doubling in her perceptions, as if she were seeing and hearing everything twice. She assumed the sensation had always been there, and she’d just been used to it because she’d seen so much of him. Now she saw him an hour a day, if that. “Catch,” she said and tossed him the almonds.
He caught the bag and opened it greedily. “I thought I smelled the magus. The scent of lovesick puppy is hard to miss. What else did he bring?”
She dropped the bigger bag from the magus on the floor, and sat down next to him. “That’s for Elly. You want a share, ask her for it.”
“I’ll pass. She hates me,” he said cheerfully, and threw a handful of almonds into his mouth.
The profligate gluttony of it made Judah feel twitchy. “Give me some of those.”
“Didn’t you eat yours already?”
“I ate exactly a fourth. But if we’re being selfish, I want my full half.”
He grinned and handed the bag back. “Since we’re being selfish, want to get drunk?”
Judah felt her eyes narrowing. “Why are you being so social all of a sudden?”
“I’m always social with you,” he said, but that wasn’t enough and they both knew it. He sighed. “Because every week, the magus comes, and he makes you look at things you don’t want to look at and think about things you don’t want to think about, and it hurts you and makes you sad, and that hurts me, and makes me sad. Plus, I knew you’d have candy.” He stood and held out a hand to help her up.
She stared at it. It was not a gesture he would offer casually, not anymore. Finally, reluctantly, she slid her hand into his dry palm. In the time it took him to pull her to standing she saw everything inside him. Less of it was anger than she’d expected; most of it was grief mixed with a flat, colorless despair. Then she was standing next to him, his face full of curiosity and a faint surprise. Because of course he would have been able to read her as clearly as she read him. What she’d seen in him felt slippery and she worried about her losing her footing there; if Gavin had questions about what he’d seen, he kept them to himself.
“Come on,” he said, dropping her hand. “You’ll like this.”
She left the magus’s bag in the foyer and followed him to the kitchen. The massive worktable, worn smooth by generations of scrubbing, was covered in dust. Gavin picked up a lantern, one of the old ones with a candle inside, and lit it. Apparently, he still had matches. “This way,” he said, and led her through the pantry to the steep staircase that wound down to the cellars. The lantern she used when she came down for water was one Theron had made, with a reflector to cast the light wide. The circle of light picked out by Gavin’s lantern was small and milky by comparison. They passed the root cellar, the wine cellar, the door that led to the catacombs and crypts; the air grew cooler and damper, the ground changing from smooth stone to brick. After Gavin passed the archway that led to the aquifer, the passageway—such as it was—narrowed. Soon she could touch either wall just by putting out an arm. Finally, they came to a small wooden door. Gavin ushered her through it.
If the circle of lantern light seemed small in the passage, inside the aquifer’s cave it was minuscule. They stood on a stone ledge. The aquifer stretched out in front of them, silent and massive, and the cavern smelled of damp rock and cold. A rowboat lay upended next to the water. She hoped Gavin didn’t intend to use it.
But Gavin was, indeed, flipping the boat over and pushing it into the water. The wood scraped uncomfortably on the stone, but then there was a swallowing sort of splash and the boat floated. He stepped into it and, steadying it against the ledge, said, “Get in.”
“You’re kidding.” The thought of her tiny self floating in a flimsy wooden shell above those unknowable depths made her queasy.
“Not at all.” He’d hung the lantern from a hook at the prow behind him, and was backlit. But she could hear the grin in his voice. “Come on, Jude. If I was planning to drown us, you’d already know.”
Yes, she would. Gritting her teeth, she climbed into the boat, which rocked wildly. The ledge she’d just stepped