But at least she was warm again.
The worst of her shivers finally banished, Luna begrudgingly turned down the temperature a smidge before taking a look at the assortment of hair tonics, shampoos, and soap flakes Mr. Grimm kept in a little caddy on the back of the claw-footed tub. Her eyes widened with some surprise at sight of a particular blue bottle hidden amongst the rest. It was an oddly shaped little thing, potbellied, with an extremely thin neck to prevent any superfluous spillage. This was not what surprised her, however. Rather, it was the fact that it looked exactly like the sort of bottle a sorcerer might use to store a potion of mystic properties. A love potion perhaps. Or a dreams potion. She and Auntie Aurora used to make monthly calls on Sorcerer Biddercombe back home, as Auntie attempted to convert him to the Faith and save his soul. In his study, Luna had seen a bottle so exactly like this one, it might very well be a twin.
Unable to repress her curiosity, Luna plucked the bottle from the caddy, popped the lid, and sniffed. A strong scent of sandalwood and cinnamon filled her nostrils, reminding her strongly of . . . something. Now what was it? Oh, right! She laughed a little and shook her wet head. Of course, it smelled like Mr. Grimm himself! She’d inhaled a nose-full of this very scent in the first moments of their meeting, when she lay atop him in the middle of the flower shop floor. It was quite a nice scent actually. In fact, she wouldn’t mind smelling it more frequently.
A flush of heat flooding her cheeks, Luna hastily recapped the bottle. Probably best not to use it in any case. If Mr. Grimm was buying black market enchanted shampoo, it must be for a purpose. He might have a thinning problem. Or dandruff. Either way, it didn’t feel polite, somehow, not only to commandeer a stranger’s bathroom, but also his personal scent.
Luna chose instead a demure lavender soap and gave herself a thorough all-over scrubbing. This accomplished, she lingered a few moments longer, even as her guilty conscience (which always sounded a lot like Auntie Arabella) berated her for wasting poor Mr. Grimm’s hot water. It was just that, when she got back to Mrs. Boggs’s Boardinghouse for Young Women of Good Character, it would mean cold sponge baths from the wash basin, with only the occasional arctic plunge in the communal tub if she could manage to snag the bathroom unoccupied. A rarity indeed, considering how Mrs. Boggs liked to pack her house to the rafters with all the single, working girls of Good Character she could ensnare with her leases.
In the end, however, the prattling voice of Auntie Arabella enjoining her to be thoughtful of her neighbors, kind, unselfish, and never, everneedy, won out. With a sigh and a wish that her aunties hadn’t brought her up to be quite so conscientious, Luna turned off the taps. It was deeply unfair, she considered, that she should be this side of twenty-five and still feel like her aunties’ little girl. Some things, possibly, get too deeply ingrained in the soul to be outgrown.
She plucked the kitten towel from the rack and hastily dried off her body before squeezing out her waterlogged hair and running her fingers through its tangles. It would be a sight in another few minutes when it began to dry all fluffy, but there wasn’t much to be done about that. She’d simply make do with the hairpins she’d managed to reclaim from the shop floor and forget about it.
With a sigh into the foggy reflection in the bathroom mirror, she pressed her lips together and tentatively touched her wet clothes. Perhaps she ought to don them at once and slip back to Mrs. Boggs’s boardinghouse as soon as possible? But each item was still so cold and clammy, she simply couldn’t bear it.
Instead, she turned her attention to Mr. Grimm’s robe, hanging from a hook on the back of the bathroom door.
It was quite the garment, now she’d warmed up enough to spare it a bit more attention beyond a hasty snatch from the wardrobe. Blue silk with black fur trimming at the collar and cuffs, and a gleaming silver lining. The tie belt sported large black tassels, nearly a foot long. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think it was a sorcerer’s robe, repurposed as a dressing gown. But surely no sorcerer would dare show his face in Ballycastle. No practicing sorcerer, anyway.
“Though it’s not so bad for sorcerers,” Luna muttered bitterly, a hard truth she’d experienced firsthand. Even back home, at the height of the Shadowbane Lady’s reign of terror, folks were only giving Sorcerer Biddercombe the odd look, while she, who’d never so much as cracked the cover of a spellbook or mystic tome in her life, was suddenly the object of whispers, crescent-signs of protection, and even the occasional handful of salt tossed in her face. People she’d known since childhood refused to greet her on the street.
And after the Authorities arrived and marked her with their detestable heptagram . . . well, then she didn’t even dare drive Auntie Aurora to town for chantry services anymore. It was simply too painful.
