Page 37 of The Towering Sky
“Trust me, I’m more of a heathen. As for a magical power...” Calliope reached for another truffle. She didn’t usually like questions like this, ones that dealt in fantasy. Perhaps because her life already felt like make-believe. “The ability to transform into a dragon,” she concluded.
“A dragon? Why?”
“So that I could flyandburn things. Two powers in one.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Brice’s mouth. “Always bargain shopping, aren’t you?”
“What about you—what power would you pick?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“The ability to turn back time,” Brice said quietly, his eyes drifting toward the window. Calliope fought back the urge to reach across the table for his hand. He must be thinking of his parents.
“What’s your mom like?” he asked after a moment. “You guys are really close, right?”
Calliope was startled by the insightfulness of the question. She’d never been on a date where a guy asked about her relationship with her mom. Then again, she’d never been on a date where she didn’t have an ulterior motive.
“My mom is my best friend,” she admitted, feeling a little dorky as she said it. “She’s hilariously witty, and upbeat, and smarter than people give her credit for. And she has such a sense of adventure.”
“She sounds like you.”
Calliope flushed and kept going. “We used to have this tradition, that whenever we had a big decision to make, we would goto afternoon tea, no matter where we were in the world. It was our signature thing.”
“That makes sense,” Brice replied, instantly understanding. “You wanted to keep doing something British even when you were traveling. A link to where you came from.”
Calliope twirled her straw in the cup of sparkling water. This was all veering dangerously close to the truth, and yet she didn’t feel as afraid as she should. “Do you and Cord have any traditions like that?”
“Skydiving and strip clubs,” Brice said evenly, then laughed at her reaction. “I’m kidding. Despite what you’ve heard, Cord and I aren’t all that bad. So where is your favorite place for tea in New York? The Nuage?”
“We haven’t had time to go out for tea much these days. My mom is so busy, with all the wedding planning,” Calliope said, sighing.
“Wow. You sound utterly thrilled.”
Calliope couldn’t hold it in anymore. She’d been feigning excitement about this wedding for months, nodding and smiling and reciting the same tired sentiments over and over. “It’s going to bemiserable,” she said baldly. “And boring. And I won’t have a single friend there—”
“You’ll have me,” Brice interrupted, and Calliope was startled into silence.
“I was invited,” he went on, his eyes brushing hers. “I do some business with your stepfather. I guess he felt obligated to invite me, as a courtesy. I wasn’t planning on coming... but now I’m wondering if I should.”
Calliope’s heartbeat picked up speed. “Maybe you should.”
“Hey,” Brice realized, “you never answered my third question. What’s your greatest fear?”
For years, Calliope had thought that her greatest fear wasgetting caught and going to prison. Now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was more terrifying to live a life that wasn’t yours.
“I’m not sure,” she evaded. “Do you know yours?”
“Like I would tell you that, and give you a weapon you could use against me,” Brice said lightly. But Calliope didn’t laugh. It was too close to something that she and her mom would have really done not that long ago.
She opened her mouth to say something—just as Brice leaned in to kiss her.
He tasted like heat and like the magic chocolate, and without quite knowing how it happened, Calliope was tipping forward and grabbing at his sweater. She knew this was reckless; it was dangerous, but like all dangerous things, it had a deep, thrilling undercurrent that was richer and better and morealivethan anything safe.
Later that evening, as they walked along the promenade of the shopping center, Calliope paused before an enormous fountain. Her eyes drifted to the wisher station a few meters away. “I haven’t seen one of these in ages.”
A couple of children were clustered around it, begging their parents to let them buy a wisher—the small round disks designed to be thrown into a fountain, accompanied by a wish. These were expensive wishers, so Calliope knew they would produce a special effect when they collided with the water: a cloud of dark ink, or a miniature whirlpool, or a temporary light effect that mimicked a school of fish.
Apparently, in the days before currency was digital, people actually threw money into fountains. It sounded to Calliope like something unbearably lavish, something only the wealthiest people on earth would have done—to be so rich that you literally tossed your money away for your own amusement.
“Want one?” Brice asked, following her gaze.
