load?”
“I’m sorry,” said Sin. “Is this the inhabitant of number one, Glass House Lane? Sir, I think you should consider putting down your stone.”
Alan nodded. “You make me think of a play.”
Sin thought that sounded very promising. She seemed to recall that Shakespeare had said a lot of things vaguely along the lines of “We should date.”
“Yeah?”
“Dryden wrote a play called
“Oh Alan, this had better not be going to any gross ‘you’re so exotic’ places.”
“No,” Alan said, very fast.
“Good,” Sin told him firmly.
“There’s this bit in it with a princess being threatened by the villain with death or, um, a villainous alternative. And the princess tells him to get lost, of course.” Alan turned the corner cautiously, making their way out of the borough. “She says, ‘My mother’s daughter knows not how to fear.’”
She had been right before. He did have a special voice for quoting.
“Oh,” Sin said.
“When you were standing in front of the Goblin Market,” Alan said, “with your sister behind you, I thought of that line.”
“That sounds like a pretty good play. You have it at home?”
“I do,” Alan admitted. “Why?”
Sin raised her eyebrows. “I thought I might read it.”
“Really?”
He didn’t have to look so surprised. Sin felt uncomfortable and irritated again, felt as she had for years at the mere mention of Alan Ryves.
“I
“I know that,” Alan snapped back. “I was stupid.”
It was a strange enough admission from him that Sin found herself tilting her head to look at him from a different angle. “Were you?” she murmured. “How?”
“I thought you were exactly what you choose to appear as in a certain context,” Alan said. “I should have known better than that. Me of all people.”
In a certain context. At the Goblin Market.
And then there had been the battlefield, where he saved her brother. There had been the school, where they looked at each other, and because they were playing different parts than they usually did, they both saw that they were playing a part and maybe saw each other for the first time.
No sooner had she seen, but all this had started.
“Why do you keep calling me Cynthia?” Sin demanded. She knew that this was no way to make him come around to seeing her the way she wanted him to, but she couldn’t help it. She wondered if this was how he felt when he got reminded of his leg. “I know you used to do it to annoy me, because you wanted to make it clear you thought it was a dumb name and being a dancer wasn’t something you took seriously. But if things are different now, why do you keep calling me that?”
“Well,” Alan said. “I mean, the Market people who knew you as a kid call you Thea. And they call you Cynthia at school, and Sin for a stage name. Cynthia has all those names in it. Why would I want to pick just one?”
Sin thought back to quite a few guys who had told her solemnly that they wanted to “get to know the real you.” As if they deserved a prize for wanting one color and not a kaleidoscope.
Of course, none of them had been as interesting as this liar.
“Okay, Clive,” she murmured.
“I’m glad we have that sorted out, Bambi.”
They reached Lydie’s school in okay time, though Alan had to park on a bit of pavement broken up by the roots of a tree.
“So you’re not normal,” Sin said. “You want to take on crazy burdens, and you lie all the time, and you think you might not have a soul. You’re terribly strange. And you thought going after normal girls would work out?”
The car was still, but Sin’s side was tipped slightly toward Alan’s. His voice was wary.
“What are you saying, Cynthia?”
“I’m saying, try someone terribly strange.”
Alan glanced at her, and Sin moved as if that was her cue. She unwound from her car seat and toward him, her hand on his shoulder, his face tilted up to hers. His eyes were very wide.
“Try me,” Sin suggested softly, and bent toward him.
Alan turned away an instant before their lips touched, and stared determinedly out the window. “Cynthia,” he said, “we’ve been through this.”
