Chapter Six
A geographer must become familiar
with danger, in order to define safety.
Blazing Trails , W.H. Jackson
For one horrifying moment, Gabriel’s heart relocated itself to the pit of his stomach. He could see nothing but burning light and, at its core, a stark after-image of Elodie raising her hand to death. Panic utterly overwhelmed him, such as it never had in all his life. He threw his umbrella aside, not caring about what happened to the thaumaturgic energy it had been harnessing, and closed his eyes—breathing, breathing, desperately trying to control his internal environment. Some five seconds later, a fucking eternity later, the light faded. He began to run even before opening his eyes. After all, he never really needed to look to know exactly where that wife of his stood. He was always aware of her, the same way he was aware of present dangers in a field: from sheer self-defense.
Except she wasn’t standing now. She was lying on her back in the mud and grass between a headstone and a grimy marble angel, eyes closed, a strange sound emitting from her mouth…
Was she laughing ?
He skidded to a halt beside her, dropping to his knees. She was indeed laughing, a laugh like river water tumbling over rocks on a bright summer’s day. As Gabriel stared in frantic confusion, she opened her eyes and looked directly into his.
Now he was the one who died, for one stark moment so infused with emotion he could not bear to exist in it. Elodie’s eyes shone as green as a man might imagine the meadows of heaven looked—
And at that, Gabriel came abruptly back to his senses with a scientific, self-disgusted thud. Imagine? Heaven? This was what the woman did to him. Much longer in her sphere of influence and he’d be writing poetry and adopting fluffy kittens.
“What do you think you were doing?” he demanded, only just restraining himself from grasping her shoulders and shaking her. After all, the laughter might be a hysterical reaction to some injury…
The thought tried to kill him all over again. “Are you hurt?” he asked, urgently scanning her body. When she did not reply, he yanked off his gloves to perform a physical examination, but hesitated, his hands hovering above her, restrained by propriety or fear or some damned feeling he couldn’t even begin to understand despite all his academic qualifications.
Then she reached up, smiling, and set a hand against his chest as if in reassurance. Or perhaps she was too dazed to know what she was doing. Either way, Gabriel felt his breath, his pulse, all the world simply…
Stop.
Lingering magic cast a phantasmic glow over Elodie’s wet, mud-streaked face. Her nose was turning red from the cold, and her hair spilled in tangles over the dirty grass. Altogether it created such a vision of ethereal beauty, one might indeed begin to believe in a heaven that had created her. Gabriel stared wonderingly as a raindrop fell from his eyelashes to kiss a corner of her mouth. Elodie’s smile faded. Her hand stroked his chest, creating warmth that twinkled with silvery magic. It soaked through clothes, skin, bone, to infuse Gabriel’s heart with something as tender and vulnerable as the secret trove of memories he kept just for her…
And suddenly both his pulse and his rationality jolted back into beating. The sharp-edged elements of the world became painfully clear once more. Gabriel caught Elodie’s hand, pulling it away from him, and pressed two fingers against her wrist to check the pulse within. It leaped and trembled.
“I’m fine,” Elodie told him, contradicting this physical evidence. “Ugh, very wet though. Can you help me up?”
“No,” Gabriel said brusquely. Dropping her hand, he rose and turned away, yanking his gloves back on with such violence, he risked tearing their seams. Breath strained in his throat. The rain tried to pound him into senselessness. On the road, something burned despite the weather, and he stared at it with a frown more thunderous than the sky. He didn’t really see it, however. All he saw was the memory of Elodie lying on the ground as if she was—was—
Crack! The small fire exploded, turning raindrops briefly into flames. Behind him came the even more disturbing sound of Elodie muttering as she struggled to push herself up.
Good, he thought ruthlessly. She ought to struggle, considering how his heart was still riotous and his mental discipline unraveled. She ought to just stay lying in the graveyard all night, thinking about what she’d done.
Then he turned back around and held out a hand, not looking at her. After the slightest pause, Elodie took it. He hauled her up. As she stood, she stumbled a little, alerting Gabriel’s every nerve to the possibility of collision. But she managed to stop herself, although the distance between them remained so slight, Gabriel could hear her breathing through blue-tinged lips that were slightly parted, as if awaiting a kiss to warm them. The alert became a wailing siren.
Just be calm, he told himself. She wasn’t his wife in truth, nor his lover. And certainly she wasn’t his student. He had no right to chastise her. He needed simply to inquire in a reasonable, professional manner as to the rationale behind her actions…
“Jesus Christ, Elodie, what the bloody hell possessed you?!”
She blinked as a rapid succession of emotions shot through her expression. Gabriel recognized less than half of them before quiet dignity ended the procession, stamping itself hard and unrelenting on the normally gentle planes of her face. “My job,” she said.
