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Chapter thirty-eight

Wrong and Right

S omething smelled delightful, but also wrong.

Rai floated in the darkest of waters under a cloudless, moonless, starless sky.

He’d been there an eternity. No birds sang, no fish broached the surface.

There were no sounds but for a soft, airy hiss and the quiet lap of water against him.

The water caressing him tasted faintly of salt, yet not of the sea, and he puzzled over that flavor for a moment, testing out the way his skin tingled at its touch.

He could not understand why, but the salt taste made his heart clench, and the pangs called forth visions that floated in the darkness, soft dark hair and moss-brown eyes that were sometimes green and soft skin and a wry smile—ah, there was the wrongness of the scent.

It was incomplete. He remembered it, the cool milky unguent pooled in his hand, a satiated giggle, his hands coaxing suds out of soft dark hair while his lips coaxed sighs out of—

“Poppy!” He sat up with a jerk, eyes wide. The dark sea was gone, and he was in a tub full of water in a dim room that felt achingly familiar, yet not. Right but wrong. Just as the scent was. The scent of Poppy’s shampoo.

He shuddered as his consciousness stretched out to encompass his body, which ached.

He was nearly naked, wearing only the silken trousers he had worn when he came to Tucson, and he frowned.

Had he not been wearing jeans? The trousers felt wrong to him somehow.

As if they no longer fit him, though they were comfortably loose.

“So very impetuous,” said a dry voice beside him. “I should have expected it.”

He still could not identify the room, but the voice was one he knew well.

He turned his head and saw Ofelia, sitting in a chair that he also dimly recognized.

It was not in its right place, that he knew, and she was not the person who should be sitting in it.

Poppy was the one who should sit there, as she painted.

The faint hiss he remembered from his long dream of darkness coalesced to reality—several of his humidifiers were arranged around the tub, sending puffs of cool mist into the air.

“Hello,” he said, his voice coated in rust. “Have you come to call me a fool?” Why was Poppy not there?

Memories were flashing into his head, but they were not reassuring.

His back was rigid with worry, and his shoulder blades felt full of knots.

There was not room here to release his wings, but he ached to.

“I have been waiting to call you a fool,” she said with an enigmatic gleam in her eye. “I was beginning to think you would deny me the pleasure.”

Rai looked around the room, recognition starting to dawn.

It was Poppy’s tiny bathroom. The wrongness was because of the light, which came from an array of faintly scented candles set beside the sink, their flames flickering gently over the tiles, giving them a warm glow entirely unlike the bright fluorescents of his memory.

It gave him the strength to ask, “Where is Poppy?”

“She is asleep,” Ofelia said gently. “But she is well.”

“I am…glad,” he said, words inadequate for the warmth that suffused him. “My plan worked brilliantly, then.”

Ofelia burst into laughter. “Yes, brilliant,” she said. “Truly the gods themselves wish to study your strategies. Tell me, did you at any point think to count the bottles of water you were consuming?”

“I am not good with math. I took as many as I could carry and drank as much as I needed.”

“And flung yourself against her car battery like a galleon dashed on the rocky shore.” She wrinkled her nose.

“The young fae of the hills have made a game of who can gather the most of your discarded bottles, as the humans do with eggs in the spring. Do not be surprised if you are asked to sign some of them when next you venture out. And be prepared for some deeply unhappy parents, as well. It is difficult to encourage wisdom and intelligence when recklessness and idiocy are repaid with success.”

Rai could not decide whether to be smug or contrite.

He settled on arrogance, raising his chin.

“I will advise them that if they wish to engage in heroism, they must train excessively, endure great pain, and earn the assistance of brilliant allies. And I shall bestow upon them words of wisdom, passed down from such sages as Tony Robbins, Bruce Lee, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

“Well, that is a relief. Perhaps you will also advise them to have an escape route?”

“I escaped, did I not?”

“Barely.”

“I reached my goal,” he said, stubbornness straightening his back, “and I…left the rest to her mother. Who is herself brave and strong.” He glanced down, uncertain again.

“Tell me, what happened after I—? They are well, you have said, but…” He was crackling with tension, but he could not help it.

He kept seeing Poppy sitting in the dirt, feverish and barely conscious.

Hearing her begging him not to do what he must. He would have to apologize for not listening to her wishes yet again.

“I do not remember beyond starting her car.”

