The City We Became (Great Cities #1) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,106
son of Ireland, huh.”
Conall grins. Aislyn’s father nods approvingly and adds, “Apple ’cause she’s my little apple, here in the Big Apple. I started calling her that when she was little and she loved it.”
Aislyn has always loathed this nickname. “Do you, uh, need anything to eat or drink, Conall? Dad?”
“We’re good, kid. Hey, but, Conall, Aislyn’s a great cook. Even better than her mother. Kendra!” It’s a sudden bellow that makes Aislyn jump, but for once, her father isn’t angry. Kendra appears immediately, and Matthew gestures vaguely toward the back of the house. “Make up the guest room, babe, Conall’s going to stay with us for a couple of days.”
Kendra nods, nodding again to Conall in lieu of a greeting. Then she hesitates. “Lyn and I already ate, though.” And the leftovers are already put up for the night, if Conall’s hungry. It’s also a commentary on the fact that Matthew came home later than usual tonight.
Matthew’s smile vanishes almost instantly, and Aislyn’s belly clenches almost as fast. “Did I ask when you ate?”
She is relieved when Conall straightens a little, drawing both her parents’ attention back to himself. “Thank you for looking after me,” he says to Kendra, and flashes a charming smile. “Wow, Matt didn’t lie, Mrs. Houlihan, you really are beautiful.”
Kendra blinks in surprise. And Aislyn’s father—who normally hates being called Matt—laughs and companionably whacks Conall again. “Trying to sweet-talk my wife, huh? What the hell, you.” Just like that, everything’s laughs again.
Aislyn looks at Kendra, without quite intending to. She’s learned over the years that she and her mother cannot appear to be allied, even if they are. But Kendra seems just as puzzled by the whole situation. She goes off to make up the guest bed, and Aislyn decides to beat a retreat as well.
Just before Aislyn completes her turn away, however, a flicker of movement snags her attention. She jumps and looks back sharply, frowning. Conall and her father have returned their attention to whatever’s on the tablet, and they’ve dropped their voices to continue talking. Just like best friends. All very abnormally normal. What was that movement, though?
There. On the back of Conall’s neck. Something long and thin and white sticks up from somewhere around the sixth or seventh cervical vertebra, and just above his crisp shirt collar. One of those weird little tendrils that the Woman in White kept putting on people and objects.
Conall glances up again, and raises his eyebrows at her stare. “Something wrong?”
“Nothing,” Aislyn blurts, and then she nods something farewell-like before hurrying upstairs to her room.
By 3:00 a.m. it’s clear to Aislyn that she’s not going to get any sleep. As she’s done with previous bouts of insomnia, she gets up and heads into the backyard. There’s nothing here but the family pool, which her father installed ten years ago, and which Aislyn’s swum in maybe twice. (It isn’t that she doesn’t like swimming. It’s that she can’t stand the fear that someone might be ogling her in her swimsuit—even though there’s a twelve-foot wooden privacy fence around the entire backyard. It’s not rational, but neither is her fear of the Staten Island Ferry.)
But even though the pool is useless for swimming, it’s not bad for meditating—if moping beside a pool while clad in jammies and her favorite Danny the Dolphin plush slippers qualifies as meditation. This time, however, she’s been out there for about five minutes, mournfully contemplating the distant, increasingly desperate call of the city, when something shifts beside her. She jumps and whirls to find her father’s houseguest Conall sitting in a poolside lounger not five feet away.
He’s been there the whole time, Aislyn realizes with some chagrin; she was just so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice. He’s muzzy-faced as he yawns now and blinks at her, and there are lines from the lounger’s straps on one cheek; he must have been asleep. There’s dried drool on one side of his mouth. Aislyn doesn’t laugh at this because she’s also a little appalled to see that he’s wearing nothing but a pair of her father’s old pajama pants. He’s double-tied them, but they’re still tentlike on him. As he’s without a shirt, she sees now that he also sports a farmer’s tan and a series of additional tattoos across his chest and belly that are a lot less ambiguous than the ones on his arms. One’s an older, nicely done Irish trinity knot over which the number 14, and a