Page 94 of What Happens After Midnight
“Sound logic.” I nodded. “Here we are at exactly that.”
Tag grinned. “This ritual is extremely sacred,” he told me. “Every Jester taps their successor by slipping themthis.” He flashed me a joker card. “I never really wondered who tapped me.”
I gave him a look. “Really?”
He shrugged. “Really.”
“It doesn’t feel appropriate for me to be here, though,” I said. “I’m not the Jester.”
“No, but you’re still in the deck,” Tag countered, then casually nodded his chin to the left. I caught his drift and shookmy head when I unlocked my mailbox to find a different card. He laughed. “Hey, Bunker called you our crown jewel!”
I carefully slid the queen into my back pocket. Anyone else would say it was silly, but I believed it was also poetic. Tag and I had been broken, and these cards had brought us back together. “But I’m not a queen,” I told him. “No matter what Bunker thinks, I’m definitely not. I’m just Lily.” I took his hand. “I’m just Hopscotch.”
Tag let out a long sigh. “I feel that,” he said. “Because I don’t want to be the joker anymore—on special occasions, maybe, but I’m so ready for someone else to be the Jester. I’ve gotta go back to being Tag.”
I winked. “Who shall it be then?”
“Thatisthe question…” he mused. “Although we both know there’s only one answer.”
And with that, he marched forward and tucked the joker card into Anthony DeLuca’s mailbox. The first fac brat Jester—I was already proud of him. No body, no crime, I thought before we vanished from the mail room like ghosts.
The stars still shimmered outside, so Tag and I decided to walk the rest of the way to his dorm. He wanted to hold my hand but couldn’t grasp it; I kept five steps between us, walking backward and smiling at him. “Come on,” he said, reaching for me. “Come here.”
I responded by melodramatically extending my arm, our fingers still not touching.
He groaned. “Hops!”
Even irked, his voice was everything.
“How about tag?” I grinned, but since I loved him, I dropped the teasing and stopped to wait…or so hethought. I had an end game. “You’re it!” I exclaimed when he held out his hand, and I quickly kissed him before darting off up the street.
I knew he would follow.
He caught me from behind within ten seconds, snaking an arm around my waist and pulling me close. Sweet and spellbinding shivers went through me. “Yes,” he murmured, lips brushing my ear. “You are.”
