Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [23]
Since Max couldn’t keep track of his keys, he locked the front door by using a spell that kept out strangers when the shop was closed but allowed him access at all times. Since I was a regular visitor, Max had modified the spell so that I, too, could enter the shop at will.
“Of course you came here, my dear,” Max said soothingly. “You should have woken me!”
I shook my head. “It was so late. And all I wanted to do by then was close my eyes.”
“But you could have come upstairs.” Max lived one floor above the bookshop. “Nelli doesn’t mind giving up her bed for a friend.”
Nelli’s bed, which was the couch in Max’s sparsely furnished living room, smelled heavily of Nelli and was liberally coated with her hair.
“I didn’t want to disturb Nelli,” I said tactfully. “Or you.”
“Nonsense! Anyhow, I was barely asleep, I assure you.” He added, “There is also Hieronymus’ bed, in his old quarters on the top floor.”
“No!” I said more sharply than I had intended. Max blinked. I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that . . . Well, after what we did to him—even though he deserved it . . . I mean, since Hieronymus left . . .” Although we had, in fact, killed him, this was the phrase I had asked Max to agree to use whenever we referred to what had happened to the young sorcerer. It seemed safer than carelessly voicing the facts. Especially since we numbered a police detective among our acquaintances. “I just wouldn’t feel comfortable sleeping in his bed,” I concluded. All things considered, even the idea of touching anything that had belonged to Hieronymus repelled me.
Max nodded in understanding. “Well, in any event, I hope the chair was not too incommodious last night.”
“I wouldn’t want to make a habit of sleeping in it.” I rolled my head around as I tried to ease the kinks out of my neck and shoulders. “But it was a blessing to be able to sink into it a few hours ago, believe me.”
“I am most distressed by your misadventure, Esther! Did your assailant harm you?”
“My assail . . . Oh, the mugging.” I paused in mid-stretch to meet his gaze as I recalled things about those gargoyles that disturbed me all over again: the dirty claws, the fierce growling, the rotten breath, the physical strength . . . “Max, the strangest thing happened last night. Lopez thinks it was a prank, and maybe he’s right—but it all seemed so real!”
“Lopez?” Max sat up straighter. “Detective Lopez was present?”
“That was later. After the mugging. He was helping me.”
Max lowered his eyes and absently patted Nelli on the head as she sat beside him, her wistful gaze fixed on the bagels and cream cheese. “And, er, how was Detective Lopez?”
“Fine,” I said, trying to figure out where to start my account of the night’s events.
“Ah. Good. I’m glad to hear it. Good.” Max kept his gaze lowered as he asked, oh-so-casually, “And he was . . . much like his usual self? You observed nothing . . . unexpected?”
I shrugged. “Well, it was about three o’clock in the morning, so he wasn’t quite his usual . . . Oh!” My dry, sleep-deprived eyes flew wide open as I realized what Max meant. “Oh.” Staring at his face, I took another long sip of my coffee. “Oh.”
“Hmm.”
I said, “You mean . . .”
“Yes.” He met my eyes. “Well?”
I thought it over. “No . . .” I shook my head and said more firmly, “No.”
“I see.”
“So you still suspect . . .”
Max and I hadn’t talked about it. Not since the last time we had seen Lopez, when he had told me he couldn’t date me anymore. I had occasionally thought about it since then, of course; but I mostly tried not to think about Lopez at all, and when I did think about him . . . Well, I’m only human, so, in all honesty, that wasn’t what I thought about. But looking at Max