She wanted to run away. She wanted to run as fast as she could, all the way back up to the path and up the stairs and down the hall and into her room. She wanted to hide under the bed—only she didn’t know why.
Kiss me, she thought. That’s what I want.
I want him to kiss me.
My first kiss.
And I want it to be here, on the beach, with this dark-eyed boy.
Her eyes were wide. The boy smiled, his teeth as sharp and white as his eyes were round and dark. He leaned his face closer to hers.
Her wish was about to be granted.
Then he whispered, so quietly that she almost couldn’t hear him over the ocean wind.
“You want me to kiss you, don’t you?”
“No,” she said. But it was a lie.
“You know why you want me to kiss you?” he asked.
She said nothing.
“Because I wanted you to.”
Then he pulled his head back and started laughing. Ridley started crying.
“Don’t mistake me for a Mortal again,” he said. “I’m not your Shoreling, or whatever you called it. I’m one of the most powerful Casters alive.”
“You wish,” Ridley said, suddenly bold. “You’re just a dumb Caster boy. And my Gramma is a thousand times more powerful than you.”
He took a sandy step closer to her. “Yeah? Prove it.”
This fight was as exhilarating as the kiss.
As the kiss might have been, she reminded herself.
She closed her eyes.
Kiss me.
I want you to want to kiss me.
And as if he was listening, he brought his face toward hers, his eyes wide open, as if he couldn’t believe it himself.
She felt her powers relaxing over him, enveloping them. She’d never used them before, not like this. Not so knowingly on another person, especially not another Caster.
She liked how they made her feel—strong, independent, invincible.
He brought his lips to hers… closer and closer.
Now his eyes were shut.
“This is for you,” she whispered, her voice as low and husky as his had been moments before. “So you never forget. My name is Ridley Duchannes, and nobody tells me what to do. If I want you to kiss me, believe me, you’ll want to kiss me.”
The boy was speechless.
“Is that what you want?”
He nodded.
“More than anything?”
He nodded again.
“Good.”
Then she slapped his face as hard as she could and turned and ran all the way back up the path.
Ridley sat up on the mattress, feeling like she’d just remembered something important. It was only when she heard Link playing “Burger Boy” from the practice room that she realized where she was—and why.
The crowd was gone, and so was Floyd. All Rid could hear was Link.
“Patty, oh, Patty, you’re not real Fatty / and you’re only kinda Bratty / my ham-burger Patty.”
Ridley lay back down on the mattress, staring at the cracks in the ceiling until the set ended and the sun was high. By either measure, it was one of the longest nights of her life.
She would get Link in this Caster band and then get him right out again. Devil’s Hangnail. Whatever. She wasn’t going to let him ruin his life for her or for anyone else. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to let her life be ruined by some stupid gambling debt.
Or by the crazy feeling she was being watched. Or by the even crazier thought that she was being threatened by a Necromancer with a Vindicabo Cast from the unseen world.
Or, craziest of all, by the idea that some rocker girl named Floyd thought she could steal her boyfriend.
Link Floyd? Never going to happen.
Because her name was Ridley Duchannes, and nobody told her what to do.
Nobody.
CHAPTER 11
Read Between the Lies
In the morning, Ridley left apartment 2D and came downstairs to see Link sitting alone in a booth in Marilyn’s Diner, talking into his cell phone.
Interesting.
A cold cup of untouched coffee sat in front of him. He was wearing Mario and Luigi on his T-shirt, which meant only one thing: Link was feeling nostalgic and sentimental. That usually meant trouble for Ridley, who never admitted to feeling much of either.
She moved toward Link, wary. She was wearing her favorite fishnets, her peep-toe suede booties, her buckled mini-kilt, and her oldest black T-shirt. All of her most trusted comfort clothes—yet somehow, this morning they weren’t doing the trick.
Ridley didn’t know why she felt so off her game. Nothing around her looked that out of the ordinary. Spinning fans turned above a long counter in the center of the room. A faded New York City Department of Health certificate hung on the wall next to an out-of-date calendar featuring Marilyn Monroe, the namesake of the diner. Not a Siren, as far as Ridley knew, but she should’ve been. Rising behind the counter, dusty glass shelves offered sticky doughnuts with frosting stained by old colored sprinkles. Stale slices of cake in plastic wrap leaned against oversize chocolate muffins or mini boxes of sugar cereal or small pitchers dripping with maple syrup—in other words, Siren bait. She could smell it in the air.
But Rid was the only Siren in the diner, of that she was pretty certain. The counter and vinyl-covered stools were crowded with nose-ringed students, tattooed arty types, even stressed-looking office folks in jackets and running shoes—mostly Mortals, it seemed. When she walked past them, they avoided her eyes, as if they knew something she didn’t. As if there was something about her they didn’t want to know.