"Please, if you die, Alex will kill me next," he says, even though it's not really a thing to be joking about. There's something defiant about it, regardless; a challenge to whatever swallows him up in the Rosenfeld basement at some undefined point in his future, though thinking of that as a death feels a little too final. "Not that she'd let you be sent through the Veil as it is."

Caleb's surprise and disbelief have him laughing. "I'm not kidding," he says, grinning. "Though I admit I used it more as a training space the last few years than anything else."