“It’s okay, Lev,” the others said. “We’ll make it. It’s the right way simply because there is no other.”
“We’ll be back to being our young selves in no time.”
“And if we don’t, we’ll all be old together.”
This last one made her cry harder, which earned Cook an elbow in the gut from Mimi.
“I was just trying to help,” the Spade muttered, then got to work on his slice.
“A spoon and a half,” March said from my other side as he poured the sugar, then passed the bowl to me,
I took it, and handed him the bowl of flour, but he didn’t let go for a moment. Held on. Looked down at me.
“What?” I breathed.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, and wiped my mind of all thoughts as if by the pull of a lever. “I want to see you becomethiswoman with my own eyes, little by little.”
Inside me, gears shifted and twisted and broke. New ones emerged.
“You’re looking right at me,” I whispered, and heat gathered in my cheeks like it always did when he spoke to me like this.
“And I’ll be looking right at you then.”
It was a promise if I’d ever heard one. It was a promise, and it broke me apart just as much as it put me back together.
March chuckled—and he sounded exactly like always, despite how he looked. He was beautiful, too, though I would never tell him that here. What those extra years had done to him wasrefinehim even more.
“Ever baked a cake before?” he then asked, and finally let go of the sugar, and took the flour.
“No,” I said, blinking my eyes quickly to force myself to focus. “You?”
“Yes. I’ve baked a huge red velvet cake once.”
I was smiling when I picked up the spoon, and my hand wasn’t shaking anymore.
“I like red velvet.” I hadn’t had any in a while, but I always liked it.
“It used to be my favorite taste,” said March. “Beforeyou.”
My cheeks could have melted off me.
“You done with that?” Russ asked, pointing at the bowl of sugar in my hands still. The others were all waiting.
I cleared my throat. “Yes,” I barely managed, and I didn’t dare reply, or even look at March again.
Focus.We needed to focus on the game.
“You know, now that I think about it,” said the host, who’d come closer to the table, had put his hands on the edge as he watched us pass the tea and sugar and flour. “Seven’s really a wound, isn’t it?” He made a face. “Seven’s a theft.Sixis the hour that Time has left—six.” He grabbed one of the clocks on the table and showed us.
He indeed looked panicked, now that I was looking at him while I waited for the teapot.
Host Ticktock wasn’t smiling for once, and as he slowly moved to the left of the table near the others, his eyes twitched, and his skin looked slick with sweat, too.
His eyes darted back to the tea and the sugar and the flour—then at Silas who was closest to him, pouring drops into his mold.
“Six. It’s supposed to be six o’clock. Tea-time o’clock at this table. No need for seven—really, friends,really.”
I narrowed my brows. Shook my head.
