For the rest of the tour, Bishop was thinking about the way Hope's slim and splintered wrist had fit perfectly inside Bishop's encircled fingers, and of his gone-rabid roommate who he'd have to face once home.

The tour that had once been booked for thirteen was now just for ten, and the difference was colossal. Taking out Chase's loud personality and Felix's relentless complaints made the trip eerily quiet. Bishop heard a few contenders comment that they actually missed Felix's cynicism, but Bishop couldn't agree. It was peaceful, the silence. It left lots of room to fill with thoughts of his own.

And once the distractions had finally ceased, the Pantheon was a marvellous experience. Lee spoke to the contenders like they had not just become the gods, but like they'd been born into these divine vessels. She spoke of the gods' complex families, stories, tragedies, like the group here had experienced them. And after a certain while, Bishop started to feel like he had always been Pluto. He could almost feel Daphne's resentment towards him on behalf of Ceres; almost longed for Felix in a complicated brotherly way.

And though Bishop could not explain why, he did finish the tour with an inexplicably better understanding of his magic. It was not exactly like knowing his magic better – more like it knew him. He had been familiarising himself with its darkness for twenty-one years, and finally it was reciprocating. It wanted to understand him.

By the time he and the rest of the group were filtering out of the building, he was aching to get home, to play with this new familiarity he had with himself. The others were the same way – most of them, at least. Their energy had fluctuated as the trip had dragged on, but once they were out into the sunlight again they were awake and attentive, like revitalised plants. Then they piled into the cars, Bishop between Annalise and Daphne, and he felt it there too – this electricity in the air, taut like tripwire.

Daphne fell quickly asleep against the window, her doll's face flat against the sun-warmed glass. Annalise and Bishop were quiet for half the drive before she leaned into him and asked, "What did you say to the Thirteenth earlier? After what happened with Chase?"

Bishop leaned back into her. They were close, very close, and this was Annalise's game. "You'll have to ask him."

The truth was that Bishop had said nothing of consequence to Hope, and he didn't want Annalise to know it. With Hope, Bishop had merely been playing a game of his own. When one of Annalise's perfect eyebrows sloped suspiciously, Bishop's lips pulled into a distracted smile and he just said, "I was asking him what Chase wanted with him."

"And?" Her knee was against his.

"Chase just wanted the ring." And Annalise knew this. They both knew this. Of course they did. But now her knee was against his thigh.

"Do you feel enlightened?" teased Bishop, his gaze deliberately sliding lower than her own. "About Venus."

"Oh, I learned nothing new."

She was lying. Her skin glowed with magic. Her eyes snarled with it. "Because you're such a genius?" suggested Bishop.

"To say the least," Annalise said.

If they weren't in a car, he'd have kissed her, just to taste her, and then he'd have gone home and regretted it, because her beauty was her weapon and he'd have impaled himself right upon it.

Then, Daphne stirred, and Bishop and Annalise shared this breath of knowing laughter, and took their bodies off one another.

Upon arriving back at Holloway, the cars dropped the contenders off at the Museum, which was where the Overseers departed. Annalise and Bishop joined Atticus, and together the three of them ascended campus to the dorms.

"We should stop to get coffee," Atticus said. Looking apologetically at Bishop, he added, "Or tea."

"We have both of those things back at the rooms," Bishop reminded him. "For free."

Atticus wrinkled his nose. "I don't want to make it."

"I'll make it. Come back to–" But Bishop stopped. He didn't want Annalise and Atticus accompanying him to his room. Chase would be home, and Bishop wanted to confront him alone.

They stopped for coffee.

Cheerful Atticus was the first to enter Tempest, and despite the spring in his step, a hush fell over the room immediately as customers took notice of him. When Bishop and Annalise followed, letting the door twinkle shut behind them, there was utter stillness, less the awkward kind than the fearful. The entire crowd appeared to be disquieted, like the contenders were a storm cloud passing over their sunny afternoon. Bishop thought, stupidly, of the irony of that, considering the cafe's name, but it wasn't funny. A scowl was beginning to form on the corners of his lips.

"They know about Felix, then," Atticus murmured.

It had been a week, and news of Felix's death had not been released formally. Still, Rumour was at work within campus walls. People were noticing the new air about the contenders, identifying that there was one missing. Possibly somebody had seen the body get removed from the premises. Possibly they all wanted another reason to hate or fear the Thirteen. What had been the Thirteen.

Bishop hated them, too. The Thirteen.

They all loved themselves enough to compensate for the gap his loathing left.

Analise approached the barista on behalf of the boys, since Atticus was put off by the stares and Bishop's skin crawled with them. The pair of them waited outside until Annalise returned with their drinks, juggling the three hot cups with unsurprising grace.

"It's like they think one of us killed him," Atticus murmured.

"I wouldn't be surprised if one of us did," Bishop replied. Atticus gave him a look of scandalised disbelief, but Annalise nodded softly.

"Maybe you could try to communicate with him," she said as they started to walk back home.

"Felix?" Bishop gave her a cutting grin of disbelief, eyeing her like she was a fool. "What makes you think I could do that?"

Annalise was unchallenged by his tone. "I forget you know less of your magic than you know even of yourself." She turned her eyes away again, watching the dorm building grow larger as they approached.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Open your mind to possibilities," Annalise said, with the exaggerated grandeur of a mock inspirational speaker. She lifted her arms in an arc. "Explore your magic!"

"It'll kill me."

Her look was flat. "You're Pluto, Bishop Butler. Your end is your beginning."
Bishop thought about this as they drifted home, silent even when Annalise and Atticus struck up new conversation amongst themselves. Bishop had been frightened all his life that his magic would eat him like it had eaten the things most precious to him. Death was hungry. It could not afford to be kind.

