What Shepard is EVER thinking
“Right now I’m thinking that you’d make an excellent prosecuting attorney.” Shepard’s sprawled out on the sofa, all long legs and orange corduroy.
“That sounds like a compliment,” I say, surveying my lists. “Thank you.” I turn back to him—and to the demonic ritual which he’s taken from his pocket andspread out on my coffee table.
At least it isn’t the actual ritual. This is just a phonetic transcription, written in purple ink on a piece of notebook paper. I start to read it out loud, and Shepard jumps off the sofa to cover my mouth. “Don’t do that,” he says softly, hand still pressed over my lips.
I nod. I suppose he’s right.
He slowly takes his hand away, and we both exhale.
“Is that it how it happened?” I ask. “You just read it out loud?”
He sits back down. “No, there was more. I drew a doorway on the floor.”
“Not a pentagram?”
“No, it was a door—there was a diagram for how to draw it. I think the door worked like a metaphor. Like it was theideaof a door, and then it became a door.”
I flop down on the sofa, wiping chalk on my skirt. “So it was only ametaphoricalsummoning.”
“Why not?” He’s still smiling. (One nice thing about talking to Shepard is that I don’t even have to pretend not to be patronizing. It rolls right off of him.) “After all,” he says, “yourmagic is based on clichés . . .”
I wince. “I think you mean that we use the power of language to harness the world’s magic in a way that you can only contemplate. But go on, you drew a door . . . Where?”
“In my bedroom.” Shepard cracks open another boxed sandwich. Coronation chicken this time.
After an hour of list-making, I let him take a break to get dinner. With all the sandwiches on the coffee table right now, it’s like Simon never left. (It’svery muchlike Simon left. I can hear him—and Baz—not saying anything, not here, not wanting to be here. It’s like giant gongs of silence. Shepard’s constant chatter does nothing to crowd it out.)
I’m crushing the end of my chalk with my nail. “So, you created a door tohell,in the room where yousleep. . .”
He finishes his bite. “Oh,” he says. “It’s curry. I wasn’t expecting that. The queen was coronated with curry chicken salad?”
“Shepard.Focus.”
He tilts his head. “I’m focusing, focusing . . . I like the raisins.”
I groan, and wipe some chalk on his leg. He pulls his thigh away, laughing.
“What’s your surname?” I ask.
“Is it that hard calling me ‘Shepard’?”
“It’s awfully familiar,” I grouse.
He laughs some more. He’s very good at smiling and laughing while he eats. It isn’t even a little disgusting. “It’s Love.”
I frown and pull away from him. “It’s not—”
“My last name. It’s Love.”
“You’re joking.”
He takes another bite, still smiling. “I am not. Feel free to call me that if it feels less familiar.”
“Ugh, you’reinherentlyimpossible.”
