Officer Ward took a long look at the flower, sitting limp and bedraggled in Luna’s grasp. “You . . . broke into Lord Bruxley’s home to fetch that?”
“I've never seen the inside of his house,” Luna answered primly. “And, you will notice, the gate is wide open.” No need to mention that it wasn’t so until very recently, or that she’d been obliged to climb the wall. That wasn’t relevant in the present moment.
“I did notice,” Officer Ward conceded. With a lowhmmm,he turned his attention from the lily to Lord Bruxley. “Have you any objections to the lady taking her property and vacating the premises?”
“I very muchdoobject!” Bruxley declared. “She positivelyterrorizedme with those monstrosities of hers!” He went on to describe the events in The Arcane Bouquet from his perspective, emphasizing the ferocity of his attackers with great sweeps of his arms.
Officer Ward looked at the lily again, one brow slowly rising. “My lord, I would think, as a man of some prominence in this city, you mightn’t want to go about saying you were . . . harried by a pack of flowers.”
“Don’t let appearances fool you, officer. That is sorcery of the blackest nature!”
“Sorcery, you say?” The wardsman turned his appraising gaze back to Luna.
She drew herself up primly. “It most certainly isnotsorcery. It’s Green Magic—and not a particularly powerful spell at that!” She cast Lord Bruxley a narrow look. “It’s meant as protectionfor young women against unwanted advances from men of particularlypersistentnature.”
“Unwanted advances, eh?” Officer Ward’s attention returned to Bruxley, a little sharper than before. “And what unwanted advances were these?”
Bruxley wilted somewhat under that stare. “I only asked her to dinner,” he said sullenly.
“Is that so?” Officer Ward’s second brow rose to match the first. “An invitation to dinner one moment; pressing criminal charges the next. They do say you’re a one with the ladies, my lord.”
Bruxley bristled with indignation. But then Officer Ward pulled out his notepad, licked thetip of his pencil, and said,“Let me see if I got this right . . . You harried this young lady at her place of business, refusing to take a simplenofor what it was worth, until she, to put off further unwanted advances, resorted to Green Magic to drive you away in the form of . . . flowers. You took flight, pursued by one of these . . . flowers . . . and when the young lady came to fetch her missing plant, you set your guard dog on her, though yourgate stood wide open, thus demonstrating a blatant disregard for the safety of the neighborhood, which the beast at large now terrorizes.”He followed this with a speaking glance. “I just want to be sure I’ve got my facts straight should any media personalities come round the department. It’ll make for quite a kippy article in theBally Daily,I must say!”
For a moment, it seemed an apoplectic fit might make off with Lord Bruxley before his time, so red did his face grow and so tight the breath through his clenched teeth. Then he threw up his hands in surrender. “Fine!” he growled. “Take the chit and go. But mark me, girl,” he added, pointing a quivering finger at Luna’s nose, “I willnotbe revisiting your little hole-in the-wall you call a shop anytime soon. And I’ll be certaineveryonein mycircle knows to avoid it in the future as well! You'll befinished. Do you understand?”
Luna, little caring for these threats, only relieved to escape with all limbs intact and no criminal record, bobbed a short curtsy and began to sidle away, resisting the urge to stick out her tongue.
Officer Wardtskedand shook his head in faux disappointment, tucked his notebook back inside his jacket, tipped his cap, and murmured, “Have a g’night, your lordship. Be sure and shut the gate after us. There’s dangerous characters abroad in these streets! Can’t be too careful.”
Bruxley uttered a word that would earn him a Distinct Sniff from Auntie Aurora. But Luna was only too happy to hear the gate clang shut as she trotted down the sidewalk toward the nearest streetlamp. There she paused, hands trembling as she cradled the sad tiger lily, and turned to the wardsman. “How can I possibly thank you, officer?”
He grinned, teeth glinting in the lamplight. “You don’t have to thank me, miss. Always happy to discharge my duty. More so when my duty includes coming to the rescue of cute little citizens like yourself.”
A flush stole up Luna’s cheeks. Under other circumstances, she might not like being referred to as either “cute” or “little.” But spoken from the well-formed lips of an impressive figure like Officer Ward, well . . . she wasn’t about to complain.
“But what were you doing up in this part of town?” Luna persisted, curiously. “I thought you patrolled Lower Eastside.”
“Ordinarily,” he acknowledged. “But we received a rather frantic call into the department. Some wild-talking maniac gassing on about sorcerous oppression and so on and so forth.” He winked. “That Lord Bruxley is an excitable soul, ain’t he?”
Luna bit her lip. “I hope you do believe me when I say there has been absolutely no sorcery—”
“Think nothing of it, miss.” The officer pushed his cap back from his forehead so that his singular dark curl bobbed freely into view. “I’ve been at this gig long enough to recognize the difference between sorcery and Green Magic. Anyone can see that little plant of yours couldn’t hurt a fly. Seems to me it would only work on a complete namby! Now, with arealman, you’d need something a bit more forceful.”
There was something about the way he spoke, about the manner in which he leaned toward her, that made Luna’s pulse jump. She opened her mouth to offer a reply, not quite certain what she intended to say. Before her voice emerged, however, her attention was caught by the not-so-distant sounds of savage and uproarious barking.
Her eyes widened. “Oh, Green Mother preserve us!Mr. Grimm!”
Nigel had approximately half a second in which to make a decision. He could either expel the invisible whorling ball of sorcerous material he’d summoned from the Dire Dimensions and explode the snarling dog in a cloud of anti-glitter particles . . .
Or he could turn tail and run like the dickens.
Some instinctual part of him knew that to murder Lord Bruxley’s dog (however snarling and intent upon his own savage end it might be) would not go well for him, Luna, or The Arcane Bouquet. So he closed his fist, snuffed out the enchantment before it got too unwieldy, turned on heel, and fled up the sidewalk, barely two kicks ahead of those snapping jaws.
He’d taken three turns down well-manicured streets before hope appeared before him in the form of a lamppost. This he sprang up with squirrel-like nimbleness, clinging to the crossbeam just beneath the glass bulb, while the hound circled and leapt, its teeth closing with such force, one would think it would break its own jaw. While suspended thusly, Nigel found himself with ample time to ponder the many mistakes which had led to this place of (presumably) his final demise.
Starting with Miss Talbot hiking her skirts and climbing onto his shoulders.
Gods on high, what was I thinking?
