Two miles andtwelve hours later, they finally arrived back at Dôlylleuad.
Exhausted and aching, they trudged into the Queen Mab’s lobby, where they found Algernon and Professor Jackson wrestling for possession of Algernon’s suitcase while Tegan looked on in amusement. As Gabriel shut the door with an eloquent thud, both men froze, astonished, the suitcase dropping to the ground between them.
“Leaving again, Algie?” Elodie asked, her voice dry with weariness.
“We thought you were dead!” Professor Jackson exclaimed.
“Algie?!”Algernon blustered at the same time.
“To be fair,” Elodie said, “I feel a little dead.”
“You do seem like you’ve been through the mill,” Tegan remarked, managing to balance neatly on the fine line between politeness andoh my God is that cow dung in your hair?
“Not so much the mill as the tornadic storm,” Elodie told her grimly.
“The exploding tree,” Gabriel added.
“The mud bombs and a magic-crazed bull.”
“And don’t forget the volcano.”
“Good God!” Professor Jackson exclaimed, whipping off his lensless spectacles to stare at them with amazed horror. “A volcano outside Dôlylleuad?”
“A foot-high volcano,” Elodie clarified. “But considering we didn’t notice and almost stepped on it…”
“How could you not notice a volcano?” Tegan asked bewilderedly.
“Our attention was otherwise occupied.”
Indeed, after hours of navigating what had turned abruptly from a placid morning to a maelstrom of fiery, deadly magic, they had been so busy arguing over whether the fey line was already in cascade or merely being zany…and if Gabriel would allow this as a topic for discussion…and furthermore whether Elodie was able to point to “zany” in a science dictionary…that they’d barely noticed anything else around them. Elodie would have received a highly educative practicum on the effects of magma had not Gabriel, annoyed by the sudden odor of hydrogen sulfide, seen the volcano in the nick of time.
He’d grabbed her by the waist, lifted her over his shoulder for some reason Elodie could not fathom, and after she finally convinced him to put her down two minutes later (not that she’d insisted with especial force), they discovered that the volcano had burned itself out and so had their ability to form any conversation whatsoever, whether an argument or otherwise. The remainder of their walk had been undertaken in profound silence.
Frankly, Elodie no longer cared about the state of the feyline or any danger it presented to Dôlylleuad. Besides, despite the surrounding countryside having been bedeviled by ricocheting magic, the village itself proved peaceful, and now her sole preoccupation was to have a bath. A nice long, quiet bath in cold water. Icy water. Water so arctic she would emerge entirely dispassionate about over-shoulder carries, and embraces, and kisses that Gabriel had been quite right to call “nervous overexcitement” after all, considering their ongoing effect on her. Even a day’s hard slog through magical chaos had not dislodged them from her consciousness.
“The degree of spillage suggests increasing thaumaturgic pressure, but all our readings have been too cluttered to pinpoint a source,” Gabriel told Professor Jackson, who murmured worriedly. “It’ssomewherenearby; that much is obvious from the intense activity. But damned if we can find it. Has there been any magical activity here? Any injuries?”
“None,” Professor Jackson assured him. “Obviously the trove isn’t inside Dôlylleuad itself.”
“Did you telegraph the Home Office?”
“I was on my way to do so when I caught Jennings here about to escape.”
Gabriel did not bother pointing out that he’d tasked Jackson with sending that telegraph a day and a half ago. “We need to call for reinforcements,” he said. “It’s imperative we locate the source of this disruption before things worsen. We also need to alert nearby villages and towns to the risk.”
“And I want to hold a public meeting here in Dôlylleuad,” Elodie added, “to discourage tourist activity before someone gets turned into—oh, wait, that already happened, didn’t it?” She turned to Tegan with belated concern. “Are the Americans back to form?”
A brassy peal of laughter from the taproom answered her even as Tegan said, “Yes.” Gabriel winced at the noise, pressing fingertips against his forehead as if pained. Elodie nodded, but did not have enough energy for a smile.
“I’m going to have a bath,” she declared, “and eat dinner in my bedroom.”
“As am I,” Gabriel said. Then his eyelashes flickered and Elodie’s pulse did the same, recollecting the fact of their shared room and its sole bed. “Mr. Jennings,” he said briskly, “since you are leaving, I’ll take your bedroom.”
“He can’t leave,” Professor Jackson argued. “We need every scientist we can get.”
“But I’m not a scientist!” Algernon wailed. “I’m an accountant.”
“You’re also a man without a bedroom now,” Gabriel told him, and marched off upstairs, leaving the others to stare at each other in stunned silence.
