Chapter 4 Seams of Liquid Gold
4
Seams of Liquid Gold
She wasn’t supposed to be there.
When I walked into the Harlow House library for the last meeting of the Cavalcade planning committee, I’d been in what passed for a good mood by my admittedly low standards. I’d had a productive morning, and the weather was Thistle Grove’s early fall perfection, vibrant and flawless as a stained glass window. Brilliant slants of sunshine, fiery leaves swirling in patterns intentional as omens, a breeze tinged with woodsmoke and the faint cider tang of the Thorn apple orchards, just chill enough to pinch a gentle flush into your cheeks. The sky was pure cobalt, every passing cloud a shape inviting dreamy interpretation. A bichon’s fluffy head, the silhouette of a cat with its tail swept over its arched back, a spouting whale.
I’d strolled the two miles here from my little cottage at the edge of the Witch Woods, the sun settling like a warm crown on my head, breathing in that crisp autumnal air with its incensey undertone. Thistle Grove never smelled more keenly of the lake’s magic, a smoky perfume of melted beeswax, amber, and frankincense, than it did in fall. It was nearly enough to make me forget the constant undertow of yearning for the other side that rushed inside me like a dark river. Even if only for an hour or so.
Which meant I’d let my psychic armor slip, leaving me even less prepared to find Ivy at Harlow House instead of Indigo.
My gaze barely skimmed the rest of the library: cluttered bookshelves, a cushy assembly of mismatched furniture beneath the punched-tin ceiling fixture, the crackling leap of flames in the stone hearth. From its handsome but understated colonial exterior to the homey elegance of its rooms, Harlow House made much less of a fuss over itself than the other family demesnes. As usual, Gawain Blackmoore lolled in one of the overstuffed chairs, in a close-cut blazer over a T-shirt for a band I didn’t recognize the name of—probably fictional, meant to signal that Gawain’s taste in music was just That Impossibly Cool—golden curls swept back from his disaffected-front-man face. Under different circumstances, I’d have been annoyed by everything from the obnoxious way he sat to the hairy ankles above the turquoise Converse emblazoned with his initials, his distressed jeans hitched up too high.
But the sum total of these irritations barely registered, because all I could focus on was her.
The glorious, devastating, all-consuming shock of her unexpected presence.
Ivy sat near the fireplace, curled up on one end of a love seat, argyle-socked feet tucked under her. The firelight gleamed off the sculpted curve of her cheekbones, highlighting the lushness of glossed lips and the dense wings of her eyebrows. Its reflection flickered in her near-black eyes, played over the luster of her dark brown skin. She’d let her buzzed hair grow out a little, but it was still only a neat shadow over the elegant shape of her skull, tapering down to the swan neck I’d run my lips over so many times. The moss-green ribbed sweaterdress she wore clung to the familiar full curves of her body, its sweetheart neckline revealing the delicate struts of collarbones, skin drawn taut over them. A tiny silver snowdrop necklace glinted in the hollow of her throat.
She was so impossibly beautiful, and her liquid gaze so shuttered as it met mine, that it made me want to keel over where I stood.
The last time I’d seen her had been only a handful of weeks ago, at the Lughnasadh celebration. We hadn’t spoken, but we’d been fresh off a favor I’d done for her and her best friend, Delilah Harlow. Ivy had been just a little softer toward me then, thawed enough to at least acknowledge me whenever our eyes caught over mugs of celebratory mead. Something like the memory of sparks flaring between us.
The steely person holding my gaze like a cool challenge looked nothing like someone who’d once called me “Starshine,” or smiled into my face like a flower unfurling as a prelude to a kiss.
“Dasha, you finally made it!” Genevieve Harlow chirped, a tart note of reproach to her bright voice. She wasn’t the type to overlook seven whole minutes of tardiness, though she was also too Midwestern to call me out on it directly. “I was just starting to worry we might have to kick things off without you.”
“Never fear,” I managed through a tight smile, somehow tearing my gaze away from Ivy as I turned toward the closest available armchair. Genevieve sat at the round conference room table I assumed didn’t normally live in the library, a platter of gourmet pretzels and a stack of napkins and paper plates arranged in front of her. Genevieve was the kind of person who’d rustle up a conference room table for a planning committee meeting of four—even if she was the only one who ever sat by it—and feel obligated to provide premium snacks. “Wouldn’t miss our last moments together for the world.”
Gawain snorted a laugh into a fisted hand, but Genevieve beamed like a glad-handing congresswoman, smiling so hard she nearly dislodged the chunky glasses perched on her freckled nose. Unlike passive aggression, sarcasm was somehow a foreign language to her. She’d even twisted her hair into a glossy brown chignon, like this was her last chance to play the role of Madame Chairperson to the hilt.
“Same, clearly. And we’re lucky Ivy managed to find the time to attend our last little recap. Though, of course, Indigo has been so on point with everything!”
