by JJ Jones
“Well, I met someone,” she replied, in a voice that was oh-so-casual. The sort of voice that might have been accompanied by twirling the phone cord around her finger, had it still been a time when phones had cords.
Her mother practically squealed, and Clarissa pulled the phone away from her ear before she could go deaf from her mother’s enthusiasm. It had the intended effect, though, and as questions streamed out of her mother’s mouth, none of them were about anything other than who this man was, asking for information on what seemed like every question she could possibly come up with.
When at last her mother fell quiet and Clarissa found some space to get a word in, she explained. Just the details of how they met, of course. The interview. The first dinner date. Implications of the night afterwards. Hinting at other dates they had been on since then. She offered no word on any of their other activities, but by the time she was finished talking, her mom seemed more than satisfied with the information that Clarissa had supplied.
“He sounds lovely,” her mom sighed, sounding almost dreamy as she said it. “And so wealthy, too. You certainly lucked out, didn’t you?”
“Careful. If you point it out, I might wake up,” Clarissa returned dryly.
Her mother shushed her, and Clarissa could perfectly imagine the way she flapped a hand whenever she was dismissing something she disagreed with. “Honestly, Clare-Bear, you need to have a bit more faith in yourself,” she sighed, and despite the fact that it probably counted as scolding, it didn’t quite sound or feel like Clarissa was being scolded. She wasn’t sure if that was a talent all mothers possessed, or if it was unique to her own mother. She supposed it would forever
remain a mystery.
“Oh, come on,” Clarissa scoffed. “You have to admit I’m punching a little above my weight class here,” she reasoned, trying to sound practical. “I mean, I don’t regret doing it, but you can’t
really blame me for thinking it’s going to end at any moment.”
Her mother shushed her once more, and supplied matter-of-factly, “No one is above your weight class, dear,” as if it was just a simple fact. After a beat of silence, though, she did concede, “But I do understand how it can seem a bit too good to be true.”
“Was that how it felt with Dad?” Clarissa wondered, pacing back and forth across the room once again. Not that she really needed to ask. She had heard all about it before. Either way, she never quite got tired of hearing about it. Like a story that never got old.
Unexpectedly, her mother laughed. “Not quite,” she answered, though her tone was fond. “I knew your father from the time we were little. By the time we wound up together, it didn’t feel like a dream, so much as it just felt like what we had been building towards for years already.” Her mom sounded slightly wistful as she spoke, but just as always, it was a good sort of wistful. The nostalgic sort of wistful. As an afterthought, her mother added, more to herself, “I should go see him again. In the next few days, maybe. It’s been a while.”
“Bring him some flowers from me,” Clarissa added, before the topic could change and she lost the opportunity.
Her mother laughed gently. “Of course, dear. But listen to me, rambling on like that, when you probably have so much to talk about! Especially when you’ve heard all of my stories before, and I’m sure none of them compare to Paris.”
“Give yourself a little credit,” Clarissa parroted back at her, and it got the desired reaction, as her mom laughed once again.
From there, it was easy enough to fill almost a half an hour with talk of the city. Of the architecture and the things and places she had seen, and of the food she had eaten. By the time she was done, her mother had completely forgotten to ask her anything else about what Abel was like, and Clarissa couldn’t even feel guilty about avoiding the topic.
Her head felt clear once she hung up, and for a moment she just stared down at her phone in her hand, relishing in the silence in her head.
She needed to do something that day, Clarissa decided, as she set about packing up her purse and getting dressed enough that she looked presentable. Something about talking to her mother whenever she was in that sort of mood always made her feel guilty for sitting around and wasting time, as if she should be filling each and every moment of her day, lest she regret missing something that she could have done.
She couldn’t say it was unexpected when the first thought to occur to her was that she should go see Abel, and she didn’t argue with it. It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to see him, and she doubted he would argue if she showed up on his porch. He seemed more like the type to celebrate any guests he got, and she was fairly sure by that point that he rather enjoyed her company.
With that in mind, she smoothed her clothes out one last time, slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder, and strolled out of her hotel room. By the time she made it to the lobby, she was already on the phone to call a cab, and once she was outside on the sidewalk, she only had a few minutes to wait before the cab pulled to a halt in front of her.
*
True enough, the trip to Abel’s townhouse hadn’t exactly been planned, but even so, she hadn’t expected him to already have company when she got there, though she supposed she should have. It seemed to be an established fact of life that Marjorie would just wander in and out as she pleased, and she was pretty sure Abel hadn’t ever actually locked his door a day in his life.
Despite that, as she walked in equally unannounced, she ground to a halt when she found them chatting in the living room. Abel looked up when he heard the door close, blinking at Clarissa in surprise before he grinned broadly and gestured her over. She jerked back into motion to close the distance between them, and without hesitating, Abel tugged her down to sit on his lap, and she landed on his legs with a startled burst of laughter.