But she wouldn’t think about that now. With the shower off, the bathroom was starting to get chilly. She couldn’t stand here naked and shivering forever while the storm pounded against the rooftop. So she draped the delicious silk robe over her freshly-scrubbed body, wrapped herself tightly up to the throat, secured the belt, and slipped her feet into a pair of oversized, fur-lined slippers she found under Mr. Grimm’s bed. There was nothing for it then but to grab her wet clothes and make her way back down to the shop and the warm stove in the nook behind the counter.
Luna paused a moment at the top of the stairs, suddenly shy at the prospect of seeing Mr. Grimm again while clad in his dressing gown. The very idea would give poor Auntie Arabella the vapors! But he did promise to hang up a drying line for her, and it would be so nice not to have to put her suit on sopping wet as it was. She considered calling down and simply tossing the lot from the top of the stairs, but . . . well, that would be silly. And possibly rude. Even Auntie Arabella wouldn’t want her to risk rudeness.
No, she would simply have to face him. If she acted as though there was nothing untoward about a young lady lounging behind the counter of a flower shop, alone with an unknown gentleman and his bird, then maybe she could make it be all right.
Steeling her nerves, Luna opened the door and descended the stairs. The overlarge slippers slapped loudly on each tread, heralding her arrival. “I hope I’ve not used up all your hot water, Mr. Grimm!” she called out as she emerged from the stairwell. A profusion of perfumes overwhelmed her nostrils, emanating from the bounteous flowers tucked here and there into every corner of the shop. It was so delightful after her dismal hike up and down the dour streets of Ballycastle, she could not help smiling.
She turned, searching for her host, only to spot him behind the counter, frozen in place with his arms overhead. At first, he looked quite mad, like a scarecrow blown askew in a high wind. On second glance, however, she saw that he was in the midst of hanging up the promised drying line. He stood on a stool, head turned over his shoulder to look at her, eyes gaping out of his skull.
The moment she caught his gaze, something in him seemed to snap. His center of gravity shifted, the stool tilted. The next moment, with a yelp and a pinwheel of arms, he vanished behind the counter entirely.
“Mr. Grimm!” Luna cried, sprinting over even as the raven on its perch screamed a warning,“Never mind! Never mind!”
But she couldn’t very wellnotmind. The poor man might have broken his neck! She plunked her armful of clothes down on the counter, found the hinged portion, and darted back into the nook just as Mr. Grimm was pushing himself up onto his elbows. “Are you hurt?” Luna dropped to her knees beside him, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Gracious Mother, but you’ve taken your share of tumbles today, haven’t you? Nothing broken, I trust?”
“No, no, not at all,” he hastened to assure her. “Just my dignity.”
That voice of his: posh and maybe a bit stilted, but almostpainfullyrefined. Luna melted a little inside just at the sound of it. Despite his status as shopkeeper, she might have guessed him a toff of some standing, judging purely by the way he spoke. It was a bit intimidating. She must sound to him like a poor country mouse, with her short-voweled Crimble accent.
“Oh, don’t you worry a jot about your dignity,” she laughed hoping to hide her embarrassment, and brushed non-existent dust from his shoulders. “You’ve plenty in surplus, I’m sure.Now, where were you going to secure this?” So saying, she snatched up the fallen drying line. One end was already attached to the towel rack on the wall by the stove. She looked up at the rod and hoops from which the green curtain draped on the opposite wall. “Was it there?”
Mr. Grimm nodded mutely. A few inarticulate grunts of protest rumbled in his throat as Luna hastily righted his stool, stepped up onto it, and stretched to secure the line. “Not to worry, Mr. Grimm!” she said, standing up on her toes out of the furry slippers. “I’ll have this done in a split.”
“It may be rather more precarious than it looks, Miss Talbot.” He scrambled to his feet, hands reaching toward her but stopping inches away from her waist and floating there uncertainly. Suddenly, he made a strange, choking sort of sound and staggered back several paces. Luna stretched a little higher than felt totally safe, hoping the dressing gown wasn’t exposing things it oughtn’t. It did feel a little breezy down there.
Refusing to be timid, she got the end of the line around the curtain rod, secured it with a twist, and stepped down from the stool. A quick glance assured her that the dressing gown was right enough, no inappropriate flesh on display. Relieved, she tossed a lock of frizzing hair out of her eyes and turned her smile on Mr. Grimm once more.
He stood with his back to the stove, eyes round, lips parted. He blinked once, closed his mouth; blinked a second time, and opened it again.
Then, in little more than a whisper: “Tea?”
“Yes, thank you.” She turned back to the counter, grabbing her garments. “You don’t mind if I . . . ?” She nodded to the line.
“Oh, yes. Of course,” he said and busied himself at the stove. There was a little table beside it which hadn’t been there before; he must have produced it from somewhere in the back of the building, Luna guessed. She glimpsed two chipped mugs ofdingy brown pottery, one missing a handle entirely. Apparently Mr. Grimm did not have guests for tea very often.
