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Fia snorted, delighting in the small display of magic.
He offered her a slow grin. “Wouldn’t want to waste.”
“That was mine.” But she’d probably had more than enough already—she’d certainly said more than enough—and sheepishly clunked down her cup.
Penbrook set his aside too, and it shifted the easy mood between them into something more expectant.
“So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?” he asked.
Fia scooted forward on the sofa, letting her feet drop to the floor, wondering if she could really trust him with everything. Before she could come to a conclusion, she blurted, “My magic is unpredictable.” That wasn’t where she’d meant to begin, but she supposed it was as good a place as any. “And yours… well, yours is spectacular. I’d hoped you might cast a spell for me.”
“Another butterfly?”
The little creature fluttered up from Fia’s hair and over to Penbrook, landing on his outstretched palm. His fingers closed gently around it, and then he opened his hand again with a flourish. A dozen golden butterflies whirled into the air, dazzling and beautiful.
Fia watched them trace across the ceiling like she was gazing at shooting stars. “You’re an artist.” The words she had never meant to say kept spilling, loosened by that amber drink.
“It’s trifling magic,” he said indifferently, but there was the slightest lift of his lip, a softer smile that seemed to catch him off guard. Quickly, he replaced it with his usual smirk and leaned back in the chair—away from Fia.
She tried not to notice.
“Call your magic what you want, but I can’t even manage to use a simple finding spell to locate my mother’s book of enchantments. It went missing the night she died.” Fia skipped on. “Which I’d rather not talk about.” She couldn’t bear to hear any small sympathies, because they only brought her grief closer to the surface, and the last thing she wanted was to cry in front of Penbrook. And if he showed her any kindness now, she would.
Honoring her request, he avoided condolences and asked, “Have you considered that her spellbook no longer exists?”
“Of course.” Fia thought about it more often than she liked, which filled her with a different kind of sadness, so instead of admitting her own doubts, she stubbornly said, “It’s somewhere. I know it.”
“If you say so.”
“Anyway, it’s a finding spell I was hoping you’d cast for me.” For my mother’s book, she wanted to say. “I have to clear my name, and in order to do so, I need to know who has The Book of Ribs. If it might be someone named Sebastian Smith.”
Penbrook stiffened, and she wasn’t sure what made him uncomfortable—the talk of her mother’s death, mention of the dark grimoire, or the favor she’d asked of him. He lifted his cup and drained it.
“Well, I’m not sure about your mother’s spellbook, but the grimoire probably has a ward deflecting magic,” he said. “Which will make finding it more difficult.”
“But not impossible?”
“I like to think nothing’s impossible.”
“Spoken by someone who has magic dancing at his fingertips.”
“And what do you have dancing at yours?”
“Mayhem,” Fia said rather dramatically, then sighed. “Or meekness. It’s inconsistent, so there’s no telling.”
Wanting him to understand how far apart their abilities stood from each other, she reached for her magic and tugged, felt the shuddering slip of it inside her from head to heart, and cast out, calling to her mother’s spellbook with a heartsore hope. This thing her mother touched as gently as she held her daughter’s hand. Fia trembled as golden dust sparkled in the air, shiny and bright, a pulsing she felt deep in her bones.
And then it all seemed to sputter inside her, as if it hadn’t worked. Again.
Penbrook’s dark eyes reflected gold. “You poof,” he whispered.
Her cheeks went red. “I do not poof.”
“What’s this, then?” He waved his hand in the air, stirring up the golden motes that circled around Fia.
“It’s… it’s dust.” She folded her arms to hide her still glittering fingers from his prying gaze, uselessly lying. “It’s just dust from the books. Dust from the spellshop.”
“Mmm,” he said flatly. “Dust.”
