“Are you going to turn around to ski with the team?” she asked.
“No,” Yarrow said. She didn’t slow down.
Maria squinted at the approaching team, Rush encouraging them from behind like a big, implacable sheepdog. Yarrow blew past the oncoming team without even a nod.
“If you don’t ski with the team, why come out now?” Maria asked. “I mean, if you don’t want the company, why not ski earlier? Or later?”
“Lila likes me to interact with my peers.”
“Ah.”
Yarrow poured on a burst of speed and Maria let her pull ahead. She skied in the girl’s tracks for several thoughtful minutes. She looked up a while later, startled to find Yarrow already kicking off her skis in front of a little shack on the bank of the mainland. It was a warming hut or an old fish house or something, Maria saw as she moved closer. Yarrow disappeared inside and Maria picked up the pace, her long legs eating up the distance to the shore. There were, she mused, some marked benefits to unseemly height.
She reached the banks, kicked off her own skis and joined Yarrow inside the little hut. “What is this place?” she asked, following the girl’s lead and propping a boot on the bench to stretch out.
“It’s Einar’s fish house. He leaves it here at the turnaround so I can cool down out of the wind.”
Maria peered out the tiny slit cut at eye level into the wall. The trees were thick enough to conceal whatever lay behind them. “Where are we?”
“Just north of Thunder Bay.”
“Canada?”
“No, France.”
Maria stuck out her tongue at Yarrow’s back.
“So,” she said, switching legs along with the subject. “You don’t ever ski with the team?”
“No.” Yarrow went to work on her hamstrings.
“You don’t get lonely? Don’t miss having friends?”
A bitter laugh shot into the air. “No.”
“How about your family?” she asked. “You miss them?”
Yarrow said nothing and Maria pressed a little harder. “You’re what—a junior now? You’ll be making college decisions pretty soon. I’ll bet your folks are all over you about SAT scores.”
“They don’t care about my SAT scores.”
Maria made her voice skeptical. “No?”
“Bigger fish to fry and all that.”
“Bigger than their daughter’s future?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Like what?” Maria didn’t figure she’d get an answer, but that had never stopped her from asking a question. That plus the judicious application of some friendly silence sometimes yielded fascinating results.
“They have their hands full keeping my sainted brother alive,” Yarrow said, going after her quads like they had personally offended her. “It doesn’t leave them much time to worry about their perennially fucked-up firstborn.”
Maria chewed on that for a moment. “You have a brother?” she asked.
“Stevie,” Yarrow said. “He has cystic fibrosis. Been drowning in his own lung crap from the moment of conception. Pale, perpetually suffering and saintlike in his endurance. In other words, my complete opposite.”
“You’re pretty darn pale,” Maria observed.
Yarrow rolled her eyes. “And oh so saintly.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Yarrow yanked her arm across her chest and worked viciously at her triceps. “Who would? I’m the devil, didn’t you know?”
“I thought you were more a slut.” Maria gave her an innocent look. “Isn’t that the whole idea behind the maiden thing? The goddess of sulky, sexy energy?”
“You
have
been paying attention.” Yarrow surprised her with a laugh. “Good for you.”
“Are you?”
“What, a slut or the devil?”
“Either.” Maria paused. “Both. You pick.”
For a long time, Maria didn’t think Yarrow would answer. The silence stretched out between them, broken only by the quiet in and out of their breathing. Maria bent her forehead to her knee and sighed at the blessed release of her hamstrings.
“I got arrested last spring,” Yarrow said abruptly. A fierce thread of self-hatred ran under a surface calm like an underground lava flow. Maria froze for an instant, then resumed her leisurely stretch.
“That’s what Einar meant last week? About your folks getting some charges dropped?”
“Yeah. We got picked up for possession, me and my friend Jilly and this guy we were both into.” She snorted. “Or maybe we were just into the shit he sold us. Hard to tell now. But we were all pretty high when we got pulled over. And wouldn’t you know, the glove box was full of pot?”
“It happens when you ride around with drug dealers.”
“It wasn’t his car. It was Jilly’s.” She shrugged. “And
that’s
what happens when you fuck drug dealers then lend them your car.”
