Fallen in Love (3 page)

On impulse, she swatted his stomach with the back of her hand. It was the way she and her mom teased each other, like best friends or something. But Shelby was usually a lot more reserved with people outside her nuclear family. Weird.

“Hey.” Miles interrupted her thoughts. “Right now you and I need to focus on getting to town, finding an angel who can help us, and making our way home.”

And getting that hat in the meantime
, Shelby added
inside her head as she and Miles broke into a jog, following the cart toward the city.

The tavern stood about a mile outside the city walls, the lone establishment in a large field. It was a small wooden structure with a swinging sign of weathered wood, and big barrels of ale lined up against its walls.

Shelby and Miles had jogged past hundreds of trees stripped of their leaves by the cold, and melting patches of muddy snow on the pocked, winding road to the city. There really wasn’t all that much to see. In fact, they had even lost sight of the cart after Shelby got a stitch in her side and had to slow down, but now, serendipitously, they spotted it parked outside the tavern.

“That’s our guy,” Shelby said under her breath. “He probably stopped in for a drink. Sucker. We’ll just snatch the hat back and be on our way.”

Miles nodded, but as they slipped around the back of the cart, Shelby spotted the man in the fur vest inside the doorway, and her heart sank. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he held Miles’s hat in his hands and was showing it off to the innkeeper as proudly as if it were a rare gem.

“Oh,” Miles said, disappointed. Then he straightened his shoulders. “You know what, I’ll get another one. You can buy them everywhere in California.”

“Mmmm, right.” Shelby swatted the canvas tarp of
the man’s wagon in frustration. The force of her blow sent a corner billowing up. For just a second, she caught a glimpse of a heap of boxes inside.

“Hmm.” She snaked her head under the tarp.

Underneath, it was cold and a little fetid, crammed with odds and ends. There were wooden cages filled with sleeping speckled hens, heavy sacks of feed, a burlap bag of mismatched iron tools, and loads of wooden boxes. She tried the lid of one of the boxes, but it wouldn’t budge.

“What are you doing?” Miles asked.

Shelby gave a crooked smile. “Having an idea.” Reaching for something that looked like a small crowbar in the sack of tools, she pried open the lid of the closest box. “That’s a bingo.”

“Shelby?”

“If we’re going into town, these clothes might make the wrong statement.” She flicked the pocket of her green hoodie for effect. “Don’t you think?”

Back under the tarp she found some simple garments, which looked faded and worn, probably outgrown by the driver’s family back home. She tossed little gems out at Miles, who scrambled to catch everything.

Soon, he held a long, pale-green linen gown with bell sleeves and an embroidered golden strip running down its center, a pair of lemon-yellow stockings, and a bonnet that looked sort of like a nun’s wimple, made of taupe linen.

“But what are
you
going to wear?” Miles joked.

Shelby had to rummage through a half dozen more boxes full of rags, bent nails, and smooth stones before she found anything that would work for Miles. Finally, she pulled out a simple blue robe made of stiff, coarse wool. It would keep him warm against this buffeting wind; it was long enough to cover his Nikes; and for some reason it occurred to Shelby that the color was perfect for his eyes.

Shelby unzipped her green hoodie and slung it over the back of the cart. Goose bumps rose on her bare arms as she tugged the billowing dress over her jeans and tank top.

Miles still looked reluctant. “I feel weird stealing stuff that guy was probably taking into town to sell,” he whispered.

“Karma, Miles. He stole your hat.”

“No, he
found
my hat. What if he’s got a family to support?”

Shelby whistled under her breath. “You’d never make it a day on Skid Row, kid”—she shrugged—“unless you had me there to look after you. Look, compromise, we’ll repay something else to the cosmos. My sweater …” She chucked the green hoodie into the box. “Who knows? Maybe hoodies will be all the rage next season in the anatomy theaters, or whatever they do for fun around here.”

Miles held the taupe bonnet above Shelby’s head.
But it wouldn’t fit over her ponytail, so he tugged on the elastic band. Her blond hair tumbled down her shoulders. Now
she
felt self-conscious. Her hair was a complete beast. She
never
wore it down. But Miles’s eyes lit up as he placed the bonnet on her head.

“M’lady.” He gallantly held out his hand. “Might I have the pleasure of accompanying you into this fair city?”

If Luce had been here, back when all three of them were still just good friends and things were a little less complicated, Shelby would have known just how to joke back. Luce would have put on her sweet, demure damsel-in-distress voice and called Miles her knight in shining armor or some crap like that, to which Shelby could have added something sarcastic, and then everyone would have burst out laughing, and the weird tension Shelby felt across her shoulders, the tightness in her chest—it would have gone away. Everything would have felt
normal
, whole.

But it was just Shelby and Miles.

Together. Alone.

They turned to face the black stone walls around the city, which surrounded a high central keep. Marigold-colored flags hung from iron poles in the tall stone tower. The air smelled like coal and moldy hay. Music came from inside the walls—a lyre maybe, some soft-skinned drums. And somewhere in there, Shelby hoped,
was an angel whose Announcer could take the two of them back to the present, where they belonged.

Miles was still holding out his hand, gazing at her like he had no idea how deep blue his eyes were. She took a deep breath and slipped her palm inside his. He gave her hand a little squeeze and the two of them strolled into town.

