by Zoë Archer
“Here’s the taproom. Wait outside.” Catullus swung down from his horse and, carefully easing his shotgun into position, edged inside.
Gemma held her breath, her hand on her pistol, as she waited for him to emerge. She glanced over at Astrid, yet the Englishwoman’s face revealed nothing. Her own pistols appeared in her hands.
After what felt like an eternity, Catullus came out of the saloon. “Completely empty. Not even a dog by the fire.”
The uneasiness along Gemma’s spine spread through her body. “Where is everyone?” She lowered her voice even more. “Maybe Arthur came and …” The idea seemed too horrible to think about.
Catullus shook his head. “He wouldn’t attack ordinary citizens. It’s Blades he sees as his enemies. And there aren’t any bodies.”
“A hundred people can’t simply vanish.” Then, she added in a less certain voice, “Can they?” She glanced around, expecting to see some malevolent creature staring from the black shadows that painted the street and clung along the sides of buildings.
Catullus strode into a home whose door had been left ajar. He came back out moments later, his hands full of scraps of fabric. “Here’s our answer.”
“The town was attacked by rags?” Even this seemed a little strange to Gemma.
“Boggarts.” He moved closer, showing her that what he held was, in fact, clothing, torn into shreds. “Destructive little fiends. They sour milk, make animals lame. Hate things that belong to the home, especially, for some reason, garments. Perhaps clothes represent too much civilization for their liking.”
“Must’ve chased everyone in this village away.” Gemma imagined the scene of chaos as people fled their homes—not much different from what happened in Glastonbury. “Will they come back?”
Tossing the heap of ruined clothing aside, Catullus said, “Unlikely. It’s an unfortunate trait of boggarts that they follow whomever they’ve decided to torment. Somewhere out there, a whole village’s worth of people are being pursued by hordes of boggarts. Come.” He held out a hand to her.
She stared down at the offered hand. “We can’t mean to stay here.”
“God only knows where the next village is, and it may be in just as sorry a state as this one, if not worse.” He took hold of her hand and pried it loose from the reins. “At least we know there are plenty of empty beds.”
Gemma tried to argue, but weariness overtook her, sinking heavy claws into her shoulders. Before she knew what happened, she found herself off of her horse and in Catullus’s arms. He cradled her to him as if she weighed no more than a sheet of paper. Oh, Lord, he felt so warm and solid, his muscles firm beneath the fabric of his clothes. She wanted to lay her head upon his shoulder, clasp her arms around his neck, and breathe in his scent.
She tried to pull away, to stand on her own feet. He held her steady.
“None of that. You need to sleep.” His voice rumbled, and she felt its vibrations through her body. “But, the horses …”
He pushed open a door to a house with one boot. From the shelter of his arms, Gemma saw they were in a neat little house, snug as an embrace. Save for the heaps of tattered garments strewn about, everything within seemed entirely orderly. Catullus moved through the house, shouldering open doors, until he came to a bedroom just off the kitchen. A small bed with a plain quilt lay in the corner, and a family’s framed photograph held pride of place beside a picture of Queen Victoria.
The bed looked so inviting to Gemma, she thought she might cry. Still, she struggled to sit up after Catullus gently lay her upon it. His large, strong hands tenderly clasped her shoulders, holding her down.
“No, I won’t let you up. So enough with your struggling.”
The room was quite dark, so she felt rather than saw his exasperated smile. The bed dipped slightly as he sat down on its edge. She reached for him. Yes, she was exhausted, but the idea of sharing a bed with him could banish all thoughts of sleep. Ever since … well … all day, she’d craved his touch. They’d shared danger, coming to each other’s rescue. Having seen him in magnificent action, knowing the strength of his body and mind, and her own capability, her craving turned to fiery need.
Yet he captured her seeking hands with one of his own. “Rest now.”
“Lie with me.” She didn’t care how bold or shocking her words must sound. Weariness and the vicissitudes of the day stripped away everything but immediate desire. “Even just to sleep.” Feeling him next to her, laying his long body down alongside her own—at that moment she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more.
