Chapter 22 #2
There was a blast of anti-light. Filled with multi-hued colors for which she had no name. Not a single color in the spectrum with which she was familiar, but all so vivid and vibrant. More real than reality.
The gate at the end of the drive burst open, and a figure stood under the archway.
A figure who looked, in that first glance, to be about seven feet tall and wreathed in writhing shadows and leaping black flames.
Luna stared, open mouthed. She must have hit her head.
That, or shock had driven her stark, raving mad.
Surely that could be the only explanation for such an otherworldly vision, such a sudden onrush of overwhelming dread.
Whatever feeling Luna experienced, however, the mastiff did not share. It saw only a foul intruder and—leaping shadows and black flames notwithstanding—this was not to be borne! Abandoning its treed victim, the dog charged up the driveway, savage and snarling, like a hound from hell.
Luna blinked.
In the space between the fall of her eyelids and their rising, the thing at the end of the drive vanished, replaced by the gray-suited and cufflinked figure of Nigel Grimm.
He uttered a yelp of horror, turned, and fled up the street, the mastiff howling at his heels.
Luna listened to the sounds of their retreat, too shocked at first to move or even breathe.
Then it occurred to her: at great risk to life and limb, Mr. Grimm had cleared the path for her escape.
Knees trembling, she began to descend the tree, only to freeze once more at the sound of a too-familiar voice. “Oi! I see you up there! Come down at once, miscreant, or I’ll feed you to Dragon!”
Luna had just enough presence of mind to wonder if the dragon in question was the name of the dog or if Mr. Grimm’s prediction of a draconian grounds-prowler might not have been pure fable.
Then she turned to see none other than Lord Bruxley himself, limping up the drive.
His striped trousers looked rather the worse for wear, following that vicious tiger lily attack.
“Oh, Green Mother, preserve me!” Luna sighed, rolling her eyes.
Despite the shudders coursing through her body, she summoned her courage and made a flying leap from the tree.
She landed hard, went down on her hands and knees.
A rip told her she’d just torn one of her stockings wide open.
Too late to worry about that now! She was up in a flash, sprinting for all she was worth for the sagging gate, the tiger lily still tucked into her front.
She had just reached the gate and placed a foot onto the sidewalk outside Bruxley’s grounds, when she slammed into a wall.
Or rather, not a wall—a large, double-breasted, green jacket, overlaying a huge, muscular torso.
The effect was similar to hitting bricks, however, and Luna, stunned, would have fallen flat on her back, save that a pair of powerful hands gripped her by the upper arms and held her in place.
“Here now!” a voice rumbled from the dizzying fog of space over her head. “What seems to be the trouble?”
Luna tilted her head back. Then, as the spinning stars around her vision cleared, she gasped, “Officer Ward!”
If the Green Mother were merciful, She’d just open up the ground and swallow Luna whole right there and then. But apparently, the Green Mother wasn’t taking requests today.
The wardsman looked down into her face. His brow lowered then rose as a big smile swept over his features.
“Well, now! Ain’t this a surprise? So, we meet again, only .
. .” He took in her bedraggled form, her torn stockings, and the leaves and twigs in her hair.
He peered beyond her then to Lord Bruxley, who stormed up the drive in pursuit.
“Only what in the blazes are you doing here, miss?”
“She broke into my house, officer!” Bruxley declared, shaking a fist. “I demand to press charges at once!”
“I never did!” Luna protested, finding her voice in an embarrassing little hiccup. Her mind worked furiously, churning up the first excuse she could manage. “This man absconded from my shop with an unpaid-for tiger lily. I merely came to reclaim it!”
“Whoa, whoa.” Officer Ward set Luna properly on her feet and folded his arms. “Let’s try that again. What’s happening here?”
“First of all,” Lord Bruxley exclaimed, “this young woman set a pack of monsters on my heels! Chased me all the way from her damnable little shop to my very doorstep!”
“Monsters, you say?” Officer Ward looked unconvinced. “And what monsters were these, exactly?”
Luna rolled her eyes. “No monsters.” She reached into the front of her jacket, producing the rather drab-looking lily. “Just this.”
“There it is!” Bruxley cried, flinching and pointing a quivering finger. “Destroy it, officer! It’s a cursed, devilish thing!”
Officer Ward took a long look at the flower, sitting limp and bedraggled in Luna’s grasp. “You . . . broke into Lord Bruxley’s home to fetch that?”
“I've never seen the inside of his house,” Luna answered primly. “And, you will notice, the gate is wide open.” No need to mention that it wasn’t so until very recently, or that she’d been obliged to climb the wall. That wasn’t relevant in the present moment.
“I did notice,” Officer Ward conceded. With a low hmmm, he turned his attention from the lily to Lord Bruxley. “Have you any objections to the lady taking her property and vacating the premises?”
