Battle Royal by Lucy Parker

Chapter Seven

De Vere’s

Twenty-Four Hours after Dominic Finally Escaped the Clutches of Major General BillWillGil Cyril

(His grandkids are still a disappointment to an old man.)

(Cheese remains expensive.)

The salt-and-pepper truffles—dark chocolate with notes of sea salt and chili—were a De Vere’s bestseller. They were also intricate to produce, mirror-glazed by hand and finished with a precise swirl of gold-tinted white chocolate. Dominic was halfway through a batch when he smelled a whiff of burning sugar.

Fortunately, he didn’t need to lift his head to see who was responsible.

“Where’s Aaron?” He completed a wisp-fine curlicue, moved on to the next, and another. “And somebody please take that pan off the heat.”

A quick clash of metal before his sous-chef crossed his line of sight with a steaming pan. More ingredients going straight in the bin. “Aaron’s . . .” Liam looked around the busy kitchen and grimaced. “Well, he was here.”

Dominic completed the tray of truffles and slid them onto the racks for packaging. Pulling off his gloves with a snap, he gestured Liam toward the remaining sweets on the assembly line. “Finish up, would you?”

He found Aaron in the back hallway, just coming in from the alleyway. He was clutching his phone. “My office. Now.”

They were short-staffed in the kitchens today and the busiest they’d been all month out front, thanks to a blasting of promos for Operation Cake. No complaints about the increased foot traffic, but he’d already endured five hours of mostly mediocre bakes in the TV studio this morning, culminating in the elimination of Byron. He of the clown phobia, lethal scones, and today, a shortbread sculpture of the Victoria Memorial that looked like a toddler had got into the biscuit tin and emptied the contents onto the floor.

The kid had cried. Tears dripping down the peach fuzz on his cheeks—before he’d double-checked which camera to sniff into and delivered a speech straight off the cutting-room floor of a third-rate battle flick. The wounded hero, reluctant to abandon his comrades to the encroaching evil.

Insert clip of Dominic.

Unless there was a genuine reason for Aaron’s increasingly poor efforts, he was not in the mood for this.

He perched on the edge of his desk and eyed his employee, who was currently demonstrating both shifty eyes and shuffling feet. “Aaron,” he said, his tone obviously not what the other man was expecting; Aaron stopped fidgeting and looked at him. “I shouldn’t need to point out that your work is not up to standard. You’re struggling. If it’s a health issue, either physical or mental, we can offer multiple avenues of support. Life deals a fucker of a card sometimes, it happens frequently, and with respect to work it’s not a big deal. We’ll help you through it. If it’s the work itself, again there’s assistance available, but if things don’t improve soon—”

“I’m sorry,” Aaron interrupted miserably. “It’s my nan. My grandmother. She’s not well, and I’ve had to move in with her. There’s no one else. And I’ve asked her not to call me at work unless it’s an emergency, but . . . but she forgets . . . And I’m tired. God, I’m so tired.”

“Right.” For a moment, Dominic said nothing. Then he nodded at a chair. “Take a seat.”

When Aaron left the office ten minutes later, some of the strain had left his features.

Dominic wished he could say the same. And when he opened his emails and read the message from his lawyer, any hope of salvaging this day from the scrap heap went out the window like a rocket.

He jerked open his door, ready to stalk out in search of his sister, but at least the universe was prepared to offer the sop of hand-delivering his target. Pet stood with her hand partly raised. He’d give her the benefit of the doubt that he’d interrupted her midknock, but her style was more shove-open-and-sail-merrily-on-in.

“Hello!” Her smile faltered when she saw his expression.

A few seconds ticked by.

“I genuinely can’t tell if you’re pissed about something, or if that’s just your face now.”

“I just received an email from my lawyer. Regarding a substantial financial deposit.”

“Yay?” Pet suggested without much hope.

“Chair. Sit. Now.” Dominic jerked the door wider, and she sighed.

