Page 48 of The Trick of It

“Going to help me bring in all this new merchandise?” she asked, throwing the door open and hopping out, oddly refreshed by the cool breeze as it stirred around her face. “I can ask Mr. Cagney if you don’t want to—”

He leapt out after her, bounding from the carriage like a deranged tomcat, his knees up so high, he seemed to soar and then land with a spray of pebbles next to her. “Unlock the damned door,” he grumbled, immediately moving to unpack the first of her parcels.

She grinned at him, brilliant and clean and true. “All right,” she said. “I shall.”

“Good,” he grumbled, hoisting the barrel of tumbled stones out and onto his shoulders. “Gwrach.”

*

It took them a little over an hour to unpack everything and to arrange the new displays on the floor of the shop.

Rhys had a specific table in mind for the taxidermy and any time Seph attempted to intervene in the arrangement of animals, he batted her away with a hissing sound that amused her more than it should have.

“Well, if you won’t let me help,” she said, crossing her arms and watching him tilt the hoopoes, step back, and then rush forward with a grouse to tilt them again. “I’ll just pop to the pub and get something to eat?”

“Yes, yes,” he mumbled, rotating the snake skeleton so that it faced away from the birds, its bony fangs glinting in the sunlight. “Get dessert.”

She did not stay to watch him fuss, though it was tempting, those frizzy curls hanging down over his brow. And she’d gotten the cobbler from the pub because she knew he preferred it to the pie.

She sighed as she walked back because she knew she was in danger again. She just couldn’t dredge up the energy to care at the moment. It had been a taxing pair of days. There was nothing left for fretting, at least not before she ate.

What was odd was the clarity of relief that had settled over her mind, like it had been given a good dusting and then been binned in the rubbish after all the dramatics today. She could think clearer than she’d been able to before. She could see the space around ideas that had formerly been filled with static.

And that was why, when she walked back into her shop, the first thing she said was, “It has to be the Changeling,” followed immediately by, “Rhys! You have to pay for that!”

His head snapped up, hand covered in chili dust as he forced himself to swallow a mouthful of pilfered sweets from one of her pink tins. “I will,” he lied.

She narrowed her eyes. “I was going to go upstairs to get cutlery, but now I don’t trust you down here. Go get it. Here’s my key.”

She shook her head, staring after him as she set the covered dishes down on the little meeting table she kept in the corner.

He’d been rummaging through her “Curiosities of the Quill” display and had left one of her copies of Celtic folklore sitting open with a red fingerprint right in the corner of the page. “Rhys,” she muttered to herself, attempting to brush the chili powder off the page. “Honestly.”

“I have that book,” his voice said from the rear staircase, where he’d appeared holding forks and knives in one hand and spoons in the other like a knight’s page. “Mine’s older, more worn, and has a harder cover. But it’s the same book.”

“Does that one also have fingerprints in it?” she asked flatly.

He grinned at her. “Yes, especially that page.”

She rolled her eyes, glancing down at where he’d left it.

Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd, it read. Warrior princess. Martyr. Heroine.

There was a painting of her block printed on the opposing page, fierce and golden haired, wearing a dirty dress draped with chainmail and looking defiantly off the page, her sword still clutched in a sagging hand. Under it, a small caption read, “Revenge for Gwenllian – Still used today as a war cry by the Welsh.”

She examined the page, frowning. “Oh,” she said. “They cut her head off.”

“They do that,” Rhys agreed. “The English. There’s another bloke in that book who just stayed a talking head afterward. My Gwenllian was too practical for such nonsense.”

“Hm,” said Seph, moving to unpack the hand pies from the pub. “Blonde.”

“Indeed,” said Rhys, his voice soft and low. “Blonde.”

They ate quietly for a moment, the book shunted off to the side, safe from sauce and spatter and crumbs. She could feel him watching her, waiting to elaborate on what she’d said when she’d come through the door. She had intended to wait until he asked, but he was being silent for once, and it was unbearable.

“He knows we are illusionists,” she said, her voice cutting through the still air. “He knows they are all tricks. But when we did the Changeling, we did it with a story about ourselves attached. We claimed to be children who were switched, part of another realm, and then we demonstrated it. That’s what was different about us. It wasn’t just not being able to figure out the trick.”

“Surely, he knows we are not actual changelings,” Rhys replied carefully, tilting his head to the side. “Even if we were, would we know about it?”