Shades of Darkness (5 page)

Oliver gave him a squeeze. And I knew, then, that Ethan wasn't just upset about the grade. He was upset about
why
he'd gotten the grade. In a few weeks we'd be hearing back from colleges, and once that happened, the happy little dream of the three of us living in this Eden together would shatter. I knew Ethan was trying to make the most of the time he had with Oliver. And I knew it killed him that he couldn't have the boyfriend and the best friend and still keep his grades up.

Priorities, man. For some reason, art school fucked with them.

We parted ways at the steps leading to the cafeteria. Oliver gave Ethan another quick kiss and pecked me on the forehead. Then, with a backward glance and wave and “Make sure you get her at least one number!” he bounced up the stairs and into the bustling dining room. From the smell that wafted out, it was Chinese night. Definitely a good reason to eat off campus. Islington couldn't do fried rice to save its life, and the smell of soy sauce and General Tso's stuck to you for days.

“Sorry about that,” Ethan muttered as we walked down the drive to the parking lot.

“What?” I asked, looking away from the crow perched above the cafeteria door.

“Being grumpy. Oliver being . . . Oliver.”

“It's why I love him,” I said. Chris's face flashed through my mind.
Someone to melt my heart?
No way in hell; my heart was perfectly fine on its own, thanks. I stuffed the thought down into the shadows. “And it's why I love you. Tea will make everything better.”

“You're so British it hurts,” he said, and opened the passenger door of his old Lincoln town car for me. “But thankfully not with the teeth.”

He was the only person I knew under sixty who had those beaded seat covers. The rest of the interior was, like him, a study in presented chaos: Papers and art supplies were strewn over the backseat, though there wasn't any rubbish in the footwells or wrappers on the cushions. I'd spent so much time in this car that it felt like a second home, to the point where I kept a chunk of my art materials in here, just for occasions such as this. He sank into the driver's seat and turned the ignition on, cranking up the frozen heat. Some whiny indie band came on, a “local favorite” as he liked to say, which just meant they played banjo and hadn't had a tour outside of the state.

“Shall we?” he asked.

I nodded, and we pulled out of the lot and onto the narrow road leading into town. The birds in the branches watched us the entire way, and I couldn't fight down the shadowy mantra in my mind, no matter how loud he blared his music.

A murder of crows. A murder of crows.
And the dream, like a stain in the night air—the face of my ex watching me through the bleeding boughs.

Never ignore an omen.

The teahouse was at the edge of the nearby town, down a small side street between a secondhand store and the organic supermarket. Fairy lights swayed back and forth above the alley like mutinous stars ready to fall. It was a good twenty-minute drive, seeing as Islington was settled far outside of civilization. I don't know how Ethan had found out about this place, but I was glad he did; T'Chai Nanni was a second sanctuary, a more urban Islington. The café itself was a small house stuck in the side of a shopping center. A wooden porch stretched out front, covered by more fairy lights and a tin roof laden with snow. Empty chairs and cushions were arranged in circles on the patio, braziers and wine barrels in between. On warmer nights, they had live acoustic bands out here, or poetry readings, and the chairs would be swamped with hipsters smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and hippies smelling like patchouli and weed. Like I said, a more urban Islington, hipsters and pot smoke and all.

By the time we pulled up, the first of the flurries had begun drifting down from the sky. I smiled as I stepped out of the car, tilting back my head and sticking out my tongue. I didn't catch any flakes. Ethan trudged over to my side and held my hand and did the same. Silently. We stood there for a good minute or so, waiting for snow to drop and dissolve. The air was sharp and metallic and smelled of cumin and cold, a strange balance of ice and warmth from T'Chai Nanni. No matter what, the first moments of snowfall always made me feel like a little kid, like anything was possible and everything was beautiful.

Lately, it seemed, I needed that reminder more and more often.

After a while, Ethan squeezed my hand and stepped aside to grab our portfolios from the back of his car. I opened my eyes and stared up at the crows darting about like black comets.
Dark omens. Shut up, Kaira, you're being ridiculous.
Then Ethan handed me my portfolio and began walking toward the café, and I followed, trying to push down the scent of blood lingering in my nostrils.

T'Chai Nanni was warm and humid and smelled like cardamom and cloves, which immediately brought my brain back to reality. The birds were just birds, and everything else was my tired imagination trying to fill in the blanks. Chalk one up to the artist's brain: always creating, and especially great at creating problems.

Plinky guitar music drifted from the speakers. It felt like being in some hippie hobbit hole: The walls were all rustic wood, the ceiling exposed rafters and prayer flags; bronze elephant statues and paintings from local artists made up the eclectic decor. And—the first real blessing of the day—all the mismatched chairs and tables were empty. The coming snow must have scared people off.

“Score,” Ethan said.

The back curtain opened and Veronica stepped out. She was maybe forty, with light blond hair and green eyes and a willowy frame. As the owner, she also knew tea better than anyone else. On many occasions, Ethan and I had plotted how to steal her away to be our Tea Mistress in our future bungalow.

“Evening, Veronica,” I said, hanging my coat on one of the cast brass fingers sticking out from the entry. An electric heater hummed below it.