Looking extremely put-upon, she brushed past him, bypassed the chair, and hopped up to sit on his desk. “I know you were already practically collecting a pension when I was born, and I might be currently between fathers,” Pet muttered, “but I’m a good decade past the parental lecture, bro.” She looked at him. “That money is rightfully yours. Mum left it to you. You’re never going to see the half you generously and stupidly gave to Lorraine again, but I’m not keeping your share.”

“I don’t have a clue what latent burst of remorse or guilt prompted Lana to leave me a third of her estate, but we hadn’t spoken for over twenty years. I severed those ties at thirteen years old, and that cut was permanent. On both sides. I have no interest in her money. It belongs to you and Lorraine. And you’ll take it.”

“No. I won’t. You were still her son. And she owed you.” The tiniest quaver rocked Pet’s instant rebuttal, but her gaze was solid. Stubborn. “Stop giving it back. I don’t want it.”

Dominic looked at her. Those big dark eyes, fixed on him. Twenty-five years ago, those same eyes, in a round little baby face. Trusting. Loving.

Abruptly, he turned away. “Then donate it to charity. Feed some cats. Clean some rivers. Set up a scholarship fund for gifted bloody chihuahuas, if you like.”

His office had been cleaned only this morning, but the air felt thick, as if it were layered with dust.

Voice clipped, he spoke solely to break the intense silence. “What do you mean, you’re ‘currently between fathers’?”

Gerald Hunt—Pet’s father, Dominic’s . . . stepfather, for lack of a more specific term for a man raising the living, breathing proof of his wife’s extramarital affair—was dead a good five years now. As their mother had also passed, Pet would find it difficult to acquire a new parent.

The silence took on a new quality. Frowning, he turned.

Pet had pressed her lips together. For an appalling moment, he thought she was going to cry. The last time he’d seen her in tears, she’d been crawling around in footsie pajamas, clutching a piece of bedraggled, drool-encrusted blanket she’d named “Fizzy” for a reason she’d kept to herself. It had been her first word. One of only two words she’d been able to speak when he’d left that house.

Fizzy. And “Mink.”

Dominic.

“So, funny story,” she said in a sudden rush, as if once she’d decided to speak, she had to get the words out as quickly as possible. “Last year, thanks to a medical test . . .” At his jerky movement, she shook her head. “It’s fine. I’m fine. And also, genetically not the daughter of Gerald Hunt.”

“What?”

“Not a single strand of common DNA. Add my bio dad to the mystery list with yours.”

He shook his head, not a negation, just—the fuck? “And was Lorraine . . .” He cut off that pointless question before it could fully form, and Pet’s obvious tension briefly relaxed into a snort.

“Lop off Lorraine’s hair, paste it to her chin, and behold! Gerald walks again. She’s his mirror image.”

In both face and personality.

“I . . .” Her voice wobbled again. Again, in his mind, he saw the baby she’d once been. The ghost of chubby arms around his neck. She took a deep breath and lifted her chin. She was a fighter. Disastrously soft heart. Spine of steel.

“There was no sense of loss in that discovery,” she said quietly. “I was relieved. He was a hypocritical, judgmental bully. As I got older, I saw him for the man he was. I saw the way he treated others. I—I know now how he treated you.” She held out her hand, and Dominic realized she was holding a card. He took it automatically. “The DNA is just a technicality. I haven’t felt like a Hunt in a long time.” She nodded at the card. “It’s finally official, so I’m just . . .” Her chin rose higher. “Informing you.”

He looked down at the business card advertising the credentials and contact information of Petunia De Vere. His thumb moved to rest over the surname.

“I didn’t know Sebastian the way you did, but he was my grandfather, too.” Her bravado seemed to falter. “I hope he wouldn’t mind my taking his name.”

Across the distance between them, her anxious gaze fixed on his.

“I hope you don’t mind, either.”

Without waiting for him to respond, she turned and left.

He stared at the business card for a long time, before he tucked it into the photo frame on his desk, next to the silhouette she’d cut, the rendition of Sylvie’s profile.

