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When I get home that night, Grandad is making a cup of tea in the kitchen. We’ve cleaned up a lot. The counters are mostly clear and the stove is no longer crusted with old food. There’s a bottle of bourbon on the table, but the cap’s still on it.
“Your mother called,” he says. “She’s out.”
“Out?” I repeat dumbly. “Out of prison? Is she here?”
“No. But you do have a guest,” he says, turning back to wipe the faucet. “That Zacharov girl is in your room.”
I look up, like I can see through the ceiling, surprised and happy. I wonder what she thinks of the house, and then I remember she’s been here before, lots of times. She’s even been in my room before—just as a cat. Then the rest of what Grandad said hits me. “Why are you calling Lila ‘that Zacharov girl’? And where’s Mom? She can’t have gotten far. Jail has to slow you down a little.”
“Shandra rented a hotel room. She says she doesn’t want us to see her the way she is. Last I heard, she was ordering champagne and french fries drenched in ranch dressing up to her bubble bath.”
“Really?”
He laughs, but it sounds hollow. “You know your mother.”
I walk past him and the remaining boxes of unsorted stuff in the dining room, up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I don’t understand his mood, but my need to see Lila overwhelms other concerns.
“Cassel,” he calls, and I turn, leaning over the banister. “Go up there and bring her down. Lila. There’s something I need to tell you both.”
“Okay,” I say automatically, but I don’t really want to hear whatever it is. Two quick steps down the hall and I open the door to my bedroom.
Lila is sitting on the bed, reading one of the old collections of ghost stories I never returned to the library. She turns to give me a sly smile. “I really missed you,” she says, reaching out a hand.
“Yeah?” I can’t stop looking at her, at the way the sunlight from the dirty window catches on her lashes, making them gleam like gold, the way her mouth parts slightly. She looks like the girl I remember climbing trees with, the one who pierced my ear and licked my blood, but she looks unlike that girl too. Time has hollowed her cheeks and made her eyes feverishly bright.
I’ve thought of her so many times in this room that it seems like those thoughts conjured her, a fantasy Lila, spread out on my bed. The unreality makes it easier to walk over to her, although my heart is beating like a hammer in my chest.
“Did you miss me?” she asks, stretching her body like a cat might. She drops the book without marking her place.
“For years,” I say, helplessly honest for once. I want to press bare fingers against the line of her cheek and trace the dusting of freckles on her pale skin, but she still doesn’t seem real enough to touch.
She leans in close, and everything about her is dizzyingly warm and soft.
“I missed you, too,” she says.
I laugh, which helps me clear my head a little. “You wanted to kill me.”
She shakes her head. “I always liked you. I always wanted you. Always.”
“Oh,” I say stupidly. And then I kiss her.
Her mouth opens under mine and she lies back, drawing me down onto the bed with her. Her arms twine around my neck and she sighs against my mouth. My skin feels pricklingly hot. My muscles tense, like I’m ready for a fight, everything clenched so hard that I’m shaking.
I take a single shuddering breath.
I am full of happiness. So much happiness that I can barely contain it.
Now that I’ve started touching her, I can’t seem to stop. Like somehow the language of my hands will tell her all the things I don’t know how to say out loud. My gloved fingers slide under the waistband of her jeans, over her skin. She shimmies a little, to shove her pants down, and reaches for mine. I am breathing her breath, my thoughts spiraling into incoherence.
Someone bangs on the door to the room.
For a moment I don’t care. I don’t stop.
“Cassel,” Grandad calls from the other side of the door.
I roll off the bed and onto my feet. Lila is flushed, breathing hard. Her lips are red and wet, her eyes dark. I am still reeling.
