Chapter Nineteen
Magic.
The moment the letter was free from Ed’s skin, it was real. No longer freckled and made of flesh, no longer faded and outlined in ink. It was paper. No bigger than a postage stamp, folded in half.
Alistair turned it over, found the flap on the back, and peeled it open. Inside was an even smaller sheet of paper with microscopic writing on it, impossible to read. Alistair felt like exploding. She’d just seen magic. Whatever else she doubted, about herself, about The Monarch Papers, about Ed, it was all blown away. She was pulled from her trance by Ed tapping the table with a finger. She looked up and saw he had rolled his sleeve down again. He was telling her to put the letter down. She did. He picked up his glass of water, downed three quarters of it, then put the
