Page 70 of No Charm Done

My gods, my life is a rom-com written by a sadist.

The player piano shifted to something slower, dreamier. Luna recognized it: “Begin the Beguine.”

Of course.

“We need to figure out how to get back,” she said, trying to sound practical but landing somewhere around mildly panicked.

“Agreed.” Elias moved to the bar, but she couldn’t tell if he was looking for clues or cocktails. He picked up one of the bottles—gin, pre-war vintage—and turned it in his hands. “This feels real. Solid.”

Luna touched one of the tablecloths, half expecting her hand to pass through it. But no, it was real linen, cool and starched. “Is this an illusion? Some kind of glamour?”

“Maybe.” Elias set the bottle down carefully. “Or maybe it’s real, and we’ve been sent somewhere else entirely.”

Luna’s stomach dropped. “Like another dimension?”

“Or another time?” He was looking at the piano now, that analytical expression settling over his features. “You notice the player piano’s actually playing? It’s not rote. This thing is actually playing, with feeling.”

“So?”

“Player pianos play what’s on the roll.” He went to the instrument, examining it more closely. “Yeah, look. This one’s improvising. I’m thinking it was enchanted, specifically for this space.” He looked up at her, and his expression was difficult to read.

“If it’s a spell, we should try to break it,” Luna said, more firmly than she felt. “Whatever it is.”

“Probably wise.” But he didn’t move, and neither did she.

The player piano transitioned seamlessly into “Night and Day,” and she wondered if it was going to kill her slowly with the entire Cole Porter catalogue.

“You know what the worst part is?” he said suddenly.

“What?”

“I’m actually charmed.”

Charmed?! she thought. One can be charmed by a five-year-old’s birthday party. Or by a granny who curses like a sailor. But he says he’s charmed by this? Charmed is a low-stakes word. This doesn’t feel especially low stakes to me.

“Not by the spell . . . or at least, I don’t think by the spell. By all of this. The absurdity of it. The fact that we just accidentally proved our argument to an entire coven by getting trapped in some kind of . . . I don’t know . . . whatever this is.”

“Romance pocket dimension?” Her voice came out smaller than she wanted it to. “Can we get out?”

“Dunno, what do you think? I assume your friends are working on it? How long would it take to break a spell like this?”

Luna shrugged. “Could be minutes. Could be hours.” Her eyes flicked to a candle on the table, the flame dancing in sync with her own uncertainty. “So.”

“So.”

“This is um. This is happening.”

He nodded. “There are worse places to be trapped, I suppose.”

The piano transitioned into something slower, more intimate. They were here. Alone in this beautiful lie. In a place that existed outside of time, outside of consequence, outside of everything except the music and the way Elias was looking at her like she was the only real thing in the entire impossible room.

“Well, Melrose. Not much to be done, I guess.” He held out his hand. “Would you like to dance?”

She hesitated—not because she didn’t want to, but because she didn’t know what this version of Elias thought they were doing. “I don’t . . . I don’t really know how to dance. Not like this.”

“Lucky for you, I’m an excellent teacher.”

It would be so much easier if her fluttering heart were just a spell gone wrong. If the warmth spreading through her was purely magical influence, something she could blame on CastR’s shoddy code and Ashton Vex’s questionable ethics. But she knew better. She’d known since they embraced outside the town meeting, maybe before. Since the basement, when he’d looked at her like she was the answer to a question he’d been asking for a hundred years.