"Are the Holy Rol ers playing at the fair?"
"This lame scene? Nah." He kicked the ground.
"They wouldn't book you?"
"They said we sucked. But people thought Led Zeppelin sucked, too."
As we walked through the fair, it was hard not to notice that the rides seemed to get a little smal er and the games a little shabbier every year. A pathetic-looking clown dragged a cluster of bal oons past us.
Link stopped, hitting me on the arm. "Check it out. Six o'clock. Third Degree Burns." As far as Link was concerned, a girl couldn't get hotter than that.
He was pointing at a blond who was headed in our direction, smiling. It was Liv.
"Link --" I tried to tel him, but he was on a mission.
"As my mom would say, the Good Lord has good taste, hal elujah amen."
"Ethan!" She waved at us.
Link looked at me. "Are you kiddin' me? You've already got Lena. That's just wrong."
"I don't have Liv, and these days I don't even know if I have Lena. Be cool." I smiled at Liv, until I noticed she was wearing a faded Led Zeppelin T-shirt.
Link saw it at the same time I did. "The perfect girl."
"Hey, Liv. This is Link." I elbowed him, hoping he'd close his mouth. "Liv is Marian's summer research assistant. She works with me at the library." Liv held out her hand.
Link stood there gawking. "Wow." The thing about Link was, he never embarrassed himself, just me.
"She's an exchange student from England."
"Holy wow."
I looked at Liv and shrugged. "I told you."
Link broke out his biggest smile for Liv. "Ethan didn't tel me he was workin' with a hot babe a cosmic proportions."
Liv looked at me, pretending to be surprised. "You didn't? I find that rather tragic." She laughed and linked her arms through ours. "Come on, boys. Explain to me exactly how it is you make this strange cotton into candy."
"I can't give away national secrets, ma'am."
"I can." Link squeezed her arm with his.
"Tel me everything."
"Tunnel of Love or the Kissing Booth?" Link grinned even wider.
Liv tilted her head. "Hmm. That's a tough one. I'm going to go with ... the Ferris Wheel."
That's when I caught sight of the familiar black hair and the scent of lemons and rosemary in the breeze.
Nothing else was familiar. Lena was a few yards away, standing behind the ticket booth in what had to be Ridley's clothes. Her black tank rode up on her stomach, and her black skirt was about five inches too short. There was a long streak of blue in her hair, twisting down from where it parted around her face, and down her back. But that wasn't what shocked me most. Lena, the girl who never put anything on her face but sunscreen, was covered in makeup. Some guys liked girls with crap al over their faces, but I wasn't one of them. Lena's black-rimmed eyes were especial y disturbing.
Surrounded by cutoff denim and dust and straw and sweat and red and white plastic checkered tablecloths, she looked even more out of place. Her old boots were the only thing I recognized. And her charm necklace, dangling like a lifeline back to the real Lena. She wasn't the kind of girl who wore stuff like that. At least, she didn't used to be.
The lowlifes were checking her out, three guys deep. I had to resist the urge to punch al of them in the face.
I dropped Liv's arm. "I'l meet you guys over there."
Link couldn't believe his luck. "No problem, man."
"We can wait," Liv offered.
"Don't worry about it. I'l catch up with you." I hadn't expected to see Lena here, and I didn't know what to say without sounding even more whipped than Link already thought I was. As if there's something you can say to sound cool after your girlfriend takes off with another guy.
"Ethan, I've been looking for you." Lena walked toward me, and she sounded like herself, her old self -- the Lena I remembered from a few months ago. The one I was desperately in love with, the one who loved me back. Even if she looked like Ridley. She stood on her tiptoes to push my hair out of my face, her fingers dragging slowly down my jawline.
"That's funny, because the last time I saw you, you were ditching me." I tried to sound casual, but I just sounded angry.
"I wasn't ditching you, exactly." She was defensive.
"No, you were throwing trees at me and jumping on the back of a bike with some other guy."
"I wasn't throwing trees."
I raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"
She shrugged. "More like branches."
But I could tel I had gotten to her. She twisted the tiny paper-clip star I had given her, until I thought it was going to snap off of her necklace. "I'm sorry, Ethan. I don't know what's going on with me." Her voice was soft, honest. "Sometimes I feel like everything is closing in, and I can't take it. I wasn't ditching you at the lake. I was ditching me."
"You sure about that?"
She looked back up at me, a tear sliding down her cheek. She wiped it away, her fingers bal ed in frustration. She opened her fist and put her hand on my chest, resting it over my heart.
It's not you. I love you.
"I love you." She said it out loud this time and the words hung in the air between us, so much more public than when we Kelted. My chest tightened when she said it, and my breath caught in my throat. I tried to think of something sarcastic to say, but I couldn't think about anything except how beautiful she was and how much I loved her, too.
But I wasn't letting her off that easy this time. I broke the truce. "What's going on, L? If you love me so much, what's the deal with John Breed?"
