"I know they never come to the city," I said.
"I paid them to bring me here. Gwen and Tommy dropped me off at the fountain," he said, nodding back towards it. "Gave them nearly all my masks, except for what Marjorie's got up in the shop."
"Pretty steep fee."
"Worth it. Anyway, I can always make more masks." He hesitated, then forged ahead. "Marjorie's letting me stay with her, until I can get a place. I put up a workshop in her garage. I'm doing an installation next month at a gallery on the north side."
"I'm glad to hear it." I licked mustard off my fingers. "I missed you, Lucas. You could have left a note."
"I left you my book," he said.
"Didn't exactly explain it though, did you?" I replied. "Just my name. Was I supposed to keep it for you? Was it proof you weren't coming back?"
He frowned. "No -- it was a gift. For you. Because I didn't need it anymore, and I thought...maybe it would help you. When you thought you didn't see enough wonder in the world. God knows I can't show you any."
"Why do you say that?" I asked. He looked out over the lake, the wind ruffling his hair.
"When someone gives you a gift, and you throw it away, you don't usually get it back," he said. "I earned the power I had in Low Ferry but it was also something...special. Something people don't get very often. I didn't appreciate it. Just not using it would have been one thing, but I treated it -- myself -- like I wasn't enough for the world. Life teaches hard lessons." He fell silent, watching the cars move back and forth, watching the shallow waves break on the concrete barriers beyond.
"What happened to Nameless?" I asked softly. He snorted.
"It sounds stupid," he said. "I buried him. Out in the field below The Pines. It wouldn't work anymore, you know. None of it. Not the rain, not the snow, not the mask. I threw away all that power, and I got my life saved..." a shy grin for me, "...but that's all I got back."
"That's a hell of a lot, Lucas. Your life."
"I didn't used to think so," he said thoughtfully. "Things are different now."
"That boy you used to tutor -- " I started, but I couldn't figure out how to say what I meant.
"Is he angry?" Lucas asked.
"No, he disappeared. About the same time you did."
"Disappeared?" he asked, looking faintly worried.
"Nobody knows where he went. I don't think he was...I don't know what he was, but he wasn't normal. Have you ever noticed you can't think of his name?"
Lucas frowned, brow furrowing. I watched as the familiar sequence of emotions passed over his face -- concentration, confusion, forgetfulness.
"What were we talking about?" he asked after a while. I shook my head.
"Doesn't matter," I said, though it did. It mattered that I was the only one with a clear memory. Which meant that the boy had not necessarily been there -- the Waxwing had not always stood guard over the door to The Pines -- for the sake of Lucas. Some part of all that magic had been mine. "Have you seen your parents, since you came back?" I asked carefully.
He looked rueful. "Couple of days ago. They tried to talk me into a clinic until I told them Marjorie gave me a job. Now I'm on an installment plan for paying off the hospital bill."
"Pulling no punches," I said.
"Must learn responsibility," he answered, managing to look amused and regretful at once. He glanced down and kicked against the cement a little. "So, is this how it's going to be? Polite and friendly?"
"I don't know," I said. "I don't know what you want, Lucas, except that you wanted to run away from me."
"No -- no," he said, giving me a hurt look. "That wasn't what I wanted. Christopher, you don't think that."
"You left," I said. "You didn't tell me why, you didn't call me when you got to Chicago. Marjorie thought you didn't want me to know. If you want me to go back to -- "
"I found the mask you made," he blurted, words running together. I stared at him. "You didn't even give it to me yourself. You didn't wait until I woke up."
"I...didn't know how," I said, startled.
"Welcome to the club," he replied. "I left because I was scared. Christopher, do you even understand what you did?"
"I thought so," I said. "But then you left, so I didn't know. I didn't even know you'd found it. Half the time I thought I was crazy."
"I'm so sorry," he said, and there was real regret in his eyes.
"What did you do with it, anyway?" I asked. Slowly his face transformed -- sadness into a kind of secretive joy.
"What do you think?" he asked, and reached up to the back of his head. I thought he was scratching it for a minute, and then he cupped his other hand carefully over his face. When he brought it down again there was that same shimmer in the air, a sense that the whole world was focused on the empty space in his palm.
I looked up from the mask and saw his shoulders slumping inwards, his head automatically dipping, eyes now trained anywhere but my face.
"Your heart," he said, which I hadn't been expecting. I looked down at his hand, where a mask no-one could see dangled by invisible ribbons. "It's healed, isn't it."
"You should know," I said. "You did it."
"I thought I might have, but I couldn't be sure. So...I gave you this thing, health, and the right to choose – even if you chose Low Ferry instead of Chicago," he said. "And you gave me this. I'm not afraid anymore. I'm...still me, but I'm not afraid."
"So why run?" I asked gently.
"I wasn't sure you'd want to see me the way I am now. You liked me the way I was."
I almost laughed -- would have, if I hadn't spent the last two months grieving a loss, only to find it restored to me. "I like you, Lucas," I said. "I always have. It doesn't matter to me."
"Good. Because then I don't have to wear it around you." He lifted his face a little, into the wind. "Would you come back to the city? No, you won't, will you," he said, before I could tell him.
"Low Ferry is my home," I told him. "The city can't give me anything I want, not anymore."