how very, very tired I am with this hidden battle for my own thoughts, the burden of counting, the work it takes to hide it.

I'm too tired to fight him off. Instead, I let him enfold me in a beguilingly soft, dark blanket of misery, and cry and cry and cry until my head is heavy and my throat is sore and my eyes swell so that the city lights blur and merge into a beautiful, chaotic mess.

The thing about a song is that, if you break it down, it's all chaos," I say. "Like, there's all these different notes, different instruments, different sounds. It's a mess. But you add a beat and a rhythm and somehow everything can come together and make something beautiful. I think that's what I'm trying to do. Find a rhythm for the mess in my head, so that it somehow... makes sense.

No way," I tell her. "Once was enough for me." And I mean it, though it has nothing to do with Paul and his blue eyes, and everything to do with how very, very tired I am with this hidden battle for my own thoughts, the burden of counting, the work it takes to hide it. The Djinn hates it when I'm adrift in the world, trying to live my life; he prefers me anchored to my home, where I can feed his need for numbers without fear of discovery.