I sat there for a moment, biting my lip and wondering what Louis-Cesare had said to Claire. I shouldn’t have left the two of them alone together; I knew I shouldn’t. But I’d been exhausted and freaked out, and I’d assumed he was just going to decline the soup, since I wasn’t awake to eat it. But the question was, how had he declined it? Because Claire had afterward felt the need to do my laundry, and that was never a good sign.
Claire had a problem with vampires, a relic of a time when she was the unwilling guest of my mad, bad, and very dangerous-to-know late uncle Vlad. Which wasn’t surprising: most mages felt the same, even if it wasn’t PC to say so, and with far less reason than Claire had. But it was a bitch when you happened to be dating one of the aforementioned bloodsuckers, who wasn’t anything like Vlad—seriously, we’re talking practically a different species here—but try telling Claire that.
I knew because I had. Which had prompted a begrudging invitation so that two of the most important people in my life could get to know each other. Only that . . . hadn’t gone so well.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner had nothing on her and Louis-Cesare, politely savaging each other over homemade potpie.
Pie.
My stomach grumbled angrily as I remembered flaky crust and Guinness-marinated beefy filling and tender carrots and plump potatoes swimming in the gravy of the gods, studded with onions and little green peas . . .
I quickly pulled on a freshly washed tee and jeans and headed out.
Of course, that required edging around Ymsi, who was still blocking the door, and didn’t seem to understand that I wanted him to move. And the serious shoving I was doing probably felt like the wafting of a feather to someone with hide like a stegosaurus. A heavy stegosaurus, I added mentally, grunting and groaning and finally managing to push my way past.
And then stopped and stared, but not at Ymsi. At the hall beyond him. Which was . . . different.
“Did somebody die?” I asked, but only got those weird crunching noises back.
I stared some more, my eyes trying to figure out what, exactly, they were seeing.
At first, it just looked like every flower in the garden had been squashed into my hall for some reason. Which wasn’t that odd, since trolls have a sincere appreciation for beauty and a love of growing things. Sven, the strawberry blond twin, was currently consumed by the warrior arts, practicing regularly with the Light Fey contingent in the backyard, who Claire’s relatives had sent to guard her. But Ymsi didn’t seem interested in learning how to kill things; he had all but taken over Claire’s already-sizeable garden, adding a whole section just for flowers.
He often brought me the fruit of his labors stuffed into mason jars or old coffee tins, to brighten up my bedside table. But that’s not what he’d done here. Or, no, I thought, my concern level ramping up a few dozen notches. Not him. Because Ymsi might be talented, but he hadn’t managed this.
“Pretty,” Ymsi said, stealing a glance at me.
I nodded. That was one word for it. Of course, I could think of a few others.
Because these flowers weren’t in jars or vases or cans. They weren’t even piled in heaps on the floor. They were growing out of the floor—and the walls, and the ceiling.
Especially the ceiling, I thought, staring upward, where great swags of cherry blossoms festooned the old hardwood planks, dipping low enough to brush my head. Some were on new-growth branches that crisscrossed over the plaster; some came straight out of the old, dusty, been-dead-for-a-century-or-so-now boards. And they were thick, like spring on the National Mall, all squeezed into the area by the stairs, just garlands of them, massing overhead and drooping down the walls—where they could find room. Because the walls were already laden with some kind of growth of their own, and what the hell was that?
I looked closer, because it looked like someone had installed moving wallpaper. Bright green moving wallpaper. Which was busy thrusting out little pods that burst open to spew something at us every few—
Oh. I figured it out when I noticed what Ymsi was up to. Because he had a basket in his lap, and some papery brown things cracking in his fist, and was busily doing what trolls did best. Only, this time, the fat green clusters of pecan pods were raining down nutty goodness faster than he could eat it.
Which was pretty damned fast.
Although, in fairness to Ymsi, he was also being besieged by other crops growing up from the floor. The parquet floor, I realized, blinking. Because the ceiling was century-old cherrywood, the house having been built back before such things were scarce, and the walls were—of course—pecan. But the floor was a scuffed old parquet that I’d never paid much attention to, like to wonder what woods, exactly, had made it up.
Magnolia, oak, and apple, I thought, taking in the huge, white, waxy blooms, the tiny brown acorns, and the rampant pink blossoms that made it look like the floor near the stairs was growing a crazy carpet. One that still followed the zigzag pattern faithfully. Well, except for where Ymsi had harvested parts of it, with the half of his basket that wasn’t stuffed with pecans overflowing with the apples that kept bubbling up from the chaos, because the whole growth thing appeared to be set on fast-forward.
“Well, shit,” I said.
Ymsi gave me a commiserating look, and proffered an apple.
“Thanks.”
I took a bite.
It was good.
Of course it was.
I started wondering if I could fit through the tiny round window at the end of the hall, when Ymsi thwarted my escape plans by picking me up and depositing me in front of the stairs. Where a cascade of apples he couldn’t reach had overflowed the floor design and were bump, bump, bumping down the steps alongside my feet. And where the pecan pods hung from actual branches, brushing my head as their produce erupted at me, like brown rain, and then rolled everywhere.
I somehow got downstairs without breaking my neck, and peered inside the kitchen door.
Yep.
That’s what I’d thought.
“Dory! You’re up!”
I was also halfway turned around and headed for the front door, but the desperation in Claire’s voice stopped me. Because her housekeeping frenzy wasn’t, as I’d supposed, due to irritation at Louis-Cesare, but to something else entirely. Something worse.
Something sitting at the kitchen table, perched on a stool with a cutting board in front of him, holding out a finger. “Dorina!” The lilting voice made my name sound like a cascade of bells. “Come and see. I am wounded.”
It was said with all the panache of a dying hero announcing a mortal blow.
I sighed and turned back around. “Hello, Caedmon.”
“Come,” he demanded. “Kiss it better.” He waggled the supposedly injured digit at me.
I sighed again and walked into the kitchen.
Most women would have been happy to kiss it, or anything else Caedmon chose to name. He was Claire’s soon-to-be father-in-law, but he didn’t look it. I don’t know how to adequately describe how he did look, because there’s simply no practical equivalent. We’re talking seven feet of finely muscled leanness; hair like actual sunlight, as in it glowed from within; eyes like genuine emeralds, deep green and glinting with an odd mix of wit and wisdom; and a face that would have been literally stunning if it wasn’t currently pouting like a child.
Or maybe not a child, I thought, as one side of those sculpted lips edged upward, barely a fraction of an inch. And yet miraculously changed the expression from sass to seduction. He waggled the finger at me again.
“Healing’s not really my specialty,” I told him, leaning against the table. “I’d only hurt it more.”
The not-smile edged up another tenth of an inch. “How much more?”
He sounded intrigued.
“Let me see your knife.”