sideways. He doesn’t quite believe her, but he’s trying to remember, just in case. “And the big bunch of hydrangeas you brought when I got the honors in folklore? I had to borrow a vase from Anna downstairs to hold them all. But my favorite was the rosebuds and freesias you gave me on my birthday.”
He is still walking. But slowly. She feels the tension in his arm. “Did I?”
“No.” She walks past him, now, her heels clicking on the pavement. “Of course not.”
He lets her get a little ahead of him, but only a little. By the time he’s caught up with her, she’s a little sorry. But only a little.
“Hey,” he says. He takes off his sunglasses. Hair falls into his eyes. He pushes it back with one hand. “Not everyone gets honors in folklore.”
“You didn’t even know me then.”
“I didn’t know you liked getting flowers,” he says innocently.
“All women like flowers. You’ve had how many centuries of us, and you can’t even remember that one stupid thing?”
He slings a pebble from the embankment into the water. Then he steps back, to watch it fall. The river is running strong. She can’t see it hit the water, but maybe he can.
“In foreign lands,” he announces, “ancient heroes sleep in caves, waiting for a horn to be blown or a bell to be rung, whereupon they spring into action in their country’s hour of greatest need.” Moodily, he slings another pebble. “Lucky bastards. Nothing to do but dream of ancient glory till it’s time for a remix. Our motherland discourages such sloth.”
“Really?”
“Really. No lying around when the land is in peril. Not here. Oh, no. We’ve got a better system in place.”
Finally! She can’t believe he’s telling her this. “And you’re it?”
“I’m it.”
She keeps her voice level, nonchalant. “I’ve always wondered how anyone could decide when the hour of greatest need was, anyway.”
“Me, too. Every year’s got plenty of hours, believe me.”
“That must be a lot of work.”
“All the work, and none of the glory.” Another pebble. “How do you think we kept our borders intact until ’41? When the Russians were boiling shoe leather?”
She shudders with delight. “You
“Ate?” He looks down his nose at her. “What do I look like, an ambulating garbage disposal? I just scared the crap out of them.” His head, lifted against the horizon, is too perfect, like a profile on a coin, a medal of heroism. “Well, certainly I drew a little sustenance first. Waste Not in Wartime and all that.” (She remembers her grandmother telling her that slogan.) “But foreign blood does not nourish like the blood of the land.”
“Is that why you hate to travel?”
“One reason.”
“The blood of the land?”
He draws a little closer to her. And he was close before. He puts one hand on the back of her head and bends down to smell her hair.
Her heart starts slamming like it’s working for him already. She lifts her chin and reaches up to draw his head down to her. Someone passing would think they were just any couple, nuzzling on a picturesque riverbank. They might even wind up in some tactless tourist’s photos. He pulls her tighter, getting her neck right up against his mouth.
“I used to be tall,” he mutters. “I mean really, really tall. People would stare at me on the street. That tall. Now I’m, what, just normal?”
“You’re hardly normal.” She always feels a giddy, reckless joy with his mouth near her veins.
“After the war,” he growls. “All that nutrition. Milk. Marshall Plan. A race of giants. And now it’s vitamins. I’ll end up having to date midgets my own size.”
He might have said more, but she doesn’t hear it because the blood is pounding in her ears. Sweet, it’s so sweet letting him take her into himself. If they were home, she’d take him into her, too. She takes a deep breath of air, the best air she’s ever breathed. She doesn’t want him to stop, but he does.
She’s lost track of time, but the birds are still swirling; it hasn’t been long. She clutches at the wool of his jacket, because otherwise she knows she’s going to fall. He’s so tender with her, now, as he pulls away. He wipes his mouth quickly with a white cotton handkerchief. He’ll never use a paper tissue, and there’s never much to wipe, but he always does it anyway.
He puts an arm around her, letting her lean against him as they walk along the river. He’s buzzing with life energy, as the sun is going down. “Come home,” he says. “Come home with me. Come home.”
He’s always up for it when he’s had a drink. He can’t even function when he hasn’t.
She’s fuzzy, and she lets a possible clue go by, still thinking of what he said before. “You’re a hero,” she says dreamily. “You patrol the borders in time of need.”
“That’s right. And now I know you want to express your gratitude.”
“The Siege of ’83? Was that you?”
“Now, which ’83 was that?” he teases.
She nuzzles his shoulder. “You know. The one with the Turks. The coffee siege.”
“Oh, look!” He stops suddenly, in the middle of the street. “I used to have a house here!”
She looks. They’ve stopped in front of a kebab joint on the border of the tourist and the red light districts. The houses are old, but so is most of the city.
“Or maybe it was a little farther down. Hey, this place used to be a bakery. It smelled like heaven in the morning. ”
Diversionary tactics. She lets it pass, because even more than truth and history right now, she wants to get him home and get him into bed.
They can be late to the party. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.
He brings her flowers that week. And the week after that. On her actual birthday.
“You’re getting sentimental,” she says, and he answers, “You’re addictive.” She tries to lie awake figuring what that means, but she always falls asleep with him beside her, warm with the gift of her blood. Little, tiny gifts, like sips of fine old cognac. He enjoys her thoroughly and deeply, in ways no man ever has before, or will. He’ll do a lot for her. She’s figuring that out. He’s beautiful, but he’s not young. He does what he can.
But she still can’t leave it alone. “Tell me,” she says, sometimes with his mouth still at her throat. “Tell me about the last king’s court. Tell me about the Spanish Embassy and the Treaty of Ockrent. Tell me whether the duchess Octavia really had an affair with her governess and her maid.”
“It was a long time ago. What’s at the movies? Let’s go out.”
“Tell me the first time you saw electric lighting. Tell me how long it took to walk across the city in 1708.”
“You can’t expect me to remember that.”
“Tell me what your mother liked to eat. How did you learn to drive? Did you ever fight a duel? Tell.”
“I can’t remember,” he says.
He knows. She knows he knows.
“Will you remember
“Of course,” he says. And maybe he even means it.
The Perfect Dinner Party
by CASSANDRA CLARE & HOLLY BLACK
You walk into the dining room, alone. You’re wearing a green shift, pale as grass, and have pulled your hair
