“Might.” I waited. Despite what Lu thought, I could be patient. Had spent all of these years patient. Too many years.
“They’re monsters.”
The truth put a hard snap in his voice, bitter because he knew no one would believe him. He knew I wouldn’t believe him.
But I knew monsters were real.
After all, I was one. Come to that, so was Lu.
Lu stopped pushing the hangers, the steady squeak of metal-on-metal silent now.
“All right,” I said, hoping he’d tell me more. We were looking for some monsters ourselves. Looking to kill the ones who had cursed us to decades of half-living.
I ducked so he would meet my gaze, wanting him to see I believed. “Do you know what kind of monster?”
“Of course I know,” he said. “Do you?”
The dull clink of the bell over the door pulled his attention, breaking the moment.
A middle-aged woman with a poof of brown hair cut in a bob and four teen girls single-filed into the shop, all of them arguing about a song I’d never heard.
The old guy took that as his cue to step away from the cash register. He messed with the bags of generic candy pegged on a shelf, angling to keep an eye on the women.
Whatever he knew, he wasn’t going to tell it to me now.
I made my way to Lu, who was sliding hangers again, acting like she hadn’t heard the entire thing.
“You’re whistling,” she said, not looking up.
“Am I?” I was. Making my own noise was one way to combat the chatter of the teens, the scuff and squeak of so many shoes across the chipped linoleum, the sudden explosions of laughter that made me jerk.
“Nat King Cole,” she informed me as hangerssnick, snick, snicked.
I didn’t know how she was always so relaxed. She tugged a shirt off the rack, and draped it over the others in her arms, the fluid shift of her muscle under skin, the smell of her perfume, deep rose and sweetness, familiar as my own heartbeat.
I wanted her always. All the time. Forever.
I inhaled, exhaled, and tried to wiggle my toes to release my stress. Since my shoes were about two sizes too tight, it didn’t help.
“That so?”
She nodded.
I turned my back to the row of shirts behind her and crossed my arms.
“It’s that song about the enchanted boy looking for the greatest thing,” she said.
“Mmmm?”
“You know the words,” she said.
“Might.”
She glanced down the length of the rack. I savored her profile, the twitch of her lips as she tried not to smile at me.
I was smiling at her. Because how could I not?
“What is the greatest thing?” I asked.
