Now Lizzy looked up, her eyebrows lifted. “You don’t know?”
“I guess I never thought about it.”
Which was true.
Lizzy dipped the brush and painted the next nail. “This color looks good on you.”
Raya looked at the red shade on seven of her nails. It certainly made an excellent symbol of the panic blaring in her brain. “Maybe I should get a red dress for the party.” Maybe, if she mentioned dresses, Lizzy would stop going on about hidden feelings.
“I see you wearing black.” Lizzy painted another nail. “And”—here she paused to reload the polish on the brush—“I see him wearing black, too.”
Raya twitched as Lizzy painted the last two nails.
Lizzy tilted her head and smiled as she released Raya’s hand. “See? I told you this would be fun.”
12
Raya scooped up a large bouquet of roses from the florist’s stand and buried her face in the red petals. They matched her nails. If Lizzy hadn’t fallen asleep, she probably would have attempted to paint Raya’s toes, too, just to have an excuse to get more details about Raya’s mystery man—who wasn’t a man at all—and, for that matter, wasn’t Raya’s, either.
She’d barely managed to slip away to catch the first train of the morning back to Paris while Lizzy slept.
A few café au laits would remedy the effects of a sleepless night, for now.
Belatedly, she remembered that touching an item signaled intent to purchase. Her gaze traveled up from the red roses to the shopkeeper, who fixed her with a pointed look.
She owed herself a treat after such a long night, didn’t she?
Raya dug in her pockets for enough money to purchase the bouquet.
The shopkeeper’s expression became much sunnier as he wrapped her purchase in paper, tied it with a bow, and handed it back to her.
Raya hugged the bouquet and continued down the sidewalk. At her hotel, she greeted Ahmed, the hotel clerk, with a cheery wave of the roses, and continued upstairs to stash them in her room.
Only when she reached her room did she realize she had no vase. She briefly considered filling the small trash can with water, then settled on stoppering the bathroom sink and propping the cut ends of the flowers in the water.
She had almost left the bathroom when a thought struck her. Why not use the minor summoning she’d learned at the convention to contact Phoenix? Whereas a major summoning was like lassoing someone against their will, a minor summoning was no more intrusive than calling someone on the phone.
Surely he wouldn’t mind.
She turned back to the sink and tore all the petals from one rose.
Where to cast the spell? She didn’t dare ruin the carpet, so the hotel room floor was out of the question. Raya evaluated the amount of space around the sink and decided it would suffice. She retrieved her spellcasting supplies, consecrated the tiny area with her wand, then built the altar according to the requirements of a minor summoning, arranging the rose petals around it.
She carefully lit the candles and took a cleansing breath. The extra power vibrating through her set her head spinning. She steadied herself against the sink and concentrated. “Phoenix,” she whispered, attempting to harness the power without allowing it to blast through her uncontrolled.
Unlike the first time they’d met, when her summons had dragged him unwillingly away from some sort of debauched party, this time he would come—or not—as he chose.
Nothing.
She breathed the fragrance of the rose petals and tried again. “Phoenix.”
Still nothing.
Fickle demon. Leave it to Phoenix to refuse to answer the metaphorical phone. It would have been easier to simply cast the major summoning and call him up whether he wanted to show or not. “Third time’s the charm,” Raya muttered. “Phoenix!”
The candles extinguished themselves, plunging the room into darkness. Raya instantly felt a presence behind her.
“Did you summon me into a bathroom, witch?”
