Chapter Fifteen #2
They’d just reached Maggie’s apartment building when the last of the sun finally sank beneath the horizon.
Even if she hadn’t pointed out the apartment on the second floor, he would have known it was hers based on the balcony alone.
A delicate crystal suncatcher hung from one corner and a wind chime in another.
The balcony was covered with plants in colorful painted pots, but they all looked a little wilted in the gloom.
“Thank you for walking me home.” He was determined to wait and see Maggie walk through her apartment door, preferably with some indication that she had locked it behind her, but she didn’t say good night or walk up the stairs.
“It really wasn’t a big deal,” he said as Maggie reached into her tote bag and pulled out her keys. She clicked a button, and the headlights on a small purple coupe blinked on. “What are you—”
“Get in.” She was already opening the driver’s side door as she said, “I’ll drive you back to your car at Bean There.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
Maggie gave him a withering look over the hood of her car. “Dean Clearwater will reject my tenure application if a ghoul eats you on my watch. Then he’d murder me.”
“Huh.” Arthur crossed his arms, not even attempting to hide the smug look on his face. “I thought you said it was safe to walk?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, two hours ago. In the daylight.” She gestured to the mist settling around them into a dense fog that collected at their ankles.
A low rumbling came from the Wilds that sent an animal shiver down Arthur’s spine.
It was followed by a crystalline screech that, thankfully, sounded like it was miles away.
“Is this what it sounds like every night?” He felt the familiar tug of his guilt.
“Since the pall.”
He shuddered. “How do you sleep?”
“Earplugs.” She glared at him with an expression that so clearly said, Well, what are you waiting for?
“Fine,” he finally said, walking to the passenger side of her car. “But you promise me you’ll drive right back here?”
“Oh, see, I thought you’d follow me back home in your car, and then I’d insist on following you to Atlantia, until you followed me back here and we got stuck in a never-ending courtesy loop that we traversed until we joined the wraiths in the Wilds, turning ourselves into the very thing we are afraid of. ”
Arthur pushed up his glasses as he looked at her with raised eyebrows, but then he couldn’t help the laugh that escaped. The sound felt strange in his mouth, the lightness that came with it even stranger in his chest.
Maggie had a satisfied look on her face. Then she put her hand over her heart. “I’ll come straight home; I swear it. In fact, you couldn’t pay me to go back out tonight.”
Truthfully, Arthur didn’t exactly feel good about walking back through town in the dark, especially as another splintering banshee cry, this one decidedly closer, raised the hair on his arms.
He slid into the car, far too tiny for his tall frame, as Maggie started the engine. “I hope Dean Clearwater would be just as furious if I lost his best linguist.”
“Oh, well, that’s Dr. Habib, for sure.”
“Fine, his best—” But as he turned to click in his seat belt, his shoulder knocked something hanging from her rearview mirror. When he realized what it was, there weren’t any other coherent thoughts in his head. He froze.
“His best what?”
But Arthur didn’t remember what he’d been saying at all.
There, hanging in her car by a delicate ribbon, was the mask with its drying leaves and flower petals, its twin slumbering runes with their spent magic.
He didn’t know whether he should stare at it or look away.
She kept the mask, too. She kept the mask, too.
That meant—did it mean anything? Maybe she just thought it was pretty. Maybe she just took it off in her car and hung it there without thinking about it again. Maybe she had been meaning to throw it out, but it had been forgotten in the chaos of the pall. Maybe it meant nothing at all.
Maggie pulled out of the small parking lot in front of her apartment and eased onto the road toward town. “You were saying I am Dean Clearwater’s best what?”
Arthur tried to remember what it had been that he was going to say, but there was a roaring in his ears that he couldn’t quiet, and something like hope burning in his chest.
Beside him, Maggie was focused on the road, each streetlight they passed illuminating her face.
Finally, he said, “His best alchemist babysitter, at the very least.”
She scrunched up her nose and sneaked a glance at him, laughing lightly. “Not a job I ever asked for, that’s for sure. I should’ve let you walk home.”
“Intentional ghoul endangerment?” He tsked and added dryly, “That’s got to be some sort of HR violation.”
This time, her laugh was louder. “Are you going to report me to Edna?”
“I’ll think about it. You’ll just have to find out tomorrow.”
Before long, they were back in front of Bean There, Done That, now dark. “Will you text me when you get home?” he asked.
“Only if you do.”
“Wouldn’t want either one of us to get fired,” he added. Gods below, all he really wanted to do was lean across the center console and kiss her.
“It would be a shame,” she said quietly. After a moment, she shook her head, and then said, “Good night, Taliesin.”