Page 97 of Grim Tidings

“You’re a pain in my ass, you know that?”

But that sentiment is contradicted when he cups my face with his hand, his thumb tracing featherlight over my cheek. He looks at me like I’m something precious. Like I’m something worth keeping.

“You like it,” I whisper.

“Yeah.” He sighs. “I really do.”

“Your sweater is on backward” is what Frank says as soon as I crash through the front door of the shop. He glances up briefly, then frowns and goes back to his arrangement. “You’re also about an hour late.”

I glance down at my chest and, sure enough, the tag is poking out just beneath my chin. “I got caught up with something.”

Frank hums. “With someone, I presume.”

“That would be a correct assumption, yes.” I drop my bag on the floor and hustle over to the hook where Frank has started keeping my apron, right next to his.

I tug it over my head and move to the table where he has his flowers spread out for arrangements. Asters and goldenrods and a delicate-looking flower with a thin stem, its pink petals rounded at the edges.

I pick one up and hold it up to the light. “What’s this one?”

Frank pushes his glasses up his nose with his knuckles. He only wears them when he’s arranging, and he grumbles about them the entire time. “Cosmos,” he says.

“Like the stars?”

He shakes his head. “Named for the Greek kosmos, meaning ‘order’ or ‘the natural harmony to things.’ See that stem and the way the petals are almost translucent? They curl up to maintain the balance of the plant. Order,” he says. “Harmony.”

“They’re pretty,” I say quietly.

Frank nods. “They’ll make a fine addition to the crescents we’re making this morning. Now that you’ve deigned to join me for our preallotted time—” He gives me a stern look over the top of his glasses that’s diluted by the smile he’s trying to hide. “I can bring out the rest of the flowers I’ve been keeping in the back. Pick out what you want for your base, and we’ll go from there.”

I grin, thinking about Gabriel’s funeral parlor comments. “I’d like to use lilies.”

“That’s just fine with me.”

Frank disappears to the back while I set up the rest of my station. Frank and I have been meeting most mornings for our informal arrangement classes. Frank shows me what to do, and most of the time I butcher it, but it’s nice. Listening to all his random facts about flowers and soil moisture and local species. It’s soothing. Like listening to rain fall against a tin roof or sitting in the corner of a crowded café.

It’s a reminder that I’m not alone. And neither is Frank.

“Do you want dahlias again?” Frank yells from the storage room.

“Yes, please!” I drag the lilies closer, careful to not bend their stems. Frank had given me hell about manhandling the blooms, and now I’m careful to use a delicate touch.

Out front, a group of kids run past the window. They’re in their Halloween costumes for the fall festival, plastic masks strapped to the front of their faces. One is holding a broomstick and another a ninja sword. They’re laughing and stumbling over one another, being loud in the way kids always seem to be, enthusiasm spilling wild and unchecked. I smile as they disappear down the leaf-strewn sidewalk, almost mowing down a pedestrian as he turns the corner.

My smile grows brittle and my chest seizes tight.

Because the man they almost trampled is familiar in all his candy-colored-polo glory. I’d know that slick-looking smile anywhere.

It’s Brad. He’s still here. And he’s still looking for me.

I drop the vase I’m holding and it shatters against the floor. But I barely register it, gripped by my panic instead. What if he comes here? What will I do? What if—what if I can’t get back to Gabriel? What if I don’t have a chance to say goodbye?

My hands shake, and my magic takes advantage, slipping through the cracks of the door I’ve locked it behind. It curls around me, protective, coiling up my arms and brushing cold over the back of my neck. It whispers to me, and I try to ignore it, I try to pack it away, but—

I can’t.

It’s too much, too fast. I lose my grip on my control, and my magic pushes outward, the lights in the shop flickering. Months and months and months of keeping it suppressed has weakened my resolve. My magic is furious, bursting at the seams.

Frank calls my name from the back, and it only makes everything worse. I panic. My shadows expand, rattling the glass shards that are strewn across the floor.