Chapter 36
AN INTERRUPTED SEDUCTION AND A CRUCIBLE
Miss Penelope Shrewsbury lifted the knocker on the study door and let it drop unceremoniously from her hand to elicit the loudest, brashest bang possible. It was her own personal way of alerting the sorcerer inside of what to expect in the upcoming encounter.
The griffin rider was pissed.
But she knew how to get even.
As the sorcerer clearly debated whether or not to let her in, she entertained herself by flicking the knocker on the beak.
The brass contraption was a funny little thing, shaped like an owl with a pineapple for a belly.
It was meant to convey both a sense of welcome (the pineapple) and of the wise, scholarly conversation one would find within (the owl).
To Penelope, the knocker most accurately described the owner of the study—a complete nutjob.
“Enter,” came a male voice from within, and the door swung inward of its own accord.
The study was a mirror image of the tower workroom if everything hadn’t been shoved to the perimeter.
Books, orreries, star charts, a crystal ball that only ever showed the bottom of a seabed, an abalone-framed mirror, the twin halves of an amethyst geode as tall as she was, the bust sculptures of famous sorcerers long since passed that now served as coat hooks bearing hat, scarf, and earmuffs—the usual.
The sorcerer’s staff stuck out of the umbrella stand by the hearth, the glow of its white crystal luminous but faint. Sleeping.
There was a path through the warren of stuff, Penelope knew, for she had trod it many times and insisted (threatened) the sorcerer to keep it clear at all times.
A merry fire licked against the logs in the nearby hearth but didn’t consume them, and a wind twirled the curtains at the open windows but didn’t affect the temperature of the room one whit.
It was an enjoyable seventy-two degrees at all times, day or night, regardless of season.
Such was the power of the sorcerer who sat with his feet propped up on his desk and his chair rocked back and balancing on its rear legs.
The posture spoke to the youthful exuberance and daring that still coursed through his veins even though crow’s feet tracked deeply at the corners of his eyes and his hair had gone completely white.
It still fell thickly to his shoulders, swept back and curling against the collar of his blue robe.
He’d been in the middle of poking and prodding a Tianzi puzzle box (to no avail) when the griffin rider entered. “Penelope,” Excelsior exclaimed, as if he hadn’t known all along who had abused his door with the pineapple owl just moments before.
As the door shut behind her, once again by its own volition, she removed her gloves, finger by finger. Muscle memory guided her through the chaotic clutter. “You, husband, are a very cruel man.”
Excelsior abandoned the unopened puzzle box onto his desk and dropped his chair back onto all fours. “Such a lovely way to greet the love of your life after spending twenty-four hours apart. You wound me, my dear.”
The griffin rider, who to everyone outside this room, with only two exceptions, was known only by her maiden name, Miss Penelope Shrewsbury, tossed her gloves down on the desk beside the puzzle box. “Good. Because that is how I feel every time I fly away from your apprentice.”
Excelsior steepled his fingers under his chin. “Having a bad go of it, is he?”
Penelope removed her riding hat and set it down by the gloves.
With it removed from her head, so was the enchantment, and her ears resumed their natural tipped appearance.
Her white-blonde hair, the only hint to her true age, tumbled down from its tidy roll at the base of her neck.
Her husband’s eyes flicked to watch the hair slide like silk over the tight riding jacket down to her waist; his fingers twitched with longing, but she stayed just out of reach.
“A word from you would go a long way,” the elven griffin rider said.
“I don’t call that tower ‘The Crucible’ for nothing, my dear,” he told her waist. “If I help him in any way other than I already have, he will never shed that curse.”
“Isn’t there something you can do? Hasn’t the boy suffered enough?” She loosened her belt and slowly undulated her hips to slide it free where it could thud against the floor.
“There are eighty ways to rid himself of that curse available in that tower—counted them myself,” he told her hips.
“With that many, how hard does he have to search? Please tell me it’s not like Ostara of ’97 where you hid the colored eggs so well that none of the children could find them and they had to use bloodhounds.
” Penelope undid the buttons of her riding jacket one by one, letting them pop free from the tension of the tight fit.
“They were ossuary pixies, actually,” he told her bust. “Tooth fairies, in the vernacular. They could smell the calcium in the eggshells from leagues away.” His gaze never wavered from the sliver of silk chemise that peeked through the riding jacket.
“And to answer your question, that depends. Has Bradley given up that ridiculous obsession with potions and finally left the library?”
“Yes, and no.”
“Well, that’s his problem. While there are many hints in the library, there is only one true path there. Two, if you include the attic.”
“I think he’s cracking.” With her hands on her hips, Penelope arched her back in a stretch, fully aware that the silk chemise would lift and reveal a swath of flat midriff.
Her husband’s eyes dutifully ogled, his lower jaw going slack. She almost had him right where she wanted him.
“His bathroom was a wreck, he’s growing out his hair, he placed a ridiculously large order for rice paper with the cook—”
“Why?” he asked her navel. “Is Lung Shang getting homesick?”
