Page 5 of Enchantra (Wicked Games #2)

4

WARMEST WELCOME

Genevieve sat up with a groan, a chill deep in her bones as she grimaced at the awful taste clinging to her tongue.

“What the Hell …” she whispered to herself as she rubbed her throbbing temples.

When she glanced over to the gates, she saw nothing beyond them, yet something in the back of her mind was telling her that was wrong . She shifted onto her knees and leaned forward, narrowing her eyes at the peculiar berries hanging around the bars.

A flicker of a memory flashed through her mind. Of her plucking one of the berries and putting it on her tongue…

Then another moment came back. Of her walking through the bars and watching a glittering villa appear before her eyes, a leafy labyrinth sprawling before it. The dead crow. The fox.

Have I gone mad?

She took a deep breath and reached out to wrap her hands around the bars and pull herself to her feet?—

—and yelped in pain.

She snatched her hands back from the metal, cradling them against her chest as she let out a furious hiss at the searing buzz of magic that lingered on her skin. And everything suddenly sharpened in her mind. She had absolutely not gone mad. There had been a crow. A fox. A mysterious figure…carrying her…

She pushed herself back onto her feet, glancing down to brush off her dress and nearly choking at how dirty and rumpled it’d become. She huffed as she grabbed up her trunks, turning to the gate with rigid resolve as she reached for her magic and passed through the silver bars once more. As soon as she was back on the other side, it was as if a thick, hazy film had been peeled away from her senses. There, the hidden estate appeared once again in its full glory. She wondered whether the berries had done exactly as they were supposed to, but when she was put back on the other side, their magic was meant to make her forget what she had seen.

“Magic is such a thorn in my side,” she grumbled, remaining in her non-corporeal state as she stepped right into the outer leafy wall of the hedge maze. She passed straight through the bushes, and the empty corridors between them, before finally finding herself clear of the labyrinth on the complete opposite side, yards away from the front porch of the expansive villa. As she approached the white marble steps, she noted the same scrawling letter “S” embossed into the double doors.

Returning to her solid form, she dropped her luggage on the porch before rocking up onto the balls of her feet to lift the silver knocker. The knocker’s ring was an intricately crafted circlet of thorned vines, their points biting into her palm as she slammed it down with a heavy, metallic clang to announce her arrival.

For a long minute nothing happened. The silence in the air was eerie, the lack of life around, in general, alarming. Before she had time to lose her nerve, however, the door on the right heaved open. Genevieve sucked in a breath at the strange power that began to crackle in the air as a figure stepped up to the threshold, leaning one shoulder against the door’s frame as their shrewd gaze took her in. A gaze that was an oddly familiar shade of amber.

The golden-eyed stranger stood a little less than a foot over her own— very respectable —five feet and five inches. His disheveled black hair was a bit longer than the preferred style of the men in New Orleans, combed back haphazardly and curling ever so slightly at the ends. His face was conventionally attractive—square jaw, sharp cheekbones, perfectly straight nose—in a way that may have leaned toward boring on anyone else. But the golden hoop that was pierced through his full bottom lip and the hypnotizing gold of his eyes enticed Genevieve in a way that was sinful .

He was wearing a tailored black shirt that was stark against his ivory complexion, a silk waistcoat affixed overtop and perfectly cut to his muscular frame. His pleated black trousers hung flatteringly at his waist, secured with a matching leather belt that was encrusted with onyx gems. He had stacks of obsidian rings adorning most of his fingers, and despite the sharp, unmistakable edge of darkness clinging to the air around him, there was something very intentional and refined about his appearance. So unlike the bland bachelors back home, who thought less effort translated to stylish for whatever reason. And certainly a complete departure from the man with golden hair and blue eyes that she saw in her nightmares.

Night and day.

Genevieve shook off the thought of Farrow, chastising herself for letting him run amok in her mind, and refocused her attention on the stranger in front of her. She cleared her throat.

“Hello,” she greeted with a vibrant smile.

He said nothing as he scrutinized her as carefully as she had him, and it was an effort not to shift under the intensity of his gaze.

She lifted her chin. “My name is Genevieve Grimm.”

“And?” he drawled. “What the fuck do you want?”

She hadn’t necessarily expected the warmest welcome for showing up unannounced after the invitation’s proposed dates, but the ire in his words truly puzzled her.

“May I come in?” she requested.

“No,” he stated, his voice not particularly loud, but inarguably firm. “Anything else?”

“Yes. I want a fucking audience with Barrington Silver, and I’m not leaving until I get one,” she told him.

For the briefest of seconds, she could’ve sworn the corners of his mouth twitched upward, but a blink later and his scowl had only deepened.

“I think you’re lost,” he told her, a threat simmering beneath the tight words. “Turn around and go back to wherever the Hell you came from. You’re trespassing.”

