Chapter 19 #2
Harriet sat next to Sam on the bed and dug in her backpack, then held out one of Sam’s carefully chosen bars of chocolate.
“But—”
She shot Sam a look, smiled, then handed the chocolate to his brother. “’Tis powerful stuff,” she said, deciding that she might as well adopt the local vernacular while she could, “so don’t eat it too quickly. Sam has more—”
“Which you will not be enjoying because I’m taking it with me,” Sam said briskly. “Where do you want us to start with our review of this scribble-fest of yours?”
“Did those four gels from Texas check in or am I safe?”
Harriet exchanged a look with Sam, then felt a little of the tension ease out of her at the smile he gave her before he turned to his brother to briefly describe the non-chocolatey delights Theo had to look forward to.
Sam was uncharacteristically silent on the way to London.
Harriet knew this because she was sitting with him in the back of that same very nice Mercedes that had delivered them to the inn, listening to a lovely classical station on the radio, and watching him restlessly toy with one thing after another with his right hand, all in utter silence.
If he’d continually held her hand with his left, who was to know?
His hand was warm and she liked the way he rubbed his thumb occasionally over the back of her hand and laced his fingers with hers only to undo that and simply hold her hand in both his own for a bit before beginning the process all over again.
She also tended to fuss with pen lids and pencils and erasers while getting things out of her head and heart and down onto paper, so she understood.
She also understood, when a trio of text messages hit his phone and he turned that phone so she couldn’t see them, that he was planning on ditching her as soon as he could.
She pulled herself away from simply watching the scenery go by when Rufus stopped in front of Sam’s building.
She was fairly sure she’d managed to thank both him and Jackson for the lift south, but that wasn’t a sure thing.
She was, however, very sure that she held onto the back of Sam’s shirt during the exiting so he wouldn’t get away, then she stuck to him like glue until they’d ridden up in the elevator and he had let them into his apartment.
She waited until he’d shut and locked the door before she put herself in front of it so he couldn’t escape.
She folded her arms over her chest and looked at him sternly.
“You’re going to leave me here, aren’t you?”
Sam set his gear down on the floor, bowed his head for a moment or two, then looked at her.
“I have things to tell you,” he said slowly, “then I’ll let you decide what you want to do.”
“More secrets?” she asked, kicking herself when her voice cracked.
“One last one, aye.”
She pointed her finger at him and ignored how badly it was shaking. “Are you now going to tell me that instead of being a thug, you’re an alien?”
He smiled gravely. “Nothing so exciting.”
“Should I be afraid of you?” she whispered.
He looked at her in surprise. “Of course not.”
“I’m cold.”
He held open his arms and waited. She searched his face for something unsettling but only saw a man who had a killer smile, an adorable dimple, and a terrible inability to keep things from her.
She took a step forward and felt his arms come around her, which was both ridiculously comforting and alarmingly familiar.
She closed her eyes and allowed herself to enjoy both for probably longer than she should have.
“I’ll hit you with my shoe if you tell me something I don’t like,” she said finally.
“Of course you won’t,” he murmured. “Faeries use wands made from stems of snowdrops, or so I’ve had it reliably explained to me.”
She used one of the few reliable curses she knew in French and had a huff of a laugh as her reward. She smiled in spite of herself and pulled back only far enough to look up at him.
“Are you going to confess this final secret here in your entryway or are we going to our usual spot in the kitchen?”
“That depends,” he said, studying her thoughtfully. “Do you have anything to confess that won’t wait for twenty paces down the passageway?”
She shook her head. “What you see is what you get.”
He closed his eyes briefly, then he looked at her with a faint smile. “I would like to kiss you to tell you how lovely I think your perfect self is, but I think you really would hit me with your shoe if I tried.”
“I can’t reach it.”
“And so my master plan bears fruit already.”
She smiled, had a lovely smile in return, then supposed a kiss couldn’t go completely awry. She took his face in her hands, then leaned up on her toes and pressed a brief kiss on his forehead. She stepped back and nodded.
“Good enough.”
He caught her hands. “Let me tell you what I must, then you decide if that was a beginning or an ending.”