“Funny timing,” he remarked, as he nuzzled his nose against the back of her neck for a moment.
“Funny how?” Clarissa wondered, trying very hard to refrain from laughing as his hair tickled her.
(For her part, Marjorie looked as if she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to coo over them or to be ill at their antics, and so she remained neutral instead.)
“I need to head out to a meeting,” Abel replied, finally leaning away from her neck, only to perch his chin on her shoulder. “Not a very long one, though. Probably. You can stay here while I’m gone.”
Clarissa nodded slowly in agreement, sliding a glance in Marjorie’s direction to see if she
disagreed with the idea. If she did, she showed no evidence of it, but Clarissa wasn’t sure if that was because she truly didn’t object, if it was because she planned on leaving when Abel did, or if she just had a higher level of tact than Clarissa herself had.
Her attention returned to the present with a brief snort of laughter as Abel picked her up and moved her off of his lap, instead setting her down on the cushion beside him. He got to his feet with a languid stretch, arms reaching over his head and standing up on his toes until his back cracked, and he settled back onto the balls of his feet. At the same time, Marjorie was getting comfortable in her seat, drawing her legs up onto the cushion and reclining sideways against the arm. Clarissa supposed that answered the question of whether she intended to stay as well.
Abel leaned down and planted a kiss on Clarissa’s cheek, before he turned and headed for the door. It closed behind him with a quiet thump, and Clarissa watched him pass the window before sliding a surreptitious glance in Marjorie’s direction once again, only to find the unicorn
watching her curiously.
Clarissa supposed they should talk to each other, unless they both wanted to sit there in silence until Abel got back, and frankly that sounded sort of unbearable.
At the same time, though, it wasn’t until they were alone together, and silence fell over them that Clarissa really realized that she knew basically nothing about Marjorie. She knew that Marjorie was a unicorn, that she was Abel’s friend, and that she owed Abel some
sort of debt that she hadn’t elaborated on. And she knew that Marjorie was nice enough, but on the whole, she knew remarkably few details.
She didn’t want to wait until the silence stretched on to the point of awkwardness, though, so Clarissa blurted out the first thing she could think of, shoving her hands into her pockets as she wondered, “What do you even do, when you aren’t digging up information on people who might want to take over the world?”
Marjorie blinked at her slowly. “As a job, or in my spare time?” she asked after a moment.
“Yes,” Clarissa replied easily, and she felt a little thrum of success when Marjorie snorted out a quiet laugh.
“Fair enough,” Marjorie decided. “I’m a private detective,” she replied. “It’s why I go digging up all of the information that Abel needs; I’m a lot better at it than he is. When I’m not doing that, though…” She trailed off, seeming at a loss for words, in the way people got when asked about their hobbies and they suddenly forgot every fun thing they had ever done in their entire lives. It was a feeling Clarissa was familiar with. To date, she still got tripped up whenever someone asked her what her favorite movie was.
“I read a lot,” Marjorie finally supplied, with a look on her face that suggested she thought she should have come up with something a little more creative. “I sketch. I play piano. But honestly, nothing quite beats running whenever I can get a chance to.”
And really, that seemed a little odd. What was stopping her from running? People did it all the time. Until it occurred to Clarissa, after just a second of confusion, that Marjorie didn’t mean running like a human. She meant running in her true form, as a unicorn. And suddenly, Clarissa couldn’t help but wonder what it was like to run like that, though she couldn’t quite bring
herself to ask.
Instead, she settled on, “How did you meet Abel? Is there a Magical Creatures Anonymous or something?”
Marjorie snorted indelicately. “Not quite,” she returned dryly, leaning her elbow on the arm of the chair and propping her chin up in her hand. “I was in trouble with a…flock? pride?…a group of gryphons. I’ve never been sure of what to call a collection of them. Either way, I sort of threw a couple of them under the bus to get out of being identified as a magical creature myself, and Abel was the one who kept them from ripping me a new one in retaliation. He didn’t even need to do much. Most creatures are just pretty quick to chill out once they realize there’s a dragon opposing them.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Clarissa returned dryly, but she didn’t have time to say anything else
before she realized just how intent the searching look Marjorie settled on her was.
“What about you?” Marjorie wondered, tapping her lower lip with one finger. “What do you do when you aren’t writing for your magazine?”
And just like that, Clarissa felt her mind go blank. She mentally scrambled to offer anything that didn’t make her sound like a monumental bore, and she wound up offering the first thing that popped into her head.
“I take a lot of pictures. My best friend is sort of a bum, so she likes being able to experience the rest of the world vicariously because she doesn’t want to actually get up to experience it.”
Marjorie’s expression brightened on the word “pictures” and if she even heard the rest of the explanation, it was unclear, as she started digging her phone out of her bag. Taking her cue from that, Clarissa pulled her own phone out and opened up the photo album, suddenly very glad that all of the pictures on it were fairly tame, or else the afternoon could get very awkward very quickly.
