Chapter 3 #2
Passing through a small side arch, I enter an entire room full of cacti.
I’ve only seen them in books, and I’m fascinated by the roughness of their knobby stalks and the waxy coating of their pads.
There’s so much variety among them, more than I could have thought possible.
I’m overwhelmed by their beauty, struck to the heart.
I could never create such art with growing things, but I feel its effect like a shining blade in my soul, like a delicious chill all over my body.
I want to wander this greenhouse forever and worship the mind of the person who designed all this.
It must be the work of years, possibly decades.
The patience it would take to create this landscape and the time required to maintain it is unbelievable.
Not to mention the difficulty of sourcing most of these plants, some of which are certainly not native to our region.
I sink onto a round stool in the center of the cactus room and sit there, drowning myself in beauty, consuming all the textures, shapes, and colors.
“I take it you don’t like to dance?” The voice behind me is quiet, like he didn’t want to scare me, but I startle just the same. I spin around on the stool and see Theron Beresford’s huge frame filling the archway.
“I love to dance,” I reply. “But I wasn’t asked, and now I’ve discovered that I love this more.” I gesture to the plant life around us.
He doesn’t smile, only gives me a calculating stare. “You haven’t touched any of the plants, or tried to pluck the flowers.”
“I wouldn’t want to damage the art. They’re living things, and this is their home. I’m just a guest.”
Beresford props his big shoulder against the doorframe. “Some of my guests seem to think, because of the invitation, that the place belongs to them. They are dreadfully entitled and pathetically civilized.” His canines and his blue eyes flash as he pronounces the last word.
“Civilized people of the higher classes are indeed the most demanding and difficult,” I agree.
“Which is why I host another type of gathering in the middle of the week,” he says. “Some of the guests you’ve seen tonight will be there—the ones who are broad-minded and less concerned with the rules of high society.”
I tilt my head, eyeing him. “You’re either inviting me, or you’re being cruel by pointing out that I’ll be excluded yet again.”
“You excluded yourself tonight,” he says. “If you had come into the conservatory, someone would have asked you to dance.”
“Unlikely.”
He scoffs as if I’m frustrating him. “You think you would have been a wallflower? You, wearing that dress, with that face?”
Heat crawls into my cheeks. When I blush, my throat and my chest tend to get pink splotches, and I know it’s happening now. I wish I could stop it. What if my embarrassment triggers a summoning?
I need to calm down, but my pulse is racing frantically, and my chest feels compressed, crushed tight. It’s hard to suck in a good, deep breath.
“No need to panic.” A faint smirk tugs at Beresford’s full lips, twitching the right side of his beard. “It was a compliment.”
“I have to go.” I jump up from the stool. “I can’t stay in here. Excuse my rudeness, but I need to get outside.”
He doesn’t step out of the doorway, and he’s filling up the entire space.
“Please move.” My voice is breathless, my fingers trembling, my palms and the back of my neck damp with sweat. “Please.”
“Or what?”
Or a demon could burst out of thin air and wreck this beautiful room. “Something bad will happen.”
“Did you have too much to drink, perhaps? Are you going to vomit on my shoes?”
I’m breathing fast, and yet none of the gasped inhales are satisfying. My heart is being crushed, it’s aching in my chest, it’s bigger than my ribcage, louder than church bells.
I step closer to Beresford and look up at him, panic and pleading in my gaze. “Let me go.”
His body seems huge, mountainous, dizzyingly magnetic. I can smell the pine and citrus scent of his cologne. His eyes widen, and his chest rises and falls with a single heavy breath, almost as if my presence and my scent are affecting him, too.
Then he steps aside.
I flee from him, desperate to leave the suddenly stifling humidity of the greenhouse. As I run, he calls after me, “It was an invitation.”
Two men in blue livery open the doors for me, and I rush out into the night.
The cold air whips my face, plunges into my lungs, and breaks me out of the terrifying spiral of my own panic.
I run along a dark garden path, between tall hedges, until I can’t see the greenhouse.
Up ahead there’s a clearing with a grassy circle in the center, and I race toward it, my skirt clutched in both hands.
I drop to my knees in the moon-silvered grass, then let the skirts fall from my fingers and crumple around me.
I bend over, gratefully drinking the cold air, welcoming its chill against my burning skin.
Nothing appeared in the greenhouse—no demons, no unnatural creatures.
