“He’s got a job. A build. Outside of town. The client is demanding. He’s…it won’t go forward without him there. Making the decisions. Talking his client into doing the right thing. And I understand it. I do. I have a job that sends me out at all hours of the day and night. Unexpectedly.” I pointed toward him, and he lifted his cup in toast and acknowledgment.
I didn’t know when I’d started pacing, but I just kept at it. “It’s not about that. About his job, except it could be. If he’s telling me the truth, then… No. There’s still something that isn’t adding up here. Something that doesn’t fit. And I try not to do that, you know?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Go all detective on my relationship. Assume there’s some kind of crime or mystery I need to dig at. Assume he’s guilty for something when I know perfectly well that’s not how relationships work. It’s not about right and wrong. It’s about want and need, give and take, support and stepping back when needed. I’m just not…just not good at some of that stuff.”
I was staring at a lovely little pot of miniature daffodils, their cheery yellow blooms blown out like trumpets with frills, sturdy dark green leaves and stems anchoring them.
They looked like nothing could hurt them. They looked strong and vital and endless. But I knew. A little too much water, a little too little, and they’d be goners. Dead.
“It’s hard to know,” Than said. “It’s hard to know how much. Or how little.”
I stuck a finger in the dirt and found that it was dry on top, but just beneath that, a little scratch and wiggle down, the soil was damp. It was just right.
“How do you know?”
Than stood. I wouldn’t have heard him, probably, but the spider eyes rattled with each step, the scrabbly legs scratching and whispering across the polished, dark wood floor.
“These questions are not as uncommon as you may think, Reed Daughter. Among the living, they are legion. Verse, chorus, song.”
“I know. Intellectually I know this is nothing new to the human race. But for me. For Ryder and me…” I pulled my finger out of the dirt and dragged the tip of it across my jeans to get rid of the soil.
“How long have you been together?”
“We’ve known each other since grade school…but if you want to count the six years he was away at college and doing that secret, monster-hunting training…”
“Dating. How long have you dated?”
“Over two years.” There was something about that. Shouldn’t we be in a better place after years together? More honest, more open, more in love? Not hiding stuff? Or was this the mark in time where we found out all the crushes and unresolved attraction was just a fluke. A fad. Wanted because it was unattainable.
“That long.”
The way he said it made me look up at him. Eyes still glassy, nose still red, but the medicine must be kicking in, since he didn’t sound as sniffy.
“That is long,” I said.
“Is it? Twenty-four months? Must I recount the difficulties you’ve endured within that time?”
And no, thank you very much, I’d prefer he didn’t bring any of it up.
I’d been shot twice, given up my soul to a demon, been bitten by an ancient vampire who was a total asshole, and kind of almost really died for a moment, because of the dude with the head cold standing in front of me.
We’d seen zombie gnomes, chased down and returned Mrs. Yates’s penguin a couple hundred times, and weathered some really bad weather. The gods had come, and the gods had gone, not always as per their preference.
People, good ordinary people, had been turned into frogs. One of my sisters had fallen in love with a demon, the other with a half Jinn.
And Ryder. Well, Ryder had found out about all the supernatural stuff that was happening right here in town, joined the force, quit the secret, monster-hunter agency, and become a servant to Mithra—a jerk of a god who didn’t like how we Reeds ran Ordinary, and who, as near as I could tell, had forced my boyfriend to pledge fealty to him just to find a way to get under my grill.
It had been…hard. There were days I thought we were just a normal couple trying to decide whose bedside tables worked better in the bedroom (his), and who had the better coffee pot (me). Other days, I knew we were so far from that kind of normal, we might never reach it.
“But how do you know?” I said.
“How do I know what, Reed Daughter?”
I couldn’t look at him anymore. “How much water. How much sun.” I vaguely waved at the flowers, then crossed my arms over my ribs and nodded at the sturdy daffodils and the little pot next to it where thick, strong triangular leaves speared up through the dark soil.
“Ah,” he said. “Life, I find, takes some time and observation. It also takes trials. Those trials bring errors.”
