“Then you’d better hop off,” he informed me, “or I won’t be held accountable for my actions.”
Grinning, I pushed away from him, getting back to my feet and gathering the book from where it had dropped to the porch beside us.
“If you need to blow off some steam, Sophie and Graham are throwing me a far less appropriate party after this one down at the eighth.” I informed him as we both stood and forced some distance between us. The night air was cooler than I thought so far away from Dante’s heated skin. “Sometimes terrible alcoholcan help you get through your stuff. Or at least, it can help you forget about it for a night.”
He nodded and took a step toward me.
He reached out and ran a hand along my jaw, then leaned in for another kiss. Quick, this time, and finished far too early for my taste. He was smiling when he pulled away.
“Just so you know, I didn’t ask you about what you were going through,” he started, keeping his gaze on mine, “because I thought you wouldn’t want to tell me. But if you ever do, just know that you can.”
Where had that come from? I nodded and watched as he wrenched the door open and stepped back inside, returning to the party he’d so far only briefly attended. I smiled a little, unable to keep from grinning after what had happened between us. It was all so crazy. He was a First Ringer. I was just a girl from the Third Ring with a bad mouth and a worse attitude. Though, I supposed I was a girl from the Second Ring now. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I stared out at the garden behind my family’s new home.
“What’s so funny, birthday girl?” My mother stepped out beside me on the deck, in the same spot Dante had occupied. I jumped, surprised to find her here so suddenly, but then relaxed.
Ignoring the wandering thoughts regarding how much she’d seen, I answered her. “Life.”
She smiled. “Ah, yes. Life does tend to be very funny. When it’s not beating the shit out of you.”
I snorted, then raised my brows, eyes wide.
“Mom!” I cried, and she collapsed into a fit of giggles. I’d never heard such language from the woman who’d raised me.
“You’re twenty-two now,” she said with a shrug once her amusement died down. “You’re not a child anymore. None of you are. Maurice is a man grown, and Warren is talking about getting married…”
I looked back out at the garden, my smile fading slightly.
“He’s doing the right thing, you know,” she continued, her voice softer than before. “I know it’ll be hard, having her around all the time, but your brother has a good heart. She’ll be safe with him. And, in this place, that’s all any of us can really ask for.”
“Did you love dad?” The words slipped out before I could even think them. As a general rule, we never talked about our father. No one had ever explicitly told me not to, but Maurice had at some point in our childhood indicated to Warren that he shouldn’t, and Warren passed that on to me. So we’d gone our whole lives, Warren and I, hardly knowing anything about him.
“I did,” my mother murmured, a wistful smile on her face as her gaze drifted somewhere far away. “Geist help me, I did.”
“How did he die?”
Her smile dimmed slightly, and she turned her bright eyes on me. “I should have told you about him. I should have told you all stories of who he was, helped you remember your father, helped you remember the man I loved. But every time I think of him, I think of how he looked in the end. And that isn’t fair. Not to me, not to you, and certainly not to him.”
I remained silent, waiting.
“When you were only a baby,” my mother stared back out at the gardens, “Warren was four and Maurice was seven. There was a fire on the south side of the Third Ring. You know how these things can spread through the houses that are so close together. They called for able-bodied men to help put out the blaze, and your father went. The house was collapsing, and people were still inside. We knew them. He’d worked a job with one of them, and I knew the woman from the shop. Your father thought he could save them. He was wrong.”
The culmination of her story hung in the air between us for a moment as I digested that knowledge and the pain she’d just relived.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
She stepped closer and wrapped an arm around me. “I promised him before he left that night, before there was any indication that it would be anything but a normal night, after we’d put you to bed and stood over your crib, that I would raise you to be strong, brave, and humble. That I would make sure you knew the difference between right and wrong. That you'd never forget where you came from or who loved you. I hope I’ve kept that promise, even if I’ve never really told you about him.”
I reached down and held the hand on my hip. I gave it a squeeze, and she smiled.
“Happy birthday, Adrian,” she whispered.
I stood with her like that for some time before we both moved with some muttered assumptions that we should return to the party, seeing as we were the host and guest of honor.
I spent the next few hours talking to people who loved me, being congratulated by people who were proud of me, and laughing with friends, new and old. And at the end of the night, I thanked my mother for organizing a time where I could simply be happy and celebrate. Then I stepped out into the night, Dante and Milo by my side, and made my way down to the Deck.
Chapter Nineteen
“Fear is paralyzing. It is a disease that must be cured, located and rooted out. For all who stand still in fear fall short of the glory of the Geist.”
