"Yes please," Bella says. "We have a day trip planned. I might not return him until this evening."

"Hi! You're dressed uncharacteristically," Bella comments. "Ready to go?"

"I was cleaning an oven," he says by way of explanation. "Yep, let's get outta here."

"It got a little caramel'd."

Bella chuckles and hops in the car. "Here," she says, handing over the notebook with the map in it as well as a local roadmap. "You're the navigator."

"You got it," he says, sliding into the passenger seat and buckling his seatbelt unprompted.

"Nope," he says, and also, "Thataway."

"Me either, but I made some more. Turns out stepping on a Lego is good for a square about two thirds of the time, but the ratio was deteriorating after a while - I guess I started stepping more gingerly or something - so I stopped when I had ten squares, seven triangles."

"That is a weird and kind of adorable mental image," Alice comments.

"What's adorable about me stepping on a Lego seventeen times and swearing under my breath?" laughs Bella.

"I dunno," he says. "And I can't write it out and navigate at the same time. Pretty sure you wanna turn up there, by the way."

"Turn which way?" Bella asks patiently.

"Left."

"I dunno, is a mile and a half serious?"

"It's a little serious. If the terrain's not very friendly I might be looking at yet another pentagon or three by the time we arrive," Bella says with bright trepidation. She parks and gets out of the car.

"Hot," says Alice, following.

"We're good for now."

"What makes it adorable for me to stomp on Legos."

"Yeah," Bella says. "Just a triangle, though."

"Well, first of all, does 'adorable' seem similar to 'hot', or are we dealing with different things here?"

"It's... kinda similar?"

"Similar in what ways, different in what ways?"

"I think... it's not as hot because I don't see you really having fun with it," he muses, frowning at the page. "And it's cuter because, I mean, you can't even step really hard on a Lego? You really don't like pain, do ya?"

"Really don't," Bella agrees.

"Too bad for you," he remarks, drawing a line down from the original question and writing the word wuss and a heart. "If only you could make wishcoins out of—I dunno, what's something you do like?"

"Is it cute or hot or what that I'm a wuss?" Bella asks, amused. "I like tasty food and interesting books and my own thoughts and sheets that have just come out of the dryer and, you know, nice things."

"Pain is nice," he says, cheerfully. "It is cute that you're a wuss."

"So if I wasn't a wuss and could cheerfully take a hammer to my own foot or stick my arm in a cage of rats, what would that be? Besides convenient."

"Sexy as hell."

"Rather literally, at that," Bella says, thinking of the theory Elias had that instead of selling one's entire soul to hell for power, wishcoin-makers served out their sentences piecemeal.

Alice laughs.

"I'm getting the impression that at this point there is not a thing I could do or a way I could turn out to be that would make you lose interest in me. Short of killing you, and you'd probably find that fascinating on the way there too."

"...Oh, honey," he sighs, hugging his armful of notebooks, "you say the sweetest things."

"Did I approve 'honey'?" Bella asks, mock-stern. "I did not."

"Sorry," he says with irrepressible cheer. "Do ya not like it?"

"Makes it sound like we're a married couple. In the 1950's," Bella says.

"And?"

"And we are not that and it is not then and, no, we cannot be that for Halloween and start practicing ridiculously early."

"...Whaddya mean?"

"He punches blocks," Bella says. "And coins appear. Enough of them and he gets a second life."

Alice laughs again. "That's awesome."

"I haven't played any video games in a long time. I never had my own system - had to go over to people's houses to play. But I'm pretty sure that's how it works." She slows down her pace a bit. "I wonder how many coinmakers there are in the world. And who they are."

"Betcha we could find out."

"By magic?" Bella asks. "Or by looking?"

"By taking over the world and seeing who squawks? But those too."

"But," Bella says, "if there are a bunch - and Elias knew like five individuals and one little cabal and they all lived on this continent - why hasn't one of them taken over the world yet?"

"Didn't think of it," he suggests. "Didn't wanna put the work in. Too busy smacking each other around. Never hurt themselves enough to get a good stash going. Who knows?"

"Or, one of them has," Bella says. "And is running the world in secret." She cocks her head. "If so they are doing a terrible job and I must depose them."

