“Raggie—”
“Is dry too,” the boy said, nodding to the musician. His water attack had dwindled to a trickle.
The wind traced over the woman’s narrow shoulders, brining goose bumps up as it trailed down her arm.
“Let me take care of you,” the boy said.
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”
“I know. Consider it a favor. To me.”
The boy’s heart thumped loudly as he stared steadily at the woman. Her long black hair was curling at the ends, drying in the wind’s gentle breeze. It ran over the pink of her cheeks and blew softly against her flushed skin.
“Just one piece of cake,” she said firmly.
“Two,” the boy said, “and dinner.”
“One, and dinner to go. Cheesecake, not chocolate.”
The boy’s nose wrinkled. “I hate cheesecake. I hate it more than wet socks in soggy shoes.”
“Cheesecake,” she said, her mouth tightening, “or deal’s off.”
The wind fluffed the boy’s hair, and he held back a smile. “All right. Cheesecake. But if I concede cheesecake, then we’re sitting in at a restaurant.”
The woman gestured to herself, reminding him she was one of the most recognizable women in the world. And supposedly dead.
The boy smirked and twisted his hand. She transformed into a willowy middle-aged woman with bobbed blonde hair and gray eyes. The wind laughed. The woman looked like the model on the cover of the book the boy was reading. He made himself older, stouter, with a gray mustache.
The woman snorted. “All right,” she said.
The boy grinned. “All right?”
She nodded. He grabbed her hand, and then, as the darkness receded, the woman stood on her tiptoes and whispered in his ear, “I named her Kýon.”
The boy laughed. Kýon meant “the dog.”
67
The wind wasn’t interested in cheesecake. It wasn’t interested in tiny bistros with hours-long waits for a candlelit table. It wasn’t even interested in the skulking, slinking, looking-over-the-shoulder scowl of the musician as he stalked away from the woman and the boy.
No.
The wind only wanted to know one thing. Did the trickster like the wedding gift the boy had left in his room?
It was the wind’s idea. It had been the one to tell the boy about the lucky one. Granted, the boy was the one who’d visited the Merchant, but he wouldn’t have if the wind hadn’t told him what the cruel one’s sister had done.
The wind huffed with pride. Even though the boy hadn’t been invited to the wedding, and even though no one was happy to see him, and even though the bride had tried to kill him, the boy had still left a wedding gift. That was polite behavior. No doubt about it.
The wind sped from the stagnant, fetid alley, shooting from the narrow, shadowed brick walk into the wide-open summer heat. It volleyed across cars, slung itself through a spinning bicycle wheel, and caught a puff of steam rising like a hot-air balloon, only to slide back to earth, gliding on the golden rays of the setting sun.
It burst through the man-size hole in the wedding hall’s stone wall, shooting rock dust in the air so it spread about like the death—or more likely, the birth—of a star. The wind gusted quickly past the poisonous vines, not liking the dripping, venomous feel of them. The hall was empty now, no guests left to drink or toast or revel far into the night.
In the hallway leading to the trickster’s bedroom, the wind brushed against the fluffy, cloudlike fabric of the girl’s blood-splattered dress. She gripped the cruel one’s sister’s arm so tightly her knuckles were white.
“If you need me, I’ll stay—” she began, but the cruel one’s sister wrenched her arm out of her grasp.
“The only thing I need is my groom. Tell me,”—she leaned forward like a vulture inspecting carrion—“how do I make him like me?”
