Oliver smiled. “Here is something you may have noticed about Xavier. He is very, very dramatic.” As if to illustrate his point, he stretched his arms out and flopped backward onto my bed. Even with his legs hanging over the end and his feet touching the floor, he could almost reach my headboard with his fingers.
I waited for him to say something else, but it seemed like that was it. I scooted back so I could lean over him, and he grinned up at me. With his arms reaching like that, his shirt had ridden up, leaving a thin stretch of bare stomach between his shirt and his belted jeans. I tried very hard not to stare at it.
“So none of that stuff really happened?” I said.
“Xavier believes it did,” said Oliver placidly. “But no, I don’t think so.”
“Hmm.”
He reached over to touch my knee. “You seem disappointed.”
“I’m not,” I said, distracted by his hand. It wasn’t doing anything untoward, just resting on the fabric of my jeans, but between that and the little stretch of bare skin above his belt, I felt my cheeks start to heat up. “I mean, maybe a little? I don’t know, it’s just the thought of infinite magic. It’s so huge. Romantic, almost.”
“You think so?” he said, with genuine curiosity. “Seems overwhelming to me. I don’t know what I’d do with that much magic.”
I smiled down at him. “If I were a genie, I think I’d want infinite magic.”
“Yeah, I bet you would,” he said with a laugh.
I stretched myself out languidly beside him, looking up at the ceiling fan. “And a house furnished entirely with pillows and candles and drapey things.”
“Drapey things,” he echoed thoughtfully, his hand rubbing small circles on my leg. “Indeed.”
“And a magic carpet.”
“Obviously.”
“And a handsome young man whose only job is to fan me and feed me grapes.”
“A perfectly reasonable request. In fact . . . hmm.”
He sat up and pushed himself to his feet. I propped myself up on one elbow, watching curiously as he looked around. It was only a moment before he spied what he was looking for, sitting on my dresser.
When Oliver sat beside me again, he held my fern, now slightly more brittle than when he’d first given it to me. And he started to fan me with it. I laughed and buried my face in a pillow—and when I chanced a peek at him again, he was still waving the fern up and down, looking absolutely solemn.
“Does this please my lady?” he asked, in a fake accent that was probably supposed to be British. He looked at me expectantly, like he was awaiting further orders.
I cleared my throat, schooling my face into an expression as serious as his. “It pleases me greatly, handsome young man. But where are my grapes? I demand grapes.”
He tilted his head to the side, considering. “If thou desirest, lady, I could raid thy refrigerator and find grapes for thee.”
I grimaced as I pushed myself back up to a sitting position. “Bad idea. Parents. Downstairs.”
“Curses! Foiled again.”
“How about a kiss instead?”
“Oh?”
“Come now, handsome young man. I command it.”
A grin tugged as his lips, but he bowed his head to try and hide it. “As my master commands,” he said, “so shall it be.”
Setting the fern gently aside, he bent over and kissed me. One hand cradled my neck, fingers burying themselves in my hair and sending tingly prickles of magic shooting down my spine. I stretched into the sensation, leaning closer to him.
But after a short moment, Oliver broke the kiss, pulling away just far enough to give a little flick of his fingers. In an instant, my ordinary bed was gone, leaf-patterned bedspread and all. Instead, Oliver and I were surrounded on every side by silken drapes, all red and purple and gold, hanging languorously down from the framework of a four-poster bed. Soft, richly colored pillows cocooned us. I started at the sight of it.
“Too much?” asked Oliver. “I know you don’t like surprises, but you said you wanted drapey things. . . .”
“I did, yeah.” Even the sound of my own voice was more intimate, with all this fabric closing us in. “No, not too much. This is a good surprise.”
He lifted one of my hands and pressed it to the center of his chest. “And what else does my master command?” he asked. The phrase rolled comfortably from his lips. Too comfortably. I drew in a sharp breath, remembering.
He tilted his head to the side. “Margo? What is it?”
