Chapter 31 The Date
The Date
“This is no longer a date,” I informed Bones, leaning towards his ear. “Just so you know.”
Bones exhaled, obviously nonplussed, and pulled out my chair.
I took a seat in it and he carefully pushed it back towards the table.
“I’m not going to dignify that with a comment,” he told me.
We’d spent far too much time on Bones’s auric boxing detour, which included him soaking in some kind of mineral hot spring afterwards.
It didn’t help that we’d all run around the kiosk-filled side streets for a few hours after he got out of the hot pools, trying strange food and examining other items for sale, particularly the magical objects and creatures.
We’d also watched a number of novelty magic demonstrations.
From what I’d calculated, we hadn’t left a lot of time for me and Bones to spend alone before we’d need to rendezvous back with the others.
Since the big fireworks display in the square was meant for families, not just adults, I guessed it would start relatively early, around eight or eight-thirty.
“Closer to nine,” Bones said, right as I smiled at the waiter and took the menu he offered me.
“Maybe nine-thirty,” Bones added. “What the hell is wrong with the parents you know, by the way? Kids don’t want to go to bed early on New Year’s.
They want to stay up until midnight and eat candy until they feel sick, then watch their parents snog. ”
I snorted a faint laugh, but only shook my head.
When the waiter retreated behind a velvet curtain, Bones studied my lips briefly before raising his dark blue eyes back to mine.
“If you want to cut the date short,” he added haughtily. “Go right ahead, Shadow. Maybe it’s even for the best. I’m quite annoyed with the way you look right now.”
My slightly buzzed brain stuttered a bit on those words.
“Would you rather go back now?” I asked, startled.
“I simply said I’m annoyed with it.” He glanced at the curtain-covered doorway, his expression intent.
“Anyway, I think we’re safe to get rid of it now, at least until we need to go back downstairs.
I gave very explicit instructions around the privacy of our table.
And a generous tip to make sure those instructions were followed.
” One eyebrow rose. “Also, I changed my mind. You’re trapped now.
I’m positively famished. And you’re not going anywhere alone.
So you’re stuck with me kitten, like it or not. ”
I huffed a little, but didn’t mean it.
I was hungry, too.
When I glanced up from the menu next, however, he’d just finished a subtle mudra, and suddenly my mind clicked back on as I watched his hair bleed its dark-brown color, moving swiftly from the tips all the way to the roots as it shortened back to its regular length.
The texture changed as the color left, turning from slightly wavy to mostly straight.
His eyes flashed next, going from dark blue back to gold, even as his cheekbones regained their height, and his mouth and eyes changed shape.
He aimed his magic at me next, and flicked more gold fire in my direction.
I recognized the strange sensation of my bone structure and hair changing, particularly my eyes, which had to move apart along with my skull, and the shape of my face. A cool sensation washed over my skin as it changed tones back to a slightly warmer one.
Bones stood up, and walked over to my chair.
He leaned down and kissed me on the mouth, and my hands wrapped around his face, then the back of his neck.
I don’t know how long we kissed like that.
I know I was breathless when he finally straightened, and a little light-headed.
I suddenly wanted to ask him about the book, about Antonia.
I bit my lip, and shoved it to the deeper recesses of my mind.
He walked back around to his side of the table, cleared his throat, and dropped his long body into the throne-like chair, pulling his napkin off his plate and snapping it with his wrist before laying it over his lap.
He glanced over the balcony of the rooftop restaurant, which gave us a view of snow-covered mountains in the distance, and a significant swath of the pointed roofs of Bonescastle as they cascaded down the foothills below.
We were at least eight or nine blocks up into the mountain above Academy Square.
I felt a flicker of awkwardness on him.
Enough to make me curious.
He cleared his throat and looked at me.
“Do you know what you want?” he asked politely.
I flushed when I realized I’d barely looked at the menu, that I’d dropped it on the table when he walked over to kiss me. I picked it up now, righted it, and scanned over the list of dishes. Most of them were not things I’d ever heard of before.
“No,” I said, honestly. “Any suggestions? I haven’t eaten out in Magique often enough to really know what a lot of the fancier dishes are.”
When I glanced at him, he looked surprised. “I would’ve thought your friends would have taken you out,” he said.
I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “They have… here and there. But we generally go for pub food, and that’s a lot like the human version on Earth.”
