He took it with a coquettish tilt to his head. “For me? You could ask me out to dinner first.” At Rowan’s confused look, he elaborated, “A gift of jewelry is very forward.”
“It’s for the wards.”
“I know. I’m teasing you.”
Vatii nipped his earlobe. “You’re incorrigible! Stop flirting, you’re making him uncomfortable.”
Briar didn’t think so. “Could you help me put it on?” He held out his wrist. Rowan tied the bracelet on with surprising dexterity for his big hands. “And now the wards won’t try to eat me?”
“No.”
“And this bracelet won’t fall off?”
“Charmed not to.”
“So you’re the alderman?”
“Mm.”
“You seem young to be. How old are you? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“How did you become alderman?”
“Long story.”
Briar remained undeterred by the monosyllabic responses. They provided brief tastes of a lilting accent like Niamh’s, with syllables that pitched upward and downward.
He looked back at his broom and the pile of luggage strewn across the road. “Is it far, the rest of the way to town?”
“No,” Rowan said. He passed Briar to heft each case, using the ropes as handles.
Briar stared. “Oh, all of them.” Even Vatii’s chirp sounded impressed.
“This way.”
Briar followed, pausing briefly at the space where he could feel the wards prickling against his skin. He stepped through one foot at a time, marveling at the way the magic that once clung to him now slid off like oil separating from water. He’d paused long enough that Rowan stopped, a question in his arched brow.
Briar flexed his fingers. “The wards feel weird. Juicy.”
Rowan said, “This way.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to carry at least one of those?”
“You’re grand.”
They set off into town. Built into the hills, the thatched cottages stumbled into one another haphazardly. The streets twisted such that you could never see all the way down a lane. There was something nostalgic about the place. Old and yearning, stretched across time. Few cars parked along thelanes, and even fewer neon lights lit the storefronts. People walked at an amble, unlike the brisk, purposeful strides of city-goers.
Rowan and Briar reached the square, with a fountain and a statue of a man holding a potion bottle in the center. A church stood tall and proud behind it, a bas-relief of elaborate knotwork over its lintel. Magical scars pocked and streaked its stone walls. Briar could make out gouges in the stone and bloody purple magic coiling through them. Their auras coiled through Briar too, coarse like steel wool. All living things had auras, but sometimes significant moments in time left signatures of their own. Briar could read them too. These ones set his teeth on edge, made his heart ache. Though he wanted to, he didn’t ask how the town came to bear the marks. They resembled Rowan’s scar, which made it feel like too personal a question.
Rowan stopped outside two empty shops, their glass displays vacant. Both had doors painted with the universal sign of a Reded witch—an acorn. Setting the luggage down, Rowan fished in his pockets for the key.
“Here you are.” He unlocked the door to one, gesturing Briar inside.
A naked light bulb illuminated the bare interior. The space was empty except for a dusty rug. A rusty cash register perched on an island counter, the noises it would make a spectral echo in the vacant room. Built-in shelves begged to be filled with curios, potion bottles, and pretty rocks in velvet pouches. Only a dusty bottle, containing something coagulated and the color of infection, sat there now.
Briar opened a back door to a staircase.
