A Spot of Tea and Sorcery, Vol. 4
Beginning
Nigel Grimm stood behind the shop counter, pretending to go over the logbook from yesterday, but in actuality watching the traffic passing to-and-fro outside the front windows of The Arcane Bouquet.
Every time someone walked by on the sidewalk, shadow flickering in the morning light, his heart leapt, and he grabbed the edge of the counter.
Even when each figure went on its way without so much as a pause or a glance, his heart continued to race for some while, as though he’d just survived a deadly encounter.
Gods spare him, since when had he become so deeply dependent on his sorcery?
He supposed it had come on slowly, many years ago, as his powers increased. The same way a small child slowly comes to depend on the expected use of arms and legs. Eventually, you don’t even think about it anymore. The power is simply there . . . until it isn’t.
One would think three years of (mostly) sorcerous abstinence would prepare him for this sudden sensation of vulnerability.
Part of the reason he’d moved to Ballycastle in the first place was the particularly stringent sorcery-suppression laws, which made it both the perfect place to hide a great work of sorcery and to limit the temptation to utilize any superfluous spells.
Surely, he’d told himself at the time, he could learn to move and function in the ordinary world without that constant twitch in his spirit, that draw of the Dire on the edge of his very soul.
Only, apparently, he hadn’t.
Nigel ran the tip of his pencil down a line of figures in the logbook.
It was his tenth time going over the same set of numbers, still not quite registering anything he read.
He’d written a total sum three times, only once he’d added in numbers from the next column over, once he’d left out an entire set of figures, and once he’d brought in an equation of Dire Integers, changing the nature of the sum entirely and partially opening a portal into the Void right there on his line-ruled page.
Nigel hastily erased and started over. His head for math was usually much sharper than this.
But it was difficult to perform even basic calculations with one’s stomach knotted up with dread.
He glanced at the clock on the wall behind him. 8:23, it read. Seven minutes until the arrival of his Sovereign Lady—the one person in the world who could now command the tremendous power which had, until yesterday, been at his fingertips.
Nigel dropped the pencil, leaned forward, and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.
Did Luna know? Did she even guess the degree of power to which she now had access?
Why, with his mastery of the Dire, she could command him to topple the governing bodies of this very city in a single afternoon!
By this time tomorrow morning, she might sit enthroned in the governor’s mansion and call herself the new Queen of Ballycastle.
And who could oppose her? Sure, they’d send their wardsmen with their anti-sorcery equipment, but nothing they wielded compared to Nigel’s grasp of spellcraft.
And he had Garden as a power source—basically an endless fount of energy reserves, if he used it wisely.
Which he would, of course. He wouldn’t try to drain it all in one go on a single Great Spell, as Jastira had attempted.
No, he would only take in part, as needed, allowing the rest to regenerate after each usage.
But each spell he worked would be so tremendous, the SSSD would be powerless to stop him.
A series of quite sorcerous images played out in his head, all the usual grandiose temptations common to any Dark Sorcerer.
Nigel liked those images. For once, they did not feature his own ascension, but that of his Sovereign Lady.
What a queen she would be! Exalted over all those who had once dared demean her with their ugly tattoos and their petty prejudices!
And he, her faithful servant, resplendent in sorcerer’s robes, wreathed in anti-glitter storms. Blasting a contingent of wardsmen (all of whom strongly resembled Officer Ward in his imagination) with bolts of Dire force—
The shop door opened to a tinkle of bells.
Nigel gulped. All grandiosity flooded from his soul like the blood draining from his face.
He looked up sharply, wide-eyed and a bit ashamed, and, for just an instant, his imagined vision of a dreadful (and rather scantily clad) Queen of Darkness overlayed the real-life vision of the woman stepping through his door.
But fantasy soon flitted away. The crown of burning Dire Matter melted down into a little knit cap, and robes of churning anti-glitter were replaced by a threadbare winter coat, splashed with street snow.
“Hullo, Mr. Grimm,” Luna said quietly. She kicked ice from her boots before pulling the door shut behind her against the winter chill.
