Double chapter post coming up.

Jack ended up taking two books with him, promising to come back later for the rest. The tub went back under the porch.

Bod picked carefully through the discard bin at work, and found two more Cowell books for his efforts. They were a very popular series; the only type that came up as often were the kind with werewolves and vampires and giggly girls. He avoided those at all costs. They make him cringe, and he briefly entertained the thought of giving one to Silas as a joke. He could picture the reaction: I am not amused, boy.

The Cressida Cowell books, though, were all right. He thought he might like them more if he were younger. He read them anyway, because that was what Jack did, and went to stash them in the tub.

The tub was empty.

Burglars! thought Bod, and then: No, what kind of thief would steal a book? It must have been Jack.

To be fair, Bod was at work for a large part of the day, so he couldn't expect Jack to sit around and wait for him. Still ... he was a little hurt. He could've at least stopped to say hello.

Bod snapped on the lid to the tub. Then he went inside to check the weather forecast.

On Sunday, he went out on the porch and waited.

"Weird guy," said Tom as the back door swung closed.

"He's crazy," remarked Henry. "Must be twenty degrees out there. It's supposed to snow today."

When they weren't looking anymore, Bod Faded.

It was one of the few things that he could still do, and he thought it might be because it was a skill he'd learned out on his own, not something that stayed in the graveyard. Well, he'd had some help from Liza. Perhaps that was a part of it, too.

And as his housemates had noticed, he could stand the cold. Not as well as when he was younger, but enough so that he was prepared to sit and wait all day if he had to.

The temperature kept dropping. Tom poked his head out the door. "Hey, are you-oh. Huh. Guess he left."

Bod was thinking longingly of lunch when Jack showed up.

Jack glanced around stealthily and made a beeline for tub. Bod stretched and stood up.

Jack spun around, staff at the ready, and Bod dived out of the way. A blast of ice missed his ear by inches.

"It's me!" he coughed, holding his hands out in front of him.

Jack lowered his staff. "Don't do that!" he said sharply. If you ever jump out at me like that again, I will turn you into a statue."

"If you'd known I was here," Bod countered, "you wouldn't have come."

Jack looked at his feet, and Bod knew he was right.

"Look, if this is about what the other guys said last time, they forgot about that as soon as-"

"It's not about that," mumbled Jack. "It's c's'y rg'-up."

"What?

"It's cause you're a grown-up," muttered Jack, barely audible.

"I'm not a-" Bod protested hotly, and stopped. Was he? He had a job, a house (all right, a quarter of a house, but still), he worred about money (although not as much as Vlad did), but he didn't think of himself as a grown-up. He was just...him. The person he'd always been.

"And you're not on the map," continued Jack, marginally louder.

He stuck a hand in the pocket of his sweatshirt and pulled out a small glass orb, holding it up for Bod to inspect.

It was a miniature globe, chilled like ice, with continents glazed in white. Lines fine as spider silk delineated countries and states.

"North America," said Jack. "Eastern U. S."

Bod realized that he'd instinctively looked for England first. He turned the globe over in his hands.

In addiction to a crisscross of state boundaries, the United States had tiny lights scattered across it. There was quite a bright constellation on the eastern side.

"Not those," said Jack. "You're farther west. You can see me, so you should be there. But you're not."

Farther west, the state was blank. The next closest lights were in Montana. Something began to make sense in Bod's head.

"The lights," he said slowly, "They're people who can see you?"

"Kids, actually," said Jack, taking the globe back and pocketing it again. "Believers. Apart from them, the only ones who should be able so see me are ... other kinds of things. Things that are going to either leave a quarter under your pillow or try and eat your soul.

"So yeah, after I noticed this, I was a little careful about coming back. And then you decide to ambush me and I thought you might be thing number two."

"I'm not," reassured Bod. "But I don't think I'm thing one, either."

"What are you, then?"

Bod was ready. This was just too good a chance to pass up.

"Nobody," he said.

The story of how Jack got a personal globe of belief I stuck in the How does it feel? collection of stories.