I was about to withdraw, to try something else, when I glimpsed the barest flicker of an emotional reaction in him, despite his comment.
Memory.
His own memory of that day.
I partitioned my mind again, and used the new section to follow the thread. I did my best to do it quietly, invisibly, without a single thought or emotion of my own, at least not inside the part of my mind following his.
Suddenly, I was there.
I was in that London Underground entrance, on Kensington Street.
Instead of looking at him, I was looking at my own, ten-year-old self. I felt a chest moving quickly that wasn’t mine, a panic that vibrated my muscles, closed my throat.
She can’t be human… she can’t be…Fear rippled through him so intensely, my own body stopped breathing.Ra’s knife, I have to go back. I have to get out of here, he’ll come looking for me any second… he said he’d only be gone a minute…
His fascination was stronger, though.
His feet felt frozen, his body on fire. He stared at me, at the clear, white-gold, solar orb burning over my head, invisible to everyone but him.
It was his. It was mine.
We were alike, both of us. We were both secrets.
He could see me looking up at him now, too.
I was staring over his head. He couldfeelme looking at him, just as he felt my sun when he looked at me. He followed my eyes up to his own light, the dark crystal wrapped in black fire that seemed to always writhe and flare and smoke, as if battered by a high wind.
No one had ever seen it before. No one, not even?
She can’t possibly see that… gods, she can’t see that… what is she?His fear worsened, that intense pull to run, to flee the spot, but he couldn’t make himself really want to. I couldn’t be like him. I couldn’t be. I’d be dead already.
Someone would have noticed.
I had no one protecting me. His father protected him. I had no one.
I was alone.
Why wasn’t I dead?
He felt paralyzed, lost in thick black curls and huge green eyes and wild, twisting,mathematicalmagic, multi-colored, out of control, teeming with strange structures, sparkingwith charges, gold and green lines, functionalities he couldn’t comprehend.
He was terrified.
Of me? I wondered.
No… not of me. He wasn’t afraid of me. He was afraid of getting caught, of me getting caught, of getting me killed, of both of us being?
Being found out. Being seen.
He couldn’t be seen. If anyone found out what he was, he was dead. If his father found out this odd, Overworlder girl could see him, his father would?
Fingers closed harshly, tightly around my wrist.
The pain jerked me out, all at once.
I opened my eyes, unaware I’d closed them until I did.
His face was close to mine again, closer than before. He was breathing harder, leaning towards me over the table.