After the day he’d had so far, he’d rather flash-boil his own eyeballs than trek across to the Starlight Circus in Holland Park for a few rounds of Johnny Marchmont’s daily vice, but one obstacle stood between De Vere’s and the Albany contract, and she wouldn’t be wasting time.

For all Sylvie’s rainbow-hued, bejeweled frivolity, there wasn’t a lazy bone in her body. Nor was she a procrastinator—

—as she proved when Dominic pushed open the ivy-covered door of the coffee shop, set off a night-themed soundtrack of owl hoots and nondescript rustling, and found her perched cross-legged on a floor cushion.

The door swung shut behind him with a thump. He tucked his hands in his trouser pockets and swept his gaze over the packed interior, from the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling to the scattering of picnic rugs and cushions.

There were no tables. No chairs besides two beanbags, both already occupied.

“If it isn’t Judge C.” Sylvie seemed equally unsurprised to see him, and not at all bothered by the strangers sprawled around her.

To be fair, most of them were in a world of their own. Many were wearing headphones. One guy had just starfished out on a rug and was napping in a happy pool of his own drool. Only one was paying Sylvie any attention, a young man with a Manchester United cap sitting staring fixedly at the side of her head, lost in admiration of her pink- and lavender-streaked plait. He had “postgrad student” and “optimist” written all over him.

One look at Dominic’s face and the budding lothario just about hid in his backpack.

Sylvie was eating a biscuit. She’d been chewing on the same bite for over thirty seconds. “What do you think?” she asked, finally swallowing. Her head inclined in the general direction of—everything. He’d seen less junk packed onto the odds-and-ends stall at a village fair. He didn’t know what to avoid looking at first. “Seventy percent toddler’s bedroom, thirty percent crack den, or the other way around?”

“I’d throw in at least ten percent low-budget slasher film.” With horrified fascination, Dominic locked stares with an enormous plastic clown and found he couldn’t look away.

He couldn’t even blink.

This wasn’t ideal.

“I was pretty sure you’d turn up tonight, too.” A pause, during which he could hear Sylvie chewing again. It sounded like hard work.

The clown’s pupils were spinning. Literally spinning.

Unless that was his own eyes.

Or his brain.

Nausea was kicking in a good ten minutes earlier than he’d expected. He hadn’t even ordered yet.

“This is like a cross between everlasting bubble gum and sawdust. I . . . Dominic?” Sylvie cleared her throat. “Dominic.”

Two fingertips touched his wrist. Dominic drew in a long breath. Briefly, he closed his eyes.

Turning deliberately away from the clown, he looked down into a bright hazel gaze. “I currently despise every atom of my existence.”

The faintest of lines feathered out from Sylvie’s lashes. They deepened now. “Poor baby. Completely out of your comfort zone.” She unwound her long legs to free a foot and nudged a plush purple cushion in his direction. “Pull up a pew and join us commoners. I saved you a cushion, and I hope you’re grateful. The bloke in the bobble hat was eyeing this spot, and in my efforts to secure it for you, I collided with the mechanical bear.”

She turned her arm and brandished her elbow, where the skin beneath her pushed-up sleeve was pink and scraped.

Dominic was fucking exhausted, and now addled by the Hypno-Clown. He almost reached out and took her arm. The unheard-of instinct that had just propelled into his muscles was to bloody stroke her.

Politely, Sylvie caught the attention of the barista. “Could you make it two Midnight Elixirs, please? Thank you.”

She was playing with the remainder of her biscuit, dropping crumbs. Everywhere she went, strewing small atoms of chaos.

“I would cling to the faint hope this is a dream.” He needed to get off his feet. Unwillingly, he hooked his boot around the cushion. When he lowered himself to sit, an arsehole vertebra midspine screamed that he was edging up on forty and spent his days leaning forward with a piping bag. “But even in nightmares, my imagination doesn’t pull up indoor tents and popcorn cannons.”

