Page 18 of Love, Nemesis
“And changed your accent, and your clothes, and rejected anything Salem tried to teach you.”
“Wow, someone sounds bitter. All right, Salem.”
She smiled wryly. “One reason I liked you was because you were so different. Remember when I met you?”
“Couldn’t forget it. Salem dragged me out of the house and made me take you to buy new clothes.”
Ana leaned back, enjoying the story as he told it.
“You’d think he’d never seen a street kid, but maybe you were the first girl he’d seen. Maybe that gave him some sense of urgency. I almost felt bad for you.”
“You didn’t?”
He continued on, not skipping a beat. “Then I got to know you. You were so annoying. Followed me everywhere!”
She elbowed him. “That’s not true.”
“You had five questions about everything!”
“Oh, yeah?” She twisted around. “And what about you?”
“Hey, hey—look.” He pointed past her, and she turned.
“What is it?” she asked, and then saw a faint streak against the sunset.
“The black train…Hailey’s Heretical Comet,” Jasper said.
“Jasper, those are just clouds.”
“No, no, follow them. It’s the smoke from the train. You can see the end of the train just—there!”
She watched as the black train emerged from the clouds in the distance, a faint black line. One of the State Var’s least favorite mutations, the black train was known to every country. It traveled by air, earth, or sea, with no apparent rhyme or reason, a perfect symbol of the world’s brokenness.
They both watched as it disappeared.
“What are the odds we’d spot it tonight?” Jasper said.
Ana watched the clouds where she’d seen it. “Someone told me it takes the dead to the afterlife.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“I know. It’s just a mutated train, but it stops and goes with no tracks or destination. It still seems kind of magical, don’t you think?” Ana continued wistfully.
“I don’t think mutated things are ever magical. They’re a representation of what broke the world. I think Hailey’s right on that one. I’m all for neutralizing that thing the first chance we get,” Jasper replied in that same resolute tone he made when making a point.
They settled into silence and looked down on the city, watching as everyone returned to their houses for the night.
He held the neck of the bottle in his hand, gesturing toward the city as the liquid sloshed inside. “Look at them with their normal lives. Could you imagine it? Getting up, going to work, coming home to a family.” He sighed. “That’s it.”
She smiled, eyes drifting from the city to the storm clouds that gave the sunset its brilliant sheen. “A Mystic prince and all you want is to live in a little quaint cottage.”
He chuckled. “I’m a reformed prince, just a refugee now. Let all the other princes have the responsibility of managing that monster of a country. I’m lucky to have been raised here with dreams of a little cottage.”
She rested back against him, breathing in the air that thickened with the coming of rain. For a while, they both watched the rolling clouds swallowing the horizon, shifting the colors in the sky like a kaleidoscope.
“Maybe in another world we could have been something,” Jasper whispered. “Our kids would have been hopeless. Bah, with that black hair. You know they’d all have it.”
“All of our problems and you’re concerned about their hair?” she breathed.
