Chapter 30
Nigel stumbled down the stairs so fast, head bowed and shoulders hunched, he didn’t see the figure coming up in front of him until he bumped into it rather roughly, and a voice growled, “Steady on, man!”
Nigel lifted his head, eyes struggling to discern the face before him in the gloom. “Dr. Bucket?”
The face beneath the bowler hat, somewhat flushed with holiday cheer from the night before, glowered at him from above the salt-and-pepper mustache. “The one and only. You trying to take me out before your bill comes due?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
“Didn’t see me coming up the stairs directly in front of you?” The doctor harrumphed, then looked at Nigel more narrowly from under the brim of his hat. “You look terrible. Long night?”
“Erm, yes.”
“And how is your little cousin?”
The numb brain-gears in his head clunked several ponderous turns before Nigel managed to comprehend the question. “Oh, Miss Talbot?” he blurted. “Yes. Erm. She is . . . I believe she is beginning to feel a little better.”
“Stayed on top of the poultices, did you?”
“Yes.”
“And the dose? You didn’t flake out and stop giving it to her, did you? No matter how she struggled?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then you’ve done a princely deed, my boy.
” Dr. Bucket looked him over again. There wasn’t much room to hide from scrutiny in the narrow stairway, and Nigel found himself wishing he’d donned his overcoat already, rather than carrying it draped over his arm.
As though somehow, its bulk would shield him from that knowing gaze.
“So why are you abandoning the poor miss now?” the doctor demanded. “Had enough of the sick room?”
Nigel felt suddenly as though he’d had just about enough of .
. . everything. The powerful and possibly not-altogether reasonable urge came over him to flee back to the shop and out into Garden, to simply lose himself in that green, rolling acreage, never to be heard from again.
Maybe, in time, he’d grow an enormous, ragged beard, and would eat locusts (whatever those were), and wear nothing but the rags of a once-fine waistcoat, and speak in the strange tongues of birds and beasts, and all memory of his former life and former self would be forgotten in the world beyond the boiler room door.
It was the best fantasy his sleep-deprived brain could invent just then.
Nigel cleared his throat rather aggressively, suppressing a cough, and drew himself up a little straighter. “Miss Talbot’s roommate has returned unexpectedly,” he replied, his voice perfectly controlled and modulated. “She has agreed to take over her care.”
A single brow slid up Dr. Bucket’s forehead, vanishing under the brim of his hat. “Kicked you out, did she? One of those high-moraled misses, eh?”
This description of Bryony was so inapt, Nigel couldn’t begin to answer beyond an uncertain, “Erm . . .”
Dr. Bucket patted his shoulder, offering a bit of manly sympathy.
“On the whole, I myself can forgive a little moral failing here and there,” he said, “especially if it motivates a fellow like yourself to do right by the young lady in question. Not many Jacks would sit up all night to administer medicines to their Janes, so I’ll give you credit where it’s due. ”
Despite the fog of sleep-numbness, part of Nigel knew what Dr. Bucket was implying.
And part of him knew as well that he ought, for the sake of Luna’s reputation, to correct the good doctor.
“Oh no, Dr. Bucket, you’ve got it all wrong,” he should protest, his voice infused with some righteous indignation for the sake of the one maligned.
“I’m like a brother to Miss Talbot. A kindly, considerate, rather stuffy older brother. ”
But his wooly-headed self couldn’t manage more than an, “Erm.”
Then he coughed into his arm.
Dr. Bucket took a step away, up the stairwell, holding his medical bag between them like a barrier.
“You sound worse than you look,” he declared.
“That’s the danger of sitting up all night playing nursemaid when you haven’t the proper training.
Best get home and get to bed. Call your own doctor if that cough gets any worse. ”
Nigel nodded and began to descend once more, then paused and looked back around. “You will continue to look in on Miss Talbot?” he asked, brow crinkling. “Until she is quite well?”
Bucket’s mustache twitched to one side. “So long as my bills are paid. What was that address of yours again? Addle Street, right?”
