"Yeah. Totally." We hung up and I looked down at the phone for a long moment. Had the world gone mad? Sara
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Madison calling me and asking about faeries like it was school gossip. I think the Sara calling-me-on-the-phone bit was even more shocking than the faerie bit. I felt like my high school invisibility was wearing off, just as I'd started to find it convenient.
The car slowed and bumped into a parking lot. I looked up and blinked at the sign, which bore a glowing neon pig with a glowing neon smile. The Sticky Pig.
"This is where you always go, right?"
I looked from the sign to Luke's face, which was pensive. "Uh. Yeah."
He made a face. "I saw it in your memories. I recognized the sign. Are you hungry?"
I nodded and made the understatement of the year. "I could eat."
He looked relieved. "Thank God. I'm starving. C'mon, I'll buy you dinner."
Guilt nagged at me: me eating out, Mom sitting at home getting dates wrong. "Maybe I should call Mom."
Luke paused, his hand on the door. "Why? She thinks you're at the gig still, and if you call her, you'll have to tell her why you're not. Do you want to have that conversation right now?"
"That," I said, climbing out of the car, "is a very good point."
He came around the front of the car, his face lit red by the smiling-pig sign, and held out his hand. I took it, wondering if I'd ever get tired of the sensation of his fingers holding mine. We crossed the empty parking lot and walked into
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the freezing air-conditioning of the restaurant; the hostess (not the James-bedazzled one) led us to a booth.
Luke slid into one side and I stood at the head of the table for a long moment, tapping my fingers against my legs, torn between bold Deirdre and normal Deirdre.
He raised an eyebrow at me. "What?"
I made my decision and slid into the booth next to him, slamming myself up against him hard and fast enough that his breath escaped in a short puff. "Steamroller!" I said.
He laughed, his face mashed up against the window, and shoved me back. "Weirdo."
"Look who's talking!" We sat arm to arm, staring at the same grubby plastic menu, like we were a normal couple, not a telekinetic freak and a soulless faerie assassin. I let my imagination run wild with the idea of us dating--Luke an ordinary teenage boy, me an ordinary girl. We'd eat the same old barbecue sandwiches we always got, then he'd pull me out of the booth by my hand and we'd go out to his car. He'd let me drive because he knew I liked to, and we'd do things normal couples did when they dated. We'd go to the Smithsonian and try to interpret modern art. We'd go to the movies and watch stupid action flicks and laugh at the melodramatic lines. We'd go hiking at the state park and watch summer disappear over the horizon; I'd lose my virginity while the trees shed their leaves all around us. When winter came, he'd hold my frozen hands and tell me how much he loved me, and that he'd never leave me.
My eyes ran down the same old menu ten times without seeing a single word.
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"Is this how it would be?" Luke asked softly, and I knew he was thinking the same thing as me.
I nodded. "This would be our place." I gazed at him, distracted by his proximity and by the darkness outside the window. I could feel that part of me--the part that had escaped into Luke during the mind-reading--all electric and charged.
He shifted so he could look at me properly. "Your... gift. Is it stronger after dark?"
Was that why I felt so alive right now? "I don't know. Why?"
"Hers is strongest while the sun is setting, so I thought maybe yours was similar." Luke cupped his hand over the top of mine and pulled it toward him. "And I'm getting the most peculiar feeling off you right now. Like someone put fresh batteries in you."
Again, there was that comparison with the distant Queen who had made him her slave--I wasn't sure I liked it. My voice was only a little frosty: "Do you get a 'most peculiar feeling' off her when her power is its strongest?"
"Not at all. But I didn't swap brains with her, either. You've infested me."
I looked over to find him grinning, and I finally affirmed it. "I do feel weird. And I haven't been doing much sleeping at night recently. Do you think that has anything to do with it?"
Luke shrugged. "It sounds plausible, doesn't it? It--" He broke off when the waitress arrived to take our orders. Neither of us had read the menu, so I ordered my usual 220
pulled pork sandwich for both of us and she whisked off to the kitchen, probably eager to be rid of the last customers of the night.
Then Luke said, "I want you to work more on your gift."
I swallowed a mouthful of tea in a hurry. "I thought you didn't want her to know what I could do."
He spoke slowly, as if unsure of what he was suggesting. "That was because of what she was doing to me. Nothing's supposed to be able to stop it except her; she'd know it was you if the fire had gone out. If you practice your telekinesis discreetly, she won't know about it until it's too late."
"Too late for what?"
"Too late for her to realize that you've learned to take care of yourself, and that she'd better just leave you alone."
Somehow I didn't think a few extracurricular telekinetic classes would secure my safety. "Do you think that can really happen?"
Luke leaned over and brushed his lips on my cheek; the feeling of his breath on my skin was intoxicating. "It's what I want to happen." I closed my eyes and leaned my face toward his. I couldn't
