“Do you have a plan to effect an escape for us both?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied at once in a tone that said,Obviously, but with a shadow in her eyes that said,Um…She turned, looking around thoughtfully. Then all of a sudden, “Aha!” she declared, her attention fixed on the tiny pond of water that Gabriel had already determined was the source of the muddle(a conclusion reached by the scientific method of accidentally stepping in it).
“No,” he said automatically.
Elodie stared at him in indignant surprise. “I haven’t suggested anything.”
“But you will.” He shook his head in anticipatory disapproval. “You’ll come up with some mad idea that will almost kill us but ultimately prove a brilliant success.”
She grinned so brightly the entire muddle seemed to light up—or perhaps it was just his brain, which organ Gabriel was beginning to accept as a lost cause. “You called me brilliant,” she said.
“No,” he disagreed, his crossed arms tightening. “Yes. But I also called you mad.”
It was hopeless. She looked like she might at any moment take flight. Gabriel considered kissing her, to make her forget what he’d said, but concluded regretfully that this would only make matters worse.
“I do have a brilliant idea, as it happens,” she told him as she began to unfasten her skirt.
“What are you doing?” Gabriel demanded warily.
“I’m going to use my skirt to soak up the puddle.”
“Bloody hell.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s incredibly risky. Besides, you can’t walk around in your drawers again. It’s too cold.”
She hesitated, considering this. “Fair point,” she said, and Gabriel breathed with relief as she refastened the skirt. Never mind the temperature—he feared for his dignity if she exposed her underwear like that again. After all, just touching her bare foot had resulted in him bumbling headlong into a thaumaturgic muddle.
Then the blasted woman reached up under the skirt and pulled down her drawers, and only three decades’ habit of imperturbability saved Gabriel from hysterics. He did, however, somehow manage to raise his eyebrows and frown at the same time.
“What are you doing? We should just wait; the muddle will eventually dissipate.”
“No, I’m sick of waiting,” she said, and flicked her gaze away from him, eyes darkening. “I can’t bear it.”
“You’ve only been in this muddle for two minutes.”
She muttered something under her breath and began to roll up the drawers in a wild, rather violent movement that caused Gabriel’s eyes to widen in alarm. “I believe we’re dealing with thaumaturgically charged sulfur,” she said, her voice all sharp edges and snapping consonants. “That means instability. The magic could collapse in on us.”
“All the more reason to act with care and precision,” Gabriel argued. “There will be a seam in the perimeter, we just have to find it.”
“That’ll take too long,” she countered, and strode toward the little flooded hollow.
“Don’t—”
She shoved her drawers into the water.
Boom!(Again.)
—
Elodie watched withsmug satisfaction as the muddle shuddered violently and began dissolving around them. Its lustrous shell became a gentle rain of argent magic that looked like a thousand tiny, sugary kisses she wanted to lift her face to. Before she could (not that she would have, she wasn’t entirelystupid…although maybe she could just catch a speck on her fingertip, the tiniest of morsels to taste…), Gabriel grabbed her wrist and pulled her to safety. They ran, hunched against the perilous shower, their hair sparking, their boots stamping on flashes of blue fire among the grass.
“So bloody foolhardy,” Gabriel was complaining as they came to a stop beyond the danger zone. He took her by the shoulders, turning her to face him, his eyes a furious dark storm.
“Actually, I believe your earlier word, ‘brilliant,’ is most appropriate here,” Elodie argued, but he ignored this. Grumbling curses, he began to brush thaumaturgic flakes from her hair and arms. A sweet prickling danced over her skin, either from his touch or the deadly magic that was beginning to burn through her shirtwaist. She swept Gabriel’s hair in turn, then pulled his coat off him and ran her fingers down the tight sleeves of his henley and over his chest. Granted, these areas were unaffected by magic, thanks to the shelter of the coat, but as a professional she felt it important to be meticulous.
“I was right about the sulfur,” she said as they worked.
“You were,” Gabriel agreed, his fingers sweeping the column of her throat, startling the breath within. “Which is one of a dozen reasons why you shouldn’t haveexplodedthe muddle.”
Elodie bristled, and not because he was now brushing specks of magic from her bosom. “It got us out, didn’t it?”
