Chapter 4
At five minutes to seven the following morning, Nigel stood behind the counter, staring at the logbook, and not really seeing anything on the pages before him.
He ought to get busy with all the first-thing-in-the-morning shop floor care. The double-delight rose kept shaking its canes forlornly at him from its porcelain pot, and the pussy willows and tiger lilies mewed piteously. All those little floral faces turned his way in expectation.
And yet he continued to stand where he was. Braced behind the counter as though preparing for a coming assault.
He was almost painfully aware of how time was passing.
The clock ticked away behind him on the wall, each tick-tock a gunshot in his brain.
In another few minutes, Luna would arrive.
Early, just as he had requested. She would call out her usual, “Good morning!” greeting, set her purse down behind the counter, don her apron, begin her routine tasks, and . . . and . . .
And would she resent him? For standing in the way of her date with Officer Ward?
She ought to resent him.
And he knew it.
Every time someone walked past the shop windows, he looked up sharply, his heart performing a series of somersaults.
So far no sign of her, however. Just folk on their way down to the harbor and the Jollify Fair.
Not merrymakers yet, not this early. Vendors and crew, or so he guessed.
But he didn’t doubt Luna’s prediction of yesterday: there would be a lot of foot traffic up and down Addle Street. The shop would see good business.
Which meant he had every right to expect his employee to put in a little extra work, hadn’t he? It didn’t matter that he’d half-offered her the day off. It was the prerogative of the employer to change his mind, and . . . and . . .
He pinched the bridge of his nose. For some reason, a face kept appearing in his mind’s eye.
Like a ghoul, determined to haunt him: Lancelot Mortimer.
A colleague at the Nocturnus Institute of Magics, and Jastira’s consort for some years.
Professor Mortimer was a talented sorcerer, a man Nigel looked up to in many ways, but stuck in his Modes and Methods, unwilling to delve into the full potential of the craft.
Jastira grew impatient with him at last and threw him over for Nigel. Not just in matters of sorcery.
When she first invited him up to her room at the top of Nocturnus Tower, Nigel was under no illusions as to her true intentions.
And he went anyway, knowing all the while what it would mean to poor, besotted Mortimer.
One didn’t stop to question moral niceties in matters of either sorcery or sex.
They were Dark Masters of Fate, were they not? They weren’t supposed to be nice.
Nigel grimaced over the logbook, his fingers forming fists where they rested on the countertop.
A few months into the affair, and he’d never once spared a thought for old Mortimer.
Not until the heartbroken sorcerer caught him in a back hallway unawares and challenged him to a duel.
Nigel had taken one look at the red-eyed, disheveled, gaunt little fellow and laughed in his face.
“You don’t want to duel me, Mortimer,” he’d said.
“Look at you, man! You can’t tell a jinx from a conjuring. Go home and sleep it off.”
With that, he’d turned his back.
In retrospect, he’d known what he was doing.
He’d known exactly how the distraught sorcerer would react.
Why else were his hands prepared in the shape of an arcane symbol? So that when Mortimer sent that blast of raw Dire Matter straight at his exposed back, Nigel had whirled nimbly on heel, caught it, and deflected it back into his face?
There had been no time to warp it with sigils or direct it with incantations. Just a pure bolt of raw energy, which struck Lancelot Mortimer right between the eyes and . . .
He didn’t die. It might have been better for him if he had. And it wasn’t a pretty mess to clean up. But then, Nigel hadn’t been the one to wield the mop, had he? That’s what Jastira’s minions were for.
Over the years, via some nimble mental gymnastics, Nigel had convinced himself that the whole business wasn’t his fault.
Professor Mortimer had fired Dire Matter at his unprotected back, without so much as a declaration of intent.
Nigel was the offended party, the object of unreasonable aggression. He’d had every right to defend himself.
But . . .
. . . but . . .
He’d also been the one who chose to climb that stairway to Jastira’s chambers.
He’d done that. Of his own volition.
Figures and numbers danced on the logbook page, forming arcane sigils and patterns. Nigel shut the book and rested both fists against the cover. He was not that man anymore. At least, he was trying very hard not to be.
Trying hard enough? Well . . .
Movement on the street drew his eye. Nigel looked up, peered out the front windows.
Watched as Luna stood on the far sidewalk, looked both ways, then trotted across Addle Street at a quick clip.
