Page 7 of A Spot of Tea and Sorcery: Vol. 6

He smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth then, tasting that nasty floral flavor once more, mingled with the sickness and heaved-up severmist. Not a winning combination. Whatever they had fed him seemed to have purged some of the poison, at least. But he could still feel the severmist stirring inside him. The moment he tried to use sorcery again, the anti-sorcery agent would activate, canceling out the channeling of power to disastrous effect.

Gods above, as though the Sovereign Troth wasn’t crippling enough! Nigel hung his head, breathing out a rough exhale. Based on what he recalled about severmist, it could take days, weeks even, to pass entirely out of the system. While he might be able to perform low-level sorcery, any further attempts to work magic on a grander scale—like transmatterportation, for instance—could prove disastrous.

“Never mind?”Debbie fluttered to perch on his shoulder and pecked at his ear.

“Damn,” Nigel whispered, bowing his head and shaking it. “What a sorry excuse for a sorcerer I’ve turned out to be.”

Flowers crowded up to his knees, climbed on his bent legs. The tiger lilies purred and rubbed their pretty orange faces against his waistcoat, while the dahlias sighed sweetly, and the snapdragons nibbled more gently than usual at his fingers. Even the double-delight deigned to bow one of her fragrant blossoms and caress his cheek.

A sudden surge of warm feeling welled up in Nigel’s heart. He looked down at the aromatic little crowd, his gaze searching until he spotted a trumpet-shaped blossom. “Houndsnose,” he said, “did you fetch them? To help me?”

The little wildflower’s leafy tail wagged gently.

To Nigel’s surprise, tears prickled in his eyes. “Good boy,” he said a little thickly. Then he stretched out his hand to run a finger down that delicate green stem. “Good boy, good little flower.” He turned to catch Debbie’s blinking eye. “And you? Did you stick that . . . that disgusting blossom in my mouth?”

She ruffled her wings defensively.“Never mind!”

“No, I’m not mad,” Nigel assured her. “Not at all. I think . . . I think you saved my life.”

The raven must have watched what Luna had done for him earlier in the night and tried to emulate it. And a good thing too. Nigel leaned his head against hers, closing his eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered. Then he looked around at all the flowers, who watched him closely. “You were that worried about me, were you?”

Leaves and petals fluttered delicately. A lump lodged in Nigel’s throat. All this time, he had labored so hard to restore his father’s legacy, to undo the damage he had wrought when he battled Jastira. But he’d always thought of himself as anoutsider, an unwelcome but necessary intruder. He’d never thought . . . never hoped . . . never imagined . . .

The double-delight patted his cheek with a green leaf. Then she tilted multiple blossoms, questioningly. The tiger lilies were once more pulling at his trousers as though they would like to carry him back home, but they weren’t strong enough. “It’s all right,” Nigel told them. “I think I can walk. Let’s give it a try, shall we?”

Using the brick wall, he managed to get himself upright. His eyes scanned the mess he’d made in the alley, the remnants of two different sigils, the spatterings of anti-glitter, the wasted drops of distilled Dire Matter. Reaching out with his foot, Nigel smeared the sigils a bit more and kicked dirty snow to cover them. No point in leaving evidence of sorcerous activity.

“Right,” he said at last, looking down at the flowers, who clustered at his feet. “Let’s get you lot home before you freeze to death.”

Snapdragons climbed his trousers and filled his pockets. The dahlias tucked themselves into the front of his waistcoat, while the tiger lilies clung to his shoulders, ousting Debbie, who took to the air. Nigel tucked petunias and carnations into the pockets of Yorik Balthazar’s dressing gown, then picked up the double-delight, who wrapped her canes around his wrists and forearms. Nigel breathed in deep of her perfume, trying to believe that sweetness could purify some of the severmist still inside him.

Then he pulled his shoulders back. He didn’t know if he had the strength to make it all the way back to The Arcane Bouquet. For the sake of the flowers, he had to try.

He set out walking, lurching from the alley, even as Debbie circled overhead. Her black pinions cast ominous shadows, like a foretelling of doom.

While Luna did her best with the comb Mrs. Goddard had loaned her, it couldn’t work miracles. It couldn’t instill bounce and curl into the limp and lifeless strands of hair framing the haggard, sleep-deprived face peering back at her from the little vanity glass.

Luna frowned pensively at her reflection. Last night had seen her taken captive by ruffians, bound to a chair in an abandoned warehouse, threatened by a Dark Sorcerer, enchanted, and forced to use her unpracticed feminine wiles to distract a wardsman. Not to mention confronting the fact that the man with whom she’d just shared what could only be described as A Heated Moment was, in fact, the ex-paramour of the most evil sorceress ever to tyrannize the modern world. In light of these events, a bit of limpness in the hair and pallor in the cheeks didn’t seem worth getting upset over.

Nevertheless, she would give a great deal for a bit of rouge right about then. Something to infuse some color into her complexion. It wouldn’t do to spend her last day in Ballycastle floating about like a wan waif from some gothic novel. Lunabit her lips, trying to pink them, but they faded back to dull, lifeless beige almost immediately. She looked the way she felt: exhausted to the bone.

But in the small, dark hours just before dawn, she’d made a decision, and she was determined to stick with it. “I’ll work today,” she told her reflection in the glass, even as she tied her hair back from her face with a bit of ribbon. “I’m probably safer at the shop than anywhere else in Ballycastle.”

It was a risk, of course. Only two days ago, when she’d first bumped into Lancelot Mortimer, she’d been wearing her work apron with the shop name embroidered across the front. He’d commented on it, and though she’d tried to cover by telling him it was the name of a laundry, it was only a matter of time before he’d figure out the truth. But surely she could risk one day. She’d finish up all those commissions for the Governor’s Ball, then say some sort of proper goodbye. To Garden. To the flowers. To Debbie. To . . .

She bit her lip again, this time in an effort to suppress the sudden pressure of brimming tears. “You can’t say goodbye,” she whispered sternly at her reflected self. “He . . . They . . . No one can know.” She swallowed hard and steeled her expression into something stern. “You’ve got to play it cool, Luna Talbot.”

Which might be easier to accomplish if she’d ever been cool in her life.

Giving herself an all-over shake, Luna pulled her blouse on over her white slip. Yesterday’s clothing wasn’t all that fresh anymore, but she didn’t have time to go back to the boardinghouse for a change. Truth be told, she didn’t feel safe walking the streets of Ballycastle just now. No, it would be better to stick close to the shop today, concentrate on her work, keep her head down. If there was any sign of sorcerous disturbance, she could dart into Garden. Garden was absolutely swathed inprotective and deflective spells. It was probably the safest place in the entire city.

But what about Mr. Grimm?

Luna’s fingers shook so hard, she struggled to do up her own buttons.

How was she going to face him? How could she even bear to look him in the eye after . . . aftereverything?

Her fingers trailed up to touch her lips. Very gently, a faint little brush. But she closed her eyes and felt all over again the burning brilliance of his kiss. So light at first, so careful. But then gathering in courage and conviction, pulling her in, deepening into something dark and dangerous and oh! so delicious. A kiss which had awakened a fiery furnace, hot in her core, filling her with hunger unlike anything she’d ever—