She shrugged. “I’ll think about it.”
The woman and the musician didn’t know about the trickster fighting with the solange-eyed one at the closing ceremony. The trickster had shot them before he’d cut his way across the room to his friend. Perhaps that was why they hesitated.
The trickster slowly pulled his hands free. “I have to go.”
He stood, shoving his chair back. The wind tottered on the wooden back. Across the room, at the newsprint-covered window, the morning sun leaked through in a dull, muted light.
The woman stood and gave her brother a swift hug. “Be careful,” she whispered into his shoulder.
The trickster smiled. “I’m always careful.” The musician snorted, and the trickster’s smile grew, then he sobered. “Take care of her. You’ll have to be enough now.”
The musician nodded. For a moment, the wind wondered what the trickster meant, but then it remembered the blood scented tubes and the woman’s dependence on her brothers. Couldn’t the trickster help her anymore? Had the jackaltooth changed his blood?
The wind sniffed him. He did smell different. And his blood had tasted different. Physical bodies were a strange, strange thing.
The citrus and pearl dust scented woman pushed away from the trickster. “Don’t worry about us. Worry about yourself. We’ll see you . . . we’ll see you soon.”
The trickster nodded.
Then the musician twisted his hand, removing the illusion surrounding the apartment. The sounds of the building leaked in—feet clattering down the stairs, a barking dog, the loud sound of morning news shows.
The trickster unlocked the dead bolt and slipped out the door. It clicked quietly shut behind him.
The wind stayed in the apartment swaying on the breeze the trickster had left behind. The citrus and pearl dust scented woman and the musician stayed silent for a long moment. The wind swept across the sugar bowl and then tapped at the now cold coffee.
The woman twisted her hand, and the hallway sounds vanished.
The musician watched the door as if he expected it to burst open at any moment. “Do you remember when you said you’d trust Luvic even as he slid the killing knife into your chest?”
“Yes,” the woman said.
“You still feel that way?”
The woman smiled. It was small, like the tiny pink seashells that were shaped like crescent moons. “I do.”
“He’s the Bard’s jackaltooth now.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I know. I get it, Raggie. He’s loyal to the bastard. But like you always said, Luvic plays deep. Even if he becomes fully jackaltooth, he won’t hurt us.”
“When he becomes fully jackaltooth.”
“If.”
“When.”
“He won’t hurt us,” she insisted. “And you won’t hurt him.”
The musician didn’t respond; he only stared at the closed wooden door.
After a while, the woman sat back down at the table and wrapped her hands around her cold mug of coffee. She didn’t drink. The television screen flickered, showing a more animated version of the woman as she ran through the city in one of her many movies.
The wind had seen this scene before. It was in Central Park, in the rain, and she ran after a man—to kiss him. The boy had watched the movie last summer. He’d turned the movie off when the kissing began and gone to read a book instead. The wind gathered the boy didn’t like movies.
The wind twirled around the apartment, waiting for the musician and the citrus and pearl dust scented woman to say more. But soon, the silence became too heavy, pressing down on the wind, so it slipped underneath the door, tumbled past the figment on the stairs, and went in search of its boy.
