Chapter 33
There were a million places to hide in a city, and the wind had strolled through a million and one.
This was, it acknowledged, hyperbole, since the wind did not count, nor did it care to count—but there wasn’t a crevice, a crack, or a crawlspace in the city the wind had not misted through at one time or another.
Even in a city where new buildings sprouted overnight, tunnels zigzagged beneath the streets as if dug by frenetic ants, and the rubble of bombed cities built its foundation—even then, the wind had been everywhere.
At least, that was what it liked to tell itself.
What was the point in being the wind if it couldn’t rub its underbelly along the construction of a city and dive through its tunneled mysteries?
It sniffed along the East River’s black edge, trailing through one of the city’s mysteries now. There, it found it—the forgotten memory and lingering scent of England’s western shore.
Long ago for humans, and a short time ago for the wind, ships full of stone, brick, and concrete had sailed into New York Harbor. The wind had sailed with them, sifting through the ballast.
It had spent the autumn with the man, soaring over England, blowing toward the continent.
It was another human war, spurred by illusion.
The wind had always found it interesting that stupid humans were most easily fooled by others, but smart humans were most easily fooled by themselves.
That war had spawned millions of humans fooling themselves.
It only took careful prodding, a few lies, and minor illusions, and then the smart humans twisted their own minds to believe exactly what they wanted.
That was the way it always was. Only an intelligent being could so thoroughly convince themselves killing an innocent was right and good.
One winter night, the wind had skated on air-raid sirens blasting over Bristol.
The man had fled after shoving a thick mist over the city, but the wind had remained.
It spun over airplane propellers and floated on dropped flares that lit the city with an eerie red glow.
Then it spent the night diving and screaming as bombs crowded the sky like snowflakes in a blizzard.
The city broke apart and became a roaring, monstrous ocean of stone and glass. It filled with fire.
Humans ran like ants from their hill, boiling water poured in the dirt. The explosions were deafening, the heat searing, the scent bitter and evil. The wind had wailed. In one night, a city of churches had become a city of ruins.
And then, shortly after, the rubble of churches, homes, hospitals, and schools was loaded as ballast into ships and sent to New York, where it was used to reclaim the East River. A road and a new neighborhood were built on top of it.
The wind sniffed along the edge of the water, tasting the ballast, the stone, and the brick.
Did the humans know they were sleeping, eating, living on top of a bombed and ruined English city? Did they know the foundation of New York was the rubble of old England?
Perhaps.
The trickster knew. The wind was certain of it.
It hadn’t meant to trail the trickster, but instead of finding the solange-eyed man in the city’s darkness, the wind had stumbled onto the trickster’s path.
The wind followed him as he walked along the water’s edge.
The street was deserted, the footbridge empty.
Streetlights gently poured over him, a milky bath that distorted his features so he looked nothing like himself.
As he walked, he shifted one feature at a time.
It was so incremental that no one would notice.
But from the beginning of the block to the end, the trickster became someone entirely new.
A woman. Tall. Short black hair. Youngish. A face that looked like a thousand others.
The wind huffed and decided to stay with the trickster a little longer.
Maybe he was meeting the solange-eyed one. They were friends, weren’t they?
But then the trickster stopped and paused in front of a plaque. He folded his hands behind his back and stared at the written words.
The wind trailed over the trickster’s jaw and pressed against the beat of his pulse. It was slow and steady—until the click of high heels sounded behind him, and then the trickster’s pulse sped into a frenzy.
The wind swirled around, blowing dust in a whirlwind.
The scent of new pennies and luck filled the air as the lucky one walked down the darkened sidewalk.
Ah.
So.
The trickster and his lucky one were meeting again.
The wind ran over her cool-to-touch skin.
It tousled the ends of her long, red, maple-leaf hair.
It tasted the honey-rich, shivery flavor of her.
Stroking the lucky one’s skin felt like riding on the ripples of water after a penny had been wished on and plunked into a cool fountain.
It was a soft splash, a quiet plunge, a joyful ripple.
She stopped next to the trickster.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye then said, staring at the plaque, “‘They saw their homes struck down without warning . . . it was not their walls but their valor that kept them free.’”
The trickster had a cool, mellow woman’s voice. The wind hummed, wondering if the lucky one would know it was him.
