Over toward the softball field, several senior boys called to Ewan, inviting him to join a lunch-period game.
"Be there soon," he called. "I gotta take care of something first."
Ewan turned the opposite direction, heading with long, supple strides toward the tables outside the snack bar. In the shade of a mulberry tree, among a group of junior and senior girls, waited the object of his desire.
Her name was Kathleen Norman. Kathy. They shared a drama class. It was in that class, as they stood to one side of the stage while other students recited lines of Dark of the Moon, that he had peeled open her mind and looked within. What he had discovered there was perfect for his needs.
She had found him attractive. His fine bone structure and lack of beard gave him an almost feminine beauty; she found that exotic. His lean, rather than muscular, strength encouraged fantasies of him holding her. His dark hair and eyes reminded her of nighttime, luring her toward the possibility of being with him in the nighttime.
Ewan wondered what she would think of his true aspect, absent the glamour he wore during school hours. No matter. She saw what he wanted her to see, and she had responded to his disguise in precisely the way he needed her to respond. Better than any other candidate.
"Kathy," he said as he neared the table.
She looked up, recognized him, and beamed. "Ewan Griffiths. What's up?"
He slid onto the empty seat beside her. The other three girls failed to hide knowing looks. Ewan made sure to halt short of contact, his thigh far enough from hers to avoid intrusiveness, but near enough to confirm his interest. "It's about the prom. It's not far off."
She nodded. The companion across the table raised an eyebrow. The one beside Kathy nudged with her elbow. Kathy blushed furiously. "Yes. May Day."
Beltaine. Ewan did not say it aloud, but for a moment he could think only of the tides rising and falling inexorably toward that point of the calendar. The true beginning of summer, though these modern-day Arizona teenagers insisted upon thinking of it as part of spring.
"Do you have a date?" he asked.
Her face lost the pleased glow. She bit her lip. Inside her mind, he saw the image of a classmate form. He knew the face. Vincent Mathers. Ewan shared an English class and P.E. with him.
"Why do you ask?" Kathy's query came in a rush.
"I want you to go with me," Ewan answered.
She sat up straighter. The smile returned. But inside she was wincing. The mental image of Vincent evolved until his phantom features hung in disappointment.
"I've been asked," she admitted.
"Have you said yes?"
She hesitated.
Ewan had found the weak strand in her web of obligation. Technically, she had not committed to the date. True, Vincent had asked, and she had been intending to say yes, but all she had said aloud was, "I'll think about it." She didn't want to be too easy. She had figured it would do him no harm to wait an extra day or two. An adolescent test of devotion.
She hadn't counted on an invitation from someone of Ewan's caliber. Vincent was a known quantity, a schoolmate since fourth grade, a family friend, a little too bookish to brag about as an escort. He was her default date.
Ewan, on the other hand, was the mysterious transfer student whose accent sometimes slipped into delightful British, not-quite-contemporary phrasings. He was handsome. He was suave. He was not the Same Old, Same Old.
Ewan saw the demure but genuine craving inside Kathy and began to congratulate himself. His joy had not yet fully blossomed when concerns bubbled up in Kathy's mind: Anticipation of her mother lecturing her about being a tease. A memory of Vincent's gentle hands removing a splinter from her calf when they were freshmen, after she had clumsily rubbed her leg on the campus's old wooden bleachers at a football game. And finally came the self-esteem issues--fear that her level of worldliness might not measure up to a date with a boy who'd seen what life was like beyond this arid, isolated community.
"No, I haven't quite said yes," she said. It was the preamble for a rejection. She paused, not wanting to turn Ewan down. During that interval, he used his trump. The effort cost him. Magic was not easy in the daylight, far from woodlands, and in such close proximity to tamed metal. His bones grew cold as a selkie's grotto, a consuming discomfort that would last a day or more.
But as a result, instead of speaking the words he did not want to hear, she shrugged and said, "I'll think about it."
That was enough, for now. The spell would linger. By the time it faded, she would have given her word. Once given, she was not the sort to renege. Come Beltaine, Ewan might yet be able to preserve his fragile liberty in this realm.
)
