Katrina withdrew her hand.

Coal stepped out of the shadows.

“I...” was all Katrina could manage.

As Coal approached she was captivated by him. He was taller than she remembered and younger looking. Irresistibly handsome. His cool blue eyes met her verdant green ones and she felt like her own insides had suddenly been coated in ice while her outsides ranged hot and her pulse quickened.

“Um...”

She did not run. She could not run. Not because of any magic but because the nearness of that being, one she’d heard so many tales about, one she’d fantasised about. The nearness of him rooted her to the floor and gave her a sense of surrealism like she’d never felt before.

“Did your mother send you?” Coal asked. His voice was calm, cool, easily confident. It carried little more than a light curiosity to the inattentive listener.

“No.” Katrina shook her head and gave an honest answer before she’d even had time to think through the consequences. She looked him up and down. He was wearing a suit so well tailored and timeless that she couldn’t even imagine how much it might cost. She wanted to touch it, to know what the fabric felt like. To know what he felt like. But she resisted. The being before her was untouchable. She wanted and feared him all at once.

She met his eyes again and somehow their coolness brought her crashing back to reality. This was her chance, to make something of herself. Her introduction to the world of the aristocrats. She couldn’t afford to be seen like a child now. She raised her chin. “I came myself. I was...” She glanced back at the vase, her confidence returning in bounds, and she decided that she did not need to tell him why she was here. Not when she could distract him instead. “What’s that?” she asked of the vase.

“That, is not your business.” Coal replied, enunciating each word slowly and clearly. He took another step forward, perhaps to intimidate her, although he remained more than an arms length away still.

Katrina was not afraid anymore. She had faith in her own charms.

She looked up through her eyelashes. She batted them at him. Not obviously, just a couple of blinks. Something she had long ago mastered by practicing in front of a mirror. She placed one hand on a nearby chair and moving in the most sensually subtle way she replied with an injection of curiosity into her own voice, “If you don’t want people asking, they why do you have it out on display?”

She was rewarded with a sword at her throat. Not the reception she’d been hoping for.

“I don’t recall inviting you in.” Coal’s voice was chilling. Cold like the ice on the outside of the vase and although it was still calm, she could hear more of a bite underneath now.

Katrina suppressed a shiver. The world belonged to the bold. “The door was open. I was simply out for a ride,” Katrina replied as slippery as velvet, deciding on a half lie. “I saw, I thought I saw someone in here.” She met his eyes intentionally, daring him to disbelieve her. Meanwhile her fingers casually dipped into her pockets where her charms lay, just in case.

Coal didn’t miss a thing.

Katrina felt a sharp pain as he pinned her hand to her side with his sword. The blade did not go in deep, but it was enough to cause a small trickle of blood to weave a slow line down toward her fingertips. It quickly clotted and dried. Not a drop fell. The wooden floor remained unstained. He held the blade in place for just long enough that he could reach in and retrieve the contents of her pockets for himself. His hit had been quick and very precise.

He could have taken her hand off but he hadn’t. He would not hurt her anymore than that though would he? Katrina had her doubts now.

He stepped back and thumbed through her charms. There was hours of work there, not so much the infusing itself but getting some of that magic had taken some significant sucking up to people, even her own siblings didn’t just let her use their magic for nothing. There had been exchanges of house chores and plenty of begging, and Katrina hated to beg. And getting the magic just how she wanted, that did take some level of focus. They were good charms. Despite her fear she scowled at him.

When he finally looked back at her she thought she saw the faintest twitch of a smile. It did not make her feel better but she kept her chin up.

Coal raised his sword to her throat and he kept going until the tip of his sword started to dig in and she was forced to raise her chin up higher than she would have liked.

Coal looked amused at this. The edges of his mouth curved up a little more. “You were just out for a ride were you? Going where exactly?”

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“Just arou-” she started to speak but cut herself off as his eyes narrowed and he moved the edge of the blade around the side of her face, stroking her chin, until it sat right under her earlobe. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her ear.

He dangled one of the charms away from the others and checked to see she was looking at it. She recognised it as the one that held her brother’s healing magic.

“If I cut your ear off and gave you this back, how well do you think you’d be able to fix it?” He sounded genuinely curious. She didn’t like the glint in his eye. She wasn’t sure how he knew what the charm was either.

“Um.” Katrina swallowed hard. With a heavy helping of defiance she replied, “If you hurt me, my mum will light you up like a bonfire.”

Coal chuckled and then with a purr he replied, “But that would require her to know you were here, wouldn’t it?”

Katrina had no answer to that. Outside had been warm. This room felt cold.

Coal turned his back to her and walked a few paces away.

Katrina considered running but before she could decide if she had any chance he was facing her once more. But he was not looking at her. He was eyeing the charms again.