With that, he slammed the door right in her face.

For a moment she could only gape in disbelief.

When she recovered, a grunt of annoyance sounding in her throat, she grabbed for the silver knocker once again. His manners were ghastly, but she’d gone through too much trouble coming all this way to let a single boorish man stop her now. Hopefully he was just part of the staff, someone to scare away anyone who might accidentally stumble upon the estate.

Though he definitely looked like he could be a Necromancer.

She slammed the heavy knocker down once, twice, three times. When both doors wrenched open this time, there was a foreboding swirl of shadows dancing in the background, creating a smokelike halo around the stranger’s broad frame. As the shadows began to spill out of the doorway, Genevieve rocked back on her heels, her breathing turning shallow as the inky wisps began to curl around her. The skin of her arms began pebbling at the unfamiliar power that shrouded him, but she stayed planted in place, refusing to give up any ground despite her instincts screaming at her to run.

Unless Ophelia has been hiding some of her abilities from me, I think it’s safe to say that he’s not a Necromancer, at all.

“Do you not understand when you are unwanted somewhere?” he growled.

“About as well as you understand how to treat a guest, I presume,” she retorted, her voice a bit breathier than she would have liked. “But as I was saying , I have a letter from the head of this estate inviting me to Enchantra. And don’t try to claim I’ve gotten the wrong place. The name is written on the front gate.”

“So it is,” he agreed as he crossed his arms, the shadows still wriggling around him like serpents poised to strike. “Why don’t you show me this supposed invitation, then?”

She reached into her pockets, but when she didn’t find the envelope, the memory hit her. The fox.

She glanced back to the stranger’s face and saw that a taunting smirk had replaced the scowl on his lips.

“You know exactly where my invitation is,” she accused, jabbing a finger in his face.

He said nothing, and when she tapped her foot with impatience, his eyes tracked the motion, the glint in them shifting to something akin to amusement. Though the tight clench of his jaw might argue otherwise.

“So, how does it work?” She propped a hand on her hip. “The fox. Is it some sort of magical illusion? A trained pet? Or was that you ? Do you possess some sort of shapeshifting ability? What are you exactly?”

Because, Necromancer or not, he was undoubtedly something . And though he looked like he was only five or six years older than her, the sheer presence of him made her wonder whether the youth of his appearance was deceiving.

“What are you ?” he retorted. “Besides trouble, I mean. How in the Hell did you get past the reinforcements on the gate a second time?”

“Aha!” she exclaimed, satisfaction flooding through her. “ You put me back on the other side after I fainted. Were you not going to make sure I woke up? That I wasn’t dead ?”

“Wouldn’t have been my concern if you were,” he told her, a look of boredom settling in his peculiar gold eyes.

“You’re an absolute cad,” she commented, wrinkling her nose. “Your attitude is horrendous.”

The smile that curled onto his lips at her insult was dangerous.

He leaned down, until his eyes were level with hers, their noses nearly touching. “Don’t want to deal with my attitude? Leave .”

She balled her hands into fists. “ No . I already told you—I’m not leaving until I speak to Mr. Silver. And especially not until I know that whatever hex was put on me has been lifted. Do you know what it’s like to be followed around by hundreds of screaming birds everywhere you go?”

His expression turned mocking. “Equally enjoyable as this conversation?”

“I was invited here, and you know it,” she maintained as if he hadn’t spoken.

“I believe someone named Tessie was invited. And specifically requested to arrive before the eve of the equinox according to said invitation,” he countered. “That deadline has passed, and you said your name was Juniper?—”

“ Genevieve ,” she corrected.

“—therefore, the invite doesn’t apply to you at all. I’ll warn you one last time— leave .”

The slam of the door in her face was less unexpected this time.

She stood there for a long minute, trying to decide whether she wanted to risk vacating the grounds without confirmation that her little murder problem had been taken care of by simply coming here. Except the stranger had made the mistake of rousing her curiosity—and her stubbornness—and she found herself much more interested in finding out what he was so determined to keep her from discovering inside the house. Not to mention she was not sure that she could live with the idea of leaving him to think he had won.

I deserve to find others like me , she reminded herself. If I find Barrington and show him the photograph, I’m sure he’d want that for me, too.

Besides, what was worse? Coming so close to everything she’d been wanting for so long and walking away like a coward—or dealing with another insufferable man?

Those are a dime a dozen , she thought.

After collecting her baggage, she shifted herself into her non-corporeal form and passed right through the door before she could give it another thought. When she let herself solidify on the other side, dropping her trunks onto the gray-and-white-checkered floor of the foyer, she’d expected to find the hostile stranger still lingering there. But there was nothing around except ominous silence.