Poison Fruit

It was a beautiful meal served by candlelight on bone-white china that I suspected Stefan had purchased for the occasion. Young Dylan Martinez played classical music I didn’t recognize on his cello in the background, his eyes closed in a private reverie as his bow danced over the strings. For a recovering meth addict, Maureen Capaldi had put together an ambitious menu: oysters on the half shell, vichyssoise, endive salad with blue cheese, a roasted rack of lamb, and a panna cotta infused with cardamom for dessert.

It was a far cry from the homely comfort of Christmas dinner at my grandparents’ house, and I couldn’t help but compare the two. Not the meals themselves so much as the atmosphere. I wondered what meals had been like in Stefan’s ancestral home, and felt the centuries stretch between us.

I wasn’t the only one aware of the strangeness of it. The Capaldi sisters served every course with a nervous attempt at formality that I was pretty sure they’d learned from watching Downton Abbey.

And okay, fair enough. Cooking for and waiting on a six-hundred-year-old ghoul had to be approximately as intimidating as serving the Dowager Countess. Stefan ate sparingly, but it was clear that as he’d said, even if he couldn’t enjoy food and drink like a mortal, he took a great deal of pleasure in the ritual. At his request, I described each dish as I found it, drawing on a vocabulary honed by hours of watching the Food Network, and causing him to laugh softly when my descriptions got a bit florid.

“Is the texture truly . . . silken?” he asked in a low, teasing voice as I dug into the panna cotta.

My blood rose, my cheeks flushing with heat. “Hey, your palate may be cursed, but your sense of touch works, doesn’t it?” I challenged him. “How would you describe it?”

Stefan took a lingering bite. “Silken.”

It’s funny how laden one word can be. With that one word, the mood shifted from Stefan and me enjoying an elegant private dinner to Stefan and me playing a dangerous private game.

Stefan felt it, too. “Ah,” he said, glancing at his watch. “The hour grows late. Allow me to thank our guests for their service, and then you and I may finish our desserts in time for the fireworks display. The view from the balcony should be very good.”

What came after that was the unspoken part.

I waved my spoon at him with a jaunty insouciance I didn’t feel. “Please, go right ahead.”

Ten minutes later, we were alone together.

I’ve never gone skydiving, but I imagine this was what it would feel like the first time you go up in that plane and the door opens. I hadn’t jumped yet, but I was staring at the prospect of free fall, and the window of opportunity to change my mind was narrowing. Once I’d finished my panna cotta, I couldn’t think of anything to say, and Stefan didn’t offer any conversational gambits. We gazed at each other across the dinner table. The candle flames were reflected in his pupils, flickering in time with my pulse.

The thunderclap of the first fireworks made me jump. “It must be midnight,” I said, stating the obvious.

“Yes.” Stefan rose gracefully. “Shall we venture onto the balcony or would you rather stay inside?”

“Outside, please.” The thought of cold air on my skin was appealing.

Stefan fetched my coat and opened the sliding door onto his balcony, following me. He was right, the view was excellent. Across the harbor, mortars thumped, launching their contents to burst in the night sky above the water.

Usually, I love fireworks, but tonight the sight of a great golden chrysanthemum blossoming above me made me shiver.

“Are you cold?” Stefan said behind me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body. It was tempting to lean back against him, but I didn’t. Not yet.

“No.” I watched trails of sparks fall from the sky. “Stefan . . . do you remember how I told you I caught the Night Hag?”

“Of course,” he said. “You summoned her with a nightmare and bound her with a strand of her own hair.”

“It wasn’t just any nightmare,” I said. “It was my worst nightmare. That was the nature of the hex Sinclair created for me.” Two more starbursts exploded overhead. “In the dream, I invoked my birthright.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “For a minute, it felt good. It felt great. And then the sky cracked open above me, and I knew I’d broken the world.”

“I see.” Behind me, Stefan’s chest rose and fell in a long, slow breath. “No wonder the revelation regarding my past troubled you so.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not that boy, Daisy,” he said. “You’re nothing like him.”

“But I am,” I said. “I’m capable of it.”

Stefan slid his arms around me, and now I did let myself lean backward into his strength. “I won’t allow it to happen,” he murmured against my hair. “I suspect that is what the hell-spawn Dufreyne dislikes about our union. If I had been Outcast, I could have helped the boy. I could help you. Perhaps that necessity is what brought us together.”

“Maybe.” Despite his warmth, I shivered again. “Because I can’t shake the feeling that something’s coming, Stefan. Something bad. Worse than what happened at Halloween. Way worse.”

“Is it this business of the lawsuit that disturbs you?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” I said. “It’s whoever’s behind it, whatever’s behind it. Not just Dufreyne. It’s Elysian Fields. It’s Hades, or whoever’s behalf he’s acting on.” I was starting to get worked up, my tail lashing as my sense of furious helplessness rose. “It’s the reading my mom did for me. It’s the fact that one of the goddamned Norns told me that the fate of the world might hinge on the choices I make.”