“No shit. I’ve seen your cakes.” Sylvie took another unenthused bite. “This place is way busier than I was expecting. I am seething.” She looked at the remaining piece of biscuit. He could see from here how overbaked it was. It was also glistening under the overhead spotlights and streaked with pink, although that could be traces of Sylvie’s lipstick. Her lip curled. “This tastes nothing like my Celestial Cloud Cookies.” She set it down on a napkin and shot a glance at the demonic clown. “And the décor is ugly.” With obvious satisfaction, she finished, “‘Emerging competitor to Sugar Fair,’ my arse.”

There was a piece of card under Dominic’s foot. He flicked it around without interest and realized it was the menu.

Popcorn Cappuccino

Penny Pops

Star Bright Fudge

Darren’s Daringly Delicious Dewdrops

“Mmm.” He lifted the menu and turned it over to see if it got worse. Darren Didn’t Disappoint. He appeared to be surrounded by escapees from an Enid Blyton book. “I can see where the comparison came from.”

In life, there were many sudden silences. Awkward silences. Companionable silences. Confused silences.

And those moments when the world abruptly went so quiet that all you could hear were the icy breaths of your approaching demise.

He lowered the menu. Any hint of amusement had disappeared from Sylvie’s face. She leaned forward, and her palm landed on the remains of her dry biscuit. She squashed it flat.

Judging by her expression, she’d prefer it was one or both of his testicles.

In lethally sweet tones, she inquired, “Are you seriously putting this nightmarish profusion of thrift-store rejects and unparalleled tackiness on remotely the same level as my gorgeous, magical dream come true?”

“Weak tea, dude.” For a moment, Dominic thought Sylvie’s admirer, the Man U fan, was delivering an unsolicited review of his beverage, but no. Just an indictment on Dominic’s recent life choices. The kid shook his head in heavy disapproval. “Insulting your woman’s work. Not cool, man.”

And the day edged further into surrealism.

“I’m not his woman,” Sylvie said, with a level of revulsion usually reserved for blocked drains and maggot infestations.

Her ally brightened. He whipped the cap off his head and edged closer with a coaxing smile. “In that case, would you like to—”

“No,” she said uncompromisingly. She shifted her weight sideways so she could pull a small pink ticket from her pocket. “But I appreciate a wise man. Have a voucher for free cake.”

He looked at her, looked at the voucher in his hand, made an all right, then face, and wandered off.

The smiling, ponytailed barista bent and placed a steaming metal flagon at each of their feet. “Two Midnight Elixirs. Sorry about the wait. We’re packed tonight.”

“I noticed.” For the other woman, Sylvie found a smile. “Thanks.” Completely ignoring Dominic now, which would usually be a gift beyond compare but, as the cherry on an endless stream of unsettling experiences, perversely annoyed him more, she picked up her flagon and took her first sip. “Hmm,” she said, and wrote something into her phone.

Dominic’s jaw shifted a few times, then he picked up his own drink and dubiously examined the contents. Johnny Marchmont’s favorite drink was a dark indigo color, shades of purple when the light hit it. The consistency was thicker than he’d expected, midway between creamy coffee and a milkshake. He brought the cup to his nose and inhaled. There was spice in it. And he was pretty sure . . . He took a mouthful, considered it for a second, and swallowed. Star anise. Followed by a strong hit of berry and intense sweetness.

He’d rather have an espresso, but the drink wasn’t actually that bad. When he broke down the rest of the contents, it would make for an unusual but palatable cake flavor.

“So, ‘Darren,’ whoever he is, isn’t amenable to disclosing his recipes,” he murmured aloud as he jotted star anise onto his tablet. An earlier call to the coffee shop had netted only an irritating giggle from the staffer at the end of the line, and “Ooh, no. All our recipes are a Clyde family secret. Darren would never tell. Shhh.”