"...I love you," says Alice.

"I wonder how far we've come. I should have checked the time when we started out from the car. Does fifteen minutes sound right to you?"

"Just about, yeah. So, any bright ideas for how to find this thing once we're in the right square mile of forest?"

"Well, if we're lucky, then to me it'll look like it's got a great big neon sign on it. If we're not lucky, I start chucking squares at the problem."

"And I sit down and hope you don't fall down any holes," he says. "Okay."

"Well, if there's no neon sign, then you can help, you just look for - markers, or anything that resembles some odd word choice from the cipher, or something out of place that most likely got there by magic."

"Okay," he repeats, a little more brightly.

Walk-walk-walk. "Does your map have any useful landmarks?"

"Yeah, actually. See any fuck-off huge rocks?"

"I don't. Are we meant to be approaching one about now?"

"Soonish," he says.

"Definitely."

"Well," she says. "If the stash doesn't have any hexes, on the way back I will consider trying to climb it."

"You know, it seems kind of backwards that you'd rather fall off something than ask somebody to break your leg for you, since you're so keen on personal safety and all."

"It's the fear thing," Bella says. "I have a reasonable intellectual expectation of falling off that enormous rock if I try to climb it. But I'm not actually afraid of heights. I am scared of somebody literally torturing me. And again, people don't usually die from short falls. I'd have to land very unusually wrong."

"Isn't landing wrong kind of a thing you're famous for, though?"

"I am still alive," Bella says. "In this context, 'wrong' means 'I break my neck' or 'I squish my head'. If I break seventeen other bones but do not suffer those highly specific injuries, that's not so bad at all."

"Well, okay." He shrugs. "It's just, you know, I don't want you to squish your head."

"I don't want me to squish my head either. I consider this only as a possibility if there are no hexes in the stash, and I'll probably decide against it anyway."

"Okay."

"Both of those!"

"Okay, I'm stumped. What's to like about cleaning ovens?"

"I think it's just one'a those things."

"...If by that you mean do I get off on it, yeah, kinda."

"At some point I might need a complete list just so I do not have to be this stunned again," Bella informs him.

"There is more stuff in the world that I could possibly do than I could ever actually do," he says, "and I don't know if most of it's gonna turn me on until I try it. I didn't know about cleaning ovens until this morning, by the way, I just thought it might be fun. And I was right! I was very right."

"Ah-huh." Bella shakes her head slowly. "How about a list of things noted so far, and I can at least try to make some predictive models?"

"Sure. You want it right now?"

"Write it down - and you could narrate it aloud as you go, too."

"Okay," he says, and flips to a new page in his notebook. "Some of it's going to freak you out," he adds, although she probably knew that already.

"Yes, I know, that's why I'd like to find out now instead of at some potentially inopportune moment."

"Makes sense," he acknowledges. "Okay."

Walk-walk-walk. Bella awaits information.

"So it's not cleaning in general?"

Bella nods. "So there's that."

"You get off on food," deadpans Bella.

"Oh come on, in what way is Hilary's cake not a sexual experience?"

"In the way that it is a gustatory experience instead."

"I'm beginning to think that you just walk around in a constant state of arousal virtually all the time."

"You are not totally wrong," he admits. "Like, not all the time, but a lot."

"That sounds distracting."

"Not really."

"It's not? How is it not?" laughs Bella.

"Well, I don't walk around in a constant state of desperately horny, or anything."

"Fair enough. Anything else?"

"...Yeah," he says, "but after this it's kind of - I don't know, hard to articulate? Like, some of them I know what they are, but I don't know what they're called."

"Okay... examples, maybe?"

"Um... when you called me a freak," he says. "The five percent of me that was not busy falling in love was really turned on."

"So those are separate things," Bella notes. "What else?"

Alice looks away; checks the map; looks back; looks away again. Apparently he is having some trouble with this one.

"We going the right way?" she asks, watching him check the map. "I think we're still heading south-maybe-south-southwest."

"Yep," he says, with a brief smile. "Still on track."

"Is there another example of the same thing?" Bella asks.

"Yep," he repeats, rather more subdued. "You've heard it already, though."

