The Darkest Midnight. R. A. Finley

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СКАЧАТЬ swayed, the gauzy strips of its costume fluttering gently. “Everything all right?”

      “I made a mess of the garage again.”

      “The door?” Abby got onto the step ladder, held out her hand for another fairy. Thia chose a brunette with lavender wings and tiny wire-frame glasses.

      “Survived.” She steadied the branch while Abby worked with the uppermost twigs. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, I really don’t. I’m never going to get this.”

      Abby stepped down, collapsed the ladder. Her unruly hair had slipped mostly free of its clip. With one hand, she swept the dark curls out of her face. “Nonsense. These things take time. And you’ve been given a shitload of power to deal with all at once. You can’t just expect to be thrown in the deep end of the pool one morning and swim laps by the end of the day.”

      “It’s been weeks. Six weeks, to be exact, and I can’t even lift a stupid garage door.”

      “But you haven’t made anything fly off the shelves here in at least a week.” Abby’s small smile held something Thia hoped wasn’t pity. It probably would be after her next words.

      “Not here, no.”

      Thia had been wrong. Alarm, not pity, dominated Abby’s expression. “Where?”

      “This morning. The garage.” Thia performed her best “no big deal” shrug. “That’s when I lost control of the door. Last night it was the kitchen. I’m not trying stuff at home anymore.” She wadded up the tissue that the fairies had been wrapped in and chucked it into the wastebasket under the counter. “Not by myself, anyway.”

      “I’ve got time after work tonight. How about we go to dinner, do some exercises after?”

      It was an offer Thia knew she should take. But knowing and wanting were two different things. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

      “If you’re worried about damage, we could do it at my place. There’s not much to break in the drying shed.”

      Maybe not much property, but what about people? They could be broken just as easily. Sweat dampened her palms. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

      “Come on, it’ll be fun.” Abby took up the stepladder in both hands and, on her way by, playfully jostled her elbow into Thia. “I’ll see if Kendra can come, make it a night out. There’s no way anything can go wrong with both of us there with you. Come on.” Her face lost its smile. “You need to do this. It won’t be safe for you until you can—”

      “—control the power, I know. Believe me, I know. It won’t be safe for any of us.” Because a powerful, vindictive woman wouldn’t hesitate to use Thia’s love for her friends against her.

      That night in the Ring, Thia had killed Cassie’s brother and contributed to the death of Cassie’s father. It didn’t matter that the former had been unintentional or that neither would have happened if the man hadn’t set the entire chain of events in motion.

      Cassie’s final words to Thia had been of revenge, and the inevitability of that threat had hung over her head ever since. Over all their heads, really.

      “It’ll be okay,” Abby said quietly and then carried the ladder away.

      At the jingle of the sleigh bells hung on the main door, Thia turned with a practiced smile. Not too exuberant, or the prospective customer could be put on edge. No one wanted a pushy salesperson, and certainly not before ten in the morning.

      A vaguely familiar woman smiled in return and drifted to the right of the door, toward the table of boxed holiday cards. With only three days left before Solstice and Christmas only a few days after that, she was cutting things rather close.

      Thia’s quick survey of the sales floor showed plenty of available clerks should the handful of browsers need help. She knelt down, disappearing from view, to straighten out the jumble of gift boxes and wrapping supplies. Nearly everyone wanted things gift-wrapped lately. And why not? The season was stressful enough without the added pressure of trying to tie a perfect bow.

      They were almost out of small handle-bags. She’d need to get on that before the lunchtime rush. A stack of folding boxes insisted on sliding every which way, and she searched in vain for something to serve as a prop.

      The back of her neck tingled.

      A throat cleared, the sound masculine and originating above her on the other side of the counter. More tentative than impatient. She arranged another smile and stood.

      She found herself looking at the base of a man’s neck where it rose from the collar of a beige and blue checkered shirt. She adjusted her gaze upward to his face. He was taller than expected somehow. Different in other ways, too, although why she’d formed any expectations at all in those few seconds, she couldn’t say.

      He was of middle age and on the tall side of average (as she’d already noted) with clean-shaven, pleasant features and a reserved, almost tense expression. His blond hair was neatly trimmed. Everything about him was neat, she realized, from the line of his brown corduroy jacket to the drape of his wool scarf.

      The tortoise-shell frames of his glasses completed the image and made her think of academia. The slight tint of the lenses obscured his eyes a bit, but his irises were most definitely brown.

      Her stomach jittered and she felt flushed.

      Oh, goodness. At thirty-two she knew all too well the symptoms of acute attraction. She also knew how rare such a thing was for her. Nerves and confusions had her turning up the brightness of her smile. It felt forced. Overdone, but it was too late to dial it back now. “May I help you?

      “Hello,” he said. And then made a visible effort to relax. His smile was charmingly shy. “Hi.”

      She felt a surge of delight that was completely out of scale for the situation, and took it as a positive sign. Maybe getting over Cormac wouldn’t be as hard as she’d feared.

      “Hi,” she said.

      And they proceeded to stare at one another like fools.

      He must have realized it was his turn. “I was hoping you—that is, wondering if you could help me.”

      “Yes,” Thia said, amused. “Of course.”

      He cringed. “You already asked me that.”

      “I did.”

      His laugh—a nearly soundless huff of breath—caught her unprepared. So astonishingly familiar.

      But his eyes were brown, not blue. Cormac might be able to make himself into anyone in the world thanks to spells called glamours, but he couldn’t change the color of his eyes. She would know them anywhere. Wouldn’t she?

      “I need a gift for my…uh…friend,” this man who was not Cormac said. “A Christmas gift. I’m new in town, and this shop was recommended.”

      “Welcome to Granite Springs.”

      “Thank you.”

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