I gasp, trying to collect myself. I must look a mess. I feel the dull ache of snot and tears, the heaviness of bawling. “But I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve you.”
“Joan, stop. It was a mistake, an awful, gut-wrenching mistake,” he says slowly. “And you’re doing everything you can to help your family.”
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. How did I just take this and ruin it, take something bright and eclipse it with the dark? “You must think I’m a monster.”
“You’re not a monster. You’re a good person.” He pulls me into him. “I see it. I see you. And I understand, maybe more than you could ever know.”
I want to ask him what he means, what he sees. I want more, like always from him, I want more. He wraps both arms around me. It’s the first time I’ve been held in a long, long time.
“Sometimes I don’t know who I am anymore, Alex,” I whisper. “What I am.”
“I know the feeling.” He begins to stroke my hair, edges closer. “I . . . hurt my family too, in a different way,” he says slowly, as he rests his chin on my head. “The news said it was all my father.” His breath catches. “But it was my magic that let him pull that racket, that ended with those D Street bastards selling him down the river. Without me, none of it would have ever happened.” He pulls me a little more into his lap, so he can look at me. “I have to believe we get another chance, Joan, a chance to do things differently, be somebody else—better versions of ourselves. That’s why I found myself here, working with you.” He shakes his head. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
“I’ve never told anyone about my mama, either.”
Alex lays me down, gently, on something soft. And in the starry space between consciousness and unconsciousness, I pat the soft blanket below me. “Did you just sorcer this?”
“Just rest, Joan. I’ll be right beside you.”
I think I’m asleep, but then I feel the softest of pressures on my forehead, the smell of Alex’s soap and cologne, a beacon through all the sensory noise of the shine. A kiss, above the bridge of my nose. “I do know you, Joan,” he says, once he’s pulled away. “I see you. I know who you are. Maybe not everything, but the important things.”
I want to tell him that I see him, too. But my thoughts are too heavy, my mouth sealed shut. I’m no longer aware if I’m in the throes of the shine, or if I’ve survived. I close my eyes and let the dark creeping around my mind finally up and swallow me.
DUST-BUNNIES
ALEX
Joan’s hair is splayed out on the pillow I conjured earlier, the dark tendrils cascading around its edges. A soft white blanket—another manipulation I vaguely remember -sorcering—is spread out underneath us. Joan’s beside me, eyes closed, curled tight, like even in her sleep she somehow protects herself and keeps everything locked up inside.
I sit up, realizing that we’re still in the VIP lounge, my head throbbing with a dull, shine-induced headache as I arrange myself into a seating position. I have no idea what time it is. When did we finally pass out?
I take out my pack of cigarettes, dislodge one, and turn away from Joan as I light it. I think about us last night, guards thrown down, her telling me about her dark secret, me blubbering to her about mine.
Christ. Last night was dangerous, taking that shine with her, dangerous bordering on reckless. I remember the convoluted logic I used to justify doing it: Joan is my strongest contact at the Den, and you do what you need to, to please that contact. Get her shined. Get her vulnerable, angle her, get more out of her, push your hunt forward.
But the truth? I wanted to, because she wanted me to. Joan has me under some kind of spell. She’s at the center of this whole affair, is right in the line of my hunt. She’s the most -talented sorcerer at the Red Den, some suspicious sort of confidante of one of the gangsters I’m spying on for the Feds and for McEvoy, and yet, she somehow feels separate from all of this.
This whole night has been reckless, from my little tryst in this lounge to McEvoy showing up shot out of his skull, shouting that he caught his underboss Kerrigan in some convoluted lie about a job tonight. Threatening that he was going to confront Kerrigan, confront all his underbosses, and if the night ended in a bloodbath, so be it. Thank God none of them were here, and I could talk McEvoy down, tell him the dust was just making him extra paranoid, get him to sleep it off. In fact, that’s what I need to do: sneak out before anyone sees me, go home, get some rest.
But I don’t want to leave Joan like this.
I stare at her, beautiful, formidable, even as she’s sleeping. And the secret that I’ve been tricking myself into not -believing flashes across my mind: I’m completely falling for this girl.
Being with Joan might be the only time I feel like I’m not performing. In this house of lies and magic manipulations, she might be the only thing that makes me feel like a shade of my old self anymore.