Granary
Nigel couldn’t say how long he sat in stunned silence in the back passage.
All the energy seemed to have simply gone out from his body, and he sank to the floor, one knee drawn up, his back to the wall.
His eyes stared unseeingly into that dark boiler room, where the unlovely metal contraption whistled and gurgled without a care in the world.
This was a good thing, though. Right?
Some part of Nigel’s mind strove valiantly to rise up from the malaise.
This situation could ultimately work in his favor.
He’d told Garden to hide, hadn’t he? Garden was simply doing as asked.
The Brotherhood knew the great magical working must be hidden close to The Arcane Bouquet, which meant this location was disastrously compromised.
Garden must find somewhere safer to conceal itself.
Only Nigel hadn’t been quite aware of just how sentient Garden really was.
He certainly hadn’t thought it capable of making choices like that.
Picking up and relocating completely, without so much as a by-your-leave?
Nor had he realized it had recovered its powers to quite such a degree.
Relocation required a truly tremendous amount of magic, after all.
But then, Garden was pure magic. So he really oughtn’t to be surprised.
This is for the best, he told himself firmly, ignoring any traces of desperation in his own mental voice.
It was true though. If things went badly with the Brotherhood (and he couldn’t expect them not to go badly), and they managed to ensnare him, they might pry the knowledge of Garden’s location out of his brain, no matter how valiantly he resisted.
It wouldn’t even take a great effort, not while he was crippled with severmist. No, this was better.
He couldn’t betray secrets he did not possess.
But now . . . how was he to get Luna back?
He looked down at Calista Anguish’s message, crumpled tight in his fist. His teeth ground so hard, they threatened to crack, but he forced himself to study the words again, focusing in particular on: the old granary in North Sobbington.
Granary . . . granary . . . why did that strike him as familiar?
“Fabian,” he whispered, his voice strangely loud in the painful emptiness all around him.
He narrowed his eyes, pulling hard on a faint memory, trying to bring it forward.
Yes, Fabian had said something at Green Yule, when they were out to dinner.
Something about Montesquieu Fairfax, a former sorcerer schoolmate of theirs.
“He set up shop in an old granary up in northern Brython.” Those were his very words.
“Made a bit of a fortune for himself concocting these face-swapping creams. But the wardsmen got a tip and tracked him.”
Montesquieu Fairfax wasn’t a Dark Sorcerer, certainly wasn’t a member of the Brotherhood. But Calista had worked with him; she’d admitted as much to Nigel over drinks. So it was very possible the North Sobbington granary was the same one in question.
Nigel grimaced. He was vulnerable. He had to admit it.
Yes, the Sovereign Troth was broken, but it made no difference, not when he was poisoned like this.
If he was going to face Calista Anguish and the Brotherhood, if he was going to get Luna back, he would have to be a lot more cunning than usual.
No storming in on the winds of a Dire hurricane, blasting bolts of darkness hither and thither.
That didn’t take a whole lot of cleverness to devise.
No, he needed a different idea, he needed inspiration. He needed . . .
Oh damn.
Fabian’s voice echoed in the back of his brain: “But the wardsmen got a tip and tracked him.”
“Gods,” Nigel whispered. Then he closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the wall and hit it a few times. “Oh gods, please, no. Anything but that!”
He sat frozen in perfect stillness for some moments. Waiting for another idea to present itself. Basically, any other idea. Listening to the shop clock as it ticked away the seconds, faster than he could count them.
Then, with a furiously snarled, “Damn it all to hells!” he got to his feet.
In the end, he found the address in the phone book. Simple enough.
He’d been obliged to scan through a series of men by the same name who lived in Ballycastle, quickly dismissing those who lived in the bougier neighborhoods.
Finally, he’d landed on an apartment in Middle Eastside, a part of town that was mostly respectable, but not highbrow in the least. Just the sort of place the object of his search might like to call home.
Nigel stood outside the apartment building, wearing Yorik Balthazar’s dressing gown, invisible to watching eyes. Just in case the Brotherhood had set watch over the shop, he’d figured a little subtlety was in order.
Eyeing a long-legged older gentleman, who strode up the steps of the apartment building and put his key to the lock, Nigel glided ghostlike out from the shadows.
