One more floor up, and rain dotted the back of Sebastian’s neck as he knocked on the glass of Molly’s window. It was Isabel who swept the curtain aside. Only three years his elder, Isabel was often mistaken for Sebastian’s sister instead of his cousin—a similar accent, same olive skin and brown hair, although hers was long and swept into a center-parted bun accented with a hair comb, and her eyes were hazel-green instead of brown.
“Sebi’s here,” she called over her shoulder, pushing up the window. She leaned out to kiss Sebastian’s cheek, taking the paper bag from him as she asked, “Nos trajiste el almuerzo—oh yes, Molly, he brought us lunch!”
Moments later, Sebastian was sitting on Molly’s rug, his back against one of the two beds. The women of Molly’s house always kept at least four cats roaming the floors, and Clover, an elderly calico, was currently curled in a ball on the bed. She lifted her head to eye Sebastian speculatively, and he reached up to stroke her soft fur.
“Hola, gatita linda, como va tu día?” he said, pitching his voice low so none of the other tenants would hear him.
“Hello, pretty cat, how’s your day going?”Molly grinned. “You’re so soft, Sebastian.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you learning Spanish?” he said, impressed.
“Got a phrase book and everything,” she said proudly. Molly didn’t have a stove, but she’d put a kettle on a hot plate, and she was humming as she moved around the room, a sharp contrast to the lines of sadness around her mouth and eyes at the pub the night before.
It was so good to see her happy again; what had caused the change?
“Olive saw me climbing up,” he said.
“She’s a doll, she won’t tell the matron,” said Molly, as Isabel unpacked the sandwiches and queen cakes Sebastian had brought. “Olive didn’t get home from Kensington until nearly midnight—bet it made her morning, seeing you.”
“The lord she works for lives in Kensington?” Sebastian said in surprise, as Clover leaned her face into his hand and he scritched behind her ears. “Do you know his name?”
“I don’t,” Molly said. “Just that he’s a demanding arsehole and the staff quarters are squalor, apparently. Bad enough that she’d rather be here, and only stays at their house when she has to.”
Could it be Lord Fine? Sebastian hoped not. Jade had said Lord Fine was an ass, but she’d also said she liked him, and Sebastian didn’t think Jade would like someone who was terrible to his staff. The glimpse Sebastian had caught of the staff quarters in Lord Fine’s basement in May, when he’d delivered Isabel’s painting, had been clean and nicely furnished.
“I’d rather work at a pub than a lord’s house,” Molly said, with feeling. “But then—I suppose I’m not going to have to work at the pub anymore either.”
Wait—what? But Sebastian belatedly realized that while the one chair in the room was taken by Isabel’s suitcase there was a second suitcase on the bed by Sebastian’s head. “Is that yours?” he asked Molly, pointing to it.
Molly’s face lit up as she glanced at Isabel, who was smiling brightly back.
“Molly’s coming to Paris with me,” said Isabel, and Sebastian’s eyebrows flew right back up.
“All the way to Wonderland,” Molly said, beaming. “Magic and all.”
Isabel plopped down on the other bed, across from Sebastian. Like him, she was bundled up against London’s chill, all her own tattoos hidden. “She sold all her jewelry to buy a train ticket to Paris, can you believe her?” Isabel was lit up like the sun, looking more than a little smitten as she handed Sebastian a sandwich. “I told her that if she wanted to come with me, she didn’t have to sell anything, she just had to say so.”
The kettle whistled on its hot plate, and Molly went to it. “She’s so perfect for you,” Sebastian said to Isabel.
“The tattoo knew it first,” Isabel confided, like she was confessing to a priest.
“Molly’s harp?”
Isabel nodded. “My art is too tied to my magic, and my magic likes her. You know what Teo says, that if your magic likes someone, the rest of you falls like dominoes.”
Sebastian rolled his eyes good-naturedly. Sebastian’s brother, Mateo, was a seer, but that didn’t make everything he said true. “That is superstition, not one of Teo’s visions.”
“That’s what you think,” Isabel said, grinning. “But wait until it happens to you.”
It never would. Molly might call him soft, but his magic was hard. He could weaken other magic, rendering other paranormals useless, and he could weaken auras, knocking the nonmagical to the ground with his mind. He was grateful to have an ability that had let him protect others, but even he wasn’t fanciful enough to think his magic could ever be soft enough to do something as romantic as fall for someone.
Clover hopped down from the bed to sit next to Sebastian, pointedly eying the sandwich. “Don’t feed her, you softie, she’ll just keep begging,” Molly said over her shoulder.
She was right. Sebastian tore off a small piece of ham and gave it to Clover anyway.
Isabel pulled her sandwich out from the wrapper. “The world’s fair is nearly over—why don’t you come too? You can tell Teo you got to see it after all. He hated it, but he hates everything.”
Mateo had been in Paris in July, at the world’s fair with Isabel. He’d sent Sebastian a long letter of complaint, telling Sebastian to come and reminding him that they hadn’t seen each other in three years. But how was Sebastian supposed to face Mateo after the things he’d done?
