Focus on the mission, I told myself. Step one—stop staring at Duke’s face. Easier said than done.
Step two—get Duke out of the speakeasy and back on track.
I shooed Koshka out of the top hat. “Go scout around, boy. Make sure there’s no…you know, kidnappers about,” I told him.
Koshka raced from the back room through the wall panel.
“Your hat,” I said. “Sorry about the cat hair.”
Duke dusted it off. “No trouble at all. Shall we have a drink somewhere? My place?”
“No time. You’re tracking Edith King, the socialite, right?”
He’d been adjusting his cuffs but froze when I said the woman’s name.
“Aren’t you a clever clock? This is a secret mission. How did you know that?”
“Long story,” I said, although Duke’s books were on the shorter side, about 250 pages each. “But it’s imperative you get back on the plot. I mean, the job. Yes? Say yes. You need to finish this job.”
It had been a few years since I’d readEmpty Graves,but I remembered it well. Edith King hadn’t been kidnapped at all but had arranged her own abduction to escape her wealthy, powerful, and very abusive husband. The Duke of Chicago, instead of “solving” the case for her husband, ends up aiding in her escape.
“You saved me, darling. Your wish is my command. And if you don’t know what to wish for, I have a few suggestions.” He grinned devilishly as he lifted his trouser leg and slipped his knife back into his sock.
“That…that is not what…No.” Suddenly, I realized what was happening. I pointed at his chest and backed up two steps. “Wait a minute. Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I? You’re beautiful, brave, and, frankly, a little bizarre. All aces in my book. Everyone I meet seems so…so two-dimensional in comparison. You’re the realest girl I’ve ever met.”
The fictional character I’d had a crush on in high school, my book boyfriend, was trying to get me into bed? And not in spite of me being weird but because of it? Had I died and gone to Heaven? Was it Christmas morning? Did I save a genie’s life and get three wishes granted in return?
“Rainy?”
“Sorry, this is weirder than when Ebenezer Scrooge sent me a fruitcake for Christmas. I’m having an existential crisis.”
Duke waved it off. “Happens to the best of us. About that drink I mentioned, should we get it before or after?”
“Before or after what?”
“You tell me.” His intense eye contact was making me uncomfortable, but in a fun way, like when you bike across a wooden bridge.
“You don’t want to get involved with me. I’m a witch.”
“You seem perfectly charming.”
“I meant that literally.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said as he buttoned his jacket. “I’ve seen witches in books. Your hat is flat and you don’t have a single wart on your nose.”
“I’ll prove it,” I said.
“How? Turn me into a frog?”
“Look into my eyes.”
“With pleasure.”
He and I locked gazes. Duke’s dark eyes made it a little harder to read him, but as I tilted my head this way and that, trying to catch the light, I glimpsed the words still dancing across his irises.
“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.This Side of Paradise. F. Scott Fitzgerald. That’s the book you’re currently reading.”
