Page 25 of Brushed By Moonlight

His voice dropped an octave, and I might have suspected some kind of cryptic innuendo if he hadn’t cleared his throat and whirled away.

I grabbed a box of appliances to sort through later and moved on to check in with Henrik…but having no desire to join a vampire in the shadowy attic, I returned to Roux and Bene instead. After a few minutes, I wandered to my own area and checked a pile of boxes stacked as high as my eyes.

Thomas — books and notes,the top one was labeled in my grandmother’s neat print.

A lump formed in my throat, and I reached for it. It was heavy as hell, as I realized when it started to tip out of my hands.

Ugly visions flashed through my mind — visions of my dad’s books lying all over the dirty floor and me crying among them, the last, precious reminders of a lost loved one. Items that deserved better than to be packed away and forgotten in a barn.

I grunted, trying to stabilize the box over my head. But I wobbled, and it did too, tipping far enough to crash.

At the last possible second, though, it floated out of my hands, and a warm, firm presence pressed against my side.

“Got it,” Marius murmured.

I skittered away before the box fell on my head and patted another box at knee level. “Over here, please.”

I had no idea what the box weighed, but it was a lot, though Marius swung it down with barely a grunt.

“Thank you. Thank you,” I murmured again and again, running both hands over the cardboard.

It’s just a box,his expression said.

Not just a box. A treasure chest.

“Thank you,” I whispered again.

Well, I meant to. But our eyes met, and I went all tongue-tied. Marius, too, and for a moment, we stood quietly, trapped in time. Henrik thumping around the attic… Bene cracking a joke to Roux… Everything faded away, and all I saw was the universe in Marius’s eyes. A softer, gentler universe than the dystopian view I expected to find, with a warm breeze and a peaceful landscape of vineyards and forests as seen from high, high above.

Then Roux called out, breaking the spell.

“Hey, Mina. Where do you want this table?”

I blinked, then gulped, because I’d just been brushed by moonlight. It felt like it, at least — one of those rare moments when an ancestor’s gift briefly emerged, giving me a power I didn’t ordinarily have — in this case, glimpsing the state of someone’s soul at a given moment in time.

Or maybe my mind was just muddled by the rush of emotions my father’s things had set off. Marius certainly didn’t look as gobsmacked as I felt. And the scene I’d imagined was peaceful, while Marius was anything but.

So, just wacky emotions, I decided.

“Over there, please,” I called to Roux. Then I nodded to Marius as casually as I could.

“Thanks,” I said, more businesslike this time.

He replied as cooly as ever. “De rien.” — literally,it was nothing.

I watched his back as he moved away. Was it really nothing, though?

Chapter Seven

MINA

Byeventually clearing this space,I’d meantin a few weeks. But Roux and his crew cleared enough room in the stable to U-turn my little Citroën in, all before lunch. By the end of the day, the entire area was clear, and they’d even made a dent into the first few stalls.

Maybe even a dent in my heart.

“Good work, everyone,” I said, calling it a day with a broad smile.

For the first time since the guys arrived, things were starting to look up.