Page 19 of The Alchemists

Light spilled into the hallway from one of the high-ceilinged studios. The music was contemporary, softly melancholy, nothing he knew—and he slowed, quieting his steps so as not to interrupt. He stopped, letting long moments pass in the glowing womb of night as he waited for the feeling of reality slipping to fade. He had spent so much time in this building and none of it in this wing, but there was a different reality, not so far off from this one—visible if he squinted—where this hallway might have been as familiar as a favorite sweater.

He paused as he reached the doorway. The studio was empty, and then it was not, as a girl, tangled up in herself, spun into view, bringing Æther with her. It practically poured out of her—or maybe it was drawn to her—but in any case, it swirled thick in the air, leaving traces of a secret language that morphed and eddied into something new with each movement. She wore a powder-blue leotard with a scoop back and capped sleeves, below capri leggings. As she stilled momentarily, back to him, it was impossible not to be floored by the perfect curve of her ass inside the sheath of spandex.

His heart stopped in his chest as she suddenly fell. It wasn’t until several seconds later, as she continued twisting and rolled up to standing, that he realized it had been purposeful. He caught a glimpse of her face in the mirrors and saw her, eyes half-closed in the private bliss of effortless concentration.

For the second time that night, Seb lost track of himself as he watched her. She was a lodestone and he was a pile of iron filings. She had what his mother would call “a gift.” It wasn’t just in her technique—which was solid, if not professionally perfect—but she had that essence, that inherent understanding of movement and physics and gravity; the way you could slip between them like a stream between rocks, and become weightless, become enormous.

As she spun, rolling across the scuffed floor, Seb realized that he knew her, and that was the most shocking thing of all, because this—this glorious collection of lines and wild emotion and centripetal force—was Lily Perkins. Leper Lily, though he had never called her that. Suddenly he caught the thick oil-slick of her aura, rendering the outline of her buzzy as a mirage, unsure of how he’d missed it before. Too late, he realized she was facing the mirrors, looking directly at him.

She pinned him with the force of her gaze, itself inscrutable. A sheen of sweat shimmered on her face and chest, which heaved rapidly with the exertion. If he weren’t so mortified that he wanted to die, he would have noticed how lovely the flush of exercise made her skin. He cast around for something to say and found nothing.

“Can I help you?” she said eventually, once she’d collected her breath, once the silence had swelled to bursting.

“Should you be practicing alone this late?” He stepped into the spill of light, regretting the words as they fell out of his mouth. “What if you twist an ankle?”

She scoffed. “That’s a side effect of being me.” She turned her back to him in the mirror, ducking to grab her water bottle, and faced him properly, pushing damp bangs off her forehead.

“What’s a side effect of being you?”

“Being alone.”

Seb said nothing. Had he ever seen her with friends? Ever really seen her at all? He had never teased her, but he’d also never stopped Conrad, always edged away. He’d never exerted any effort in the face of her loneliness for the sheer fact that she did not concern him. He was who he was, and she was who she was, and that meant they occupied completely separate orbits in the same small galaxy. The difference, of course, was that Seb had his own gravity, pulling in innumerable other bodies, celestial and otherwise, while Lily was some small, dark planet that took generations to orbit the sun.

The fact that they both seemed to know who the other was, despite never having interacted, disturbed him greatly. It disturbed him that he knew she knew who he was, because he was someone presumed knowable.

“Why are you spying on me?”

He tripped backward. “I’m not,” he stammered, hoisting his Cantrèa duffel. “I was just finishing. I heard the music…” He didn’t know what to say then. Any true thing was far too intimate an admission, but he was incapable of lying to someone so baldly truthful, whose eyes had already taken the measure of him and found him wanting. “I used to dance.”

She’d been studying the ground and looked up then, sharply, scanning his face for subterfuge. Curses, her life must be a nightmare. “You. Used to dance.” She repeated the words flatly, her disbelief palpable.

“I swear.” He stepped fully into the studio, his sneakers squeaking on the floor. “You were lovely—” He cut himself off before he descended irreparably into stupidity. He couldn’t tell then if she flushed or was simply flushed. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I’m sorry.”

Lily smiled, or at least her mouth did something approximating a smile.

“Movement casts its own spell.” Her eyes sparked with something he thought might be mischief.

“What?” His brain was still on her cheeks and the dim constellation of freckles therein.

“A spell. The pattern of the movement is the transmission; the emotion of the audience, the intended effect.”

“Oh!” He couldn’t help grinning. “I know, right?”

She smiled at him fully then, the way a shark grins at a seal. “Prove it.”

“What?”

“Prove that you know how movement can be a spell.” He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “And no, I don’t mean Cantrèa. I mean dance.”

“You want me to dance for you?” He swallowed, his pulse suddenly racing.

She shrugged. “It’s only fair. I danced for you.”

“You didn’t⁠—”

“You’re sure?”

Shit.