“Oh, no.” He chuckled. “You hock big, juicy loogies in the faces of all those High Society dames, just like Maud.”
The comparison warmed me with an odd sort of pride. Maud had been her own woman, and that’s what I wanted to be, though I had no doubt the Grande Dame would attempt to thwart my independence at every turn, seeing as how I owed it to her in the first place.
“You like that in a girlfriend?” I was only half serious. “Are you also a fan of grasshoppers and llamas?”
“Spitting doesn’t bother me.” His lips curled when he said it, and my cheeks exploded in a blast of mortification at what he implied. He lapped up my embarrassment for several beats before squeezing my hand where it rested over his heart. He looked on me like I was sand gliding through his fingers. “I’m all in, Grier.” Gravel churned in his voice. “For as long as it lasts.”
With neither of us ever having been in a serious relationship, I hadn’t expected a romance with Boaz to be anything less than pistols at dawn, aimed at the heart, but his fatalistic outlook blew me away. The heiress I once was, the one well aware I might be called upon to marry for position or wealth or power, appreciated him giving me this time with him no strings attached. But the girl who had walked out of Atramentous with no title, no money, no future, wanted to give her word that she would be his for as long as he wanted her.
After all, the odds were good he would tire of me long before I was ready to give up on him. History was nothing if not repetitive. “Are you available?”
“For you?” His lips brushed the shell of my ear. “I’m wide open.”
There was zero chance I could resist asking with that lead-in. “For everyone else?”
“There is no one else.”
Eyes crushed shut against reality, I pressed my face into his chest and sank into him, willing myself to believe this was real.
I’m not dreaming, not dreaming, not dreaming. It was still so hard to be sure. Please, never wake me.
“I’ll be off the grid for the next twenty-four hours.” He tugged on my ear with his teeth. “Call me after?”
“Maybe.” The sting ignited a path leading straight to my core. “Maybe not.”
“Don’t sass me, Squirt.” His smile pressed into my skin. “I’m trying to be good here.”
I let my right arm dangle at my side, and my fingertips traced the seam of his jeans. “Define good.”
“Good means walking away while I still can, not throwing you over my shoulder and climbing up to your bedroom. Good means knowing my limits and refusing to let a little brat like you push me past them. Good means doing my job. Not holing up with you for as many days as we can go without needing groceries.”
“Who needs groceries?” Not I. Not him either. “That’s why takeout was invented.”
“Please,” he groaned against my throat. “Let me do this right for once in my life.”
“Okay.” I brought my arm up again, held him as tight as I could for as long as he let me, but his body was fighting his noble intentions. The hard length of him pressed against my soft stomach, and I eased back, more to allow him his honor than to preserve mine. “Be safe out there, Elite.” I hooked my finger through his belt loop and gave him a hard tug. “Come home in one piece or else.”
“I always come home, if not all in one piece.” Turning his attention on Woolly, he smoothed his palm down the wooden siding beneath the glowing porch light. “Take care of our girl until I get back, okay?”
The bulb flared in bright agreement. She was, as ever, his humble and eager servant.
Boaz ambled over to the garage, and I forced myself to stop watching. I hated it would be a week before I saw him again. Already tonight felt spun from dreams instead of memories.
I lingered on the porch, the churros cooling in my arms, and reconsidered my plan to share the bounty with Amelie. Following Boaz home, even if I technically beat him there, smacked of clingy girlfriend vibes, and it’s not like Amelie would want me to gush about the moves her brother put on me. Remembering the sketchbook waiting on the coffee table, I decided to share the treats with a different sort of friend. Sugar in exchange for questions about Cletus.
I passed through the living room, scooped up the sketchbook and tucked it under my arm. Remembering the avowal, I picked that up too. I paused to rub Keet’s earholes while he hung upside down with a single wing extended. “You’re such a little weirdo.”
He blinked one red eye at me then returned to his bat impersonation. Leaving him to practice his echo location, or whatever undead parakeets imagined while pretending to be something they were not, I exited the house through the back and entered the garden.
Cold fingers closed over my shoulder as my toes brushed grass.
“Hey, Cletus.” I waited for him to unclamp me, but he held tight. “What’s wrong now?”
Maybe the wraith really was broken.
“Let her go,” a dark voice purred from the shadows. “I won’t harm her. Promise.”
Dread, cold and sharp, turned to icy perspiration down my spine. “Who are you?”
Cletus, who was not the trusting sort, released me then coalesced before me, an undulating shield of malevolence.
“Grier Woolworth.” The man savored my name the way I had that first bite of caramel-filled dough.
“Who are you?” I demanded again over Cletus’s shoulder. “Why are you here?”
“Call me Ambrose.” His laughter serrated my ears, two bright stars honing their edges against one another. “My reasons and my purpose are my own. I do not answer to you, little goddess, and you would be wise to remember that.”
Cletus bumped against me, ushering me back up the steps onto the safety of the porch. His bony fingers lengthened to vicious blades he clacked together in warning, but the man kept circling, a shark scenting bloodied waters.
For a single heartbeat, through the tatters of Cletus’s cloak, I glimpsed him.
His skin was as pale as the first full moon in winter, his hair a ravaging flame around his head. His lips were so blue they were almost violet, his eyes full of shadows so deep no light had hope of penetrating them. Mist swirled around his ankles, black tendrils that resembled a wraith’s tattered cloak. Having that emptiness gaze back with calm detachment turned my knees to water.
He looked more like the stories I’d heard of ethereal fae princes, as sharp as razors and as lovely as death, than anything born of this world. He twitched his berry lips, and my heart gave a painful lurch.
Behind me, Woolly rang her doorbell in panicked bursts. I glanced over my shoulder as she waved her door back and forth in a hurrying gesture. Gathering my courage around me, I turned from Ambrose and ran. I didn’t stop until the wards snapped into place on my heels.
Hands shaking, I dialed Boaz and got dumped straight to voicemail. I queued up Linus next. No answer. Amelie left me hanging too. I jogged up the stairs and peered out my bedroom window. Ambrose stood on the lawn, his hands shoved into his pockets, head thrown back to see me better, the Romeo to my Juliet. He was electric in the night, alive in the way dreams are before you wake.
And he was wearing a French blue dress shirt.
Nine
Today the nightmare wasn’t a problem. I never fell asleep. I kept seeing Ambrose when I closed my eyes.
Smoothing my thumb over my phone’s screen, I scrolled through its list of unanswered texts. Amelie had finally replied. Turned out, she had been taking an exam with her phone muted. She hadn’t seen my message until after she left campus. Now that the immediate danger had passed, I wasn’t in a rush to call her over knowing she would have to cross the yard—and Ambrose—to reach me. Boaz was within his twenty-four-hour incommunicado period, so no help there. And Linus...
Right now, I wasn’t sure what to make of the shirt or the resemblance.
“Of all the gardens in all of the backyards in all of Savannah…” Ambrose walked into mine.
Woolly sighed her agreement through the floor registers.