Page 20 of Once Upon a Dark October

Chapter Twenty

I ’d only managed to get back into my chemise when the noise outside our door rose to a concerning volume. Where were my boots? Morrigan had buttoned her overcoat and was struggling to fasten her trousers.

“What is it? A fire?” I breathed in deep, stretched my vampiric senses. Blood and sweat, faint candle wax…mildly unpleasant body fluids. “I don’t smell any smoke.”

“Not a fire,” Morrigan answered in that slow, worrying tone of creeping realization that sent a tremor of cold panic through my veins. I hadn’t liked that tone—it never meant anything good. “I hear bat wings. And they don’t belong to our coven.”

I dashed toward the boots she hadn’t bothered with—hidden under the rest of my clothes—but she grabbed me by the wrist.

“Your clothes!”

But we were already halfway out the door, trapped in the threshold by the chaos filling the hallway, a perilous riptide. “There’s no time for that now. I won’t be needing them soon enough.”

We stepped into complete disarray the moment we left the room. Dozens of hearts in a dire sprint. I had to pull myself back from it so I could hear Morrigan, but the relentless pounding had already bashed against my skull. The hall was crowded—patrons and workers alike in various states of undress, pushing and shouting, fighting to escape. We tried to elbow our way through but the churning crush of bodies tossed us about. I tripped over a broken vase and extinguished candles littered across the rug, catching myself before the rabble could trample me.

Morrigan’s hand started slipping from mine. She locked her fingertips in my own, a fleeting glance thrown over the heads of the crowd.

“Minutes until midnight. We need to find Josephine.” Morrigan wrenched me from the path of several patrons running without care who would have flattened into the carpet anyone to get away. “You must get the ichor from her, otherwise we’ll never get it home.”

Whatever you do , Morrigan slipped into my thoughts, do not let your power to the surface here. Everyone knows who I am. They cannot yet know about you. We can never be sure of who’s lurking.

“But if you need my help…”

“It’s my job to keep you safe.” She notched her fingertips tighter, our grip on each other stretched to its limit. “Stay close to me.”

We have to get to the ground floor, she continued. It was easier to hear her in my thoughts, but my head was absolutely pounding . Heightened senses were a nightmare at a time like this. The rush of voices, the swell of beating hearts. High-pitched screaming. A howling peal of agony. The acrid odor of sweating bodies that weren’t Morrigan pressing into me.

It’d be a bit easier if you had your wings, wouldn’t it?

An older woman wrapped in a bedsheet knocked into my shoulder as she swept past. Morrigan and I were jostled apart.

We should’ve taken the service stairs …

Too late now, she groaned. This way—to the right, Elspeth. I’m over here.

Again, I tried to pull myself from the commotion around me and latch onto Morrigan’s pulse. A blast echoed from below; not the thump of blows landing or perhaps a brawl—though I heard that, too—but a small explosion. Then another. And another.

Josephine’s pumpkin seeds , I realized, brightening a little.

An errant elbow grazed my nose. With a yelp, I ducked between a vampire in a corset and bloomers and a mortal man struggling to button his trousers while moving. Never in my mortal life had I thought I’d be running about it nothing but a thin chemise, but at least here no one paid a second thought to propriety and bared skin.

There was a glimmer of Morrigan’s silver hair. She’d gotten further away from me and was trying to move against the crowd. A futile effort of careless limbs and swearing and bodies pushing deeper into the fray.

The sudden drumbeat in the air gave me pause. Screeching and chirping somewhere above, an inharmonious, horrible racket. Silhouettes of wings dashed against the walls. A swarm of bats swooped and circled, tangling themselves in hair, raking their claws across skin, chasing and diving.

The shrieking that ensued battered my aching head. People began swatting at the creatures with anything they could get their hands on. I dodged a swinging pillow, the wide arc of a heavy candelabra that nearly cuffed the side of my head.

“Elspeth!” I heard Morrigan shout.

The bats became shadows. The shadows then molded into vampires, fangs bared, eyes feral with bloodlust.

Morrigan, watch out! I yelled desperately.

But one of them grabbed her from behind, an arm thrown across her throat, the vampire’s long hair a flash of dark red as she and Morrigan grappled. My heart lunged into my throat once I lost sight of her .