I’m fine. Everything is normal. After all, I recently summoned three demons in two days.
It’s unlikely that I would summon anything else so soon.
If I did, it would mean I’m worse than ever, and that’s simply not true—
A thin wail emerges from the hedge directly ahead of me. Something thrashes amid the tightly woven branches, about halfway between the ground and the top of the hedge.
“Shit,” I whisper.
I still remember the first time I heard that word.
It escaped my mother’s lips when I summoned my third demon, right at the center of the dinner table.
Ever since my father left, Mama has been much more liberal with her profanity.
She says that curse words are the seasoning of language, meant to intensify its flavor.
Slowly I rise to one knee on the grass and unbuckle one of my shoes.
They’re the least fashionable part of my outfit, because fine shoes are hard to fake.
Even dyeing and embellishing them can only accomplish so much.
The soles of this pair are chunky and sturdy, and I heft the right one in my hand, gauging its usefulness as a weapon.
I limp toward the hedge on one bare foot, all my nerves alight, eyes fixed on the spot where something is struggling and wailing in the hedge.
I summoned a creature, and it’s stuck. I need to set it free, but I must also be prepared to defend myself. Sometimes the demons can be dangerous, even if they don’t attack. I remember one whose wings ended in talons as long as my hand, and there was another who spewed acid when startled.
The demons are often injured when they arrive, like the winged mice I summoned in Wormsloe.
I don’t know if it’s the journey that causes the damage, or if the wounds were inflicted prior to their summoning.
Usually they’re too frightened or too wild for us to help them, and the best thing for everyone is to set them free so they can seek refuge and healing in their own way.
A few times, though, I’ve been able to stitch up a cut or staunch some bleeding before the creature fled or we had to usher it outside.
Anne even has a soothing balm she developed for just such occasions.
She rarely gets to apply it, but whenever a demon will let her tend its wound, she’s thrilled.
The creature in the hedge is flailing frantically.
If it wasn’t already injured, it’ll tear itself up against the twigs before I can manage to get it out.
Has Anne brought any healing balm with her tonight?
Unlikely. Only Mama brought a bag with her—the beaded one she purchased shortly after her wedding to Papa.
She has kept it carefully all these years, only bringing it out for the very finest occasions.
“Hush,” I croon to the thing in the hedge, creeping nearer. “Calm down. Give me a moment to help you get out of there.”
Another wail, another panicked rustle. A few rags of cloud lessen the moonlight, and I lean closer to the wall of intermeshed twigs, trying to penetrate the darkness between them. A beady black eye glints at me.
Holding my breath, I reach out with the shoe, pushing it into the hedge and using both it and my left hand to pry the branches outward and down, creating a hole.
With a violent flutter, the creature bursts out of the opening, flying right at my face. I scream and jerk away. I’ve lost my balance—I fall backward as the demon streaks up into the sky.
Hands catch me beneath my arms and set me upright. The rich scent of pine trees and oranges fills my nostrils.
“Beresford,” I gasp, pulling away and turning to face him. “Did you follow me?”
“I wanted to see if you needed help. Clearly you did.” He frowns at the shoe in my hand. “What were you doing?”
“I was…” I glance at the hedge, then at the sky. “Helping.”
“Helping what? A bird?”
It’s as good an excuse as any. “Yes, a bird was stuck in the hedge.”
He arches a brow. “Birds don’t get stuck in hedges, Miss Fallon.”
“Call me Sybil,” I say impulsively.
“You want me to use your first name? Is that proper?”
“No.” I shake my head, then sit down on the path, pulling my skirts up to my knees so I can put my shoe back on. “Neither is this.”
A broad grin spreads over his face. “I knew I liked you. Allow me.”
He kneels with surprising grace for someone of his size, and he takes my stockinged foot in his hand.
Lightning zips from my toes to the hollow of my thigh, tingling at my core.
He’s touching me. Men don’t touch me, ever. Even exchanges of money or goods are usually cautious procedures when I’m involved, as if people think my odd ability might be contagious.
Yet here is Theron Beresford, kneeling beside me in the garden, with my ankle cupped in his hand.
I hold out the shoe, but he doesn’t accept it right away. Instead, his other hand moves up my leg, all the way to the knee. The heat of his fingertips lights up my skin, turning every nerve incandescent.