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DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES
SABLE SPELLS WILL BE CLOSED TEMPORARILY.
APPOINTMENTS TO BE RESCHEDULED.
WITH APOLOGIES.
Penbrook whisked the pen from her hand, pocketing it along with the inkpot—for what, she still didn’t know. She also didn’t know how the lines of his coat remained so smooth with his pockets filling up as they were. It must have been some complicated expansion spell.
He peered at the notice she’d written. “Rescheduled?”
“It’s for the best. For now.”
“Because the looking spell didn’t work, you think I can’t manage my illusions?” A glint of devastation crashed through his eyes.
“That’s not—”
“I can manage.” Penbrook pouted.
“I’m sure,” Fia said, swinging into her coat and putting the sign in the window. Her customers—well, the ones who’d hoped to see Penbrook—wouldn’t like it, but it couldn’t be helped. “Finding the book and breaking your curse have to be our priorities.”
He wasn’t listening, trying to draw her attention instead. “Look here.”
“It’s not necessary,” she said, even though she knew her words were a waste.
Penbrook was determined to prove his magic, and it came to him without delay. Up from his fingertips a glimmer of light speared, edges darkening until it took the shape of an umbrella, hooked handle and all. He waited to open it until they stood outside, then let it bloom above them just as the sky suddenly broke open with rain. In the snap of a second, he went from unaccountably anxious to smug. Which he had every right to be when all his illusions, as impermanent as they might be, were tangible things, and his timing was impeccable.
“It’s a little much,” Fia grumbled, unable to ignore the blue polka dots decorating the black umbrella and the fact that he’d matched the colors to each of their outfits. Yet she found herself huddling closer to Penbrook to keep out of the rain, their arms brushing against each other as she led them east down Garland Street, past all the other pedestrians now scrambling for cover by way of awning or coach.
“You’re no fun.” Sighing, Penbrook magicked the umbrella entirely black.
Which was just as well, considering where she was taking him. Still, as they approached the tall iron gates of Fortune’s End, Fia almost missed seeing those silly dots overhead. So much like the ones—she thought with a small smile—that had patterned his socks.
When Penbrook caught sight of the cemetery and the gravestones beyond the finialed fence, he came to a stop, an appraising look on his face. “Well, you’ve certainly found us a wide-open space.”
“It’s what you asked for.”
“And you figured we might pick out my burial plot while we’re here?” He offered a grim grin.
“Oh, I thought you were going off to the woods alone when the time comes.” Fia had snapped at him when he’d said the same thing only that morning, and so she was surprised when the words sprang from her own mouth now. There was just something about him that loosened her tongue, allowing her to make light of something that was entirely serious. That made her feel she could say to him what she wouldn’t to others.
“I did say that, didn’t I?” Turning away from the rain-drenched gravestones, he looked down at Fia, his face darkened under the canopy of the umbrella. “Can I change my mind?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’d rather not go off alone.” Rain fell around them, a little harder now, matching the solemnity of Penbrook’s voice.
“You won’t have to,” Fia whispered. Maybe she lowered her voice because they stood so close to the cemetery—and each other. Maybe it was because she wanted so much for her words to be true. She couldn’t stand to have any more death around her. And… certainly not his. Not because she felt anything for him—she barely knew him, of course—but, well, because when he wielded magic, he seemed so very alive.
He stiffened, and she worried she’d said the wrong thing as, without another word, he crossed through the gates, leaving Fia to the rain.
“Penbrook!” she squealed, and darted after, dipping beneath the umbrella again and shivering as droplets of water ran beneath the collar of her coat.
“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” He lifted his free hand, wiping the wet from her cheeks, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw, then he abruptly pulled away, realizing too late how intimate the gesture was. “You didn’t get too soggy, did you?”
“No, I’m all right.” She shivered again, but not from the cold. Wanting to lean into him, but holding herself away.
They wandered deeper into the cemetery along a tree-lined path Fia knew well, though when she might have turned left to find her mother’s small grave, they went right, winding up the slight incline to the top of a hill where a bench and an old oak stood, the tree’s leafless branches stretching protectively around the crooked headstones.
