I couldn’t help the way her fantasy tugged at me. The world was a book for the two of them. They would let the wind flip the pages, Daisy would put down one delicate finger, and away they would go.
“And you must come with us, Jordan,” she said. “Gatsby wants Nick along, and so of course you should come too. It’ll be splendid, we can have a double wedding on top of the Eiffel Tower, or maybe in front of the sphinx in Egypt.”
One moment I was gently envious of Daisy’s daydreams, and the next I was struck with a wave of opposition. I wanted to see all of those places, maybe with Daisy, maybe alone, but for some reason, I didn’t want to see them as myself with them, or even with Nick.
“Sorry,” I said lightly. “I have to stay with Aunt Justine. I’m taking over some of her causes after her unpleasantness earlier this year.”
“Oh, but darling, of course you can’t! And what will happen when Nick meets some pretty little China doll in a Shanghai port and gets his head turned all around?”
“Well, I would say if he can’t tell the difference between us then he’s welcome to her.”
“Don’t be cross, Jordan, you know that I cannot stand it if you are cross. Let’s say this instead. I’ll give you tickets to wherever we are traveling, special ones that get you where you need to go no matter where you start from.”
“Gull tickets?” I asked in surprise. They weren’t magic but money, offered by the enormously prestigious Paul Wright Gull travel agency. They were edged in real gilt with enough enchantments piled on that they could never be duplicated, and no matter where you were, city street, cow byre, moor or castle, if you could get your Gull to a ticketing booth, it would take you on.
“Yes,” Daisy said with a sly smile. “You’ll forgive me for a book of Gull tickets, won’t you?”
I rolled over onto my side, away from her.
“I’d consider it, anyway,” I said, but for the first time, the idea of getting out of New York appealed to me. I was tired of the heat and the summer, I thought, but maybe I was only tired of who I was in the heat.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next morning, we all woke up late, the heat of the day beading sweat and damp on every surface and rolling a haze through the air that made everything look oddly flat and faraway.
Tom was the only one who could dress first thing. Daisy and I draped ourselves over the cold marble stairs of the foyer in nothing more than our long silk robes, and I pressed my cheek against the marble and made a face at Pammy when her nurse brought her by. Daisy’s daughter, I thought, had been replaced with a rag doll in the heat, so very limply did she slouch over the nurse’s arm. Then I realized with a bit of a start how long it had been since I’d seen Pammy in the skin. Changelings were growing less common as time went on, the fairy magic draining out of the east and flowing west, but there were a few cases every few years of it happening, usually in the good families as well.
I was just thinking about suggesting we go to check when Tom nudged us both with an officious booted foot.
“Come on, girls,” he said with a patience I liked less than his bombast. “Time to go get changed. Nick and that damned drug store mogul are coming over soon.”
Daisy took a lazy swipe at him like a bored cat, but she helped me to my feet.
“Oh very well,” she said, making a face. “If the great Napoleon tells us we must.”
“He was only a little man,” Tom said indignantly. “I’m just the opposite.”
“Of course you are, dear,” Daisy said with such poisonous sweetness that I thought she must surely have given the game away. Tom seemed all smiles however, and it came to me that he only ever really took offense when she wasn’t needling him. When she was only herself and moody or strange or angry for herself.