"That's fair," he says. "I'm not even the weirdest thing in my family." Not in his blood family and not among the Mortizes either, not when he'd been taken into a family that boasted an encantrix, a magical hacker, and a girl who loved so fiercely that she raised the dead. After all that, one measly light show was pretty boring.

"So you're making this stronger," he guesses, keeping his orb afloat. "Without it all coming out of me." Good, maybe if he sticks around her, he'll live longer.