Enthusiastically, he matched her running pace as they headed up a nearly forgotten staircase full of spiderwebs and dust that made him sneeze. His footsteps creaked on the aging wooden risers. He kept his left hand tight on the banister in case something gave way. Thistle still claimed possession of his right hand.
She bounced lightly up each step hardly making a sound or raising a puff of dust.
Thistle paused at the first landing. She looked up, pressing her ear against the wall. Then, on a giggle, she pointed to the next grating. Dick guessed that it was placed directly above the one in the ground-floor meeting room.
“Onward and upward,” he said, and sneezed.
“Shush.” She placed a finger on her lips, then touched his own with the same finger.
He kissed the finger. Instinct or impulse?
She smiled, then set forth again, moving up the next set of steps. She kept her gaze on the internal wall. But she kept flicking pleased glances toward him.
He couldn’t watch anything but her, the way her hips swayed beneath the draped skirt of her green-and-white outfit, the way her slender feet barely caressed each step, the luster of her hair, even in this dim and forgotten back stairwell. She seemed to float. Or fly.
The close air made him a bit dizzy. He thought he saw double leaf-shaped wings across her back. And had her skin turned faintly lavender?
He closed his eyes and shook his head briefly. If her capillaries were very close to the skin and suffused with blood, her naturally pale face would take on more color, he told himself. When he looked again, all seemed normal. Just a trick of the light and the windowless stairwell on a hot and humid day.
God, he wished it would rain.
“Here,” Thistle whispered. She stood with her ear pressed close to a steel fire door.
Dick noticed that she kept a few careful inches between herself and the metal. Her hand reached for the door lever, but she jerked it back as if burned.
“Is that a not-so-subtle way of saying a gentleman should always open a door for a lady?” He tried the latch. It refused to budge. He jiggled it a bit. It still resisted pressure.
“We’re locked out. And that’s a major violation of fire codes,” he muttered, standing back a bit and surveying the door from all angles, as if that would give him some clues for getting through it.
“Let me try something,” Thistle said quietly. She swallowed deeply and pressed her finger close to the tiny key slit in the handle.
Suddenly the entire stairwell filled with sparkling lights, dancing and arcing in magnificent whorls and spirals.
Dick’s mouth opened. “Is that Pixie dust?”
“I… I… help,” Thistle moaned. Her arm flexed again and again as she tried to remove her finger from the lock.
“What?” Dick hung back, uncertain what he needed to do.
“Help me. The iron…” Thistle slumped, her finger still stuck to the metal. The bright starbursts moved faster, more frantic and erratic in their patterns as they faded.
“Huh?” Dick caught her around the waist, then gently grabbed her wrist and pulled. Her hand came away with a popping sound.
The whirling, colored pinpoints of light vanished. Thistle collapsed against him, head lolling on his shoulder.
He held her tightly, too worried about her paler than usual face and rapid but shallow breathing to relish the close contact.
After a moment she stirred, eyelashes fluttering as if awakening from a deep sleep. “Thank you.”
“What do you need?”
“Water.” Her voice sound weak and scratchy.
“Down we go, then. I know where the water fountain is on the ground floor. Can you walk?”
“I… I think so.” She broke away from him and took one step. Her knees buckled.
He caught her as she slid toward the edge of the steps. “Um, maybe you should sit. I’ll go find you a bottle of water.” He guided her onto the first step and sat beside her.
“Don’t leave me alone.” She clung to his suit jacket lapels with new intensity.
“Never.” He looked into her deep purple eyes, losing his concentration in their luminosity. “Thistle,” he breathed.
“Dick.” She looked up at him, mouth slightly parted.
A new awareness wrapped them in an isolation bubble. Nothing existed but the flowery scent of her skin, the warmth of her body pressed against him, and the tingles of excitement bubbling in his veins.
As if drawn together by magnets, he lowered his mouth to hers as she reached up to him. The first touch invited more. He deepened the kiss. They melted together. As she opened her mouth to accept him, he forgot where he ended and she began. The lines of self dissolved.
Gradually they withdrew, lingering here, renewing there. Until finally he remembered to breathe. Still she clung to him.
He wasn’t sure he could stand on his own.
“If you’d just hold me up a while. That little bit of magic drained me terribly.” She rested her forehead on his chest.
“Magic, huh? That kiss was magic.” He lifted her chin with his finger and coaxed her into another softer, more tender kiss.
She withdrew before he did and looked at the door, puzzled.
“Pixie dust should open any lock. I’ve never met resistance like that, no matter how much iron was in the lock.”
“What would do that?” He brought them both up to their feet again, pinning her to his side with an arm around her waist.
“Another Pixie locked it.”
“Another Pixie?” Dick needed to sit again. The world spun crazily for a moment. Logic and preconceived notions crashed against her words like matter and antimatter in a supercollider.
“Another Pixie is working against us.”
“Who?” He looked around the stairwell half expecting to see a tiny being flitting about, laughing at their antics. He blushed that their kiss might have been observed.
“If I knew who, I’d know how to counter it. If I was still a Pixie.” She studied her fingers.
“I think you’re still a Pixie, just a little disoriented. That sparkling dust wasn’t normal.”
“It’s just a trick. Not real magic. Not like enticing clouds our way and tickling them until they spill rain like laughter.”
“You can do that?”
“Silly, not anymore. I’m human now. I have limits. But that other Pixie doesn’t. He’s got more power than a Pixie should have.” She paled again. “The magic tasted… hot like fire. Like Faery magic, not Pixie tricks.”
“Well we aren’t going to find out anything trapped in this stairwell. We need to get you outside and find you something to drink.” He dropped a kiss on her nose and gently led her downstairs and back into reality.
Twenty-two
“I DID IT, JOE. I READ THE ENTIRE statement you wrote, and I only stumbled once,” Dusty announced as she skidded into her boss’ office.
He looked up from the stacks of paperwork on his desk with bleak eyes, rimmed in red and shadowed with black smudges beneath. “Did it do any good?”
He didn’t sound hopeful.
“I don’t know. Everyone listened, but the mayor explained how the money from the sale of the timber would save the clinic and replace some of the teachers.”
“Crap.” Joe buried his hands in his face. “I just wish I knew who is behind this and why they are in such a damned hurry.”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. I almost think it’s a vendetta against the museum, trying to get us to cancel the Ball.”
“We need that fund-raiser. Grants are drying up, school field trips are getting fewer, so admission fees are down. We just don’t have enough income to keep this place running without the money from the Masque Ball.”
“The grant committee…?”
“Haven’t heard back from their inspection yet. Oh, Dusty, I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ll figure it out, Joe. You always do.” She reached across the desk to clasp his hand. He returned her grip with a light squeeze as he rose and came around the desk without releasing her.