And Avery smiled, so bright and guileless that Laurence’s heart started beating a little faster.
The next few days were the easiest he had ever spent. The rain settled in, and they took that as an excuse not to leave the house and, some mornings, not to leave their bed. It was a week of shameless indulgence. Laurence loved it all, loved giving his body up to another’s touch, loved the way he could bring Avery to the edge of dissolution time after time, loved that this was all happening with a near stranger, that neither of them was required to worry about consequences or commitments.
But day by day, the Yule log in the hearth burned smaller.
Avery’s touches lingered sometimes, and there were moments when his gaze grew wistful. He took his time in saying anything, though. When he did, it was not quite what Laurence had expected.
“It’s Twelfth Night.”
“Yes?” A whole sack of chestnuts had shown up in the pantry that morning, and Laurence was doing his best to roast them over the fire. He looked up at that, though, to where Avery was sprawled out in his usual chair. “Good Lord, have I really been here less than a fortnight? It feels like much longer.”
“You could stay.” Avery sounded very careful.
Laurence considered it wistfully for a moment. In the end, though, he knew better than to think he could hide from the world forever. “I have business affairs to see to, and I still need to find a job. I’ve got a bit of a pension and some money put away, but it won’t keep me indefinitely.”
“Laurence,” Avery said meaningfully. Then, when Laurence just blinked at him, he added with impatience, “I have magic. What else do we need?”
Laurence sighed. It was a lovely fantasy, but there were too many dangers. “And when someone notices us both living here and starts to ask questions? Or did you plan to use your magic to hide from them too? From the whole world? This has been wonderful, but you know it can’t last.”
“Yes, I know that.” That faraway look had settled on Avery’s face again.
Laurence patted his ankle. “It’s been the best Christmas I’ve ever spent. But it can’t always be Christmas.”
Avery let out a hollow laugh.
“We can still see each other,” Laurence said, though he knew it would be better to make a clean break of it. Could even Avery keep magic alive in the glare and roar of the modern world? “If you’re ever in town, or I’m ever down here, we—”
“Stay,” Avery said again.
Laurence didn’t answer, but he saw the bitter disappointment on Avery’s face and felt its echo in his own heart. It was foolish. He’d only known the man for twelve days. Once he was back in the real world, all this would fade away and he’d probably feel silly remembering it. There was no real reason to have regrets.
It cast a pall on the evening, though. The chestnuts, once roasted, seemed to have little flavor, and Avery was subdued and distant. Laurence was surprised when the other man suddenly rose to his feet, holding out his hand. “Come to bed. Please.”
It was even more tender than the first time, and Laurence wasn’t surprised when he looked down to see Avery’s eyes shining, not with light and fire, but with tears.
“Don’t,” he said, reaching down to wipe the tears away, even as he rocked into Avery, their bodies in perfect harmony even if their hearts were not.
“Then stay,” Avery murmured.
“I can’t,” Laurence said, not sure who he was trying to convince.
He went to sleep that night, as he had every night since the New Year, wrapped in Avery’s warm embrace, but tonight regret made his chest feel tight.
AND WHEN he woke the next morning, he was alone in the bed and the cottage was cold.
More than simply cold, he realized as soon as he sat up. The warm blankets that had covered them last night were still there, though they were newly threadbare, but everything else had changed. The rag rug on the floor was gray with dust. Cobwebs hung from the corners of the room and in the cold fireplace, where a warm fire had crackled the night before. The glass in the window was broken, and the cold wind that blew in made Laurence swear and scramble hurriedly into the clothes he had discarded on the floor last night.
“Avery?” Laurence called. “Avery!”
No reply came, and Laurence left the room to search for him.
There were broken floorboards on the landing, and dry leaves moldering below the shattered window over the stairs. He found his kit bag in the room he had first slept in, but the bed there was a rotting mattress on a splintered frame and the window was gone completely. Arms of ivy reached in through the space where it had been, bare and dark in this season. A broken basin sat on a dirty table by the bed.
What the hell was going on? Had Avery’s magic been the only thing making the cottage habitable? And if so, what had happened to the spell, and where the hell was Avery?
Downstairs was worse. The larder roof was gone, and there was no food left at all—nothing but an abandoned mouse’s nest below the bottom shelf. The stove was cold and streaked with rust. The fireplace where he had roasted chestnuts the night before was nothing but a broken grate and a blocked flue. He crouched down to stir the ashes and found a scrap of blackened ribbon, but the Yule log itself had finally crumbled to nothing.
Twelve nights and twelve days it will burn, Avery had said, and when it is done, so is this Christmastide, and we must wait for all to begin again.
“Avery!” Where was he? Had something happened to him?
The hallway was full of dead leaves, and the front door hung loose on its hinges, rotted away at the bottom.
“God damn it! Avery, where the hell are you?”
But no matter where he looked or how hard Laurence searched, Avery was not there.
Chapter Five
BY MIDMORNING the snow had begun again, and Laurence was reluctantly forced to admit that he would find neither food, shelter, nor his lover here. With no idea what else to do, he searched through the ruined cottage until he had found all his belongings, hefted his kit bag back onto his shoulder, and made his way slowly back to the road. From there, only the roof of the cottage showed over the holly bushes, tiles missing that had been intact just yesterday.
Already it seemed hard to believe that he had lived twelve joyful nights below that roof. He lingered on the road, though, even as the snow settled on his shoulders and soaked into the wool of his greatcoat.
Then, from the heart of a copse, he heard a bird sing—not the robin, but the steady fluting call of a thrush, a wild thing living in a place free from men.
That was enough to spur him into action, and he started downhill, concentrating grimly on his direction.
It was surprisingly easy to find the station, and there was a train due. He bought his ticket, went to the waiting room, warmed his hands over the brazier, and felt normality settle heavily over him. Standing there, with the snow falling, he suddenly recalled another day, long ago, in weather as far from this as could be imagined, sitting on the veranda of his parents’ bungalow in Calcutta and puzzling over a book of British fairy tales sent by a well-meaning great-aunt. They had made no sense to him then, when the Ganges was more familiar to him than the Thames, but a forgotten fragment had him hurrying to check the date stamped on his ticket.
Still 1947. He had not lost years to fairy mischief.
But what had Avery lost?
Had Avery been real?
Yes, Laurence decided. Yes, he had. Laurence had spent twelve nights under his roof, and since he was neither frostbitten nor starving, he was inclined to think those nights had been real.
So what the hell had happened last night?