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He muttered a curse, extending a hand. “I didn’t mean for you to fall. My apologies.”
I giggled as I reached for him. “You’re only angry because you’re aroused.”
An icy curl of wind kissed my nose as he pulled back his hand without touching mine. “You may think with your body, Catherine, but I. Think. With. My. Mind. I am going home. Are you coming with me, or are you returning to your friends at the Speckled Iguana? Because you can be sure I will not stop you from going where you wish.”
He walked away. It took far too long for his words to filter through my muddied brain and then longer still to remember how to get to my feet. I ran after the harried rhythm of his steps. He said nothing as I stumbled up beside him. By the set of his shoulders and the nip of the air pooling around him, I knew he was furious. Aroused and furious, certainly a bad dish to be served.
“I’m sorry about Drake,” I said. “I really am. I was drunk.”
He did not answer, but I felt his thoughts as if they were knives. Very cold edgy knives.
“I mean, he got me drunk.”
“I can now see how well that would have worked out for him.”
“Ouch! That was unkind!” I waited, but he fumingly said nothing, so I went on. “Anyway, I had just washed up on that place we’re not supposed to talk about. I was so scared and confused.”
His anger veered off me and slammed elsewhere. “As I suspected, he took advantage of you. Or worse.”
“He saved my life. Or maybe he didn’t. I’m still not sure who to believe about that. Do you know what? He uses dying people as catch-fires to heal people who have a chance to live. That seems wrong to me but what if it is right? If they’re already dying, I mean?”
“Lord of All, that is a grim tale,” Vai murmured. “Fire mages seem rank upon the ground here in the Antilles.”
His words caused my thoughts to gallop down a more interesting path, one whose peculiar contours I ought to have surveyed before now. “Vai, what’s wrong with you?”
“What makes you think anything is wrong with me?”
“When you’re angry, shouldn’t there be hammering waves of cold? Shattered iron? For one moment there at the ball court, weren’t rifles killed and flames extinguished? Yet then didn’t a pistol go off?? Given you are a rare and potent cold mage, how can you sit in the courtyard and not extinguish Aunty’s cook fire? What is going on with your magic? Is it you? Or is it this place?”
He said nothing. We walked a ways in a calm resembling truce.
At length, he spoke. “I’m wondering how you are able to walk unseen. I weave cold fire to form false images. You truly veil yourself from the sight of others.”
“From everyone but you.”
“I will always know where you are. Maybe you will tell me how you manage this magic.”
“You think I will tell you because I am drunk.”
“The drink does loosen your…control.”
I staggered away from him as the abyss that was my future yawned before me to coax me into its chasm. “No, what am I thinking? It’s impossible. I have to hold on.”
“Why should it be impossible, Catherine? Hold on to what?”
“How can it not be impossible? Haven’t we already had this conversation? Aren’t I already bound—?” The wind was tearing at the clouds, and in a rent appeared the masked white face of the moon, its light a talon dug into my throat. I halted as if I had slammed into a glacial cliff.
He took two steps, then turned back to take my hand. “Catherine?”
I was a statue, with a statue’s grindingly hoarse whisper like a chisel chipping away at my very soul. “What makes you think he will ever let me speak??”
The calluses on his fingers made his touch a little rough, and yet thereby their very ordinariness settled his presence over me like balm. “Tell me who ‘he’ is, Catherine. We will find a way to unchain the binding.”
In a rumble of thunder I heard the warning boom of his voice. I broke away from Vai. I hurried, for I was sorely afraid, and I was not truly sure what scared me most: that I would never be able to speak or that I would. I came to the closed gate first and scratched at it.
When Aunty Djeneba answered, I lunged forward to kiss her. “Aunty! I missed you!”
She stepped back to let us in with a look at Vai that would have scorched wood.
