“Yes. In Kent.”
His other eyebrow joined the first. “You’re famous. In Kent. For what professional achievement?”
“Oh well, not anythingprofessional, exactly. I’m famous for…” She murmured something, and Gabriel leaned toward her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“For walking along the roof ridge of Canterbury Cathedral.”
Gabriel stared as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or shake her. She stared back defiantly. His face was gold and blue-spangled in the magical sunlight, and his lips looked like they had been kissed and needed to be again. Elodie felt her own lips parting…
“Ahem.”
They turned their heads to see Tegan and the tourists watching them in fascination.
“I have a question!” A young woman thrust her arm into the air, and from her expression it was clear the inquiry would involve not geographical but biological science.
“Just hold your potato, Sue-Ann,” a man shouted, despite there being no evidence of Sue-Ann possessing any rootvegetable whatsoever. “I have a more important one. Should that blue light be spinning quite so fast?”
BOOM!
A hot wind blasted through the group. Elodie and Gabriel ducked immediately, throwing their arms around their heads. The atmosphere flashed silver, then faded to a quiet, shaken pallor. Straightening, Elodie and Gabriel turned to each other. She touched his face, he touched hers, ostensibly assessing for injury, although rather more stroking and yearnful gazing went on than was medically necessary—then they snatched their hands back as if burned by the realization of what they were doing.
“Are you hurt?” they asked, words tangling.
“I’m fine,” they answered.
“Mmuuhhhhh.”
The low, mournful sound had them looking around belatedly at the group. “Oh dear,” Elodie said.
Tegan was standing open-mouthed with stunned horror among a half dozen orange and yellow cows that had, a few seconds before, been American tourists.
“This is terrible!” the girl wailed.
“Don’t worry,” Elodie assured her. “Ignis fatuus energy tends to be short-lived. In about an hour or so they’ll transform back into people, with no lingering harm other than an inclination toward vegetarianism.”
“They’re Texans!”
“Oh dear,” Elodie repeated, wincing.
“Allow me to offer you a solution,” Gabriel interjected.
Tegan nodded eagerly.
He gestured to her picnic hamper. “If you give us some of the food, it won’t go to waste.”
Tegan gaped at him incredulously, but Gabriel, unrepentant, just displayed the unblinking calm of a man who has seen countless magical transformations during his career and no longer considers it a reason to go without lunch.
“Try to herd them back to the village,” Elodie advised while Tegan handed over sandwiches and tea cakes. “Or at least get them onto more solid ground. Magic is leaking up through the groundwater here to enchant the atmosphere.”
“It’s only been pretty lights so far,” Tegan said with a touch of accusation in her voice, as if the geographers themselves had caused an escalation of the danger.
“Pretty lights are hazardous in themselves,” Gabriel told her severely. “You people have been playing with fire. Literally.”
“Oh.” Tegan’s voice was small but her eyes grew huge as she looked around her, as if taking even one step might transform her into some variety of farm animal.
“Don’t worry,” Elodie told her, smiling with warm reassurance. “Just go carefully, stay alert, and you’ll be fine. Probably. Almost certainly.”
