”Where were you?” she demanded. “All you wise men of Lethe with your spells and your chalk and your books? Where were you when the dead were following me home? When they were barging into my classrooms? My bedroom? My damn bathtub? Sandow said you had been tracking me for years, since I was a kid. One of you couldn’t have told me how to get rid of them? That all it would take was a few magic words to send them away?”

My heart is breaking for Alex all over again. She really has been failed by so many of the adults in her life and she’s completely right about Lethe. I love that she confronts Darlington about it here and it’s the first time she’s probably really ever been able to articulate what she’s been through.

To Darlington, this is magic, a glimpse of the other side. To Alex it’s horror, fear, always looking over your shoulder. Up until now, Darlington has been quite arrogant and this is the first time he’s had to confront how maybe Alex’s gift is not a gift at all, but a curse—and I love that it took her throwing his wineglass to start to get him to see that.

After a long moment, he said, “Would it help to break something else?”

From a relationship perspective, I think this is the first major turning point in their tentative friendship, too.