There was none of the usual brightness or spark in her voice.
Instead, a subdued melancholy clung to her, hunching her shoulders.
She did not pause to glance at any of the flowers, which raised their heads to greet her as she crossed the display floor.
She certainly did not look at her employer.
Nigel forced words up through his thick throat. “Good morning, Miss Talbot.” Even that small utterance required positively heroic effort.
Luna approached the counter. Lifted the hinged portion. Stepped back into the small space with him. As though it didn’t matter. As though to share proximity once more wasn’t tantamount to suddenly returning to a breathable atmosphere after drifting through airless vacuums.
Nigel’s jaw locked. He ought to resent her for what she’d demanded of him yesterday.
For making him pledge that Sovereign Troth, bestowing on her the right to dispense his magic as she willed.
But he couldn’t resent her. Not even if he wanted to.
She sidled past him, unaware of what the brush of her coat against the back of his legs did to his equilibrium, and Nigel purposefully did not watch as she hung up her things, as she donned her apron, as she shook her smooshed hat-hair into a more attractive arrangement.
But he felt every movement she made so intensely, it hurt.
“Excuse me,” Luna murmured, sidling by him again as she stepped out from behind the counter. He watched from under his brow as she made her way to the back passage, heading for the storage room. Preparing to go about all the regular opening duties, as though this were just any other morning.
“Miss Talbot?” he called after her abruptly.
She paused, turned. Looked back over her shoulder. Her face was devoid of all expression.
Nigel swallowed. He found himself briefly trying to recall the look he’d thought he’d seen in her eyes in the dark two nights before.
When they’d shared a makeshift bed of piled quilts, and she’d lain in his arms. When she’d brushed her lips against his jaw, sending such an electric storm bursting through every synapsis of his brain, and he’d rolled atop her, struggling to see her face in the shadows, to discern her expression, to understand.
To know if what he thought he was sensing from her was in any way true or even likely.
Did she want him to kiss her? Not just a brotherly salute on the cheek, chaste and sexless.
A true kiss. A lover’s kiss. Passionate.
Whole-hearted. The sort of kiss which rocked foundations and irrevocably altered the shape of worlds.
But in the moment, he couldn’t see her face well enough to know. And now, looking at those cold features, schooled into such emotionless lines, he wondered if he’d very nearly let wishful thinking make him into a fool. Again.
“The, erm.” He cleared his throat and said the first thing which sprang to mind. “The snapdragons. They require deadheading this morning.”
Luna’s lips thinned ever so slightly. Deadheading the snapdragons was a singularly unpleasant (not to mention mildly dangerous) task, one Nigel had only asked her to perform on rare occasions.
He could kick himself for doing so now, but the words were spoken, and he refused to back down, refused to break her gaze.
She nodded. Once. Short. “Of course, Mr. Grimm.”
Turning, she continued on to the storage room. Nigel listened to the sounds of her footsteps, the opening and closing of the door.
Then he readdressed his gaze to the logbook page where the numbers once more danced and whirled and made no sense to his brain. Debbie hopped down from her skull-pot and fluttered across the counter to peck at his necktie. “Never mind?” she suggested with some sympathy.
“No,” Nigel growled. “I’m not running away to Garden this morning. We . . . we’ve got to figure out a way to work together. Like two reasonable people.”
But he couldn’t help wincing when the storage room door banged open once more, heralding Luna’s return.
She appeared, toting a bag of Mama Morgana’s Miracle Manure, her hands clad in rubber gloves, and a bucket slung from one elbow.
Nigel made a valiant effort not to watch her as she moved about the display floor, feeding the potted plants, trimming withered leaves, plucking browned petals, and rearranging the ready-made bouquets.
She tackled the snapdragons last of all, her face set in stern lines, for they were crotchety and eager for bloodsport this morning.
One snapping blossom caught the end of her rubber-gloved finger and bit down hard.
When she recoiled, it came up by the roots, dangling from her fingertip, the other flower heads puffing smoke and uttering tiny, furious roars.