“Have to keep watch.” He hesitated, then brushed strands of hair from her forehead. His rueful laugh was a hoarse rasp in the darkness. “But, God, how you tempt a man.”
She did not want him to retreat. Not now. Not when they were on the verge of something significant. “Catullus—” “Sleep.” He bent and brushed his lips across her forehead, his breath warm, feathering across her face.
Then, releasing her, he stood. He made a large, dark figure in the doorway—but not threatening to her. A guardian. She tried as long as she was able to look at him, but exhaustion refused to be denied, and the last thing she saw before sleep took her was his tall form, standing watch, protecting her.
When Gemma’s breathing slowed, confirming she’d finally fallen asleep, Catullus quietly went out into the street. He spent a goodly amount of time patrolling the perimeter of the house, ensuring that he’d chosen the most safe dwelling in the village. He longed for his full complement of tools beyond the little case in his pocket. With his whole workshop at his disposal, he could fashion impervious locks that only Gemma’s magic could breach.
Finally satisfied that there was no place safer, he went and found Astrid already tending to the horses in an empty stable off the square. A lantern on the ground softly illuminated the scene. Two horses had been stripped of their tack and put into stalls. The other, she now rubbed down.
“Not even a horse or mule stayed behind,” she said without looking up from her work. “Boggarts must’ve scared them off, too.”
Wordlessly, Catullus pumped water into a bucket and brought it over to the trough. “This is dark magic, Astrid. I’ve never seen its like.”
“Nor I.” She patted the horse’s nose. Still looking into the animal’s large, brown eyes, she murmured, “I don’t know if we’re going to survive this one.”
“We will,” he said immediately, reflexively. Yet even Catullus understood that the Blades’ fatuous optimism could not withstand the threat they now faced.
Astrid glanced up, holding his gaze with a look that said she believed him as much as he believed himself, which was to say: not at all. Under the scrutiny of his old friend, Catullus couldn’t support the weight of illusions.
He removed his spectacles and wearily rubbed at his eyes. “Perhaps we won’t survive,” he allowed, “but we cannot fail in our mission to take back the Primal Source and stop whatever the Heirs plan on doing.”
“Damned hard to do that, when none of us know how. Or even what it is we go up against. Hell,” she muttered, “if this village and Glastonbury are any indicators, we’re facing a magic that no one in the history of the Blades has ever confronted.”
“All the more room for exploration and discovery. Where the map is blank, the world is open.” Putting on his spectacles, he saw Astrid staring at him. “What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Just then, it seemed as though—never mind.” After leading the final horse into a stall, she came out, dusting her hands. “So, shall we find ourselves a deck of cards and amuse ourselves until your American scribbler wakes?”
“Her name is Gemma, and you are going to find yourself a bed and get a little sleep.”
Astrid folded her arms across her chest, mulish. “Absolutely not. I’m not leaving you on your own in this eerie place.” Her words slurred with exhaustion.
“And you’re barely coherent,” he countered evenly. Seeing her flat refusal, he had no other op
tion but negotiation. “We’ll sleep in shifts. I shall take first watch.”
Still, tired as Astrid was, she remained obstinately standing in the middle of the stable’s yard. Short of bodily picking her up, as he’d done with Gemma, there did not seem to be any way to get Astrid to go to bed. And, as Catullus did not fancy receiving one of Astrid’s feet in his groin or a punch to his nose, he needed another tactic.
“Do you remember Latimer?” he asked.
She blinked, trying to recall. “The beefy chap from Cornwall?”
“That’s the one. You, Michael, Latimer, and I had to go to the Orkneys when the German cabal tried to capture some selkies.”
“Right. Yes. The selkies.” She suddenly realized where his story was headed, and scowled. “I am not going to fall asleep on my gun and accidentally shoot myself.”
“Latimer refused to rest, even though we told him he had to. And almost lost a leg as a result.”
“He was an idiot, trying to prove himself on his first mission.”
