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"Ravus?" Val asked, although she knew his voice.
The other faerie slunk away, but Ravus kept his fingers at her neck. "It's dangerous here. You should be more careful. Now I'd like you to at least try and break free."
"You never taught me—," she began, but then she stopped, ashamed of the way her voice sounded like whining. He was teaching her now. After all, he was giving her time to think what the possible moves might be. It wasn't as though he was choking her. He was giving her time to win.
Val relaxed, pressing her back to his chest and grinding against him. Startled, he loosed his grasp and she pulled free. He clutched her arm, but she spun around and pressed her mouth to his.
His lips were rough, chapped. She felt the sting of fangs against her bottom lip. He made a sharp sound in the back of his throat and closed his eyes, mouth opening under hers. The smell of him—of cold, damp stone—made her head swim. One kiss slid into another and it was perfect, was exactly right, was real.
He pulled back abruptly, turning his head so that he wasn't looking at her. "Effective," he said.
"I thought maybe you wanted me to kiss you. Sometimes I thought I could see it." Her heart was thundering in her chest and her cheeks were scalding, but she was pleased that she sounded calm.
"I didn't want you…" Ravus said. "I didn't want you to see it."
She almost laughed. "You look so shocked. Hasn't anyone ever kissed you before?" Val wanted to do it again, but she didn't dare.
His voice was cool. "On rare occasions."
"Did you like it?"
"Then or now?"
Val sucked in a breath, let it out with a sigh. "Both. Either."
"I liked it," he said softly. It was then that she remembered he could not lie.
She ran her hand over his cheek. "Kiss me back."
Ravus caught her fingers, clutched them so hard that they hurt. "Enough," he said. "Whatever game you are playing at, end it now."
She pulled her hand out of his grip, sobering abruptly, and took several steps back from him. "I'm sorry—I thought—" In truth, she couldn't recall what she'd thought, what had made this seem like a good idea.
"Come along," he said, not looking at her. "I'll take you back to the tunnels."
"No," Val said.
He stopped. "It would be unwise to remain here, no matter your—"
Val shook her head. "That's not what I mean. Someone found our place. There's nowhere to go back to." It had been a long time since there was something to go back to, anything to go back to anywhere.
He spread his hand as though trying to express something inexpressible. "We both know that I am a monster.">"Me either," Val said, because suddenly all of it seemed equally surreal, equally random and unbelievable. It felt less possible that Ruth should be sleeping on cardboard in Central Park than that faeries existed.
Luis slid his hands up under Lolli's skirt and Val took took another sip of the cooling tea, ignoring the flash of skin, the glimmer of steel rings, trying not to notice the wet sounds and the giggling. As she turned her head, she saw the leg of Luis's baggy pants, hiked up so high that the scorch marks on the inside of his knee were visible, scorch marks that could only come from Never.
As Ruth's breath evened out into sleep and Lolli and Luis's breath escalated into something else, Val bit the inside of her lip and rode out the pain of withdrawal.
Chapter 10
They love not poison that do poison need.
—William Shakespeare, Richard II
As the night wore on, Val got no better. The cramping of the muscles under her skin grew until she stood up and crept away from their crash spot so that she could at least twist and move as her discomfort urged. She walked across the rocks and started back through the Ramble, scattering a flurry of crumpled leaves from their branches. She took another sip of the tea, but it had turned icy cold.
Val had grown up thinking of Central Park as dangerous, even more than the rest of New York, the kind of place where perverts and murderers lurked behind every bush, just waiting for some innocent jogger. She remembered countless news stories about stabbings and muggings. But now the park just seemed tranquil.
She picked up a stick and did lunging drills, thrusting the tip of the wood into the knothole of a thick elm until she figured she'd cowed any squirrels that might have lived there. The movements made her feel dizzy and slightly nauseated and when she shook her head, she thought she saw moving lights on a nearby path.