Again the subtle sniping, this time at Ivy’s expense. I caught the brief spark of irritation in Ivy’s heavy-lidded eyes, the flare of her fine nostrils. Genevieve also happened to be her best friend’s not-quite-estranged little sister, and I knew the fierce loyalty Ivy felt toward Delilah Harlow meant she wasn’t Genevieve’s biggest fan even at the best of times.
“I’m just here to make Indigo more comfortable,” Ivy replied, with enviable mildness. The low, honeyed texture of her voice resonated right in my solar plexus. “An event like this is way more than she’s ever had on her plate. She’s been a rock star covering for me, but we both wanted to make sure she hadn’t let anything slip on our end before I take over for the duration of the Cavalcade.”
I caught my breath, the pit of my belly blooming with excitement. So Ivy would be there for the Cavalcade itself, overseeing Thorn involvement. I knew not to read anything into it; Ivy was a paragon of responsibility, and it tracked that she’d be willing to show up when her presence really counted, even if it meant dealing with me. But at the same time, I’d get to see her every weekend, for a whole month.
Which meant opportunities.
“Right, right.” Genevieve peered at the sleek laptop open in front of her. “So, why don’t we run through the full sequence of events? I’ll start! Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning, Tomes & Omens will be the first stop of the Cavalcade, with hot chocolate and breakfast pastries from Wicked Sweet available for purchase. From eight to eleven, Delilah and Emmy Harlow will be there to greet tourist groups, provide background on Thistle Grove’s founding, and hand out brochures containing the town map, the schedule of events, and affiliated vendors.”
Technically, Tomes & Omens wasn’t the Harlow family demesne, and an educational tourist meet and greet wasn’t exactly a spectacle. But given Elias Harlow’s historical role as the scribe of our Grimoire and Harlow House’s relative modesty, it made more sense for the tourist procession to kick off at the family’s indie/occult bookstore on Yarrow, allowing visitors to explore the other storefronts along our picturesque main street before heading to the next event.
“The Honeycake Orchards spectacle will begin promptly at two,” Ivy picked up smoothly, without consulting any notes. “Plenty of time to walk over to the orchards, or take a shuttle if they prefer. Those visitors who didn’t grab lunch on Yarrow can choose to eat at the Honeycake restaurant or bakery. For the spectacle, we’ll be doing an avian summoning at the entrance to the hedge maze, in recognition of Alastair Thorn calling down birds as witnesses to the founding.”
Ivy flicked a gaze up at the ceiling, absently brushing the pad of her thumb over the silver hoop in the center of her lower lip in the achingly familiar way she always did when consulting her memory. I’d done it myself many times, too, grazing my finger over the plush pillow of her lip to part her mouth open before I kissed her.
The hollow space below my ribs clamped down so hard that I crossed my arms low over my stomach, curled over them to curb it a little.
“A normie contemporary dance troupe will perform as well,” she went on. “After that, everyone’s welcome to wander the orchards before heading to The Bitters.”
“Uh, the Avramov spectacle begins at five thirty. Peak dusk,” I said after a beat, so thrown by Ivy’s gaze shifting expectantly to me that I almost forgot I was up next. “We’ll be featuring normie aerialists, against an ectoplasmic shadow play evoking Margarita Avramov’s ceremonial gathering of shades. We’ll also have food trucks catered by the Shamrock Cauldron and Cryptid Pizza, and cocktail trucks courtesy of Whistler’s Fireside.”
The cocktail trucks had been my brainchild, and fuck if I wasn’t proud of it, especially since we couldn’t go as hard as the other families with our “special effects” lest we trigger a mass possession event.
“Is your demesne even big enough to mount that kind of production? I mean, cocktail trucks , really?” Gawain said, wrinkling his patrician nose, as if the Little Lord of Castle Camelot Musical Theatre somehow had the nerve to find cocktail trucks trashy. “That takes, like, some serious real estate.”
“You were there for the opening ceremony of the Gauntlet of the Grove two years ago, were you not?” I retorted, infusing my tone with as much “do you even have spatial reasoning and basic recall, you relentless box of tools” as I could without making it explicit. From the corner of my eye, I caught Ivy almost-smirking, a dimple denting her smooth cheek. My heart leapt unreasonably at this tiny evidence of harmony between us. To be fair, when it came to loathing Gawain, you could probably find common ground with any random stranger plucked off the street.
“So you might remember that we can comfortably fit all the members of the families in The Bitters’ backyard,” I continued. “Which means plenty of room for everyone, plus a bevy of cocktail trucks.”
Gawain held his palms up in mock concession. “Okay, chill. I’m not implying any lack of foresight on your part, or whatever. I was just making sure , given that we’re about to go live three days from now.”
“Right, except the cocktail trucks have been the plan for”—I glanced down at the nonexistent watch on my wrist, cocking my head—“a month and a half? Would you say that’s how long it takes the average fact to fully penetrate your consciousness?”
This time, I caught the corner of Ivy’s lip twitching dangerously, before she bit down on the inside of her cheek. A swell of satisfaction surged up my throat, sweet and heady as a mouthful of mulled wine. I’d always been able to make Ivy laugh herself silly, and apparently that much hadn’t been irretrievably lost, swallowed up by the yawning fault lines that had consumed everything else good between us.