“Suicide isn’t in the job definition.”
“I knew what I was doing.”
“That makes it bloody worse , woman!”
The moment he said the words, he wanted to haul them back into silence. And sure enough, Elodie’s dignity crumpled into an outraged frown. Gabriel considered backing down, but he was too distressed disapproving to manage it. He clenched his jaw—her eyes darkened—and both suddenly realized they were still holding hands.
They snatched them apart so rapidly, Elodie almost lost her balance again. She pressed her feet more firmly on the sodden ground, lifted her chin, and glared at Gabriel defiantly. She looked terrifying and enthralling, with wet strands of hair streaking her face like witch light, and a fire of formidable intelligence in her eyes.
“Pish tosh!” she declared. “I stopped the magic and saved the village from disaster. Although,” she added with reluctant self-honesty, “it is particularly good fortune that the diverted energy just happened to miss all the gravesites.”
They both flicked a glance at the ground beside her, where a three-feet-deep gash was sparking with bright fragments of magic. Elodie seemed to appreciate all of a sudden that it represented what might very easily have become of her, and she shuffled to obscure Gabriel’s view of it. Immediately, instinctively, he reached out, grabbing her wrist—
And pulled her forward just before she tumbled into the crevasse. Their bodies collided with a shock of what must have been residual magic. They scowled at each other across the hazardous distance of five inches.
“You are incorrigible ,” Gabriel said furiously.
“I certainly hope so,” Elodie retorted, “or nothing would get done. You are a pedant.”
“If it is pedantic to not want my wi—colleague dying before the assignment is complete, then I stand guilty as charged.” He released her wrist and stepped back, his angry frown tilting a little with confusion. “How the hell did you stop ignis fatuus just by touching it?”
“You’re Welsh,” Elodie replied—taking their conversation and throwing it in a completely different direction, as usual.
He blinked at her, seriously aggravated, and only just managing to stop himself from falling to his knees again in gratitude that she was still alive to aggravate him like this. (Which, of course, he would feel about any colleague under the circumstances.)
“And?” he said curtly.
She held up her left hand, the back of it toward him. “This wedding ring, it’s Welsh gold, isn’t it? There’s a dragon stamp on the inner side of the band.”
Gabriel turned to stone, as if he’d been blindsided by magic, or at least by a metaphor that made his brain hurt. If he truly were stone, he’d not feel on the verge of internal combustion. “Hm” was all he said.
“You said your father came from Snowdonia, and Dolgellau is located there—a gold-rich area that’s one of the most powerful troves on the 3-SEQ fey line. I speculated that you or one of your predecessors may have got the ring from there.” Watching his face for a reaction, she suddenly grinned, her frown disappearing like shadows defeated by the return of sunlight. “You gave me a magic ring.”
Well, damn. She was right. The ring had belonged to his paternal grandmother, and its gold was indeed sourced from Dolgellau. But Gabriel had never intended for her to know that he’d given her a precious family heirloom (merely to save money, of course, no other reason whatsoever), and he now felt an actual blush spread across his cheeks. Aghast, he scowled so vehemently, the warmth fled faster than a student leaving for home at the end of term.
“You risked your life on the basis of a wild guess like that?” He shook his head. “I’ve never heard of anything more foolhardy, reckless, insane—”
“Successful,” she countered. “Gold is a powerful thaumaturgic inhibitor in any case, and I felt it reasonable to suppose that gold from a level five Welsh trove would be especially effective on the magic of another Welsh fey line. I simply used the ring as a shield to stop the ignis fatuus. And it worked.”
“You got lucky.”
His words seemed to strike her like a whip. Her smile vanished, taking its sunshine with it. “I did not. I may have a uterus—oh for heaven’s sake don’t wince, you’re a scientist—but I can think better than most men in this country, despite what they believe. I analyzed the evidence before me and used it to form a reasonable plan of action. Within seconds, I might add. And although I don’t need to excuse myself, risk assessment was part of that plan. Even if the ring hadn’t been magic, it’s still gold, and there was a decent chance of that being enough to counter ignis fatuus. So do not accuse me of being lucky , thank you. I am far too clever for luck.”
Gabriel stared at her unblinking as the rain poured down their faces like years of regret, and the air gasped with wind and unspoken emotion. He knew full well that Elodie had chosen to study geography only because she loved the idea of magic. She was a scientist because it allowed her to be a professional dreamer. And yet, it was that imagination, alongside her eternally restless curiosity and the sheer joy of her mind, that had led her to become the best exigent thaumaturgy analyst in Britain—even better than him, Gabriel could admit (privately, behind several mental barricades and a forbidding glower). Elodie was the kind of person who would dance on a rooftop if dared (or even if not), whereas he was, quite properly, a ladders and read-the-safety-manual-in-its-entirety man. D?lylleuad would be burning right now if he’d been on-site alone, since he’d never have thought to stop ignis fatuus magic by using a gold ring, of all things. His brain simply couldn’t make a sharp turn sideways like that.
