Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Lorcan’s attention turned to what she was doing. She felt his rage. She felt his betrayal. She laughed in the face of it. Shouldn’t he know her well enough that she always used her thieving tricks?
And now the door was open.
She pushed Lorcan away from her, and the door remained cracked. A touch of her magic trickled into her fingertips. She released the glamour on her ears with a sigh. Her full Fae heritage was visible for him to see. It wasn’t enough. She needed more to break through, but it was a start.
The reality of the con hit Lorcan all at once.
“Kierse,” he said, “what have you done?”
“What I must. I’m going to my enemy’s table tomorrow night, and I’m going as a weapon now instead of this bullshit that you’ve tied me up as.”
“Amberdash’s party? I have an invitation, too. We could have gone together.”
As if that was ever going to happen. The last person she or Graves would want at her back was Lorcan Flynn.
“You’ll be shocked to learn that I don’t trust you.”
“You just kissed me!”
She laughed in his face. “That was a con, Lorcan. You can’t think I would actually want to kiss you?”
His face went pale, but he pushed himself forward. “We’re not enemies. And whatever act you put on, I know it’s not a lie.” He tapped his chest twice. “The bond knows.”
The world softened as the spell came to a close. “Fuck off and die.”
Then Ireland dissolved before her, and she found herself lying on the hard marble of the Williamsburgh Bank building. Magic tingled at her fingertips. Not much more than a trickle compared to what she had when Lorcan opened their magic, but it was enough.
“We’re back in business,” she said to Niamh and Gen with a smile.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rain trailed her across Manhattan, keeping even the gutters free of monsters. It left her feeling like a drowned rat when she finally made it back to the brownstone. The warmth greeted her like an old friend as she passed the dragon knocker on the front step and entered the house in the early hours of the morning. Isolde and Edgar had long gone for the day. Walter was safely asleep upstairs. He lived normal human hours compared to her and Graves. The sounds of the old house felt as if it was speaking to her through its creaks and groans. She ran a hand along the stair banister before noticing that a fire burned in the sitting room.
Kierse headed toward it, shaking rain out of her hair. “Graves?”
She found piles of books littered from one corner to the next. Anne Boleyn lounged against a precariously arranged stack a little too close to the crackling fire for Kierse’s liking. She swished her tail at Kierse’s entrance and then leaned her head back toward the flames as if she sunned herself on the beach.
Graves had abandoned his books. They were scattered around him, but for once, he didn’t have his head buried, or in his lap, or paging through them. His eyes were cast to the fire, unseeing. The light flickered thunderstorms in the gray irises. His pianist fingers held onto a crystal glass half full of scotch.
But the rest of him was incongruous to the put-together warlock she was used to. He’d changed out of his suit and was in a black athletic shirt and pants. His hair had a sheen to it like he’d been out jogging in the rain. She’d seen him do that before when he needed to clear his head. An old Druidic technique that never quite left him.
“Hey,” she said, trying to draw his attention, but it was so focused on the fire that he didn’t even look up. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Graves?”
He snapped to attention, grasping her wrist in a grip that was almost painful. As if he were going to toss her across the room as he had the first night they met. When he had thought she was just a little thief and not yet his little wren.
A puff of air exhaled from his lips. “Wren.”
“I called your name a few times.”
“I wasn’t expecting you back this early.”
Kierse frowned. “It’s almost dawn.”
“Is it?” he asked, releasing her wrist.
Normally he would have drawn her into his lap, pressed a kiss into her hair, and enveloped her into his heat.
“What happened? Did you not make it into the building?”
Graves returned his attention to the fire. “It was sealed. We’re working on clearing it.”
“By tomorrow?” she asked skeptically.
“Today, if you have it right.”
There was something else bothering him, but Kierse didn’t know what it could be.
“Tell me about the spell. Niamh gave me a million reassurances that you wouldn’t be harmed.” His voice was flat as she cleared a space on the coffee table before him and took a seat. “Were you harmed?”