When Marjorie held her phone out, Clarissa brandished her own in turn, and they swapped phones to begin scrolling through photos, offering commentary on nearly every one. Sometimes admiration, but mostly outbursts of incredulity, because despite the sheer number of pictures, neither of them was particularly accomplished photographers.
If nothing else, it was a decent (if unexpected) way to pass the afternoon.
*
When Abel got back to the house, Clarissa and Marjorie were still poring over photos on each other’s phones, oohing and ah-ing in all of the appropriate places. It had been a surprisingly enjoyable afternoon, considering she had barely known a single thing about Marjorie beforehand, but she was glad to see Abel regardless. Especially since that meant it was time for the two of them to leave.
Abel didn’t bother telling Marjorie to leave. Clarissa got the impression she came and went as she pleased, and she wouldn’t leave anything out of place when she left. Clarissa bid her a last goodbye as she followed Abel right back out the door before he had even been back for more than a minute, and there was a car waiting at the curb.
Clarissa was a bit disappointed that they weren’t flying, but she didn’t say anything about it, least of all because the driver would hear her. And though she prodded at Abel for details about where they were going throughout the whole drive, he offered her no answers. Or at least none that were helpful, responding only with vague riddles and pleasant smiles as she tried to come at him from every angle she could think to ask questions from to make him slip up.
By the time the car came to a halt, Abel had spilled none of his secrets despite the length of the drive, and he continued to remain quiet on the topic as he escorted Clarissa out of the car.
They were outside of the city by that point, and if she had been with anyone else, she would have worried about the cost of the ride. As it was, though, she supposed it was fairly little concern, and she was distracted a moment later when Abel held a hand out to her, and she laced her fingers together with his.
He led her through a break in the trees, leading her along a path on the ground, shallow but well beaten. She wasn’t sure how far they walked before they came to a break in the trees, as a small section had been cleared to set up a tower. As Clarissa squinted at it, she realized they weren’t particularly far out of the city, as she recalled catching a few glimpses of the tower before, far off on the horizon. She had always assumed it was simply a cell tower, but up close it was apparent that it had been made of wood and was nowhere near large enough to be a cell tower.
Abel gave her shoulder a prod, and with a roll of her eyes, Clarissa started climbing the tower. Just then, she was suddenly rather glad that they hadn’t flown, considering it had turned her legs into jelly last time, and she wasn’t too keen on climbing a tower like that.
She wasn’t quite ready for the view once they got to the top of the tower, of Paris spread out in front of them, lit up for the night. Like a beacon, the Eiffel Tower seemed to be at the center of it all from where they were standing, pulling Clarissa’s gaze to it as if it had its own magnetic force. As if she was drawn to it, Clarissa walked to the edge of the tower, her hands landing on the railing and curling around it as she gaped at the view. It was only when Abel sidled up next to her and settled one hand on top of hers that she returned to the present, looking at him with wide, startled eyes.
He was smiling at her like he couldn’t quite believe she was there, not even bothering to look away or temper his expression once he realized he had been caught out.
“I thought you might appreciate it here,” was all he offered, shrugging one shoulder as if it wasn’t a big deal.
Slowly, as if she was moving on autopilot, Clarissa turned to face him. She leaned up on her toes, reached up to cup his face with her free hand, and drew him down to her height so she could kiss him, slow and soft and sweet.
When she leaned away, her gaze returned to the view in front of her again, drawn by that same magnetism.
(She couldn’t quite help but to make a mental note to add the little watch tower to her article. For those looking to get a quiet, romantic moment and didn’t mind a bit of a walk to get it.)
For as nice as the scenery was, though, they couldn’t stay there all night. As it was, by the time they finally began to make their way back down the tower, a breeze was picking up and the hair along Clarissa’s arms was beginni
ng to stand on end.
As if he thought he was being subtle, Abel slipped an arm around her middle once they got back down to the ground and pulled her close to his side, his warmth seeping into her.
They didn’t make it the whole way back to the road, though, instead stopping a few yards off, still largely concealed in the trees. Abel stepped away from her, and Clarissa could largely see it coming when he transformed, but she found herself grinning fit to split her face in two
regardless. She climbed onto his back without any coaxing required, and despite the growing chill in the air as they rose higher and higher into the sky, she clung close enough to the warmth of his neck that she hardly even noticed.
The flight was…well, as uneventful as sitting on a dragon’s back could be, and he landed
carefully around a side street a few blocks from his townhouse. They walked the short way to his front door, his arm once again around her as they walked.
As they made it to his door and he let her in, he ushered her towards the couch with one hand. “Go get comfortable,” he said fondly, kicking his shoes off before he turned towards the kitchen. “I had an idea and I’m going to go throw together some dessert.”
