“Not so late in the night,” he said, stepping out of the stall. “In the morning, I would be happy to take you to better accommodations. But tonight, no one should be out on the streets. There are…strange happenings in our town. I do not think it would be safe.”
He pulled the hood of his cloak back up and then left the barn, disappearing into the snow.
Cedar finished with the saddle, blanket, and bridle from the horse, then closed the stall door behind him.
“Well,” Miss Dupuis said, “I, for one, am looking forward to some time out of this weather. Perhaps a cup of tea, or a hot meal.”
She adjusted her scarves and hat, tucked her hands into her woolen muff. “Do you need any help with the animals?” she asked.
“No,” Cedar said. “We’ll be right behind you. Wil, please go with her.”
She walked out of the barn and so did Wil.
Mae lingered in the stall with the last mule.
“Mae,” Cedar said. “Are you all right?”
She patted the mule on the nose before ducking under its neck and stepping out of the stall. “Better now that we are out of the storm. How are your hands? The burns?”
“Fine,” he said. “I don’t feel them. The burns,” he clarified. “I wanted to thank you. For the spells, the warmth against the cold. I wouldn’t have survived that without your witchcraft.”
“I think you are overstating that a bit,” she said gently. “Nothing could have stopped you from finding our way through that storm.”
He gave her a slight smile.
“Tomorrow will be the full moon,” she said. “Do you want me to try to cast something to ease the beast?”
They’d tried that, more than once. Spells didn’t seem to have an effect on the curse he carried. The best way to be sure he didn’t roam the night killing Strange—or accidentally any people who got in his way—was to chain him up and wait until dawn gave him back his mind and body.
Mae strolled up next to him. He could see the fatigue in her step, but she held her shoulders back and her eyes were clear. “Or do you want me to chain you?”
She paused, her gaze searching his face. It was suddenly no longer the beast that he was thinking about. It was Mae and only Mae.
Mate, the beast whispered in his head.
Cedar very gently brushed a stray lock of her hair away from the curve of her cheek, his fingers hot and stinging. “I want,” he said softly, “you.”
They had had too little time alone together since they started this journey. Only enough for a caught hand, a stolen kiss. He hadn’t even had a chance to tell her how much he loved her. To ask her if she would be his wife.
Mae looked down and smiled, but shook her head slightly, taking this moment away too. “We need rest, you need rest. I want…” She looked away, swallowed, then looked back to him, her expression calm, clear. “I want you to eat something, and drink.”
He took in a breath, knowing he should say more, explain to her that he wanted her in his life, forever.
But before he could say a word, she slipped her finger gently to his lip, and then very carefully kissed him. She pulled away, and he could see a small drop of his blood on her bottom lip. She took out her kerchief and dabbed at her lip, then at his.
“You are injured, Cedar,” she said softly. “You might not feel it now, but you will. You need rest.”
The beast inside him pushed, wanting out, wanting her, and if not her, then wanting the hunt.
But she was right. He needed rest, warmth, and a man’s mind for as long as he could have those things. He took a deep breath and ignored the beast’s demands. He offered her his arm. “Mrs. Lindson,” he said.
“Rowen,” she corrected. “My maiden name is Rowen. I think I will use it again.”
Cedar’s heart leaped at that and he smiled. “It’s a good name.”
“Yes, it is,” she said.
It was a short enough walk to the church, and the glow from the windows made of small colored panes lay a patchwork quilt across the snow.
Mae stepped into that light, and for a moment he imagined her at the altar with him, exchanging vows. Then she stomped snow off her boots and stepped through the door.
He shook his head. This was something new to him. When he’d been a much younger man and asked his wife to marry him, it had been a whirlwind of plans, and preparations, and a wedding before spring was over.
But Mae…Mae was worth waiting a thousand springs for.
He climbed the church steps and paused.
An eerie call, like the weeping of the dead, echoed through the night.
He snapped around, hands to the side, feet spread, bracing for an attack.
Nothing moved in the snow. Nothing he could see. The call rolled out from the city, a sobbing wail.
The Strange were crying. He’d never heard a Strange weep, but he knew with every inch of his being that it was the Strange behind that sound.
The crackle of lightning licked copper against the sky. Once, twice, three times. Then thunder rumbled in its wake. He thought he heard a gun fire far off, then all was quiet again, smothered by the falling snow.
There should not have been lightning in the middle of this snowstorm. Copper lightning. There should not have been thunder.
And the slight scent of blood in the air told him there was something else here that didn’t belong: the Holder.
Chapter Four
Rose had never been in a library before. The small town of Hallelujah, where she’d been raised, had a few books in the schoolhouse and a few more in the church, but there wasn’t a proper library within a hundred miles.
But here the entire house was filled with shelves that reached up two stories high. Off where one might expect bedrooms were chairs and tables and lamps set easy for the eyes. The whole place smelled of summer—that peculiar dust-and-dry scent of well-tended books, oily ink, leather, and wood that was shared with the season.
“I could live here,” Rose sighed, drawing her fingers along the mounded spines of the gold-lettered volumes.
Thomas Wicks chuckled. “Do you read much, Miss Small?”
“I’ve always endeavored to do so. Mostly the periodicals coming through my parents’ shop. Sometimes a novel or poems, but those were usually ordered by people in town who were quick to pick them up.”
“Come now. You never once snuck a book off in a corner and took a peek?”
She looked up and across the room. Thomas was half-turned from the shelf there, in shirtsleeves and vest, having draped his coat and jacket across the back of a chair. He’d taken off his hat too, revealing his dark, wavy hair. She thought he looked rather at home here, as if he did indeed have a cot stashed away in some corner of the place and would at any moment kick off his shoes and settle in by the fire.
He smiled, waiting for her answer.
“Maybe once or twice,” she admitted with a laugh. “Old Mrs. Pruce loved her romantic fiction, and Mr. Donaldson asked every week if a new bit from his favorite, Longfellow, had come through.”
“Did you have a favorite too?” He turned back to the shelves and tipped his head just slightly to one side to better read the titles on the spine. “Poetry, intellect, suspense?”
“Oh, I like it all, especially the popular fictions. But really, anything at all to set my mind dreaming.” Rose noticed a stout brown volume and tugged it out gently by its top. The Handbook of Household Sciences. She tucked it under her arm with her other finds, The Lady’s Oracle and The Lamplighter.
“And you, Mr. Wicks? Do you have a preferred sort of reading?”
“I am particular to the philosophies.”
“Really?” She glanced back over at him.