“I really do get it, you know.” She shook her head, a little wry. “I know what it’s like to want too many things at once. A very familiar mood, you might say.”
“You should be working at Tomes, Lilah,” I blurted out, with a sudden pressing urgency. “I mean it. Whether I stay or leave, you deserve to have at least that much go to you.”
“I’d like that.” The corners of her lips quirked up almost shyly, her glossy curls flicking in the wind. She put up a hand to comb them back from her face before meeting my eyes again. “Maybe . . . you could put in a word for me with Uncle James? He could use the help, but you know what he’s like. Always saving a spot for the apple of his eye. If you really mean it, Emmy, if you’re going to let me have Tomes . . . he’ll need your permission. To feel like he’s not stepping on your toes, giving you another reason to leave.”
“Then I’ll make sure he knows he has my blessing,” I said, reaching for her hand on impulse. “Okay? I know I haven’t exactly been generous with you in the past, and maybe . . . no, definitely that’s my bad. But I really do want this for you.”
She smiled more fully, giving my hand an answering little squeeze. We sat like that for a few minutes, hand in hand, basking in the magic gusting off the lake. Two Harlows atop their hill.
“If you do stay,” Delilah said eventually, breaking our companionable silence, “can I just say I hope it’s not only because of the communion? I hope you stay because you really love it here, and you can’t imagine putting down roots anywhere else. Because that’s what this town deserves, Emmy. And those of us who live here, too.”
* * *
As Linden and I stepped into Tintagel’s ornate ballroom—its arched windows paned with intricate stained glass, the soaring cathedral ceiling painted with murals of heraldic beasts and mist-shrouded isles, a marble starburst mosaic flecked with gold underfoot—I didn’t spot Talia in the dense crowd of revelers.
Distinctive as she was, she’d be harder to recognize tonight; falling as it always did on All Hallows Eve, the crowning gala was traditionally a masquerade.
“You ready for this, Em?” Linden asked me, her arm looped through mine. She was masked, loosely, as a marigold, in a radiant gold-shot dress with a crown of flowers on her head, her eyes hidden behind a gauzy yellow mask. It was a stunning look against the deep brown of her skin; she looked less like a flower and more like a sun.
“As I’ll ever be,” I said. As badly as I wanted to see Talia, the thought of it made me equally nervous. She was a tempest at even the most predictable of times, and I had no idea what to expect from her tonight. “At least they didn’t skimp on the wine.”
We’d managed to snag some as soon as we arrived, the wineglasses crisp and airy as wafers, almost weightless in your hand. The wine itself tasted like very expensive dried cherries soaked in milk, ridiculously balanced and smooth. Turns out, money can buy you some of the best things in life.
And the Blackmoores hadn’t spared any expense, presumably to demonstrate how much their defeat hadn’t even dinged their lofty self-regard. An extravagant buffet lined a banquet table set against one of the walls, its heaps of hors d’oeuvres, steaming roasts, and tiny frosted cakes magically replenishing. Fiery autumn leaves swirled above us in intricate patterns, like a collage in perpetual motion, and the room was lit by hundreds of hovering miniature moons moving through their phases. Whatever Blackmoore minions were tasked with maintaining such demanding spells for hours really had their work cut out for them.
But even the Blackmoores couldn’t completely mask the collective drop in their morale, a subdued pall hanging over them. As far as I could tell, Gareth wasn’t even here, probably licking his wounds and too embarrassed to show his face; or maybe he’d been stuck with maintaining some of the ornate spells, as a punishment for his failure. Unlikely to be true, coddled as he was, but still, I got a jolly kick out of the thought. In contrast, the Avramovs were in full raucous celebration mode, thumping one another on the shoulders, bursting into snippets of strange song, and generally having what passed for a ball with them.
Then their ranks parted to reveal Talia, who’d spotted me and Lin and had started making her way toward us.
She wore a mulberry corset in alternating panels of satin and leather, above a floor-length riot of spiky charcoal tulle, like the skirt of an extremely punked-out wedding dress. Her silver mask was engraved with scales, and a wolf’s head pendant hung below her restored garnet. Her hair was half-up, thistle flowers embedded in the complicated braids that wound around her head.