For the entire rest of the day, all I could taste was honey wine on my lips, and all I could smell were the cherry petals in my hair.
ChapterTen
The following day, Henry, May, and I stood in front of a wall of goldfish tanks in a pet store on Forty-Fourth Street.
“That one!” May say emphatically. “No, that one!”
Henry rolled his eyes at his sister. “She’s been obsessed with undersea things ever since she sawThe Little Mermaid. She wants to pretend she’s Ariel.”
“No, I don’t!” May whirled on her brother. “I just like fish!”
“I want a rat,” Henry declared, and I cringed. On the other side of the aisle, a few white rats nosed through pine shavings while others slept in a giant heap in their food dish. Theywerea little cute, and I knew that pet rats were actually very smart and didn’t carry diseases, but I’d seen too many wild rats in the city rolling around in garbage to make me want one.
“Hmm,” I said, turning back to the fish. “On second thought, a goldfish might be perfect. No werewolves will eat it…at least, I don’tthinkthey will. More importantly, Severn can’t possibly complain about a goldfish. He won’t even notice it’s there. It’s not all that different from a plant.”
“A plant?” Henry asked, confused.
“Never mind. Look, let’s start with a goldfish, okay? We’ll see how it goes for a few weeks, and if you guys do a good job cleaning the tank and keeping it fed, we can talk about getting another pet.”
“A rat?” Henry beamed.
“Uh…we’ll talk.”
We ended up buying a ten-gallon tank, a few jars of fish food, and some plastic decorations for the bottom. Naturally, May picked out a mermaid figurine, while Henry got a deep-sea diver. I paid with Severn’s credit card and arranged for it all to be delivered the next day. I promised the children that once everything was set up and the water was conditioned, we’d come back to pick out the fish.
Back at Wilde Tower, we entered the golden turnstile, and as I came out on the other side into the lobby, I nearly ran into a girl about my age. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and a button nose and was very pretty, but the thing that struck me most about her was that she was perfectly human. No horns. No brilliant-colored eyes. No cloak; she was wearing a jean skirt.
“Oh!” she said when we bumped into each other. “Sorry!”
To my further surprise, Talon stood just behind her. He was gorgeous as ever, though his hooded eyes still gave him that off-putting look like he’d murder you for not getting out of his way fast enough.
The girl grinned. “Hey, are you Willow? I heard there was another girl living here. Hi, Henry. Hi, May.”
They smiled up at her shyly.
“I’m Mia,” she continued, then gestured to the hulking fae behind her. “I think you already met my boyfriend, Talon.”
I had to hide my shock.Boyfriend?The two of them were a couple? Then I remembered Poppy Wilde’s comment about Talon being accompanied by human women. Now it made sense.
“Hey, I’d love to get together some time,” Mia said to me. “It can get a littlestrangearound here, and I’d love to not always feel like the odd one out. Want to get a coffee sometime?”
“Yeah, sure.” Mia had a natural warmth, and I instantly felt drawn to her, but I was so distracted by the way Talon wrapped an arm casually around her waist, pulling her close, that I wasn’t even sure I’d heard her correctly. “I mean, definitely,” I blathered. “Anytime. I’d love that.”
She beamed, leaning into Talon like she was used to being close to him. I couldn’t imagine a more unlikely pair: a petite, sweet human and a hulking fae who looked like he’d shove you out of the way to get on a train. If he didn’t just kill you outright.
“Awesome,” she said. “I’ll stop by sometime. You’re in the penthouse across from Locke, right?”
I nodded, and the two of them went through the turnstile together. I couldn’t stop thinking about them the rest of the afternoon. When I asked Henry and May as casually as I could if they knew about them being a couple, they just shrugged, too busy setting up the aquarium that had been delivered to care.
That night, as I said good night to Henry and then tucked May in with a bedtime story, she yawned and sleepily grabbed my hand. “Willow, I’m glad you’re here.”
I smiled and stroked her hair. “Me too, May Queen.”
“May Queen?”
“It comes from a story my mother used to tell me. That the fae stole away a human child as a changeling and substituted a fae child in its place. The human girl grew up amid the fae. Every summer, they crowned her with flowers and dressed her in white, and she would be queen for a topsy-turvy day, when someone with no magic rules and those with magic are her subjects.”
May smiled cozily as she snuggled into the pillows, yawning again. “I like that story. Maybe I will be the May Queen.”
