He took it, a smile spreading over his face and a whole herd of feelings rampaging through his chest. Butterflies, birds of fucking paradise, all that shit.
“You made this,” he repeated. “For me?” Through the black gauze, he felt dried-out plants and little stones.
She nodded, looking like she might die of embarrassment. “Um. Yes.”
He still had no fucking clue what it was, but—“It smells like you.” Like peace and candlelight.
A hint of pleasure warmed her features, erasing her self-consciousness. “It’s a charm. It’ll help you sleep. I know you don’t like taking your meds when you have to get up in the morning, so I thought maybe—”
“You thought you’d make me this,” he said, emotion spilling from his voice without permission. His feelings for Dani were like sunlight: they’d always find a crack to slip through, a way to light things up. “Careful, Danika. Keep being so sweet and I might think you give a damn.”
She pursed her lips. “Well. You’re no use to me if you’re too tired to get it up.”
“Bullshit.”
“Be quiet.” She grabbed a handful of his shirt, dragged him closer, and kissed him again.
Changing. Everything was changing.
But time slipped through Zaf’s fingers like sand, and the end of their deal loomed like an axe over his head. When their fake relationship became unnecessary, would she take the leap with him and start something real? Another man might assume the answer was yes, but he knew Danika well enough to realize that soft touches and significant looks meant nothing. When she made a decision, she spoke.
She hadn’t spoken yet.
The Friday before the symposium was full moon night, which meant Zaf found himself banned from Dani’s flat and discouraged from calling. Something about a standing date with Sorcha, witchy business, and “the baffling quality of heterosexual energy.” He decided not to follow that particular thread.
But the next day, Saturday, dawned bright and brilliant. He got up with a smile on his face and a determination to put his pining on the back burner, because today was about one thing and one thing only: Dani sitting on a panel beside her idol. So he combed his hair into something like an actual style, dressed carefully, and used the beard oil Kiran always badgered him about. Then he made his way over to Dani’s flat, knocked three times, and waited.
And waited. And waited.
Just when he was wondering if he’d missed a pretty vital text, the door burst open and there she stood, wild-eyed and . . . brown-haired?
“I’m sorry,” she said, “sorry, sorry, sorry. I heard you, but I didn’t hear you.”
“That’s o—” She was already gone, whirling so fast, her black dress fluttered around her shins.
Zaf shut the door and watched her pace across the room, muttering to herself under her breath, her hands rubbing that newly dyed hair. There was a pile of books and paper in the middle of the floor and a small mountain of shoes by the desk that looked like they might have been thrown. The candles on her little goddess table were burning, surrounded by half-empty mugs of different-colored tea.
“So,” he said, “you seem perky.”
Dani ignored him.
“And obviously in a very healthy place right now.”
She ignored him harder. A passing bystander might claim she hadn’t done anything at all, but they would be wrong.
He sat on the arm of the sofa and said, “Want to talk about it?”
She turned to glare at him, which was progress. “You are profoundly annoying and extremely troublesome.”
“Good thing I have a big dick.”
There was a flicker of surprise, a hint of a smile. “Shut up.”
“Come here.” He caught her hand, pulled her closer. “Yesterday at lunch, you were fine. Now your hair is brown and your laptop is balanced upside down like a tent on your kitchen counter, all of which suggests you’re losing your shit. Want to tell me why?”
She raised a defensive hand to her curls. “It’s not brown! It’s very dark blue.”
“Danika. I’ve seen your hair blue. That’s brown.”
She folded her arms over her chest and made a strangled, jerky sound, kind of like a frustrated kitten. “Well, maybe it is! Maybe I need to look as ordinary as possible to make up for the fact that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“There has not ever,” Zaf said mildly, “been a time when you didn’t know what you were doing. Including your actual birth. I’m pretty sure about that.”
“I just—after you left, I may or may not have had a rather unpleasant