“His recipes. Please.” Sylvie’s dislike of Darren and his saccharine alliteration was apparently strong enough to break the silent treatment. “He regularly steals ideas from Sugar Fair. I’d bet my stake in this contract that he didn’t concoct this himself.” She took another sip, a frown of concentration in her eyes. Then she wrote down something else. Dominic’s eyes traveled to her fingers against his will, and she lifted both her chin and her phone, covering the screen. “Unfortunately, he didn’t rip this one off me. And it’s way too . . . not beige to come from your kitchens.”

“A neutral palette is universally appropriate.”

“That’s not how you pronounce ‘dull.’”

They both drank more.

Dominic wrote down Boysenberry? Definitely vanilla; no more than two drops.

Finishing their drinks, they ordered another round from the barista.

“This place would be Byron’s worst nightmare,” Sylvie commented after a few minutes of silence, staring at the clown again. Dominic wasn’t repeating that mistake. “I thought he handled the elimination well today.”

He accepted another flagon of Midnight Elixir and swallowed a mouthful. It burnt a warm trail down his throat that he quite liked. “He cried for an hour. I’ve seen less moisture expelled by hydraulic dams. Ironic, considering his gâteau opéra was dust-dry.”

“Don’t be horrible.”

“Every poignant, quivering teardrop was straight out of school drama. Are you planning to let every evictee faux-snivel into your neck?” Dominic’s thigh was starting to cramp. He shifted irritably. “It’s inappropriate.”

“Some of us have compassion for others. It’s called empathy.”

“Some of us would hug a rabid squirrel if it shed a few tears and burbled an improbable sob story. It’s called gullibility.”

If she kept hurling her eyeballs around her skull like that, he wasn’t going to be the only one with a headache.

He must have grimaced unconsciously, because Sylvie stopped rolling her eyes and narrowed them on his face.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re all strained here.” Without warning, those cool fingertips touched him again, this time glancing over his temple, a light kiss of a movement. He stiffened, his hand curling around the flagon of Elixir.

Sylvie’s own hand folded into itself. A tinge of color invaded her cheekbones, until they matched the patchy remnants of her lipstick. “Sorry. Instinct. I didn’t mean to . . . infringe on your . . .” She cleared her throat.

“I . . .”

Had apparently experienced a human touch so infrequently lately that one silk-soft tap and the rest of his body almost separated from his skin.

Except he could still feel that prickle through his nerves.

Not exactly a reaction he had to every bit of casual physical contact.

“Headache,” he said shortly, sitting back. He touched his temple. “It’s been a very long day.” Each word came out with grim emphasis.

“Staff problems?” Sylvie guessed warily. She was frowning into her Elixir. After burying her nose in the cup and inhaling deeply several times, she wrote down three more things on her list.

He was falling behind, as his mind wandered down several unsettling avenues. Raising his flagon, he drained half the mixture in one go. The more he drank, the more cloying the sweetness in the aftertaste. It wasn’t so much complementing as cloaking the other flavors. Not honey. Sucralose?

“Those as well.” He felt damned sorry for Aaron, but hopefully the interim measures they’d taken paid off, because he also couldn’t afford an endless stream of expensive mistakes.

Especially if they secured the Albany contract. The short-term pressure would shoot into the stratosphere at that point, and he confidently expected a significant increase in knock-on sales once the name of the bakery was released in connection with the cake.

The royal effect on trade was no joke. Princess Rose could single-handedly exceed the impact of thousands of pounds of advertising budget.

He could almost hear Sylvie’s voice in his head: She’s a person, not an algorithm.

What nontheoretical Sylvie said aloud was “Me too.”

A combination of fatigue and high sugar content was slowing his reaction time. It took a second before he connected those words to a meaning. He glanced up. “You’re having staff problems?”

“Problem, singular.” Sylvie wrinkled her nose. “Unless you count Jay and Mabel, our senior assistant, constantly squawking and pecking at one another like territorial budgies. Which is doing my head in, but nothing new.”

Jay . . . one of those surnames with an unnecessary repetition of consonants. Fforde. Dominic had met him a couple of times, and they occasionally crossed paths in the street. Sharp head for figures but flapped under pressure. He’d crumble in a crisis.

