Page 57 of The Alchemists

“You don’t need to think about the Elumnara right now.” Her voice carried an unfamiliar tone, and it took her a moment to realize that she was comforting him. No one had ever wanted her comfort before—she hadn’t known she’d had any to give. “You should go to sleep.”

“That’s why I called,” he said, and she could feel the relief in his voice, now that he’d finally found the thread in the drunken knot of his thoughts. “I was thinking about all of this shit, and this summer. I was so happy before—I thought I was happy. And this summer, I wasn’t sure—I didn’t think I’d ever be able to be happy again. But I think I am.”

“Is that bad?” She barely trusted herself to speak.

“It’s different. Everything feels inside out and now I don’t know if I was ever happy before at all.”

She took a while to mull that over. “I don’t think happiness is as simple as people make it out to be.”

“But I don’t even feel like I’m the same person I was.”

This time she laughed for real. “That’s called growth, Seb. You’re growing.”

“Like my tree.”

Lily pressed her face into the pillow so he wouldn’t hear her snort. “Maybe.”

“You’re laughing at me.” He sounded accusing, but she could hear the smile in his voice.

“Maybe.”

“Anyway, I was thinking about all of that, and then I started thinking about you, and I called you, because I don’t feel that—overfullness, anxiety—when we’re together, and I knew you would tell me to go to sleep.”

“You should go to sleep.” Saying anything else was an impossibility.

“I can’t. I’m too awake now.”

She swallowed. “Okay, then tell me what it’s like. In Québec.”

He shifted on the line as he switched the phone to his other ear. “It’s snowing. I’m lying in the window seat in the apartment watching the snow. There’s a big, brutalist library—it’s so hideous, I cannot even begin—across the street, and all the lights are really dim. Everything is so quiet, except for the radiator. It’s steam, like the ones in the dorms.”

She listened as he described Québec, all of it—everything they’d done over the weekend—in drowsing detail, until he went quiet on the other end of the line, and all she could hear was his breath coming in slow, even waves.

She whispered into the phone, “Goodnight, Seb.”

SEB

“Tori! Come on!” Asher stomped from the living room into the bathroom and returned with his long fingers around the crook of her elbow. “We need to take photos before Gemma gets here.” He shot a look at Seb. It said, Coward.

Seb pursed his lips and practiced his pout. It wasn’t hard.

A nameless sensation had gnawed at his insides since he’d woken up too early, smashed into the window seat, the day before. He’d fallen asleep on his phone, and it had left a purple imprint on his jaw. Slowly, he remembered calling Lily after their dinner at the French-Scandinavian restaurant, several rounds of drinks, the impromptu dance party that faded into conversation and then sleep. Part of him thought it had been a dream until he checked his phone log. He’d been on the phone with Lily Perkins for nearly an hour at two in the morning.

She had answered and talked with him at two in the morning.

The whole trip felt like a dream, one that he didn’t really want to wake up from, except for one damning thing—Lily was here. He wished he’d invited her to come with their group, even though she would have never accepted. Tori was right—she would have made a great Mary Shelley; she was sharp, observant, shrouded in an aura of darkness which he now thought might be grief instead of a curse.

“How’s my hair? I swear there’s an entire can of hairspray and twelve enchantments in there.” Tori turned side to side for Seb’s opinion.

“You didn’t need to copy his hair.”

Tori sighed. “Great art is about commitment.” She looked down at her dust-colored tailcoat. “I can’t believe you made me be Keats. I should be Byron.” She glowered at Seb.

Asher scoffed. “No one mopes like Sebastian. You could have been Mary Shelley.” He offered his arm in faux gallantry.

“There is nothing more boring than women’s Regency fashion. Give me a tailcoat and a cravat over an empire waist or give me death.” She attempted to flip her hair, forgetting that it was now much shorter.

Seb stifled a laugh. “You could have been my bear,” he said with a wicked grin.