“His last mission, too, as I recall. Went back to Cornwall and became a publican.” Catullus’s voice gentled. “If anything happens to you because you’re too tired to react in time, Lesperance will waste no time disemboweling me. It’s my own welfare I am considering.”
At the mention of Lesperance, even in conjunction with the idea of him ripping out Catullus’s entrails, Astrid’s scowl faded, and tender affection softened her face. Finally, she tipped her head forward in minute acknowledgment. “Very well,” she grumbled. “You can have first watch. But you’d better come and get me in an hour.”
“Three hours,” Catullus countered.
“Two,” Astrid shot back.
“Done.” In truth, he was pleased she consented to two hours, but wouldn’t let his satisfaction show. That was the shortest route to having his teeth knocked out of his mouth. He consulted his pocket watch to mark the time. Sunrise was at least three hours away.
Carrying the lantern, he and Astrid left the stable and returned to the house where he’d installed Gemma. He peered in to make sure she was still asleep and sound, and his heart contracted sharply in his chest to see her face, smooth and lovely in repose, but not fragile. He allowed himself a moment to marvel at the things she’d seen this day, and the strength with which she faced them—and the gentle snoring she made now.
Satisfied that Gemma was well and safe, he closed the door and discovered Astrid behind him, staring at him again with a strange, speculative look.
“What?”
“I like this side of you, Catullus.” A trace of a smile curved her mouth.
“It scares the hell out of me,” he confessed.
“That’s one of the reasons why I like it.” With that, Astrid ventured off in search of the other bedroom in the house.
Catullus drifted to the kitchen. He busied himself there, making a pot of coffee and finding some slightly stale bread. The coffee was bolted down, the bread gnawed on. Thus fortified, he took a chair, and sat outside the front door, shotgun across his lap and pipe in mouth, to wait out the night.
She dreamt. Of clockwork castles and mechanical dragons. A storybook world powered by steam and gears. Empty streets that clicked as cogs and wheels turned. Yet in the middle of this mechanized kingdom beat a heart of glowing, pure magic, dazzling in its countless colors, its crystalline wonder. She reached out to touch it, and it was made of glass—the same glass in a man’s spectacles. Behind that glass, she knew she would find the truest heart. All that remained was to reach it, without shattering its vitreous surface.
But how?
Men’s voices filtered in to her, deep and masculine. They spoke in urgent tones, words coming quickly, and she strained to make them out. One voice she knew well—it was the rich, resonant sound she longed to hear. The other she didn’t recognize. And that made her frown as she slept. It wasn’t right. No other man was here except him. Danger, then. A threat.
She pushed herself through the layers of sleep. Had to wake. He needed her.
Gemma felt a fleeting panic when her eyes opened. She lay in a strange bed, in a strange room. Where was she?
A moment, and she remembered. Arthur. The race across the English countryside. Demon dogs. The empty village.
Catullus.
She heard his voice in the other room. And another man, one she couldn’t place. Hard to tell the nature of their conversation, only that it was low and pressing. One of the Heirs?
Quietly, Gemma slipped from the bed. She tread lightly across the floorboards, making sure nothing squeaked beneath her feet, then pressed herself against the door, listening.
“… God damn it….”
“… rotten bastard …”
She eased the door open and peered out to the kitchen. A dark-haired man swung his fist at Catullus, who evaded the blow and threw one of his own. The unknown man nimbly leapt out of the way.
“Hands up,” Gemma clipped. She stepped into the room, pistol drawn and trained on the dark-haired man.
His eyes went round—she faintly realized that his eyes were an astonishing shade of blue. She quickly took his measure: not as tall as Catullus, and younger, too. Lean, athletic body. Smartly dressed. And also, quite simply, the most handsome man she’d ever seen, and that included all the justifiably vain actors she had interviewed.
This unfamiliar man smiled at her. Surely women’s underthings spontaneously dissolved when he smiled. Nothing compared for masculine beauty. For herself, she felt only removed interest in his appearance. He could be Adonis in the flesh, but if he threatened Catullus, then he’d better say farewell to his pretty face before she blew a hole in it with her derringer.
