Page 25 of Written in Red

She nodded, then silently returned the key to its hiding place. They stood a moment, neither looking at the other. Neither speaking. There was a heaviness in the air between them. He didn’t really like it, but he understood why it was there. Things were difficult and uncertain. He wanted to protect her; she wanted to protect him. In some ways, those two goals were at odds with each other.

After a moment, she turned to face him. “If things grow as dangerous as you are anticipating, promise me you will at least consider grabbing those things from the wall yourself and leaving with me.”

“We would always be fugitives,” he said. “Always on the run. And we wouldn’t have the protections of Aventine.”

“But we would have each other,” she said.

“I think you would be getting the short end of that particular stick.” He started to walk away, but she reached out and took his hand, keeping him there.

“You didn’t tell me if you were willing to agree to that,” she said. “My mind will be more at ease and my heart will worry less if I know that you are going to try very hard not to leave me behind.”

“It certainly wouldn’t be voluntary,” he said.

The tiniest bit of a laugh joined the concern in her eyes. “You wouldn’t voluntarily leave me behind or wouldn’t voluntarily agree not to?”

He threw caution to the wind and cupped her face, brushing his thumb gently over her cheek. “Leaving you is the last thing I want to do.”

She inched closer to him. He bent closer to her. His racing heart pounded so hard that she likely could hear it.

“Then don’t leave me,” she said quietly.

He wrapped his other arm around her waist. “What if that puts you in danger?”

Her gaze didn’t leave his. “What if I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to be away from you?”

She brushed her fingertips along the edge of his collar, brushing ever so lightly against his skin. He pulled her flush with him. Heartbeats aligning. Breaths mingling.

Her voice emerged in an intriguing and mesmerizing whisper. “Now would be an excellent time to kiss me, Mercury Raine.”

He laughed. For the first time in, perhaps, his entire life, Mercury laughed. Far from offended, Tacey laughed right along with him.

“Was that too bold of me?” she said through her chuckles of amusement.

“Not at all. It was so delightfully . . . you.”

She hooked her arms around his neck. “Then it is a good thing that you like . . . me.”

“I very much do.” He bent closer once more, intending to follow her “bold” request of a moment earlier.

But Baby Blue rushed through the wall. “Someone’s coming up the drive!”

11

Mercury watched and listened, tucked out of sight at the top of the stairs. A husband and wife stood just inside the door, both soaked to the skin. The lady’s hair was plastered against her face, her coat dripping with rain. The man’s hat drooped, sitting misshapen and clingy over his eyes. A small ghost hovered behind them. Despite its diminutive size, it didn’t appear to be a child. Indeed, its snow-white hair made the ghost seem elderly.

“Mr. Raine is not brokering swaps just now,” Smythe said. “He does not often allow himself a holiday, but is doing so at the moment.”

“Will he resume soon?” the lady asked. “We attempted a London Season with an unfashionable ghost, and it was an utterly regrettable error.” She sounded miserable and more than a little pleading. This was precisely the sort of circumstance he would have welcomed weeks earlier, before everything had begun falling apart.

“I was not informed of an anticipated resumption date,” Smythe said, not unkindly.

Tacey, hunched next to Mercury, whispered, “Do you recognize them?”

“No. I haven’t brokered a trade for them before.” Mercury looked over his shoulder at the Violet Giant.

The enormous ghost shook his head. It was unlikely, then, that they were bounty hunters.

Down at the front door, the woman asked Smythe another question. “Do you think Mr. Raine will resume brokering before next Season? I don’t think I could bear the difficulties of another Season so out of fashion. Our social standing is not significant enough to overcome that.”