"Saw it drawn, rather?" Bella asks, to make sure.

"It's nothing special for features of you to be fucked up, we already know that," Bella says. "Can you think of any more or is this what we have to work with?"

"Uh... you reading my mind is a little of the same kind of thing," he says.

"Surprises that could be really bad," says Bella, but she doesn't sound confident in the characterization.

"...Well, I do like surprises," he says, "but that's a different thing. I mean, I am looking forward to you reading my mind, that's not gonna be a surprise at all."

"It's surprising that I could do it, as of yesterday," Bella says. "But yeah, that doesn't seem exactly right."

"Maybe it's a power thing?" he says. "Not sure. I don't think that's completely it, but it might be part of it."

"Would it still count if the mindreading thing was pauseable at will on your end, instead of mine - if we turned you into a projective telepath instead of turning me into a mindreader?"

"...Kind of," he says. "But less. Like, this counts a little bit, not enough to turn me on, just enough to be... nice."

"What, just me interrogating you?" Bella blinks.

"Yep."

"Ah-huh. Would anybody have the same effect or am I a special snowflake here?"

"I wouldn't do this for anybody," he says.

"Is that part of it or does it just enable whatever 'it' is?"

"Well, I'm sure as hell not turned on by psychologists."

"I'm sure the psychologists appreciate that. Hmm."

"I mean, you know, of course the fact that I'm madly in love with you makes you generally sexier than other people. That's not a surprise. But I dunno. Other people reading my mind is... hot, not necessarily good."

"Well, there is another thing on this list that has been designated hot but not necessarily good."

"Yeah."

"Other people have called you a freak. Did that count?"

"Nope. I think with you it's 'cause I could see you were doing it on purpose."

"Really? No one else has done it on purpose?"

"Not like that they haven't, or I'd be in love with them too."

Bella laughs. "Okay, but what's 'like that'?"

"Like you knew I wouldn't like it and you wanted to see what I'd do."

"Hm." Walk, think, walk, think. "Transgressions. Not, like against the law, though."

"...Transgressions," he says. "That's a good word. I like that word." He writes it down.

"You got it," he says cheerfully.

Walk, walk, walk. Bella checks the time. "If I'm right about how fast we're going this should be about it." She looks around. "I'm seriously disappointed in the lack of neon signs. Come on, Elias."

"What do you wanna bet you'll end up falling down a hole?"

"No bet," Bella says. She starts to pat things. Trees, that one big rock... She starts up a hill. The hill eats her.

"What'd I tell you," Alice says to the hill, and sits down with his back against a tree trunk right next to it.

"Welcome back," says Alice. "Did you stop for tea with Bilbo?"

"Beg pardon?" Bella says. "No, there was no tea, I just grabbed the treasure chest and hauled it out. Let's see what's in here."

"...You were gone for like half an hour," he says.

Bella opens her mouth, then closes it, and then takes out her phone. "Do you have any form of timepiece on you?" she asks.

He digs his phone out of his pocket and hands it over.

"Yeah, I wonder what the fuck it's for," he says.

"...Well, fuck," says Alice.

"Ah-huh."

"...Hey, close that for a sec?"

"Uh, sure, why?" She puts the lid down.

"So, what the fuck are you gonna do about that?" he asks, pointing to the star.

"Nothing - well, I'll wear it, but no wishing - until I have a good idea why stars go wrong and think I can get around it."

"Good plan."

"...yep," says Alice. "Noticed that."

"Fuck."

"Yep."

"Are there any of these I shouldn't wish onto the necklace that you would like to have?" Bella asks quietly. "In case... it takes me a long time."

"Did it with a pentagon for my leg, when I fell. A square might have been enough but I didn't have one to try at the time."

"Then I think I want one of those," he says, grabbing a pentagon. "And some of these," a handful of squares.

"That all?"

"Cute or hot," Alice says musingly, "I can't even decide."

"Can things not be both?" she asks, setting back towards their footprints in the soft ground.

"Okay, yes," he acknowledges, "they can."

"Do you want to?"

"Aww," he says, smiling wryly. "Okay."

"Look," Bella says. "I think you can think of at least one thing you do not like and would hesitate to invite even for magic powers."