Without thinking, I threw myself at the vampire’s coven-mate, shoving aside limbs and bodies as I went. I made myself a leaden weight, and we crashed into a side table, splintering it to pieces beneath us. She hissed inches from my face, blood-flecked spittle flying onto my skin. Her nails—long and polished, sharpened into points—scraped across my throat with a serpent’s strike.

Grunting, I drove the heel of my palm under her chin, trying in vain to force her head to the side. Messy, loose curls curtained her face, but she hissed through them as she shredded my exposed skin with her claws. She had monstrous sort of delight about her each time she scratched me open. I thrust upward once more, another attempt to twist her neck while she laughed.

Digging a knee into her stomach, I rolled to the side, but she got her hand around my bleeding throat. Squeezing tighter and tighter, the air became thin with each choked breath, my lungs seizing in a fight for the next—

The vampire gasped and went rigid as if turned to stone. I watched her grey eyes roll back into her head before she slumped beside me. I’d barely gotten the air into my lungs again when Morrigan grabbed my wrist, hauling me up from the broken table. Remnants of sorcery scorched the air with iron. She’d stopped the vampire’s heart dead.

“Come on.” She pulled me along. Her lapels and collar glistened from the blood flowing freely from her nose. Deep scratches—three lines—marked her left cheek and there were bloody welts on her knuckles, a bruise forming under her right eye. “I’d rather not get bludgeoned by a candlestick once I sprout wings.”

I’m the only one allowed to take a swing at you, then?

We made it to the staircase clogged by a horde of people. Morrigan kept a strangling gip on my fingers. Everyone froze as squeaking overtook us, shrill and chittering. I evaded a flailing arm wielding a shoe, only to have a bat soaring straight toward my face. I’d let go of Morrigan to cover my head, yelping, but the swarm was relentless. Pulling at my hair, weaving their claws and wings into the golden strands, yanking them into painful knots.

The chirping bats shaped themselves into another vampire, her nails tangled deep into my hair, biting my scalp. She wrenched my head back violently with a fistful to expose my neck.

Her body pressed into mine, I heard the dizzying beat of her heart, blood flowing hot and lightning-quick through her veins. The monster within me riled up, interested for a taste, hungry for her pain. Morrigan had warned against using sorcery. Yet I couldn’t stop once it slithered out of me, once I had a taste for it. Her pulse beat in my hand. I didn’t know what to do with it as the power reared back like a cresting wave, blooming into the fraught air.

Morrigan had made it look so easy; I couldn’t get much further with people colliding into us. We’d been shoved against the banister, careless shoulders and hips nudging us aside. The vampire slipped an arm around my waist, using my hair to tug me closer to her flared nostrils, her salivating fangs.

“I remember you,” she whispered across the long welts on my skin. “But not like this…”

Sheer panic made my sorcery flare anew, the bloodthirsty monster gouging into veins with abandon. The vampire’s fingers went slack, untangling painfully from locks of hair. Dark crimson stained her bottom teeth, a stream of it running down her chin. I didn’t know exactly what I’d done, but it had wounded her.

Elspeth, don’t! Morrigan was yelling into my mind.

A revolting crack of bones breaking somewhere inside her, and the vampire crumpled at my feet, clinging to the banister. Morrigan appeared on the step below me, fresh blood dripping from her nose. Her face pinched, she motioned with her fingers and the vampire gurgled on a mouthful of blood before tilting onto her side. Her heart had gone quiet, then completely still.

Wincing, Morrigan towed me down the stairs behind her. As soon as the sorcery dispelled from me, the scent of her flooded my senses, molten and sweet.

“What did I tell you?” she scolded as we reached the ground floor. The receiving desk had been abandoned. Through the front windows, a crowd of half-naked—or entirely naked—and sparsely clothed people had amassed on the cobblestones outside, confused and frightened. “It’s too risky to reveal yourself here. You must resist it. You’re lucky I still have enough strength in me to kill.”

We picked our way back to the parlor-tavern where we had left Gwen and Josephine, maneuvering around what was once the plush receiving room turned into a battlefield. Stuffing gaped from jagged holes in the furniture. The crystal remains of wine glasses and goblets pierced the bottom of my feet. Drapes tattered, askew on their hangings. Blood splattered across nearly everything, the gruesome patterns a chilling tale. I tried not to linger on the bodies left behind. Most of them were Sonia’s coven, but they’d claimed victims in their mad ambush—mortal and vampire alike.

Vampiric warfare was not for those with weak stomachs.