Fault lines I’d carved into place, fracturing them open like the human earthquake I was at my worst.
Genevieve cleared her throat with a schoolmarm’s prissy disapproval at our bickering, breaking in before Gawain could mount a retort. “The cocktail truck box is officially checked, so let’s keep things moving, shall we? Gawain, the Blackmoore spectacle?”
Gawain shot me a final azure glare, then sullenly set his gaze somewhere above Genevieve’s shoulder, as though this entire tiresome exercise was beneath him.
“Eight sharp, in Castle Camelot’s courtyard,” he recited in a grudging monotone. “And we will not be using any normie performers.”
“?‘Using’?” Ivy echoed under her breath, her face scrunching with distaste. “Ugh.”
“Instead, we’ll feature an incendiary charm extravaganza, spellwork shaped to mimic fireworks and lightning,” Gawain went on, demonstratively ignoring her. “In memoriam of Caelia Blackmoore’s historic founding storm. We’ll still be running both matinees and evening performances of The Green Knight’s Folly , for tourists who want to spend more time at Castle Camelot over the weekend. But the evening performance will be over well before eight, so no conflicts with the spectacle.”
I swallowed back the same futile complaint I’d lodged a number of times already, about the inherent unfairness of holding the elaborate Castle Camelot musicals at times that would conflict with both the Thorns’ spectacle and ours, potentially drawing tourists away from us. As far as Gawain was concerned, he’d already made a massive concession by agreeing to hold only a matinee on Sunday—though I suspected that even this token gesture of goodwill came from Gareth or Nineve Blackmoore, Gawain’s older sister and Gareth’s advisor.
Given the Cavalcade’s fluid format, it didn’t matter as much as it otherwise could have, anyway. Since we’d be running the spectacles on the same schedule for all of September, tourists would be able to either enjoy the entire Cavalcade in one packed day or split the experiences up between the three weekend days, giving themselves more time to explore Thistle Grove in between. We were also offering guided tours that included all four stops, discounts, and meal vouchers, and the circulating shuttles would add an extra layer of flexibility. There’d almost certainly be more than enough tourist money to go around.
My seething at Gawain’s Blackmoore selfishness was mostly a reflex at this point, but damned if I was willing to give it up.
“And finally, the closing lakeside spectacle,” Genevieve said, clicking away at her laptop. “Last Saturday in September, so it doubles as a Sabbat for us. All four families will converge on Hallows Hill, and the four elders will cast a joint ceremonial spell above the lake as we’ve discussed, to commemorate the founding. No normies will attend the rites, obviously, so it should run like any of our more customary Wheel of the Year holidays. Any questions on that front?”
“Elena’s wondering if we feel confident about safely executing the closing,” I offered. “Given how temperamental Lady’s Lake has been lately.”
“We do,” Gawain replied testily. “As I’ve explained before, Nina will handle any weather-related contingencies.”
That made sense. For a brief time, Nina had enjoyed a particular kinship with our Lady of the Lake, who’d granted her a mysterious goddess’s favor that had lent Nina’s own magic an exponential boost, along with other unexpected fringe benefits. As far as I knew, Nina had willingly relinquished the favor, but her unique familiarity with Belisama likely meant that she still felt attuned to the lake’s weather patterns.
“I assume you’ve run Nina’s stewardship of the weather by Emmy Harlow?” I asked Gawain, who ceded a stiff nod. “In that case, it’s good enough for us.”
“Oh, thank the triple goddess,” Gawain muttered. “Imagine if it weren’t .”
For another fifteen minutes, we discussed outstanding logistics. We’d divvied up the affiliated Thistle Grove vendors, along with point-person responsibilities regarding the shuttles and tour guides.
“That should be it, then,” Genevieve said with relish, closing her laptop with a triumphant click. “Well done, team! I was thinking, if you all had time, we could go for a celebratory lunch at—”
The library instantly dissolved into a chorus of demurrals and the screech of pushed-back chairs, as the rest of us flailed for any excuse to not spend any further time together. Gawain was the first to duck out, sneaking a handful of pretzels for the road without even cursory thanks to Genevieve, the cheap bastard. I scrambled up next, heart pounding as I hastily shrugged into my trench coat and slung my satchel over my shoulder, hoping to catch Ivy before she left.
Yes, she’d looked at me like a stranger…but she’d also smiled twice, I thought, a foolish flood of hope rampaging through me. Maybe that meant something, some internal softening if not an outright invitation. Maybe the rattling collection of sharp-edged fragments between us could still be salvaged if I found the right words this time. If I finally managed to rein in all my fear, and the worst tendencies that came with it.
I’d seen a kintsugi exhibit once, in Thistle Grove’s tiny art museum. Maybe we could be like one of those broken vases that became art once it was pieced back together, made whole with seams of liquid gold.
But by the time I’d gathered myself to go after her, Ivy had already slipped out.