“I see.”
“And when the police put us in separate rooms and asked us who the pot belonged to, Jilly said it was his. He said it was Jilly’s.”
“And you?”
“I lied,” Yarrow said baldly, as if daring Maria to judge her. To condemn her. “I knew he had a record and would go to jail if I told the truth. I also knew Jilly wouldn’t. Her rich parents would get her a slap on the wrist.” She looked Maria straight in the eye and said, “But mostly? Mostly, I wanted Jilly out of the way so I could have him myself.”
“What happened?”
“Jilly got probation from the state. She got Catholic boarding school from her parents.” There was a burning brightness in her black eyes a less sympathetic person might have mistaken for evil or, at the very least, heartlessness. Maria knew better. “I told you her parents were rich.”
“Did she forgive you?”
“Not exactly.” Yarrow threw her a wretched smile from the snow-packed floor, where she’d dropped to work on her gluts. “Every guy in the greater metro area now thinks I’ll suck his dick for a dollar’s worth of meth.”
“Ouch.” Maria drew her arm across her chest to stretch her triceps. “Was he worth it? The guy?”
“He threw me a gratitude fuck and moved on. Fast.”
“Ouch again. What did you do?”
“Oh, I went
high
drama. Swallowed a bunch of pills, a fifth of Jack and put myself in the hospital.” Yarrow didn’t look up, just shook her head as she bent over her knee. “As it turns out, my parents only sympathize with kids whose health problems are involuntary. So here”—she waved an expansive hand—“I am.”
Maria didn’t say anything. She didn’t figure Yarrow expected her to. She let the silence play out while she tried to decide where to step next. Yarrow had revealed more than Maria had dared hope and she didn’t want to break whatever unexpected magic had prompted the confidences.
Apparently, she waited a beat too long, because the girl suddenly leaped to her feet.
“You know what? Whatever.” She snatched up her backpack and headed for the door. “Like it matters.”
Maria jumped up and said, “Yarrow, wait! Let me—”
Yarrow shoved her arms into the pack and turned on Maria with a hard smirk. “Jesus, settle down. I’m just going to pee, not kill myself. I’m not stupid enough to try that shit twice.”
“See that you don’t,” Maria said, with deliberate coolness. Everything in her said it would put Yarrow more at ease than some heartfelt speech. “I’m counting on drafting off you on the way back to the island. I’m not as young as I once was, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” Yarrow said, her smirk losing a degree or two of ice as she pushed through the door. “Granny.”
“Bite your tongue,” Maria said mildly.
Yarrow laughed as the door swung shut behind her, but Maria watched with worried eyes as the woods behind the hut swallowed the girl up with alarming ease.
ON FRIDAY night, Maria let Rush lead her into the circle Lila had cast in her snowy backyard. Flaming torchères on long bamboo stakes marked the compass points, their tongues of fire spearing straight up into the still night air. Not a breath of wind stirred the flames, while beyond them, through the trees, the lake was a serene white stretch glittering under a gibbous moon.
Maria wore nothing but the thin white shift Lila had provided, and her hair bounced crazily on the crystalline air, but she didn’t feel the cold. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe it was the sauna Lila had insisted she take beforehand, but even her bare feet radiated heat.
She saw Lila waiting for them by her backyard altar, and Rush threaded his fingers through hers.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked softly. He didn’t seem to feel the cold either, and he wasn’t wearing much more than she was—a boy-cut version of the same thin tunic thing, his in black.
“Sure.” The strength and calm that were his essence flowed into her through their joined hands and steadied her. “It’s a protection ceremony. How could it hurt?”
“You look nervous.”
“I was.” She lifted her shoulders as if to say,
Go figure
. “But I trust you.” She smiled. “Let’s do this thing.”
They joined Lila in front of her altar, where three slim candles—black, white and purple—burned.
“Merry meet, children,” Lila said. She glanced at their tunics with disapproval. “You’re sure you wouldn’t prefer to do this sky-clad?”
“Sky-clad?” Maria looked to Rush for translation.
“Naked.”
