“No, Mr. Grimm!”
The protest burst from her lips with such force, it almost made Nigel take a step back.
He stood his ground, however, even as Luna scrambled out from the back of the van.
On impulse, he extended a hand to assist her, but she didn’t seem to see it.
She hopped down from the bumper, catching her balance, cradling violets against the front of her green apron.
Tossing messy pin-curls back from her forehead, she stared up at him with a furious expression.
“I will not give you leave to work sorcery!” she declared.
“Whatever it is you have in mind, it’s much too dangerous.
We’re in the middle of Northside! There are wardsmen everywhere! ”
Nigel resisted the urge to reach out and smooth another bobbing curl from her forehead. Instead, he crossed his arms over his breast. “How do you suggest we solve this little problem then?”
“Not with sorcery!” Luna shook her head violently. “Seriously, what is wrong with you sorcerers, immediately jumping to dark magic the minute things get a bit messy?”
“So, you’d rather deal with the ramifications of Mrs. Lambert’s forthcoming review in the Bally Daily?” He lifted an eyebrow. “You spent more time with that woman than I did over these last two weeks. Did she strike you as the sort of person who will give credit for effort?”
Luna opened her mouth, but paused. Shut it again. “We can weather it,” she muttered, her jaw stiff. “We’ve gotten by without big commissions up until now.”
Nigel’s other eyebrow shot up to join the first. His shop assistant was not the one in charge of balancing the books, after all.
She didn’t know how touch-and-go business was from week to week.
If it weren’t for the fact that he sourced all his stock free of charge, thanks to Garden’s generosity, they would be in a bit of a pickle.
Regular commissions like this one would make a big difference.
Luna searched his gaze, reading into his silence but still resistant.
Her dark eyes sparked with the intensity of her hatred for all things sorcerous.
And it wasn’t as though Nigel could blame her.
Not after all the ways her life had been torn apart by sorcerers these last few years.
It was a wonder she could stand to remain in his presence at all.
Then again, he had never met a will quite like Luna Talbot’s.
For all her delicacy, there was iron at her core.
But she wasn’t the only one with a stubborn streak.
Nigel reached underneath his work apron to his trouser pocket, withdrawing a handkerchief.
Luna watched the slight movement sharply, her brows lifting in some alarm.
He saw the moment when awareness came over her, a sense of Dire Matter in the atmosphere, which only someone of highly-attuned sorcerous perception should be able to notice.
Luna’s perceptions were intense, despite her ignorance of anything to do with sorcery. Her eyes widened, the whites surrounding her irises. “What is that?” she demanded.
“It is Dire Matter, Miss Talbot.”
“Yes, I know that. But I don’t understand . . .”
Silently, Nigel held out his hand, offering the handkerchief to her.
For a moment, she recoiled, her lip curling in an expression of disgust. Then, with a brief flick of her gaze to his, she shifted the violets into one hand, holding them protectively off to one side.
She did not take the handkerchief from him, merely pinched a corner between forefinger and thumb and gingerly pulled it back, revealing three dark spots on the white cloth.
A gasp escaped her parted lips. The stink of Dire Matter in the atmosphere intensified.
Ever since his near-disastrous encounter with Calista Anguish, Nigel had taken to carrying droplets of Dire Matter with him everywhere he went.
Just in case. He didn’t use them. In fact, he’d been carrying these same three drops for weeks now.
But he had no intention of being caught unprepared again.
“You swore,” Luna breathed, her gaze flashing to meet his again. Her voice scarcely rose above a whisper and yet simmered with feeling. “You swore the Sovereign Troth! No sorcery without my permission, so long as I remain in Ballycastle.”
Nigel cleared his throat softly. “The specifics of the vow are that I can make no transference of energy from this world to the next without your command or approval. No fresh sorcery, as it were.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Right.”
“This”—he gestured with his chin at the dark spots on the white cloth—“is distilled Dire Matter. The transference required for its formation was performed many years ago. And not by me.”
Luna stared at him. Hard.
“As you may recall,” he went on, “wardsmen’s sensors pick up on the transference of energies, not the actual act of performed magic. So long as I use old Dire Matter to work the spell I have in mind, we should be perfectly safe from any wardsmen.”
