Chapter 28 The Festival
POV: Carly
She stepped off the bus and the music hit her first.
Live and loud and coming from everywhere at once, wrapping around the whole park like the sound had weight to it. A jazz tune from the amphitheater stage, the kind that moved through your chest whether you wanted it to or not. She stood on the pavement outside the entrance and just let it land on her for a second.
Then the lights.
Strings of them covering every tree and fence and vendor stall in the park, warm and gold against the dark Washington sky. The fog that followed Black River Falls everywhere it went was softer here, diffused by all that light into something that looked almost intentional. Like the whole park had been designed to exist inside it.
And the people.
So many people. Laughing and dancing and eating and talking over each other and completely absorbed in the specific joy of being somewhere they chose to be on a Friday night with nowhere else to be and nothing pressing down on them.
She had forgotten this existed.
She had forgotten that the world outside Black River Academy's gates had nights like this in it.
"Carly."
She blinked. Niko was a few steps ahead of her, turned back, watching her with his hands in his pockets and an expression she was becoming familiar with. The one that meant he found her genuinely interesting and wasn't trying to hide it right now.
She realized she had just been standing on the pavement with her mouth slightly open.
She cleared her throat and walked forward.
"I knew you'd love it." He said.
"I haven't said anything yet." She said.
"You didn't have to." He said.
She looked around at everything and did not argue with that.
They moved into the crowd together, squeezing between groups of people, the smell of food from the vendor stalls hitting her from every direction. Grilled things and sweet things and something fried that she couldn't identify but wanted immediately.
"Are you hungry." He said.
"Extremely." She said.
"Food trucks are this way." He said. "And before you say anything, I'm paying."
"You paid last time." She said.
"And I'll pay this time." He said.
"Niko."
"Consider it the cost of having me as a project partner." He said. "You're getting a bargain honestly."
She gave him a look. He gave her one back that said this was not a discussion he was planning to lose and she decided to save her energy for something worth winning.
She let him pay for the food.
She drew the line at the drinks.
He came back to the table with two bottles and set one in front of her and she looked at it and looked at him.
"I didn't poison it." He said.
"I know you didn't." She said.
"Then what's the hesitation."
She picked at the label on the bottle. "I don't usually drink with people I don't trust."
The words came out before she fully thought about them and she watched them land on him. He didn't perform being unbothered by it. He just looked at her steadily and something behind his eyes settled into something quieter.
"That's fair." He said.
She looked at him.
He wasn't arguing. Wasn't pushing back. Just sitting with it honestly the way he had been doing all night with everything she said that was harder than it needed to be.
She picked up the bottle and popped the top and took a long drink and made herself keep her face neutral even as the beer hit the back of her throat and reminded her exactly why she didn't drink beer.
She set the bottle down.
Half empty.
Niko looked at her with something between impressed and delighted. "Well." He said.
"It's disgusting." She said.
"You have an impressive poker face." He said.
"I'm full of surprises." She said.
"That you are." He said. And the way he said it was warm enough that she looked down at her food before she could respond to it.
They ate and the food was incredible and she told him so and he looked satisfied in a way that had nothing to do with smugness. It was genuine. Like her enjoying herself actually mattered to him.
She threw a fry at him when he brought up Aurora and he dodged it easily and grinned at her and she rolled her eyes and grinned back before she caught herself.
She thanked him for the homecoming theme properly this time. Told him the committee had loved it and watched something move through his face when she said it. Something warm and slightly uncomfortable, like he didn't know what to do with being genuinely useful to her.
"Glad I could assist." He said. Twice. Because the first time didn't come out the way he wanted it to.
She noticed that. Filed it away.
"Show me something." He said after a while.
She looked up. "What."
"One of your spells." He said. "You said the wildfire one is perfected. Show me something. Anything."
She laughed. "Niko we are surrounded by humans."
"Who are all spectacularly drunk and paying attention to absolutely nothing except themselves." He said. "Come on. Just one."
She looked around the park. He wasn't wrong. The people at the nearest tables were deep in their own world, laughing at something on someone's phone, completely absorbed.
She turned back to him.
"Don't laugh." She said.
He held both hands up.
She turned slightly in her chair and found two empty beer bottles on the table behind them. She took a breath and settled her palms face down on her lap and let her focus narrow until the bottles were the only thing in her field of awareness.
They lifted.
Both of them. Smoothly and without a sound, rising off the table while the people sitting there kept talking and laughing without registering anything. Carly brought them up slowly and then let them circle each other gently in the air, a slow lazy orbit, before setting them back down just as carefully.
She let out the breath she had been holding.
Niko was staring at her.
Not the bottles. Her.
"That." He said. "Was incredible."
She laughed and looked at the table. "I learned that when I was ten."
"I don't care." He said. "You moved things with your mind. I don't care when you learned it, it's extraordinary."
She looked up at him.
He meant it. She could tell the difference by now between Niko performing a compliment and Niko actually giving one and this was the second kind and it landed somewhere deep enough that she felt it in her chest.
Nobody outside her coven had ever asked to see her do magic before. Not because she was ashamed of it but because the people in her life had either already seen it or quietly considered it a separate part of her that they didn't need to engage with.
Niko was looking at her like it was the most interesting thing he had ever seen.
She pushed her hair back and focused very hard on her food.
"You should see what I can do with fire." She said without looking up.
"I would love to." He said immediately. "Someday."
She smiled at her plate.
"You continue to stun me Carly McPherson." He said quietly.
She kept her eyes down and told herself the warmth in her chest was just the food.
It was not just the food.