Chapter 2 #2
Dani paused. She was entirely certain Burren, her third-wave coffee snob of a manager, would not approve.
But the only way Burren would find out was if the door-ghost tattled, and Dani had the utmost confidence that he would not.
Indeed, she had the utmost confidence that he did not realize he was in a coffee shop at all, much less that there were employees to tattle on.
“You can sit facing the door so you’ll see anyone who comes in,” Kass added. “I won’t mind if you have to abandon me for a cappy or two.”
As she considered it, she realized her anxiety from the run-in with Silva had been transmuted into a different kind of energy—the buzz of excitement. What was the harm? She’d already pre-closed the pastry case and done all the dishes.
“Sure.” She smiled. “Pick a table, and I’ll get my things.”
In the time it took her to join him out front, Kass had made himself at home.
He had chosen their most sumptuous table, meant for larger groups, and covered more than half of it with books and papers like a war room.
From the looks of it, the war had been going on for a while.
Some of those books must have been centuries old; Dani could smell their musk as she got closer.
“What’s this paper on, again?” She set her coffee and scones on her side of the table before taking a seat and sliding her bag off her shoulder to the floor. “Ancient dust and mold?”
Kass gave her an apologetic look, which happened to increase his adorableness by an exponent of six.
Dani observed that this was both intensely unfair and, from an evolutionary standpoint, incredibly useful.
“It’s on the variations of xylophilous magical properties in different species throughout North America,” he said, as though it were a sentence any normal person might say.
“With a special interest in alpine ecosystems. Trees at that altitude tend to have somewhat, how do I put this … arcane qualities, much of which are yet to be understood.”
“No kidding,” Dani said. “I barely understood a word you just said. Except trees. I have a vague idea of what trees are.”
Kass ducked his head like a puppy that’d been caught playing with a cat instead of chasing it. “Damn,” he said. “I’ve shown my hand too soon. You weren’t supposed to find out until we were already friends and beyond the point of no return.”
Already friends. Like their future was assumed. “Find out what?” she said. “That you’re weirdly into trees?”
“Well, that—and I’m a massive nerd.”
He said it lightly, but Dani was no fool. He was nervous. No colors, though—this was all him revealing what he wanted to, even if it felt like a risk to him.
“Don’t be silly.” She lifted her bag into her lap and began to rummage through it, beaming the spotlight away from him. “If you really want to feel normal, you can always get me going about the Major Arcana or something.”
“The major what?”
“Or I could talk about different grind levels for coffee. Do you drink coffee at home? Where do you get your beans? They’re not robusta, are they?
” Dani found her quartzpad at the bottom of her bag and pulled it out.
“What setting do you grind them on? I can help you figure out the perfect number for your machine if you want. What kind would that be again?”
“Okay, okay,” he said, laughing. “I get it. I still want to know what the Major Arcana is, by the way.”
“And I still want to know what your xylophone paper is about. We all want something, Kass.” She set her quartzpad on the table with a shrug.
He regarded her with suspicion. “You really want to know?”
She met his eyes. “I really, really do.”
His features opened up as though she’d unlocked him.
All bashfulness abandoned, he set his elbows on the table and leaned forward.
They were close enough now that Dani could see every detail of his face: the mole on his right cheek, the convex curve of his overlong nose, his barely noticeable buckteeth.
These mild imperfections took nothing away from his overall perfection.
He had a faint and pleasant scent—a mix of clean boy smell and kitchen, like he had chopped some basil and then showered.
Together with the coffee, you could have bottled it and sold it.
“You may not realize this,” Kass began, “but every type of wood is naturally imbued with different magical properties.”
“Wood? That’s what we’ve been talking about this whole time?”
“Well, when you say it like that … but that’s what xylophilous means, yeah.
The prefix ‘xylo’ denotes wood—like xylophone,” he said generously, “even though not all xylophones are made of wood anymore. But that’s beside the point.
Each type of wood has properties suited to different things.
Like humans, I suppose. You could call them affinities.
For instance, rowan is a very protective wood, which is why it’s been used to guard against fairies and the like since the beginning of time. ”
“That’s handy,” Dani said. “So what’s this table made of, then?”
“Mahogany,” he said without hesitation. “It’s a peaceful, stable wood that absorbs magic very well.
Whoever built this table might not necessarily have taken that into account, but it works well for a coffee shop, and as a place to do homework.
It would work even better if it had an anti-stress spell on it. I could do that for you, you know.”
“That sounds useful,” Dani said. “It also sounds like something you should get paid for. Let me check with my manager; she might be interested.”
“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “But honestly, I’m happy to do it on the house.”
She curled her hands around her coffee, studying him discreetly. He was, so far, not what she’d expected when he had sauntered in, flouting the café’s rule against animals. He had an earnestness to him, a sincerity that seemed to indicate he took people at face value. It was refreshing.
“So, what’s the thesis of this magical wood paper?” she asked, instantly regretting her word choice. But the innuendo seemed to go straight past him.
“Good question. I’m trying to prove that woodworkers—magically gifted or no—throughout history have gravitated toward varieties of wood magically suited for their needs. Like sassafras for bed frames, hazel for paintbrushes, lilac for love charms. The list is infinite, really.”
“But your paper, I assume, is not.”
“Gods, no. Though I could certainly write a lot more than twenty pages if I had the time.” He did his embarrassed head-duck again, and Dani felt her heart warm. “Maybe.”
“Have you declared your concentration yet? Is it xylophilous magical properties or however you call it?”
“Not yet. I’d love to declare for wood magic, but first I’d have to convince my father that it’s practical. And that could take until senior year.” He laughed, but it was bitter.
“Of course it’s practical. You could go into contracting or something, right?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to.” He hesitated.
He had gone further than he intended, prompting a psychic influx of forest green in Dani.
She could have let him off the hook—over the years, she’d learned she could push people to say more if she wanted, simply by continuing the conversation, or she could save them from themselves by changing the subject.
This time, she decided not to put her finger on the scale in either direction.
She wanted him to choose to tell her what he did want.
She balanced her chin in her hand and watched him.
“I—” He cut himself off and looked down at his lap.
“It doesn’t matter what I want. My father has my future in an iron vise.
He’s paying my way through school, but it comes with a price.
He has a specific idea of how my life is going to play out.
And if I do something that veers even one degree off course, he’s pretty fast to correct it. ”
“That’s shitty.” It was shitty, and she felt bad for him; but she was also more than a little pleased—not because his dad sucked, but because there were no colors in her brain. He’d told her all that because he’d wanted to.
“It can be, but I mean, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him, so I can’t complain too much. What about your parents? Are they like that?”
Dani shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Not exactly,” she hedged. “Honestly, they couldn’t really care less about my future. It was more what I did with my present that mattered.”
More like what she did to benefit them, that was.
Her parents had caught wind of her unusual gift when she was just a toddler—she’d managed to get the truth out of a friend who had lied about how much money they owed using nothing but baby talk, or so the family legend went—and had no qualms about using it to their advantage.
She’d been their good luck charm at every casino, flea market, tourist trap, and festival they set up shop at, until she’d been old enough and clever enough to escape.
She hadn’t spoken to them since she left, so they didn’t know she’d made it as far as Fox’s Leap.
If they did, they’d probably be disappointed in her for buying into the system.
“Thanks to them, I never really got to figure out what I could be good at. Now I have no idea what I want to do in life.”
“You don’t have any kind of career in mind?” Kass asked. “A dream you’ve always had?”
“Of course,” Dani said. “Fox’s Leap.” At his look of puzzlement, she added, “I’ve wanted to come here since I was little.”
“Really? How come?”