Castles Made of Sand Read Online Free Page A

modern drugs anyway. Taking massive doses of enhanced human biochemicals for fun sounded to her like—feeding cows on dead cows. You don’t need the scientific details, if you have any sense you just know it’s a terrible idea.
    They’ll be okay. Sage will be in charge, because it is drugs. Or Ax will be in charge, because Sage loves that. Anyway one of them will be in charge. They always do that, very clever; or maybe it’s genetic, a male thing, to avoid—
    The entryphone chimed: she had to go down and let them in.
    ‘Sorry,’ said Ax, on the doorstep, ‘couldn’t find my key.’
    ‘You don’t have a key, idiot. You look at the ID thing with your eyes. What are you doing back here, futile creatures? You can’t have a pair bond with three in it.’
    ‘We’re not interested in any other kind,’ Sage kissed the tip of her nose.
    ‘DON’T kiss my nose! I HATE it when you do that!’
    But he had followed Ax upstairs, laughing.
    In the big living-room they were walking around, beaming weirdly. Ax had taken off his coat and Sage his outer scummy sweater. Fiorinda returned to her book. She’d been asleep when Ax left for Reading (pretending to be asleep, to signal her disapproval). ‘Is that what you were wearing at Allie’s party? She will have been impressed.’ There was nothing wrong with Ax’s dark red suit except that it was a little shabby, which should be a virtue these days. Sage wore his beloved slick, Imipolex, one-shouldered black dungarees (easy for hosing down), over a dreadful Hard Fun Tour hoodie, itinerary dates illegible with age. It might once have been grey. Or maybe mud-brown.
    ‘Uh, yeah?’
    ‘Are we not modish enough? Maybe that’s what was up with her.’
    ‘She didn’t say anything—’
    ‘I don’t remember whether she said anything. But I received tetchy vibes.’
    ‘Oh, surely not,’ said Fiorinda. ‘She wouldn’t have wasted her fire.’
    Fiorinda was occupying one couch, along with Ax’s cat, who was fast asleep on a cushion. They took the other: Sage stretched out, Ax propped against it on the hearth rug, in front of the old flame-effect gas stove. ‘Is this room warm enough?’ asked Sage. ‘Can we turn that up? You have to keep warm, Fee.’
    ‘I am very cosy. Leave the stove alone, both of you. The state you are in, you’ll set the place on fire. Is it turning out the way you expected?’
    Sage looks at Ax, Ax looks at Sage. They have a little staring match: breathing in synchrony. She’s not going to get an answer. They’ve forgotten the question, or neither of them is going to be the first to back down and say yes; or no.
    ‘What’s it feel like,’ she asked (her attitude softened by the fact that nothing seemed to have gone horribly wrong), ‘doing oxytocin?’
    ‘Depends who you are and who you’re taking it with,’ said Sage, disengaging from the stare to grin at the ceiling: a skull in a soppy dream. ‘If you’re me, and taking it with Ax, it feels not unlike being three years old and spending a happy day pottering around, doing nothing much, with your mother.’
    ‘I’d go with that,’ said Ax, smiling at his huge infant. ‘Only different.’
    ‘I may throw up.’ She wondered about Allie’s party. ‘ Could you behave normally if you wanted to?’
    ‘Oh yeah,’ said Ax. ‘It’s very mild, really.’
    ‘Are we not behaving normally?’ asked Sage. They started laughing like fools: then stopped, gazing at each other with such grave happiness—
    ‘I should go to bed and leave you to it.’
    She did not throw up; or go to bed. She stayed, pretending to read, unable to tear herself away, and they didn’t seem to mind. Ax fetched an acoustic guitar, and made sure it was in tune. He started to play, looking at Sage expectantly. She was so flustered by the situation it wasn’t until Sage began to sing that she recognised ‘Stonecold’, Fiorinda’s own paradoxical, teenage-vagrant anthem, her first big hit, her first big song. What