“Gods!” she sighed, “I feel all swoony when you say my name like that! Don’t remember anyone calling meMiss Braithwaitbefore. You make me sound like a lady toff with that voice of yours!”
“Erm . . .”
“You’re really nothing like what Luna led me to believe. Why, you’re not an old curmudgeon at all, are you?”
A shot of ice lanced through his innards.
“Miss . . . Miss Talbot said . . . that?”
“Oh, yes,” Bryony, unaware of what her words were doing, trilled on pleasantly. “We quite agreed that bosses are always either curmudgeons or perverts, but you don’t strike me as either! Though perhaps you’ve got a little more of one than the other buried deep.”
She winked in such a way that really ought, by rights, to melt the frost in his veins. But Nigel’s gaze fixed ahead on Luna, strolling along beside Officer Ward. Her cherry-print dress wafted delicately, and she tilted her head back in a laugh he could not hear through the festival din, and . . .
Curmudgeon.
Is that what she really thought of him? How she represented him to her roommate?
Of course, she had every right to talk about him behind his back. It was an undeclared term of any employee/employer agreement. So long as one kept one’s whinging beyond range of the boss’s ears, one was allowed to say what one wished. Why, he used to say the most outrageous things about Jastira over a pint with his fellow under-professors, in the pub just off Nocturnus grounds. (That was back before she invited himupstairs,of course . . . after which, he became her staunchest defender, up to the bitter end.)
Besides, he reminded himself firmly, it wasn’t fair to Luna for him to hear this from Bryony. Bryony ought to have honored her roommate’s confidence. Really, Bryony was to blame for sharing, not Luna for speaking her mind in the first place.
Curmudgeon.
The word felt heavy inside his head.
He found himself pulled to a stop rather abruptly in front of an enormous sign, on which some mentally-tormented calligrapher had seizured out the wordsWacky Housein the most outrageous sans-serif nightmare, complete with little gears, explosions, sparkles, and hideous laughing faces. The “a” of “Wacky” boasted googly eyeballs and a flapping tongue. What was it with fair signs and tongues?
Ward and Luna stood at the back of the line and beckoned Nigel and Bryony to join them. Or rather, Ward beckoned. Luna continued to keep her gaze demurely averted. And it was a little too pointed not to be noticeable.
Nigel’s collar felt tight.
Curmudgeon. Curmudgeon. Curmudgeon.
“They’ve added a new wing,” Ward said, pointing to the sign and script along the bottom:Now with Haunted House add-on!The letters were painted like dripping blood, framedwith hollow-eyed ghosts. “But there’s an option to exit before continuing into that section. It’s said to be too scary for the kids.”
“Oooh!” Bryony cooed, wriggling her shoulders. “Sign me up! You’ll have to protect me, Mr. Grimm.”
“And what about you, Miss Talbot?” Ward asked Luna. “If you’d rather not, we can always—”
“I like a good spook as much as anyone,” Luna declared, smiling brightly. Just as if all her nerves on the fete wheel were long forgotten. And still, she never glanced Nigel’s way. Did she want to get rid of him? Was her curmudgeonly employer spoiling her day of fun? It’s not as though she could truly relax, not if she felt under constant supervision.
“I think it’s time I was off—” Nigel began.
But Bryony grabbed his hand, lacing her fingers through his. “No, Mr. Grimm, I won’t hear of it! I would befartoo scared to see the haunted house without you!”
“Yeah, don’t let a little ghostly effects put you off, old boy,” Ward added. “It’s all in good fun.”
Nigel’s hackles rose. Did the wardsman think he was afraid? He was just opening his mouth to offer a frigid comeback, when Luna’s dark eyes flicked to meet his at last. “You should come with us,” she said.
Just that. Nothing more. And she looked away again, somehow fixated on whatever was happening on the back of the head of the stranger standing in front of her.
But the work was done. Nigel would follow her to the ends of the world. Even if it meant watching her trip along arm-in-arm with Ward the whole way there.
The line to the Wacky House felt achingly slow. Nigel faded in and out of the chit-chat, which the other three somehow managed to sustain in a constant stream, sharing stories of Wacky Houses of yore. Because apparently this was a mutually-shared experience of childhood. Nigel had no such stories in hispast. Old Mister Grimm certainly couldn’t be bothered to take his boys to county fairs year after year, and Old Aunt Galatea hadn’t the nerves for such occasions. Fabian may have snuck off on occasion, but he certainly never dragged an annoying younger brother in his wake, and Nigel hadn’t the gumption in his youth to make such forays on his own. Based on what he’d seen thus far today, he could not imagine his younger self would have enjoyed this tormented assortment of amassed humanity, noise, smells, and chaos in any case.
They reached the entrance to the Wacky House. Ward and Luna led the way inside, Nigel and Bryony trailing just behind. Immediately Nigel’s senses were hit with manic music played over thaumatic speakers, all in trilling, downward spirals of sound designed to put the mind and body off-kilter. It wasn’t just the music either—the floor beneath his feet kept tilting wildly, the floorboards on rocking pivots designed to make one stagger and stumble into the padded walls. It was like entering a madhouse.
“Whoopsie daisy, Mr. Grimm!” Bryony giggled as the two of them, linked at the elbows, hit one wall. Nigel found his companion pressed up against him in mounds of womanliness. “Best find your sea legs, or we’ll take a tumble together!”