"Well, okay."

She turns back to their trail. Walk walk walk. "I'm glad it's clear today."

"Yeah, making this trek in the rain would be pretty annoying."

"Is that bad?"

"It's dull." She sighs. "Why couldn't he leave one more hex?"

"I don't think he expected me," says Alice. "I mean, people usually don't."

Bella laughs. "What if I was twins? Or just had a sibling? Two descendants could have conceivably fallen into his hole at the same time!"

"Yeah, but they probably wouldn't have been one person who's kind of a wuss but willing and able to take over the world and one person who doesn't really give a shit about ruling the world but really likes pain. And, you know, maybe he was kind of a wuss too. Although I gotta wonder how he fixed himself a star if he was."

"Considering what he wrote about stars, I bet he was going for a hex and overshot, and then freaked out and didn't try whatever that was again."

"Maybe. Oh hey, can I borrow the book while we're in the car?"

"Sure, why?"

"'Cause I wanna copy some parts," he says. "Now that I've got a big pile of little ones, I think I'm gonna go home and experiment."

Bella shudders involuntarily. "Okay," she says.

"...Does that bug you?"

"It's not the pleasantest of daydreams. It's your prerogative, though."

"Why not? I mean, I'm gonna like it."

"Yeah, I know, that doesn't affect the content of the mental image that much." She shrugs.

"It should," he chirps.

"I have a general idea, but not enough to edit the picture. Let alone be sure I care to."

"Well, which is worse: mental image of me hurting myself and not liking it, or mental image of me hurting myself and getting off?"

"I'm ending this thread of conversation," Bella announces.

...Alice bites his lip. There are just so many things he could say to that.

"I guess no one heard me yelling when I fell. A pentagon would probably get you through the pillar," Bella says.

"Maybe," he says. "That might even be a better idea, I dunno. But what I was gonna say is, you remember how I broke my ribs? Yeah, that wasn't quiet. Most of the rooms in my house are soundproof with the doors closed."

"Well, technically no, 'cause I've never heard you scream or vice versa. But I'm pretty fucking sure."

"And since I have not extensively messed with my head like this before," Bella says, "I might not be very good at it, and regardless of the fact that everything about taking a hammer to my foot - I think that's probably my preferred option, hammer plus foot, left foot - is probably relevant to your interests, if it turns out I am not good enough at managing my brain to make it tolerate this, then I'll change my mind, and then there will be no hammering of my foot, okay? I just want that verbally clear. No surprises."

"—yeah," he says. "I mean. You asking me to hurt you is hot. But the asking is important."

"Well, really, the problem is what it'll take to handle a little less than hex-level damage."

"Exactly-one-hex might be an actual target, and then after that the same injury could hurt only enough for pentagons. Are you suggesting I sit there raining pentagons while you wish yourself coinmaking powers and then find a way to generate more hexes so you can turn me into - who was it, Wolverine?"

"No, not really."

"Do you wanna know the plan?"

"What's the plan?"

"Blowtorch," he says succinctly.

"Oh, for the - what if your clothes catch, or your hair does, and the whole house goes up, and I can't run away because my foot is broken?"

"Believe it or not, I am actually pretty good at fire safety? It does not have to go near my clothes or my hair. If what I saw in that picture worked, then I just have to do this..." he draws a broad line down the inside of his left wrist and over his palm with the first finger of the opposite hand "...and then I can rip into it with my fingernails to get the rest. Easy."

"I would still be more comfortable with some non-fire-based method," Bella says. "While I will be sitting there with a broken foot."

"Okay," he says. "Those're messier, though. And slower."

"...Should we not be talking about this right now?" he wonders. "'Cause I mean, I'm sure my dad is gonna go on other trips this year..."

"I'm not even planning to attack my disinterest in supervising self-mutilation. I just need to be able to hold still and not tell you 'stop'."

"Okay," he says, but he sounds unconvinced.

"What do you mean?"

"Wouldn't that apply if I do accomplish what I have in mind, too?" Bella asks.

"If you make yourself not hate it the way I don't hate it, you'll be fine," he says. "I don't think you'll do that."

