Page 107 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

And it was perhaps easiest of all to thread her fingers back into his hair and bring his face to hers, to kiss him softly as he slid forward in one slow, easy glide until he pressed his pelvis fully against hers. He made a choking sound.

“Are you well, my love?” she said against his throat, nipping him with her teeth, the coolness of his cock less noticeable now.

“I just… I am never warm. But you… you make me warm. At least part of me.”

She squeezed tighter with her legs, forcing him to grind against her. He dropped his forehead to the crook of her neck and groaned.

“Well,” she said, licking where she’d just nipped, “by my count, you still have six minutes. Shall we see how warm you can get?”

36

After a blur of busy days, the end of the month was upon them. Jory had never slept less, but she’d never been happier either. She and Esther had worked out a system for running the store and splitting ownership. Jory had wanted to give the store to Esther free and clear, but Esther wouldn’t have it. She seemed to think that Jory needed an incentive to return to World’s End. In addition, somehow Robbie had talked himself into a job. As it turned out, Robbie was an excellent salesperson, helping customers to find exactly what they were looking for and making them feel like a million bucks all the while. He and Esther had become fast friends. Jory tried very hard not to think about how much she would miss them.

She and Callum were to leave for Scotland in the morning, and she had mapped out several future estate sales she wanted to visit while she was in Europe.

The winter sky was opalescent, with sunlight making a valiant attempt at shining through the dome of clouds.

“Do you really think you’re going to be able to get those corsets?” Esther asked excitedly as she tackled a stack of denim that needed refolding after a particularly enthusiastic customer.

Jory had been chatting with a friend of hers in London, Isabeau Voland, an elf who had worked as a modiste for centuries and now ran the couture fashion house, L’Armure. They had met in New York before the Revolution, before Isabeau had fallen in love with an English vampire and followed him back to London. Recently, Isabeau had come across a large collection of richly embroidered silk and damask corsets and stays, all in impeccable condition. Jory had gasped when the pictures had come through in her text messages.

“Isabeau,” she said, her tongue curling to cradle theeau, “tells me that she found them in an estate sale at some manor house in northern England. The owners had never fully explored the attics, and when they went to renovate the home, they found a trunk that likely hadn’t been opened in more than a century. She bought them on the spot and told me she paid two hundred pounds for the lot. They’re worth twenty times that much.”

“We can’t afford that, Jor,” Esther gasped.

“No, we cannot,” Jory agreed with a smile. “But Isabeau has agreed to offload them to me for two hundred and one pounds if I throw in those 1960s bottle-green Ferragamo flats.”

Esther sighed. “I do love those shoes.”

Jory sighed with her, thinking of the beautiful shoes, neatly packed in her carryon bag.

“I’m excited to see her. It’s been decades.”

She cut into a box of paper shopping bags and began arranging them by size beneath the counter.

As Jory worked, she asked, “Do you have everything you need for when I’m gone?”

“Mm-hmm,” Esther answered, having moved onto a pile of soft, vintage band T-shirts.

“No worries about the store or how to handle any of it?”

“Nope. All good.”

Jory broke down the shipping box in which the bags had come and moved on to replacing the receipt tape in the register. As she peeled the sticker off the end of the paper, she heard a sniff and looked up to see slow tears trickling down Esther’s cheeks.

“Esther?”

Esther sniffed again.

“Is it the inventory? I know it’s awful, but if you have any questions, I’m a phone call away. I’ll walk you through it.”

“It’s not the inventory,” she said, her voice watery.

“The bank drop? I promise that Timothy really is a nice man once you get to know him. He’s just?—”

“It’s not that either,” Esther said, her voice thick now.

Jory’s heart sank. “Is it Hank? Is he okay? Or your cousin? Has something happened?”