She looked away without saying a word.
Answer me.
"It's not like that, Ethan. John's just a friend of Ridley's. There's nothing going on between us."
"How long has nothing been going on? Since you took that picture of him in the graveyard?"
"It wasn't a picture of him. It was his bike. I was meeting Ridley, and he happened to be there." I noticed she ignored the question.
"Since when have you been hanging out with Ridley? Did you forget the part where she separated us so your mother could get you alone and try to convince you to go over to the Dark side? Or when Ridley almost kil ed my father?"
Lena pul ed her arm away from me, and I could feel her withdrawing again, moving back into that place I couldn't reach. "Ridley warned me you wouldn't understand. You're a Mortal. You don't know anything about me, not the real me.
That's why I didn't tel you." I felt a sudden breeze as the storm clouds rol ed in like a warning.
"How do you know whether I would understand or not? You haven't told me anything. Maybe if you gave me the chance instead of sneaking around behind my back --"
"What do you want me to tel you? That I have no idea what's going on with me? That something's changing, something I don't understand? That I feel like a freak, and Ridley's the only one who can help me figure it out?"
I could hear everything she was saying, but she was right. I didn't understand. "Are you listening to yourself? You think Ridley's trying to help you, that you can trust her? She's a Dark Caster, L. Look at yourself! You think this is you? The things you're feeling, she's probably causing them."
I waited for the downpour, but instead the clouds parted. Lena moved closer and put her hands on my chest again, staring up at me, pleading. "Ethan, she's changed. She doesn't want to be Dark. It ruined her life when she Turned. She lost everyone, including herself. Ridley says going Dark changes the way you feel about people. You can sense the feelings you had, the things you loved, but Rid says the feelings are distant. Almost like they belong to someone else."
"But you said it wasn't something she could control."
"I was wrong. Look at Uncle Macon. He knew how to control it, and Ridley's learning, too."
"Ridley is not Macon."
Heat lightning flashed across the sky. "You don't know anything."
"That's right. I'm a stupid Mortal. I don't know anything about your supersecret Caster world and skanky Caster cousin, or Caster Boy and his Harley."
Lena snapped. "Ridley and I were like sisters, and I can't turn my back on her. I told you, I need her right now. And she needs me."
I didn't say anything. Lena was so frustrated, I was surprised the Ferris Wheel hadn't come loose and rol ed away. I could see the lights from the Tilt-A-Whirl, spinning in the corner of my eye, churning and dizzying. It was the way I felt when I let myself get lost in Lena's eyes. Sometimes love feels that way, and you find your way to a truce when you don't real y want to.
Sometimes the truce finds you.
She reached up and laced her fingers behind my neck, pul ing me into her. I found her lips, and we were al over each other as if we were afraid we might never have the chance to touch again. This time, when her mouth tugged at my bottom lip, biting gently into my skin, there was no blood. Just urgency. I turned, pushing her against the rough wooden wal behind the ticket booth. Her breath was ragged, echoing in my ear even louder than my own. I raked my hands through her curls, guiding her mouth to mine. The pressure in my chest started to build, the shortness of breath, the sound of the air as I tried to fil my lungs. The fire.
Lena felt it, too. She pushed away from me, and I bent over trying to catch my breath.
"Are you okay?"
I took a deep breath and stood up again. "Yeah, I'm al right. For a Mortal."
She smiled a real smile and reached for my hand. I noticed she had drawn crazy-looking designs on her palm in Sharpie. The black curls and spirals swirled from her palm around her wrist and up the base of her arm. The pattern looked like the henna the fortune-tel er wore, in the tent that smel ed like bad incense at the other edge of the fairgrounds.
"What is that?" I held her wrist, but she pul ed it away. Remembering Ridley and her tattoo, I hoped it was Sharpie.
It is.
"Maybe we should get you something to drink." She led me around the side of the booth, and I let her. I couldn't stay mad, not if there was a possibility the wal between us was final y coming down. When we kissed a minute ago, that's what I felt. It was the opposite of the kiss on the lake, a kiss that had taken my breath away for different reasons. I might never know what that kiss was. But I knew this kiss, and I knew it was al I had -- a chance.
Which lasted two seconds.
Because then I saw Liv, carrying two cotton candies in one hand and waving at me with the other, and I knew the wal was about to go back up, maybe for good. "Ethan, come on. I have your cotton candy. We're going to miss the Ferris Wheel!"
Lena dropped my hand. I knew how it must have looked -- a tal blond, with long legs and two cotton candies and an expectant smile. I was doomed before Liv even got to the word we.
That's Liv, Marian's research assistant. She works with me at the library.
Do you work at the Dar-ee Keen together, too? And the fair?
Another flash of heat lightning tore across the sky.
It isn't like that, L.
Liv handed me the cotton candy and smiled at Lena, holding out her hand.
A blond? Lena looked at me. Seriously?
"Lena, right? I'm Liv."
Ah, the accent. That explains everything.