“And does Miss Lambert harbor equally strong feelings?”
Luna sighed. “Stronger, I fear. Though of a rather different nature. Oh, Mother bless me!” She growled softly. “I bet you anything he’s behind all this hullabaloo.” She turned on heel then, taking in the corridor into which they had stepped. Nigel recognized it as the one which led eventually to the dressing rooms on the far side of the cathedral. “Ah!” Luna said and jerked her chin. “Now there’s something interesting.”
Nigel turned to look the way Luna peered. It was more challenging to discern much through the pinkish haze in smaller, enclosed spaces like this. The shadows tended to go weird and a bit purplish, and the anti-glitter sparks gathered more densely. But he spied a figure at the end of the passage. “Who is that?”
“That,” Luna said, striding away from Tom Doorhandler, “is Sutton. Miss Eugenia’s maid. If anyone knows where our missing bride has gotten off to, she does. Come on!”
Nigel followed his determined assistant through the stirring shadows. The passage spilled out into a larger corridor at the end, and it was into this which Sutton stepped, carrying a cup of tea with her. She was caught in the act of turning to look back over her shoulder, an expression of suspicion and dislike plain on her habitually-stoic face.
Luna peered beyond the maid, as though expecting to spy Miss Lambert. But the hall was empty. Just more pink-whorling reality veils. “Well, Mr. Grimm,” she declared, “I think we must return now to our own time.”
“Really?” Nigel glanced at the bouquet. “You know, you could just leave that with the maid, and we could be well away fromhere before breaking the spell. That way they’ll never know it was missing to begin with.”
“Oh, you don’t think Sutton will be shocked to find the missing bouquet miraculously appearing in her hands out of thin air?”
“She might just think herself forgetful.”
“No, Mr. Grimm. We’ll hand it to her ourselves. And we’ll ask after Miss Eugenia while we’re at it.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s in trouble. I’m sure of it.”
Nigel caught her eye. “You do realize, Miss Talbot, that you are not personally responsible for every client for whom you perform a scrying, do you not?”
Luna wrinkled her nose but followed it up with a sigh. “I think she needs a friend. That’s all. Everyone does sometimes, you know?”
And that was Luna Talbot for you in a nutshell. No matter what other concerns might be pressing in on her life, she always found room to care for those around her. Even those who really did not merit her caring. Nigel could almost be jealous. Not to mention irritated. Instead, he was unexpectedly softened. The cold, closed-off heart of his Dark Sorcerer-self seemed to be a thing of the past. He scarcely recognized this new, rather soppy organ flopping stupidly against his breastbone.
“Very well,” he said, taking care that his voice betrayed nothing of what went on internally. “In that case, you had better hold onto something.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Like what?”
“Like me, for example.”
She blinked slowly. Then, her lips pursed in a tight line, she took a step forward and gently rested her hand on his arm. “Is . . . is this good enough?”
Nigel looked down into her eyes. Before he could think twice about it, he slipped a hand around her waist and, with a single tug, pulled her tight against him. She gasped, one hand splayed against the front of his green apron bib, the other still gripping the bouquet. “More like this,” he said roughly, close to her ear.
Raising his other hand, he made a sharp gesture in the air, cutting through the sigils which held them suspended in this sliver of reality.
It was incredible how such a simple maneuver could send such a pyroclastic flow surging through her veins.
Luna thought she might actually begin to melt. Starting from that place where Mr. Grimm’s hand pressed into the small of her back. She could feel her spine going all bendy, her knees buckling, and had no choice but to grasp hold of the front of his bib apron for pure survival.
And when he dropped his mouth close to her ear and spoke in those rough, almost growling tones—“More like this.”—that fire in her veins burst in her chest cavity and ran trickling down into every secret part of her body. Her breath caught on a ragged inhale through parted lips, and then . . .
The veils of reality split apart, and Luna and her employer tumbled through.
Luna ought to have been prepared for this part. At least somewhat. They’d just done it going the opposite way, not all that long ago, in the hotel parking lot. But it had been different, popping between realities while her bum was firmly planted in a bucket seat with a seatbelt wrapped across her torso. Itwas another thing entirely while held in the arms of the man who . . . who . . . well, if she was totally honest with herself, the man whose arms she’d been dreaming about for weeks now. A bizarre combination of sensations, terror and pleasure, difficult to discern from one another, tangled up inside her. By the time the essential modalities of whosiewhatsit settled around them once more, Luna felt as though her body had been transformed into a bowl of limp noodles.
The solid floor beneath her feet tilted wildly. She tilted with it, ready to go right over.
“There, Miss Talbot, I’ve got you,” Mr. Grimm’s melting voice murmured in her ear, not helping mattersat all,blast him. His other arm wrapped around her, his strong hand pressed into her shoulders, supporting her. Through the whirling in her head and the thunder in her temples, Luna was painfully aware of the way his body bent over hers as he prevented her from falling. “Up you come now,” he said.
Luna gripped his shoulders with both hands, vaguely aware that she seemed to have dropped the bouquet somewhere in transition. Did it make it back into this reality? Shuffling her feet, she tried to find a steadying angle, but the world continued to tip, and she leaned forward. For a moment, her forehead came to rest against something solid. Mr. Grimm’s shoulder, in fact. She breathed in the sandalwood-and-cinnamon scent of him, which didn’t help to calm her racing heart as much as she might have wished.
Slowly, she turned her head. Only to find Mr. Grimm’s face quite close to hers, his expression concerned, his lips parted. And so very near. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Reality-shifting can leave one a bit nauseated, especially when you’re not used to it.”