“Jay’s your business partner?”

“Business partner. Lifelong best friend. We’ve known each other since we were babies. We were born in the same maternity ward, twelve hours apart. Our mothers apparently bonded over how useless our fathers were during the onset of labor. I literally learned to walk holding Jay’s hand.” The dimple by her mouth deepened again. “My aunt said we were crawling around the floor together, playing as usual, and I spotted a packet of biscuits. Motivated by sugar even then. I was determined to get to it, but I kept falling over when I tried to stand up. So Jay clambered to his feet as well, grabbed my hand, and off we toddled.” She lifted one shoulder. “He’s my brother, for all intents and purposes.” As Sylvie spoke of the other man, her preoccupied expression diffused into affectionate softness. The door opened to admit yet another customer, setting off the soundtrack of birdsong and a few piano notes of Moonlight Sonata to accompany her raptures.

An odd, unfamiliar sensation was prickling at his spine. Not quite impatience, not quite discomfort. Literally shrugging it off, Dominic rather curtly addressed her original observation. “Maybe it’s personal.”

She cocked her head.

He could be at home right now with a glass of lager, his homicidal cat, and no constantly talking people. “Maybe Jay and Mabel are skating around an always-inadvisable workplace relationship,” he clarified. “According to my sister and the book she’s currently reading and for some reason thinks I need a daily briefing on, squabbling like enraged parakeets is an early sign of attraction.”

“In the nonfictional world, it might be easier to skip the verbal pigtail-pulling and just ask someone out for a drink.”

They finished their flagons, and he scribbled down a few more ingredients.

Cranberry juice.

White chocolate.

Raising a hand, he asked the barista for a third round.

A spark of wicked humor suddenly lit up the green in Sylvie’s eyes. She grinned. “Jay and Mabs—God help the entire planet. But despite the lessons of literature, courtesy of this book I’m privately convinced you’re reading yourself, that’s a negative on pissing me off because they secretly want to bang. Mabel’s asexual and already in a committed relationship, and Jay has a girlfriend.” After a beat, her brows compressed. “I think. I just realized he hasn’t mentioned her for a couple of weeks. He’s still writing poetry, though, so I assume they’re still together.”

Intense gloom invaded that sentence.

“Poetry?”

“He writes poems. He reads them aloud for feedback. It’s a deeply distressing subject for me. I don’t want to talk about it.”

A small smile tugged. It felt like the first minuscule release of tension all day. “You said you were having an actual staffing problem.”

“Yeah.” All traces of smiles on Sylvie’s part fell away. “My intern, Penny. She’s really struggling with the work. I’ve had to move her to four different stations so far, and nothing seems to be clicking. It’s not an issue of effort—she is trying.” On a very dry note, she added, “Every mistake is made with an impressive level of enthusiasm.”

“So she’s not suited to the job.”

“But she wants to be.” Sylvie caught her lower lip between her teeth. He’d been right about Pet’s silhouette drawing falling short on the full curve of her mouth. “And I get the feeling there’s something going on outside of work. She’s frequently distracted, and a couple of times she’s taken a phone call and seemed odd afterward. Jay’s over it and wants to let her go, but if the rest of her life is falling apart, I don’t want her to be unemployed as well.”

His answering grunt was neither agreement nor immediate dismissal. “I’ve got an employee myself with extenuating circumstances that we’ll do our best to accommodate.”

“You see.” Sylvie leaned forward, brightening. Her right hand tried to twitch in his direction again. She sat on it. “You get it.”

That was probably the most genuine smile she’d ever directed at him.

“In my case, the employee in question has a lot of talent when he’s in the right mind to access it, and is very definitely in the right field,” he said warningly, and Sylvie blew out a breath. “Do you think your employee might be having family issues?”

She shook her head. “She doesn’t have any family. It came up at her interview. Her parents have passed, no brothers or sisters, no eccentric aunts, no drunk uncles. Not even a cat.”

Despite the light, lilting addition at the end, a strange note underlaid Sylvie’s response.

