Page 49 of Never the Roses

“Then come in and close the door behind you,” he invited. “Tell me how you liked the novel you borrowed and returned.”

She narrowed those eyes, still hesitating on the threshold of a dream. “The shelf is behind you. How are you so sure I returned it?”

“First of all, it’s you. You would not have come here until you could return it, and you’re not one to delay. Also, it’s part of my talents as a posotomancer. My sorcery allows me to quantify most anything. I know where everything in my house is and isn’t.”

“Thus the obsessiveness.”

“I prefer to think of it as attention to detail.”

“Hmm.”

Her gaze rested on him, pensive, weighing her options. Stearanos had an odd sensation of unreality, as if he might be sleeping still and dreaming this conversation, that she might evaporate at any moment and become something else. He rubbed his eyes and focused on her again.

She let out a huff of impatience. “It’s having the Dream open. You’re awake, but it’s getting to you. I should go.”

“Stay,” he countered immediately. “Please? I have wine.”

After an eternity of hesitation, she stepped fully into the room, the Dream closing behind her with a snap he felt all through his magical senses. A faint odor lingered in the air, the sort both familiar and rarely named, like petrichor or oud. A shimmer of magic glistened like ice crystals forming from the humidity in the air on a brutally cold day in the northern wastes. Oneira waved her hand at the miasma impatiently, looking like someone clearing obnoxious smoke from their face, only her efforts worked, vanishing the residue as if it had never been.

“Apologies,” she said. “I should not have left the doorway to the Dream that wide open for so long. I didn’t intend to.”

“You also didn’t intend to stay, but I’m glad you did.” He rose and went to the wine, tipping the bottle to show her it was unopened, the seal around the cork intact.

She smiled wryly, gaze lifting to his. “I would not have lingered if I thought you meant to poison me.”

“As if I could.”

“As if you could,” she acknowledged.

He used magic to remove the cork, sinking the correct numbers into it to assess its circumference and decrease it enough for the air pressure he increased inside to ease it out.

Oneira raised her brows. “A handy trick.”

Pouring a glass, he handed it to her. “Useful for impressing the ladies.”

“Do you often entertain ladies you’re intent on impressing?”

“You’re the first,” he admitted, clinking his glass against hers. “An admission that doubles as a toast.”

Her eyes on his, she sipped, making a low sound of pleasure that reminded him of how she’d hummed when they kissed, the desire he’d ruthlessly leashed hitting him hard in the groin.

“So, which is it,” she asked, slowly spinning the stem of the goblet between her index finger and thumb, “do you not entertain ladies, or do you not care about impressing them?”

“I haven’t had a lover in years, but when I did, I never brought them here. And no, I didn’t care about impressing them. As you succinctly noted, for our sort, finding a lover who isn’t terrified of us is a challenge. Impressing them would be not only redundant but would pale in comparison.”

“Our sort,” she echoed.

“Yes. We are of a kind, you and I. Will you sit?”

She cast her gaze about the room. “Your rusty entertaining habits make themselves known. All of your chairs are singles.”

In consternation, he noticed she was right. Poor planning. “You sit in the armchair,” he pointed to his reading chair by the fire, “and I’ll drag my desk chair over.”

“No need.” That same luminescence shimmered, the unnamed scent unfurling in the room, and a doorway outlined itself in the air. Fascinated, he observed as the reality of his library dissolved within the rectangle, and the Dream uncoiled in all its unnatural landscape.

“Don’t look directly,” Oneira reminded him, and he quickly averted his gaze, aware of the fuzzy sense of being not quite awake.

He felt the portal close right as Oneira told him it was safe to look. There sat a new chair beside his, like and unlike, as if reflected in an imperfect mirror.

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