He shook his head. “Evie. Don’t.”
Evie’s cheeks went hot. For months, he’d been toying with her. And now that she’d put herself out there, he wasn’t interested. “Why not? Because girls shouldn’t kiss first?” She didn’t mean for it to sound so angry, but she was hurt and embarrassed. “Am I supposed to look up at you through fluttering lashes, all phony innocence, and wait for you to feel moved? I burned that rule book a while ago, Sam.”
“I don’t care about that,” Sam said. “Just… please don’t kiss me if you don’t mean it.”
All of Evie’s old fears bubbled up. She wanted to kiss Sam, but she was afraid of what that meant. What was right? Why was it so hard to know? “I mean it right now,” she said.
Sam kicked at a bit of gravel on the roof’s floor. “That’s always your answer, isn’t it? Don’t think about tomorrow.”
A melancholy undertow threatened. In a minute, it would drag away any hope of momentary happiness. “Now is the only thing you can count on, Sam. It’s all we really get,” she said quietly, and felt that it was the truest thing she’d said in a long time.
For a second, the searchlights fell across their scared faces. Then the bright, restless columns moved again. They reached into the heavens and disappeared, unanswered prayers.
Evie reached for Sam. She was interrupted by the arrival of the New York Herald’s society reporter. “There you are! We’ve been looking for you two lovebirds all over. Gracious, it’s freezing up here! Come down to the ballroom. Everyone’s waiting.”
Evie still wasn’t sure if Sam wanted to keep up the charade they’d started.
“Guess we’d better go make nice,” Sam said, offering his arm, and Evie took it, grateful.
“Guess we’d better,” she said.
Dutifully, Sam and Evie marched into the ballroom to applause. Beside her, Sam was skittish as a colt. Evie squeezed his hand and he squeezed back. “Just another con game,” she whispered, and the smirk he put on was just for her, she knew. People crowded around, patting Sam’s back, telling him he was a hero. Then the white-haired emcee quieted everyone.
“I know we’ve already had New Year’s. But let’s usher in the New Year… of the Diviners!” the man barked while people raised their glasses and cheered. “Ready? Here we go: Ten… nine… eight…”
Their counting became a swelling chorus of everything that was good, everything that was hoped for. All Sam and Evie could see was each other.
“Four… three… two… one!”
Confetti and streamers rained down from the ceiling. Horns and blowers bleated their tinny congratulations. The air was giddy with celebration. The little orchestra took up with “Auld Lang Syne,” everyone warbling along drunkenly to the familiar tune, looking sharp and smug, as if it were all so clever, because they were celebrating a new New Year they’d just invented. As if they believed they could rewrite time itself whenever it pleased them, in the same way they revised whatever truth dared to inconvenience them.
“We’ll take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne.…”
“Happy Diviner New Year, I guess,” Evie said, a little breathless.
“To hell with it,” Sam said and wrapped Evie in his arms, kissing her fiercely.
Ling and Wai-Mae sat among the soft flowers in the meadow. The sun was bright and warm. The hills glowed, a constant gold. But for the first time in many nights, Ling couldn’t enjoy it fully. As Wai-Mae talked happily of her impending arrival in New York and her wedding day, Ling’s misery increased. She needed to tell Wai-Mae what she suspected about O’Bannion and Lee, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. She didn’t want it to be true—for Wai-Mae’s sake and, selfishly, for her own.
Waiting for her courage to find her, Ling kept her eyes trained on the village below, basking in the beauty of the sun glinting on the red tile roofs. “It’s pretty. Is it your village back home?”
“No. It is a place I saw once and remembered. A place I loved.” Wai-Mae blinked up at the canopy of leaves. “They had the most beautiful opera there. It was so magical! I had been very sad and homesick, but I sat in the balcony watching the opera, and for a while, I was not sad anymore. I escape to it in my mind whenever I need to.” As Wai-Mae poured cups of tea for them, she flicked a glance at Ling. “Perhaps you need an escape. What’s troubling you, Little Warrior?”