Damn.
“I’m fine,” Karou said, and she kept on resolutely in the direction of Poison Kitchen. What was she supposed to do, smack her forehead and claim to have remembered an errand, after all that? She wondered what Zuzana would say if she could see Brimstone’s little beast messenger, his bat wings so bizarre on his feathered body. Being Zuzana, she’d probably want to make a marionette version of him.
“How’s the puppet project coming?” Karou asked, trying to act normal.
Zuzana brightened and started to tell her. Karou half listened, but she was distracted by her jumbled defiance and anxiety. What would Brimstone do if she didn’t come? What could he do, come out and get her?
She was aware of Kishmish following, and as she ducked under the arch into the courtyard of Poison Kitchen, she gave him a pointed look as if to say, I see you. And I’m not coming. He cocked his head at her, perplexed, and she left him there and went inside.
The cafe was crowded, though Kaz, blessedly, was nowhere to be seen. A mix of local laborers, backpackers, expat artist types, and students hung out at the coffins, the fume of their cigarettes so heavy the Roman statues seemed to loom from a fog, ghoulish in their gas masks.
“Damn,” said Karou, seeing a trio of scruffy backpackers lounging at their favorite table. “Pestilence is taken.”
“Everything is taken,” said Zuzana. “Stupid Lonely Planet book. I want to go back in time and mug that damn travel writer at the end of the alley, make sure he never finds this place.”
“So violent. You want to mug and tase everybody these days.”
“I do,” Zuzana agreed. “I swear I hate more people every day. Everyone annoys me. If I’m like this now, what am I going to be like when I’m old?”
“You’ll be the mean old biddy who fires a BB gun at kids from her balcony.”
“Nah. BBs just rile ’em up. More like a crossbow. Or a bazooka.”
“You’re a brute.”
Zuzana dropped a curtsy, then took another frustrated look around at the crowded cafe. “Suck. Want to go somewhere else?”
Karou shook her head. Their hair was already soaked; she didn’t want to go back out. She just wanted her favorite table in her favorite cafe. In her jacket pocket, her fingers toyed with the store of shings from the week’s errands. “I think those guys are about to leave.” She nodded to the backpackers at Pestilence.
“I don’t think so,” said Zuzana. “They have full beers.”
“No, I think they are.” Between Karou’s fingers, one of the shings dematerialized. A second later, the backpackers rose to their feet. “Told you.”
In her head, she fancied she heard Brimstone’s commentary:
Evicting strangers from cafe tables: selfish.
“Weird,” was Zuzana’s response as the girls slipped behind the giant horse statue to claim their table. Looking bewildered, the backpackers left. “They were kind of cute,” said Zuzana.
“Oh? You want to call them back?”
“As if.” They had a rule against backpacker boys, who blew through with the wind, and started to all look the same after a while, with their stubbly chins and wrinkled shirts. “I was simply making a diagnosis of cuteness. Plus, they looked kind of lost. Like puppies.”
Karou felt a pang of guilt. What was she doing, defying Brimstone, spending wishes on mean things like forcing innocent backpackers out into the rain? She flopped onto the couch. Her head ached, her hair was clammy, she was tired, and she couldn’t stop worrying about the Wishmonger. What would he say?
The entire time she and Zuzana were eating their goulash, her gaze kept straying to the door.
“Watching for someone?” Zuzana asked.
“Oh. Just… just afraid Kaz might turn up.”
“Yeah, well, if he does, we can wrestle him into this coffin and nail it shut.”
“Sounds good.”
They ordered tea, which came in an antique silver service, the sugar and creamer dishes engraved with the words arsenic and strychnine.
“So,” said Karou, “you’ll see violin boy tomorrow at the theater. What’s your strategy?”
“I have no strategy,” said Zuzana. “I just want to skip all this and get to the part where he’s my boyfriend. Not to mention, you know, the part where he’s aware I exist.”
“Come on, you wouldn’t really want to skip this part.”
“Yes I would.”
“Skip meeting him? The butterflies, the pounding heart, the blushing? The part where you enter each other’s magnetic fields for the first time, and it’s like invisible lines of energy are drawing you together—”
“Invisible lines of energy?” Zuzana repeated. “Are you turning into one of those New Age weirdos who wear crystals and read people’s auras?”
“You know what I mean. First date, holding hands, first kiss, all the smoldering and yearning?”
“Oh, Karou, you poor little romantic.”
“Hardly. I was going to say the beginning is the good part, when it’s all sparks and sparkles, before they are inevitably unmasked as ass**les.”
Zuzana grimaced. “They can’t all be ass**les, can they?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe just the pretty ones.”
“But he is pretty. God, I hope he’s not an ass**le. Do you think there’s any chance he’s both a non-orifice and single? I mean, seriously. What are the chances?”
“Slim.”
“I know.” Zuzana slumped dramatically back and lay crumpled like a discarded marionette.
“Pavel likes you, you know,” said Karou. “He’s a certified non-orifice.”
“Yes, well, Pavel’s sweet, but he does not give of the butterflies.”
“The butterflies in the belly.” Karou sighed. “I know. You know what I think? I think the butterflies are always there in your belly, in everyone, all the time—”
“Like bacteria?”
“No, not like bacteria, like butterflies, and some people’s butterflies react to other people’s, on a chemical level, like pheromones, so that when they’re nearby, your butterflies start to dance. They can’t help it—it’s chemical.”
“Chemical. Now that’s romantic.”