“I very much do object!” Bruxley declared. “She positively terrorized me with those monstrosities of hers!” He went on to describe the events in The Arcane Bouquet from his perspective, emphasizing the ferocity of his attackers with great sweeps of his arms.
Officer Ward looked at the lily again, one brow slowly rising. “My lord, I would think, as a man of some prominence in this city, you mightn’t want to go about saying you were . . . harried by a pack of flowers.”
“Don’t let appearances fool you, officer. That is sorcery of the blackest nature!”
“Sorcery, you say?” The wardsman turned his appraising gaze back to Luna.
She drew herself up primly. “It most certainly is not sorcery. It’s Green Magic—and not a particularly powerful spell at that!” She cast Lord Bruxley a narrow look. “It’s meant as protection for young women against unwanted advances from men of particularly persistent nature.”
“Unwanted advances, eh?” Officer Ward’s attention returned to Bruxley, a little sharper than before. “And what unwanted advances were these?”
Bruxley wilted somewhat under that stare. “I only asked her to dinner,” he said sullenly.
“Is that so?” Officer Ward’s second brow rose to match the first. “An invitation to dinner one moment; pressing criminal charges the next. They do say you’re a one with the ladies, my lord.”
Bruxley bristled with indignation. But then Officer Ward pulled out his notepad, licked the tip of his pencil, and said, “Let me see if I got this right . . . You harried this young lady at her place of business, refusing to take a simple no for what it was worth, until she, to put off further unwanted advances, resorted to Green Magic to drive you away in the form of . . . flowers. You took flight, pursued by one of these . . . flowers . . . and when the young lady came to fetch her missing plant, you set your guard dog on her, though your gate stood wide open, thus demonstrating a blatant disregard for the safety of the neighborhood, which the beast at large now terrorizes.” He followed this with a speaking glance.
“I just want to be sure I’ve got my facts straight should any media personalities come round the department.
It’ll make for quite a kippy article in the Bally Daily, I must say! ”
For a moment, it seemed an apoplectic fit might make off with Lord Bruxley before his time, so red did his face grow and so tight the breath through his clenched teeth.
Then he threw up his hands in surrender.
“Fine!” he growled. “Take the chit and go. But mark me, girl,” he added, pointing a quivering finger at Luna’s nose, “I will not be revisiting your little hole-in the-wall you call a shop anytime soon. And I’ll be certain everyone in my circle knows to avoid it in the future as well! You'll be finished. Do you understand?”
Luna, little caring for these threats, only relieved to escape with all limbs intact and no criminal record, bobbed a short curtsy and began to sidle away, resisting the urge to stick out her tongue.
Officer Ward tsked and shook his head in faux disappointment, tucked his notebook back inside his jacket, tipped his cap, and murmured, “Have a g’night, your lordship. Be sure and shut the gate after us. There’s dangerous characters abroad in these streets! Can’t be too careful.”
Bruxley uttered a word that would earn him a Distinct Sniff from Auntie Aurora.
But Luna was only too happy to hear the gate clang shut as she trotted down the sidewalk toward the nearest streetlamp.
There she paused, hands trembling as she cradled the sad tiger lily, and turned to the wardsman.
“How can I possibly thank you, officer?”
He grinned, teeth glinting in the lamplight. “You don’t have to thank me, miss. Always happy to discharge my duty. More so when my duty includes coming to the rescue of cute little citizens like yourself.”
A flush stole up Luna’s cheeks. Under other circumstances, she might not like being referred to as either “cute” or “little.” But spoken from the well-formed lips of an impressive figure like Officer Ward, well . . . she wasn’t about to complain.
“But what were you doing up in this part of town?” Luna persisted, curiously. “I thought you patrolled Lower Eastside.”
“Ordinarily,” he acknowledged. “But we received a rather frantic call into the department. Some wild-talking maniac gassing on about sorcerous oppression and so on and so forth.” He winked. “That Lord Bruxley is an excitable soul, ain’t he?”
Luna bit her lip. “I hope you do believe me when I say there has been absolutely no sorcery—”
“Think nothing of it, miss.” The officer pushed his cap back from his forehead so that his singular dark curl bobbed freely into view.
“I’ve been at this gig long enough to recognize the difference between sorcery and Green Magic.
Anyone can see that little plant of yours couldn’t hurt a fly.
Seems to me it would only work on a complete namby!
Now, with a real man, you’d need something a bit more forceful. ”
There was something about the way he spoke, about the manner in which he leaned toward her, that made Luna’s pulse jump.
She opened her mouth to offer a reply, not quite certain what she intended to say.
Before her voice emerged, however, her attention was caught by the not-so-distant sounds of savage and uproarious barking.
Her eyes widened. “Oh, Green Mother preserve us! Mr. Grimm!”