Quiet documentary filmmaker Luke Wright adores his celebrity-witch boyfriend: Primrose Stone’s beautiful, charismatic, powerful, and kind underneath the flamboyant surface, honestly happy to help those in need. And Luke might be only human, but he believes Prim loves him; he’s starting to think about their future together.
But when Primrose accepts a case involving a perilous magical rescue, Luke will come face to face with vicious sorcery, his own fears, and the all-too-real dangers of Prim’s job, with Prim’s life hanging in the balance.
The main room is normally a comfort, a familiar paradox of tradition and Prim’s effortless style. A moon-chart and a star-map, the row of bottles and jars labeled in Prim’s messy handwriting, a wide-mouthed scrying bowl, candles and pillowy chairs for the benefit of clients, a tidy rack of gold and silver and bronze knives, the long white ceremonial robe hanging on the wall-peg -- and also Prim’s favorite black leather jacket tossed over one chair, and charmed coffee keeping itself hot in the background, and a tumble of jewelry that isn’t magical at all but just means that Prim’s shed some whimsical shiny bracelets and rings in the usual random places.
That one makes Luke smile, and normally Prim’s magic smiles back, all warm and smoky and glittery as opals.
The magic is familiar. It recognizes him. But it’s also wrong. Frantic. Scurrying. Spiking. Singing and summoning, sounds Luke doesn’t quite physically hear but feels --
He’s not a witch the way Primrose is. But he is magic-sensitive, kind of adjacent to it and aware of it if it’s happening, and he’s Prim’s boyfriend. The magic knows that.
He turns toward the hall, with the two doors: the individual consultation room, for anything too personal to be done in the main space, and then Prim’s private workroom. The distillery and store-rooms are in the garden, and the old wooden staircase on the right goes up to Prim’s bedroom/library, with the books on astronomy and the low cozy bed with the decadent satin sheets, where they’ve spent a lot of enjoyable time, but that’s likely not where his boyfriend is during working hours.
“Prim? Are you home?”
No answer. But Primrose’s protective magic’s shrieking now, a cacophony of clashing melodies and scents and textures -- burning scarlet and blinding gold and copper on Luke’s tongue and whistles in his ears -- and it wraps coils around his wrists and ankles and begs for his help --
Something else nags at his brain, something seen or not seen; his eyes catch up after a second.
A space on the wall rack. A missing knife. The silver one, the moon-knife.
Prim’s protected against most ordinary blades, but magicians sometimes need to offer drops of blood. Prim’s got a few specific knives for that purpose, which means a few weaknesses. Luke tries to breathe. To think. He’s clutching the to-go coffee cup so hard he’s denting the curve of it. He shoves the cup onto the nearest flat surface.
Prim doesn’t have any specific enemies, not that Luke knows about; magicians can be envious and prickly and wary, but Prim’s generous and happy and clever and kind, and good at warding-spells, also.
But Prim had said -- something, that morning -- something about being asked to consult on a police investigation, a missing child, and of course he’d said yes, and Luke had nodded because that was a good thing, obviously ... but Prim hadn’t said it’d be anything difficult ...
Or had he? By not saying so, by smiling, by kissing Luke as a distraction?
