Page 53 of The Alchemists

“She’s not creepy,” Seb said, a little too quickly, then, “Mary Shelley, either.”

“Not creepy,” Asher agreed, fussing as he folded his long limbs into the back seat. “Weird. Good weird.”

Seb slid behind the wheel, staring ahead, then started the car. He jolted to a stop several feet later.

“What the hell, Sebastian?”

“We need to make a detour.”

“Is this it?” Asher leaned forward to look at the Queen Anne on Fountain Avenue.

With its mix of brown shingle and mismatched burgundy siding, its weathered goldenrod trim and slate roof, it looked tired. It was probably drafty in the winter.

Tori, for reasons unknown, had been able to provide Lily’s address on this shaded street near the heart of downtown. Seb swallowed, his hands suddenly clammy. His roommates watched him silently as his indecision held them all in stasis.

“We’ve got to get going,” Tori said, not unkindly. “If you want to get in before rush hour.”

He wiped his hands on his pants and shoved open the door. He’d thrown his coat in the back seat, and he wished he had another layer now, between her and his heartbeat. As he walked up the cracked slate path, the way she’d looked in his arms when they’d danced—breathing hard, russet bangs stuck to her forehead, warm eyes wide and deep—superimposed itself over his vision. He’d felt her heart thudding in his hands, through her ribs. Sebastian scrubbed his face with his hand, adjusted his red-and-tan plaid scarf, and took the slightly tilted steps up to the porch two at a time.

This is a mistake.

Maybe she’s not home.

He rang the bell, watching for movement behind the lace-curtained window facing the porch. Several long seconds dragged by, and then several more. The door jerked open, and he looked down into Lily’s face, her shoulder-length hair pulled into a ponytail. She sprang backward, slipping slightly in her sock feet at the sight of him.

“What are you doing here?” she said after finding her footing.

“You didn’t return my text.” Then, after a lack of acknowledgement, “I didn’t want to leave without talking to you, after⁠—”

She stiffened. “We don’t need to talk about that.”

“No,” he agreed. “I just—I wanted to apologize, if I gave you the wrong idea.” It felt like the right thing to say, but he felt like an asshole as he said it.

“You didn’t.” He watched her swallow, his eyes moving to her collarbone, revealed by her sweatshirt, which she’d hacked into an off-the-shoulder thing. Even the way she slouched against the doorframe had a certain strange grace.

“I wanted to make sure you don’t hate me. That we’ll still be friends when I get back.”

“I don’t hate you,” she said quietly.

“Lily,” he said, surprising both of them. She met his gaze, finally. “Your friendship is too important to me to lose.”

She stood there, lips parted, mask nowhere to be seen, curse aura shadowing behind her. Even after so many hours spent together in such a short time, he had no idea what she was thinking most of the time.

“Say something,” he whispered, taken aback by the plea in his voice.

Her brow furrowed as she finally said, her voice impossibly soft, “You have to know I feel the same.”

Seb sighed then. He wanted to collapse against the doorframe, kiss her feet. Instead, he slid the ring off his finger and held it out to her.

“Will you hold onto this? There’s a non-zero chance I will lose it in a drunken stupor.”

“Sure.” She accepted it, then peered past him to the curb. “By the way, that car?” Lily raised an eyebrow. “It makes you look like an asshole.”

He grinned over his shoulder. “I know.”

They arrived in Québec City just as the angle of the sun made it impossible to see the car ahead of him in the glare. After lunch, Asher had managed to muscle Tori into the backseat through a game of Rochambeau, and she had promptly fallen asleep, leaving Asher and Seb to talk in a way that they hadn’t had time for in forever.

Asher carefully sipped his flat white. Seb could tell from the shape of his silence that Asher was gearing up toward something.