G
one was the peaceful countryside. Instead, just outside the city gates, there was a great bustling, with makeshift tents set up along the green—which was more a grayish brown now, in winter—on both sides of the road leading to the tall black city walls. The tents were clearly part of a temporary setup, like a weekend-long festival or something. The happy chaos of the people milling around reminded Shelby a little of Bonnaroo, which she had seen pictures of on the Internet. She studied
what people were wearing—apparently the wimple look was in. She didn’t think she and Miles stuck out
too
badly.

They joined the crowd passing through the gates and followed the flow of people, which seemed to move in only one direction: toward the market in the central square. Turrets rose before them, part of a grand castle near the far limits of the city walls. The square’s cornerstone was a modest but attractive early-Gothic church (Shelby recognized the spindly towers). A maze of narrow gray streets and alleys sliced off from the market square, which was crowded, chaotic, stinking, and vibrant, the kind of place where you went to find anything and anyone.

“Linen! Two bolts for tenpence!”

“Candlesticks! One of a kind!”

“Barley beer! Fresh barley beer!”

Shelby and Miles had to leap out of the way to avoid the stocky friar pushing a cart with earthenware jugs of barley beer. They watched his broad, gray-robed back as he cut a path through the crowded market. Shelby started to follow him, just to get a little space, but a moment later, the smelly mass of chattering citizens filled the gap.

It was nearly impossible to take a step without bumping into someone.

There were so many people in the square—haggling,
gossiping, swatting children’s thieving hands away from the apples for sale—that no one paid attention to Miles and Shelby at all.

“How are we ever going to find anyone we know in this cesspool?” Shelby held tight to Miles’s hand as the tenth person stepped on her foot. This was worse than that Green Day concert in Oakland where Shelby bruised two ribs in the mosh pit.

Miles craned his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe everyone knows everyone else?” He was taller than most of the citizens, so it wasn’t as bad for him.

He
had fresh air and a clear sight line, but
she
was feeling a claustrophobic fit coming on: She felt the telltale flush creep across her cheeks. Frantically, she tugged at the high collar of her dress, hearing a few stitches snap. “How do people breathe in these things?”

“In through your nose, out through your mouth,” Miles instructed, demonstrating his own advice for a second before the stench forced him to wrinkle his nose. “Er. Look, there’s a well over there. How about a drink?”

“We’ll probably get cholera,” Shelby muttered, but he was already moving away, pulling her behind him.

They dipped under a sagging clothesline damp with homespun clothes, stepped over a small parade of scraggly, clucking black roosters, and angled past a pair of redheaded brothers peddling pears before they ended up
at the well. It was an archaic thing—a ring of stones around a hole, with a wooden tripod set up over the opening. A mossy bucket dangled from a primitive pulley.

After a few seconds, Shelby could breathe again. “People drink from that thing?”

Now she could see that though the market took up most of the open square, it wasn’t the only show in town. A group of medieval mannequins robed in burlap had been set up on one side of the well. Young boys practiced wielding wooden swords, tilting at the ancestors of crash-test dummies like knights in training. Wandering minstrels strolled the edges of the market, singing strangely pretty songs. Even the well was its own little destination.

She saw now that there was a wooden crank to raise the bucket. A boy in skintight buckskin leggings had dipped a ladle of water from the bucket and was holding it out to a girl with enormous wide-set eyes and a holly branch tucked behind her ear. She drained the ladle in a few thirsty gulps, gazing lovingly at the boy the whole time, oblivious to the water dripping down her chin and onto her beautiful cream gown.

When she was finished, the boy passed the ladle to Miles with a wink. Shelby wasn’t sure she liked what that wink insinuated, but she was too thirsty to make a scene.

“Here for the St. Valentine’s Faire, are you?” the girl asked Shelby in a voice as placid as a lake.

“I, uh, we—”

“Indeed,” Miles jumped in, adopting a horrible fake British accent. “When do the celebrations commence?”

He sounded
ridiculous
. But Shelby swallowed her laugh to avoid giving him away. She wasn’t sure what would happen if they were found out, but she’d read of impalings, of torture devices like the wheel and the rack.
Lip balm, Shelby. Stay positive. Hot cocoa and sun salutations and reality TV. Focus on that
. They were going to get out of here. They had to.

The boy draped an arm adoringly around the girl’s waist. “Anon. Tomorrow is the holiday.”

The girl swept her hand across the marketplace. “But as you can see, most of the sweethearts have already arrived.” She touched Shelby’s shoulder playfully. “Don’t forget to drop your name in Cupid’s Urn before the sun sets!”

“Oh, right. You too,” Shelby muttered awkwardly, like she always did when the people at the airport check-in counter told her to have a good trip. She bit the inside of her cheek as the girl and boy waved goodbye, arms still linked as they sauntered down the street.

Miles gripped her arm. “Isn’t that
great
? A Valentine’s fair!”

This, coming from a baseball-playing boy-next-door
whom Shelby once watched eat nine hot dogs in a single sitting. Since when did Miles get jazzed about a sappy Valentine’s Day party?

She was about to say something sarcastic when she saw that Miles looked—well … hopeful. Like he actually wanted to go.
With her?
For some reason, she didn’t want to crush him.

“Sure. Great.” Shelby shrugged nonchalantly. “Sounds like fun.”

“No.” Miles shook his head. “I meant … the fallen angels are bound to be there, if they’re going to be anywhere. That’s where we’ll find someone who will help us get home.”