“Really?”
“Yes, really.” His breath flutters the hat’s burgundy fur and some of the loose brown tendrils of hair framing my face. “Not very trusting, huh?”
“Should I trust you?”
“Probably not. I’m a man of extremely loose morals.”
Even though I don’t mean to smile, a corner of my lip twitches. I iron out my expression immediately. “If anything disappears, I’ll know it’s you.”
He snorts, and his eyes squeeze and curve like tiny black arches. I’ve heard of people smiling with their eyes, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen it.
“Except, you don’t know who I am.”
“But I know what you look like,” I answer back sweetly.
The camber of the boy’s eyes increases.
“Cadence! There you are.” Alma’s voice bounces against my eardrums, and then her hands wrap around my arm. “Who’s your new friend?”
“He’s not . . . my friend,” I grind out the last part. “He’s a new student. Apparently.”
She hums, or maybe she purrs. “And what’s your name, new student?”
“Slate.” He daintily picks up her hand and brings it to his mouth. “Slate Ardoin.” He doesn’t touch his lips to her knuckles, but his mouth comes close.
Slick. This guy is so slick.
For a second, I feel a little miffed that he didn’t greet me this way until I notice Alma’s bare pinky. “Give her back her ring.”
Alma’s gaze widens when she realizes Slate’s filched the pearl jewel, a homeschool graduation gift from her parents.
“How did you do that?” Instead of sounding peeved, she sounds amazed.
“Sleight of hand.” He opens his fingers with a flourish. Atop the black leather rests Alma’s white pearl.
She plucks it from his palm and slides it back onto her pinky. “Is that how you got your name?”
His good humor collapses. “No.” He closes his fingers slowly, the smooth leather whisper-hissing. “But it would make a hell of a better story.” Whatever annoyance gusted over him is gone, and although he isn’t back to being Mister Smiley-Eyes, he’s also no longer Mister Moody.
“So . . .” Alma leans in. “It’s tradition to kiss someone at the stroke of midnight.”
“It is, huh?” Slate asks, distracted by something behind me.
I turn to find Adrien chatting with Papa.
When I spin back around, Slate’s attention is back on Alma.
“For good luck,” she says.
A nerve ticks in his jaw, beneath the black stubble, and then his eyes bow with a smile that matches the one on his lips. “I’m starting to like this town and its fanciful traditions.”
Slick. Slick. Slick.
Alma snakes her arm around my waist. “Cadence, here, has no one to kiss.”
My heart skitters to a stop. “What?” She did not just toss me under the cauldron!
“It’ll get Adrien’s attention,” she murmurs inside my ear. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
As though the air isn’t thick enough with my embarrassment, the music stops, and the countdown begins.
Alma lets me go so suddenly I almost topple over. “I promised to show Romain how a real woman kisses.”
She winks at me as everyone begins to shout: “Seventeen, sixteen.” I’m going to kill her.
Fifteen.
Maybe put a real spider on her puny hat.
Fourteen.
She hates spiders.
Thirteen.
Or soap on her toothbrush.
Twelve.
“So, who’s this Adrien?”
I murder my best friend in my thoughts. “No one.”
Eleven.
All of his face is smiley. “Ex-boyfriend?”
Ten.
I look over my shoulder and see Charlotte skipping to Adrien’s side, and then I spot our town’s good doctor in her purple tutu-like frock prancing toward Papa in spite of her bad hip.
Nine.
Oh my God. Please tell me she’s not going to kiss him. Papa’s gone a bit pale. He probably doesn’t want Sylvie, who’s two decades his senior, anywhere near his mouth.
Eight.
I turn back around, and my gaze bangs into Slate, who’s staring at me like he’s a cat and I’m a new ball of yarn.
Four.
Where did seven, six, and five go? And when did his hand land on my hip?
Three.
He leans over.
Two.
Lower still.
When the crowd yells one, his mouth whispers across my cheek toward my earlobe. I feel the heat of his lips against the shell of my ear.
“If I relied on kisses for luck, I would never have made it off the streets alive.”
I’m so surprised by his confession, and the fact that he didn’t use the pretense of a tradition to kiss me, that I gape up at him.
He picks up my limp hand, bows his head, and brushes his mouth over my lace-cloaked knuckles. “Word of advice . . . make your own luck. It’ll last you longer.” And with that, he’s gone, slinking like a shadow through the embracing crowd.
When