Luna cast him an encouraging smile before following the houndsnose down the driveway. They hadn’t gone far when the houndsnose made a sudden dart to one side, so abrupt, Luna lost her grip on the string. “Green Mother drat it!” she growled, fully aware such language would shock poor Auntie Aurora into lighting at least half a dozen candles for her compromised soul. The houndsnose disappeared under a nearby camellia, and Luna dived on hands and knees after it. The string slithered between her fingers, just out of reach. “Drat and blast!” she grumbled, pushing branches out of the way. Then “Oh!” she exclaimed, taken aback.
For suddenly, she found herself face-to-face with none other than the tiger lily.
The poor little plant was looking quite worse for wear, hidden in the shelter of the camellia bush. It had lost all but one of its petals, and its green leaves were wilted and subdued.
“Well, now! Regretting some of our life’s choices, are we?” Luna reached in to grab the lily. It seemed to melt into her hands with relief. She pulled it out, sat up on her knees, cradling the trembling stem against her blouse. “There, there,” she soothed. “We’ll have you home to the shop and in your pot in no time. But first . . .” She bent again and called, “Here, boy! Here’s a good houndsnose!”
She was not answered by a snuffling yellow blossom, however.
Instead an uproarious explosion of hideous barking burst upon her ears.
Luna leapt to her feet in a flash. She didn’t have time to look, to see what manner of doom descending upon her even now with rending jaws and tearing paws. Nothing but pure impulse drove her, and she gave herself over to it, stuffing the tiger lily into the front of her jacket even as she bolted as fast as she could back up the drive. Somehow she knew, with the knowledge born of pure survival instinct, that she’d never reach the tree by the wall in time, so her attention zeroed in on another, nearer tree. This one had branches low enough that she might spring into them.
And spring she did, scaling up as high as she could get in a matter of seconds, even as hot breath blasted against her ankles. She heard the savagesnapof jaws closing just a hair’s breadth from her calf. Only once she was securely tucked out of reach did she look down into the snarling face of the most enormous brindle mastiff. Its massive jowls shook, showing every possible tooth and spattering saliva every which-way as it circled the tree.
Luna’s heart thundered so loudly in her ears, she only distantly heard a voice crying out,“Miss Talbot!”
There was a blast of anti-light. Filled with multi-hued colors for which she had no name. Not a single color in the spectrum with which she was familiar, but all sovividandvibrant.More real than reality.
The gate at the end of the drive burst open, and a figure stood under the archway. A figure who looked, in that first glance, to be about seven feet tall and wreathed in writhing shadows and leaping black flames. Luna stared, open mouthed. She must have hit her head. That, or shock had driven her stark, raving mad. Surely that could be the only explanation for such an otherworldly vision, such a sudden onrush of overwhelming dread.
Whatever feeling Luna experienced, however, the mastiff did not share. It saw only a foul intruder and—leaping shadows and black flames notwithstanding—this was not to be borne!Abandoning its treed victim, the dog charged up the driveway, savage and snarling, like a hound from hell.
Luna blinked.
In the space between the fall of her eyelids and their rising, thethingat the end of the drive vanished, replaced by the gray-suited and cufflinked figure of Nigel Grimm. He uttered a yelp of horror, turned, and fled up the street, the mastiff howling at his heels. Luna listened to the sounds of their retreat, too shocked at first to move or even breathe.
Then it occurred to her: at great risk to life and limb, Mr. Grimm had cleared the path for her escape.
Knees trembling, she began to descend the tree, only to freeze once more at the sound of a too-familiar voice. “Oi! I see you up there! Come down at once, miscreant, or I’ll feed you to Dragon!”
Luna had just enough presence of mind to wonder if the dragon in question was the name of the dog or if Mr. Grimm’s prediction of a draconian grounds-prowler might not have been pure fable. Then she turned to see none other than Lord Bruxley himself, limping up the drive. His striped trousers looked rather the worse for wear, following that vicious tiger lily attack.
“Oh, Green Mother, preserve me!” Luna sighed, rolling her eyes. Despite the shudders coursing through her body, she summoned her courage and made a flying leap from the tree. She landed hard, went down on her hands and knees. Ariptold her she’d just torn one of her stockings wide open. Too late to worry about that now! She was up in a flash, sprinting for all she was worth for the sagging gate, the tiger lily still tucked into her front.
She had just reached the gate and placed a foot onto the sidewalk outside Bruxley’s grounds, when she slammed into a wall. Or rather, not a wall—a large, double-breasted, green jacket, overlaying a huge, muscular torso. The effect was similarto hitting bricks, however, and Luna, stunned, would have fallen flat on her back, save that a pair of powerful hands gripped her by the upper arms and held her in place.
“Here now!” a voice rumbled from the dizzying fog of space over her head. “What seems to be the trouble?”
Luna tilted her head back. Then, as the spinning stars around her vision cleared, she gasped, “Officer Ward!”
If the Green Mother were merciful, She’d just open up the ground and swallow Luna whole right there and then. But apparently, the Green Mother wasn’t taking requests today.
The wardsman looked down into her face. His brow lowered then rose as a big smile swept over his features. “Well, now! Ain’t this a surprise? So, we meet again, only . . .” He took in her bedraggled form, her torn stockings, and the leaves and twigs in her hair. He peered beyond her then to Lord Bruxley, who stormed up the drive in pursuit. “Only what in the blazes are you doinghere,miss?”
“She broke into my house, officer!” Bruxley declared, shaking a fist. “I demand to press charges at once!”
“I never did!” Luna protested, finding her voice in an embarrassing little hiccup. Her mind worked furiously, churning up the first excuse she could manage. “This man absconded from my shop with an unpaid-for tiger lily. I merely came to reclaim it!”
“Whoa, whoa.” Officer Ward set Luna properly on her feet and folded his arms. “Let’s try that again. What’s happening here?”
“First of all,” Lord Bruxley exclaimed, “this young woman set a pack ofmonsterson my heels! Chased me all the way from her damnable little shop to my very doorstep!”
“Monsters, you say?” Officer Ward looked unconvinced. “And what monsters were these, exactly?”
Luna rolled her eyes. “No monsters.” She reached into the front of her jacket, producing the rather drab-looking lily. “Just this.”
“There it is!” Bruxley cried, flinching and pointing a quivering finger. “Destroy it, officer! It’s a cursed, devilish thing!”
