“But you only just met him!”
“So what? I wanted to. And we were safe.”
“Fine, okay, you always do what you want. Everybody knows that. But you made the water bloom, and he could see it? You don’t think that’s something to talk about?”
“Not at this moment, no.”
Her mouth went slack with incredulity. “He shows up out of nowhere right before Mama’s attacked, right before she goes missing, and you don’t even think twice about him? How do you know he doesn’t have something to do with this?”
“Why would he have anything to do with Mama? He’s just visiting from Iceland. His mother was from here. It’s the start of the season, there’s probably hundreds of tourists who showed up in the last few days.”
“Not ones who can’t get enough of you all of a sudden, who think about you like you’re made for dessert.”
I felt a distant bolt of fury, like a glimpse of lightning two mountain ranges over. “Because that’s such a crazy thing to consider, that a boy I met might want me?”
She dug both hands into her hair. “That’s not what I meant! I’m just saying—”
I reached over her to flick off the lamp, feeling her flinch as my wrung-out hair dripped salt water onto her face. “I want to go to bed. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
I WOKE BLEARILY, squinting against the glare of late-morning sunlight. My muscles felt dull and sluggish, a hungover ache more intense than I would have expected from the wine and single cigarette I’d had the night before. All the stress and exhaustion of the past few days finally crashing over me, most likely.
Lina was already up and about, for a wonder, wearing a peach maxi dress with a tiered skirt, patterned with tiny wild strawberries, ferns, and sleeping mice with curled forepaws. A corded bracelet of braided leather and silver thread had been wound around one wrist, and I could see the peep of her silver espadrilles beneath the dress’s hem. ?i?a Jovan must have brought over some of our things yesterday, while we were still out.
She turned to me cautiously, hands stilling on the shirt she’d been folding to put in the dresser. Her hair was in a loose braid, its curling ends and ribbons trailing over her chest, and with it drawn back she looked even more like a watercolor version of our mother.
I could see the moment she felt my stab of pain; her face softened with sympathy. “There you are,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
I dug a knuckle into one crusty eye. “Pretty far from phenomenal, actually. Not sure what’s wrong with me. I never sleep this late.”
Malina had always been the one able to plunge into sleep like an Olympic diver, willing herself into oblivion whenever the world around her grew too intense. But this morning I still felt half asleep even with my eyes open, the waking world around me tilting swimmy and unreal.
I stretched my arms gingerly over my head, wincing. “And I feel like I spent last night in a mosh pit instead of . . .” Gleaming for Fjolar, I didn’t say. Just thinking of him revived a surge of lust, and I dug my nails into my palm, trying to quell it before Lina caught its sound. I didn’t want to disrupt this fragile peace between us.
It was futile as usual, and I could see Lina’s nostrils flare in response before she chose to let it go. “Well, if you’re feeling up to it, Niko said she’d meet us at the Prince. She’s bringing her mother’s book with her. Do you want to come with me? You don’t have to, I could go alone while you keep resting—”
“No, I want to come. If you don’t mind. If she’s found anything, I’d like to see it for myself.”
“Sure. I put up your clothes, too—I hope that’s okay? They’re all in these two drawers, next to mine.”
I dredged up a smile for her. “Thank you for that. You didn’t have to do that.”
She flicked one shoulder in a tentative shrug. “I was up anyway. I think Jovan’s made breakfast for us, if you want to eat together?”
“I do. Let me just take a quick shower first.”
I dragged myself to the bathroom, feeling like a prizefighter who’d lost a particularly vicious bout. Despite all the sleep, my eyes were heavy with plummy bags, and my temples felt tender. In the shower, I let near-scalding water pound over me until my skin turned red. By the time I’d wriggled into shorts with radioactive symbols stamped onto the pockets and a black tank with a mesh racerback, my head had cleared a little.
Outside, ?i?a Jovan had laid out a breakfast banquet for us, as if we were actually starving orphans. He’d been cooking lavishly for himself for years, since his wife, Anita, had died so young, and even when I worked with him in the studio he was forever interrupting to spoon-feed me bites of whatever he had simmering. We ate with him at the wrought-iron table in his garden, between patches of neatly tended vegetables and wildflowers trailing tendrils everywhere. He watched us like an anxious mother hen, offering us feta cheese omelets, spooning extra sour-cherry preserves onto our plates. Lina had loaded her plate with a chocolate Eurokrem crepe, and was carefully dotting mayonnaise onto her toast, which she’d smeared with Carnex vegetable paté.
“What?” she said through a mouthful, catching my look. “Why are you looking at me like I’m eating roadkill or something?”
“I think Carnex paté might be worse than that. Roadkill is too close to organic.”
She shrugged. “Well, it’s delicious. Better than your crepe of the Spartans there, for sure.”
“I know not of what you speak. Cocoa and sugar is a classic.”
?i?a Jovan frowned at me over a steaming sip of black coffee. “You’re barely pecking at that, Iris. Have some of the omelet, my girl, you’re beginning to look like a whalebone corset. Or I can cut you some gibanica from yesterday if you want.”
My insides turned over at the thought of the cheese pie leaking grease. “No, thank you. I’ll eat more at the Prince, I promise.” I looked up at him, gauging his reaction. “Lina and I were thinking of spending the day there. It helps to be around Niko and Luka, and they’re both working today.”
It was painfully easy to lie to him, when he was so clearly unmoored when it came to us—how to keep us both safe and happy, now that we were in his care. “I would rather you stayed with me today, at least until we hear something from the police or the hospital. I know you want to be with your friends—”
“Jovan, please?” Malina broke in softly, reaching across the table for his knobby-knuckled hand. “We’ll be with Niko and Luka, and their father will be there too. It’s such a public place, who’d come after us there? It might even be safer for us there, maybe?”