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She became fully alert. She became so alert she couldn’t move. She became a scientific instrument designed to measure the effects and properties of Georgie Redmayne. She was a barometer registering the precise degree to which Georgie’s presence changed the weight of the air in the room, and a telescope focusing on the galaxies hidden behind the sky blue of their eyes, and a thermometer with its sealed liquid expanding and contracting as Georgie…hesitated uncomfortably on the threshold.
“Um,” they said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have…”
“Come in.” She sat up so quickly her vision sparkled at the edges.
Georgie was still hesitating. “Mrs. Pegg said there aren’t any rooms made up for guests.”
“There aren’t.” Her voice was unnaturally high. “We haven’t had a guest since Aunt Susan. Her room won’t do. Birds are roosting in the rafters.” Did this necessitate explanation? “Broken window. Agnes. Papa’s armillary sphere.” She was leaving out the connections, but there was no need to belabor the explanation. Not when everything she said emerged with such an awkward squeak.
“It won’t do,” she repeated.
“Mrs. Pegg said I should sleep here. But if you’d prefer, I could go roost.”
Elfreda huffed a laugh, relaxing. “You’re too tired to climb up to the rafters. And sleeping below roosting birds is revolting.”
Georgie stepped into the room, glancing about with curiosity. There wasn’t much to see. The room was dim even by day, with dark oak-paneled walls, dark oak floors, bulky oak furniture casting perpetual shadows.
“Is that Mrs. Pegg’s?” she asked, and they looked down at their nightgown, too short and too wide.
“Yes,” they said. “She insisted. It was very generous, and also very intimidating. I’m relieved she no longer thinks I’m a swamp demon.”
They didn’t take another step.
Elfreda swallowed. “You’ll catch cold if you stand there.” She twitched the counterpane, flipping a corner back.
Their gaze filled with light. They crossed the room in three bounds, deposited the wildly flickering candle on the table, and swung themself up onto the bed.
They slid under the covers.
“Are those your feet?” Elfreda gasped. “You’re an ice demon. Is this what ice demons do? Drain their victims’ warmth with their toes?”
“With their fangs, please. A demon can’t attack with their toes. No one would take them seriously.” Georgie attacked. She felt their mouth on the crook of her neck, then the edges of their teeth.
“Your hair still smells like smoke,” she whispered. She’d scrubbed herself in the tub, washed her hair and wrung it out, and Georgie had too, but beneath the scent of soap, the scent of smoke lingered, the strange hot smoke of lightning strikes, and lightning too, and even thunder.
They lifted their head and lowered their mouth onto hers.
Warmth flowed into her.
“You wanted to do this,” she whispered, between kisses, “for years?”
They eased back, hands cradling her face. “Years.” They kissed her, one perfect, perfectly self-contained kiss, parted lips, warm glide of tongue. “And years.” They kissed her again, gossamer light, a kiss that was mostly heat and breath and made her ache for more. “And years.”
“How did you know?” She kissed them.
“It was something I felt. And hoped would go away.”
She withdrew far enough to peer into their eyes. “Why?”
“You didn’t feel the same. The more I thought of you, the less you seemed to think of me, and the worse. Call it self-preservation.”
Her skin rippled with gooseflesh. “That’s not why you stopped coming to Twynham?” As soon as she said it, she blushed, waiting for them to mock her presumption.
“In part.”
Their toes weren’t cold anymore. Her feet were between their feet, her knee between their knees. Their hand moved lazily through her damp hair, then drifted down, stroking from her temple to her jaw.
“But how did you know that you could kiss girls at all?” She was blushing so hotly Georgie could probably detect it with their finger, which was now tracing small circles high on her cheekbone. “I’d never read or heard or seen anything to make me think that kissing wasn’t just for…”