Bishop let his magic call on him, draw him in, taste him and relish his (scarcely) beating heart, and in exchange, the dead gifted him his black power. But he'd never tried to summon the dead or speak to them.

Because he knew they'd answer. And what then?

It wasn't that Bishop feared death; his damaged skin said so. He feared the dead.

They were vengeful, they were brutal, they were wretchedly human.

At the dormitories, Bishop waved his friends off and trudged down the hall to his own room. He hesitated outside of it, one hand poised to knock and the other holding his cooling chai. What sort of mood would Chase be in? Hopefully all remnants of the murderous temper from earlier would have subsided by now. Bishop dropped his hand onto the knob and braced himself as he pushed his way inside.

The room smelled sweetly of freshly-cut vegetables and herbs. Water was running, or spilling, somewhere, and steam shrouded the room. "Chase?" Bishop said warily, creeping forward into the kitchen. A dark figure moved behind the smoky screen and Bishop felt the patter of his heart in his throat.

So suddenly that Bishop nearly dropped his drink, Chase sprang from the steam, his arms flying forward, brandishing something long and dangerous-looking. He was swinging it straight for Bishop's face, saying something as he went that sounded senseless to Bishop's distressed ears.

Thoughtlessly, Bishop's arms lurched up to protect his face, and he beat aside whatever Chase was holding. Chase released a dismayed cry; something wet and warm splattered against Bishop's leg. It wasn't his drink, for he was clinging to that like it was his one true love. Too late, Bishop saw Chase crumple, going down with a mighty moan of horror.

Bishop was seized by a fear like no other. Had he released his magic on Chase?

"Bishop, for fuck's sake!"

So Chase was unharmed.

"You're scared of sauce?" Chase was scrambling across the floor to reach his fallen weapon: a wooden spoon. What Bishop had thought were Chase's insides, spilled across the polished wood, was sauce. It also occurred to Bishop then that Chase was wearing an apron, which appeared to have dancing kittens on it. He'd even wrangled his hair into a knot on top of his head.

"Don't do that again," Bishop grumbled, setting aside his tea then leaning over the counter to collect paper towels. He joined Chase on the ground and started to smudge Chase's precious curry sauce off the floor.

"I wanted you to taste it. Tell me if it's too sweet." Chase sounded miserable – so much so that Bishop almost felt bad for slapping his creation across the floor.

"You try to kill Hope," Bishop said, "then come home and just cook?"

"It relieves stress."

"You're stressed?"

Chase blinked at Bishop, his eyes clear and innocent. There was no remnant there of the animalistic fury from earlier. "Are you upset with me?"

"No." It was true. Bishop had no reason to be displeased with Chase when he'd only been playing the game. "In a public place, though, Chase? The one day we go out, you had to sabotage it?"

"I like to be witnessed." Chase's grin was slow and spectacular. "We're gods, Bishop B. Let's at least make history."

Chase loved himself more than the moon loved secrets. And yet, he was self-destructive. This was always the consequence of being a self-admiring thing; it was accompanied by the unfathomable craving for war. Against oneself, that is. It was a human compulsion to despise beauty, because it was unfair and inexplicable. One's own beauty was not an exception to this innate temptation, and so all the beautiful people started to pull themselves apart.

They were all victims to this phenomenon, and yet Chase was one of the worst. Bishop dissected himself by his own hands, but Chase used others. It was little more than a barbaric rendition of the game 'tag' that he had lured Hope into playing with him, so they could chase one another around until one was brought to their knees. Chase could lose nothing in this game, which was why he played. Either he won, like he supposedly had today, and he walked away with a re-established pride – a new cause to adore himself – or he lost, and his appetite for destruction was indulged.

Once they had cleaned the kitchen up, Bishop let Chase spoon-feed him a mouthful of the sauce. Immediately, Bishop reached for more, bewildered that Chase had been keeping this talent up his sleeve all along, but Chase slapped his hand away. "You spilled what could've been your seconds all over the floor," he said snootily, and shooed Bishop to the other side of the counter.

"When will it be finished?" Bishop collected his long limbs onto a barstool and leaned forward into his hands, resting his elbows on the cool counter.

Chase regarded his watch. "Half an hour? I haven't cooked the rice."

"I'll cook it."

"You take up too much space in the kitchen. Sit there and watch."

Bishop did. The experience came with a note of nostalgia, letting Bishop relive the days he'd curled his little body into a stool just like this one and watched his mother work on dinner in the kitchen. As she worked, they'd chatter about meaningless things, and sometimes Edith or their father would join them. Things would smell of lavender. Everybody would be smiling.

Bishop wasn't smiling now. "I still want to know why you did it, Chase."

Chase turned around, pretending to have not heard, and went to collect the rice cooker.

"Chase," Bishop said, voice low with warning. "Why did you even want the ring? You're powerful. You know that. And it's only been a month."

Still, no response. Chase flicked the light on in the pantry and started to search.

Bishop tried one last time. "You could have killed him, Chase, if you'd taken that ring, or if something had gone wrong. Or he could've killed you. Tell me why you did it."

"Because we're dying, Bishop!" Chase whipped around, exasperated, only to shut the door of the pantry and slump against it. He was the bare bones of himself, then. He was carved wide open and his heart gleamed there on diabolical display, a horrific and captivating exhibition of woe. "We are dying. Felix is dead and whoever killed him is bound to be after the rest of us shortly. We are on the killer's list and so we are dying. Being powerful isn't enough. I need more than that."

Bishop was silent for a long moment, absorbing Chase's words. "I saw you in that fight. You were a complete monster." He didn't know what he expected from Chase. An apology? Something more? Whatever it was, he wasn't going to get it.

"Christ, Pluto. None of us would be here if wewere saints."