“Hell, no.” Maria looked back at Lila, her free arm over her chest, where she knew her nipples were beaded and plainly visible against the thin white material. “This is bad enough.”
Lila sighed. “All right, then. Let’s get started.” She laid her hands over Maria’s and Rush’s joined ones. “I come before the goddess this night, in the fullness of the moon, to seek Her blessing on Maria. To anoint Rush Her champion and to request for him Our Lord and Lady’s strength that he may turn aside any wickedness that seeks Maria, and defeat any who wish her harm.” She lifted her arms to the nearly full moon hanging bright and low in the sky, tossed back her head and proclaimed, “An’ the goddess will it.”
“So mote it be,” Rush said.
Lila folded her arms over her chest in what looked like some sort of ritual cross. “Begin,” she said to Rush.
A wave of awareness washed over Maria, along with something prickly and powerful and unknown. She kept her eyes pinned to Rush, somehow sensing it emanated from him.
She stood silent and waiting, her arms loose, her hands relaxed in spite of her exquisite vulnerability. She was all but naked, yet she burned. Burned with heat, yes, but with hunger, too. For what she didn’t know. All she knew was that relief could come only from the man standing before her with an answering hunger in his eyes.
Rush turned to the altar and picked up the white candle burning there. With his left hand he reached across his body to hold the candle above Maria’s left shoulder. His eyes hot on hers, he tipped it, allowing a single drop of melted white wax to fall onto her skin. Skin that was already too hot even to register the sting.
With the candle, he drew a line in the air from her shoulder to her opposite hip. A tingling need sprang up in its wake, as if he’d stroked her with his hand. He stepped closer, brought the candle behind her back and the heat pumping off his body slid into hers. The half inch left between them went heavy and hot, and Maria forgot how to breathe.
He reached behind her with his other hand, the loop of his arms encircling but not touching her. Certainly close enough to touch, though, Maria thought wildly. Close enough to taste. To smell. She closed her eyes and dragged in a greedy lungful of him. Even with her eyes closed, she knew the taut swell of his shoulder was
right there
next to her cheek. All she had to do was lean forward a scant inch and put her mouth on it.
The hot splash of a second drop of wax joining the first on her shoulder startled her out of her lustful little daydream. God. She could see what Lila meant about paganism being very sex positive. She shook herself lightly and almost chuckled. She opened her eyes, ready to share the joke with Rush, but he wasn’t laughing. His eyes were on hers, direct, patient, serious.
He said, “My shield be thy shelter.”
Any urge to laugh died a swift and unsettling death with those old-fashioned words, spoken in that economical voice of his. Rush might not be a pagan anymore, and he might not believe in the ceremony Lila was performing, but this promise to protect her? To put her firmly under his aegis and take all comers until anybody who wished her harm was in bloody shreds at his feet? That was serious, and he was in deadly earnest.
Something shifted inside her, something huge and heavy and vital. She gazed at him in wonder while her internal landscape heaved and cracked like all her tectonic plates had come unexpectedly unmoored.
And suddenly Maria knew. Her body wasn’t responding to smoke and moonlight. Her head wasn’t turned by magic and goddesses. This wasn’t paganism. This wasn’t even that dangerous, heated hunger that lived inside her. This wasn’t sex at all. This was love.
She’d fallen in love with Rush.
Chapter 28
MARIA’S CAREFULLY constructed world had already sustained some heavy shelling over the past few days, but now it collapsed into rubble around her bare feet and she could only stare at the man responsible. She was in love? With Rush?
Her face must’ve shown her utter dismay because he gave her a reassuring look as he replaced the white candle. Then he took up the black candle, this time with his right hand.
Okay
, Maria thought. She tried to breathe while he drew another tip-tilted circle in the air around her with the candle, only in the opposite direction this time, right shoulder to left hip.
Okay, this is bad. It’s bad but it’s manageable. I can figure this out. I can—
A line of fiery want followed the candle across her skin and she knew she was lying to herself. She couldn’t figure this out. She couldn’t fix this. She was in love. With Rush, who refused to tolerate even polite social fictions, let alone all the willful dishonesty that made her little world go round. What the hell was she going to do?