The odor of burned flesh almost knocked me sideways. A few of the bodies smoldered where they’d dropped, pale wisps of smoke rising from husks of charred flesh and protruding bones. I pointed out the trail Josephine’s pumpkin seeds had left behind to Morrigan. Blackened scorch marks ate into the rug. It seemed a couple had gone wayward, incinerating some of the curtains, blazing a hole through a chair cushion.

Morrigan grimaced as she stepped around a pile of ashes. It wasn’t the only one, I discovered, when we approached the parlor, where the ripped curtains were still being consumed by faint glowing embers. The edge of my chemise stirred pale grey ash into the air. It seemed to be too much destruction from a mere seed, but then perhaps I was underestimating its potency. A whimpering older gentleman shoved past us, a kerchief held to his nose and mouth, the collar of his shirt marred with red.

The battle had spilled into the parlor-tavern. Dark and lush as a séance room, the walls were draped in velvet red, the furnishings a deep scarlet of tufted velvet to match the cherry-hued wood. Josephine’s pumpkin seeds had left some of the drapes smoldering and dashed holes through overturned tables, pockmarking the soft rug with burns. A massive hearth still puffed out embers beside the wooden bar counter littered with broken bottles and glasses. Soot filtered down onto dying flames, bat wings sprawling into the dimming golden light.

Gwen and Josephine were in the thick of it, a handful of patrons and workers left to cower at the outskirts of the fight. A woman bleeding from her head had taken shelter behind a damaged settee and implored us with glassy eyes. There was a rabble of bats circling overhead, scavengers called by the scent of the dead.

“You think they would get the idea,” I heard Gwen saying through clenched teeth, “and stop coming through the stars-damned chimney.”

Gwen was wild-eyed, cackling as her fangs ripped a cavern into the throat of a vampire she’d taken to the floor. All that love pouring out of her in violence. The front of her dress was a canvas on which she savored her vengeance—bright red soaking into the once cheery fabric, gory fragments sticking to her bodice, her chin, the column of her neck.

She swiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Have any more of those pumpkin seeds?” Gwen glanced up, her tongue darting over her bottom lip. “I think I can get a clear shot from this distance.”

“Fresh out. I wasn’t expecting an ambush,” Josephine answered from beside her. Morrigan and I had slipped into the room, but our coven-mates were busy tracking the bats with their eyes. “Come on, you mangy beasts…”

“We won’t be much different soon enough,” Morrigan said.

“Lovely of you to join us,” Gwen quipped. “I see you both had about as much fun as we’ve had down here.”

“Jo, Elspeth’s going to carry the ichor home,” Morrigan said.

“Take it, take it.” It sounded as if she was happy to get rid of the burden. “I’m busy hunting.”

Morrigan nodded to me, then moved deeper into the vaulted room to flank Josephine. There must have been about thirty bats diving and wheeling overhead, their chirping resonant on the exposed coastal rock. The firelight exaggerated their shapes, their wingspans thrown onto the walls.

“Not very smart, are they?” Josephine asked. “At least we have that going for us.”

“Perhaps they haven’t gotten used to flying yet. They’ve taken a form of bats —not one, but several. Lots to manage,” Gwen offered. “A lot of them were new blood. Nothing but fodder, the poor wretches.”

“The one that caught me upstairs wasn’t,” I said. “She’s awfully bold to deplete her coven like this.”

I saw the edge of Josephine’s smirk. “Bet she wasn’t planning on it.”

Morrigan helped the young woman out from behind the settee and shooed her off. She left a trail of bloody footprints in her wake. Shadowing Josephine, I kept an eye on the roaming shadows as they began to converge. I had to grab the ichor holstered to her waist, but I was half-curious about whatever alchemical power simmered in her veins—it had been enough to maim Sonia, after all.

Carefully, I reached into the leather pouch without getting in Josephine’s way. The decanter’s glass was a block of ice in my hands; I thought for certain I’d find frost feathering the inside. The ichor was a loathsome, angry, hateful thing, rolling like a gale-tossed wave when I cradled it between my palms.

As soon as the shadows took form, Gwen pounced, a blur of pale red-gold and crimson. She’d already tackled one of them to the bloodstained carpet when Josephine and Morrigan lunged for the others. Josephine’s hands wove the air with the grace of a musician plucking notes from strings. The vampire stood bewildered, her head canted to the side, wearing a pompous grin.

