Existence

She tips back her head and hollers, “Freeeeeee!” The streetlight gives her a glow, like an aura, and Jago is almost afraid to blink—as if he’s imagined her, as if she might disappear.

Everything changes, she said, and he feels it, a buzz in the air, his skin bristling with electric charge. Everything changes tonight.

Tonight, for the first time, he can imagine wanting what she says. Freedom. Escape. Wild adventure with this strange, wild girl, the two of them flinging themselves into a great unknown.

She won’t tell him her name until he offers his.

Even after they kiss under the streetlight beside her dorm, even after she presses her body to his and lets him feel her heat, her need.

“Who are you?” he says in wonder, when they break, and he means, What are you? What kind of strange, enchanting, beautiful creature could make him feel this way, like she’s the first girl he’s ever touched, the first girl he’s ever wanted?

“You first,” she says.

He doesn’t want to offer his real name—this is the twenty-first century; the first thing she’ll do when she goes inside is Google him and his family, and she’ll discover all the things he doesn’t want her to know, the rumors and allegations that inevitably swirl around a crime syndicate even when the government declines to prosecute, or care.

“Most people call me Feo,” he says, offering his nickname instead. It has always felt right to him, as if naming his secret, fundamental truth.

“Feo?” She wrinkles her nose. “Does that mean something?”

Jago laughs. “You really don’t know any Spanish at all, do you?”

“Tell me what it means.”

Her combination of stubborn ferocity with wide-eyed innocence is addictive and irresistible. He can see it in her eyes: this girl is fearless.

“Guess.”

She appraises him carefully, narrows her eyes, smiles. “Mountain.”

He shakes his head.

She presses a finger to his lips, slips it through, taps one of his capped incisors. “Golden boy,” she guesses. “Diamond head.”

“Not even close.”

“Tell me,” she says, and kisses his neck.

“No.”

“Tell me.” She kisses the tip of his nose.

“No …”

“Tell me.” She kisses his palm, the inside of his wrist, works her way up his forearm, and he knows this girl will be trouble—this girl will take whatever she wants from him, and he has much to lose.

“Feo,” he says, giving in. “‘Ugly.’”

She flinches. “Who would call you that?”

He shrugs, smiles to show he doesn’t care, that it’s all a good joke to him. “Who wouldn’t?”

She grazes her fingertips down the length of his scar. “I wouldn’t,” she says softly.

He’s embarrassed, suddenly, not of the nickname, but of the fact that he allows it, and for an impossible moment feels a flicker of rage toward this girl, that she can make him burn with shame. One moment, one spark of anger; then it’s gone as if it never existed.

“Your name is so much better, I suppose?”

“It’s Alicia.” She rises up on her toes, gives him a quick peck on the lips, suddenly demure. “Think you can remember that for next time?”

“Next time?”

She retreats, carefully eases open the door to her girls’ dorm—it’s hours beyond her curfew, but she seems unconcerned, says she’s snuck out before, and anyway, what can they do to her, these overcautious nursemaids? He loves the way she talks.

“You know where to find me,” she says, before she disappears into the citadel. “Just make sure you’ve come up with a better name by the time you come back.”

The following night, Jago takes her to dinner at Los Gatos, an exclusive bastion of candlelit elegance where the waiters keep a bottle of their finest champagne on ice for him, just in case he happens by.

He orders every appetizer on the menu and four entrées, so they can have a taste of everything, and once they’ve sipped their champagne, he summons the waiter and requests a bottle of their most expensive wine.

As they drink the rich red, Jago puts a small velvet box on the white tablecloth. Alicia opens it up to find a small sapphire dangling from a delicate gold chain.

“Oh,” she says, then closes the box and digs into her meal.

It’s not exactly the reaction he was hoping for.

“You don’t like it? I thought it would bring out your eyes.”

“It’s gorgeous,” she says. “But, it’s so …”

“What?”

“Well, it looks crazy expensive, and we just met, so that’s kind of weird, don’t you think?”

“I think it’s beautiful, and you’re beautiful, so it seems like a perfect match.”

She shakes her head. “Well, um, okay. But I don’t really wear much jewelry. It would be wasted on me. So …”

It’s not like it was at the nightclub, or in the moonlight. It’s not easy between them, and he doesn’t know why. He excuses himself to the bathroom, and on his way slips some money into the palm of the maître d’ and makes a whispered request.

When he returns to the table, a violinist comes over to join them and begins a mournful rendition of a childhood lullaby. Jago waves over an old woman shuffling past the tables with an armful of roses, and buys a dozen, gives her a tip ten times their value. He offers them to Alicia—she takes them but doesn’t smile.

“I’m sorry, but …” She stops, turns to the violinist, and says, “That’s lovely, but I’ve got a bit of a headache, so …”

The violinist looks to Jago, who nods his assent, and the musician backs away, looking abashed, surely afraid he’s displeased the monster of Juliaca.

“I’m sorry,” Jago says quickly. He can feel the night slipping away from him, and if he doesn’t understand what he’s done, how is he supposed to fix it? He speaks eleven languages fluently, knows nineteen ways to kill a man with his bare hands, holds this city in the palm of his hands … yet somehow, he’s powerless to make this one girl smile. “I didn’t realize you had a headache.”

“I don’t, I just …”