It was in her eyes, too. Pain. A deep well of emotions that coalesced into, simply, pain.

“I see,” Dominic said.

She blinked a few times, and a self-conscious stiffness came into her posture.

Two more portions of Midnight Elixir were delivered to their bit of floor. They both knocked them back like huge shots of tequila.

Simultaneously decided to order another.

“If your employee is wise enough to live a cat-less existence,” he said at last, while they waited for the next round, “it may be worth keeping her on.”

He pulled back his sleeve and revealed a long, angry scratch slicing through the hair on his forearm.

Sylvie’s expression cleared of shadows as concern yanked her back to the present. This time, she seized hold of his arm without hesitation, her fingers wrapping gently about his wrist as she pulled it into her lap. His own fingers curled into a light fist. “Oh my God. What kind of pet do you have?” she asked, horrified. “A Bengal tiger?”

“Similar bulk, worse temperament. A tabby menace, inherited from a relative whose affection for me has since been called into question.”

“I hope you put something on this; it’s really nasty. What provoked that?”

“The vet suggested I cut his dry food allotment by a quarter cup. Humphrey suggested I get sepsis.”

Her fingertips were absently stroking the back of his hand, another glide along his nerve pathways.

The barista approached with two more flagons of Midnight Elixir, and Sylvie released him to grab the drinks.

Her cheeks were flushed again.

She took a hasty gulp from her cup. “Definitely cranberry,” she said aloud.

“Agreed.” His own mouthful was a more intense throat-burn than the last glass. The barista returned behind the counter, and he studied the array of treats in the glass cabinet. They ran a gamut from children’s party fare to wouldn’t-even-feed-it-to-his-hellcat. “Is the owner of this place really ripping off your menu?”

“Yes, and with the exception of this . . .” Sylvie waved her flagon at him. Her voice was slightly slurred. She really was pink in the face. “. . . this fantastic concoction, he doesn’t even have the decency to plagiarize well. It’s like a counterfeit purse, all cheap plastic and bad stitching. And freaky clowns.”

“Pretty shit of him.” The tension was draining out of his muscles, and his headache had eased somewhat as his body relaxed.

“I know,” Sylvie agreed fervently. She leaned forward and pointed at him. Having stuck her finger in his face, she didn’t seem to know what to do with it.

Dominic considered the problem. “I should punch him.”

She looked absolutely thrilled. “Could you?”

“Of course I could,” he said, vaguely offended. He held up a hand. Fisted it. “I have hands.” He turned his wrist to examine his fist from multiple angles. It was very satisfactory. “Big ones.”

“Yes, you do.” In the dim light, Sylvie’s wide eyes looked more black than hazel. “Huge. I’ve noticed that before.” The last words dropped, low and husky.

Sexy.

“Have you?” Deep. Gravelly.

She nodded solemnly and put her fingers back over his, and they studied the result.

“Your hand is quite small,” he had to point out.

Her sigh was all sad resignation. “It is.” Her lower lip was pink and damp. She sank her teeth into it again. “I’m sorry about that.”

His view of anything farther than her head was beginning to haze. Dominic’s brain was currently fixed on one subject, but a spike of suspicion penetrated.

Over their entwined fingers, they stared at each other. He could see the movement of her chest with her quiet, quick breaths. A loose clot of mascara clung to the end of one lash, and her eyes really were quite . . .

Dilated.

Sitting there with Sylvie’s hand in his, her herb-scented breath a warm tickle against his chin, he saw a reflection of his own rapidly dawning realization.

Releasing her, Dominic reached for his tablet. With a decisive motion, he deleted the top line.

Across from him, Sylvie retrieved her stylus pen and her phone. As it clicked on, she picked up the flagon by her foot and set it aside with an emphatic thud. The nearly empty flagon. Their fourth helping. She drew a crisp line and made the necessary amendment.

Midnight Elixir’s mystery ingredient number one: not star anise.

A grim murmur, in unison: “Absinthe.”