Page 72 of No Charm Done

She fumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat, her fingers clumsy with urgency. “This is insane,” she managed between kisses.

“Completely,” he agreed, helping her with the buttons because apparently even in the throes of passion, Elias Shaw was a gentleman. “But I’m done pretending I don’t⁠—”

The world lurched.

One second Luna was on a table in a 1920s fever dream, halfway to doing something that would definitely make things complicated. The next second she was on a table in Track 61, under the cold fluorescent enchantment of the Guastavino tiles, her legs still wrapped around Elias Shaw in front of approximately twenty witches.

Time stopped.

Her brain tried to process what was happening. Failed. Tried again. Failed harder.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

The coven stared at them with expressions ranging from delighted to scandalized. Hector cleared his throat. It was possibly the loudest throat-clearing in the history of throat-clearing.

“So,” Diego said, his voice carefully neutral. “The spell appears to be working as advertised.”

Luna scrambled off the table . . . or tried to. Her legs had apparently forgotten how to work. Fortunately, he caught her before she could face-plant into the Turkish rug, which was mortifying in an entirely new way.

“We were just—” she started.

“Testing the spell,” he finished, his voice strangled.

“Very thorough,” Adrienne added, grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Very, very thorough.”

“I mean, we needed to understand the scope—” Luna tried again.

“Oh, we understand the scope,” one of the younger witches said, barely suppressing laughter. “We understand it extremely well.”

I want to die. Actually die. Cast myself into the Void . . . Maybe Elias’s old room is available?

He had his hands in his pockets now, looking everywhere except at the assembled coven. His hair was completely wrecked—Luna’s fault—and his waistcoat was half-unbuttoned—also her fault. A muscle in his jaw ticked.

“How long were we gone?” he asked, his voice remarkably steady given that he’d been horizontal sixty seconds ago.

“About four minutes,” Hector said.

“FOUR MINUTES?” Luna’s voice pitched high enough to shatter glass.

“The glamour spell creates a time dilation effect,” Diego explained. “You experienced roughly an hour. We experienced four minutes of watching you two vanish, then reappear on Adrienne’s table, making out like teenagers.”

Hector stood from his commandeered throne, and something in his demeanor had changed. The amusement was still there, lurking around the edges, but underneath it was something more serious. “Well, I think we can all agree that CastR is significantly more dangerous than we initially assessed.”

“Significantly,” Diego echoed, also standing.

The twins exchanged one of their looks that contained entire conversations. Then Hector reached into his jacket and pulled out a small leather satchel, aged and worn, with protection sigils stitched along the seams in silver thread.

“Luna Melrose,” he said formally. “We grant you access to the subway tokens. Three uses. No more.”

She stared at the satchel like it might explode. After everything—the arguments, the skepticism, the humiliating demonstration—they were just giving them what they asked for? “You’re serious?” she managed.

“Deadly serious.” Hector held out the satchel. “If that is what one spell can do, then we shudder to think what happens when a million civilians have access to the entire catalog. You were right. We were wrong.”

Luna took the satchel, hands shaking. It was heavier than she expected, and warm, like it was alive. She could feel the power radiating from it. The accumulated psychic energy of millions of New Yorkers, their hopes and fears and desperate wishes crystallized into something both terrible and useful. They had just three chances now, one for each token. She just hoped it would be enough.

“Three times,” Hector repeated. “Use them wisely. Use them well. And for the love of all that’s holy, use them for the investors, not for—” he gestured vaguely at the space between Luna and Elias “—whatever that was.”

“Just a bit of research,” Elias said with as much dignity as he could muster, which was minimal.