Page 83 of Charmless
“Miss Upton?” he squawked.
I closed the distance between us, demanding, “What’s happened to Mal?”
The Fear Blade caused Louie to shrink away from me, reducing him to a state of babbling incoherency. I hastily sheathed the knife and repeated my question.
Louie blinked as he shook off the effects of the magical blade. He still looked a little trembly as he blurted out, “Two men! They must have ambushed Mal in his shop. Shifty, the tinker saw the whole thing. These brutes slung Mal over the back of a horse, and they rode off with him.”
“Who did? Who were these men?”
Louie shook his head. “Two great, tall fellows dressed in ordinary working -clothes. But Shifty suspected they were Scutcheons in disguise. He caught a glimpse of one of their swords. It had a gilt emblem like all the soldiers carry.
“Mal was unconscious, bleeding.” Louie gulped. “Shifty said they killed him.”
“No!” I gasped.
“I am sorry, Miss Upton.” Louie’s eyes filled with tears. “I am sure Mal must have put up a good fight but?—”
I didn’t wait to hear anymore. I shoved past Louie and rushed out of the Winking Goblin. As I raced down Rock Gunnel Street, my heart pounded out a denial with every beat. Mal dead? No, no, no!
Scutcheons in disguise… Shifty said they killed him.
Long Louie’s words echoed through my mind, but they made no sense. Horatio had gone alone to confront Mal and there was no way Horatio could have summoned men in time to ambush Mal unless…
Unless that had been Horatio’s plan all along. Before he had traveled to Misty Bottoms with me, Horatio could have already set this trap into motion, all the while pretending he would let me try to reason with Mal. Even when Horatio had held me in his arms, comforting me after my quarrel with Mal, Horatio could have been concealing his plot to ambush Mal.
No, my heart swiftly rejected this painful idea. Horatio Crushington was far too honorable of a man to have deceived me in such a cruel way. If it had been his intention to capture Mal in such a brutal fashion, Horatio would never have risked me being there to witness it.
I slowed my pace, catching my breath, allowing reason to master the panic that had consumed me. As I approached Mal’s shop, I tried to convince myself Long Louie’s story of Mal’s death had to be based upon nothing but a wild rumor. After all, how much faith could one place in the account of a tinker named Shifty? And The Hawk’s Nest looked so quiet and undisturbed.
There was a closed sign posted on the front window, but the shop door stood slightly ajar. My stomach knotted with apprehension as I pushed the door open. I stumbled across the threshold, greeted by a scene of utter chaos. Potion bottles shattered on the floor, a broken shelf barring the way to thecounter, the fireplace cauldron tipping over, spilling some green liquid over the hearth, all bearing mute testimony to some terrible conflict.
“I am sure Mal put up a good fight,”Long Louie had said. Perhaps he had believed I would derive some comfort from that thought. I didn’t.
Picking my way carefully to avoid stepping on shattered glass, I retrieved a garment discarded in front of the apothecary counter. Mal’s cloak, the one he’d been wearing when I had last seen him. The gray wool was still damp from the rain.
My fingers trembled as I inspected the garment. The braid that fastened the cloak had been snapped as though the cloak had been wrenched from Mal’s neck. Near the hem, the wool was stained with a large splash of something dark crimson. Blood.
“Mal.” I breathed his name in a despairing whisper. Hugging the cloak against me, I felt as though I was going to be sick. I swallowed hard, my mind struggling to reject the evidence of my own eyes.
A rattling sound alerted me that I was not alone in the shop. I tensed, listening. A floorboard creaked in the adjacent room. Someone was moving about in Mal’s kitchen. I tiptoed in that direction, torn between fear and hope that contrary to all reports, Mal had somehow survived the ambush and eluded his captors. Or perhaps it was Horatio and he would take me in his arms, reassuring me that my worst dread was untrue.
But when I reached the doorway, I halted in shock at the sight of the man in Mal’s kitchen, the last person in the world I would have wanted or expected to find.
Prince Florian had made himself quite at home in Mal’s kitchen. Rocking on the back legs of a wooden chair, he unscrewed the lid from the jar of Mal’s favorite sweets. Glancing up, Florian did not appear in the least surprised to see me frozen in the doorway.
He calmly popped a peppermint in his mouth, crunching it between his teeth before drawling, “Ah, my beloved. You have finally arrived for your tryst with this Hawkridge rogue.” He ate another mint and regarded me with a dreadful smirk.
“Well, my dear, I am afraid you are a bit too late.”
Sixteen
Istared at the prince, unable to believe my eyes, my mind in such a whirl, I wondered if this was what it felt like to snort pixie dust. Florian seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere, reminding me of a story that Mal and I shivered over during our childhood. The Tale of the Malicious Imp, all about a wicked sprite that would appear to torment bad children by breaking their toys and stealing their sweets. I believe the story had been concocted by Mal’s crusty old grandfather to induce us to behave. It had never worked.
It spoke volumes about the disordered state of my wits that I would recollect such a thing at this moment. When I finally recovered my voice, I blurted out, “You!What are you doing here?”
I stalked forward, brandishing the gray cloak. “Where is Malcolm Hawkridge? What have you done to him?”
“So many questions,” Florian mocked. He munched another peppermint, eyeing the cloak. “Is that blood? Tsk, tsk. You’ll never get that stain out. Might as well throw the cloak away. It is not as though Hawkridge will be needing it.”