An ethereal light filled the grey of Josephine’s eyes—golden and radiant, a swirl of sunlight, perhaps. I backed into a toppled armchair, mesmerized by it. The watery, squelching sounds of Gwen devouring her prey faded into the background. Morrigan reappeared at Josephine’s side, her chest heaving from the toll of sorcery, bleeding freely from her nose. She lifted the bottom of her tunic to staunch the flow as Josephine’s power rippled the air, a chord being struck.

The vampire leapt forward, but Josephine thrust out her palms. The smirk vanished from her arrogant mouth, dispatched by a quiver of fear. She held out her arms in front of her, breaths shuddering in and out, fingers shaking. As she pulled up her long blouse sleeves, I finally understood her sudden terror—a faint glow had started to wend through her veins, an inferno sparking from the inside, flickering to life, torching and consuming everything in its path.

Thick, dark grey smoke rose in curling plumes from her skin. Josephine’s fingers continue to thread the alchemy into her veins, light pouring from the vampire’s fingertips and nostrils and eye sockets—beams of daylight, golden and perfect as an autumn afternoon.

Her blood became radiant as the sun.

The warm rays reflected in Josephine’s eyes. The vampire clawed at her blouse, gouged her neck as if trying to put out the fire roasting her from the inside. Her smoldering flesh sloughed to the floor in raw, bloody pieces, the smell of it so unbearable that I clapped a hand to my mouth. Her screaming ricocheted off the high ceiling until the conflagration turned it hoarse, her peeling flesh blackened and exposed layer by layer. They, too, were consumed, each piece of her withering away into charred ash.

The clock on the mantlepiece began to chime toward midnight.

“Josephine,” Morrigan and Gwen warned.

“One more moment,” Josephine answered. “Can’t break it now.”

Gwen pointed an indignant finger at the clock. “We haven’t got another—”

With a grunt, Josephine swept her fingers in a half-circle before her, a last chord striking in harmony with the clock’s sixth chime. Whatever was left of the vampire—hollow and blackened and bloody, a shambling corpse lit from the inside—disintegrated, drifting to the floor in a mound of lumpy ashes.

My mouth was agape in horrified awe. An alchemist with sorcerer’s powers.

Morrigan swore when the clock struck twelve.

The midnight curse overtook my coven-mates as a tide would break upon the shoreline, their vampiric forms doused in shadow and ether. And then I heard screeching—not from the three of them, but echoing from the chimney. Soot fell in clumps, smothered the flames. Somewhere above my head, Morrigan let out a string of curses.

“Gwen?” A familiar voice called suddenly from a rustle of curtains. “Gwendolyn? I thought I heard you—”

Estella had pushed through the ruined curtains, her curls still in a frenzied tangle, her eyes muddled from broken sleep and residual terror.

“Estella,” Gwen cried, swooping lower. Estella watched her bat’s movements, her eyes round, mouth parted, half-wondrous and half-confused. “You mustn’t wait for me—leave, now! Go!”

Burgundy-red shadows converged from the bat’s shapes, hovering like fog, tendrils reaching. I shouted for Estella, the decanter hugged to my chest. Morrigan dove for her, but the shadows had swallowed her up, a swath of ichorous mist. Estella screamed and twisted her body against their bonds, pushing out her hands, shoving with knees and elbows. But the shadows had her. Her screaming was cut short, carried into the ether with an unsettling rumble of ominous magic. Gwen was screeching, beating the air where Estella had been standing moments before, the last wisps of wine-colored shadow melting away.

Estella was gone. After everything we’d done, Sonia’s coven had still found a way to take her from us. From Gwen.

More bats rushed in from the chimney, chittering and chirping, their wings leaving smudges of shadow in their wake. Gwen rushed at them—a daring assault of fangs and claws.

Morrigan’s wing mussed my hair. “Run,” she yelled. “Back upstairs. Hurry!”

“Upstairs? Why ?”

I dashed through burnt curtains into the receiving room, and Josephine shouted somewhere behind me that they would meet us at home, if she could pull Gwen from her murderous rampage.

“Can’t we just—”

“We need to draw them back outside.” Morrigan whirled impatiently around my head. “And we need the height.”

My eyes widened. “What for?”

“Come along.” She flew ahead of me, circling toward the stairs. “Don’t drop that ichor.”