Katrina waited. There was no way she could outrun him. She had more charms in her other pocket but given how fast he had moved before, and given he had her telekinesis charm and he was probably well-practised with infusements, she dare not reach for them.

He met her eyes once more and some small childish arrogant part of her was annoyed that he did not seem inclinded to run his eyes up and down the rest of her. Her black top was lacy and cut low. Even the teachers at school couldn’t help but glance at least occasionally in lust or jealously, and while she might complain about leering eyes to her school friends, a part of her loved to be adored. And there was no adoration she wanted more than that of the famous aristocrat, Coal.

“You made these infusements?” Coal asked.

Katrina nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“They’re not bad,” he remarked the way one might assess their 20th racehorse of the day.

Among a tornado of other emotions, despite his nonchalant tone, Katrina felt a swelling of pride. She stood up straighter. She almost smiled.

Coal’s next words brought her back down to Earth. “The question is, what do we do with you now?” He was looking at her face again, reading her reaction.

Her posture relaxed but she did not. Inside she was a mix of thrilled, apprehensive, fearful, awed. She felt like she was stading on a wire which was very very high up.

“I suppose we could tell your mother.”

As Katrina’s eye’s widened in fear and her face paled, Coal chuckled. Her mother would kill her, if she ever found out Katrina had come here, not literally but she would never be allowed to leave the house again which would be just as bad.

Katrina shook her head. “I really was just out for a ride...”

Coal was studying her infusements again.

Katrina had been going to say more, but the look that came across Coal’s face stopped her in her tracks. It was dark, angry.

Without looking at her Coal replied, “It’s better if you don’t lie.”

Katrina opened her mouth to start over and then she closed it again. She was quiet until Coal looked over at her again.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked finally, pushing her luck. It was after all one of the things she had come here to learn.

Coal’s smile returned and Katrina decided she liked it much better than his frown.

He looked thoughtful for a moment and then his frown returned but it was different this time, not angry like before. “What did you cast? Outside.”

“I...”

He was studying her curiously again, trying to read her expression or maybe her mind. Did he have mind magic on him? Katrina was suddenly glad that she’d left that charm at home.

She decided to answer his other question instead and honestly this time, just in case. “I just, I just wanted to know what sort of spells you used. I’ve been learning about defensive magic, and... and my sister said I couldn’t even steal a rose from your garden.” She was about to add ‘and she doesn’t think I’m any good’ to try and garner some sympathy, but it would have been a lie, and somehow she felt that Coal would know that and would not approve.

He raised his eyebrows at her. “I don’t grow roses.”

“I noticed. And the door really was open...” She met his eyes hoping he would believe her this time.

He looked thoughtful.

“And I did see someone inside. There was an old lady....”

He went back to frowning.

Katrina stopped. Maybe that had been imagined? She wasn’t really sure exactly what her spell had done. “But, it might have been a trick of the light.” Katrina quickly added.

Coal seemed to relax at that. He went back to eyeing the infusements. “A rose huh?” He picked out one of her charms, one that was itself rose-shaped. He dangled it in front of her. “Your sister’s magic I take?”

Katrina nodded.

“And this one?” He held up another, a tiny horseshoe on a silver chain. “Your mother’s or your sister’s?”

“Sister’s.”

“Hmm, a pity.” He put them in his pocket. “Well, I suppose it’s almost a fair payment for breaking and entering, and then there is the matter of my silence.” He separated out two more charms from the four remaining in his hand. Both her brother’s magics. He added the invisibility one to his pocket with the others then studied the healing one. With a sigh he put it back with the two he still had out, telekinesis and dreamwalking. “Unfortunately, only some of these I’m interested in.” He handed those three back to her.

She took them hesitantly with a frown, a little insulted but also relieved. That relief vanished when she realised he was eyeing her other pocket.

Coal started to say, “What else have-”

He cut himself off for no obvious reason that Katrina could see. With a swift movement he reached out and broke the ring of dirt that surrounded the pretty red vase which sat not far from them on the table. A moment later the vase vanished. Katrina wasn’t sure where it had gone but she knew he had done it. She watched all of this with confusion.

Suddenly there came the sound of a door opening and then clicking shut from the front of the house. Someone was coming.

Coal gave a brief glance toward the hallway and then looked back at Katrina. “Perhaps we better say that’s even and you get out while you’ve still got your ears. Sound good?” He didn’t sound in too much of a rush but gave her a nod and a pertinent look at the open back door.

Katrina didn’t waste any time. She was outside and around the corner before whomever it was reached the room. But she was not yet out of earshot, and she pulled up short when she heard the name Coal used to greet the other person.

“Amanda.”