Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“Prophet Genesis,” Graves said with a bow. “Always a pleasure.”
Gen blushed. “I haven’t heard that name in quite a while.”
“It’s a tragedy not to use a talent such as yours.”
Gen had always had a piece of magic buried within her. Just a touch of sight that allowed her to read tarot for truth. Not all the time, but when the cards spoke to her. It turned out that her touch of sight had been a blossom waiting to flower—a flower that meant she was actually a High Priestess.
“I have been cultivating other gifts.” Gen glanced at Kierse. “Though I am surprised to see you here. In our apartment. In Dublin.”
“It’s a long story,” Kierse said with an eye roll. “Graves, tell her about how you engineered our meeting so that I could help you steal the cauldron.”
Gen squeaked. “What?”
“I’m going to go change.” Kierse headed into her bedroom.
“I assure you she was safe the entire time,” she heard Graves say from the other room.
Kierse snorted. “Except for the period I was alone with a master warlock who snapped my magic like a twig,” she yelled back.
“What?” Gen asked in increasing distress.
Graves’s extended sigh was oh so satisfying.
Chapter Eleven
“I’m just going to…” Gen trailed off, and then Kierse heard her scurrying footsteps. “Kierse, Graves is in our flat.”
“I know. I know.”
“What is he doing here?”
Kierse kicked the bedroom door closed. It probably wasn’t enough to keep Graves from listening in if he wanted to, but he might take the hint and afford them some privacy. She knew how important it was to him.
“Scheming,” Kierse said. She stripped out of her travel clothes, tossing them into an empty hamper.
“Are you involved in his schemes again?”
“Against my will,” Kierse assured her as she tugged on black leggings. “I was stealing the bracelet and he just happened to be there.”
“So he was stalking you.”
“What else is new?” She threw on a fitted black crop top and reached for her new favorite red jacket.
“I really didn’t think he would leave us alone all this time.”
“I don’t think he has. At the very least, he’s been spying on us,” Kierse said as she slid her arms into the cozy material.
Fully clothed, she reached for her most treasured possession—a wren necklace. She stroked a finger over the bird at the center of the silver emblem. It was the only thing that she had left from her parents. And it was the first sign that had made Graves hire her for that job last winter. Wrens and the Holly King were connected. She’d been his little power booster until the winter solstice. While she may have been the one to walk away from him, she could still hear him saying how poetic it was to fall for the source of his own destruction.
She shivered at the words and then looped the necklace around her neck, where it belonged.
“Well, I can’t imagine him letting you walk away. Not after…” Gen trailed off again.
Kierse wasn’t sure how Gen would have ended that sentence, but maybe she didn’t want to know, either.
“Did you sleep together?” Gen asked.
Kierse shot her a look. She never could get anything past her friend. She had been this close to doing just that. “Not yet.”
“Kierse!” Gen said with a shake of her head.
“I’m kidding. Things got heated, but nothing happened. You know it’s complicated.”
“So you still have it bad?”
Kierse made a little shrug. “Well, he’s very pretty.”
“Big trouble, though.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Getting the third degree from Gen was unsurprising. It was what family did when they were concerned, and Gen was family in every sense of the word. After Jason had beaten Kierse to within an inch of her life and left her for dead, Gen had found her, taken her in, and healed her. She’d done the same with Ethan when he’d escaped a similar fate in the church. Gen had been there to pick up the pieces for the both of them.
“I’m not going to tell you not to do it, because I know you better than that,” Gen muttered.
“Good. I love you,” Kierse said with a laugh. “Anyway, we have more important things to deal with.”
Kierse reached under her bed and felt around for the hidden compartment she’d created when she’d first moved in, to store the spear. Gen had thought that they should keep it somewhere more secure, like a bank vault, but Kierse had broken into enough of those to want it near her person.
She reached through her ward and pulled out a gray metal box. The carrying case was bulletproof and hermetically sealed. She’d had a keypad and facial recognition scanner attached and then etched her warding in by hand. No one was breaking into this thing. It didn’t keep anyone from stealing the entire case, but still, they’d have to get through her wards or through her for that, and the spear inside would remain inaccessible.