“Nice night, eh?” she asked.

“Lovely,” Ethan said.

“Hungry?”

We both nodded. “Hungry” was an understatement.

“On it.” She disappeared into the small back kitchen and Ethan and I took up our usual space in the far corner. The two sofas here were plush red velvet, the arms and cushions faded and threadbare. Ethan chucked off his sweater and threw it over the back, then unzipped his portfolio and began rooting through projects. I shuffled around in my own bag and pulled out a couple of papers, spreading them on the Tarot-card-mod-podge table in front of us.

Veronica came by a few minutes later bearing a tray with two handmade teapots and thick mugs. There were also two bowls of soup and a steaming loaf of fresh bread.

“You're an angel,” Ethan said when she set the pot of faerie's blood tea in front of him.

“And you're a fabulous brown-noser,” Veronica replied, reaching over to hand me my pot of spiced lemongrass chai. Our orders were predictable, but since she hand-blended the teas each time we came in, the taste was always just a little bit different.

“What's on the agenda for tonight?” I asked her. I poured a stream of milky tea from the pot; the scent was almost heavenly enough to make me forget my looming thesis. Almost.

Veronica reached into one of her apron pockets and pulled out a novel with a half-naked man on the cover and a woman kneeling in front of him, hands on his chest.

“The classics,” she said with a wry smile. Veronica had once admitted to doing a PhD in English literature; it had been enough to turn her away from reading “good” books for life. It also earned her another point in my eternal devotion department. That and her wicked-good chai.

“Can I borrow it after you?” Ethan asked, rooting around in his bag.

“Not until you give me back the other ten I've lent you.”

“Nine,” Ethan said. “The tenth was a gift. You said so yourself.”

Veronica just laughed and ruffled his hair before going over to a loveseat by the kitchen curtain to read.

With that, we settled in to working on our theses. Neither of us said anything for the first half hour or so. The music faded into the background and mingled with the occasional rumble of wind and the door didn't open once to admit new customers. The warmth of chai sank into my bones as the electric caffeine buzz heated my veins. This was familiar. This was what I needed. Work was always the best answer for putting the past behind you. And yes, I realized what sort of complex that would create in my future years. It worked for now.

My project both terrified and exhilarated me, which was how I knew I was doing the right thing. I was going to be presenting with two other artists, and I had an entire thirty-foot stretch of hallway to fill. It was supposed to be thematic, to showcase the culmination of my work at Islington. Two years of practice and prep, two years of late nights and frustrated tears and way too much caffeine. Two years to sum up in a single, week-long showcase.

And I was making Tarot cards.

Well, paintings of Tarot cards. The eventual goal was to scan them and package them as a deck, but for right now I had a series of eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch paintings depicting most of the Major and some of the Minor Arcana. Tonight's project was finishing up The Hierophant. I pulled out the canvas and the photo of Barista Ike and a few magazines. This card was all about ritual and formality, the sort of guidance that comes through process and strict mysticism. At least, in my view. Which meant a painting of Ike on a golden collage throne, holding a cross and a horned moon and sitting in a temple I'd constructed of photos of Stonehenge and Ethiopian mystics and anything else I could find in
National Geographic
or travel magazines. It was still in that “hot mess” phase of creation, where nothing really fit together quite yet. But it was getting there. Slowly.

As I scoured magazines, I kept glancing up at Ethan, a knot slowly forming in my gut. He reclined on the sofa with
Great Expectations
propped open in one hand, his eyebrows furrowed and his lips occasionally dancing along with his reading. We'd been performing this ritual weekly for the last year and a half, and even now, in the depths of February, there was something about this that seemed hopeful, like together we were on the verge of discovering something greater about ourselves. And there were only a few months left until we graduated. How many more times would we sit in this same location and worry about homework and art while the rest of the world slumbered on?

He glanced up at me and gave me a cocky little grin.

“Planning on drawing me like one of your French girls?” he asked.

I blushed, but I didn't look away. Winter always made me think of firsts and lasts.

“I'm going to miss you,” I said. I gestured to the café. “All this.”

The smile dropped off in a heartbeat, his face softening.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

I sighed. My life seemed like one giant timeline right now: College applications were in, which meant two weeks until my thesis, one or two months until I heard back from colleges, then another month or two before graduation and then . . . I had no idea.

“You, me,” I said. He and I had always had a joking relationship. Banter was how we showed we cared.

He nodded slowly. We'd each applied to four colleges, and only two overlapped. For me, they were both
reach
schools. My grades were good. My art was good. But I wasn't certain they were good enough. And, judging from how many panic attacks Ethan had while applying (often remedied by me buying him ice cream and walking through the snowy woods or by the lake together), I knew he felt the same.

“We're going to be fine, you know,” he said. He looked into my eyes when he said it, which was kind of unusual for him when being serious—he had that way of glancing off into the distance dreamily, like he was choosing his words from the ether. This new gaze reminded me of Chris. “Even if we don't get in together, we'll still be in touch. I mean, c'mon, we're practically married. You're stuck with me for life, whether you want to be or not.”