It was all Caleb’s fault. And Amelia smiled privately to herself at the thought of telling him so, once she had a doctor confirm what she herself had only recently begun to suspect was the cause of all these wayward emotions. Laying one hand in an entirely casual, nonsignificant manner on her belly, she reached with her other for the teacup…
And stopped as it trembled in its saucer.
Thud.A book fell off one of the library’s shelves. The floor shook. Looking around with some alarm, academics murmured worriedly to each other through mouthfuls of sardine pâté and pipe smoke.
“Earthquake,” Gabriel said with the utmost Tarrant calm. “Interesting.”
Elodie, however, was already on her feet, causing her chair to totter. Gabriel reached out without looking to place a steadying hand on her back. “That’s no normal tremor,” she declared. “Do you see the tint of blue in the air? Magic! I need to get my thaumometer.”
“Wait,” Caleb interjected before she could dash off. “This is all too familiar.” He turned to Amelia with a look of suspicion. “Dearest, would you do me a favor?”
“No,” she answered at once, for she knew what he wasgoing to suggest. The air between them began crackling, and only partly due to the buildup of thaumaturgic energy. At the end of the table, Beth and Devon glanced at each other nervously. Elodie sank back into her chair, but slowly, suggesting that she’d rather run for the door. Gabriel drank tea with the peace that being oblivious to other people’s emotional dramas granted him.
“Meely, really?” Caleb shook his head, the very picture of tragic disappointment. “You promised you’d stop carrying that teaspoon around with you.”
Amelia held herself even more primly erect. “I’m worried Ottersock will try to steal it back,” she explained.
“Ottersock is too busy trying to keep his job as faculty head after losing his two best professors. Hand it over.”
“Certainly not,” Amelia declared with an outrage that, under more private circumstances, would have been a passionate kiss instead.
“Do you mean that teaspoon?” Gabriel asked, pointing to where one lay on the floor beside Amelia’s chair.
Gasping, she reached down to retrieve it. “It must have slipped out of my pocket,” she said, wincing apologetically. In all honesty, she ought not to have brought the blasted little Utensil of Chaos (as Caleb had dubbed it) with her tonight—but despite what she’d just said, she’d actually forgotten it was in her pocket. As she straightened, clutching the silver handle tight in case it slipped away again, she wondered if her constantly forgetting it was part of the magic.
She also had to secretly admit that this was not the first time lately that the teaspoon had fallen to the floor. Or flown across the room. Or tapped playfully against her desktop for no apparent reason. The episodes did not appear connected toher own emotional state at the time, and more than once Caleb hadn’t even been in the house. It was a mystery, for her studies thus far had proven the psycho-conjunctive magic interacted solely with human emotions. Furthermore, its range did not extend far enough to include neighbors, and no other living soul had been in the house…
Oh dear,she thought, placing an instinctively protective hand on her belly. Had the dratted teaspoon enchanted the baby she suspected she was carrying? Had it created a witch child?
Oops. Caleb was going to be so—well, delighted, probably.
She held out the teaspoon. “I think you should keep hold of this,” she told him soberly. “At least for the next seven months.”
Caleb, reaching to take it, stopped, staring at her with an utterly blank expression. Amelia looked back at him nervously, heart in her throat. If in that moment any other person existed in the entire world, let alone the Minervaeum’s library, neither she nor Caleb knew it. A deeply intimate silence encompassed them, filled with worry—and wonderment—and love, always love. Slowly, Caleb’s expression transformed like magic into the most beautiful Amelia had ever seen. He reached for her hand.
She remembered him in the shadows so long ago, bringing her sunlight, giving her his handkerchief. She’d sworn in that moment never to cry again. Now, as she took his hand and heard the tiny, sweet sound of their wedding rings kissing together, Amelia felt tears once again fill her eyes. They made the whole world seem filled with silvery magic.
Whoosh!
All of a sudden, the teaspoon flew out of her other hand.
“Aaagghh!” The crowd of academics screamed as flames leaped up from their pipes, instantly setting fire to the ceiling.
Boom!A case of books erupted, toppling large volumes of historic household records onto Dummersby’s head.
With a sigh, the Minervaeum staff rushed for their water buckets(again).