He also knew that most of Oxford University’s faculty considered Elodie “the pretty girl that Tarrant married.” Were he ever bothered to, Gabriel could have supplied them with a plethora of more suitable adjectives to describe her. Exasperating. Maddening. Mysti -bloody- fying .
And brilliant, damn it. So brilliant that, in Gabriel’s rational moments, when he wasn’t breathlessly anticipating her destroying either herself or half the world, he would never accuse her of relying on mere luck.
Unfortunately, her presence all too often left him irrational.
Case in point: his right hand was inexplicably lifting toward her face, and he realized with a startled hop of pulse that it was intent on doing something as dangerous as smacking a magical bomb out of the sky: gently brushing the spatters of mud from his wife’s cheek. Appalled, he shoved it into his coat pocket, clenching its fingers around the compass therein. Get yourself and your minions under control at once, he ordered his brain.
In response, like a snarky, supercilious villain, it showed him an image of the woman Elodie used to be, blithe, sunny, randomly offering to marry him. Scowling, he focused instead on the version before him. She’d become fierce, this past year, since their estrangement. Even soaking wet, and garbed in what appeared to be a velvet dressing gown, she looked indomitable. Gabriel was not daunted, absolutely not. But if he were to be, now would be the moment for it.
Not that he’d ever admit to that. He would, however, accept when he was wrong. It was the only proper thing to do.
“I misspoke,” he told her. “My apologies.”
—
Elodie was astonished to discover that she had been killed by the thaumaturgic bomb after all, and was now in heaven. This was the only conclusion she could reach, considering Gabriel had just apologized to her. Certainly such a thing would never happen in real life.
By the time her brain had processed the matter, Gabriel was already walking back to the road, leaving her alone in a spooky graveyard as rain dragged down the shadowed sky and oak leaves whispered of their own death. With a dry swallow, Elodie hurried after him. It wasn’t that she believed in ghosts and fairies, you understand. She did, however, believe quite fervently in the power of her own imagination.
“We should discuss our plan from here,” she said as she caught up to Gabriel.
“There’s no need for discussion,” he replied imperturbably, pushing the wet hair off his face.
“Of course there’s a need!” she argued. “We are a team. You cannot just make unilateral decisions.”
“The rain is killing the wind. You stopped the magic. I’m going back to the inn for dinner and a hot bath. Discuss.”
“Er, well, yes, I’m going to do that too.” She scowled at him, which achieved nothing except future wrinkles, because he did not even glance her way. “Although tomorrow we should talk to someone about installing drainage in the graveyard to prevent—oh dear, your umbrella.”
They stopped in the road, staring at the Weather Mitigation Device, which was engulfed in flames despite the heavy rain.
“So much for waterproof,” Elodie remarked wryly. “It’s been completely overwhelmed.”
“I know how it feels,” Gabriel muttered under his breath.
Suddenly a voice emerged from the gloom, growling harshly. “Beware!”
Elodie and Gabriel turned to see two figures in a long dark coats appear out of the deep shadows beside a hedge. Elodie’s brain leaped from vampires to Hades to highwaymen. Gabriel raised one eyebrow with mild annoyance at being approached.
“Beware!” intoned one again. “?‘The wind is a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees!’?”
Gabriel exhaled a sharp, irritable sigh. Elodie recognized the tourists Pimmersby and Hapsitch, dressed in galoshes and hooded raincoats.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded with her sternest voice (which she’d practiced so often in a mirror she could now make even her undergraduate students shiver at the sound of it—and not shiver with repressed laughter, thank you very much).
“Our innkeeper told us about the Gothic Flame Display that happens out here in the graveyard,” Pimmersby said. “He charged us five shillings for directions, and sixpence each to hire the raincoats, but it was worth it, by George!”
Astonishment pushed Elodie’s sternness aside. “He urged you to go sightseeing at a zone of volatile thaumaturgic activity?”
“He’s a chuckaboo, for sure,” Pimmersby said, then gestured at the umbrella. “We even get a magical fire as a bonus! ‘Burning bright, in the forests of the night’!”
Gabriel looked around with grim confusion. “I would call this a grove, at the most. And it’s not even five o’clock yet.”