Nigel nodded. “And . . . you won’t tell her, will you?”
“You want me to let her believe in the charity of my good nature?”
“Yes. That.”
Dr. Bucket chuckled and shook his head. “As long as I’m paid, I can play angel of mercy for as long as you like.” He tipped his bowler then. “Merry Green Yule.”
Unable to return the solicitation, Nigel turned and stumbled on down. In his head, he could hear Luna’s voice, murmuring against his shoulder in the dark of the night, “Merry Green Yule, Mr. Grimm.”
Not particularly aware of his surroundings, Nigel descended numerous flights of stairways to the lower levels of Mrs. Boggs’s Boardinghouse for Young Women of Good Character.
Some small part of his brain registered the yipping and yapping of Mrs. Boggs’s terriers, and Mrs. Boggs’s own voice shouting, “Down, Blitzen! Down, Dancer!” But it wasn’t until he reached the door that he was arrested by Mrs. Boggs herself, stepping between him and his exit, a sentry of darkness in her black crepe dress and ebony brooch.
“And when can I expect payment for my goods and services?” she demanded, with all the seasonal goodwill of a battleax.
“Just send the bill to The Arcane Bouquet,” Nigel muttered, hand reaching around her for the doorknob.
But Mrs. Boggs sidestepped, forcing a visage of meritorious fury into his line of view.
“I won’t have women of bad character staying on in my establishment,” she declared.
The slight bristling on her upper lip quivered with the passion of her words.
“That girl had a man in her room overnight. This goes strictly against the guidelines! She will have to leave by the end of the week—”
It happened quite without intention—more of a reflex than anything.
Nigel certainly didn’t mean to summon a sudden influx of Dire Matter into his being, he didn’t plan to swell suddenly into a towering figure of dark-infused radiant horror.
Sometimes these things happen. When one is a former Dark Sorcerer, that is.
And Nigel found himself suddenly looking down into Mrs. Boggs’s cowering form from a loftier height than moments ago, his vision ringed in a whorling storm of anti-glitter. And he heard his own voice, reverberating with hidden depths of horror: “You will not drive Miss Talbot from her home.”
Mrs. Boggs shrank before him, a quivering ball of abject terror.
Her terriers yelped in chorus, fleeing on skittering nails into the depths of the house, abandoning their mistress to her fate.
But though his hands were already beginning to form fell sigils, Nigel hastily squeezed them into fists, and forced his essence and being back down into more ordinary proportions.
He smoothed back a lock of his hair and added in a much-softened tone, without any echoing traces of the Dire Dimensions, “Good day, Mrs. Boggs.”
With that, he pushed past the cowering landlady and stepped through the door out into the frigid morning. Gray clouds filmed over the sun, and fat, gentle flakes of snow fell, contriving to disguise the worst stains and ruts of Bootblack Alley.
Shivering, Nigel stuffed his hands deep into his coat pockets, tucked his face behind his scarf, and set out walking.
There weren’t any taxies to be hailed, not this early on Green Yule morning, and certainly not in this part of town.
He tramped past the same seedy bar as yesterday.
Green Yule music continued to play on the thaumatic radio inside.
Apparently, they didn’t close for the holy day, and more than one sad voice, upraised in drunken chorus, echoed from within.
“Like a whisper of love, a gleam of light hails the hope of dawning day,” drawled the desperate revelers.
Nigel closed his eyes, hastening by. But he could not outrun the memory of Luna, cradled in his arms. And though he tried very hard not to, he felt again the unexpected softness of her bare shoulder beneath his lips when he awakened this morning with his head bowed forward.
That memory sent a rush of warmth through every vein, driving out all wintry chill.
But no. No!
“I think very highly of him. He’s been good to me. Just like a brother.”
Her words seemed to follow him, pursuing like determined terriers, all the way back through the snow-muffled streets of Lower Eastside.
He was scarcely aware of his surroundings and didn’t notice the length of the walk.
Were the traffic any worse, he may well have been flattened for all the attention he paid at crosswalks.