“He just really enjoys spring rolls, apparently. And he mis-shelved eight books. One is even missing.”
“What book?”
“Small Magicks.”
Excelsior’s gaze took on a faraway look, a soft smile quirking up the corners of his mouth.
“Ah, so the boy hasn’t lost his sense of wonder.
If he has the perception I think he does, that’ll eventually set him on the path of the Tianzi Twist Treasure Hunt.
Or the false path of Infernal Dealings. Oh, I do hope it’s the treasure hunt. I need to update my board!”
The sorcerer jumped to his feet and leapt over a stack of books on the floor as nimbly as a gazelle.
His blue robe flapped madly as he wove between pedestals and paintings leaning against those pedestals (as the walls were already full and he hadn’t gotten to securing them to the ceiling yet) to the blackboard.
Listed there were all eighty methods of counter-curses and the odds of Bradley choosing that particular path.
He updated two of them and decided to go a step further and draw a heart in pink chalk next to the few that were his personal favorites, specifically the Tianzi Twist Treasure Hunt and the Rock Dove Restoration.
While all eighty would test his mettle and ingenuity, these two would test his character most cruelly, something Excelsior was far more invested in than Bradley’s power.
After wiping the chalk from his fingers with a cloth, he returned to his desk, sat, and lifted an expectant expression to his wife.
Her face was a mixture of disbelief, bemusement, and irritation.
“You may continue your report and your seduction.” He eagerly inched his chair closer to where she stood. “I’m ready.”
She snorted and folded her arms over her chest. Leaned against the desk and crossed her legs at the ankle.
Penelope fixed him with a glacial glare, though she wasn’t nearly as vexed with him as she was angry with herself.
She knew she’d been a little obvious, but he’d never proven immune to her charms before.
Was this what it was like after a hundred years of marriage?
Was she losing her touch? Her allure? Even if she was, he’d done the unforgivable and pointed it out.
Which meant no carnal congress whatsoever until he apologized. This was all business.
“He found the parchment, Excelsior,” she said flatly.
“You need to be more specific, my dear. That library is full—”
“The parchment. You know, the one that smells like licorice?”
For the first time since she entered his study, the sorcerer grew serious. “And?”
“Well his eyes aren’t black orbs in his head and his soul isn’t corrupted. Yet. Like I said, husband, you are a cruel man to test him so.”
“I’d be crueler to the world if I didn’t. And I’m not the villain you make me out to be. There are safeguards, for everyone. Believe me, my dear, I take no delight in this necessity.”
It was so necessary that Excelsior betrayed his own morals and spied on his apprentice.
In fact, he’d been spying on Bradley Donmarin and little Lung Shang since the day he shut his charges up in that tower.
Miss Penelope Shrewsbury, war hero and griffin rider extraordinaire, snooped and gave reports, but she wasn’t the spy his charges thought she was.
The large mirror framed in abalone shell did that, and his apprentice had no idea of its two-way properties or how the eyes of all those hermit crabs transmitted what they saw directly to the twin mirror in his office.
Excelsior’s tone lightened. “Is that all? How’s our little luck dragon?”
“Lung Shang is doing well. He spooled up and maintained a tornado for the whole duration of my visit. It was very impressive, though Zora was disappointed he didn’t treat her to a sprinkle bath.”
“I’m delighted to hear it—the tornado, that is. His littermates can barely control the wind and he’s raising his own tornadoes? And to think the little chap thought he was defective because of his scales. Ha!”
Excelsior’s smile dimmed against the disappointed furrow in his wife’s brow.
He offered her a gentle smile. “My dear, will you stop pouting and make exceedingly free use of the response you have invoked within me?” He lifted his arms invitingly.
“Your seduction has been most thorough, even if I have not become putty to your will. But take heart, such tactics normally beguile me senseless.”
Penelope released a petulant huff, pushed off the desk, and sank down into a straddle across her husband’s lap. “I’m losing my touch.”
“I should think not!” Gripping her hips, he gave a thrust beneath her to disprove the ridiculous notion that he was not as randy as a youth who’d just seen his first pair of breasts.
“Just as I thought,” she sighed, though she smiled inwardly. “Your ardor for me has softened.”
“You wicked woman.” The sorcerer lifted his wife, set her down upon the edge of the desk, and attacked the buttons of her riding breeches.
“You are not leaving this office to spread such lies to your girlfriends and thus besmirch my name across the whole of Bellafont and beyond. In fact, I will not allow you to leave, wife, until you are whole-heartedly convinced otherwise.”
He tossed her boots over his shoulders, where they collided with a floor globe and popped the upper hemisphere up and open to reveal a bourbon decanter and two glasses inside.
Her breeches followed the boots over his shoulder, then her stockings, smothering the marble faces of the sorcerous busts because what was to happen next was solely between them.
As Excelsior kissed from her knee up along her inner thigh, Penelope pillowed her hands behind her head and grinned. “If you insist.”