Page 71 of Grim Tidings

“If you’re going to take my menu, can you at least make me something to drink?”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

Nate’s wrong. It’s not a crush.

It’s far worse.

Chapter Sixteen

Darcy

It’s still dark as I walk toward the bar, just me and the clouds hanging low in the sky, blocking out the stars and casting everything in shadows. It’s quiet at this hour. Time, holding its breath.

It makes me feel like a Reaper. While everyone sleeps, I am the shadow that creeps through the dark.

I turn the corner, and a puddle of warm, golden light spills over the sidewalk. The bar light is out, but the lantern at the edge of the docks is not. Gabriel stands in the center of its halo, his back against the lamppost, two cups of something balanced in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

He straightens when he sees me, watching as I walk down the street toward him. His attention feels like a weight. Like a hook in the center of me, dragging me closer.

This thing with Gabriel doesn’t feel like part of a deal anymore. Not to me, anyway. Not since he threaded his fingers through my hair and put his mouth on my skin. Not since I saw those scars carved into his chest.

He was right. I was avoiding him. When I woke up tangled in bedsheets that smelled like him, I thought putting some space between us might be a good thing. But now, walking toward him with his hair still mussed from sleep and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, I’m not sure that space did much of anything at all.

My magic perks up in interest, prickling just beneath my skin. Pins and needles, like I’ve moved for the first time in hours. I push back against it, trying to force it behind the locked door where I keep it. Aelia’s warning is still fresh in my mind.

I followed your magic, she said. That means someone else can, too.

I have no interest in any other immortal beings entering the town, so I’ve been keeping it under lock and key. No magic. For any reason.

It’s been harder than I thought.

“You made it,” Gabriel calls.

I like that he’s been waiting for me. I like that he asked me to come. I like that when I showed up at the bar last night, he was eager to see me. I had been afraid that I’d get the sharp-edged version of Gabriel again, instead of the soft one he allowed himself to be when plied with enough wine to take down an elephant.

I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to hold back my smile. “I said I’d be here.”

He offers me the coffee cups, but I shake my head and reach for his cigarette instead. A smile hooks his mouth as I bring it to my lips.

“You could buy your own, you know.”

I take a long inhale, smoke burning at the back of my throat. It’s all in my head, I know, but I swear I can taste him when I breathe out again. “I like stealing yours better.”

“Why am I not surprised?” He grabs the cigarette from my mouth and takes another quick pull, before flicking it off to the side. He snaps his fingers, and the butt disappears from the asphalt, a single dandelion easing up between the cracks instead.

I arch an eyebrow. Gabriel shrugs. “I don’t like to litter.” His gaze turns assessing, those blue eyes of his shadowed in the early morning light. “You try.”

“Try what?”

“Make it a flower. Or, I don’t know. A bramble. Whatever you want.”

I shake my head. “I told you. My magic doesn’t work like that.”

And my magic isn’t my biggest fan since I started suppressing it. I’m afraid if I snapped my fingers, the whole block might go up in flames.

Gabriel brings one of the coffee cups to his mouth. “Your magic works however you want it to.”

“Says the thousand-year-old, all-powerful Guardian.”