Her face showed that was the least of her problems. “I figured you’d give me a ride back and could cover if anyone said anything.”
“My car’s in the shop. You’ve got to get yourself back.” I carefully set the cupcakes on the counter. “Please, please, don’t get caught. Sydney doesn’t need that kind of trouble.”
“Her? I’ll be the one who’s in trouble,” Angeline argued.
“No, because you’ll just get to sit around and wait while she bails you out.” I would’ve preferred Marcus coming to eat Sydney’s birthday gumbo than Sydney sitting in the Amberwood principal’s office tonight, trying to keep Angeline from getting expelled. “Now get back. You’re sneaky. You can get in without them noticing.”
“I still think there’s something going on.” When I refused to play along with that, she nodded to the cupcakes. “Sure I can’t take some back?”
“They’re not ready. They need to be frosted.”
“Frost ’em now. I’ll help. That waiting-until-they’re-cool stuff is a bunch of crap.”
It was another moment I wished I still had full control of spirit so that I could compel her away. Finally—after I rustled up some change for the bus—she left me in peace so that I could finish the rest of my birthday preparations. I cleaned up the apartment and set out candles and then changed into a dark green shirt I knew Sydney liked. By the time that was done, the cupcakes were ready to frost, and when I dared a taste of the gumbo, I discovered Cassie had been right. It was more than soup. It was sublime.
Sydney showed up around eight, coming to a halt as soon as she stepped inside. “It smells like . . . shrimp. And mint. And pineapple.”
“Dinner, dessert, and these.” I pointed to a bright yellow candle. “Just got them. They’re called ‘Hawaiian Siesta.’”
“That’s not even—never mind.” She shut the door and hurried over to kiss me. It was one of those scorching kisses that made me lose track of my surroundings. “My best birthday present so far today.”
“Withhold your judgment,” I said, gesturing grandly to the kitchen.
She followed me in and stared openmouthed. “You actually made a roux?”
“If by ‘made,’ you mean ‘supervised,’ then yes.”
We ate at the coffee table in the living room, sitting on the floor by candlelight like we had two months ago. I’d never imagined she could be more beautiful than she was in that dream of a red dress, but with each passing day, she proved me wrong. We let Hopper come out, and he curled up near Sydney, taking delicate bites of andouille.
I fessed up to my kitchen helpers, which actually seemed to endear me to her further. Jill had been right that imperfection would get me farther than perfection. Sydney’s laughter died down when she recounted her day.
“Zoe was so mad. We’d been doing so well, Adrian! And now our relationship just totally regressed. I told her I was doing stuff for Ms. Terwilliger—like usual—and that it’d be better for us to go out on the weekend for my birthday anyway. More time and all that.” She shook her head. “Zoe didn’t buy it. All the work I’ve done to get in her good graces . . . gone. She went off about how I was neglecting the mission for personal reasons and that I just wanted to postpone the outing so that those creatures could come with us. But that wasn’t even the worst part. I said something I shouldn’t have.”
“That you were already spending your birthday with one of those creatures?” I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. But surely if something too awful had happened, she wouldn’t be here.
Sydney gave me a small smile. “I told her if she really cared about me, then she’d let me do whatever I wanted for my birthday, just like Mom did when I was twelve.”
“What happened when you were twelve?”
“Oh, Mom offered to take us all out for dinner—us girls, Dad was out of town—to celebrate, but I didn’t want to. This book I’d been waiting for had just come out, and the only thing I wanted to do was read it all night.”
“My God,” I said, touching the top of her nose. “You’re adorable.”
She swatted me away. “Anyway, Carly and Zoe really wanted to go out so that they could score a meal, but Mom just said, ‘It’s her birthday. Let her do whatever she wants.’”
“Your mom is cool.”
“Very.” Sydney stared off for several long moments, the candlelight reflecting in her eyes. “Well, mentioning her was the worst thing I could do to Zoe tonight. I’ve been trying to sell her on the idea of testifying for joint custody, in case she really can live both lives with Mom and Dad. I think she was considering it . . . then she asked Dad about it. And, well . . . he had plenty to say. One conversation, and she was completely brainwashed again, so when I brought up Mom, Zoe started going off on how we need to remember what a bad person she is. On and on.” She sighed. “I think the only thing that got me out of our room was when I told Zoe I managed to get her permission to practice three-point turns by herself in the faculty parking lot.”
“Ah, yes, nothing to get a young girl’s heart racing like control of a car. I hear that’s big in the Sage family.”
Her smile was starting to return. “That’s the thing, she’s still so young in many ways. One minute, she wants her license. The next, she’s got the power to call me in for breaking Alchemist rules. It’s dangerous, especially since she thinks she knows everything.”
I gathered our empty bowls and stood up. “And as we all know, only one Sage sister knows everything.”
“Not everything. I don’t know that recipe,” she called. “But I might have to. That was amazing.”
“Maybe we could go to New Orleans instead of Rome.” I put some cupcakes on a plate and gathered up a tiny candle and my lighter. Hopper watched with interest, especially the cupcakes. “Escape plan number thirty-seven: Go to New Orleans and sell overpriced Mardi Gras beads to unsuspecting tourists. No language problems. And I bet it’d be sexy if I learned to talk with a Cajun accent.”
“Sexier, you mean. You know, I bet Wolfe wrestled alligators down in the bayou.”
“I bet he tamed them in order to facilitate his escape from pirates down there.” I returned to the living room and sat beside her with the plate.
“I bet he did both,” she said. We were both silent for a moment and then burst into laughter.
“Okay, birthday girl.” I set one of the cupcakes in front of her and pushed in the little candle. My lighter, despite a month of neglect, lit the wick. “Make a wish.”