What does my master command? The Oliver illusion had said the same thing, in the same tone, with practically the same inflections, back in the parking lot. Right before he let Xavier kill him.
I grabbed his shirt in my hands and pulled him down toward me. “Kiss me,” I whispered. “Hard.”
Something flickered in his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. He pressed his mouth against mine, so hard it almost hurt, hard enough that it felt real, so real, and then I was pushing myself up against him, threading my fingers through his hair and holding tight and pulling and kissing him as hard as I could while his fingers sought out the small of my back, touching the skin just under my shirt, trailing magic everywhere, and before I knew it he was tumbling over onto the pillows and I was pinning him down with the weight of my body, feeling his breath moving his chest up and down beneath me, and my hands were holding his wrists firmly against the bedspread, just inches above his head.
We breathed together, silent. I looked at Oliver. Really looked at him: willingly trapped beneath me, watching me closely. He leaned up a little, as if to try kissing me again, but I pressed his wrists hard against the sheets. “Don’t,” I said.
He instantly went still. I could barely even feel him breathing. He was tense and coiled beneath me, waiting for my cue.
Want to play? echoed Xavier’s voice in my head.
“He said I want you gone,” I whispered. “Xavier. He said he saw that in my head—that I want you out of my life.”
His features went rigid. He pressed his lips together, and didn’t reply.
“Can you see that, too?” I asked.
Eyes still locked on mine, he nodded, very slowly.
My throat went tight. I forced myself to speak anyway. “That was Saturday night, though. I was angry, and I’m sorry. But I swear, I don’t want to lose you.”
“Sometimes you do, though,” he said, still making no move to escape my hold on him. “Sometimes you wish you’d never met me.”
I didn’t know if it was the words themselves, or the matter-of-fact way he said them, but suddenly I felt on the verge of tears. “Sometimes? As in more than once? How long have you been seeing that in my head?”
He smiled, sort of sadly. “Since the day you found my vessel.”
I drew in a sharp breath. “All that time?”
“Yes.”
“And you still . . . ?”
“Yes,” he said again. “I still let myself fall for you. No matter what you think about me when you’re sad or angry, there’s another part of you that’s very happy I’m in your life. And that’s the part you’ve acted on, the entire time I’ve known you.”
“I guess so, but—”
“Listen,” he interrupted. “Nobody ever feels just one way about another person, Margo. We’re so much more complicated than that. I can see a million things you want from me, just like the million things I want from you. Some of them are wonderful. Some are awful. Some contradict each other, and some don’t make any sense at all. But none of those things matter, not really. What matters is what you do about them.”
He spoke slowly and evenly, and for a moment I was silent, letting his words settle into the space around us, absolving me.
“You want a million things from me, too?” I asked. He nodded. “Like what?”
“Well, you already know the big ones,” he replied with a smile.
That was probably true, at least after our last conversation at Tom’s. He wanted acceptance. Love. A gir
lfriend who didn’t abuse her wishes. “The little ones, then,” I pressed. “Tell me one.”
“Hmm,” he said, narrowing his eyes in thought. “Here’s one: I’d very much like to take you on a picnic. In summer, so you could wear a pretty sundress.”
“A sundress?” I said. I was pretty sure I hadn’t owned a sundress since fifth grade.
“So I could ogle your legs,” he explained. “And we’d go somewhere with a river, so we could dangle our feet in the water.”
“And then, let me guess,” I said, grinning at him. “We planned to go swimming but, oops, we forgot our bathing suits, so we have to go skinny-dipping instead?”
“If you like,” he said, returning my grin. “Although if you want the X-rated picnic, I can do way better than skinny-dipping.”
“Yikes,” I said, as a little thrill raced up my spine.
“You asked,” he said sweetly. Turning his head to the side, he nodded at one of my hands, which still held his wrists in place. “Now, are you gonna let me up? Or should we bust out the handcuffs?”
