Chapter EIGHTEEN
Luna found herself with less than three seconds in which to make the first of several vital decisions. And she didn’t have time to consider any of them—they simply must be made. Now.
She swept the knit hat off her head and, with a single, swift step, dropped it over the spider. Then she stood a moment, staring down at the hat. Trying to tell herself that there wasn’t really a spider underneath. Even as she knew perfectly well there was.
She really hated spiders.
She was beginning to hate Lord Bruxley as well.
But she couldn’t very well just leave him out here in the snow, could she? Spiders and snow do not mix—she was fairly certain on that point. It would be tantamount to a death sentence to abandon him out here. And who knew how long this spell would last? Or had Mr. Grimm made it permanent?
Mr. Grimm . . .
Breathing out a gust of white vapors, Luna turned her attention to her employer next. Lying there. With his face in a pile of dirty snow. His wet, stockinged feet sticking out behind him.
A whole-body shiver rushed through her. Nothing to do with cold. Pure terror, pulsing in little waves down her spine. Because she’d seen him, again: that awful, seven-foot tall figure of whorling darkness. Storming across Addle Street, a nightmare made manifest, summoning all the fell energies of the Dire Dimensions to his fingertips, anti-glitter brimming in his blood. And Luna knew now what she had only suspected before and tried her hardest to pretend she didn’t suspect. Mr. Grimm wasn’t a sorcerer like Sorcerer Biddercombe back home. He was something far worse.
“A Dark Sorcerer,“
she whispered.
That was certainly Dark Magic he’d just used. Transmutation was one of the worst crimes, one for which the SSSD could lock him away for life, if not something more permanent.
She drew another shuddering breath as yet another pulse of terror shot from the top of her head down to her toes. “Oh, Mr. Grimm!“
she whimpered.
Turning her head sharply this way and that, Luna looked up and down the sidewalk and the street. All was empty. Still. No automagic mobiles, no faces in the windows. While the blast of magic had been swift and violent, it was perfectly silent, and she didn’t think it had spread particularly. It was a very controlled, very concentrated blast. Unless a wardsman with a sorcery sensor happened to be patrolling a nearby street, she had reason to hope no one would have noticed.
She should go. Now. Before a whistle shrieked sharply in her ear, before wardsmen’s footsteps pounded on the pavement, before she found herself in handcuffs, her tattoo prominently displayed, trying to explain before a judge how she wasn’t really involved, truly. Before she ended up behind bars. Trapped. Pinned down.
Before the phantoms closed in.
Luna took a few steps. And stopped. Because she couldn’t just go, could she? She couldn’t leave Mr. Grimm lying there on the sidewalk. No more than she could leave Lord Bruxley under her hat.
“Oh, Green Mother!“
she growled, not quite in prayer. Then, summoning her courage, she stepped to her employer’s side, knelt, and, gripping his shoulders, gave him a firm shake. “Mr. Grimm! Mr. Grimm, you’ve got to get up!”
He moaned a little. Tried to lift his head. Then it flopped down again, heavy on the end of his jelly-like neck. Luna sat back on her heels, looking him over. What had happened to him? She’d seen him use sorcery before, when he burst open Lord Bruxley’s gate. That hadn’t seemed to affect him like this. But then, she supposed, a simple blasting spell wouldn’t require the same expenditure of force necessary for literally warping and reshaping reality itself.
“Why did you do it?“
she hissed, shaking him again ungently. Then, setting her jaw, she smacked the back of his head. “Why? Don’t you think I can manage the likes of Lord Bruxley? You absolute fool!”
Grabbing him hard by both shoulders, she heaved and hauled and finally succeeded in rolling him onto his back. It took everything she had—he was slender, but that didn’t make him light. He flopped insensibly, his eyes blinking at the swiftly-brightening sky overhead without comprehension.
“We’ve got to get you inside, Mr. Grimm,“
Luna said. “And I can’t carry you. I can support you, but you need to move your own two feet.“
She took hold of his arm and somehow managed to haul him into a seated position. From there, she contrived to pull one of his arms around her shoulders. His other hand came up, vaguely clutching at the front of her coat. “Fresh,“
Luna muttered, but without malice. She could tell he wasn’t doing it on purpose, and at least he was conscious enough to hold onto something.
“Get your feet under you,“
she commanded and watched his legs flop about like noodles for some moments before contriving to brace and lift. With a groan, she rose from a crouch, pulling him up with her. He began to topple almost immediately, but she managed to angle his back against the wall of the building. There he propped for a moment, on the verge of collapse but not quite giving into it.
“Eeeeerm, mumble,“
he said, his eyes very heavy. One shivering hand pointed at something on the ground.
Luna looked and saw her knit hat. Grimacing, she knelt and very slowly, very gingerly, lifted it up. Her heart thudded. The spider! It was gone! But, no, wait . . . she turned her hat over to look inside. There it sat. Big. Fat. Menacing. Blinking eight shiny eyes up at her. And somehow, despite a lack of mustache, still contriving to look something like Lord Bruxley.
