It’s a special kind of feeling, to come out victorious with a good team. It brings you closer, cements a special kind of connection that’s hard to explain to outsiders. That night, as we sat and drank and ate ice cream, a pile of treasure on the table, my heart filled to the brim. Too often in my life I felt as if I were alone, but now I was part of a unique, wonderful group, and I had to blink away the tears of gratitude that materialized in my eyes.
At some point, when the ice cream was gone, Sinead put on music and, to my amazement, Harutaka jumped atop the table and began to dance. It was a clumsy sort of dancing, full of twisting limbs and ridiculous hops. Sinead, not one to be beaten at partying, joined him on the table and tried to teach him some basic salsa moves, to no apparent success. I just watched them, smiling, feeling content and calm and full of warmth.
Then a chilly breeze brushed my cheek. I glanced aside and saw Kane standing by the window, a cigarette in his hand. He had cranked the window slightly open, letting in the cold night air. He gazed outside, his body still. He took a drag on his cigarette, its tip glowing against the dark cityscape, and breathed a plume of smoke out the window.
“Scrumptious, isn’t it?” Sinead whispered in my ear. She was kneeling on the table, her lips by my ear.
“What?”
“His ass. You were staring at it for the past minute.”
“I was not!” Blood rushed to my face.
“Uh-huh.” She stood back up, and shook her head despairingly at Harutaka’s latest attempt at the basic salsa steps.
I got up and sidled over to Kane. My heart beat fast, and I told myself it was because of the sugar rush from the ice cream.
His eyes had a sad glint in them, as if his mind was somewhere far away. I thought of his tales about his sister, playing her viola. He had the same look now as he’d had then, when he’d told me about her.
“Would you mind giving me a drag of that?” I motioned to his cigarette.
He handed me the cigarette, our fingers brushing. “You said you didn’t smoke.”
“I don’t.” I put the cigarette between my lips, tasting the tobacco, knowing his lips had touched the same cigarette. I took a quick drag and returned it to him, keeping the smoke in my mouth, imagining that I tasted Kane and not just tobacco and smoke. “But I used to. And occasionally I get an urge.” The smoke made my voice heavy, raspy.
“I hope this won’t be the cigarette to make you fall off the wagon.” He smiled at me. “These things can kill you.”
“What do you think?” I gestured at the Boston cityscape. “Beats every other city, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?” He took one last drag of the cigarette and dropped it in his almost empty plastic cup. “I prefer New York.”
“Were you born in New York?”
“Born and raised.”
“And your sister? Is she still there?”
He tensed. “Yes.”
“What happened to her?”
“She’s… in a coma.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. How did it happen?”
His jaw tensed. “That’s not something I want to talk about.”
“With me?”
“With anyone.”
I touched his arm gently. “If you ever change your mind—”
“Thanks, I won’t.”
We stared outside in silence. The city was a myriad of lights—radiating from windows and streetlights, the moon glowing from above. The plethora of lights reflected in the river below, a blurry second city, its skyscrapers pointed downward, the rippling shape of the moon below it.
“My parents died when I was eight,” I said. “In a fire.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You probably think it’s ironic. A girl whose hands regularly burst into flames lost her parents in a fire.”
“I didn’t think that, Lou.”
“I was in school. And a teacher… I don’t even know her name… she came into my classroom and escorted me out. She took me to the principal’s office. It’s probably hard to believe, knowing me now, but I was a good girl back then. I’d never been in the principal’s office before. The principal sat with the woman from social services… I didn’t know it back then, of course. She was a stranger, but the way she looked at me—as if she knew more about me than I knew myself… It chilled my blood. And they told me. That our house burned down, and my parents died.”
Kane offered me his cigarette pack. I shook my head. He seemed about to take one for himself, but then changed his mind, sliding it back into his pocket.
“We had no living relatives, and my parents had no will. Not a lot of money, either. Many years later, I found out they had left me something”—a book, with alchemical recipes. The Tenebris Scientiam—“but back then I thought I had nothing left. You’d think I’d focus on the fact that I’d lost my parents, that they were gone forever, but I distinctly remember that there was a dress I had gotten for Christmas a few months before. And I kept asking about that dress. I was really upset about losing that dress. My mother loved it when I wore that dress.”
I blinked a tear away, the memory as fresh and searing hot in my mind as the day it had happened.
“They put me in foster care. The first couple were fine, I guess, but I was still in shock, didn’t talk to anyone. After a while, they moved me around and I ended up in the second house, where my foster father slapped me the first night for not answering a question he asked.”
Kane’s eyes sparked in anger, and I saw his reflex to lash out at the past, to find that man and make him pay, to shelter that scared, nine-year-old girl.
“After that… well. It wasn’t the worst place I ended up in.” I suddenly didn’t feel like talking anymore.
“That sounds rough.” Now it was his turn to touch my arm, his grip strengthening me.
“I guess it was.” I cleared my throat, trying to banish the past. This was a night for celebrating, after all. I wiped my eyes. “So… what will you do now with your precious dragon scale?”
“I’ll take it back to New York,” he said. “I know someone who might be interested in it.”
“Oh.” I tried to ignore the wave of disappointment. “You’re not staying here?”
“I don’t think so. I have unfinished business in New York.”
“Right.”
“It was a pleasure to work with you, Lou Vitalis.”
I was about to tell him I felt the same when he suddenly bent forward, tilting his head, his lips meeting mine. A small peck and he drew back, looking at me, gauging my reaction. I licked my lips, breathing heavily, and then leaned toward him, pulling him closer. Our lips met again, and my tongue darted, feeling for his.
He tasted of tobacco, and smoke, and man.
Chapter Thirty-Two
A paw scratched at my cheek, accompanied by the high-pitched whine of a canine with a full bladder. He had already tried several of his favorite methods—the nose licking, the incessant ear-barking, the back-and-forth bed-tromping. He was clearly getting desperate. And somewhere in my alcohol-marinated brain, I knew if I didn’t wake up soon, I would have a puddle of pee in my bedroom.
I groaned, and pushed myself to a more-or-less sitting position. The events of last night were muddled in my brain. There had been more drinking after the kiss, and then some more kissing, and possible thigh-stroking, though that part could have been a dream. Then, disappointingly, Kane had turned out to be a gentleman and helped me into a cab.