Page 53 of Grim Tidings

“Did you send a seventy-eight-year-old man down a set of narrow stairs in the near dark to fetch imaginary mums you have no intention of actually using?”

Gabriel looks offended. “I plan on using them.”

“I doubt that.” I duck under the worktable. Tater Tot is plucking the petals off the sunflower with his teeth. I jerk my head toward the open cellar door. I can’t shake this buzzy, anxious feeling. “Go check on him for me, would you?”

Tater Tot bounds to his feet, trotting happily across the room and slinking through the narrow crack in the door. I listen to his paws clunk down the steps, and then Frank’s raspy laugh when he gets to the bottom.

“I want the mums,” Gabriel insists. “They’re very festive.”

“Maybe you should have gone down there and gotten them yourself, then,” I mumble, flexing my hands open and then closed, distracted. The buzzing feels more like a burning now. Like I’m passing my palms directly over an open flame. “Why were you looking for me?”

“Your list,” he answers. “I need a copy.”

“Just grab it from my bag.” I nod toward the front counter where I dropped my satchel when I walked in this morning. Gabriel dutifully stalks over to it, slipping his hand in the front flap. I turn away, focusing on the flowers, and try not to let my anxieties spin out of control.

But that list has been a precious guarded secret for decades, and having Gabriel hold it—read it, judge it—feels like scraping back my skin and showing him my bones.

It’s just a list, I reassure myself. Why do you care what he thinks?

Gabriel snorts a laugh, then coughs to try and cover it up. My chest pulls tight.

“Which one?” I ask.

He hesitates. “Bake a pie.”

“Because you don’t think I’ll be good at it, or because you think it’s stupid?”

“Because there’s an asterisk that says, ‘bake a good pie.’”

I nod and tuck my chin to my chest, trying to disassociate. I had an assignment in Amsterdam once. Her next-door neighbor was always baking pies with her daughter. They seemed happy.

The day I reaped her soul, there was an apple pie on her windowsill.

“Bold of you to make a comment about my list when you have a bumblebee tattooed on your wrist,” I murmur.

Gabriel laughs. The feeling in my palm pulses. An itchy, tight pull and then a release. I close my eyes and inhale slowly. Exhale even slower.

When I open my eyes again, my stomach drops.

What was a colorful, gorgeous arrangement a couple of minutes ago is now a cluster of dead flowers. The thistle is dried and curling, sharp spindly branches of brittle green. The baby’s breath is a dull gray, and the lavender has completely shriveled up.

I flex my hands. Smudges of black stain the tips of my fingers. “Shit.”

“What?” Paper rustles and then Gabriel is there, staring down at what I’ve done. He sucks in a sharp breath through his nose.

“I don’t—I didn’t do that on purpose,” I explain quickly.

My magic needs to be coaxed. I have to dig for it, encourage it. And since my visit with Aelia, I’ve been careful to not acknowledge it at all. A metaphorical chair wedged beneath the handle.

But it seems my magic has a mind of its own.

My hands won’t stop shaking.

“Darcy,” Gabriel warns.

I shake my head. “I can fix it,” I breathe. “I just need a second—” I touch the edge of a dried bloom, and it crumbles to ash. A sob catches and my eyes burn. “I can fix it,” I say again.

Gabriel’s massive hand covers both of mine, and he squeezes tight, holding me still. Almost immediately, my shaking eases. I look up at him. He’s moved around the table so he’s standing at my side, his chest pressed to my shoulder.