Page 22 of Jace

“Was she ill?” Jace asked. “From standing out in the street the night before in the rain?”

Susannah shook her head and tried to give him the significant scary look the older kids had always given the littler ones while telling stories.

“What?” he asked, looking mystified.

“They said the girl had died many years ago,” she told him, in a deep, solemn voice. “She was seduced and abandoned by her true love. And every once in a while, she appears to another young man.”

Jace blinked at her for a moment.

She arched an eyebrow.

“That is nonsense,” he told her. “Either the girl is dead, or she isn’t. I suspect the elderly couple created the entire ruse. Did they try to sell the boy something afterward?”

“No,” Susannah said, surprised. “Not according to the story.”

“A hoax, to be sure,” he said definitively.

“Well, it is what Terrans call an urban legend,” she told him. “Just a story that no one thinks is true, but everyone likes to pretend it’s real, especially children.”

“I thought you said the boy was driving in the countryside,” Jace said dubiously.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then what is urban about this legend?” he asked.

“It’s hitting me that a lot about this doesn’t make sense outside my home culture,” she said. “You can just think of it as a silly, made-up story that’s fun to tell around a campfire because the idea of it is a little spooky.”

“I see,” he said, squinting at her in such a way that made it clear he did not.

She stifled a giggle.

“Are your feet feeling better?” he asked.

“Yes,” she told him. “Thank you so much. This was really nice of you.”

She began to pull her foot back, even though his touch felt incredible.

“Your toes still need attention,” he told her admonishingly, keeping hold of her foot.

“I’m ticklish, remember?” she warned him.

“Just for a moment,” he said. “You can stand it if I’m quick, right?”

She couldn’t, and she knew it. But something about the way he asked made her want to say yes. She wondered what else he might ask that she’d be unable to resist.

She nodded slowly.

His hands moved to her toes, and she was instantly catapulted into ticklish territory.

“Remain calm,” he instructed her.

But she was already laughing her head off and trying to wrestle the foot away from him.

He clamped his free hand on her hip to hold her still and something between them seemed to shift.

His hand stilled on her foot and his eyes flashed up to meet hers, the pale blue deepening to the color of the ocean at dawn.

Susannah fought to drag a breath into her lungs. The air seemed to have gone still, the world outside of the two of them fading away.

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