“No,” Maggie admitted. “Absolutely nothing on this earth could be longer than that week.”
“Just wanted to establish a baseline. Needed to see how strong I should ask Rodrigo to make our drinks tonight.”
Chapter Six
At some point, the relentless mist had dissipated, leaving only low, drifting gray clouds, so Maggie parked her car a few blocks away from Rodrigo’s. As she spun the wheel to slide into a tight spot, the Beltane mask swung from her rearview mirror, and she felt a not-unpleasant blush creep across her cheeks as she thought again of how she’d opened up for the stranger.
Last night, as she’d tossed and turned, she’d tried again to unravel the magic of the mask, excavating her memories for anything that might help. But instead of anything concrete about him, she just recalled again the way desire had coiled hot in her belly while his hands had traced the soft swells of her shoulders, breasts, hips, as if he had been trying to memorize every inch of her. And then there’d been the way he’d kissed, the way he’d done everything that night, with a kind of shy confidence. It had been so charming. So different from the way Taliesin reminded everyone of how brilliant he was at every turn.
In downtown Galloway, the faefire glow of the streetlamps reflected off the still-damp road in shining halos of light. Galloway was, technically, a small coastal hamlet, but between here and the beach was ten miles of uninhabited, near impassable Wilds. Part forest and part swamp, the Wilds were a strange,overgrown place full of tangled brambles and creatures touched by myth and magic. The edge of the Wilds crept up behind Ilex Hall, and it had unsettled Maggie since her first trip to campus for her interview four and a half years ago. But because travelers had to go nearly twenty miles around the Wilds to get to the ocean, Galloway didn’t get the same amount of tourist traffic as other coastal towns did. That meant that most of the people walking the streets were students or people who lived in Galloway year-round.
Galloway and Hawthorn were never quite what she had envisioned for herself and her career. But her entire life had gone up in smoke during graduate school, all thanks to her ex, Evan. The scars of that time still stretched her skin. Personal and professional relationships soured; a promising career opportunity disappeared into dust. She’d had to start over on the other side of the country, alone.
Good had come out of it, too. She and Dahlia had started as professors at Hawthorn the same year, Maggie in the Applied Linguistics and Incantation Translation Department and Dahlia in Runology and Sigil Studies. Their friendship was forged in the fire of trying to figure out how to balance teaching and research and the endless politics of academia. She had come to love Hawthorn and Galloway, too. A small college in a small town, with a close-knit community of colleagues and friends she wouldn’t dream of risking. Not again.
Maggie’s heart felt full and grateful as she looked around at the town that had become her home while she waited for Dahlia to get out of the car. “Rodrigo saved us two good seats at the bar,” Dahlia said as she shut the door. “We’ll be able to keep aneye on the crowd for a mysterious, six-foot-one man with a little brother.”
“I’m never telling you anything ever again,” Maggie grumbled.
“Now that is a lie.”
“He’s not going to be in Galloway. Brig Beach and Atlantia are miles away,” Maggie reasoned.
“Then you have nothing to be nervous about, do you?”
“Who says I’m nervous?” Dahlia looked down her nose at her. “Fine, I’m nervous. What if he’s married?”
“What if he’s not?” Dahlia reasoned.
“What if he’s an asshole? I have enough of those to deal with during the day.”
“No one is as big an asshole as Arthur Taliesin. C’mon.”
—
Rodrigo’s drinks werestrong and dangerously delicious, which helped because Maggie felt a little silly, sitting on a stool in the corner of the bar, watching the crowd for anyone who might trigger some sort of memory.Chasing a man around town? What am I, an undergrad?She recognized probably a third of the people in Rodrigo’s that night, but none of the strangers fit the thin description she had of the man from Beltane.
Rodrigo’s was, affectionately, a dive. The building was ancient, with low ceilings and old stained-glass lamps. On one side of the room was a sweeping bar, polished to gleaming, and on the other were low, overstuffed couches and booths. Upstairs, there were fraying pool tables, dartboards, and groups playing card games or mahjong. Dahlia had already been up there to scope out the people playing games and sipping on beer but returned with nothing much to report. “It’s the same crowd as always.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Maggie said, but she had a small grin on her face, and her voice was cheerful. She could enjoy the night with Dahlia, chat with Rodrigo while he was in between customers, and be spectacularly annoyed about Arthur Taliesin. She knew that Dahlia just wanted to see her happy. She knew that because if the situation were reversed, she would turn over heaven and earth to find a masked stranger for Dahlia.
“Who are you looking for?” asked Rodrigo, the burly owner of his eponymous bar.
“Maggie’s inlove,” Dahlia interjected before Maggie could explain.
Rodrigo grinned as he mixed a drink. “Who’s the lucky person?”
“Would you stop telling people I’m in love? We’ve got to work on boundaries, Dahlia.” Maggie sighed. “I met someone at the Beltane festival on Brig Beach, but I don’t know his name.”
A playful smirk turned up the corners of Rodrigo’s mouth. “We’ve all been there, haven’t we? What does he look like?”
“Well,” she said, dragging out the sound, “I don’t really know that either.” She explained the masks, and the way he’d charmed her, and that she didn’t know how she’d let Dahlia talk her into trying to find him. “Your bar is on every Best Of list this side of Atlantia. We figured there’s as good a chance as any that he’d come through here one day.”
“What do you know about him?”
Dahlia reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out a sticky note. It matched the list Maggie had erased from herchalkboard, but Dahlia had added two more details she had coaxed out of Maggie.Calls himself TK. Thirty-five.She passed it over to Rodrigo.
He took it, holding it up to the light and an arm’s length away because he wasn’t wearing his reading glasses. “This is it? At least six one?”