“Ugh!“
Luna hastily put her hat back down again. Gods, but she hated spiders. Still, she couldn’t leave him out here. This sidewalk would be crowded with foot traffic in another thirty minutes. Time to get all three of them safely back inside.
Closing her hat like a little purse, Luna stuffed it unceremoniously into her pocket, hoping Lord Bruxley wouldn’t be squished in the process. Then she turned to Mr. Grimm again. “All right,“
she said. “Let’s do this.”
It was easier said than done, but somehow, with much staggering, teetering, puffing, and at least one moment when she was certain she would lose him to the gutter entirely, Luna managed to get her employer back across Addle Street and into the relative warmth of The Arcane Bouquet. All the flowers looked up, horrified, and Debbie, who had been waiting by the window, fluttered her wings and squawked with pure indignation.
“He’s fine!“
Luna hastened to reassure them. “I think. No worse than he deserves, in any case.“
She turned a narrow-eyed glare the raven’s way. “Did you know he’s a Dark Sorcerer?”
Debbie shrugged.
“Oh, I suppose you did. You’re probably his familiar, aren’t you?“
She swung her gaze around at all the flowers then. “And none of you thought to tell me? Not even a hint?”
The violets retreated deep behind their leaves, and the fuchsia stocks shivered with shame. Even the tiger lilies appeared somewhat abashed. Which was unfair, Luna had to admit. After all, no one had deceived her—not like she’d deceived herself. Because, in retrospect, she could have figured things out long ago if she’d wanted to. Not just the spell he’d worked at Bruxley Hall, not just the flashes of onyx she’d glimpsed upon occasion in the depths of his eyes. No, it was the portal spell which gave it away. That powerful gateway through layers of reality behind which he hid Garden. And all the protections which prevented that spell from being detected. That was tremendous magic. Intricate, complicated magic, not the stuff of a hobby sorcerer or even a smalltime academic. Real sorcery.
As to why a Dark Sorcerer would take it into his head to move to a sorcery-free city like Ballycastle and open a flower shop? That, Luna couldn’t begin to guess.
She cast a glance toward the stairwell, halfway wondering if there was any chance she could get her boss up to his bed. But that was unlikely, not with the way he sagged from her shoulder, heavy and flopping and muttering deliriously. Was he trying to chant a dark spell even now?
“Right,“
she growled, “it’s back of the counter for you!”
At least their makeshift bed from last night was still there. When she all but dropped him in a tumble to the floor, he had a pile of quilts to cushion his landing. Luna had just enough compassion in her heart, despite her fright, to kneel and arrange the quilts around him into a more comfortable configuration. His eyes stared glassily up at the ceiling, but she could see that he wasn’t conscious. It was eerie—like he gazed out of this world and into that Dire place. There was real terror in that gaze. Was he even now fighting to prevent his soul from being drawn into fathomless depths?
Luna backed away quickly, as though her own soul might be compromised by proximity. Then, with a little, “Oh!“
she reached in her coat pocket and withdrew her hat. Cringing, she opened it until she saw several long, spidery legs. “Ugh!“
She closed it again. But she couldn’t leave Lord Bruxley stuffed in there. Hastily, she grabbed a glass vase out from under the counter, along with floral wire and some tissue paper. Then she shook her hat over the vase until the fat, leggy body of the erstwhile lord dropped down into the bottom.
“Eeeep!“
Luna pressed fingers to her mouth, suppressing a much more impressive scream of horror. Oh, why did it have to be a spider? Why couldn’t Mr. Grimm have chosen anything else? A nice, fluffy bunny, perhaps? Even a rat. She liked rats. Rats were cute. Or butterflies were always welcome. But no. Mr. Grimm was a Dark Sorcerer. Bunnies and butterflies wouldn’t be darkly sorcerous enough for him.
“It could have been worse,“
Luna told herself as she hastily spread several layers of tissue paper over the top of the vase and secured them with the floral wire. “It could have been a snake, I suppose.”
The spider skuttled around at the base of the vase and made a few abortive attempts to scurry up the sides. It didn’t seem to have quite figured out the use of all its limbs, however, and kept tripping over itself and landing in a pathetic little ball of disgustingness. Luna used the point of a pencil to punch a few air holes into the tissue paper. This task accomplished, she backed away into the nook, collapsed onto the cane chair. And waited for the panic attack to come.
“Breathe in for six,“
she whispered to herself, desperately trying to make her shaking lungs obey. “Hold for six. Breathe out for six.”
The events of the morning kept playing round in her head. Could she have prevented any of it? Had she been more aware of her surroundings, might she have spied Lord Bruxley in that doorway in time to avoid him? But her head had been down, her gaze on her feet, and her mind in a complete tumult after waking up cold and alone behind the counter. She kept asking herself, had Mr. Grimm abandoned her sometime in the night? She couldn’t say. All she knew was that she’d woken up very uncomfortable, her body sore from hours of lying on the hard ground, and her chest filled with a heavy weight of sorrow which, in those initial moments of waking, she couldn’t recall the reason for. Then it hit her all over again.