Her voice was in his head, an inescapable echo: “Brother . . . brother . . . brother . . .”
Abruptly, he found himself standing in front of The Arcane Bouquet.
Nigel gave his head a little shake and stared stupidly at his own door.
The echoes in his head receded, and he drew a deep breath of cold air.
Then he coughed—and that served to wake him up a bit.
Lurching forward a stumbling step, he fetched his key from his pocket and jiggled it in the lock a few times until the door swung open.
Immediate pandemonium erupted in his senses.
“Never mind! Never mind! Never mind!” Debbie screeched, flapping around the ceiling pipes, raining down feathers with every ominous injunction.
Potting soil was scattered every which-way across the floor.
The tiger lilies, having all escaped their pots, chased the petunias under tables and around displays.
The double-delight rose had grown much too large for her pot, and was taking over the holiday wreath display with more aggression than one might expect.
The Winter’s Heart tree lay toppled, its decorations scattered, and the snapdragons amused themselves by tossing holly berries into the air and setting them ablaze in little pops of sparks.
Nigel took this in, all in a single, sweeping gaze. Then, drawing breath into his lungs, he bellowed, “ENOUGH!”
All the little flower faces turned to him, even those wilting blooms gathered in demure bouquets.
Then, there was an abashed skittering and scuffling, as rogue blossoms darted for their pots and planters and vases.
Even the double-delight retracted her colonizing canes, reducing to fit in her pot once more, leaving numerous flower heads dropped in her wake.
Debbie fluttered to settle on Nigel’s shoulder and nipped his ear. “Never mind!” she croaked, in tones which communicated quite clearly, “It’s about time you showed up!”
“I thought I told you to mind the shop?” Nigel growled.
She ruffled her wings at him and shook her head despairingly.
Nigel sighed. “Never mind,” he echoed, and patted her head.
“Never mind, never mind. It was unfair of me to leave you alone with all these nutters.” He scowled around at the flowers.
The tiger lilies were using their own leaves to pat down their potting soil, making a mess of it, but appearing contrite.
There was dirt, mud, berries, leaves, twigs, stems .
. . mess. Absolutely everywhere. And Nigel would have to clean it all up.
But just now, he couldn’t.
He locked the door behind him. Then, Debbie still clinging to his shoulder, he stomped to the nook behind the counter. It was cold back there, so he lit the stove, stirred it up into a nice bright blaze inside, then sat in the cane chair, his feet stretched before him, his hands limp at his sides.
A long exhale breathed through his lips.
Debbie, concerned, perched on his knee. “Never mind?” she asked and pecked at a button of his waistcoat.
“She wants a brother, Debbie,” Nigel said, looking down at his bird. “A kindly, considerate, stuffy older brother.”
The raven tilted her head, bright eye blinking.
Nigel coughed into his elbow, then stuck the heel of his hand into his eye, rubbing hard.
He was suddenly, blisteringly exhausted.
But the idea of trying to make it up to bed was, for the moment at least, too much.
“If that’s what she needs,” he murmured, more to himself than to his bird, “so be it. I . . . I’ll be a brother to her. ”
He would do it. He would redirect all of these unruly passions, which had been starting to get so wildly out of hand, and put them on a more appropriate, fraternal sort of track.
He would become whatever it was Luna needed, for as long as she needed it.
And he absolutely would not, under any circumstances, make her uncomfortable with feelings she clearly did not want from him.
As for those near-midnight confessions in the darkness of her room? Well, a man will say a lot of things while under stress. It wasn’t as though they were binding vows or anything of that nature.
No, no. He could fix this. He could get himself—his heart, his emotions—back into proper regulation. By the time Miss Talbot returned to work, he would have snuffed out any inappropriate desires. He wasn’t some callow youth, after all. He was a man. He was in control.
Debbie turned her head, gazing up at him with some sympathy.
“Merry Green Yule, Debbie,” Nigel said, stroking her dark head.
“Never mind,” she replied.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I figured as much.”
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