Page 39 of A Spot of Tea and Sorcery: Vol. 6

The Sovereign Troth. It was broken.

He felt it—the liberated access to all his powers. No chains binding him, no spellwork winding through his soul. Pure freedom. Which meant . . .

“She’s gone.” He lifted his gaze, turning to stare first at the double-delight, then at the other flowers, one worried, petaled face after another. “She’s gone from Ballycastle!”

Those were the terms of the troth, were they not? His sorcery was bound to her, but only so long as she remained within the city limits. If she left, he was free. If she left, or if she . . . if she . . .

“No!” Nigel roared, his hands forming fists. He whirled in place so hard, Debbie flapped off his shoulder and landed on the ground in front of him. He stared down at the bird, meeting her worried gaze. “She isn’t dead! They need her alive, don’t they? Need her alive for their damnable resurrection spell!”

He forced himself to take deep breaths as renewed shocks quaked through his body. All right. All right, this was bad. Very bad. Very, very bad indeed. But not the worst! Because the Brotherhood wouldn’t hurt Luna, surely. Not until they’d performed the spell. And they couldn’t perform a spell of that magnitude without an equally magnitudinous power source. Which was Garden. Garden, which Nigel had been nurturing and tending and restoring to its former glory. Garden, which pulsed and seethed with tremendous Green Magic on a truly unfathomable scale.

But Garden was still his. That little attack last night had been unsuccessful. Yes, they would come back. Sooner rather than later, no doubt. And yes, Nigel would be severely hamperedin his ability to protect his own while this cursed severmist continued to torment him.

But he had time. He had time to locate where they’d taken Luna. Time to get her back. Time to turn this whole situation on its head and absolutely slaughter every member of the Brotherhood, one after the other. How he was going to manage this while crippled, well . . . that was a problem for future Nigel. Right now, he needed to find Luna. And that meant going back to the alley, hooking up to Lancelot Mortimer’s transmatterportation spell, and following where it led. Which he must somehow manage to accomplish without, you know,dying.Somehow. He was working on it.

“You stay here,” Nigel said, turning to Debbie and the double-delight and all the other huddled flowers surrounding him. Then he looked out at Garden’s rolling grounds and spoke in a louder voice. “Sit tight. I’m going after her. Keep all your defenses high, and don’t let yourself be found. Got it?”

A breeze wafted up to blow in his face, carrying with it kiss-like brushes of petals. Nigel felt the understanding communicated, but he frowned even so. His heart twisted at the prospect of leaving Garden unprotected. Strange . . . until that moment, he’d not realized how attached he’d become to the great, semi-sentient acreage. In his mind, it had always just been an extension of his father, and he’d assumed Garden merely tolerated his presence, even as his father once had. It was hard to feel any warm emotions in response to mingled tolerance and disdain.

Only now, having been saved by Garden’s quick-thinking action yet again, Nigel couldn’t help remembering what his father had told him on more than one occasion: that the more you gave to Garden, the more it gave back to you, until you were both so deeply part of one another, it was difficult to separate the entwined souls. Nigel had spent years now workingon reclaiming Garden from the brink of disaster. He had fed his own sweat, stamina, and lifeforce into the soil. And in return, Garden had given back to him. Life and growth and greenness and beauty. Gifts beyond measure, even when he himself had been too short-sighted to recognize them.

Nigel drew a sharp breath. “I’m going to find a way to save you both,” he said, speaking thickly through an unexpected lump in his throat. “I swear it. I won’t let any harm come to her or to you.” He made a soothing gesture with both hands. “So sit tight. All right?”

Debbie fluttered up from the lawn to grip his sleeve, but Nigel shook her off as gently as he could. “No, Debbie,” he said. “I need you to stay behind as well. I want to know you’re safe.” She circled his head, croaking furiously, but Nigel remained firm. “Never mind about all that,” he said. “You stay back and watch over Garden. All right?”

With a last sweeping look around at the flowers, Nigel marched to the free-standing boiler room door. It appeared to him as it really was: not the simple white door that matched all the others within the shop building. This door was green, with a flaking pattern of roses and trailing vines, painted by his own mother’s hand long ago, before he was born. Faded and battered, but exactly the way Old Mister Grimm had left it when it stood in an old country cottage and opened on what was initially intended to be a simple kitchen garden.

Nigel took hold of the rusty latch, turned it, felt a brief moment of resistance. It gave at his pressure, however, allowing him to stumble out of Garden and into the back passage of the shop. Immediately, something felt wrong. A strange coldness. An emptiness in the air. Something he could not define.

Nigel breathed out slowly.

Then, leaving the door open behind him just in case, he moved cautiously up the passage. Part of him expected to bumpinto someone else at any given moment. The emptiness simply felt too empty to be believed. It must be a deception of some kind, a work of enchantment to addle his senses. He reached the end of the passage, peered out into the shop.

His eyes widened.

It was empty. The entire shop was completely bare of flowers. This didn’t surprise him; he’d already seen all the blossoms, fled into Garden for protection. It was strange and unsettling, but not unexpected.

But his gaze latched onto something else. Right there, in the middle of the tile floor. A tube of brilliant red lipstick, standing atop an envelope, on which his own name had been written in thick, red pigment.

Striding swiftly forward, Nigel kicked the lipstick aside, snatched up the envelope, ripped it open and pulled out the paper inside. He scanned the words, fury swelling with each line:

Dearest Nigel Grimm,

We have the girl.

Come to the old granary in North Sobbington. Come alone. Bring the key to the garden, and she will be returned to you unharmed.

You have until six o’clock this evening.

Then we start sending pieces of her every hour until you arrive.

Love and kisses,

Calista Anguish, née Quick

Black rage roiled from the pit of his soul. The troth broken, Nigel very nearly summoned a storm of Dire Matter to transmatterport to the stated location right then, right there. Who cared that even to attempt such a spellworking would thoroughly kill him at this juncture. He wanted to get there, now,and lay waste to the lot of them. How dare they? Howdarethey threaten his Luna? They would pay for it. All of them. He would curse their innards, swelling every cell of their bodies with black force, until they bloated and burst in clouds of blood and anti-glitter. He would set fire to their veins until they boiled alive, screaming as their own flesh bubbled and melted from their bones. He would summon a horde of ravenous Dire Demons to devour them again and again and again, without ceasing, he would—

Hang on.