A series of expressions flashed across her features.
First, understanding—she could not deny the logic of the plan he proposed or the convenience.
This was followed swiftly by disgust, however, then by anger.
And sorrow. That last one was the worst. A subtle shift of her expression, there and gone again swiftly, but it shot straight to the bullseye of Nigel’s heart like an arrow.
She felt deceived by him. And with good reason.
All other expressions fled behind a wall of hard resentment as Luna lifted her gaze back to Nigel’s once more. “This is why no one likes sorcerers, you know.”
Nigel blinked.
“You knew you had a workaround,” she continued. “When you made the troth, you knew. Didn’t you? You took advantage of my ignorance.”
Those words cut to the quick. And he deserved them. Deserved every sharp edge, every bitter slice. Because he had withheld the truth from her. Many truths, for that matter.
But he simply couldn’t tell her. Not about Calista and her simulacrums. He couldn’t let her know how very near to death and disaster they had all come because of this stupid troth. He couldn’t tell her, because if he did . . . she would leave. And then she would be beyond his ability to protect.
Abashed, Nigel lowered his lashes. He stared at the tips of her fingers, which trembled slightly as they continued to hold the edge of his handkerchief.
“I have only a limited amount of distilled Dire Matter,” he said softly.
“When it is gone, that’s it. I cannot get more.
I’ve not used any since swearing the troth and have no intention of using it without real need. ”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
He forced himself to look up into her thin-lipped face.
“I am sorry. Sorry for not disclosing this at the time of the troth. Sorry for any action of mine that makes you feel disrespected or unsafe. But I am not sorry for doing whatever I can to protect . . .” He paused a moment, nearly overcome by the vehemence of the words wanting to be spoken.
Words like those would not help matters at this particular moment, however, so he swallowed them back and finished lamely, “. . . to protect Garden.”
Luna held his gaze for a moment longer. Then, with a short expulsion of air, she dropped the edge of the handkerchief, turned, and marched away from him, deeper into the parking garage.
Her shoulders hunched, and she seemed to be looking down at the violets, cupped gently in her hands.
Time was slipping away. Miss Eugenia was probably all the way up the aisle by now, and any chance of getting a bouquet into her hands was .
. . well, not impossible. There were few things Nigel had found to be truly impossible when it came to the multidimensional manipulation of the essential energies of the universe. But certainly more complicated.
At last, Luna pivoted on heel, facing him once more. “You are quite certain whatever you have in mind will draw no attention from wardsmen?”
“Quite, Miss Talbot,” Nigel assured her, taking care that his voice projected nothing but confidence.
She drew a little breath, pulling her shoulders back. “Very well, Mr. Grimm,” she said. “It is your business, after all. Do what you think is best.”
There was something oddly detached about the way she said it.
As though she withdrew emotionally, distancing herself from both the problem and the solution.
It was a bit alarming, actually. Luna Talbot had always thrown herself headlong and wholehearted into all the doings of The Arcane Bouquet, as though the shop itself were hers as much as his.
Triumphing and despairing with him over every little success or failure, her enthusiasm was enough to make Nigel almost forget, sometimes, that she was not, in fact, his partner. Merely his assistant.
But that enthusiasm was nowhere to be seen now. Her eyes were shuttered, and no matter how Nigel searched, he found he could not read them.
For the first time in a long while, he found himself wondering: Does she mean to leave?
But no. Surely not. Why would she leave?
This past month has been quiet enough. He’d taken great pains over the last few weeks not to annoy her with his presence, to maintain all modes of decorum proper between employer and employee.
To keep his feelings to himself. What’s more, he knew for a fact that the simulacrums, which had been haunting her footsteps all this while, were done for.
She was safe here in Ballycastle, and there was no reason for her to abandon a job she loved, doing work she enjoyed.
No reason to abandon Garden and Debbie and her teas and her customers and—
“Well, Mr. Grimm?” Luna’s voice broke through his thoughts. He blinked, shook his head. Her face came back into focus, watching him with silent intensity through her many masks. “Get on with it, won’t you?”
Nigel emitted a short breath through tight lips. Then he nodded. “Get into the van, Miss Talbot,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I mean to open reality’s veils, and you’ll be safer inside.”
Her eyes grew very large.