“Unrivaled,” he corrected her, then looked away. He thought he heard a tiny storm, as if Elodie had gasped, but nothing could have induced him to look at her, lest he see what his word had done to the expression on her face. And, quite frankly, he rather feared that he might cry, or shout, or offer an extensive explanation as to why running on magic in the skywith your bloody eyes closedimperiled the health of people who loved you.
Not loved. Admired. Respected as a colleague.
He scowled at the field in which they found themselves.
The ground was damp, bruised from the week’s storms. Fragments of the thaumaturgic beam littered the air like broken rainbows but were fading fast, leaving only a ruin of torn hedges and ripped-up grass in the wake of magic. A lone farmhouse stood some quarter of a mile away, white smoke arising placidly from its chimney. Everything appeared calm, as if the shock of magic had been no worse than a brief, bright gust of wind. The late morning sun burnished tawny leaves and gently spun Elodie’s hair to gold, and Gabriel realized he was looking at her yet again.
“Any sign of a thaumaturgic trove?” she asked.
“Not immediately.”
“It must be here somewhere.” She gazed out at the surrounding countryside, no doubt accumulating romantic adjectives about its trees and mud puddles—and although she didn’t bite her lip as was her habit, she did tuck a stray curl behind her ear, which was almost asalluringuninteresting. Gabriel’sheart fluttered again, watching her. He began to worry about his blood pressure, and made a private note to decrease his morning intake of coffee—except no, he’d not drunk coffee this morning, had he?Because he’d been in bed with his blasted wife.
“Annoying,” he grumbled to himself, even as other things within him began fluttering. Elodie heard, and cast him an offended glance, and for a startling moment Gabriel feared he might blush. “I am not referring to you,” he said hastily, his brain racing through the tidy stack of its thoughts, tossing them hither and yon, in search of a reasonable explanation. “It’s annoying that we’re dealing with such a conundrum.”
Which was a ridiculous thing to say about two people who loved nothing better than a good conundrum to exercise their mental faculties. Disgusted with himself, Gabriel turned away, shoving a hand through his hair. The field really was very quiet. Eerily quiet. No birds sang, no breeze stirred. It was as if the world held its breath behind a smirk, poised to spring a practical joke upon him.
Then Elodie sighed. It was a sound so ecstatic, Gabriel couldn’t prevent himself from looking back at her. She stood with her hands clasped, face tipped up with a rapturous expression, soaking in the eeriness as if it fueled her very soul. Baffled, Gabriel regarded her, his head tilted to one side as if doing so might give him a better perspective on this wayward woman.
Her linked fingers were half-hidden in the sleeves of the scratchy-looking brown cardigan. One fine, rippling strand of hair snagged in her eyelashes. She seemed young, and yet Gabriel couldn’t even begin to fathom the strength within her—this woman who threw herself out of hot air balloons and intomarriage without a second thought, and held her ground among the fusty old men of the geography school who, despite having accepted her as a student because she was undeniably clever (and because the university’s chancellor forced them to), were appalled by the very thought of her as a professor. Had she been a man, they’d have proved welcoming, with much back-slapping and advice about the best pipe tobacco. But fora womanto become their equal was deemed insufferable.
In fact, as a member of that same faculty, Gabriel believed Elodie superior to them all. Certainly she possessed far more strength than he did.
Oh, he could lift her off her feet and over his shoulder (note to self,his brain interjected:try to make that happen), but he could never match the power of her spirit. How did she feel so much emotion all the time and not collapse with exhaustion from it? He himself was still recovering from the brief interlude following their wedding, during which he’d spun from passion to astonishment to delight (upon Elodie making him a truly excellent omelet for breakfast) then shock and pain as it all came to a crashing halt. And that recovery would now take significantly longer, considering in the past two days he’d watched Elodie run pell-mell directly into a magic bomb and race blindly down a magic beam…to say nothing of the hug last night, which perhaps had been the most discombobulating of all.
He wanted to hug her now. But that was insane. For one thing, she was wearing the blasted scratchy cardigan again. For another, a man didn’t just hug his wife indiscriminately. Especially when she’d made it very clear she was his wife in name only.
But damn it, he wanted to hug her more than he wanted tobreathe. No, that wasn’t true. He wanted tokissher. And to undress her, slowly, gently, until he’d absolutely confirmed that no inch of her being was at risk of further peril.
Which was more than insane. It was heartbreaking.
Clearing his throat gruffly, he directed himself back to the safe territory of science. “Atmospheric conditions suggest no ongoing thaumaturgic forces in the immediate zone,” he said, squinting at the sky, where no trace of magic lingered against the bland expanse.
“That’s true,” Elodie answered. “And yet, things feel iffy.”
“Iffy,” Gabriel repeated with a frown. “Elucidate, please.”
She shrugged. “I have a tingle down my spine.” Then she grinned at him sidelong. “I know, that’s not scientific.”
“Hm,” he said. “No, it’s not. But under the circumstances, one shouldn’t discount the subconscious awareness of an expert.”
“Good heavens, are you saying I should trust my instincts?” Elodie laughed and nudged him with her elbow.Nudged him. With herelbow. Everything in him clenched against a sudden bizarre impulse to laugh with…what was this feeling? Appreciation? Dyspepsia? Joy?
“My instincts tell me that we have a long day ahead of us,” she said. “The source of the magic emissions must be somewhere, although I don’t see any significant disturbance of the earth, or blue lights, or an enormous hound of darkness and thaumaturgic fire that chars the ground beneath its claws…”
“Such a specific example,” Gabriel said dryly. He was trying to repress the disconcerting amusement that had started to grow like colorful weeds in his heretofore neatly trimmed psyche, but Elodie made it difficult when sheexistedsaid things like that.
“Um,” she replied. She was staring to the northwest, eyes wide, and Gabriel turned to see what had so captivated her.
“Well, that’s aggravating,” he said.
Across the field crept an immense, hunched figure of mist and fury, a hellhound shaped from hill shadows and old, buried magic. Vicious blue light spiked its back and spat broken fragments like pain-colored stars that blistered the land when they fell. A memory of volcanic fire served as eyes, flashing and roiling with malevolent hunger. There was nothing substantial about it, only feral enchantment and an echo of mythology, but Gabriel knew that, if it caught them, they would be swallowed, bones and soul.
“Run!”he commanded.
And snatching Elodie’s hand, he pulled her with him into the haunted wild.
—
