Victory borrowed a pair of Bard’s pajamas, left her overalls and black sweater in a pile next to his bed, and curled up next to Bard as she had before, the night after he had first met Kai.

“When were you planning to tell me?” Bard asked, not turning away from the wall.

“Tell you what?”

He traced his finger on the faded stylized floral pattern. Some kind of attempt at William Morris imitation.

“About going to art school.”

Some of the tension in Victory’s shoulders settled. “How do you know?” she asked softly.

“Barkley.”

“Bloody bastard,” Victory said. “Sorry.”

“Perfectly all right. Your father has been swaggering about telling people, it seems.”

For a moment Victory was stunned silent. The image of her father—tall, silver-haired, ruthless—vaunting her artistic accomplishments was impossible for her to conjure up.

“Will wonders never cease,” she finally murmured, and then gave Bard’s shoulder a nudge with her forehead.

He shifted slightly. “Don’t think I can’t be happy about something good happening for you. You deserve it. And you’re not going to be far away. The school is a twenty minute walk from the Palmer Manufacturing office.”

“Where you’re sure you’re going to be?”

“For a little while, anyway.”

“Oh, Bard. Just... Don’t stay there until it becomes unbearable. Promise me that.”

“I promise you.”

“Promise me something else.”

“What?”

“You’ll let me take you clothes shopping.”

“What?” He tried to twist around to look at her, but the bed was too small and she had him held down with a lazy arm draped over his side.

“Trust me. Pretend you’re playing a part, like in a play. You have a wardrobe for it, and when the show is over, it’s over.”

“And then I can go on to being... whom?”

“Anyone you want to be.”

Bard was well enough to leave the house three days later. Victory stayed at the house and, miraculously, did not catch his cold. 

“It must have been some virus that only leprechauns are susceptible to,” she said as she leaned into the mirror on his wardrobe door, lining her eyes.

“Fey folk,” insisted Bard.

Out into the crisp spring Milton air, it was rainless and clear of smoke because of the wind blowing in from the moors, cool, with the scent of heather and melancholy. They walked along the High Street district, and decided, without speaking of it, to go to the haberdasher’s instead of to a department store. As they turned a corner, Victory caught a flash of movement ahead—a tall, almost ungainly, black-clad boy, practically diving into a store when he saw them. Kai. Victory managed to distract Bard and get them past the tobacconist where Kai was peeping forlornly through the newsstand, without Bard noticing.

She said nothing about seeing Kai as they picked out wool slacks and smart button-downs and knit waistcoats that Victory wrinkled her brow and shook her head at but that Bard insisted on buying. But as the tailor measured Bard for alterations, she thought about the glimpse she had gotten of Kai’s pleading eyes.

Victory saw him again, a week later, when she was meeting Bard after he got out of work. She was standing on the corner under her umbrella across the street from the Palmer Manufacturing offices when Kai came out out of the record shop on Empire Street and started. She glanced in the direction of his gaze and half a second later saw Bard come out of the office building. Kai was like a rabbit, alert to his surroundings. She pictured him with ears perked, nose trembling. But, she thought, he had reacted before Bard had come out of the building. Maybe Kai was just anticipating it, knowing that Bard worked there, but hadn’t there been that nonsense about reading minds, showing up at the cemetery the day they happened to be there too? The creep of discomfort snaked its way up her spine, as if she were being watched. She shook her head at herself. Vic, sort yourself out.

Outside the record shop, Kai was near panicking, looking around as if for someone to save him. Across from him, a bus was pulling up to the curb, and Kai darted for it, jumping through the door just before it closed. The poor lad was obviously desperate not to bother Bard, but still hopelessly besotted.