Page 89 of Hexbound

One of the beds had a crocheted pink blanket laid lovingly across the bottom half, and there was a well-used toy cat stuffed with wool. Gifts from Maggie Henderson, who'd had the keeping of her in the workhouse. Her thought, not his. And sent only because she'd noticed the direction his gaze turned.

She was picking up thoughts from him, and he from her.

Bishop cleared his throat as he caught flashes of memory from her: a dark, grimy workhouse; hundreds of ill-washed bodies; cold, always cold; and a pit of hunger so deep in his stomach that he feared he'd never fill it. A little girl cried out,"Mama, please!" as she tried to shake the cold, still body of a woman in a narrow bed."Please wake up!"

Jesus. He clutched at her shoulder, feeling her grief inside him like a fist of cold in his gut. Orphaned early, the pair of them. Only he had discovered a father much later, a strange gift that he'd never fully embraced.

They stared at each other. "I'm sorry," he said, feeling her loneliness and knowing it intimately.

Verity shrugged sadly. "So am I."

And he dulled the brief glimpses she'd caught of his thoughts of Drake.

It would be difficult to concentrate when they were linked so explicitly. "I can keep the line between us open," he said, "but I need to withdraw. I'm getting tangled in your thoughts."

"Probably a good idea," she replied.

The pair of them withdrew to a respectable distance, though he could still feel her on the edges of his consciousness.

"Guthrie's room is this way," she said, and strode for the door. "He has the Chalice."

"What?"

Verity hurried to explain, detailing her little side excursion with Agatha. He could have wrung both their necks. What had Agatha been thinking?

"I managed to get her back here, but only because this place is so ingrained in my consciousness. I can't quite explain it. I can leap blindly as far as I can see, or within a certain distance, but I have to know a place intimately to make a massive leap. I don't think I've spent enough time at your house, and I worried that I'd leave part of her behind if I tried."

He sensed the worry in her voice, and the guilt. "It's fine, Ver. You did better than expected considering the circumstances. We'll get her back."

And the Chalice.

"So how do we play this?" he asked.

"What do you want more? The Chalice? Or Agatha?"

"That's not even a question."

She nodded, looking relieved. "Agatha then. Guthrie will make us pay dearly if he can, but he won't give us both. Not yet. If we get Agatha to safety, I might be able to come back and steal the Chalice."

"We," he corrected.

She blinked, then nodded. "We. Here we are."

Rapping on the door earned swift attention. The tall, dark-skinned man opened the door, his eyes carefully narrowed when he saw who was there.

"Why, it's our Ver and her... friend," Conrad muttered back into the room.

"By all means," called Daniel Guthrie, "send them in."

Bishop was swiftly starting to despise the owner of that voice. The coursing chill of themaladroiseslid through his veins like a lover's call:Kill him now and you get both Agathaandthe Chalice.

Common sense said that they'd be prepared for him now. And Bishop had two potential casualties standing nearby. If he were in their shoes, he'd strike at Agatha or Verity first. Possibly both. And not even Bishop could cast wards to protect all three of them at the same time.

"Ah, my sweet Verity, returned to the fold," Guthrie mocked.

"You have something we want," Verity said.

Bishop's gaze went directly to Agatha, who lay recumbent on the daybed in the far corner of the room with the assassin girl sitting by her side, holding her hand. Fear shook him. Agatha had always seemed invincible. He simply couldn't comprehend what life would be like if she... wasn't.