Page 3

Chapter three

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R ai paused in the middle of describing the rain forests of Costa Rica when Poppy let out a little shiver. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” She laughed. “Yes. Can you believe I’m kinda cold? In July, in Tucson.” Her moss-brown eyes twinkled at him. “I’m surprised you’re not freezing. How come your shirt is still dripping wet?”

Rai blinked, then looked down at himself.

His glamour was still in effect, just as it had been.

Belatedly, he noticed that Poppy’s clothing had started to dry.

And yet she was shivering. He gave a little shake, trying to mimic her.

He wasn’t immune to cold, but it wasn’t something that made him uncomfortable—just different.

Perhaps a bit slow. Not his favorite feeling, but not misery, either.

“Wouldn’t it be hilarious,” Poppy said with another little shake, “to die of hypothermia in one of the hottest months of the year? They’ll call in the CSI team to look at our bodies, and they’ll tell everyone we were killed in an ice cream truck right before they take off their sunglasses and everything explodes.

” She dug into her purse for her light device, frowning. “I hope my phone still has some juice.”

Not one word of that made sense, but Rai nodded as if it had.

He’d gotten good at that over the past hour or two—however long it had been.

He could sense that the moon had moved a bit farther in its arc above the clouds, but there were still many hours left in the night. “Perhaps the rain will stop soon.”

She was staring at her device, her face twisted in clear distress, and then she took a deep breath.

“I don’t think I can wait any longer. Mom is…

worried.” Her eyes slid to Rai’s face. “Not that I have a curfew. I’m not, um…

Well, you probably can tell I’m an adult.

But you know how it is. Mothers worry about you even when you’re thirty-three.

” She bit her lip, her expression guarded.

Rai nodded quickly. He hadn’t seen his mother in a while—she and his father were still comfortably settled in their peaceful, dull lake, to the east and north of this desert—but she did get vaguely pouty if he went a long time without sending a message through the waters. “Of course.”

Poppy sighed, then turned away. It wasn’t until she had picked up her bags that he realized she intended to step out into the downpour.

“Wait,” he said. “You’ll get wet.”

“ Er ,” she said with a short laugh. “Wett er . But sometimes you just gotta take the plunge.” She took a deep breath and turned back to Rai.

“I… I don’t usually do this but… I had a great time talking to you.

And…and I’d like to talk again sometime.

Could I…text you maybe? Or I can give you my number, so you can… ” She trailed off, looking uncertain.

Rai opened his mouth and closed it again. He had deduced from Poppy’s stories that a text was one of the ways humans communicated. He wasn’t sure how it worked, though. “I do not text,” he said at last.

“Oh.” She seemed disappointed. “I guess… Okay. I understand.” She gave him a smile, one that was wide and bright but still managed to look sad. Perhaps because she was cold. “I hope you have a great time here in Tucson and…and your sales go well. Bye!” She turned toward the rain.

Rai hastened to pull back the energies he’d been using to keep the downpour going; the rain and hail petered off quickly, before Poppy had taken her first step.

“Well, fuck.” She laughed. “If I’d known monsoon storms responded to positive thinking, I’d have tried to get home sooner. ”

Rai stepped forward, setting a light hand to her arm.

It was the first time he’d touched her since they’d shaken hands earlier, but he felt the same little zing of electricity, even though the clouds above were now still and peaceful.

She looked at him, eyes wide, as he spoke.

“Poppy, I…I also had a good time talking. I hope you have a great time here in Tucson, as well. Goodbye.” Were those the right words to say?

He knew the language, knew many languages, but he had come to realize he didn’t know how humans…

worked. What the words meant underneath.

Her eyes crinkled in her wide, bright smile, relieving his uncertainty. “I’d better have a great time. I’m here for the long haul.” And she stepped out onto the wet streets, walking fast.

Rai watched her go until she was out of sight, frowning, and then returned to the clouds, dismissing his glamour and spreading his wings wide.

They felt tight—probably from being hidden so long.

He didn’t usually need to hide them, though of course he’d learned the trick when he was young, as passing among the humans was necessary now that they were like locusts all over the earth.

The wind was slower now, the clouds almost dissipated, and he gazed down from them and watched Poppy trudge through the puddles.

She was hurrying, glancing up every so often as if she expected another storm, and he found himself flying against the wind, following her until she turned up the walkway to a worn wooden house.

She paused briefly, gazing at a smaller building at the back of the property, then shook her head and ascended to the larger house’s porch; oddly, she deposited her burdens in a dark corner before entering the building.

Rai couldn’t see inside the house from his vantage point, but he could only assume she had rejoined her mother. Good. She was home.

Odd, though—there was a vehicle parked half under an extension of the building’s roof, the sort that other humans used to travel. It was strange that Poppy had not used it.

Ah, but perhaps she just enjoyed the danger, as he did—in her case, the chance that the rain would win their challenge game.

He’d expected talking with a mere human to be boring, but their conversation had shown him differently.

She had a quick wit and a ready laugh. He was glad he’d chosen her to torment.

Even if, now that he thought of it, he hadn’t actually done much tormenting.

He hadn’t needed to do so to be amused. Unexpected, but he shrugged and put it out of his mind.

He abandoned the wispy clouds and turned back to the south.

The moisture in the air was already thin and diffuse, but there seemed to be enough to get him back to the damper climes where the storms were born.

It had been an intriguing interlude, speaking with Poppy, a charming moment’s fancy, but he needed to escape the desert before it sucked up the storm completely and boiled it away, leaving nothing but the dry dust that would mean his ending.

And there would be another storm to ride tomorrow, or the next day. His skin tingled with electric anticipation. He could hardly wait.

Poppy’s mother was not in the living room when she opened the front door, which surprised her for a moment until she heard hurried footsteps from the back bedroom and her mother burst out into the hallway.

She was dressed in one of her long cotton dresses, her feet bare; the hem of the dress was damp.

She must have gone outside at some point while she was waiting.

“Oh, my god,” she said in a shaking voice. “You’re home. Thank god you’re home.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I know you were worried.

” Poppy was still pretty damp, even after the long wait in shelter and then the mile walk under shockingly clear skies.

She held out her arms anyhow, and her mother enfolded her quickly, just a little too tight, and didn’t let go.

She was quivering, and Poppy carefully stroked her long, gray-streaked hair, breathing slow and deep and trying to exude calm and soothing vibes.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see that their TV was on the streaming local weather channel, Doppler radar replaying over and over a map showing the isolated spot of red she’d seen earlier on her phone as it spiraled away into nothingness.

Everything around her was spirals. The storm, her career…and her mother, spiraling down into anxiety.

“Did you find any leaks?” Poppy said at last, knowing that her mother hadn’t, no matter how many times she’d shone her flashlight at the ceiling.

They’d just had the roof entirely replaced a few months prior at a cost that had made Poppy sick even as she’d hoped it would alleviate her mother’s stress during the monsoon. “I can call the roofing company.”

“I thought I did,” her mother murmured. “But it was just shadows.” She released Poppy suddenly, stepping back and plucking at the wet patch the embrace had left on her dress. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t…”

“It’s all right, Mom. It’s okay that you were worried. ”

“Did you have a nice walk?” That was said with determined braveness, a deliberate attempt at normalcy.

“It was good. I found a safe place to wait out the rain.” She opened her mouth to add, I met somebody who made me laugh , but closed it again.

She wasn’t ready for all the questions that would encourage, questions she didn’t know how to answer.

And with her mom still clearly struggling, mention of a strange man could just make things worse, leading to either hyperdrive protective instincts or more anxiety that Poppy would leave her alone.