Siren Queen(31)

“I don’t know what I would have done,” I said, meeting her eyes. “You were very brave and very clever. I hope I could have done the same. But I still wonder what would have happened if he had opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was you sitting behind his desk.”

“Nothing good,” Greta proclaimed, and because it was her, I smiled a little.

“You never think there’s anything good,” I said, and the strange tense moment with Jillian passed. She leaned her head against Emmaline’s knee, and I tried not to be so jealous, because now I knew it was just jealousy.

Someone else mentioned the courtyard in front of Mr. Abelard’s office, a famously ugly place, and when Jillian described the statue and the iron fence and the flowers that grew there, Emmaline looked surprised for the first time.

“Five pointed petals on a short stem?” she asked. “A rust-red center?”

“Yes,” Jillian said, too startled to be calculating. “Just like that. In a few pots.”

“Oh, love-comes-home,” Emmaline said faintly, and the whole circle drifted a little closer to her. When she noticed, she looked up and for the first time, she seemed almost embarrassed.

“Love-comes-home, that’s what that flower is called,” she said. “It used to grow all over my family’s estate. They’re spring flowers, and every year, without fail, they bloomed just a day before I was sent off to school. Like my home was saying good-bye.”

Even then I didn’t really believe it. There was a story behind Emmaline and love-comes-home, called kickweed back in her native Minnesota. I never got it, but all I needed was that wistful look in her eyes, a longing for something that somehow, she didn’t have.

Someone muttered about Abelard being able to make it summer all year round in his courtyard, and someone else countered that they could all do it, turn back the season and make it shine or snow.

“I bet we could get love-comes-home for you, Emmaline,” Jillian was suggesting. “I know this florist on St. Immanuel’s Way, and he does all the flowers for the big weddings…”

I saw the tolerant look on Emmaline’s face and a trace of pain there that made me strangely hungry. I wanted to erase that pain, and I wanted to be the only one to do it.

“He’s not going to have love-comes-home,” I said. I hadn’t meant to speak up at all, and without consideration, my voice was scornful. Jillian turned to me with a stung look that narrowed when she realized she had no idea who I was. I was no one to be careful around, no one to placate or smile for.

“What do you know about that anyway?” she asked. “Do they have a lot of flowers at the restaurant?”

Greta stirred almost as if she had woken up just for this statement alone, blinking large eyes in the firelight.

“They would not here,” she said in her slow and amiable way. “That flower, we have it at home. Needs warmth in the ground, but it will not bloom without a first frost, you see?”

She thought for a moment before continuing.

“You could do it, I suppose. Warmth of this sun, refrigerator. But no one would. It is not so beautiful.”

Greta made her way at Wolfe Studios as if she didn’t care about anything, because she didn’t. That gave her a peculiar kind of power, often imitated but never perfectly, because if you imitated her, you cared. For Greta, they had already taken away her tail, and now she didn’t see what else anyone could take from her.

“I suppose it’s not,” Emmaline said with a half laugh. “You’re very right, Greta. It’s only a humble little thing, after all.”

“We know it grows in one place in LA,” I said.

It was a peculiar moment. I had stepped back from myself, a foot or more. Greta was still leaned against me. The fire still warmed my face, and it was my voice echoing around the circle. The real me sat back in the shadows as if astonished.

“Yes, in Mr. Abelard’s courtyard,” said Jillian. “He doesn’t do anything for anyone, not just for asking.”

“Maybe if it was Emmaline doing the asking,” said a narrow person draped in a robe from last year’s musical, Midsummer Madcap. Someone from the costuming division, I thought absently, judging from the borrowed look of their finery.

“She’s not going to have to ask at all.” From a foot behind my body, I got a sense of curious dread. I knew what was going to happen because it was me, after all, but if I could have stopped myself, I might have.

“And why not?” asked Jillian.

“Because I’m going to go get them for her myself. Tonight.”

The circle broke into excited murmurs, almost as good as applause. The sound woke me up a little; at least it sent goose bumps up and down my arms and brought a flush to my numb face. My heart was beating fast, and somewhere, that drum echoed in me still. Greta squinted at the fire and then at me as if I had turned into something that she didn’t recognize.

“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it,” said Jillian, but she looked uncertain. She gathered closer to Emmaline as if suddenly unsure of her place. Emmaline’s hand landed in her curls, but carelessly. Her voice cut through the chatter.

“You mustn’t,” she said seriously. “It’s far too dangerous.”

(“Oh, she must have liked you right away to feed you a line like that,” laughed Jane.