A few weeks ago, if someone told Eli that she would have Zara pressed up against a decorative screen in prop storage, hands linked, lips one yes away from kissing, she would have laughed. And then secretly hoped they were right. And then laughed again. Now that she’s here, her nerves are so deafening she can’t even enjoy it.
“I don’t want you doing that jump,” she says. “There’s no time to practice. It’s totally unsafe.”
Zara sighs, leaving behind a miniature frown. That just makes Eli want to attack her lips. To fix things with kissing. But she’s started an argument, an important one, and she has to see it through.
“Remember that speech you gave me about doing your job?” Zara asks. “Well. This is mine.” Her teeth clack, bone on bone. Zara has been shivering from jumping into the swimming pool of the damned. Eli is doing vigorous, nonsexy things with her hands to keep Zara warm.
“Maybe you can talk to Meg about it. I mean, you obviously can’t talk to him.” Eli doesn’t want to say Leopold’s name. It makes her as sick as the sweet garbage-y scent that rises out of random vents in the street.
Last night, Zara let loose the stories she’d gathered of just how dangerous Leopold could be. Lies, manipulation, rape. “He shouldn’t be able to tell anyone what to do. Especially not you.” She feels this inner spinning, this dizzy sickness. She wonders if it’s what Roscoe felt like before he fell. “I want you safe. Forever.”
Zara laughs, a short stab of sound. “Ariston tried that with the cave, and it didn’t work out so well.”
“We’ll need something better,” Eli says. “Towers are pretty traditional, right?” She spins a glance around the room, only half-kidding. “I could put together something impossible to scale. With an Eli-only door.”
Zara’s finger finds Eli’s belt loop. “The problem with towers,” she says, “is that girls don’t like staying locked up.” Zara walks Eli backward until they’re pressed against an old armoire. Their lips meet: easy. The new challenge is keeping them apart. Eli slides her mouth to Zara’s throat, and a groan spills out. Someone might hear them. But the whole thing is so unspeakably hot, Eli has a hard time caring. Zara steps up the kissing from sweet to intense, running her hands up and down and everywhere.
Under the stage, in her living room, Eli had tried to put a dimmer on her hopes: a chorus of what if she changes her mind? In Eli’s bedroom, Zara changed Eli’s mind. Or melted it. Now, in the overheated dark center of a kiss, the only thing Eli is afraid of is someone trying to stop them.
Her back slams into a loose drawer, and the whole armoire rattles. Zara and Eli hold tight. No one jumps out from the shadows or bursts into the room, but Eli can’t shake the feeling that something bad is coming. “Hey,” she says. “Did Kestrel recover from the snap-fest she had last night?”
Zara’s face does a nervous flicker, like a fluorescent that can’t decide if it’s broken or not. “She looked sick at rehearsal today, but I couldn’t tell if it was guilt or just a hangover.”
“Jesus,” Eli mutters.
Zara picks at a handle on the armoire. “I was just scared last night. Of everything. I don’t think she’s really going to hurt me.”
Eli feels like she’s getting brighter and brighter and that soon she might be burning to the touch. “She attacked Carl.”
“That was really, really bad. But . . .” Zara shakes her head, as if there’s something in there she can’t get out. “I’ve been around her every day for two months. She’s weirdly . . . innocent.”
Eli stops in front of Zara to rub her shoulders again. “You forget that I grew up in suburban Connecticut. Kestrels everywhere. Kids who thought they could get away with anything. Mostly because they did.”
Zara sighs. “She’s definitely in her own world. She took a Xanax right before the gala, and I thought it would help her stay calm, but it was like the medicine didn’t even touch her.” Zara speaks to her shoes, which are covered in dark spots from all the dripping. “I think I have to go back to the apartment tonight.”
Eli lets her hands drop from Zara’s shoulders to that curve in her back, the one that she touched the night before. Over her dress, and then under it, and then without anything on at all. “You can come home with me. You can always come home with me.”
Zara tugs at a piece of her hair, which has gone clumpy and lank from the cold water. “What if Leopold notices?”
Eli wouldn’t really be surprised if Leopold started to stalk Zara’s movements. She thinks about going to the police again, but what would she say? Leopold Henneman raped one of his actresses twenty years ago and they have no proof? He told lies, tricked people? Got Zara drunk and forced her to kiss the same guy she willingly kisses onstage every night?
Tension builds along Eli’s inner wiring. She kicks at the nearest prop with the toe of her boot, until she realizes it’s a creepy doll — one in a row of creepy dolls — and promptly stops.
“You could leave, you know,” Eli says, hating the words. Asking Zara to give up her dreams should be unthinkable. The idea of one of them at the Aurelia without the other is physically painful. But the idea of Zara getting hurt is worse.
White-hot. Untouchable.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Zara says, crossing her arms over her wet, glorious chest. “Enna told me not to.”
“Really?” Eli asks.
Zara goes into that middle distance, where the memories of the dead seem to live. Like they’re always just beyond where the eyes settle, and all a person has to do is look a little farther to find them. “She said don’t leave, no matter what. That’s letting them win.”
“Yeah, and look at how that turned out for her,” Eli says, forgetting to be gentle because she’s so afraid.
Zara gathers herself, as if she’s making a stand. Her nose is only a few inches away from Eli’s, but kissing seems miles away. “If Roscoe told you to do something, would you trust him?”
Eli nods. Grudgingly.
“You really think I would give up the only two things I’ve ever wanted this much?” Zara asks.
“Two things?” Eli teases out the words.
Zara smiles, and that warm, bright look on her face closes the distance between them. “Right. Two things. Echo and . . . Ariston.”
“Ariston!” Eli says. “Now with way more estrogen.” She wants to stay in the land of bad jokes for a while, but she can feel her nerves creeping back up, like the inching of a waterline. “Promise me you won’t let Leopold near you.”
Zara pulls her closer, douses her in chlorine. She kisses Eli like she can’t imagine a better fate. They are so busy turning themselves from girls into steam that Eli almost misses it.
Zara doesn’t promise.