I pulled my hands off him like he’d scalded me, and he laughed softly as he sat up. I watched him, thinking about what he’d just said. Nobody ever feels just one way about another person. I wondered if that included Xavier, Oliver’s friend-turned-assassin. How many things did Oliver feel about him?
Oliver looked up at me, his brow furrowed. “Something about Xavier?” he asked. “What is it?”
“It’s just, the way he talked about you. There was something . . .” I frowned at him. “What were you like, back then? When you and he were . . . when you were Ciarán?”
He looked surprised at the question, but didn’t hesitate before answering. “Still me. I just looked different.”
“Okay, then what did you look like?”
“Shorter,” he said, which made me smile. “My face was . . . I mean, just different.” He paused. Swallowed. “I could show you. Do you want me to?”
Something fluttered in my chest. Apprehensive but insanely curious, I nodded.
As he stood, he flicked his fingers again, and all the drapes and pillows disappeared, replaced by my familiar room. But then Oliver himself began to change. The air shimmered around him. His face grew tight with concentration, and he began to go blurry . . .
And then, someone new was standing in his place.
“Ta-dah,” said Oliver. Ciarán. Holding out his arms, he stepped back so I could get the full picture.
Ciarán was shorter than Oliver, just like he’d said. It was only a difference of an inch or two, but it was enough. He had a similar build, slender and strong—but instead of Oliver’s usual jeans-shirt-hoodie combination, Ciarán wore brown pants with a loose-fitting white shirt. The clothes were simple enough, but even with my limited fashion sense, I could tell they hadn’t been in style for at least a hundred years. And that wasn’t even counting his hat, which made me want to put on a production of Brigadoon and cast him in the lead.
His face was different: slightly longer and thinner than Oliver’s, with a nose that turned up ever so slightly at the end. A casual scattering of freckles emphasized the incredibly pale skin of his cheeks. His hair was lighter and wavier than Oliver’s, but the way it fell into his eyes was pleasantly familiar.
Looking at Ciarán and knowing that he was Oliver wasn’t nearly as jarring as I’d thought it would be. In fact, he looked like he could be Oliver’s cousin or something . . . except for the eyes. His eyes were exactly the same. Bright green and shadowed by dark lashes, they shone as they looked at me.
“Ohhh,” I said.
“Oh good, or oh bad?” he asked. A thick Irish accent curled comfortably around the words.
“Oh oh,” I said. “You’re more the same than I thought you’d be.”
“I am?” He looked down at himself, uncertain.
I frowned, stepping toward him and touching one hand lightly to the front of his shirt. He felt warm underneath, just like before. “I mean, obviously you don’t look the same. But there’s a certain . . . I don’t know. The way you look at me is the same.”
“That’s because it’s still me. Like I told you. Just a slightly different version.” He leaned down, and I soon discovered that the way he kissed me was the same, too.
A few minutes later, my computer made a little noise, and Oliver, still looking like Ciarán, got up to check on his pictures.
His hand worked the mouse, and his eyes darted to and fro across the computer screen that lit his face. He moved like Oliver did. It relieved me to know that he could look so different, but still be the person I thought he was—not the person Xavier wanted me to believe he was.
And then there was Xavier, who adopted the bodies of living people without thinking twice. Who changed faces on a whim, just to mess with my head. Who wouldn’t tell me his real name.
But he’d told me the name of the persona he’d adopted for his current master. Shen. Maybe there was a way to find this Shen and track him back to his master. If only I could do it without Xavier overhearing, before sunset tomorrow. . . .
“Margo,” came Oliver’s soft voice, cutting into my thoughts. I looked up: Ciarán was gone, and Oliver was slumped in my chair, watching me with tired eyes. “I can hear you. Please, just stop.”
“But why?” I said. “Just give me time. I’ll think of something.”
He took a deep breath. “I already told you, there’s nothing—”
“Don’t give me that ‘nothing I can do’ crap. Remember my idea? Making him change his mind? You already said it was brilliant, and I saw the look on your face when you said it. You wanted me to do it.”
