“Close your eyes,” he says.
I do what he says. It takes a moment, but then I feel it, the icy fingers of January giving way to a warm breeze. The sun grazing my face, my shoulders. The smell of fresh-cut grass. I open my eyes to see the same gazebo Alex conjured for me all those weeks ago, when it was just the two of us in the hall, tricking and flirting with our magic. His manipulation is perfect, so warm and reminiscent, that I find my eyes starting to water.
“Do you remember this?” he says.
“Of course I do.” I stare down at the wide wooden planks of Alex’s gazebo, which now run underneath us. “I’ve missed you,” I blurt out. “I haven’t seen you since that night.”
He wraps his hands around mine. “I’ve been thinking about you too much in that lounge. I’m constantly distracted.”
My face warms. “I know the feeling.”
Alex stares at me, like he’s waiting for something, unsure of himself. And then in a rush, he leans in, kisses me deeply, desperate and tender all at once. It’s like a spell, a heady, warm, wonderful spell of its own, and it almost makes the world outside his magic feel like a distant dream.
He pulls back and sighs. “It’s been a rough few days, Joan.”
I nod, thinking about all of Gunn’s veiled warnings, my family floating through this place, running my caging spell over and over—“On my end too.”
“You having second thoughts about the deal?” he says slowly. “About all this?”
“No,” I say instinctively. I steal a look at him. “Maybe. It just—it doesn’t feel like I expected it would.” I look at my hands. “How am I supposed to do what I’m doing when my little sister’s right upstairs, you know?” I shake my head. “It’s just gotten more complicated. And I have no idea what’s in store for us after tomorrow. I’m trying to get it out of Gunn.”
Alex runs his fingers through his hair, then inhales real big, like he’s gearing up to sprint. “Joan . . . I need to tell you something.”
I have no idea what he’s about to say, but his face tells me that I don’t want to hear it. “What’s wrong, Alex?”
“Before I do this,” he says quietly into his lap, “I need to know that despite all the lies for Gunn, the manipulations we’ve conjured under this roof, that this is real.” He points to me, then to himself. His hands are shaking a little as he does it, which sort of scares the crap out of me. “If you trust me,” he adds with a breath, “just like I trust you.”
“Alex, seriously, what’s this about?”
He looks at me sideways. There’s so much brewing in his eyes. “It’s important.”
“Yes. I trust you, maybe more than anyone,” I say, without even needing to think about it. “Hell, these days I might trust you more than I trust myself.”
A slow smile breaks across Alex’s face. But he still looks nervous.
Wildly, jumpy, out-of-his-skin nervous.
He starts rubbing the inside of my palm. “I know you think you need to do this, that this shine deal is the answer for you and your family,” he says, “that there’s no other way out but working alongside Gunn. But you’ll be no good to your family rotting behind bars.” He pauses. “Tomorrow night—it isn’t going to happen. The Feds are onto it. The deal might start, but it’s going to end with the largest Prohibition Unit bust in history. You need to get out now, while there’s still time.”
I shake my head. What Alex is saying is so far-fetched, it sounds like a story, one of the fairy tales I used to ramble on about to Ruby at night. “Alex, why are you . . . what—how would you even know this?”
“And I have a way,” he talks over me. He starts breathing heavier and slower. He lets go of my hand, and then his words come out in a rush: “Colletto’s gang is due here sometime tomorrow. The troupe’s to make sure that all the shine we’ve brewed over the past few days, the glass quarts that you’ve been binding, are packed and ready for loading in the VIP lounge. That’s where the deal is going down,” he keeps talking, “but before D Street walks out of there, we clue in the rest of the troupe to what’s going on and spellbind the room. If we time it perfectly—not too early to risk betrayal, not too late that we miss our chance—we force the troupe on board. And then we lock both gangs in like sitting ducks for the Feds.”