But the desirous dip in my tone does not comfort her.
“Gah!” she blurts, wrenching to the side as I approach. She crisscrosses her arms until gripping her opposite shoulders and visibly shivering. “Please, Bastien. Please. Can’t you just drop it? You…this… Being so nice isn’t helping shit at all, okay?”
“Ah.” It is the verbal version of how I brutally halt myself. “Well, then. My humble apologies for annoying you with my nice, Mademoiselle Tavish. But perhaps if I had some explanation to be less nice—”
“Seriously?” She whips back around. “Oh, that’s such a mature recipe to follow. Hold on, I’ve got to make sure I post all this. Hashtag wokeandwonderfulguy. How does that one work for you?”
“What works for me is helping you. If hashing is required for that, then give me a sharp knife and point me to the sideboard. But love of Christ, let me into the kitchen first. To me, that is a mature recipe.”
She opens her mouth as if a ready rebuttal is already there, but not a sound spills out. She remains there, her back against the wall, visibly raw but tough—just like a sideboard full of uncut vegetables. I am just as stoic now. Out of ideas about wrestling her for the big blade. I cannot help without knowing where to dig it in first.
Our impasse continues, silent and inelegant. I have nearly resigned myself to walking away without expiation when she inhales and then exhales with ponderous intent. Her arms fall to her sides. She flattens them to the wall.
“I’m…sorry,” she mutters. “And I promise that’s sincere. I’m just facing a dilemma that’s new for me. There are lots of weird feelings because of it. But if anyone has a right to know about it, that’d be you.”
“Me? Why?” I let my own hands drop, though it is impossible to keep them idle. With measured purpose, I flex my fingers in and out. “To know about what?”
At once, my flexings are not so steady and slow. It is not comfortable to witness the creep of tighter tension along her slim shoulders.
“Drue went to get me…a morning-after pill. That’s what’s in the white bag.”
I honor her sincerity with my own. Admittedly, my confusion is not difficult to summon. “Assume I am from the eighteenth century and know naught of what you speak of. A pill? You mean for medicinal purposes? The morning after what?”
She straightens her stance. Visibly pulls in another breath. “After having…relations…with a man and not taking precautions about it.”
My hands go limp. I start to regret my persistence. More than I want to.
“And this pill is a precaution…after the fact?”
“In basic terms, yes.”
“So it terminates anything that has begun to live inside you?”
“No.” She is flustered again, her face in conflict. And damn it, I have never been happier to observe the emotions. “I mean, not usually.”
“Not usually? What about the unusual times, then?”
“Don’t you think that this—us, whatever the hell this is—checks enough of the boxes for unusual already?” She lifts her arms and splays her fingers. “Eventually, we’ll get you back to the wardrobe. Do you really want to be climbing back inside that thing, wondering if you’ve left a child behind? Or technically…ahead. Shit. Where’s the user’s manual when a girl needs one?”
Only now do I realize that I have stomped sweaty footprints onto the floor between the kitchen and front window. I halt them with a pair of loud squeaks and make more noise when pivoting back around. My posture is already rigid. I impale the woman with a strict thrust of my glower. “Do you think, for even a moment, that I would crawl back into that cabinet if there is an inkling you are with child?”
As soon as I finish, I nod with satisfaction. That should be fucking enough of that. End of discussion.
But it is the end of nothing.
Raegan’s chest pumps with agitated air. Her nostrils flare.
“Let’s go again with that whole guy-who-knows-nothing-about-this-century theory,” she snaps. “Because in this case, it’s a good one. Because in this day and age, even if we can skirt the rules of your gypsy friend’s spell, this is a lose-lose proposition.”
Thankfully, I am already stopped in my tracks. Still, I sway as if she has flung open a window and let the rain pummel me.
“My gypsy fr—” More figurative rain now, drenching my mind in icy sheets of. “Are you referring to…Kavia?” I narrow my stare. “How do you know that about her, Rayonnement?”
That detail that nobody in our family ever speaks of…inside or out of Château De Leon…
As more wild conjectures daunt my mind, the woman slams hands to the graceful curves of her hips. “You remember the part about us figuring out how Max got here? And then stayed without becoming two-hundred-year-old ashes?”
“Oui.” I mean to state it but barely croak it. The conjectures have turned fiercer than I think. “Mon dieu.”
Fiercer…to the point of agony. Clear, sharp, shards of it all.
I have cheated the universe. Fucked over history. Eviscerated fate itself.
By the laws of time, I should be naught but a pile of bone and dust in the De Leon family crypt now. To avoid that, providence has certainly demanded a specific tariff.
A price attached to a gypsy spell.
Kavia’s gypsy spell.
The toll that she never had time to impart. The instructions I still have not heard.
I scrub a hand down my face as the realization sinks in. As my memory fills with the last few moments that I saw Kavia and Carl, cut short because the revolutionaries were closing in on our hiding space.
Good. Very good, my boy! Now there is only one more thing to remember…
“I never heard it.” My admission is barely a rasp on the thick air. “The conditions of the spell,” I explain. “Kavia never had the chance to tell me. There was a mob. They were after my life—”
“You don’t say.”
Her comment brings some needed levity, as well as a moment to catch my breath. Revision: to snap up whatever air my lungs will allow in. They are as constrained as the rest of me, braced in agonized battle against the memories that keep tumbling on me. But I accept the paltry oxygen as a blessing. It helps me to blurt out the rest.
“They wanted to kill me. But instead, they slayed Magique.”
RAEGAN
“Wh-What?”
I’m shocked I’m able to get that much out. As my mind absorbs the truth of his confession, it surrenders its hold on other parts of reality. The room is rotating. My head spins in the other direction.
They slayed Magique.
What the hell do I do with that?
Bastien loves her. And he’s supposed to get back to the mystical-magical wardrobe, hop back in, and return to her. Then he’ll still be alive, and I’ll be back to normal. That was the reason for making Drue go out in the storm, right? The reason I talked myself out of the ridiculous baby-mama fantasy. Normal is good.
Okay, so it’s…fine.
But fine works too. It’s workable. Predictable. A stable safety net, giving me freedom to get back to work and create for my clients. The work I love, despite the insecurity that’s been a tiny roadblock lately. But just a small one. It’ll pass…