“You were rescued,” she said briskly. “I was not there for much of it, but I was able to track the clues you sent and meet them in the middle. Poppy was sorely injured, and unwell from the heat, but she was cared for and will recover. And though she wished to stay by your side every instant until you awakened, she was compelled by necessity to rest.”

Rai exhaled harshly and fell back into the tub, his tension washed away by a wave of relief that also took his meager strength. “I would not wake her. She must be exhausted from her ordeal.”

“Not as exhausted as some,” Ofelia snipped, though she leaned forward and pressed her palm against his cheek, testing. “How do you feel?”

“Not very well,” he admitted, sulkily tracing circles in the water. “But I cannot apologize for taking an hour or two to recover after such a journey. Even with my endless weeks of training, I exerted myself to my limits.”

Ofelia regarded him for a long moment, then sighed. “So you did. Though it was merely a few weeks that you trained—do not glare at me, impatient one—and much more than two hours you were asleep. Poppy has been…”

Rai brightened. “Concerned? Disconsolate?” He faltered slightly. “Enraged? ”

“All of the above, at various times. She has quite a colorful vocabulary. You did not tell me of that when singing her praises.”

“Ah, so she does.” Rai closed his eyes, sweet memories washing through him. “She is so very clever. I had not imagined there were so many uses for the word fuck .”

“Yes, well, I suppose it comes of her being an artist.” Ofelia folded her arms, glaring at him. “You are fortunate.”

“This I know.” He crossed his arms on the rim of the tub, setting his chin atop them. “She is also kind. Do you think she may yet forgive me?”

“That depends,” Ofelia said, “on what it is you expect her to forgive.”

“I was thinking of the lies,” Rai said glumly. “Is there more of which I must repent?”

“You did bear her mother off into danger,” Ofelia noted.

Rai sat up straight again. “Did Jen come to harm?” He had thought the scented candles were a symbol of her gratitude.

Ofelia rolled her eyes. “No. But if we are to compile a list of all your foolish behavior, it would have to be included.”

Rai flopped back down, irritably catching the slosh of water before it hit the floor. “It is a long list,” he agreed. “I have brought Poppy nothing but pain and misery.”

“At least you are self-aware, if exceedingly morose. I would think you’d have grown used to your own foolishness by now.” Ofelia stood and turned toward the door. “In any case, I will fetch her for you.”

“Let her sleep,” Rai said, glaring at the closest humidifier. “She has been through much today.”

Ofelia paused in the doorway, turning her golden eyes back upon Rai. “You truly are a fool. How long do you imagine you have been lingering on the shores of death?”

Rai frowned. “Not hours, then? A day?” When Ofelia raised her eyebrows, he tried again. “Two days? It cannot be three.”

“Try three weeks ,” came a husky voice from the doorway beyond Ofelia, and then Poppy was wriggling past his friend—who melted gracefully out of the way—and falling to her knees beside the tub, a pair of metal crutches clattering beside her.

She had a cast on her ankle. With an expression that lifted Rai’s heart and crushed it at the same time, she stroked his face and shoulders, her lips trembling.

“You’ve been unconscious for three fucking weeks .

Forever. But you’re awake. You’re awake.

You—” Her ethereal, joyful smile twisted into something like rage. “Why do you have to be so stupid ? ”

Ofelia let out a short laugh. “I believe I shall see if Jen has the kettle on.” She swept out of the room in a swirl of silk.

Rai gazed at Poppy hungrily, bringing a shaking hand to her cheek.

“I am not stupid,” he said gently, though he suspected Poppy could hear the subtext of I love you , just as he had heard hers .

She was puffy-eyed and tousled and her cheeks were too thin, and she was indescribably beautiful. Incandescent.

Poppy ran her hands over his cheeks again.

There were tears in her eyes. “I know you’re not stupid, ” she said in a low, harsh voice.

“You’re too smart for your own good. I’m being sarcastic…

or hyperbolic or…or something. But you’re still stupid.

Orange cat stupid. You were doing stupid. You could have died!”

“But I did not.” He looked at her closely, sinking his hands into her soft hair. “Would you have mourned, then? As if I were a beloved orange cat? I have seen on Google that they are much desired as pets.”

She nodded, lower lip jutting out. “More than that.”

“Ah, you are kind.” Rai stretched out his arms, and she lunged into them, not at all careful to keep from being splashed.