“I wished my mother was here tonight, which is stupid, because it’s an impossible wish.” He shrugs and turns to me, drowning the smile that cracks me every time. “It’s not stupid to want to see her again.” “It wasn’t so much that I wanted to see her again,” he says, looking at me with the depth of more than seventeen years in his eyes. “I wanted her to see you.”

“I wished that my hand would work again," I tell him when he climbs in after me. it was my first wish and the only one that mattered."I wished my mother was here tonight, which is stupid, because it's an impossible wish." He shrugs and turns to me, drowning the smile that cracks me every time."It's not stupid to want to see her again.""It wasn't so much that I wanted to see her again, " he says, looking at me with the depth of more than seventeen years in his eyes. "I wanted her to see you.”

“So we forgive each other?" The crooked smile climbs up one more time. "Again?"And I look right into his eyes, right into him as far as I can see, because I want him to hear me, I want him to hear me with everything I mean and feel and say."Always," I say to him. "Every time.”

“His voice dropped to a low murmur, and he leaned down so that he was almost whispering in her ear. “You see, there’s this woman.”She wasn’t going to look at him. She wasn’t.“Normally, one might say that there was a beautiful woman—but I don’t think she qualifies as a classical beauty. Still, I find that when she’s around, I’d rather look at her than anyone else.” He set two fingers against her cheek, and Minnie sucked in a breath. She was not going to look at him. He’d see the longing in her eyes, and then…“There’s something about her that draws my eye. Something that defies words. Maybe it’s her hair, but I tried to tell her that, and she told me I was being ridiculous. I suppose I was. Maybe it’s her lips. Maybe it’s her eyes, although she so rarely looks at me.”

“She’s forgotten me. It’s over. I don’t want to see her again, and now I’ll have to. I won’t be able to help it. I’ll have to sit back and just watch her…live. Without me.” The ifrit shrugs. “Then I overestimated your feelings for her.” My jaw drops. “How dare you? Because I don’t want to see that she’s forgotten me?”"No. Because nothing is really ever gone or forgotten. If she’s a piece of you, and you of her, then memory is merely an obstacle—our power covers the memory, it doesn’t erase it. And I should think, at least based on what I saw in your eyes last night, that it’s an obstacle worth going up against.”

“In the happy times, in the tell-me-again times, when I’m seven and there are no stepbrothers and it’s before the stepfathers, my mom lets me sleep in her bed. Her bed is a raft on the ocean. It’s a cloud, a forest, a spaceship, a cocoon we share. I stretch out big as I can, a five-pointed star, and she bundles me back up in her arms. When I wake I’m tangled in her hair. “Tell me again,” I say and she tells me again how she wanted me more than anything. “More than anything in the world,” she says, “I wanted a little girl.”