His patience broke barely a minute later, and he rolled me over, cursing and fighting with the damned sweater while I laughed and laughed, and while the chair we’d banged into again squeaked and squeaked, and while the musicians below, who had started playing for real now, probably started wondering which of them was making that weird noise—
I bit his shoulder, because it was that or give them a screaming demonstration.
And then Louis-Cesare stopped, and stared around.
“What?” I asked breathlessly. “What is it?”
He swallowed. “We usually get to this point, and your roommate shows up. I believe I’ve developed a complex.”
“Well, Claire’s not here.” I moved sinuously underneath him, and felt him shudder. “We should come to the theatre more often.”
“Or you could move in with me, and we could do this in a bed,” he pointed out. “Just for a change.”
His eyes were serious, but his head came down, catching my lips again, before I had to answer that, and the mounting rhythm resumed, and damn, it was even better this time. Slow and sweet and hot and—yeah. Might have been wrong about that whole climax thing. Because the shuddering was getting harder, and the fireworks were getting brighter, and I was biting my lip to keep from crying out at every . . . passionate . . . thrust . . . and yeah, oh yeah, right there, right there—
The door banged open and someone came in, carrying a tray of something I couldn’t see, because I was looking at it from below.
And because the fireworks were in the way.
“Hey, sorry it took so long. The meeting went okay, but I hadda go down the street for snacks. You wouldn’t believe the crap they have at the—oh.” Ray peered over the tray, blinking. “Are you guys busy?”
“Out!” Louis-Cesare roared, loud enough to cause the musicians to miss a beat, and flung his nice pullover at Ray. Who didn’t have the greatest reflexes, and who promptly spilled a tray of convenience store treats everywhere, including onto us.
Louis-Cesare looked furious and tragic and crushed and half a dozen other things, all in quick succession. I don’t know what I looked like, and didn’t care. I kicked the door closed, rolled on top of him, and finished what we’d started, complete with cola in my cleavage and Twizzlers in my hair.
’Cause that’s what love is.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Ray said, settling into one of the seats behind us, and handing me some more napkins. “You oughta put a sign on the door. If the balcony’s rockin’, don’t come a knockin’—”
“This isn’t a hotel,” Louis-Cesare grated out. The mess was cleaned up, and the pullover was back in place, but the hair was still a tousled mess. I grinned at it. And then reached over and tousled it some more. He caught my sticky-with-cola wrist and placed a kiss on it. Ray snorted.
“That’s my point. There’s hotels all over the city. You two need to get a room—after the show, all right?”
“When’s the meeting?” I asked, deciding that I was as clean as I was going to get, despite the fact that the cola had made the jumpsuit cling in all the wrong places. I gave up dabbing at myself with dry napkins and stole some of his Bugles.
“Intermission. Curly said he’s got some stuff to do, but’ll meet us for drinks.”
“Curly?”
“The theatre owner. His real name’s Meredith, ’cause I guess his parents hated him. But he goes by Curly, even though he don’t have too many anymore.” He sat forward. “This oughta be good.”
“What ought to be good?” I asked, because they still hadn’t raised the curtain.
And then, almost as if they’d heard me, they did, pulling it not up but across, in one huge swish of red velvet. And I just sat there, a Bugle about to fall out of my suddenly slack mouth. Because that . . . wasn’t a stage.
“Okay, oh boy, okay,” Ray said, as I took in the sight of a wall of water. It spread over the entire area where the stage should have been, with the bottom disappearing behind the orchestra pit, and giving the impression that it went down a lot farther. With the top and sides hidden by the framework of curtains, it looked like a whole reef had somehow been transported into the theatre. It must have contained millions of gallons. It was huge.
Yet that wasn’t the weirdest thing about it.
I stared at the setup, which looked like nothing so much as a kid’s first aquarium, complete with a bunch of fake-looking plants, some colorful coral, a turreted, backless castle perched on a rocky outcropping, and some bubbles.
But that wasn’t the weirdest thing, either.
“Are those . . . What are those?” Louis-Cesare whispered, sitting forward in his seat.
I didn’t answer.
I thought it was kind of obvious.
“Huh, huh?” Ray elbowed me as something swirled up out of the darkness. “We’re gonna be freaking rich.”
Yeah, I thought blankly.
Yeah.
The music reached a crescendo, although it was almost drowned out by the audience. Which was on its feet, giving a standing ovation as the cast members arrived, despite the fact that nothing had happened yet. Sit down, I thought, annoyed that they were holding up the show.
Until I realized: I was hanging over the side of the box, trying to get a better view, even though I already had what was probably the best in the house.
And was suddenly even better, when one of the “showgirls” paused in the water not twelve feet away from my reaching hand.
For a moment, we just stared at each other.
There was no doubt what she was. But she didn’t look anything like the flirty neon cuties on the sign outside. She didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen.
“Hey. Hey, get back in here. You’re gonna fall,” Ray said.
I barely heard him.
The water was dark, or maybe it was just that the lights were pointed at the castle, where something I didn’t care about was going on. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t need it.
She made her own light.
Not like other fey I’d seen, who cast light shadows in our world, how thick and how bright depending on how powerful they were. But like she captured any light that came her way and sent it back in a scintillation of colors. They sparkled off the antenna-like filaments above her eyes, the delicate gills at her neck, and above all, the long, sinuous sweep of iridescent scales beginning just below her waist.
They were completely unlike Claire’s. Hers had been lustrous, but thick and hard, like battle armor carved out of semiprecious stones. These were soft and supple, a glide of colors rather than a single hue, the way water takes on the shade of the world around it. I honestly couldn’t have said what color she was.
The tail ended in a spreading, translucent, filmy fin, gossamer fine, like the bluish gray hair that ghosted out in the water around her. It was long, maybe two-thirds the length of her body, making her look like she was drifting in a cloud. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. . . .
“Dory?” That was Louis-Cesare, because I was up on the side of the box now. It was thick old wood, perfectly capable of supporting my weight. But he had a hand on my leg anyway, probably because of the thirty-foot drop.
Or maybe because I was acting crazy again.
Get down, I told myself, but I didn’t get down. I wanted to touch her. I needed to—
“Dory!”
His hand tightened on my calf because I’d reached the end of the box and was trying to go farther. But there was no way unless I learned to walk on thin air. I let out a cry of mixed frustration and longing, heard Ray asking Louis-Cesare what the hell was wrong with me, didn’t have an answer.
And then I didn’t need one, because part of me was able to close that gap, after all.