But the gentlemen were uninterested in such fiddle-faddle as accurate timekeeping. “Mumbers is going to be so narked he missed this!” Hapsitch chuckled. “I must take a sketch of the fire!” He pulled a small book from his raincoat pocket and held it out toward Gabriel. “And will you sketch us standing beside it?”
Gabriel just stared at him. It was a Professor-Grade Stare, as terrifying as any weapon. The sort of stare that takes the very measure of your soul, then hands it back to you covered in corrections. Elodie imagined Gabriel didn’t ever practice it in a mirror; he probably looked that way at the midwife when she delivered him.
“Er, actually, never mind,” Hapsitch said, his throat bobbing. Elodie could practically see exams flash through his eyes. “I might just toddle back to the inn…Got a Latin textbook that I am very excited to read…”
He tugged on Pimmersby’s arm. “But the magic!” Pimmersby whined.
With one blink, Gabriel shifted the stare to him.
Pimmersby turned more ghostly pale than the subject of an Edgar Allan Poe poem. “Uh, actually, we should probably hurry, before we miss the dinner service,” he said, gesturing back toward the village. “Got to keep ourselves healthy for the term ahead, after all.” He tugged in turn on Hapsitch’s coat. Indeed, so much tugging occurred, the two men almost pulled each other off-balance. They retreated down the road with the haste of people whose nightmares involved such things as attending a lecture naked.
“The wind is only some ten knots now,” Gabriel muttered, frowning after them. “I wouldn’t call that a torrent.”
“I think he was taking poetic license,” Elodie explained. Turning back to the burning umbrella, she removed from her dressing gown’s pocket several paper scraps that were scrawled with important notes long forgotten, passed them to Gabriel, then took off the dressing gown and beat it against the enchanted fire until all that remained was a charred, soggy mess. Gabriel, hands full of paper, watched bemusedly. Once she was certain the fire would not reignite, she dropped her ruined dressing gown on the pile of ash and began walking back to the village, not caring if Gabriel followed.
Thoroughly soaked, with her boots filled with water and her gloveless fingers so cold they burned, she felt like a perambulating block of ice. Her teeth began chattering, and she hugged herself in what she knew would be a futile attempt to ward off hypothermia.
Coming alongside, Gabriel cast a dark glance her way, then began to remove his coat. Elodie’s breath tripped. The cursed man was going to give it to her! How inconsiderate! He was her estranged husband; he ought to be consistently rude and arrogant so a woman knew where she stood with him! How was she supposed to maintain a healthy antipathy when he kept doing thoughtful things?
Immediately, she walked faster, trying to ignore how her feet hurt as the wet leather of her boots chafed them. Without effort, Gabriel kept pace. From the edge of her vision, Elodie saw him withdraw one arm from within the coat’s sleeve…
“No,” she said, holding up a hand in refusal as she increased her speed yet again.
“I beg your pardon?” Gabriel asked, managing to sound simultaneously confused and repressive.
“Thank you for your consideration, but please do not be charming or gallant. Do not give me your coat.”
“Why not?” he asked suspiciously. “Do you think I have body lice?”
“Aah!” Mortified by the very suggestion, she covered her face with a hand. “No, of course not! I just feel we ought to remain scrupulously professional.” In other words, do not make me like you, or I will remember that I love you, and that’s a worse disaster for me than any storm could create.
“Hm,” he replied. In fact, not even that. Half a hm. The least amount of sound possible while still being definable as a reply. So no real danger, then, of him being actually charming. Elodie had to wonder why she was making a mountain out of a mere chalk down elevation. Besides, her teeth were now chattering so hard she feared for their integrity more than that of her character. She stopped in a band of limpid red-gold light overflowing from a cottage window, and squinting against the rainfall, she looked obliquely at him.
“Unless you would offer it to any other colleague under similar professional circumstances, that is.”
At once, he had the coat off. Elodie girded her loins against the thrill of him draping it around her shoulders…
But he simply handed it to her. She took it automatically, rendered wordless by surprise, and he continued walking down the road.
“So rude!” Elodie muttered under her breath as she hauled on the coat. Its sleeves hung beyond her fingertips and its hem to her ankles, making her feel rather like an awkward child. But waterproofing had kept the satin lining dry and warm, and the exterior smelled of—well, sodden wool, actually, and smoke from thaumaturgical lightning, but also a dark muskiness she could only describe as masculine. She closed her eyes, allowing herself one moment to luxuriate in being inside Gabriel’s coat . She’d spent years dreaming of this. Granted, in those dreams he’d tucked it around her, gently gathering her hair out from under the collar and then, with a forehead kiss, drawing her close to comfort her against his strength and his steady heart—
“Are you coming or not?” he called from farther along the road.
Sighing, Elodie hurried to follow.