“What? Why?”
He shrugged. “Humor me.”
I didn’t know how much longer Mom was going to stay inside without bothering to check on me, so I did. Whatever would make him leave sooner.
“Are you looking at me?” he asked.
“Yes, and hurry up. It’s like staring into a light bulb.”
Quentin cleared his throat. “Genie Lo, you are definitely . . . NOT the most gorgeous human being I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
A metal bubble bigger than our heads spewed out of his lips and rose into the air. It could have taken out a power line. It looked revolting.
How it felt was another matter entirely.
I couldn’t keep an uncontrollable, dizzy grin off my face. And I started to get self-conscious about my neckline. I didn’t need Quentin seeing how far down I blushed.
“That’s messed up,” I said. I reached out and p
oked him in the chest, but my touch lingered longer than it meant to. “Everyone keeps saying I look like your former master who used to torture you.”
Quentin laced his fingers between mine and pulled me closer to him. “Maybe I have some issues I need to work through. You might be able to help with that.”
I couldn’t think straight. The look in his eyes was out of hand. This was first-day Quentin. Quentin standing on my desk, not caring who or what anyone else thought. A demigod who knew exactly what he wanted.
Whom he wanted.
The door opened behind me and I nearly tumbled backward into my mother.
“Pei-Yi, if you think for one minute you can—oh, hello dear,” she said once she saw Quentin. “Are you coming to the concert too? Genie didn’t tell me. Because why would she tell me anything?”
Quentin snapped back into propriety and raised his hands. “Just paying a visit. Sadly, I don’t think I’m invited to whatever’s going on tonight.”
“Oh, such a pity,” Mom said. Her voice was the tonal equivalent of a public assassination. “Who knows how she chooses which people to bring and who to exclude. I thought for certain that you’d be on the list.”
I wheeled around. “I’m not the sole arbiter of who gets access to Vivaldi in the Bay Area!”
“Oh please! Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about!”
“I’d better go,” Quentin said. “You ladies have fun. Try not to get into any trouble.” He tucked his hands into his pockets and sauntered away, whistling into the evening air. The tune might have been the “Spring” concerto from The Four Seasons.
Mom let out a snort. “See? That’s what happens when you act like that. You scare the good ones away.”
It was not a pleasant car ride across the bridge and up the highway, but at least it was a silent one. The two of us knew that we needed not to show our asses this evening.
The performance was being held at the auditorium of a nearby state school. A good one too—one that would have been at the top of my list had I not been so desperate to gain some distance from Santa Firenza.
We pulled into a lot in front of the hall. It was a weird building, ugly concrete bones on the outside harboring a beautiful, creamy wood interior. People mingled throughout the upper and lower levels, mites inside a larger see-through organism.
“You should find him before the performance,” Mom said softly. “You don’t get the chance to talk to him much.”
I tried to do what I should have done earlier and apologize, but she shushed me. “Go on,” she said. “It’ll take me a while to find a parking space. It’s okay.”
There was nothing I could do but get out of the car and go inside. I only prayed she wouldn’t ditch the performance and drive off into the night.
The hallways of the auditorium were filled with older folks dressed to the nines, grim-lipped parents and grandparents readying themselves for battle by proxy. The stakes of this competition must have been even higher than I thought. The Tiger Mom Olympics.
Yunie and the other performers were in the back getting ready. I knew I wouldn’t see her before she went on stage. Nor did I want to. The two of us never interrupted each other’s warm-up routine before big events.