When Zaf and Zain were kids, their dad used to tell them stories about the moon, just before bed. Zaf should’ve flinched away from the memory, but he didn’t. And nothing bad happened. Instead, for a moment, he thought about sharing it with Danika, and how she’d probably say something weird and wonderful like “Moons are eminently important. Your father sounds a very sensible man.”
Or maybe that was wishful thinking. Maybe she’d be like everyone else, and say, “Your father and brother died at the same time, and then your mental health plummeted and your life spun out of control? Sounds awful. Tell me all about it, every gory detail.”
That didn’t seem likely. But it hadn’t seemed likely with anyone else, either.
Zaf left the strange little bowls and moved on to the coffee table in the center of the room. It was small and sturdy and polished, with a golden statue of a woman planted dead center. The woman had a head full of curls, bees on her wrists and collarbones like tame pets, and a mirror in one hand. There was a marble cup of water in front of her, along with a little dish of orange slices. There were candles all around her, solemn white things with wax dripping at their edges and burnt-black wicks. It took him a moment to realize this was probably an altar, and he was gawking at it like it was a circus sideshow. Oops.
He turned away, moving on to the last oddity in the room: a wall of pink sticky notes beside Danika’s desk. He studied them for a few moments, taking in the scrawled words and phrases, most of which he’d only ever heard from her mouth. Then he realized what he was looking at. This wall of sticky notes was Danika’s brain.
Well, part of it. Probably a tiny part, considering how smart she was. Once, a few months back, she’d come into Echo looking kind of annoyed, and when he’d asked her what was up, she’d launched into a speech about thesis statements, specificity, and cissexist understandings of gender and family in an essay about something called Creolization. He was awed, not because he didn’t understand most of the words—although, no, he didn’t—but because he understood just enough to realize how quickly she was jumping from point to point. How many logical steps she didn’t even feel the need to say out loud because, apparently, they were obvious to her. Kind of like how, if he were going to do a spin pass, he wouldn’t consciously think about his sight or his hands or his wrists, because he wouldn’t have to. He’d just know how to do it, and that would make him faster and sharper than someone who didn’t.
Danika Brown was faster and sharper than a whole lot of people. And by the time he’d read all of her haphazard, sticky, pink thoughts, Zaf was grinning.
“Good Lord. I’ve never seen you so cheerful.” Dani’s voice came from the doorway she’d disappeared through. He looked up and found her standing there, transformed in a way he could only call impressive. The pajamas had been replaced by painted-on black jeans and some kind of tight, sleeveless top that did gravity-defying things to her chest—which he really could’ve done without. Especially since she was still wearing her usual black leather necklaces, and they disappeared between her epic cleavage like arrows to paradise. Her makeup was the glossy, shiny, heavy kind that made a woman’s entire bone structure look different, the kind his niece had attempted last Eid before Kiran had seen her, frowned, and said, “Really, Fatima? Go upstairs and wash your face.”
Dani was much better at it than Fluff.
“Wow,” he said. “You look . . .”
“Aggressively sexy and mildly terrifying?”
He paused. “Yeah, actually.”
“Thank you.” Her smile was privately pleased. Apparently, that was exactly what she’d been going for. He didn’t know why, since they were going to be on the radio, but—
The click of her high heels cut through his thoughts as she stepped closer. “You like my Wall of Doom?”
“Your . . . ? Oh, the sticky notes?” He turned back to the sea of pink and felt another smile tug at his lips. He had no idea why the sight of her chaotic, almost-impossible-to-read handwriting and her brilliant, almost-impossible-to-follow thought processes fizzed through his mind like sherbet on his tongue, but they did. “Yeah, I like it. What’s with the doom?”
“This is my preparation for the Daughters of Decadence symposium in a few weeks. I agreed to sit on a panel discussion about intersectionality in feminist literature, and, since my lifelong idol will be there, too, it’s possible I’m overpreparing.” Her shoes kept clicking, and Zaf looked down to study them. Silver high heels covered in little diamonds, her black-painted toes peeking out, tiny skulls lining the ankle straps. His smile widened.
Then her words sank past the adoring fog blanketing his brain. “A few weeks?”
“Mm-hmm. Eighteen days, to be precise.” Dani was standing beside him now, tall enough to kiss, thanks to the heels. He would take advantage, only kissing was a slippery slope that might lead to his dick inside her when they should both be inside a taxi, and also—
“You never mentioned a . . . a
