Libba stared at her, her fingers looped through the large, false-gold earrings that were dangling from her lobes as part of Juliet’s ensemble, and waited three ticks of the second hand on Seph’s cuckoo clock. Then she demanded, “Well?!”
Seph sighed, sipping her tea and then setting it down gently in its saucer, rotating it just so that the handle was facing the corner of the room, and shook her head. “Mercutio? Really?
Libba blinked.
She opened her mouth and closed it.
She swallowed.
And then she began to laugh, a ragged, hysterical thing that somehow eased the planks of wood that had taken residence between her neck and her shoulder blades back into gooey submission.
“He is so good,” she said, hiccupping and wiping tears from her eyes. “You’re going to hate it. He’s perfect in the role. And he’sso indignantabout dying.”
Seph curled her lip and reached for the teapot to refill them both. “He didn’t know Mercutio dies?”
“No!” Libba lost herself in another bubbling series of desperate laughs. “He didn’t know Tybalt was revenge-killed, either. He wasdelightedabout that. He stood over Lem gloating like he’d gotten the chance to truly haunt his actual murderer.”
Seph pressed her lips together and proffered the sugar.
Libba watched her cube bob and dissolve, just as the hysterics in her chest did the same, dragging and diffusing out in her body into something like sanity again.
She picked up the teaspoon.
She stirred.
And she sighed.
“Never once did I think this entire business with Jasper and Xandine would crack so hard on its maiden voyage,” she said, watching the eddy in the brown liquid form and swirl. “Cats, Seph! He dove into the bloody Channel without a second thought for cats!”
“Yes, so you said,” the other woman replied, watching her carefully. “You cast him as a hero and he played one. Ought that to please you?”
Libba hesitated, clenching her teeth a little at the memory of his swan dive over the edge of the pier, his stupid heroic splashing, and his grip on those cats even while the white one had shredded his mouth to ribbons.
Her throat tightened, and so she cleared it. “Not just that,” she insisted, a little higher-pitched than her usual alto. “What about that woman throwing real African words at me? Then posh Mama with the rescue. They asked me if I spoke French and I responded in a garble of Catalan Franglais. Hattie would have fainted.”
“Hattie might be able to help,” Seph pointed out, shaking off her dressing gown and reaching behind her head to pull her dark-blonde tresses into a braid. The little birds on her set of pajamas appeared to hop and take flight as she worked. “If you told her what you were doing.”
Libba frowned. “It will hurt her feelings if she finds out I used her expertise for mischief when I let her believe she was helping with a theatrical production. I can’t hurt Hattie’s feelings. She’s too pure.”
“She’s pregnant,” Seph pointed out. “Giving her the wrong number of cashews is going to hurt her feelings right now. It’s the best time, honestly.”
Libba blinked at her and sniffed. “Do you have cashews?”
Seph smiled then, for the first time since she’d come in the door, just a twisting, grudging little thing. “Actually, I do,” she said. “I nicked a tin from the store. My edible oddities are doing very well, I’ll have you know.”
Libba sniffled. “I like edible oddities.”
Seph gave her a look, her sharp features softening a little around the edges. “I’ll fry some eggs too, if you like? Maybe some bread? Cheese? Something other than nuts?”
Libba nodded. “Just don’t drop them like I did with the ruse,” she muttered, “and my rose oil. Do you carry rose oil?”
Seph shook her head, already standing and floating past to withdraw a pan from her cupboard and a basket of eggs. “No. You’ll want an apothecary or some such for that. Not Ruby?”
“Not if I don’t want to be charged triple,” Libba replied dryly.
It made Seph titter. “You have to break the eggs to make them into anything worthwhile,” she said, plunking a pat of butter onto the pan and firing up her range. “Perhaps it’s a metaphor.”
“My father cooks his eggs so long that the yolks turn gray,” Libba replied, staring down at the glossy edge of the table again and wondering if her forehead would like another visit to it. “I thought I had forgotten he always did that. It’s disgusting.”
