Chapter 36
“Where the hell did you get that?” Hiromi asked.
“Family car,” I said. It was an Aston Martin ragtop from the eighties, one of Uncle Orrin’s Gotham fleet, picked up that morning from a parking garage near our Brooklyn properties.
“I thought you were renting,” she said.
“Mortons don’t rent.”
“Must be nice,” Hiromi said. She’d spent the last week on edge, nervous about Lyon’s party, quietly irked at me for saying yes to her kind offer. Standing there on the sidewalk, bag in hand, she seemed close to calling the whole trip off.
I began to take down the convertible’s top.
Hiromi came closer, entranced—windshield clips, hinges and pivots, the origami of vinyl vanishing from sight. On our walks, she always paused to watch machines in transformation. Roller doors, retractable awnings, folding bicycles all enchanted her.
When the car’s metamorphosis was complete, she dropped her overnight bag into the back seat.
“Well,” she said. “At least the drive will be fun.”
I waited until we left Manhattan to speak again, after we’d negotiated the crawling funnel of the bridge, the tangle of interchanges in New Jersey. At last we broke free onto the open highway, forested hills rising on either side.
“Thanks for doing this. I know you hate him.”
Hiromi didn’t answer at first, staring into the sky. The wind turned her hair into a storm of black tentacles.
“If you only sell art to nice people,” she said at last, “you starve.”
“Lyon will buy your work whether or not we go to this party. You’re doing this for me.”
She put a hand on my shoulder, letting the subject drop into the well of this perfect afternoon. Here outside the city, the asphalt heat had lifted, the air smelled of trees and grass. The high clouds were backlit, their edges opaline through my polarized sunglasses.
Our conversation came slowly, punctuated by the stretched-out silences of the road.
“Will anybody we know be there?” I asked.
“A few collectors of mine. Tech bros who admire Lyon’s taste.”
“His taste isn’t so bad—I mean, he likes you. What about other artists?”
“A dozen, maybe. Too blue chip to have heard of me.” She squeezed my shoulder. “But good people for you to meet.”
None of this was news. I’d scrolled through the chatter from the party’s last few years, memorizing faces, names, and résumés. Every summer, Lyon’s guest list grew in riches and glitter.
His art collection had done its job, drawing the wealthy and prominent into his fold. But Hiromi’s work had captured him instead.
“We should grab something on the way,” she said. “I hate being hungry when there’s only party food.”
The edge in her voice was back.
I was looking forward to meeting Lyon—to coming face-to-face with this source of fear and revulsion. Garrett shivered, theatrically, but honestly, when he spoke of him. Arabella retreated into Morton truisms: Kill him, and he’ll die.
I’d brought options. A butterfly knife in one boot, a flash grenade in the other.
“There’s a diner, just before we hit the back roads.” I reached across Hiromi to pop the glove box. “In the meantime, Grandmother’s care package from Upper Falls arrived.”
“Candy!” She reached into the compartment. “From the legendary general store?”
“I asked for Barley Pops, Coconut Long Boys, and Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews.”
“Barley Pops! Those sound ancient and terrible.” She leaned across, pulling against her seat belt. As she kissed me, her windblown hair batted at my face, a kittenish tempest. “Like a certain family I know.”
I smiled, freshly forgiven, and kept my eyes on the road.
When we pulled into the diner, the sun had already fallen behind the mountain, the parking lot empty, growing dark. Hiromi gazed at the diner windows—buzzing neon shakes, fries, and burgers.
“It’s been ages since I had a milkshake.”
I brushed a fingertip across her cheek. “Two straws?”
“Sure, but I’m getting fries too—and dipping them.”
“In the milkshake?”
She turned to me. “You gotta problem with that?”
There was more than a joke in her stare. This was the last stop before Lyon’s party, a last chance to stall.
“If you fill yourself up,” I said, “you won’t have to eat Lyon’s food.”
Hiromi turned back to the neon milkshake and shivered a little. “Silly, I guess. He’s not a faerie king.”
“It’s hard to break bread with enemies.” Weddings and feasts had maintained the four families’ peace for a hundred years.
I took a small risk. It had taken us three hours to drive here.
“We can go home if you want.”
She didn’t answer, except to kiss my hand. I felt the current in her lips. More stalling, but the kind I could work with.
“If he so much”—I pulled her hand to me, kissing her wrist—“as touches you”—then the inside of her elbow—“I will murder him.”
Hiromi shuddered from deep down, glancing at the diner windows.
“Convertibles have their disadvantages.”
I smiled—and put us in neutral.
The car slid from the space, drifting down the gentle slope of the parking lot. Looking backward, one arm over the seat, I let gravity carry us to a dark corner, the farthest parking space from the diner.
“That was hot,” she said as we eased to a silent halt.
I turned to kiss her shoulder, her neck, her chin, her mouth. Softly, gently, then increasingly not. My hand slid into the warmth between her legs.
Once or twice, Hiromi glanced over her shoulder at the diner. But then she began to find her way—short, sharp breaths, half fighting me, head arched back on the leather upholstery.
When release came, she curled forward around my hand, tipping sideways, warm and panting against me.
She asked a question before she’d even caught her breath. “Who was the first person to make you come?”
“Me,” I said.
A laugh. “Okay, but who were you thinking about?”
“I was too little to be thinking about anyone. It was just a button I discovered.” A car drove past us into the lot. They parked in the space we’d first pulled into. Hiromi shifted so her dress covered more of her legs. “I thought it was just me, until my Aunt Veronica taught us about it.”
Hiromi sighed a little. “Sex ed on the farm.”
“Farms are a hundred percent sex ed.” And slaughter ed, too—all the clockwork of living bodies. “There were diagrams.”
“But who was the first person you thought about?”
“Sebastian. Was it Chef Sam for you?”
“In thought and deed. Isn’t Sebastian the cousin who’s mad at you?”
“One of them. The distant one.”
“And adopted—I remember him from the funeral. Did you two ever hook up in real life?” Hiromi sat straighter. “Sorry. Is that weird to ask?”
“You’re not the first.” At least she’d been more direct than Faraday.
“Because people see sparks between you?”
“Because people want him. Not because he’s handsome. Mostly it’s his confidence, certainty, charm.”
“Runs in the family, though he seemed a little confused to me. So have you?”
I gave her Sebastian’s most sardonic look, eyebrow aslant, eyes narrowed. “We have not.”
“Because the family would freak out.”
“They think we’re a good match.”
“Seriously? Mortons marry Mortons?” A slow laugh rolled out of her. “Of course you do.”
“We mostly don’t marry at all.” I opened my door, got out. “But Sebastian and I would be impossible.”
Hiromi didn’t move. “Too different?”
“Too alike. Too competitive. Two keys trying to fit the same lock.”
“Have you ever…almost?”
So many times. Training, dancing, climbing together. Defusing one of Aunt Iris’s smoke bombs, fingers brushing, eyes meeting, almost leaning in. The unspoken game of not yielding to that gravitational pull.
Acquiescence is surrender. Consent, sinister.
“It’s better if we’re friends.” Rivals. Allies. Whatever we’d been before Peter’s death. I sometimes wondered if we’d return to that. If Sebastian would speak to me again.
He’d have to acknowledge me once we were both home. But would he forgive me?
“So you ignore the sparks.”
“Mortons aren’t ruled by our desires.”
Hiromi got out at last, making a show of straightening her dress. “You could’ve fooled me.”
“You and I are the right amount of different.” I came around the car, giving into gravity, kissing her again, wanting to pull her back into the car, this time with the ragtop deployed.
“I still need a milkshake,” she said.