He followed at the man’s heels, entering a foyer that smelled like rubber boots.
The gentleman continued on to the iron-cage elevator, but Nigel moved to where a series of post boxes lined one wall.
He searched until he found the name he sought, along with the corresponding apartment number—12B.
Minutes later, he had climbed the stairway to the second floor and stepped into a dingy corridor with geometric wallpaper in rather dull shades of blue and yellow. He hastened down the worn carpet until he stood in front of Number 12B.
Part of him hoped he’d guessed wrong. Part of him hoped a stranger would answer his knock.
The rest of him, however, knew he needed to get this over with. Because time was running out for Luna. He only had until six o’clock, and it was already past ten in the morning.
Nigel knocked.
Nothing.
Taking a steadying breath, he knocked again with more vehemence.
Still nothing, though when he put his ear to the door, he thought he could hear movement inside.
He pounded again, his fist beating out a rough rhythm, even as he bellowed, “I know you’re in there!” He didn’t care how his voice might disturb others in their homes. “I’ve got to talk to you! Now! Open up!” He paused for a moment before adding begrudgingly, “It’s Grimm.”
A woman walking by at the end of the hall stopped and stared with horror.
She uttered a little scream and darted back the way she’d come, and only then did it occur to Nigel that he was still wearing the invisibility robe.
That poor soul probably just thought she’d heard a ghost. Nigel hastily canceled out the spell, shimmering back into full view just as footsteps sounded on the other side of the door.
The next moment, the door opened just enough to reveal a stern, handsome, square-jawed, heroic visage.
Ward glared down at his unwelcome visitor, blinking with an expression somewhere between shock, displeasure, and complete bafflement.
The wardsman looked devilishly disheveled, of course.
He wore an undershirt, untucked from his trousers, like he’d just dressed in great haste.
His hair was all tousled, that heroic curl of his bobbing.
No dimples in sight, however. Small graces.
“Gods, Grimm,” he said, taking in the sight of Nigel in his celestial dressing gown, his lip curling. “What is that getup? You look like a ruddy sorcerer.” An eyebrow rose suspiciously. “You got something to confess?”
A growl rumbled in Nigel’s throat. “I’m here about Miss Talbot.”
“Luna?” Ward’s other brow shot up to join the first. “She’s not here, you know. I sent her home last night.” He shifted on his feet uncomfortably, his gaze skittering away from Nigel’s. “Did she, um, say anything? About . . . what happened?”
Nigel’s eyes narrowed. He vividly recalled Luna’s offhand comment about Ward not being “a perfect gentleman, perhaps.” Part of him would very much like to inquire more thoroughly into exactly what those words had meant. But he needed to stay focused. For now.
“She didn’t mention anything, no. And I’m aware she’s not here, because she’s—”
“Oh, Wardsy!” a feminine voice trilled from somewhere back in the apartment. “Are you coming back to bed?”
Nigel’s eyes flashed to meet Ward’s. The handsome wardsman had the grace to look embarrassed, a dark stain flushing his cheek.
“Ur, um, just a minute, honey!” he called back over his shoulder.
Then he glared down at Nigel again, his expression mulish.
“What? It’s just some dame I picked up at the ball last night. Luna dumped me, you know.”
Sparks of red flashed on the edges of Nigel’s vision. “She dumped you,” he echoed, his voice a low, angry snarl. “And you replaced her? With some dame?”
Grunting irritably, Ward pushed Nigel back a few paces, stepped out of the apartment into the hall, and shut the door behind him.
Crossing his arms over his enormous chest, he scowled.
“Look, that girl’s had me living like a priest for months now.
I did everything I was supposed to, put it all on the line for her, and she turned me down.
Flat. What’d’you expect me to do? Sit around moping ‘cause the girl I liked didn’t fall into my arms?
Oh wait,” he added nastily, “look who I’m talking to. ”
Were circumstances even slightly different, Nigel would rise to that bait.
He would declare with great boldness that it would be better to mourn the loss of Luna Talbot for the rest of his life, living on the mere memory of her smile, than to try to fill his lonely bed with some dame.
But he hadn’t come here to quibble over Ward’s morals, had he?
Instead, Nigel shoved Calista’s message out and said only, “Read that.”