She looked up at him. “I get to decide?”
“Aye, Harriet,” he said quietly, “you get to decide.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “Let me make you tea, fetch some gear, then we’ll talk, aye?”
She supposed she’d heard worse ideas. She walked with him back to his kitchen—err, his kitchens, rather—then shooed him away and started tea herself since she knew where everything was.
She couldn’t say she wasn’t hesitant to turn around and look at the bulletin board, but she didn’t hear any self-important harrumphing or swords being used which boded well for her peace of mind.
She left the kettle to doing its thing, forced herself to put off what she considered to be a well-deserved freak-out over whatever it was Sam had to tell her—never mind his offer of a proper kiss—and turned to walk over and take a gander at what she hadn’t had time to properly study before.
She pulled back the cabinet doors so they were fully open, then stared at the incredible spread of details there.
There were names and dates, true, and sticky notes with times near the names.
There were also, as she’d seen before, hearts scattered here and there, though she could now see that they were also attached to specific names and dates.
She could only assume those were couples who were intended to be together in Theo’s books.
What she hadn’t noticed before were the other initials that were also attached to at least one name in each pairing.
She could see that they were similar—TSP, TBCF, TRE, for example—and they often repeated, though she had no idea what those initial stood for.
She looked along the edges of the board for some sort of key, then struck gold with a list taped to the inside of one of the doors.
The Squealing Piglet; The Boar’s Curly Forelock; The Rooster’s End …
She frowned. Were those pub names? But why would it matter which pub went with what name, never mind all those different years apparently associated with each establishment? Was Theo writing a series of pub mysteries now with couples through the ages—
She took a step backward suddenly, not because she was afraid but because she felt as if she might be on the verge of coming to some rather large conclusions and needed a bit more room to accommodate them.
The Squealing Piglet was where Sam had met Miss Fanny Darling at 14:25 however many days ago it had been.
She hadn’t seen him go anywhere mysterious, but she’d certainly seen him stumble out from behind that wooden barrier she’d assumed had been hiding garbage cans.
Actually, he’d tripped over a loose cobblestone which, now that she thought about it, might have been part of a pattern that could have been circular.
It was odd, wasn’t it, how the other circular thing she’d seen recently had been that fairy ring with that absurdly improbable doorway that had simply appeared out of thin air, half open and leading to heaven only knew where?
If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought she’d stumbled onto a movie set where those sorts of doorways led to realms where magic wasn’t limited to card tricks or disappearing coins or rabbits being pulled out from the false bottoms of top hats.
But that doorway inside that ring of spent snowdrops couldn’t have been a sort of portal to another …
She took a step backward and ran directly into the kitchen table.
She rubbed her backside, then forced herself to entertain a few more impossible ideas.
If inside those rings lay portals that led to other places, where were those places?
A charming castle in Germany? Dante’s seventh circle of Hell?
Perhaps even a sunny beach in the Caribbean where the dangers were limited to falling coconuts and sunburns?
The idea that on the other side of what she’d seen in the woods lay Faerie or some other mythical realm seemed a bit too fantastical even for her formidable imagination to wrap itself around.
Then again, what did she know? TD Piaget seemed to find those sorts of circles, more particularly standing stones and fairy rings, to be fairly useful plot devices for his sword-wielding, cowl-wearing hero who occasionally had to track down thugs in times not his own.
But that was fiction, not reality. That sort of thing didn’t happen in real life and circles in streets and fairy rings in forests couldn’t possibly lead to other centuries.
Miss Fanny Darling, 1824, 14:25 The Squealing Piaget.
Harriet could see the words as clearly as if they’d been there in front of her, which, as it happened, they were.
Right there on the board. She decided that 14:25 had to be the time since Sam had been trotting down the alleyway twenty minutes before that, and The Squealing Piglet was the location, but that didn’t explain the rest of the entry.
Unless 1824 was a year.
“Harriet?”
She jumped half a foot, she was certain. She found Sam standing in the doorway, dressed in an outfit that made him look as though he were on the way to a medieval faire himself. He was also carrying a sword.