Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(45)
“Right,” I muttered, my cheeks lightening. The moonlight was so bright I wondered if he could see my skin flushing with color; I could feel his eyes on me even as I looked straight ahead. “And what was this bet I lost, exactly? Maybe we should start with that.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed. “If you’re going to be parting with my two kisses, seems reasonable to tell you why.”
The certainty behind the words—the sureness that those kisses were his—caught fire like a sparkler lit in my stomach, a hissing mix of excitement and indignation.
“Well, we’ll see about that,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “The honorable don’t usually finagle drunk girls into bets. I’m still deciding if this one even stands.”
“One, I never claimed any honor to my name,” he replied, ticking the points off on his fingers. “Two, I thought it might be in my favor that we had so much in common, what with fractal magic between us. Not a quality you find in a beautiful witch every day. And three, I won fair and square. You told me you couldn’t make the ceiling bloom for me—I told you that you could. And so you did.”
My face went numb, but even as my mind blanked with shock, a small part of me spun in giddy circles at having been called beautiful. “Fractal magic?” I stammered. “Witch?”
“You are one, aren’t you? You and your sister, both. I heard her singing at that café before I came in, and you made me the prettiest Christmas-light nebula at that party. You just needed a little nudge, was all. I can’t do it myself, exactly, but I can help. Make it easier for you to bloom.”
“How?” I breathed. “Who are you?”
A match flared, illuminating his broad-boned face, eyes glinting and mouth soft amid faint stubble. I heard him suck in a long breath, a pungent waft of tobacco from a hand-rolled cigarette.
“I’m like you,” he said through the smoke. “My mother was a witch, and among other things, she could summon fractals. I can see them—and draw them, hence the tattoos, that’s actually what I do for work—but I can’t pluck them from thin air like you can, make others see the fabric of the world.” He chuckled softly. “It’s spectacular, what you do. Wild, stunning. I’ve never seen another one like you.”
I sifted through everything he’d said, still reeling. “Was a witch?” I said carefully.
“Yes. She’s gone, has been for a few years. It’s just me and my younger brother now, in Reykjavík, she and our father split very long ago. She was from here before she moved to Iceland, taught us both the tongue. I thought this might be the right summer to see it for myself, her Montenegro.”
That explained the accent, the unusual, rocking rhythms of his speech. I stole another glance at his sharp profile, watched him blink slowly like a sleepy lion. “Maybe this is where the magic comes from,” he added, “and she simply brought it with her.”
“I just never . . . I had no idea there were others. My mother always told us we were all alone in the world.” And somehow, even after remembering Sorai and Naisha, I hadn’t thought past it enough to glimpse the notion that there might be other families in the world like mine. “But I’m starting to think she might have told us a lot of things that aren’t true. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you lost your mother.”
“She wasn’t an exceedingly nice woman,” he said dryly. “Pleasantness was not so much her forte. But even still. It’s always hard to let a mother go.”
I pressed my lips together, scraping my teeth over their tender insides. “It is. I—I wouldn’t have thought that I’d miss mine.”
“Why not?”
“She wasn’t ‘exceedingly nice’ either,” I replied, mimicking his tone. “Especially not to me. Have you ever heard of those people who have overactive immune systems, and they’re allergic to ridiculous things, like to their own spit or skin? It was like that with us. I’m half of her, but the way she tore into me you’d think I was made from all her castoffs, all her warts and wrinkles and crooked joints. All the things she ever hated about herself, things she wished she could cut out. Or would have, if she hadn’t been so fucking perfect.”
“Maybe it’s the opposite,” he mused quietly. “Maybe there was too much of everything shared between you, and not merely the bad. Two magnets face-to-face, repelling.”
I closed my eyes against the searing swell of tears. Silently he passed me the cigarette, and as I pinched it between my fingers, his hand landed lightly on my thigh. I nearly flinched at the sudden contact and the warmth of his skin, but the first potent lungful chased the doubts away. My mind opened up like it always did, unfurling and unfolding. Heat dripped through me like some sweet sap, and I tipped my head back as he just barely stroked my thigh, trailing caresses on the very surface of my skin.
“What kind of magic did your mother have? Was it like yours?”
“No,” I murmured, eyes still closed. Each word felt discrete and sticky, like a melting bonbon on my tongue. It was work stringing them together, but sweet. “She baked things, made flavors. You’d taste them and see something like a memory, but of a place you’d never even been. A moment in time that she’d seen or imagined, and translated into taste.”