Page 19 of Threadbound

“Okay,” Jamie’s mouth answered, also without consulting his brain. “I can leave here in about a half hour. Because we’re closing.”

The man nodded once. “I’ll wait outside, then?”

Jamie nodded, then watched as the man turned and headed toward the door.

“Wait!” Jamie called after him, and the man turned, his loose dark hair half-obscuring his profile as he turned to look back at Jamie with those beautiful green eyes. “What—what’s your name?”

That quick flash of a curve of his lips. “Bran.” The man hesitated for a half-second. “Bran MacCairn.”

Jamie swallowed. “Jamie Weaver. I’ll… meet you in a half hour?”

“Aye.” And then he was gone.

Jamie stood rooted in place for a good fifteen to twenty seconds, then ran through the rest of the lower floor to make sure it was empty before taking the stairs up to the lobby of the museum two steps at a time. He was breathless when he stopped in front of the desk.

Trixie looked up, her light eyebrows rising. “What’s got you in a lather?”

“He came back again,” Jamie blurted.

“Did you get his bloody name this time?”

“Bran.”

“Well, that’s progress, then!”

He’d been right. Trixie thought this was a good thing.

“We’re going to dinner,” he confessed.

“Good for you!” Trixie grinned, wiggling her brows suggestively. “When?”

“Now?”

She blinked. “As in?—”

“He’s waiting outside. I guess. Or that’s what he said, anyway.”

Trixie grinned. “Then let’s get you out of here!” She ran a critical eye over his museum polo. “You got another shirt in the back?”

“Maybe?” He sometimes brought in changes of clothes in case they decided to go out and didn’t want to be walking advertisements for the museums.

Fortunately, he did still have extra clothes in his cubby, which he discovered when he and Trixie went back to the staff room to grab their bags before locking up. He quickly put on some extra deodorant—also an important post-work necessity if they were going out—and swapped out his work polo for a grey t-shirt and a blue-cream-and-yellow striped short-sleeved button-down that he left open.

Trixie cast a critical eye over him. “It’ll do, I suppose,” she said.

“I don’t have a whole wardrobe in there, Trixie,” Jamie muttered. Not that it would have made much difference. He owned like two things that weren’t khakis, jeans, and more of the same. His one formal suit and tie would have seemed more than a bit excessive. And suits always made him feel like a kid playing dress-up, even though he understood that on his career path, he probably had many more suits in his future.

But for now he couldn’t really afford more than the one anyway, so khakis, t-shirts, and button-downs it was. Sweaters—jumpers—in winter.

They walked outside, the summer sun still fairly high on its arc, since sunset wouldn’t come until almost nine. He’d been spending some late nights at the library recently, getting wrapped up in his current research as he tried to sort out the specific ingredients of several tinctures and potions that were supposed to have magical as well as medicinal effects. The problem, of course, was that, old-style handwriting aside, the names of things weren’t always the same between the middle ages and now, and he hadn’t quite figured out what several of the things were supposed to be, which made it very hard to figure out if there was any actual medical merit to some of the recipes.

He’d been planning to spend some time tonight working on the same thing, trawling through some online archives of plant compendiums and descriptions, but instead he was apparently going on a date. Ish. Assuming that Bran hadn’t thought better of his semi-coerced invitation to dinner.

Bran had, in fact, repeatedly thought better of his invitation, but he had extended it and was therefore obligated to follow through. Condatis did not look kindly on those who violatedoffers of hospitality, whether made to human or fae. Or the half-breed human to which you found yourself unfortunately bound.

Bran stood on the sidewalk, leaning against the column holding the gate to the Surgeons’ Hall Museums, squinting a little in the sun. It was still warm, and Bran was wearing his habitual black, although—thankfully—his magic seemed to be calmer today than it had been over the past several days.

He was trying not to think about the fact that its stability might be attributable to his physical proximity to Jamie.

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