I put on my gloves and left.
Outside, the sky was already as dark and chilly as cold coffee in a black mug. Unseen clouds spat cold rain, and the lights of passing cars slid over the wet ground. I pulled my coat tighter against the night.
One too-short taxi ride later, I stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the redstone building, a dark castle only touched by a little of the warm streetlights, the lit windows less inviting and more of a multi-eyed monster peering into the darkness. Looking for me.
How many times had I gone to Gramercy Park and had my life turn on a dime?
I rode the small elevator to Daniel’s floor. Everything that had already happened rode with me; everything that could happen, I tried to leave behind when I stepped into the hallway. Only the now, only the present, could come with me.
I knocked.
Footsteps, then Daniel opened the door. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” I said, stepping inside. “Where’s Jessica?”
“Out.” Daniel was dressed to leave: tailored slacks, polished leather shoes, a thick sweater that looked like it’d been hand-made for a millionaire. His overcoat draped the chaise lounge, and I had a brief vision of using it like a blanket, to curl up underneath and hide from everything.
“Nice sweater,” I said. I didn’t feel the need to flirt with him anymore, but without it, I didn’t know what to say instead.
“Thanks,” he said, falling silent for a moment, as if it were the same for him. “You sure you’re okay to do this?”
I laughed. “I’m never sure I’m okay to do anything. And yet, here I am.”
“Here you are,” he said.
Oh, the silence. Like a violin string around the neck.
What were we? Friends, yes, but something else was different. Daniel, the Lord of the Blessed, and me—untitledbut also somehow the balancing point between the witches, the Blessed, and the Gentry. It had been easier to ignore when we were simply flirting with each other to pass the time and remind ourselves how smoldering we were. Without that, we weren’t just people. We werefactions.
“Can I get you anything before I go?” he said. “A drink? Something to eat?”
“You have food?” I said, momentarily distracted from my own thoughts by the surprise. Daniel’s refrigerator was usually as clean and unoccupied as Antarctica.
“Cheese—good stuff—some fruit, cold cuts, bottled water… and some fresh bread and salted nuts in the cabinet.”
I stopped myself from noting out loud that he didn’t actually need any of this. “Thanks,” I said. “Maybe after.” Unlike at any time in our long history, I wanted to set him at ease.
He seemed to want to do the same.
This friendship stuff was strange.
“I’ll get out of your hair, then,” he said. With that, he scooped up his coat and moved to the door. He opened the door and turned back. “I’m not going far. Call me if you need anything.” Then he left.
I waited for his footsteps to fade. “Alone at last,” I said to the empty room, trying to crack a joke, only to have the room suck it up like a vampire of humor instead of blood.
Time to get cooking. And if there was one thing I’d learned in cooking school, it was to make sure everything was in its place before I started:mise en place, as the French said.
I threw my own coat where Daniel’s had been. Out of my bag, a pillowcase filled with the crumbled shards of the Mirror. The witches’ copy ofPreparing for a Seance.
I pulled a sword cane out of the stand, withdrew the blade a few inches, and snapped it back into place.
Then I went to Prospero’s room.
Daniel was so neat I could have easily thought he didn’t even live there. Best to go with that.Prospero’shouse.Prospero’sroom, as if those simple thoughts would summon him.
I surveyed the layout again, with a different eye than when Berron, Daniel, and I had ransacked it. I needed a place to lay the book. A place to put the broken glass. A place for the sword cane.
I propped the book on the mantel, open to a list of instructions. The sword cane and the pillowcase of Mirror fragments went on the mantel, too.