The ominous bat noises creeping closer, their shadows encroaching at my heels, quickened my steps. I took the stairs two at a time, climbing past the second floor when Morrigan led me up the next staircase. We weren’t on the uppermost floor, but we were a considerable distance from the street below .

“You still haven’t told me what you’re—”

“Stand there in the middle of the hallway, facing that window.” She swooped to graze the ceiling, and I noticed her form grew larger with every pass she made over me. A sinking feeling gutted my insides. “Keep a tight hold on that decanter.”

A swath of moonlight cast its glow onto the floor through a high, circular window at the end of the hallway, the panes of glass like an old clock tower. My mouth opened then shut again while I tried to gather the words that had flown from my tongue. The back of my throat parched.

“Oh, stars above, Morrigan—please tell me you’re not going to do this—”

“Hold on.” Gusting air stirred against my cheek when she made a final pass. “If you can, cover your face. This won’t be gentle, but it’s the only way out.”

“Why is it always the hardest path that’s the last remaining for us?” I shouted back. “Morrigan, please, I don’t—don’t do this—I don’t like heights!”

“Then don’t look down,” she yelled. “I’ve had over a century to get used to them, it’s not so bad once you do.”

“You’re the one with giant wings!”

“I suppose it’s good you never succumbed to this curse if you don’t like flying,” she teased. “Hold tight to that, Ella—I mean it. If you drop it, Josephine will be furious after everything we’ve been through to get it.”

“As long as you promise you won’t drop me .”

The coven-swarm of terrible yawping filled the staircase.

“Time to go!”

Morrigan dove lower, her claws digging into the back of my chemise. My feet kicked out once she’d lifted me into the air, wheeling around the hall in a wide arc to gain speed. I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn’t bear it. The floor rushed under us and my stomach plummeted. I let out the scream buried in my chest as the window-glass met us in a dizzying collision, broken shards falling outward and catching pieces of moonlight on their descent. The window smashed easily around Morrigan’s outstretched wings.

We were still alive.

The wind howled in my ears, my stomach finally dropping out of me—or so it seemed. I’d forgotten to shield my face; I’d been too focused holding the decanter to my chest. Morrigan soared above me, shifting to accommodate my dangling weight. I’d never seen her like this before, never knew she could make her bat form so expansive. The wind glided along her silvery fur, moonlight gilded on the tips of her leathery wings. I kept my eyes on her because I couldn’t stomach looking down. Every time I made the attempt, the silhouette of Dreadmist—its spires and peaked roofs, twinkling pumpkin lights, and dark autumnal color—blurred in and out of focus.

We flew through patches of dense harbor fog rolling in off the sea. The cloudy bursts kissed my bare skin with misting cold. I tried not to fight the icy glass cradled against me, shifting the decanter from one palm to another once the biting chill became too much. Strange, how the demon’s blood was easier to center my attention, an almost welcome distraction from the ground getting farther away.

“A curse that I cannot even see the harbor from this great distance,” she said. “You should take it all in, Ella. This might be your only chance.”

“I’d rather not.”

I dared a glance over my shoulder, the telltale noise of wings—lots of them—riding currents of night air. Some were more shadow than beast, trails of pitch-black and burgundy blotting out the stars, weaving between fog.

“They’re going to overtake us!”

She gave an unhappy grunt, agitated. “Hold on tight.”

Soaring higher, Morrigan tried to evade the swarm with a hard beat of her wings, propelling us both upward. The decanter burned cold against my chest. Wind streamed through my hair, raw against my bare skin. Morrigan’s erratic flying wasn’t for weak constitutions, either. Her reeling turns were sharp, though she couldn’t swoop into a diving roll while carrying me. A hard bank to the left, perilous and too close to a barbed spire, sent my heart leaping. I watched as several of the bats exploded back into the night, gusts of shadow reeking of some fell sorcery.

I searched for Morrigan’s beady red eyes. “They’re retreating.”

“Not all of them,” Morrigan warned.

A bellowing, shrill call echoed so loud it might’ve woken the sleeping harbor far below. The rest of the bats rushed Morrigan first, a streak of mottled darkness speeding past me, ghosting strands of my hair, my billowing chemise. I screamed for her, but they were relentless—biting and clawing at Morrigan’s fur, clipping her gigantic wings like invasive pests. Morrigan’s claws loosened. I felt my chemise slip, dangling from her claws, the fabric splitting to threads.

