“Believe it or not, they came to the carnival looking for a lion shifter that was causing some trouble,” he said. “I helped them resolve the problem without anyone getting hurt, which impressed them. So the League sent me to college and law school on scholarships and funneled me right into the legal department. And the name change? Lancaster, Ohio was the last place I saw you. I didn’t want my dad to be able to find me. I can’t believe you’re using your real name. Aren’t you worried about your mother tracking you down?”
“That was part of my agreement with the League, that they help me stay invisible to the outside world,” Cordelia said. “In my initial contract, I asked for all sorts of conditions to protect my anonymity. The League bought my apartment under an LLC. They process my mail and my bills. I have almost no digital footprint or trackable financials.”
“So not entirely different from traveling, then,” Alex replied.
“Exactly,” Cordelia said.
“It’s sort of strange, thinking that kids don’t grow up the way we did anymore.”
Cordelia shrugged. “It’s more difficult to get people excited about contortionists and clowns when they have the wonders of the internet. Plus, people are more suspicious than they used to be. Do you ever miss it?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “It took me a long time to get used to staying in one place for months at a time. The weather gets warm and my feet get kind of itchy, you know? I just want to climb in my car and start driving for parts unknown. And then I remember I have bills and condo payments and I snap out of it. So, what have you been up to?”
“Oh, this and that.” She burst out laughing. Alex was still so normal, in that way she’d craved normalcy like oxygen when she was younger. “I’ll try to sum up fourteen years in a few sentences. Honestly, I’ve been well. Happy. Settled. I like my work with the League. I tried to contact you, early on. After I left, I sent letters to the AAM, hoping that they’d catch up with you, but you never responded.”
His brow furrowed. Mail was a problem for people who moved constantly, so a long-standing practice among carnies was to use the offices of American Amusements Magazine as their mailing address. The trade magazine staff was kind enough to forward the addressee’s mail along the carnival’s planned route. When she’d first left the carnival, she’d practically flooded AAM’s offices with long, heartfelt letters, telling Alex that they could still be together. She told him about the job she’d found in DC, her little apartment. She’d written him for months, and he’d never responded. She’d been so lonely. She’d spent her entire childhood wishing she could be alone and then she’d had it and she’d hated it. It had taken two years for her to get used to it, to appreciate it.
He shook his head. “I never got any letters. If I had, I would have come to find you.”
Cordelia insisted, “I wrote dozens of them, for months.”
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “My dad was always the one to check the mail.”
Cordelia nodded, pursing her lips. She’d expected it to hurt more, the cauterizing of that wound. It helped, she supposed, that it hadn’t been Alex who rejected her, but his father. “He was never a fan of mine.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “If I had known you were still out there, waiting for me, I…I would have come looking for you. But you were gone without a word and I thought that was some sort of sign. That you didn’t really want me anymore, so I took the hint.”
“It wouldn’t have done us any good, because I was still pretty much under my mother’s thumb then,” she said, shaking her head. “And you were still under your father’s. We were kids, Alex.”
“Still hurts,” he said, smiling sadly. “Thinking of what could have been. I even got married, thinking it would help me move on to be with someone else. It crashed and burned within a year.”
That stung, more than she’d expected it to. She’d known in some small corner of her mind, that one day, he would be out in the world, connected to someone else. But the confirmation burned like hell. “So where does this leave us?”
“Where do you want it to leave us?” He reached for her, his fingertips nearly brushing hers. She snatched her hands back out of instinct, but was glad that she’d done so when she saw the sullen expression on his face. “That’s still an issue?”
“Yes, psychic powers don’t go away when you’re an adult,” she cried. “It’s not like acne!”
Frustration boiled up within her, burning away the rose-tinged nostalgic light of her memories and making way for recollections of the moments that weren’t so golden between them. He was patient. He’d been kind. But he’d also been a teenage boy, demanding, stubborn, occasionally petulant. She’d let herself forget the arguments and petty fights, the moments he’d made her feel small and damaged because of her gift, without saying a word.
She pulled away from him, backing toward her own trailer. “This leaves us as two people who knew each other a long time ago, and barely know each other now.”
“Cordelia.” He started to follow her, but she held up her hand.
“Treat me like the stranger you thought I was,” she told him.
9
Brendan
Something was wrong with Cordelia.
She wouldn’t talk to him, beyond very perfunctory basic pleasantries, before scurrying off. She barely made eye contact with him. It was like she was allowing him to observe her from a distance. She was coming out of her trailer more often, which was good. She was going to the pie shop for meals regularly, usually in the company of Sonja, Jillian, or Dani, and he was pleased for her. She spent an amount of time with the hulking mayor that would worry Brendan, if he himself hadn’t seen how devoted Zed was to Dani.
Brendan stood at the main office lot, smearing SPF 50 into his pale skin and waiting for his partner to show up for work. He’d been thrilled to finally receive the “go ahead” email from Jillian the evening before, and he’d fairly bounced out of bed that morning. They would be stuck in a confined space together for hours today; she would have to talk to him.
That sounded bad, even in his head.
How had things between them gone so wrong so quickly? They’d had such a sweet moment together in his living room, but the next day, she’d turn so cold.
He tried to tell himself that it didn’t matter, that she was just a coworker in this mad project that would be over within just a few months, and then he would never see her again. But somehow, the idea that she was angry and avoiding him weighed on his chest like an anchor.
He leaned against the car they were assigned from the League fleet. The metal felt warm as bathwater through his clothes, but it was still more palatable than the temperatures when they’d first arrived. It wasn’t cold exactly, just less humid and less abominably hot. It was bizarre the difference a couple of weeks could make.
Very little had changed about his limbo-like situation beyond the weather and some executive-type moving into the trailer at the end of the row. Bael told Brendan that the man’s name was Alex Lancaster, and he was the cause of most of Jillian’s recent heartburn, so he’d taken what was an instant and probably undeserved dislike to the man. Lancaster seemed to have a bit of city spit-and-polish to him, all bespoke clothes and grammar too perfect to be natural. It all came across as someone that was trying too hard to cover up rough roots.