Chapter 8: The Towel

I asked him in the lodge, with the door shut and the lamps off.

"Would you have taken any woman who smelled right?"

Niko stood very still in the dark.

"I don't know," he said.

It hit me.

"I mean it," he went on, steady.

"I'm not going to say no to make this easier on you."

"For three years I walked past that hall and never tried the Call, because I didn't believe it would answer me."

"I'd have taken the bond from anyone."

"I wanted it so badly I didn't care whose."

"Then why-"

"Because it answered with you."

His voice roughened.

"Because I knew the smell before the bond lit."

"I stood in that hall and I knew it before the first word."

"So I said yes before anyone could take the chance from me."

My throat closed.

He held still a moment.

"I couldn't tell you what I'd think if I could see you."

"I can only tell you what I think, and what I think is mine."

I crossed the dark floor to him.

I put my arms around his waist and my cheek against his heart.

"Show me the bathroom," I said.

"What?"

"The one with the towel over the mirror."

His chest hitched.

"You noticed that."

"I notice everything. I'm a dishwasher."

He took me by the hand.

The bathroom was big and white, with a stone sink under a wide mirror.

A grey bath towel hung over the whole glass.

"I took it down at first," he said.

"Every morning, a stranger."

"I'd say good morning to him, and my own face would look back and I'd have no idea who it was."

"Do you want it down?"

"I don't want anything."

I reached up and pulled the towel off.

The glass was clean and black and enormous, and the little light over it made a soft yellow room of the reflection.

We stood in it.

A huge man with a shaved head and a beard.

A short woman in a grey hoodie, with silver hair down to her waist and three scars on her face.

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