Daughter of Smoke and Bone Read Free Page A

them.
    “Not those,” said Kaz. “I mean the one that says Kazimir , right over your heart.”
    “I don’t have a tattoo like that.” She made herself sound puzzled and unfastened the top few buttons of her sweater. Beneath was a camisole, and she lowered it by a few revealing inches to demonstrate that indeed there was no tattoo above her breast. The skin there was white as milk.
    Kaz blinked. “What? How did you—?”
    “Come with me.” Zuzana grabbed Karou’s hand and pulled her away. As they wove among the easels, all eyes were on Karou, lit with curiosity.
    “Karou, did you break up?” Helen whispered in English, but Zuzana put up her hand in an imperious gesture that silenced her, and she dragged Karou out of the studio and into the girls’ bathroom. There, eyebrow still arched, she asked, “What the hell was that?”
    “What?”
    “ What ? You practically flashed the boy.”
    “Please. I did not flash him.”
    “Whatever. What’s this about a tattoo over your heart?”
    “I just showed you. There’s nothing there.” She saw no reason to add that there had been something; she preferred to pretend she had never been so stupid. Plus, explaining how she’d gotten rid of it was not exactly an option.
    “Well, good. The last thing you need is that idiot’s name on your body. Can you believe him? Does he think if he just dangles his boy bits at you like a cat toy you’ll go scampering after him?”
    “Of course he thinks that,” said Karou. “This is his idea of a romantic gesture.”
    “All you have to do is tell Fiala he’s a stalker, and she’ll throw his ass out.”
    Karou had thought of that, but she shook her head. Surely she could come up with a better way to get Kaz out of her class and out of her life. She had means at her disposal that most people didn’t. She’d think of something.
    “The boy is not terrible to draw, though.” Zuzana went to the mirror and flipped wisps of dark hair across her forehead. “Got to give him that.”
    “Yeah. Too bad he’s such a gargantuan asshole.”
    “A giant, stupid orifice,” Zuzana agreed.
    “A walking, talking cranny.”
    “Cranny.” Zuzana laughed. “I like.”
    An idea came to Karou, and a faintly villainous smirk crossed her face.
    “What?” asked Zuzana, seeing it.
    “Nothing. We’d better get back in there.”
    “You’re sure? You don’t have to.”
    Karou nodded. “Nothing to it.”
    Kaz had gotten all the satisfaction he was going to get from this cute little ploy of his. It was her turn now. Walking back into the studio, she reached up and touched the necklace she was wearing, a multistrand loop of African trade beads in every color. At least they looked like African trade beads. They were more than that. Not much more, but enough for what Karou had planned.

C RANNY

    Profesorka Fiala asked Kaz for a reclining pose for the rest of the period, and he draped himself back across the daybed in a way that, if not quite lewd, was certainly suggestive, knees just a bit too skewed, smile bordering on bedroom. There were no titters this time, but Karou imagined a surge of heat in the atmosphere, as if the girls in the class—and at least one of the boys—needed to fan themselves. She herself was not affected. This time when Kaz peered at her from under lazy eyelids, she met his gaze straight on.
    She started sketching and did her best, thinking it fitting that, since their relationship had begun with a drawing, it should end with one, too.
    He’d been sitting two tables away at Mustache Bar the first time she saw him. He wore a villain’s twirled mustache, which seemed like foreshadowing now, but it was Mustache Bar after all. Everyone was wearing mustaches—Karou was sporting a Fu Manchu she’d gotten from the vending machine. She’d pasted both mustaches into her sketchbook later that night—sketchbook number ninety—and the resulting lump made it easy to locate the exact page where her story with Kaz