“The next nine days stretched out like taffy. Mrs. Casnoff went back to Hecate, which was kind of a relief. Having her at Thorne had been a little too "worlds colliding" for me.I spent most of my time in my room, recovering from my injury. But staring at the wall gave me lots of time to think, mostly about Archer. I'd seen the look on his face right after the explosion had gone off. He'd been scared. Shocked, even, and not in the "Whoops, my assassination didn't go off as planned" way. He hadn't known it was coming, which meant he couldn't have been the one who planted the gift. Which meant there was someone else who wanted to kill me, a thought that made me want to never leave the safe cocoon of my bed.”