“There’s hardly any smoke.”
“I still need one, I still need them.”
Crown scrounged in her pockets and took out two flimsy softshell masks, winding one around her head and face. She had a hood on her jacket, and she unsnapped it from the collar to settle it around Nona’s head and shoulders: “I’ve got chem screen on,” she said, and tucked Nona’s arm into hers. “Come on. Let’s live a little.”
By that point the car had burred to life again and was reversing back down the street. Nona hesitated—but Camilla hadn’t used the special safe word, after all, hadn’t used any of the codes they’d agreed on that meant Nona couldn’t. That meant Nona was being ordinarily selfish, not dangerously selfish. And seeing Crown in the city sunshine was fantastic. A couple of people had stopped on the street to gawk at her, hatless and golden, then moved on hurriedly when they saw her gun.
“But Camilla—” she began.
“I’ve got as much right to you as Camilla does,” said Crown, still smiling. “In another world I might have been the one looking after you, you know. And I think Camilla does a bit too much looking after … you’re not so much younger than she is, after all.”
This resembled some of the darker and more resentful thoughts in the back of Nona’s head. She mumbled, “But I love Camilla.”
“Do you love love Camilla? In-love-with-Camilla?” Crown sounded amused, and weaved her around a little stand that was selling magazines and candy. The streets were thick with people meandering home before the hottest part of the day kicked in, but not hurrying yet, which meant it hopefully wasn’t that late. “Maybe you could be the one to melt her icy heart. You’re cute… on your best days, adorable. But I’m not sure you’re her type.”
Nona flushed. Suddenly being treated as an adult made her feel out of her depth, like when a wave knocked her off a sandbar and her feet went out from beneath her. She didn’t know what to say or how to act, and floundered toward the shallows: “She’s not your type either,” she said.
Crown stood back from the road as a barrage of open-backed trucks rattled past. There was a piercing whistle in her direction and she ignored it with a disdainful toss of her big yellow hair. She looked down at Nona and asked cheerfully, “How do you know my type?”
Nona thought it was obvious.
“It’s the way you look at people.”
“Tell me,” demanded Crown. There was a deep velvety spark of mischief in her eyes, and Nona thought again how lovely they were, like the flowers in the sexy shampoo advertisement. “Come on—I’ll die if I don’t know. I love being told about myself.”
Nona rose quite eagerly to the challenge. “You look at Commander We Suffer like you want her to think you’re into her, but you aren’t at all, it’s just something you’re doing with your eyelashes,” she said. “But that’s no help figuring out your type because I don’t know what the commander looks like. You don’t like Pash at all, but I don’t know what she looks like either. You’re scared of Pyrrha, and you do think she’s nice-looking, but you’re confused when you think that so you don’t look at her very much. You want Camilla to cuddle you but not in a—a sexy way. I think you want Camilla to look at you like she looks at me. And you’re in love with th—”
A hand went over the mask at Nona’s mouth. When she looked up at Crown, in that press of people and the clinging smoke, she could see that the eyes above the softshell mask had lost their soft purple gleam and were dark, with the heavy amber brows drawn low over them. She said, in a different voice, “All right, Nona. I’ve heard enough.”
Nona, when the hand was withdrawn, said thickly: “You’re mad at me. Shame on you.”
The trucks had passed and everyone surged together across the street in one big slosh of humanity. Crown, half-stricken, half-laughing, had put her arm back through Nona’s, and they hurried down the street toward the school. She said, “You’re—you remind me very much of someone when you make that face. I’m sorry, cutie, I got frightened. Can you forgive me? I won’t ever ask you to do it again—tell you what, I’ll owe you an ice cream.”
Nona was a little bit mollified.
“I don’t want an ice cream, thanks,” she said, on her dignity. “You shouldn’t ask me things if you don’t want me to tell the truth about them.”