Two men appeared carrying buckets, and Apollo rushed an arm around Miss Grant’s waist, crashed her to him, his hand cradling her head against his chest as water rained down on them from emptying buckets.
With a sizzle, the drying plants stopped burning.Miss Grant coughed against his chest, and he held his sleeve over his nose.Thick smoke made it hard to breathe.
Lady Guinevere stood in the doorway, murder in the set of her lips, in the fists on her hips.A bird, a large raven circled around the room, squawking.
“What is happening in here?”she demanded.
“Practice?”Miss Grant offered, pushing out of his embrace.
Oh God, that made him want to laugh, but you didn’t laugh in the face of an infuriated lady.
“This is not a forge!”Lady Guinevere shouted.She inhaled deeply, didn’t even cough through the smoke, and pinched the bridge of her nose.“Sybil.I do like you, but I thank Flora you are leaving tomorrow.Now clean this up.”She slammed the door.
After the walls stopped vibrating, Miss Grant groaned.“We almost burned her shop down.”
“We’ll practice outside next time.In the alley?”
“There will be no next time.”She clasped her hands behind her back.
“You’re… leaving?”The potion mistress had said that, hadn’t she.“Where?Why?”
“Wherever my brother deems safest.I told you that would happen.”She reached up and began to pull down charred plants and twine.
Leaving.If she was leaving, lessons were over.The only power he’d acquire would be hollow, a position gained by giving new information to Stone.Or to Temple.
“What did you shape?”
“What?Oh.”He opened his hand, and there on his palm, the disk of gold had elongated into something resembling a blob.Or, if you looked closely enough—the wavy silhouette of a naked woman.He closed his palm as quickly as he’d opened it.
She wrinkled her nose.“What were you trying for?”
“I was thinking about the sun… mostly.”
She offered a weak smile then returned to cleaning.He helped her.And when the room was clean, he opened the door.The steady chatter of customers and shopgirls rose like a song on the air.
“Don’t throw the burnt ones away,” he said before slipping onto the balcony.“They may look ruined, but they’re still useful.Ash is good for complexion.Burnt camelia excellent for warding off former lovers.”
“Thatdoessound useful.Considering my former lover…”
He made it down the stairs and toward the door, stopping briefly in a corner to steal the aloe.“Don’t worry darling,” he mumbled to it, “I know your worth.”
His own worth… questionable.He was useless except for poking about and spying and being otherwise nefarious.He looked at his hand.Unscorched.Ha.He’d done it.And a slip of a woman had helped him do it.He’d not felt useless under Miss Grant’s instruction.
Temple wanted him to spy on Stone.
Stone wanted him to spy on Temple.
Apollo had always been a selfish bastard.
He knew exactly what he wanted.
And she was leaving tomorrow.
7
A WHOLE ALCHEMIST
Lady Guinevere squatted behind her large oak desk in her office at the back of her potion shop.Sybil could just see the gold frizz of her hair above the desk as she rummaged through it.Various clinks and clangs caused the large raven resting on a perch at one end of the desk to bristle, and finally Lady Guinevere popped up, small, basket in hand.She fastened it and pushed it across the desk toward Sybil.
