Page 28

Outside, in the cold, quiet night, she saw him a few paces ahead with his back to her.

“No, she’s in bed,” he was saying. “No, I really can’t wake her up so you and Mum can say good night.

” A pause. “Well, for one thing, that’s not fair to her.

It’s not her fault you didn’t get home in time to speak to her before bed.

For another, I’m not at the inn.” Another pause.

“Jesus, no, of course I didn’t leave her alone, what’s the matter with you? ”

There was another, much longer pause. Feeling like she ought not to be listening to this, Sera was about to quietly go back inside when Luke spoke again, sounding weary.

“Fine. We’ll see you then.”

He hung up. He put his phone and hands in his pockets, stared silently ahead for a minute, and then turned. He stopped, seeing her.

“Sorry.” Sera gave him a small, sheepish smile. “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. I just came out to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine.” His expression softened slightly. “Thanks.”

“I’m not sure I believe you, but I’m feeling magnanimous tonight, so I’ll let it go.”

He smiled a little, which was a pretty big victory as far as Sera was concerned. Stepping out of the path of the cold, biting wind, Luke drew nearer, looking down at her with a curious expression. “Where are your parents?”

“Right now? On a ship somewhere south of Argentina, I think. There’s really not much to say about them. They’ve never been proper parents to me, but we get along fine. We talk on the phone. I see them once or twice a year. I’m used to it.”

“You don’t mind?”

“No, I don’t think I do,” Sera said, truthfully. “Jasmine’s the one who matters to me.”

It was cold, and there was absolutely no reason to linger out here, but she found herself reluctant to move.

“The answer’s no,” Luke said, abruptly. She blinked at him in confusion.

“Your question from the other day. No, we didn’t think you were like Grey.

Nobody did. Most of us barely knew you, and some of us did think you thought you were better than the rest of us, but we could see even then that you weren’t like him.

You were never cruel. Not once. You could have been, and you’d have gotten away with it, but you never were. ”

Sera found it difficult to speak. Swallowing, she just nodded.

“That said, you should know I’m probably not the best person to ask that question,” Luke went on with a faint, rueful smile. “I did a lot of reading between the lines, but it’s not like anybody was actually telling me what they thought of you.”

“Why not? Didn’t you have friends?”

“I was…” He sighed. “I’ve been told I’m cold.”

“Luke, I’m sure that’s not—”

“It’s fine.” He looked away. “It was Verity who first called Albert the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz, but as soon as the other apprentices overheard her saying it, it caught on. They leaned into it. Poor, silly Gregory Chester became the Scarecrow. And I was the Tin Man.”

“The Tin —”

“No heart,” Luke explained.

Sera’s temper blazed. “They didn’t . Oh, the audacity .”

“It’s fine,” Luke said again.

“It’s not. But you do know the joke’s on them? Because the whole point of the book is the Tin Woodman thinks he doesn’t have a heart, but the whole time he’s actually the one with the most heart.”

His eyes met hers. There, in the glacier blue, between one blink and the next, she saw something raw and dark and heartbreakingly surprised. She couldn’t look away.

“I’m sorry,” Luke said at last. “I used to think a lot of things about you that weren’t fair. I was wrong.”

“No.” It wasn’t an easy thing to say, but she said it.

“No, you weren’t. Not totally. I did like the attention.

I did let the praise and the flattery go to my head.

Maybe I wasn’t like him then, but who knows what I’d have become if I’d stayed?

If I hadn’t brought Jasmine back, if I hadn’t lost my power and been exiled, I don’t know, maybe I would have become another Albert. ”

Luke shook his head. “I doubt that. If you were the sort of person who could have become another Albert, you would never have brought Jasmine back in the first place.”

“I didn’t know what I would lose.”

“Someone like Albert could never have cast the spell on the inn.”

Sera crossed her arms, cold fingers gripping the fabric of her chunky knitted sweater. “I was angry when I cast it.”

“That’s the whole point.” He took a step closer.

“In a moment of rage, that was the spell you cast. It wasn’t planned.

You weren’t careful. It just happened . And yet in spite of that, it didn’t hurt the people who’d made you so angry.

Your magic knew exactly who you were. That’s why your spell was a shield, not a sword. ”

She looked up at him, breath catching in her throat, wondering why this moment felt like something much, much bigger than it ought to.

A long, still, suspended moment. She captured it in pieces, saving each one.

Her heart, beating out of her chest, exposed.

Moonlight. Music from inside the pub. His hand, rising, the whisper of a thumb against her cheek, there and gone so quickly she would have thought she’d imagined it if it weren’t for the startled look in his eyes as if it had surprised him as much as it had her.

She retreated, biting her lip, pretending it was just another moment, the most ordinary of moments. “We should…”

“Go in?” He cleared his throat. “Right. Yes. We should.”

“We should,” Sera agreed.

“You said that already.”

“I did, yes.” Sera was glitching like obsolete technology. “Er, here’s the door. Good. I’m going.”

Really, the only thing she could say in her favour was that she managed not to trip over the threshold on her way back in.