“Pub food?” He looked borderline appalled. “What about Alaric?”
“He thought it might make me uncomfortable to go to a place like that in London,” I said.
“Or even Bonescastle. Even before this latest thing.” I gestured vaguely, as if half of Magical Britain wanting us both dead was just some new trend in my notoriety timeline.
“Even before, I was in the paper a lot. So we’d usually order in at the Dragon’s Keep, or else pick up takeout from somewhere.
It was easier to be inconspicuous in clubs. ”
Bones nodded, but continued to look perplexed.
He opened his mouth a few times, then closed it.
Finally, he said, “Dates?”
I scoffed. “There weren’t a lot of those,” I said wryly. “And when I did go on one, it was usually pub food or something casual, too.”
Bones’s gaze narrowed. I started to wonder why I’d said anything. I should have just taken my chances and pointed at something.
“I’ll order us a few different things, okay?” he said, using his hand and a whisper of magic to mark some things on the menu. “That way you can try them. I’m starving, so I’ll probably be able to eat whatever you don’t like.”
I laughed at that, and nodded, setting my own menu down, careful not to touch anything in case I ordered food on accident.
“Wine all right?” he asked next.
I nodded to that, too, and leaned back in the surprisingly comfortable chair. I crossed one leg over the other and exhaled a breath.
“Sounds perfect,” I said sincerely.
Dinner was surprisingly relaxed. Bones hadn’t been kidding about my appearance bothering him, nor about how hungry he was. He relaxed visibly once I no longer looked like a stranger, which struck me as odd for someone as magically-sensitive as him.
He relaxed significantly more after the food appeared on our plates.
When I very obviously liked the first few appetizers and entrees I tried, I finally saw the last of that sharper scrutiny in his eyes begin to fade. I knew he was satisfied when he finally looked away, and used the silver utensils to load his own plate.
He let me try everything first, so that he could gauge which things I liked, and how much I liked them. I noticed he left me more of the things I very obviously loved, and loaded his plate with more of the things I liked but wasn’t making strangled happy noises while I ate.
I’d been hungry too.
None of us had anything but breakfast, coffee, chocolate, and alcohol.
Well, and Alaric’s “squishies.”
Even so, I was a little shocked at the sheer amount Bones could eat.
It also struck me that, apart from at his mother’s house, we really hadn’t eaten very many meals together. It seemed especially strange when I contrasted it with how often I’d eaten with Alaric, or with Miranda, Jolie, Draken, and Luc, for that matter.
We only talked a little through dinner itself, and then mostly about things we saw over the balcony and in the sky as we looked out over the city at night.
Our area of the roof was relatively dark, and I felt a chimaera shimmering around us, so I suspected we couldn’t be seen up there at all, but our view of the nearby streets remained unobstructed.
Some of what I saw looked almost like rituals.
There were bonfires with naked witches and wizards dancing in circles around the flames.
I saw fireworks on the streets, and a flock of what looked like glowing bats rise up from one of the kiosks, and jeweled scarabs forming written messages on a sign hanging from a building below.
A dragon made of someone’s magic roared past, exhaling purple flames, and I ducked a few times, hiding my face when I saw witches and mages wing by, on their way somewhere so quickly, I doubt they would have noticed us even without the chimaeras.
“I thought there was a moratorium on flying in Bonescastle tonight?” I asked, after I saw the first pair wing by. “Because of the fireworks?”
Bones nodded, his eyes following the flying Magicals warily.
“There is,” he said. “There are always people who ignore it.”
I snorted, thinking again that Magique and Earth really weren’t that different.
When we’d finished with dinner, and dessert, he looked at me.
He just looked at me for a few long-feeling seconds, watching me take a sip of an after-dinner coffee, and clearing his throat a few times.
Finally, he tossed his napkin on his plate.
The plate vanished.
I hesitated, then tossed my own napkin on my plate.
My plate vanished, too.
I smiled. “That’s a neat trick. I wonder, is that another boomerang? If so, they must have it combined with something on the napkin, or––”
“Leda,” Bones broke in. He blurted it, like he hadn’t quite meant to say it, or at least not the way he had. “I read the book. The one you sent me yesterday.” He hesitated. “We need to talk. We need to talk anyway, frankly. But we really need to talk about this now.”