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“Fine,” said Kami, grinning at him. “Be a hater of dances. Be a hater of joy. I don’t care. You’re not invited!” She clapped her hands. “You have plans.”
Hearing his cue, Rusty sauntered obligingly through the doors. “Hey, Lynburn, we’re going out,” he said. Then he stopped and frowned. “There are two of them,” he observed.
“The other one won’t need to be subdued by force,” Kami assured him.
“Nevertheless, my price has doubled,” said Rusty. “I’ll want six dinners prepared lovingly for me in the next two weeks.”
“Four,” Kami told him. “And you’re ridiculous. You can cook.”
“Be reasonable, Cambridge,” said Rusty. “Not doing things you can do is the whole point of laziness. Not doing things you can’t do is just sensible.”
Kami slapped his arm. Rusty leaned down, took her lightly by the shoulders, and brushed a kiss on her cheek.
“You look nice, Cambridge,” he murmured. “Who’s the blond bombshell?”
“Holly,” Kami whispered. “Don’t hit on her!”
Rusty laughed, sliding his arm around her shoulders and pulling her in against his side. “You know I don’t hit on people,” he said, ruffling her hair. “I’m Endymion.”
“You’re Endymion,” Kami repeated.
“It is my ambition to be the Endymion of dating, yes,” Rusty said calmly. “Endymion, he was a guy in myth who knew how to work it. He lay asleep forever while the goddess of the moon dropped by every night and adored him. Nice.”
He doesn’t have to talk nonsense in a whisper in your ear, Jared said.
As opposed to talking nonsense in a whisper in my brain? Kami asked.
Jared glared. Some people, Kami knew, had bedroom eyes. She was saddened to have to admit that Jared had filthy alleyway eyes. The thought reached Jared and he tilted his head, and Kami felt what he felt: startled and amused.
“For killing people in,” Kami exclaimed.
The kitchen went still except for Jared’s small, strangled laugh. Kami could not blame everyone else: it must have been a very unsettling thing to hear out of context.
Rusty remained relaxed. “Time to go,” he announced. “Come on, Lynburns. We’re going to the pub.”
“Thank you,” Ash said doubtfully.
“Not the pub where the girls are going,” Rusty clarified. “The pub on the other side of town.”
Jared had been edging up on Rusty and Kami, giving Rusty that edging-toward-homicidal look.
Rusty let go of Kami and grabbed Jared casually by the collar. “Come on, Blondie,” he said to Ash, who moved forward propelled by the sheer force of his own politeness. Jared jerked away, and his shirt pulled tight in Rusty’s hand. Rusty held on with no visible effort. “The girls don’t want you here,” Rusty continued, his voice light. “So you’re not staying.”
Kami moved toward Jared; he glanced at her and checked himself.
“Fine,” he snapped, and made for the door.
“This evening with Surly and Blondie had better get me pastries,” Rusty said. “You girls have fun.”
He calls you Cambridge, Jared pointed out.
You knew he did that, Kami said. It’s to tease me for studying so much and wanting to do journalism at Cambridge.
He did know. He knew everything about her, which sounded creepy even to him, but it wasn’t like he could help knowing.
I could give you a nickname, Jared suggested. I could call you Cam—Cam—His brain refused to surrender up anything appropriate. Camembert.
The inside of the Water Rising was dim and brown, with stools that seemed to have old men growing from them like mushrooms from the hollows of trees.
