We walked that way, not speaking, our joined hands swinging gently between us, every nerve in my body suddenly awake. I was concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, because otherwise, all my thoughts would have been focused on the fact that Clark and I were holding hands, that somehow, on this walk, something between us had changed.

“So then what happens?” I asked, when I saw we were approaching the guardhouse again.

Clark looked over at me. “What happens with what?”

“With Marjorie. And Karl,” I said, as he slowed and turned to me, still not letting go of my hand.

“I don’t know,” he said, stopping and looking down at me. “I guess we’ll have to wait and find out.”

I nodded and looked up at him and knew this was the moment—if I let this happen, whatever this was, whatever it might be, would start. I could feel my heart pound as Clark dropped my hand and moved it toward my waist, brushing the hem of my tank top between his fingers.

Normally, I kissed first. I didn’t like the moment before, the wondering if a guy was going to get up the courage to kiss you while you were just standing there, waiting and hoping. I liked to take matters into my own hands, squash that moment and get right into the make-out session. But now . . .

Now, being in this moment, on the cusp of something happening, made me wonder why I’d been rushing through it all these years. Or maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I’d just been waiting for this moment, right now.

Clark looked down at me, brushing his hand over my forehead, smoothing back my hair like he’d done before, and I knew this was my last chance to change my mind. And as much as a part of me wanted this, there was another part that knew this would be different from my three-week boyfriends. That it already was.

But I didn’t turn away or walk in the other direction or stop the moment from happening. Moving so slowly, he tilted his head down toward me. I stretched up to him, and we stayed like that for just a second, not kissing, not yet, just hovering in the moment before, only a breath apart.

And then he leaned forward, or I did, and then his lips were on mine.

We lingered there, our lips brushing gently. And then he raised his hand and cupped it under my chin, drawing me closer toward him, and we started kissing for real.

And my arms were around his neck and then his were around my waist and he was pulling me closer, lifting me off my feet, and when he set me back down, my knees were wobbly, like the ground had gotten less solid in the interim.

It was a kiss that made me feel like I’d never been properly kissed before, and as we paused to take a breath—a minute later? an hour?—he leaned his forehead against mine. I looked up at him, and a thought passed through my brain before I could stop or analyze it. It’s you—of course it is. There you are.

And as I touched his cheek and his hand tightened on my waist, I leaned forward to kiss him again, knowing as I did that something was ending while something else had already begun.

Tamsin cursed under her breath as she watched the owl sitting on the branch regard her with what she was almost certain was disdain. This was supposed to be the one area where she was showing any kind of natural inclination, and she had been failing miserably all morning.

“You’re distracted,” the Elder said from the tree stump where he had sat, motionless, for almost an hour now.

“Maybe,” Tamsin acknowledged as she watched the owl ruffle its feathers in a distinctly haughty way.

“Does it have something to do with Sir Charley Ward?” the Elder asked, his voice innocent.

“How did you . . . ?” Tamsin started, then gave up, realizing what a foolish question it had been. She had been aware the Elder knew everything, but until that moment she had thought it was restricted to things like the names of all the plants in the kingdom. She hadn’t realized it also included knowledge of her first kiss.

“Be careful there,” the Elder cautioned.

“It’s fine,” Tamsin said, turning back to the bird. She would prefer not to discuss Charley with anyone, but especially not someone old enough to be her grandfather.

“It’s always a risk,” the Elder said, but more quietly now, like perhaps he was no longer speaking to her. “Wherever there is great emotion. Because there is power in that. And few people handle power well.”

“It was only a kiss,” Tamsin said, focusing back on the owl.

“Oh,” the Elder said, shaking this head, “that is where you are mistaken. Believing that such a thing—just a kiss—has ever, for even a second, existed in this world.”

—C. B. McCallister, A Murder of Crows. Hightower & Jax, New York.

Chapter TEN

Almost without my noticing it, the summer started to find its rhythm. I had dogs to walk, I had my friends to hang out with, and my dad and I were finding a little more to say to each other day by day. But mostly, I had Clark.

“So Karl and Marjorie duck into a roadside tavern,” he said to me as we walked three hyperactive terriers, all straining desperately at their leashes, like the trees up ahead of us were just so much better.

“But they’re going under false names,” I reminded him, and Clark nodded.

“Of course. They can’t let their real identities be known, not with the bounty on their heads.”