He also knew that most of Oxford University’s faculty considered Elodie “the pretty girl that Tarrant married.” Were heever bothered to, Gabriel could have supplied them with a plethora of more suitable adjectives to describe her. Exasperating. Maddening.Mysti-bloody-fying.
And brilliant, damn it. So brilliant that, in Gabriel’s rational moments, when he wasn’t breathlessly anticipating her destroying either herself or half the world, he would never accuse her of relying on mere luck.
Unfortunately, her presence all too often left him irrational.
Case in point: his right hand was inexplicably lifting toward her face, and he realized with a startled hop of pulse that it was intent on doing something as dangerous as smacking a magical bomb out of the sky: gently brushing the spatters of mud from his wife’s cheek. Appalled, he shoved it into his coat pocket, clenching its fingers around the compass therein.Get yourself and your minions under control at once,he ordered his brain.
In response, like a snarky, supercilious villain, it showed him an image of the woman Elodie used to be, blithe, sunny, randomly offering to marry him. Scowling, he focused instead on the version before him. She’d become fierce, this past year, since their estrangement. Even soaking wet, and garbed in what appeared to be a velvet dressing gown, she looked indomitable. Gabriel was not daunted, absolutely not. But if hewereto be, now would be the moment for it.
Not that he’d ever admit to that. He would, however, accept when he was wrong. It was the only proper thing to do.
“I misspoke,” he told her. “My apologies.”
—
Elodie was astonishedto discover that she had been killed by the thaumaturgic bomb after all, and was now in heaven.This was the only conclusion she could reach, considering Gabriel had justapologizedto her. Certainly such a thing would never happen in real life.
By the time her brain had processed the matter, Gabriel was already walking back to the road, leaving her alone in a spooky graveyard as rain dragged down the shadowed sky and oak leaves whispered of their own death. With a dry swallow, Elodie hurried after him. It wasn’t that she believed in ghosts and fairies, you understand. She did, however, believe quite fervently in the power of her own imagination.
“We should discuss our plan from here,” she said as she caught up to Gabriel.
“There’s no need for discussion,” he replied imperturbably, pushing the wet hair off his face.
“Of course there’s a need!” she argued. “We are a team. You cannot just make unilateral decisions.”
“The rain is killing the wind. You stopped the magic. I’m going back to the inn for dinner and a hot bath. Discuss.”
“Er, well, yes, I’m going to do that too.” She scowled at him, which achieved nothing except future wrinkles, because he did not even glance her way. “Although tomorrow we should talk to someone about installing drainage in the graveyard to prevent—oh dear, your umbrella.”
They stopped in the road, staring at the Weather Mitigation Device, which was engulfed in flames despite the heavy rain.
“So much for waterproof,” Elodie remarked wryly. “It’s been completely overwhelmed.”
“I know how it feels,” Gabriel muttered under his breath.
Suddenly a voice emerged from the gloom, growling harshly.“Beware!”
Elodie and Gabriel turned to see two figures in a long dark coats appear out of the deep shadows beside a hedge. Elodie’s brain leaped from vampires to Hades to highwaymen. Gabriel raised one eyebrow with mild annoyance at being approached.
“Beware!” intoned one again. “ ‘The wind is a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees!’ ”
Gabriel exhaled a sharp, irritable sigh. Elodie recognized the tourists Pimmersby and Hapsitch, dressed in galoshes and hooded raincoats.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded with her sternest voice (which she’d practiced so often in a mirror she could now make even her undergraduate students shiver at the sound of it—andnotshiver with repressed laughter, thank you very much).
“Our innkeeper told us about the Gothic Flame Display that happens out here in the graveyard,” Pimmersby said. “He charged us five shillings for directions, and sixpence each to hire the raincoats, but it was worth it, by George!”
Astonishment pushed Elodie’s sternness aside. “He urged you to go sightseeing at a zone of volatile thaumaturgic activity?”
“He’s a chuckaboo, for sure,” Pimmersby said, then gestured at the umbrella. “We even get a magical fire as a bonus! ‘Burning bright, in the forests of the night’!”
Gabriel looked around with grim confusion. “I would call this a grove, at the most. And it’s not even five o’clock yet.”
But the gentlemen were uninterested in such fiddle-faddle as accurate timekeeping. “Mumbers is going to be so narked he missed this!” Hapsitch chuckled. “I must take a sketch of the fire!” He pulled a small book from his raincoat pocket and heldit out toward Gabriel. “And will you sketch us standing beside it?”
Gabriel just stared at him. It was a Professor-Grade Stare, as terrifying as any weapon. The sort of stare that takes the very measure of your soul, then hands it back to you covered in corrections. Elodie imagined Gabriel didn’t ever practice it in a mirror; he probably looked that way at the midwife when she delivered him.
“Er, actually, never mind,” Hapsitch said, his throat bobbing. Elodie could practically see exams flash through his eyes. “I might just toddle back to the inn…Got a Latin textbook that I amveryexcited to read…”
