“Harlow,” Talia said breathlessly, drawing back a little. Her pale eyes were heavy lidded and unfocused, lips beautifully bee-stung. I reared up to steal another small kiss before she went on. “Not that I don’t cosign this—very fucking enthusiastically, in case there’s any confusion—but we need to stop.”

“Why?” I asked, in a half-strangled tone that suggested I might die of such deprivation.

She jerked her head toward the dark beyond the lantern. “Because we’re attracting an audience.”

I followed her gaze, ice spilling like hoarfrost over my skin. “Oh. Oh, shit.”

Shades surrounded us, at least three deep in every direction, like the creepiest ever gathering of voyeurs. They hovered midair like untethered shadows, surveying us with those craters of not-quite-eyes that had taken on an even deeper darkness, like light-sucking vortices.

“Okay, so, this seems very bad,” I whispered to Talia through a suddenly dry throat.

“Well, it’s not the best, but it’ll be fine,” she said, unwinding her arms from my neck and shimmying fleetly off my lap. She kept her voice even-keeled and mellifluous, like some kind of hostage negotiator, which made me only more nervous; it was clearly for the shades’ benefit rather than mine. “We were just acting a little too alive for comfort. Shades are drawn to sex, and uh, sex-type activities. Unbelievably dumb of me not to have thought of that before.”

“My bad, I guess,” I said, even though, all things considered, I still wasn’t all that sorry about the part before the ghosts.

“Hardly,” she replied, shooting me a wicked smile before she turned back to the shades. She lifted her hands in front of her blazing garnet, arranging her fingers in a complex fretwork. I could feel the crackle of fresh spell forming, brewing between her palms. Then she began a low chant that corresponded to the twitches of her fingers—as though she was modulating the working crafted by her hands and voice, like some invisible instrument. Like she was charming spirits rather than snakes.

At this show of power, I felt the resurrection of that old, familiar envy I’d tried so hard to kill and bury all these years. To unwind and extricate from my sense of worth.

Whatever she was doing, a Harlow witch could never do. Not even the Harlow Arbiter.

The shades clung stubbornly to their spots for a few moments longer, bobbing in place like eerie buoys suspended in an invisible sea. Then they began to slowly, reluctantly disperse, wafting back to their trees or simply vanishing where they hovered, slipping back through the veil and into the bleak beyond.

“So, listen, I know this was my idea of fun and all,” Talia said when they were gone, the garnet’s fierce glow subsiding and her hands sinking into her lap, “but next time? Maybe we skip the peeping ghosts and grab dinner instead.”

14