“First relationships are supposed to be easy. Simple. Fun.”
“Fun.”
“Yes, fun.” He tilted his head, which made his fake nose go all wonky. He waggled it back and forth, until it resembled a lying Pinocchio’s. I sighed and pulled it off. “Don’t you like to have fun?”
“Yes, but that’s . . . Relationships are supposed to be serious.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because you’re talking about spending your life with someone!”
“Someone who’s not any fun.”
“He’s fun!”
“You sound defensive.”
“I’m not,” I said, and grabbed a rag to remove the rest of the nose. “He’s fun when he has time to be. It’s just . . . he’s busy. So am I.”
Pritkin pursed his lips at me. “This relationship of yours sounds like a lot of work. I’m glad I’m not so busy. Or so complicated.”
“You’re plenty complicated!”
“Not at all. When I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m tired, I sleep. When I see a pretty girl, looking at me with eyes as dark as the ocean, with hunger in them, so much hunger . . . I oblige.”
I stared down into burning green eyes for a moment, and then looked away again.
“That’s because you’re . . .” An incubus, I didn’t say, because there was a possibility he didn’t know yet. “Young.”
“Yes. So are you.”
Yeah, right. “I don’t feel like it much lately.”
“Then feel like it now.” He saw my expression, and laughed. “Not like that. Well, unless you change your mind. But there’s other ways to have fun, you know.”
“Like what?”
“Like this.” And he pushed open the back door with his foot.
I looked at him with alarm. “What are you doing?”
We were still moving, which didn’t stop him from catching hold of the roof and somehow vaulting up on top. And then reaching down, when I peered out the back, and grasping my arms. “This,” he said, grinning.
“Um,” I said, because the ground was suddenly looking very hard.
And very far, when he pulled me up in one fell swoop, like flying. Depositing me beside a fat guy with a tambourine and maybe three teeth. All of which he bared at me in a lopsided grin. Pritkin rapid-fired some introductions, and then plopped a straw hat down on my head, probably because the gate was coming up.
There were people lining the road on both sides, and running to catch up, like it was Mardi Gras and we were the only float. The girls laughed and waved, some guy went to town on a lyre, and in a minute, the craziness had infected me, and I was laughing, too. And trying to hold on to my hat, before the wind sent it flying.
Pritkin snatched it out of the air and put it back in place, green eyes gleaming.
“If he gets you, I get this much,” he said, and kissed me while the girls laughed and flashed the guards, and the tambourine shook, and the wagon trundled through the gate, unopposed.
And that was how we entered the city.
Chapter Fifty
The players were housed in tiny plain rooms off the kitchen, which seemed to make everybody happy.