He pressed his lips into a thin line, but he didn’t deny it.
“And if I find his master, I’ll be able to. I just need to keep him from overhearing me.”
“He can probably overhear you right now, you know.”
That shut me up.
“And what’s more,” Oliver continued, resting his elbows on his knees and leaning forward, “he won’t let you anywhere near his master. Whoever it is, he’s been protecting them ever since the initial binding.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You think I haven’t wondered who his master is?” he said. “I’ve looked, believe me. Do you remember that day in the park? I told you I felt something, like a call?” I nodded. “Normally, I’d be able to feel it every time Xavier’s master called him, or made a wish. But ever since that first call, it’s been nothing but radio silence. No calls. No wishes. No anything. I don’t know how he’s kept his master from using any magic, but as long as this goes on, I could stand face-to-face with Xavier’s master and never know it.”
“Is that how he found me?” I asked. “By following your magic?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “But it should have taken him a lot longer than it did. The last time he tracked me down, it took him a solid month. Feeling another genie’s magic is easy, but following it is quite the opposite. And I’ve been keeping a pretty low profile. Even when I went to school for Vicky, I was just the kid in the corner that nobody noticed, you know? And now that I’ve stopped going, I don’t see much of anyone except you. I come when you call, and aside from your wishes, that’s pretty much it.”
“Could he have spotted you at school?”
He shook his head. “Nope. If he were hanging around the school, I’d know it. Even without his master making wishes, he’d need to draw on his magic to create and maintain a human body. And that magic would be visible, at least to me.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Hold on. What if it’s his master hanging around the school, not him? What if it’s a student who helped him track us down?”
He looked as stricken as I felt. “That does make sense,” he said slowly.
“It does, doesn’t it,” I said, feeling my heart begin to race as I began to piece it together. “Someone at school. Someone who isn’t using magic, so you’d never know it was them. God. Whoever this guy is, I
will find him and I swear I will kill him. I’ll kill him right in his stupid face.”
“Will you please calm down?” Oliver said. He moved to the floor, sat back on his heels, and rested a hand on my knee. “You’re not killing anybody, in the face or otherwise. Look what he did to you on Saturday, Margo. Look what he did to you today. If he thinks you’re going after him again, he won’t hesitate to do even worse next time.”
I tensed, but forced myself to hold Oliver’s gaze. “Not if I get to him first. Or, and let’s not forget this one, I could do nothing, and we could live one more day like everything’s all kittens and rainbows, until he comes and wishes you free and you die, and in case that’s not bad enough, I’ll have to live knowing that I could have done something about it, but I didn’t.” Oliver looked down, and I heard him take a ragged breath.
“Come on, Oliver,” I said, as gently as I could. I slid to the floor too, positioning myself in front of him so our knees were touching. “You don’t want Xavier to decide whether you live or die. You said so yourself. Your magic might be bound by other people’s wishes, but your life is your own.”
“You’re right,” he said, a sudden intensity in his eyes as they met mine again. “My life is my own, which means nobody else gets to control it. Not even you. I love you, Margo, and if I have one day left, I want to spend it with you. Not playing spy, or trying to track Xavier’s master down, or complaining about how life isn’t fair. Just . . . living. With you.”
It was a moment before I realized my jaw was hanging slack. “You love me?”
“I thought I’d made it kind of obvious,” he replied with a wry little laugh.
I lowered my gaze, feeling suddenly shy, and he reached for my hand. Magic zinged up my arm, but he remained silent, waiting patiently for me.
“One day,” I said after a moment. “Okay. What do you want to do? We should make a list. Here, I’ll get a notebook, and we can write everything down and make sure we fit it all in before, um . . . before the deadline.”
But Oliver squeezed my hand harder, keeping me from going to my desk. “I don’t want a list. Let’s just see what we feel like doing.”
“But—”
The Art of Wishing Page 21