Any Way the Wind Blows (Simon Snow, #3)(97)

“If I ever see her again, I’ll ask her.”

Penelope gets another piece of red licorice, and spins it with one hand, watching the end whip around. “So you don’t keep in touch?”

“We do not.”

“Is there someone else you keep in touch with?”

I clear my throat. I’m looking at Penelope. At her messy ponytail. And her excruciating knees. She isn’t looking at me. “Is that you asking if I have a girlfriend?”

“Or a boyfriend,” she says quickly.

“I usually date girls,” I say.

“You usually date magical creatures—”

“I don’t have a girlfriend, Penelope.”

She looks at the wall. “I should probably add that to the list.”

“What was your boyfriend like?” I ask, before I can process how stupid it is to bring him up.

“Micah?”

“Yeah.” Stupid, stupid. “Was he a magician?”

“Of course.”

I sigh. “Of course.”

“We met at Watford. He was an exchange student. He was very bright.”

“He’d have to be.”

“And he was, um…” She shrugs. “Nice.”

“Nice?”

“Oh, I don’t know how to describe people.” She frowns and twirls her licorice. “He was a good listener. He was never cruel. He was a very gifted magician. Good with languages, an excellent ear. He never seemed to get tired of me … Until he did, and then I didn’t notice.”

I’m wearing mint-green corduroy pants, and I run my thumb along my knee where the stripes are wearing off. These are the pants I was wearing in the desert. I still have these pants and one T-shirt and a few things I was carrying in my backpack that day. Everything else got left at our hotel in Vegas.

Penelope had to buy me underwear and a change of clothes at the airport …

Actually, she probably stole them.

I clear my throat again. “Were you in love with him?”

“I don’t know.” She seems irritated. I should definitely stop asking about her ex-boyfriend. (This isn’t how I ended up going home with a fairy.) “I thought I was…” she says. “I definitely cared about him. But if I was in love with Micah, I’d miss him now, right?”

She looks up at me, like I’m supposed to answer. I stay quiet.

“I don’t think I miss him,” she says, still irritated. “I feel rejected and humiliated and lost. But I don’t—” She shakes her head. “— long for him.

Maybe I don’t have that chip. Maybe I don’t do longing.”

“I probably wouldn’t decide that after one boyfriend…”

“Have you been in love, then?” She says it like she assumes I have, like it’s part of my whole insufferable package.

“Yeah,” I say anyway. “Once, for sure. And then I think I’ve been at least half in love, twice.”

“You can’t be half in love, Shepard…”

“How would you know?”

Her face falls a little. I shouldn’t have said that. We’re going to need another chalkboard to keep track of all the things I shouldn’t have said tonight. Penelope shifts her weight, so she isn’t quite facing me anymore.

“You probably don’t believe in soulmates, then. Magicians usually believe in soulmates. And destiny.”

“I believe in everything,” I say.

She makes a judgmental noise in the back of her throat, then picks up the bag of licorice and spins it closed.

I want her to keep talking to me. Even if I keep saying the wrong things.

“Did you think Micah was your soulmate?”

She makes another disappointed noise. This one is for herself, I think.

“Micah made sense for me … So I plugged him into all of my important equations. It was like I solved wrong for x, and it threw off the other variables.” She ties the top of the bag in a knot. “I must sound like a child to you.”

“No … You sound like a person who doesn’t know everything about love.

That’s most of us.”

“You’ve got it all figured out. You’ve been in love three-point-five times or something.”

“If I had it figured out, I wouldn’t be alone and engaged to a demon.”

“It’s not a real engagement,” she says softly.

“Thanks.”

She turns her head towards me and looks into my eyes. Penelope only looks in your eyes when she expects something.

I wait for her to tell me what it is.

PENELOPE

I’ve been in this room too long with no one but Shepard.

He’s starting to feel more real than everything else. He’s starting to feel like the one thing that’s supposed to be here.

It should be the opposite—it is the opposite. Shepard is a Normal. And Normals don’t matter. I mean, I’m sure they matter to other Normals—but they’re not supposed to matter to me. They’re supposed to be like ants. Or plants. Important to the overall ecosystem, but not important.

My mother always said there was no sense in making friends with Normals, because what could you even talk about, if you couldn’t talk about magic? What’s left?