My stomach did a violent somersault before I realized I’d fallen from Morrigan’s grasp. The scream that pounded against my chest got lodged in my throat. The decanter bounced in my hands. I watched it jump into the air for a frightening moment as I began my free-fall. Reaching with the tips of my fingers, I grabbed it back, cradling it into my embrace.

I supposed it wouldn’t matter if we both hit the ground.

My body fell into a tumbling dive. I squeezed my eyelids shut so I couldn’t see the harbor rushing ever closer, all those spires and rooftops awaiting to impale me. The scream finally dislodged itself from my throat. The ichor pitched fitfully into the freezing glass, drinking in my fear.

What are the chances a fledgling blood sorcerer might survive a fall from this height?

“Elspeth!” Morrigan’s voice was desperate. “I’m coming for you!”

Don’t look down .

Do not look down.

Whatever you do, don’t open your eyes—

The wind had lashed my face raw, my eyes watered. I blinked to clear my vision and saw one of my worst nightmares come to life—the spire of an administrative building, haloed in fog and moonlight, its bladed point headed straight for my guts.

If only I had a pair of wings of my own. Perhaps it was better that I couldn’t be trusted with them. I’d had immortality granted to me for barely beyond a week and already it was coming to an abrupt end.

The building’s winged gargoyles seemed to mock me from their rooftop perches. I stretched my fingers toward them, the ichor in my hand seemingly delighted at the numbing terror that coursed through my veins.

The back of my chemise constricted with such sudden force that I thought it might strangle me about the neck. Morrigan’s claws bunched into the fabric, nicking my skin. She pulled me up, an arm’s length away from the spire running me through. Relief drowned the fear in my veins and the ichor ceased its roiling tantrum.

Morrigan drew me closer to her enormous body. Scarlet matted her fur, patches missing here and there. The tip of her wing had been shredded. The other moved sluggishly, perhaps a bone broken in her fight. “Are you all right? I’d never be so careless with you—those damned shadows shook you loose. You’re safe now.”

“Now that I can breathe again,” I answered, my voice turned gravelly from the screaming. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll heal.”

We were high above Dreadmist’s knifepoint skyline again, which came as a surprising comfort. Whatever Morrigan had done, it had chased the rest of the coven back into their home.

Morrigan took us higher, above the shroud of fog. “I imagine it’s beautiful. Over a hundred years, thousands of nighttime flights across the beach, and I haven’t seen a stars-damned thing.”

“It is, when you’re not falling to your death toward it.”

“Describe it for me?”

I scoffed. “The horrifying free-fall?”

Morrigan laughed. “The harbor.” We made a wide turn, approaching the coast, and my stomach plunged toward the earth again. “Go on, Elspeth. Tell me what our home looks like from way up here.”

I swallowed thickly. “It’s dark.”

“I know you can do better than that. Use those new eyes.”

The bracing air from the coast filled my lungs. I relaxed somewhat—as much as I could while hanging so high up from a bat’s claws—when that familiar scent of home engulfed me.

And I opened my eyes again.

The shoreline was a smear of charcoal below. Gaslamps and candlelight glittered in the darkness, as if reflecting the stars concealed beyond the mists. I’d never seen the ocean look so vast before, so breathtaking and endless.

“ Oh ,” I gasped. “Oh, it’s wonderful, Morrigan. It’s like we’re soaring through a painting.”

Her laugh was soft, perhaps a little fatigued. “Details, Ella.” We careened over the beach, descending a little. The jolt riled my insides, my knuckles stark on the glass. “I can smell the sea. The brine. The saltwater. The damp sand.”

The wind combed through my hair, billowing behind me, long and dark gold. Perhaps flying wasn’t terrible, once you’d gotten used to the weightlessness. Falling was unpleasant, but this was…agreeable. Part of me longed to skim my hands over the waves, close enough that we just kissed the surface.

“The sea’s choppy tonight,” I told her. “The foam looks like lace upon the shore. It’s dramatic—the breaking waves, the spray on the rocks, the moon glow. There’s a ship on the horizon—great big sails, a lantern winking in the distance. I wonder what they’d think if we flew past? And the cliffs …I feel like I could touch the top.”

“See? Our promise of a romantic evening turned out all right in the end.”

I huffed a laugh, unsure if I’d agree, exactly. “Can we take the long way home?”