His hands remained at his sides. “You’ve got the wrong idea, love.”
“What you’ve got in looks,” she gritted, “you’re missing in brains. My gun is loaded. So get your damned hands up.”
He finally complied, raising his hands, but he didn’t look concerned to be on the pain-inducing end of a pistol. “This must be her,” he said to Catullus.
“Gemma,” said Catullus, wry, “may I have the dubious honor of presenting you with Bennett Day, reprobate and only recently reformed scoundrel. Ben, you filthy sod, this is Miss Gemma Murphy of Chicago, Illinois, the United States.”
Gemma glanced over at Catullus, who had his thumbs tucked into the pockets of his waistcoat. “A friend of yours?”
“’Friend’ is a rather pleasant term for ‘someone I barely tolerate,’” he answered.
“Come now, Cat,” Day chided, “is that any way to speak of the fellow who has seen you drunk, wearing only a tea towel, and swearing that the next evolution in transportation was to be one-man hot air balloons?”
“Go ahead and shoot him,” Catullus said to Gemma.
“Catullus!” a woman exclaimed, coming into the room. She was delicate and pretty, with honey-colored hair and a lively face, her clothes fashionable—in contrast to Gemma’s threadbare, somewhat grimy traveling dress. “I would be extremely vexed if your friend shot my husband.”
Gemma lowered her pistol, and Day let drop his hands. Clearly, neither of these newcomers were Heirs of Albion. The only threat Bennett Day presented was the fact that he annoyed Catullus.
“And this is London, Bennett’s wife,” Catullus said.
The stylish woman gave a refined curtsy, which Gemma returned. With a cultured voice, London said, “Always a pleasure to meet friends of Catullus, Miss Murphy.”
Gemma looked at Catullus. “Drunk, in a tea towel?” A flush darkened Catullus’s cheeks. “A very uninteresting story.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
Day said cheerfully, “We were in Prague and there were these, well, I suppose one wouldn’t call them ladies precisely—”
“Enough, Ben,” growled Catullus.
“Yes,” said Day’s wife. “I think we would all appreciate not hearing that tale.”
Day strode over to his wife and wrapped her in his arms, smiling do
wn at her. “Merely practice, love. Preparing me for you.”
“Naturally.” Yet she allowed her husband to kiss her, boldly and thoroughly, in front of Gemma and Catullus.
Rather than watch Bennett effectively seduce his wife, Gemma busied herself by stashing her derringer in her pocket. She glanced up when Catullus drifted to her side.
“Thank you for coming to my aid,” he murmured.
His voice was velvet along her skin, and she felt her cheeks warm. “When I heard him call you a rotten bastard, and I saw him swing at you …”
Catullus grimaced. “Ben’s way of saying hello. He’s the Blades’ most expert cryptographer, but sometimes he has the behavior of a poorly socialized warthog.”
“I am a very nicely socialized warthog,” Day interjected.
Catullus ignored him. Still speaking softly to her, he asked, “Did you rest well?”
“Well enough, but,” she added quietly, “it would’ve been better if you’d taken me up on my offer.” She had to show him that her interest hadn’t ebbed, and appearance of his old friends hadn’t changed her feelings.
He looked pleased, then flushed again and cleared his throat. He plucked his spectacles from his face and carefully polished them—his habitual gesture when he found himself at a loss.
Then, as if pushing the words out, he rumbled, “That would … be nice.”
Nice wasn’t precisely how she wanted a future tryst described, but she knew that she flustered him, and so couldn’t take offense at what words he was able to cobble together. He was letting her know, in his way, that he wanted her just as much. She took the victory for what it was, and so guided the conversation back to more stable ground.
“Did you get any sleep?”
He took the offered distraction. “Astrid spelled me, until Bennett arrived.”
“How did your friends find us?” she asked.
“Lesperance. He flew to Southampton—”
