Page 84 of Magic for Nothing

“No, I guess you haven’t.” He stayed where he was, looking at me. “I knew something was wrong with your story. Some of the things you’d said to me didn’t track.”

“I’m not the best liar.”

“I know. All the good parts of what you said . . . those were the true parts. I should have known something was up when you didn’t freak out at the idea of kissing a guy with a tail.” His lips twisted into something dark and wry. “Even the carnie girls don’t like to kiss a monkey. They say it’s kinky in the bad way.”

“Then they’re short-sighted. You’re a much better kisser when you’re not tense.”

Sam’s bark of laughter was so abrupt that it startled us both, creating a sort of stunned silence. He recovered first. “I shouldn’t have left you in that parking lot. I was pissed, and I had the car keys.”

“I deserved it. I shouldn’t have lied.” I shook my head. “Or maybe I shouldn’t have taken you anywhere near a roller derby game. But I don’t feel like that’s a strong enough moral. ‘To keep lying to your boyfriend, avoid beloved locations and pastimes.’”

“You really thought I was your boyfriend?”

I froze. The word had been an accident—but there are no accidents, as Elsie has always been so happy to remind me. The subconscious always makes itself known. I shrugged a little, looking down. “I thought you might be. Guess we’ll never know now, huh?”

“Guess not.” Sam looked around the tent. “Grandma’s always been a stickler for fire safety. She says this place would go up like a candle.”

“That’s the hope.”

“How long . . . ?”

“We have about an hour before I’m supposed to check in. I won’t. They’ll come looking for me, and when they do, I guess they’ll find me.” I shrugged again. “After that, we’ll see what happens. Either I win and the carnival burns and you all get away, or I lose and the carnival burns and I go back to England to answer for my family’s sins.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“You keep saying that, but you’re wrong. You have to go.”

“No, I don’t. Grandma says I do, but I’m an adult, and this is my home. I get to stay and defend it if I want to.”

I slid off the net, holding my hands beseechingly toward him. “There’s nothing to defend. We’re letting it burn, remember? The Covenant thinks you’re human. Margaret said so explicitly. We can’t kill them all, even if we wanted to try, so we need this to work. We need them to think everyone died or scattered, and is no longer a problem either way.”

“So what, you think I’m just going to run off and let you do this by yourself?”

“That was the idea.”

The corner of Sam’s mouth twitched. “That would make me a pretty shitty boyfriend.”

“Since everything I’ve said to you was a lie, I think you’re allowed.”

“Not everything.” He moved toward me with that unnerving speed, taking my still-outstretched hands and twining his tail around my waist, pulling me close to him. “Pretty sure you think I’m cute.”

“Sam—”

“You lied to us. I’m not thrilled about that. I was pretty pissed, actually, and if we had more time, I still would be. We don’t have more time. I’ve lied to everyone who’s ever thought I was human. I’ve told stories to protect myself. And you never hurt anyone here who didn’t try to hurt you first. I’d be sort of stupid to let this screw things up for us.”

“Sam . . .”

He leaned in and kissed me, tail tightening around my waist as his hands tightened on mine. The heat was back in my fingertips, but it wasn’t burning this time, more warming them to a slow boil. Together, we wrapped ourselves around each other under the big tent, and we let everything else go for a few minutes. There was no future for us. The girl he’d been kissing before didn’t exist: this was the first time he’d kissed me and known my name, who my family was, where I came from. When this place burned, he’d disappear in one direction and I’d disappear in another, and we’d never see each other again. But oh, sometimes the future is a very long way away, and sometimes the present matters more than anything that might be coming down the line.

There was no hesitation in him now. The way he kissed me told me his thoughts were mirroring mine, at least on some level. He knew this was the last time, and while he might not have forgiven me fully for my lies, he was smart enough to know he’d regret it if he didn’t give me a proper farewell. I let go of his hands, using mine to pull him closer, threading my fingers into the furlike hair atop his head. He responded by sliding his hands under my shirt . . . and stopped, pulling away, and bursting into laughter.

I blinked. My breasts had garnered a lot of responses since they’d started making an appearance back in middle school. Some of those responses had been more welcome than others. But I’d never had a guy get his hands on them and start laughing before.

“Excuse me?” I said, bemused.

“How many knives do you have under there?” asked Sam.

The mystery was solved. I grinned and said, “About thirty.”