"I'm not even sure if - wait. What am I even thinking? I have fucking magic powers. I have Elias's stash. It worked for cryptanalysis, hell, that only took squares, maybe it works for masochism. It's at least worth a try, and then," she laughs, "I don't even have to wait overnight."

"The cryptanalysis lasted a minute, maybe a minute and a half? That should be enough time, shouldn't it? Smash foot, create hex, heal foot with pentagons if I can't stand it. Hand off the hex and you have magic powers."

"It could easily take more than a minute and a half to get you to hex-level pain by smashing your foot with a hammer," he says. "Especially if we stop to test that it works at all first, which you know, we probably should."

"Well, what's faster? And don't say 'blowtorch'," Bella says. "And yes, of course, squares are cheap, I'll try a dry run. I could definitely tell when I did and did not have cryptanalysis powers."

"Squares can wish up small things," he says. "Can a square wish up a jar of lye? You wouldn't need a lot, that shit burns like a motherfucker."

"Like a hex-sized one?" Bella asks. "I can try that too, when not driving."

"Yeah, that's the idea."

"Mkay." She sighs. "I could probably make it a permanent hack with a pentagon - but - I don't know if those are reversible. It doesn't say in the book. And I don't really want to keep the... predilection... forever."

"...Why not? I mean, you know, it would kinda come in handy."

"Yes, it would. But I haven't fully thought it through, it would probably have other effects, and I take alterations to my brain very seriously."

"Yeah, I guess," he says.

"Also," she says, "I'm not sure if it counts as a skill. If I worked really hard for some months or years and then got good vocal training I could speak fluent Spanish without much accent. Same thing if I studied and practiced the piano or got serious about being really good at cooking. If I wished on a pentagon I could do the same thing. I'm simply not clear on how one could, sans magic, turn into you - which means it could be a hex problem, to do it permanently - which means this doesn't solve the current problem and will be nearly redundant after the current problem is handled."

"...Getting used to pain and liking it aren't the same," he offers. "First one sounds like more your kind of deal."

"It's not the pain," she says. "I could move my leg around after it was broken. It's the fear."

"You can get used to that, too."

"But," she says, "not soon, and not easily."

"Guess not."

"Yep," says Alice.

"Can I take a few home?" Bella asks. "I'm not feeling well at the moment and that would be unjust to the muffins."

"Sure."

He leads the way to the appropriate stairs, and then down them, shutting the door at the top.

"Do we bother magicking you into the pillar, or just - sit anywhere?"

"Basement's soundproof," he says.

"Dry run meaning...?"

Bella runs over the scratches - and harvests squares, invisibly - until suddenly a weird look passes over her face and she stops and squeezes her injured arm. "One minute," she says, "and twenty seconds."

"That," says Alice, "was really hot."

"Predictably so," Bella remarks dryly. "I'm not sure I know what lye is. You've - er - handled it before? Can you do the conjuring?"

"One. Two. Th -" Bella's face twists up in the way that indicates a square messing with her brain. "Wait," she blurts.

"...Yeah?" he asks, obligingly doing nothing.

It is unexpected, and like most unexpected things Bella does, fills Alice with unexpected feelings. He closes his eyes and leans into her hand, much in the attitude of a happy kitten.

"Okay," says Alice. He closes the jar.

"Come down with what?"

"It's a disease. I think it has something to do with chicken pox, which I had when I was like four. And it's supposed to involve a rash that hurts really badly."

"I find it so weird that you can wish you'd get hurt, or risk getting hurt, but not just plain hurt yourself," says Alice.

"I don't think it's that uncommon. People do dangerous things and don't self-injure in large numbers. Kids who resent their parents say things like 'but if I cross the street to return the neighbor's loaf pan and get hit by a car then Mom will be sorry and I'll never have to do chores again'. And you know what? If I get hit by a car, and it creams me good and proper, that will predictably lead to a state of affairs in which I'll never have to do chores again." She hefts her invisible necklace, twirling the coins around on the chain. "So to speak."

"...well, I like that mental image in entirely predictable ways," Alice reports.

"I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not, so."

"Nope, go for it."

He leans into her hand again, wrapping his arms around his knees.