The cups and plates on the shelves along the kitchen wall would all be arranged largest to smallest.
The cast-iron stove would be sooty and scorched. An oversize mug would be placed nearby, knives and ladles poking out of it in a sharp metal bouquet.
There would be a river-rock fireplace to my left and a dining table with four chairs.
And there would be one other door, the only other one in the house. I knew that, too, because it led to Jesse’s bedroom.
Dark Fay, reminded the fiend. Dark dreams. Dark desires.
A window—no curtains—was shiny with night, directly across the room. Jesse was seated in one of the two armchairs before it, relaxed, unmoving. He appeared to be gazing out at the trees that slept just beyond the glass.
“Lora,” he said. In the reflection of the panes, I might have seen him smile. “I’m glad you came.”
The candlelight hardly revealed him; he was more wily shadows than light. It must have danced along me a good deal more clearly as I lingered there by the front door.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” I said, and it was true. Somewhat.
“That’s all right.” He nodded toward the chair opposite his. “You still can come in. I won’t bite.”
I swallowed, abruptly remembering my idiotic threat to Armand—biting your lip off—and fighting a bloom of something in my throat that felt perilously close to panic.
“I’m not giving back the brooch,” I said.
Jesse Holms turned in place to see me. Even by the solitary candle, even from this small distance, I was near flattened by his beauty: hair, skin, jaw and brow, throat and shoulders, every inch of him golden. Every inch of him perfect, as if he’d been sculpted by the gods from some lovely, impossible stone.
“No, you shouldn’t,” he said. “That was for you.”
I tore my gaze from his and edged a step toward the free chair, then gathered my nerve and made it all the way. I sat down, feeling guilty, flustered. I’d been braced for at least a token argument. After all, I had no idea how he’d gotten it. It might have been his mother’s, or his grandmother’s, or he might have spent every last penny he’d ever saved on it, just to offer it to a girl he hardly knew. I hadn’t actually expected to keep it, but the words had popped out, anyway.
A round piecrust table, surprisingly delicate, separated the armchairs. A jam jar holding a collection of starry white flowers gleamed square in its middle. I pulled free one of the stems, inspecting it as if it held all the answers to every question I’d ever ask.
It sounds peculiar, but touching that stem, feeling the cool smoothness of it in my hand, made me realize that I truly was inside Jesse’s home, unaccompanied and unchaperoned and far, far from where I was supposed to be. I didn’t even have the debatable comfort of knowing that this was another dream.
This is how girls get into trouble, I thought. This is how charity girls end up shunned and starving on the streets. They venture out alone at night to beautiful boys, silly stupid moths to incandescent flames.
The crickets outside seemed suddenly, embarrassingly loud.
“I hope it didn’t cost much,” I said at last. “The brooch, I mean.”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“On how you might … characterize cost.”
“Pardon?” I glanced back up, confused.
This time Jesse’s smile was aimed straight at me. “Don’t fret, Lora. I can easily afford you that brooch.”
“But why?” I blurted. “Why would you just give it to me?”
I knew I sounded ungrateful, but I didn’t care. The truth was, the brooch was exquisite. I’d never be able to repay him for it, not with money, and we both knew it.
He tipped his head, thoughtful. “Well, you didn’t like the orange I left you. So I tried something else.”
“Didn’t like it?” I began, but had to stop, because my throat had squeezed closed. I pretended to take in the view beyond the window; all I could see was the faint mirrored image of the chamber behind me, broken into rectangles. Jesse and me, fixed in the glass as if we’d been painted there in watercolors, transparent as wraiths.
I closed my eyes and tried again. “It’s not that I didn’t like it. It wasn’t the orange. It was that …” You were there in my room. You saw me sleeping. I think you stroked my face. I managed, “Food is extremely important to me.”