Along with a flood of excruciating embarrassment.
She’d needed to get out of that shop and away from Mr. Grimm as fast as she possibly could. Was this, she’d wondered, what the girls at Mrs. Boggs’s Boardinghouse for Young Women of Good Character meant when they talked about a “walk of shame?“
Because she definitely felt ashamed as she shuffled across the slushy pavement of Addle Street and stepped onto the far sidewalk. So ashamed, she wasn’t sure she could ever bear to look Mr. Grimm in the eye again—
And that’s when Lord Bruxley had grabbed her elbow and whirled her to face him.
She’d been so shocked at first, she’d not even recognized the man. He was looking rather worse for wear and stank of bourbon, despite it being only just past 6 o’clock in the morning.
“Lord Bruxley!“
she’d yelped before drawing herself up with some dignity. “You smell like a distillery. Let go of my arm, sir!”
But he’d dragged her toward him, breathing alcohol fumes into her face. “It’s your fault,“
he’d snarled through his mustache, which was still neatly trimmed and in perfect order, despite the raggedness of the rest of him. “She’s dumped me. On my arse! Thrown me over for Huntley, that little gods-damned, upstart jockey! Countess d’Ackerley and all her vast fortune has slipped through my fingers, and she tells me you’re to blame.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,“
Luna had protested, trying to twist her arm free.
“Oh, don’t you? I don’t remember much about that night, but I remember you. You in that little trashy getup of yours, shaking what you’ve got right in front of me. Well, you can’t make promises like that and expect not to keep them. You’ve lost me a fiancée; the least you can do is console me a little!”
He’d pressed her up against the wall then, and Luna began to feel truly alarmed. “Lord Bruxley,“
she’d said sternly, pushing against his chest, “you don’t deserve a woman like Countess Claudine.”
“What?“
He’d sneered. “She was begging to marry me! Embarrassed herself, falling all over me in front of everyone. That old bat with her airs and her old money and her bony shoulders. I was doing her a favor, don’t you know? She was desperate to get me, and she’d marry me still if it weren’t for . . .”
He went on talking for some moments after that, but Luna didn’t hear any of it. For just then, she saw, over Lord Bruxley’s shoulder, the figure of whorling darkness and Dire Energy storming across Addle Street, and every sense in her body went totally numb.
For a moment, she thought, They’ve found me. I was careless, and they’ve found me. Oh gods, I should have left weeks ago. I should never have stayed in one place for so long.
And then the blast flew.
She’d thought it was meant for her. A scream ripped from her throat, and she threw her arms over her head.
But it didn’t touch her.
She didn’t even feel any heat from it, no prickling of Dire Matter. It enveloped Lord Bruxley, absolutely and completely, with a precision of sorcerous marksmanship that went far beyond any degree of sorcery she’d ever experienced. Not that she’d experienced much. But the spells which had eradicated her parents’ existence from this world had certainly not been so precise. So focused, so exquisitely rendered. Or so quick.
In less than ten seconds, Lord Bruxley went from a fully grown, human man, to a tiny, crawling arachnid. All his life-force, all that energy, all that vigor of sheer personhood, folded up and condensed and compressed and compacted in a few blinks of the eye.
And Luna knew she was sharing the sidewalk with one of the Great Sorcerers of the Age. Who, now that she looked at him again—now that the churning Dire Storm cleared away—also happened to be . . .
“Mr. Grimm!”
Luna opened her eyes, returning from that place of memory to the nook behind the counter. She peered through her lashes down at the man before her, tumbled awkwardly on the quilt pile. The man with whom she’d shared that same quilt pile for at least some portion of the night. The man whom she’d kissed. Just a little press of lips against his jaw, sure. But a kiss, nonetheless. And the strong implication that she would welcome more, were he so inclined.
Luna turned her face away, burying it in shaking hands. She felt sick inside and wondered momentarily if she was going to vomit then and there.
He’s a sorcerer. The words clanged inside her head like chantry house bells. And not just any sorcerer. A Dark Sorcerer.
If he knew who she was . . . if he guessed . . . what would he do about it?
She should go. Now. Leave him and the transmogrified Lord Bruxley behind forever. Flee to the train station, buy whatever ticket she could afford to whatever destination. Get out of Ballycastle. She shouldn’t even stop at Mrs. Boggs’s to claim her things. Not if she was wise. Just put as much distance between herself and this man as she possibly could.
Only . . .
Only it was Mr. Grimm.
Her Mr. Grimm.
Who gave her a job, when everyone else took one look at the tattoo on her wrist and kicked her out the door. Who bought her new winter boots because he knew she couldn’t afford them. Who held her while she wept, who didn’t abandon her in the dark. Who made her all those cups of tea.
He’d turned Lord Bruxley into a spider. For her.
“I mean, it’s rather sweet if . . . if you look at it from a certain point of view,“
she whispered.
Then she choked on a little sob and quickly pressed both hands to her mouth.