Tell the Wind and Fire(34)

I’d told Ethan about my mother: that she had existed, that I’d known her, that she’d died. It wasn’t much, but he was the only person in the Light city I had told about her at all.

I had not told Ethan anything about my Aunt Leila. I did not think he would like the sound of her, somehow, any more than she would have liked him. They were impossibly different people, from impossibly different worlds, and it would have made Ethan think differently of me.

Besides, Aunt Leila was safe, as safe as a Dark magician in the Dark city could be. I did not want to bring her to the attention of any Strykers, even the one I loved.

“It never came up,” I said unsteadily.

Until the train platform, with Ethan kneeling and a guard drawing his sword. I had known the risk when I flung myself at the guard. I had known what to do. Ethan had just assumed I did not . . . because I had never told him anything else. I didn’t want him to think of me as someone who could deal with these kind of situations, who belonged in that kind of world: Aunt Leila’s world, in the Dark.

“I want you to tell me things, even if they don’t come up,” Ethan said. “Just as long as they’re about you. I only want to know more about you.”

It should have been a strange thing for a boy to say to his girlfriend of two years. I found myself looking away, as if I, not he, had been beaten.

“If you knew me more, you’d like me less.”

“I don’t think so,” Ethan murmured.

I made myself smile, even though I was scared. “Come on—let a girl keep her mystique.”

It was a weak ploy.

Ethan opened his mouth, and I knew it was to argue with me. I stared at him, mutely imploring him not to.

I thought it wouldn’t work, but after a moment he lowered his eyes and put down his sword. “Asking you to spar was a mistake, huh?” he said, stepping forward and wrapping his arms around me. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want this,” I said into his shirt. “I don’t want us to be frightened. I want things to be the way they always are between us. I want everything to be normal.”

Normal for me was keeping secrets. What was one more?

“All right,” Ethan murmured. “Whatever you want.”



There was an amazing sofa in Ethan’s apartment, deep and soft as a cloud, and the color of excellent cream, the kind of sofa that meant price was not an issue and neither was the sofa owners cleaning it themselves. Six people could lie on that sofa like a bed.

That evening it was just me and Ethan, curled together and snuggled into the sofa cushions.

“I would love you without the fabulous luxuries,” I informed him. “But they help.”

“So what you’re saying is that if I get fat, you’ll keep me around for the sofa.”

“You have a personal trainer because you’re so afraid of losing your svelte figure,” I pointed out. “But if you start balding prematurely, I’ll consider keeping you around for the sofa.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

I levered myself up on one elbow, looking down into Ethan’s face, soft with laughter and tenderness. The commercials buzzed along on television, little jingles and bursts of color, drawing into the news of the day, and everything seemed normal and safe.

“Besides,” I said, laying kisses from his jaw to his mouth, feeling him smile under my lips. “I bet all your money could buy a truly awesome toupee.”

I remembered an old poem that went, What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten . . . but I had not forgotten. There had only ever been Ethan.

The other one didn’t count.

I had almost lost Ethan, a handful of days ago. It reminded me that it was a privilege to be close like this, the skin of his stomach under the flat of my palm, the curl of his smile against my mouth.

“You’re such a romantic,” Ethan mumbled.

“You have no idea.” I kissed him again, my hair a curtain all around us, his mouth opening in a warm, easy slide under mine, and then a cough sounded like a door slamming, and I bit down on Ethan’s lip.

“Ow!” said Ethan, and I reared back and stared around wildly.

Jim Stryker, Ethan’s cousin, was standing in the doorway.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, with one of his stupid grins. “You were just getting your PDA all over the good sofa.”

“Oh, as opposed to the extremely private stuff you were doing on it with Suzy at your birthday party.”

“Come on, Lucie, be reasonable. I was drunk.” Jim grinned again. He had thick lips, a thick bridge to his nose, gel turning his hair into a solid mass. Other people thought he was handsome, but he’d always looked like an overblown version of Ethan to me. “I wouldn’t do anything like that sober. Unless you’re finally willing to drop Ethan and try a real man.”