Lexicon

her.
    “Wait. Wait.”
    “I have waited,” he said. And she caved, because he was right, and so had she. He pulled her shirt over her head and threw it onto the counter. He pulled her to him by the waistband of her jeans. His mouth mashed hers. His hand dove into her pants. She knew she should stop him, because they wouldn’t be safe until they were a thousand miles from here, but his fingers found her and she forgot about that.
    “I missed you so much,” she said.
    • • •
    She lay in the curl of his arm, slick and sated. She played with his hair. After a while, she poked him. “Harry.” She scratched his chest. She wished she could do this forever. But she could not. “Harry.”
    He opened his eyes. His lips stretched, rubbery. “I thought you were a dream.”
    “I have to tell you something kind of crazy. And then we need to leave.”
    He sat up, smiling. “What?”
    “This is hard to explain.” She felt the need to put on some clothes. Her satchel was on the floor somewhere. She had a vague memory of leaving it with her pants. The most powerful weapon in history, she didn’t know exactly where she’d left it. “There are people looking for me. I stole something from them.”
    “What did you steal?”
    “It’s . . .” she said. “It’s a word.”
    “A word?”
    “Yes. But not an ordinary word.” She hesitated. “There are words that can persuade people. This one is very persuasive. The people looking for me, they want it back. They’ll kill me for it. Kill both of us.” His expression hadn’t changed. “I wasn’t supposed to come back here. I was supposed to never see you again. But I had to. That’s why I stole the word. And it’s taken me a long time to get here, but I made it. I know how this sounds, but you need to trust me. We need to leave.”
    “Are you high?”
    “No. No.”
    “You stole a magic word?”
    “Not . . . actual magic,” she said. “I mean, yes, magic, in the classical sense, but not the way you mean it.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Just trust me. Will you trust me?”
    “And leave?”
    “Yes.”
    “For where?”
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    “I have to work this afternoon.”
    “That doesn’t matter.”
    “Well, it does,” he said. “I’m a paramedic.”
    “Harry,” she said. “This thing I stole, it’s probably the most valuable thing in the world. Do you get that?”
    “You’re freaking out, Em.”
    “I can prove it. Just come with me. When we’re safe, I’ll show you how it works.”
    “Look, no one’s leaving, okay? I’m happy you’re home. But you need to calm down.”
    She recoiled. “Harry—”
    “I haven’t seen you in almost a year. I haven’t heard from you in three months.”
    “I was coming home.”
    “I didn’t know that!”
    “If you love me,” she said, “trust me.”
    He threw back the sheets. “I’m going to work.”
    She didn’t want to compromise him. She’d never wanted to do that: reach into the essence of who he was and change it. But she had known it might be necessary, and planned accordingly. “
Ventrice hasfal collimsin manning.
Get dressed and start packing.”
    He screwed up his face. “What?”
    She blinked. Had she had mixed up his segment? Surely not. She knew him completely. “
Ventrice hasfal collimsin manning.
Get dressed.”
    “You sound fucking crazy.”
    She slid off the bed, unnerved. Harry’s personality was unusual. He was close to the edge of his segment. But she couldn’t have misjudged him that badly. She wasn’t new at this. She wasn’t new to him. She ran to the hallway and found her satchel. She withdrew the bareword from it and held it waist-high. She turned and his eyes moved to it and he grimaced. She felt further unsettled, because she hadn’t seen anyone react like that.
    “Do everything I say.” She didn’t say
ever
, because she loved him.
    He looked at her. His expression was wrong. He was not compromised. He looked like he’d never seen her before.
    “Em,” he said. “I have a shift. Why don’t you chill out until I get back.”
    She had the bareword facing the right way, didn’t she? She resisted a tremendous urge to look down. Had it broken? Was it covered somehow? She ran her fingers over its grooves and nausea rose in her brain. It was there. “Harry,” she said. “Harry.”
    He scooped up his pants. “Em, you need to get out of my way.”
    “Look at this. Do what I tell you.”
    He pushed past