She wore the same green suit she’d been wearing the day they first met, the one which had hung in sodden folds on the drying line he’d strung in the back nook.
It never fit quite right after the fact, but she only had a handful of outfits to her name, so this one remained in rotation.
Every time he saw her in it, his heart made a little hiccup, and his mind skittered back to that overcast afternoon when she’d sat across from him, clad only in his dressing gown, trying valiantly to swallow the hideous tea he’d pressed into her hands.
His heart hiccupped now. Right on cue. Followed by an uncomfortable turnover, ending with a plop.
Luna paused under the awning, unaware of his watching gaze.
She shaded her eyes, looked down to the harbor, where the festival was even now making ready to open.
Gazing upon all the fun and excitement, which she was going to miss because her boss was an ass.
Nigel swallowed with some difficulty and pulled at his collar.
He was halfway tempted to duck out into Garden.
Hadn’t he told Luna he intended to stock up on .
. . something? Geraniums or nasturtiums or one of the other-ums?
But no. Whatever other dastardly things he might be, he wasn’t a coward. So he stood his ground.
Luna’s mouth set in a little pucker as she slipped her key from her purse. She unlocked the door, stepped inside, and her voice joined with the tinkle of the shop bells as she called out, “I’m here, Mr. Grimm!”
“Good mor—” Nigel stopped, his throat closing up so tight, he couldn’t get the words out. He cleared it roughly and tried again. “Good morning, Miss Talbot.”
She offered a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, then cast a few swift glances around the shop, noting everything he’d left undone.
Uncharacteristically silent, she crossed to the counter, lifted the hinged portion, and slipped into the narrow space behind it.
“Excuse me,” she murmured, sidling past him.
She removed her outer coat, donned her apron, tied it neatly around her waist. Then she sidled past him again, stepped out from behind the counter, and made for the back passage and the storage room.
Before she could disappear, however, Nigel called out: “Miss Talbot.” His voice emerged in a rough bark.
Luna paused, looked back at him. Her dark eyes were demure, her face devoid of either displeasure or subtle accusation. A perfect blank. But he knew better. They may have spent only a few short weeks together, but he’d learned to read her rather well in that time.
He knew—he knew, damn it—that she was hurt. And he was the one who’d hurt her. What’s worse? He’d done it on purpose. She was the last person in the world whom he ever wanted to cause pain, and he’d done it anyway.
“Don’t you . . . have plans for today?” he asked, forcing the words out with difficulty.
She blinked. Then her gaze skittered sideways to study a bucket of colorful bouquets she’d arranged only yesterday. “No,” she said with a little shrug. “Not as such.”
“Surely you meant to go to the Saint Jollify Fair?”
“Well, my roommate and I . . . we talked about it.”
Nigel’s stomach knotted. So she wasn’t going to tell him about Ward. Somehow, that was the worst. That she would hide the truth from him. That he was such a jealous bastard, she felt the need to pretend she’d not accepted a date with the handsome wardsman.
He must set things right. Now.
“You should go,” he said, firmly. “Take the day. Call it a paid holiday.”
Her brow knotted. She looked away then at him again. Her lips parted for a moment, then closed in a thin line. She tipped her head a little to one side. “Are you sure, Mr. Grimm?”
“Yes.”
“What about the shop?”
“I’ll manage.”
“What about the teas?”
He hesitated. He hadn’t considered all their tea-drinking customers, coming in eager for their favorite brews and their daily readings.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said and moved to fetch her coat and hat from the peg, her purse from the alcove.
He offered them over the counter. “I’ll be fine on my own, Miss Talbot. ”
That frown of hers didn’t lift. He wanted it to lift. He wanted her to smile. But there was no sudden burst of delight, no beaming sunrise on the horizon of her visage. She simply removed her apron, draped it over the counter, and accepted her things from him. “If you say so, Mr. Grimm.”
“I do say so,” he answered firmly, averting his eyes as she shrugged into her coat. He opened the logbook again and pretended to be absorbed in the columns. “Have a good time with Officer Ward,” he added in what he hoped was a sincere inflection.
Luna froze, midway through doing up her buttons. He could feel her gaze on him.
Then: “I’m not going with Officer Ward.”
His stomach dropped.
“I’m going with my roommate. Like I told you.”