Tempt the Stars

was no chance of that the way I felt. I’d woken up tired and was fast approaching exhaustion, and I hadn’t even done anything ye—
    A bubble sprang up around Jules, small but perfectly formed.
    I blinked at it, surprised, since I’d half expected to fail. But it was real. The light from the lounge shone off it in a swirl of iridescent colors. It looked like a soap bubble—and about as stable. I needed to hurry.
    I concentrated on the mental biography Jules had shown me.
    It was thick. Not only had Jules had a long life; he’d had a busy one. Luckily, we weren’t covering a lot of time here, and I didn’t need to worry about all those pages and pages. Just a few words back, maybe even a couple of letters ought to be—
    The wind I’d felt before picked up again, fluttering the pages, and it was a lot stronger this time. I made a mental grasp for them, but they slipped through my fingers as if they were oiled. One, two, three pages back, and finally I managed to grab one, trying to tamp down my power enough to stop the gale without killing it— and the bubble—completely.
    And it must have worked, because I heard a collective gasp. And glanced at Jules. And did a double take.
    It looked like his face had been submerged in a vat of pale paint, and was now being raised up again. Eyes, nose, mouth were all becoming visible, as the slick, too-flawless surface sloughed away on every side. Pores emerged again, and eyebrows, and lashes and—
    And I could barely breathe.
    Because it was working.
    His chest was harder to look at, doing strange things to my brain as it writhed and churned in a way flesh was never designed to. But the same process was happening there, with random bits of material coming together into a shirt once more. Like the body underneath, which was starting to look like a man again, and like the hands . . 
    I’d barely had the thought when Jules’ beautiful, graceful hands rose up from his stomach like two birds, still encased by the bubble, but no longer trapped.
    Like the pages of the book, I realized. They suddenly fluttered out of my grasp, as if they had a mind of their own. A gust of that strange wind caught them, and they fell in a single, rippling cascade, decades passing like seconds.
    Shit! I grabbed for them, but they had an almost frictionless surface, impossible to hold. Until I finally slammed myself down in desperation, trapping the still bucking and moving book under the full weight of my mental body.
    And at last, it was enough.
    “Cassie—” someone said, and I glanced at Jules. And then stared, transfixed, as color bloomed on once-pale cheeks, as blond hair lightened, as a beard sprouted and then retreated and then sprouted again—
    “Cassie!”
    Marco’s voice rose in my ear, loud and panicked, as I slashed my hand through the bubble. It evaporated in a flash of light bright enough to make me close my eyes. And when I opened them, I saw Jules, still sprawled on the carpet but flexing two perfectly fine hands with a look of stunned wonder on his face.
    And Marco, who was pale and tight-lipped. And Fred, who looked like he was about to faint. And Rico, the brunet member of the trio, a daredevil type who was famously unafraid of anything.
    Except me, I thought, meeting eyes that held that unmistakable emotion, before quickly skittering away.
    “What is it?” I asked, staring from them to Jules. Who was still flexing his hands—his pink and healthy and obviously perfectly fine hands.
    “My God,” Fred whispered.
    “What?” I asked again, starting to worry. “It worked. He’s back to normal—”
    “Normal?” Marco asked fiercely. “You call that
normal
?”
    I looked at Jules, who finally looked up. His eyes were a little different as they met mine, bluer maybe. And his skin looked different, too, almost . . . sun kissed. If anything, he looked better than before.
    “Yes?” I said, growing more confused by the second. “What do you call it?”
    Jules gripped my hand again, and this time, his was . . . different, weaker, warmer. And I could swear I felt a pulse in the wrist he held against mine. And there were fine freckles, which a moment before, had been glamoured away. And—
    No. No, it couldn’t be, I thought, staring at him in disbelief.
    “Human,” Jules said hoarsely.

Chapter Twenty-six
    I went back to bed.
    Not because I wanted to. But the room had started to telescope around me when I tried to get up, and Marco had put his foot