“What do you think?” I modeled the old-fashioned velvet hat for Lucas, thinking that he would laugh; surely the deep purple of the fabric looked bizarre next to my red hair.
Instead he smiled at me in a way that made me feel warm all over. “You’re beautiful.”
We were in a secondhand clothing shop in Riverton, enjoying our second weekend in town together much more than the first. My parents had taken chaperone duty at the theater again, so we’d decided to skip our chance to see The Maltese Falcon. Instead we ran in and out of the shops that were still open, looking at posters and books, and dealing with some eye rolling from the clerks behind the counter, who were clearly sick of teenagers from “that school” running amuck. Too bad for them, because we were having a great time.
I took a white fur stole from a shelf and draped it around my shoulders. “What do you think?”
“Fur is dead.” Lucas said it sort of wryly, but maybe he didn’t think people should wear fur at all. I personally felt like vintage things ought to be okay; the animals had died decades and decades ago, so it wasn’t like you were doing any more harm. All the same, I hastily took the stole off.
Lucas, meanwhile, tried on a gray tweed overcoat he’d dug out of an overstuffed rack in the back. Like the rest of the shop, it smelled sort of musty, but in a good way, and the coat looked amazing on him. “That’s sort of Sherlock Holmesy,” I said. “If Sherlock Holmes were sexy.”
He laughed. “Some girls go for the intellectual type, you know.”
“Aren’t you lucky I’m not one of them?”
Fortunately, he liked it when I teased him. He grabbed me, arms around my arms so that I couldn’t even hug him back, and kissed me soundly on the forehead. “You’re impossible,” he murmured. “But you’re worth it.”
The way he held me, my face was buried in the curve of his neck; all I could see were the faint pink lines on his throat, the scars of my own bite. “I’m glad you think so.”
“I know so.”
I wasn’t going to argue with him. There was no reason my one terrible mistake couldn’t remain just that—one mistake, never to be repeated.
Lucas’s finger brushed along my cheek, a gentle touch like the soft tip of a paintbrush. Klimt’s Kiss flickered in my mind, gold and gauzy, and for a moment it was as though Lucas and I really had been drawn into the painting with all its beauty and its need. Hidden behind the racks as we were, lost in a maze of old, cracked leather and wrinkled satin and rhinestone buckles dulled with time, Lucas and I could’ve kissed for hours without being found. I imagined it for a moment—Lucas placing a black fur coat on the floor, laying me atop it, lowering himself over me—
I pressed my lips against his neck, right on the scars, the way my mother used to kiss a bruise or scrape to make it better. His pulse was strong. Lucas tensed, and I thought maybe I’d gone too far.
It can’t be easy for him either, I told myself. Sometimes I think I’m going to go crazy if I don’t touch him, so how much worse must it be for Lucas? Especially since he can’t know the reasons why.
The jingling of bells jolted us out of our trance. We both peeked around the corner to see who had come in. “Vic!” Lucas shook his head. “I should’ve known you’d show up here.”
Vic sauntered toward us, thumbs beneath the lapels of the striped blazer he wore beneath his winter coat. “This style doesn’t put itself together, you know. It takes effort to look this good.” He then groaned as he looked longingly at Lucas’s tweed overcoat. “You tall guys get all the best stuff, man.”“I’m not buying this.” Lucas shrugged it off, ready to leave. Probably he wanted to give us a few more moments of privacy; it was almost time to return to the bus. I knew how he felt. As much as I liked Vic, I didn’t really want him tagging around.
“You’re crazy, Lucas. Something like that fit me? I’d snap it up.” Vic sighed. He looked dangerously close to accompanying us out to the bus.
I thought fast. “You know, in the back of the store, I think I saw some ties painted with hula girls.”
“Seriously?” Just like that, Vic was gone, pushing his way through the clothes display in search of hula ties.
“Good work.” Lucas pulled the hat from my head, then took my hand. “Let’s go.”
We were almost to the door when we walked past the jewelry rack, and a dark, glittering object caught my eye. A brooch, carved of something that was as black as the night sky but shone brilliantly: I realized that it was a pair of flowers, exotic and sharp petaled, just like the one in my dream. The brooch was small enough to fit in my palm and intricately carved, but what amazed me the most was how much it looked like a flower that I had started to think only existed in my imagination. I had stopped in my tracks to stare at it. “Look, Lucas. It’s so beautiful.”
“That’s genuine Whitby jet. Victorian-era mourning jewelry.” The saleslady peered at us over the lenses of her blue-rimmed reading glasses, trying to evaluate whether we were potential customers or kids who needed to be scared off. Probably she decided on the latter, because she added, “Very expensive.”
Lucas didn’t like being challenged. “How expensive?” he said coolly, like his last name was Rockefeller instead of Ross.
“Two hundred dollars.”
My eyes probably bugged out. When your parents are schoolteachers, you don’t get the biggest allowance in the world. The only thing I’d ever bought that cost more than two hundred dollars was my telescope, and my parents had chipped in for that. I laughed a little, trying to disguise my embarrassment and the sadness I felt at having to leave the brooch behind. Each black petal was more beautiful than the last.
Lucas simply pulled out his wallet and offered the clerk a credit card. “We’ll take it.”
She raised an eyebrow but took the card and started ringing up the purchase. “Lucas!” I grabbed his arm and tried to speak under my breath. “You can’t.”
“Can, too.”
“But it’s two hundred dollars!”
“You love it,” he said quietly. “I can tell by the look in your eyes. If you love it, you should have it.”
The brooch still sat in the display case. I stared down at it, trying to imagine anything so beautiful belonging to me. “I do—love it, I mean, but—Lucas, I don’t want you in debt because of me.”
“Since when do poor people attend Evernight?”
Okay, he had a point there. For some reason, I’d never really thought about the fact that Lucas must be wealthy. Vic, too, probably. Raquel was a scholarship kid, but there were only a handful of those. Most of the human students were actually paying through the nose for the chance to be surrounded by vampires—though, of course, they didn’t realize that last part. They didn’t come across like snobs, probably because they didn’t have a chance. The ones who really acted like entitled rich kids were the ones who’d been saving money for centuries or who bought IBM stock back when the typewriter was a newfangled invention. The hierarchy at Evernight was so strict—vampires on top, humans hardly worthy of notice—that I hadn’t realized that most of the human kids came from money, too.