It had been a middle-school class in another dimension, but he didn’t need to know that.
“And now you’re here in the big city,” he said. He still had that look in his eyes like he was waiting. She knew the smart thing would be to end the conversation, go back to her table, and never see him again. But she stayed sitting on the barstool. “Doing what, exactly?”
“I already told you,” she said. “Mayhem.”
He didn’t laugh. The blue glow of the olive reflected in his eyes, which in the dim bar looked almost black. She watched the blue ricochet in his irises as the olive moved in the glass. Finally, he smirked.
“I guess you did,” he said. “Here’s your drink.”
She took the old-fashioned old-fashioned off the bar and sipped it, then followed him back to the table, where he handed out Esther’s drink and the two beers like nothing had happened. But something had—Sloane just didn’t know quite what it was.
Edda and Kyros were singing. The four of them were walking from the bar to the nearest hotel, where it was easier to hail a taxi. It was dark, and Esther had noted that at least half of the streetlights they passed were the old gas-burning kind. It seemed to Sloane that with the spread of magic had come a deep affinity for the past, but she wasn’t sure what one had to do with the other. Maybe it was like the movie-set feel of the Tankard—all their magic stories were set in old-timey fantasy worlds or eras so ancient the magical acts were associated with old gods and angels and demons, so they reached backward to figure out how to be magical instead of forward.
Esther hooked her arm around Sloane’s elbow. “So that Mox,” she said.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Sloane said. “And you’re off base.”
“All I was going to say is, if you want to have a rebound fling with that hot praying mantis, you don’t have to hide it from me,” she said. “That’s all.”
“Good to know,” Sloane said.
“I’d hide it from Matt, though.”
“Obviously.”
Esther cocked her head to the side and looked up at Sloane like she was trying to remember the title of a song. “You seem better here,” she said.
“Better?” Sloane laughed. “Tell that to Evan Kowalczyk.”
“I didn’t say you were normal, just . . . better. Steadier.”
“Well,” Sloane replied, “I know how to do this. Fight the big bad, dodge the government goons. Same script, different movie.”
Esther nodded. She choked a little when she responded: “I don’t want to do this again.”
Edda and Kyros had finished their song, one they had both learned in army training, apparently. They stood under the bright overhang outside the hotel, talking to a man in uniform with a whistle in his mouth.
“What if I die here?” Esther’s voice was throaty. “What if my mom dies at home without ever knowing—”
Sloane couldn’t bear to hear the rest. She had met Esther’s mother when they were both teenagers, and Esther’s face had still been round as a dinner plate. Her mother had been warm but somehow aloof, like she was living in two worlds at the same time, and each took her attention away from the other. And then, years later, after her diagnosis, she had been half the size, her head wrapped in a scarf, and still always smiling.
None of their parents were the dream of what parents should be. Every one of them had given their child away. But of all of them, Esther’s mother was maybe the closest, fussing over Esther’s diminishing waist, always foisting cookies and tea on them even if she was in someone else’s house.
Sloane squeezed Esther’s hand hard and hoped the pressure would steady her. She wasn’t good at consoling people; that had been Albie’s job. “Your mom knows everything she needs to know,” she said. “That her daughter saved the world. And loves her.”
Esther’s head bobbed. “Okay.” She swallowed. “Yeah.”
A taxi pulled up to the curb. They all piled in, quieting down on the drive back to the Camel. Sloane looked out the window, but she didn’t see anything they passed. All she could think about was how everything that happened now—including getting pulled into a parallel dimension—would be After Albie. Like a new era. Sloane AA.