But of course she did. She smiled, peering at the plaque, then said, “And perhaps a bit of luck.”
The trickster’s pulse thrummed wildly, and his hands shook as he let his fingers brush along the back of the lucky one’s hand.
She exhaled sharply, and then her smile widened. “Hello, stranger.”
“Hello, love.”
The lucky one looked over her shoulder, quickly scanning the dark street. No one was there. She turned and walked away. The trickster waited for a moment and then followed. He always followed her as if he were being pulled by an invisible string.
The wind thought about leaving to hunt down the solange-eyed one. It seesawed back and forth, undecided. Should it go? Should it stay?
But what had happened the last time it hadn’t known the trickster’s secrets? It hadn’t known the musician and the citrus and pearl dust scented woman were alive.
It sped after the trickster.
He ducked into the vestibule of an apartment building, and the wind whooshed through just as the door slammed. The wind rustled the paper recycling and then climbed the stairs after the trickster.
At the second floor, the lucky one unlocked an apartment door. She smiled over her shoulder. Even with illusion, the trickster’s gaze filled with fire.
She shoved open the door. The trickster followed her in. He kicked the door shut behind him. The wind slammed into the wood. It bounced to the floor and huffed, shaking itself off.
There was a crack between the door and the floor. The wind settled against the wood and flew into the lucky one’s apartment.
“. . . got your Silencer—” she said, but then she broke off, because the trickster had her pressed against the wall, his mouth over hers.
He was himself again. He held the lucky one’s face gently, stroking his thumbs over her cheeks as his mouth devoured hers.
“Don’t care about the Silencer . . .” He stopped, consumed by her mouth.
The lucky one made a protesting sound, “You’d better. I risked my life. The Merchant—”
“Cora.”
She smiled. “Yes?”
The trickster’s pulse raced. His skin seared the wind. He shivered as he stroked the lucky one’s cheek. “I missed you.”
Her mouth softened, and she turned her face into the trickster’s hand, kissing his fingertips. His gaze devoured her as she pressed her mouth to each of his fingers and then to the center of his palm.
The wind fluttered across the lucky one’s lips and tingled at the honeyed, lucky sensation. She was a shooting star, and the trickster held himself still so he could wish on her luminescence.
After she pulled her lips from the trickster’s palm, she whispered, “I missed you too.”
The trickster swallowed and then slowly freed the top button of the lucky one’s shirt. The fabric sighed and whispered as a slit of skin was revealed.
It was soft, satin-smooth, and tasted like a warm peach left out in the sun. The trickster trailed his finger along the horseshoe-shaped divot at the base of her neck and then leaned forward to dip his tongue into the depression.
The lucky one dug her hands into the trickster’s hair and kept him against her while he freed another button. A sliver of skin, the top of her breastbone, a peek of lace. The trickster’s lips feathered over the flushed heat of her skin.
A soft, shuddering sigh, like the wind gliding over a falling flower petal, left the lucky one’s lips. At the noise, the trickster glanced up, his eyelids heavy, his gaze sunstroke-hot.
“Luvic.”
After that, the wind knew there wouldn’t be any words for a long time. Only “I love you” or “I need you” or “don’t ever let me go.”
The trickster focused on the lucky one with a desperation and an intensity that swept the wind along like a summer monsoon.
He rained over her, pouring himself onto her, like water drenching parched desert soil.
In the desert, when the rains finally came, the sand sighed and moaned and soaked up as much water as it could.
And then, when it couldn’t contain anymore, a flash flood swept through, obliterating everything in its path.
The trickster was a summer storm, a flash flood, and the lucky one was his riverbed.
The wind hummed, vibrating, ravaged by the storm.
And then, finally, the monsoon calmed, the flood washed away, and the trickster lay with the lucky one on a long velvet couch.
His chin rested on the lucky one’s head.
She was tucked on top of him. He stroked her hair and ran his hand over her naked back.
The trickster’s pulse had slowed. Their heartbeats thudded in tandem.
The lucky one ran a finger over the trickster’s scarred, mottled gray forearm. The gray had spread further than the last time the wind saw it. Now, it reached past the bend of his elbow.
“Tell me,” she said.