Sydney gave me a smile brighter than the flame in front of her and then leaned forward. Our eyes locked briefly, and I felt a bittersweet tug at my heart. What was she wishing for? Rome? New Orleans? Anywhere? She kept the wish to herself, as she should have, and simply blew out the candle.
I clapped and whistled and then dove into my own cupcake, dying to know how my creations tasted. And seeing as I’d done the hard work—frosting and decorating—I felt like I could take credit and call them my creations. All Cassie had done was get the ingredients, come up with the recipe, and do all the measuring and mixing.
“I never would’ve thought following up gumbo with cupcakes like this would work so well.” Sydney paused to lick frosting off her fingers, and I momentarily lost all higher cognitive functions.
“It was part of Cassie’s master plan,” I said at last. “She said making out is always better after peppermint.”
“Wow. She really is a culinary genius.” She finished off the frosting and then delicately wiped her hands with a napkin. “Speaking of making out . . . can I assume you got the Mustang detailed?”
“Ah. Well.” I’d nearly forgotten about that. “Don’t freak out but—”
“Oh no. What’d you do to it?”
I held up my hands. “Hold on, I didn’t do anything.”
I gave her a brief rundown of what had happened this afternoon and then watched as that earlier mischievous look turned to glumness. “That poor car. I’m going to have to call the shop in the morning and find out what’s wrong. We might have to take it to a specialty place.”
“Gah. I don’t know if I can even afford this place.”
She put her hand over mine. “I’ll spot you.”
I’d had a feeling that was coming and knew there’d be no way to fight it. “Coming to my rescue?”
“Of course. It’s what we do.” She scooted closer to me. Hopper tried to move in, and I pushed him out of the way. “I rescue you; you rescue me. We just take turns whenever the other needs it. And if it makes you feel better, think of it as me coming to the Ivashkinator’s rescue, not yours.”
I laughed and put an arm around her waist. “That totally fixes everything. Except, now that I don’t have a car, I can’t really make good on my birthday promise.”
Sydney thought about it for several moments. “Well. I’ve got a car.”
An hour later, I vowed I’d never make fun of that Mazda again.
It turned out to be one of our most intense encounters and certainly one of our most inventive, seeing as we had to deal with the space constraints of the backseat. As we lay together afterward, curled up under a blanket I’d had the foresight to bring, I tried to etch every detail into my mind. The smoothness of her skin, the curve of her hip. The exhilarating lightness that burned in my soul, even as the rest of me felt blissfully lethargic.
Sydney boldly sat up and reached for the moon roof. “How’s that for a birthday?” she asked triumphantly. A partial silver moon gleamed down at us through some branches.
Before the clothes had come off, she’d driven around the block to ascertain that there was no tail lying in wait. Even though she had no reason to think the Alchemists were tracking her, she still erred on the side of caution. Satisfied, she’d ended up parking in a pretty strategic spot on my street, one that was overhung with trees and in front of a vacant house a block from my building. Someone could still obviously come by and spot us, but the odds were pretty low in this darkness.
She snuggled back under the blanket with me, turned toward me so that she could rest her head on my chest. “I hear your heart,” she said.
“Do you check every once in a while, just to make sure I’m not undead?”
Her answer was a soft laugh, followed by a long, sensuous kiss at the side of my neck.
My hands tightened on her, and I again tried to memorize every part of this moment. There was such perfection in the way our bodies were wrapped together. It didn’t seem possible that outside the sanctity of this moonlit car was a world we had to hide from, a world that wanted to tear us apart. The thought of what surrounded us made what was between us seem that much more fragile.
“‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold . . .’” I murmured.
“Are you quoting Yeats now?” she asked incredulously, lifting her head slightly. “That poem’s about apocalyptic visions and World War One.”
“I know.”
“You have some very strange post-sex poetic choices.”
I smiled and ran my fingers through her hair. It looked neither gold nor silver in here, just some fey color in between. Even in the throes of love and joy, I could feel a little of the Adrian Ivashkov moodiness settling over me.
“Well . . . it’s just sometimes I feel like this is too good to be true. I couldn’t have created anything this perfect in one of my own spirit dreams.” I pulled her closer and pressed my cheek against hers. “And I’m enough of a pessimist to know we eventually wake up from dreams.”
“That’s not going to happen,” she said. “Because this isn’t a dream. It’s real. And we can handle whatever comes. You come across any William Morris in your poems?”
“Isn’t that the guy who makes cigarettes?” And here she was accusing me of non-romantic poems.
“No. William Morris was an English writer.” She rolled over and rummaged through the mess of clothes on the floor. A moment later, she lifted up a phone and did a search on it. “Here we go. ‘Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter.’” She tossed the phone back into the pile and snuggled up to me again, resting her hands over my heart. “The poem’s called ‘Love Is Enough.’ As long as we’re together, that’s how we’ll be. No trembling. No faltering. We’re unstoppable.”
I caught hold of her hands and kissed them. “How did you become the starry-eyed romantic while I became the worrier?”
“I guess we rubbed off on each other. Don’t make a joke out of that,” she warned.
“Don’t leave me such good setups, then.”
I smiled at her, but that brooding cloud still hung over me, even as I lay there so full of happiness. I had never thought I could love another person this much. I also never thought I’d live in such fear of losing another person. Was that how everyone in love felt? Did they all cling tightly to their beloved and wake up terrified in the middle of the night, afraid of being alone? Was that an inevitable way of life when you loved so deeply? Or was it just those of us who walked on a precipice who lived in such a panic?
I brought my face a mere whisper from hers. “I love you so much.”
She blinked in that way I’d come to recognize, when she was afraid she might cry. “I love you too. Hey.” She slid one of her hands up and rested it on my cheek. “Don’t look like that. Everything’s going to be okay. The center will hold.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we are the center.”