Page 28

Day two without a nightmare. Kierse woke up feeling more refreshed than she had in months. She didn’t know if recovering the new memory had kept the rest at bay or if her mental state was more secure now that she had a plan. Either way, she would take the win.

The jet lag was a problem, though. She hastened into a shower in the hopes the hot jets would wake her up. They only did half the job, and she spent some time on her appearance before going in search of coffee.

Voices drifted up to her, and Kierse jogged downstairs to see Gen and Laz sitting at the kitchen island while Isolde filled their plates with heaping portions of eggs, pancakes, bacon, and fresh fruit.

Kierse blinked and blinked again. She was used to Graves’s house being a somber place.

Somewhere he slid in and out of mysteriously in the dead of winter, not a raucous home where Laz could regale them with some tale about a pirate ship in a sunken cove.

Isolde slid a cup of coffee to her, and she took it with a muffled, “Thank you.”

“I almost had it, too,” Laz said. “But then the coast guard showed up and half the crew were arrested.” He shook his head. “I barely escaped, watching as they hauled up my score.”

Gen’s eyes were wide with wonder. “That is quite a tale.”

“How much of it is true?” Kierse teased as she reached for a lemon raspberry muffin.

“All of it,” Laz said with a twinkle in his eye.

Isolde shook her head. “I’ve heard many such stories from Mr. Kates over the years,” she said. “Embellishment is the name of the game.”

He put his hand to his chest. “My dear Isolde, you wound me.”

Gen giggled.

“Any word from Graves?” Kierse asked.

“He’s in the library,” Laz said. “Something business related came in.”

“I’m going to let him know we’re heading out,” Kierse told Gen. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah. Mom is excited to see you.”

Kierse grinned. “I highly doubt the grand Madame Colette said she was excited .”

“Well, I can read between the lines,” Gen admitted.

“I bet.”

Colette had allowed Kierse to stay in the attic with her daughter.

She’d never forced her into sex work. In fact, she was the one who’d introduced Kierse to Nate in the first place, giving her a way to use her thieving for good—sort of.

She was the closest thing Kierse had ever had to a mom until her memories had started to return.

“And Ethan?” Gen asked as they left the kitchen.

“Our next stop.”

“Niamh is worried about me,” Gen muttered.

So was Kierse. The thought of taking Gen into enemy territory made her want to peel her skin off. But to see Ethan, Kierse would consider it. Yes, Gen was a High Priestess, so she would likely be safe, but she didn’t trust any of them.

“We’ll figure it out,” Kierse told her.

Kierse followed Gen up the stairs, but as Gen continued to the third floor, Kierse stopped on the second.

She stepped up to the double doors entwined with holly warding, The Holly Library engraved in the same bronze plaque.

A warning for what lay beyond and who owned the library within—the Holly King.

At her entrance Graves looked up, his hand on a tablet, a glass of bourbon next to it. His black cat, Anne Boleyn, sat curled up half on top of his work. She lifted her head to peer at Kierse.

“Hey,” she said, taking in the splendor before her. “Mind if I interrupt?”

“By all means.”

The libraries of the present and past formed layers on top of one another in her mind. The room was now thick with holly ivy, which had taken over as many bookshelves as possible and even begun to crowd into open space. As if this magic, this curse, had grown in her absence, choking out all else.

He seemed to just fit here, in this place, like this library was a second skin.

In his dark suit, black shirt, tie, and gloves, he was a shadow.

The holly encroached on him as much as the library.

The midnight blue of his hair blended into the background, and he was twin storm clouds and a perfectly kissable mouth.

Anne hissed as she approached and jumped down from the desk. She slunk around Graves’s ankles apprehensively.

“You have been sulking for months because you missed her,” Graves said in exasperation to the cat. “And now that she’s here, you act like this?”

Kierse bent down and reached for the cat. “Is that right? Have you missed me?”

Anne batted at her hand and darted away into the depths. Kierse laughed and straightened, watching her disappearing form.

“Tempestuous,” he muttered under his breath.

“What can you expect? She’s a cat. I’m a bird.” Kierse gestured to the wren necklace dangling between her breasts. “We don’t mix.”

His eyes flickered down and then back up. “Indeed.”

“Laz said you had business.” She glanced at the tablet and tensed, anticipating him hiding it away.

But he pushed it in her direction so she could get a better look at the memo titled “Monster Holdings.” It had a blue logo at the top, an MH that bled together in a stark, blocky font with a circle around it.

“I’m investigating the company that’s hosting the auction,” he explained. “Including any paperwork I can find regarding the owner.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Frustratingly little. They’ve apparently been around for at least a decade, so they were founded during the war. The owner is so shrouded that I’m unclear who is even hosting it.”

“So a dead end.”

“I’ll keep looking.” He removed his gloves and tossed them onto the desk. “If I’ve learned anything in my pursuit of knowledge, it’s that everything will out if given enough time.”

“Ah, the thing we are short on.”

The corner of his mouth lifted in the hint of a smile.

“We’ll get as much as we can and make contingencies for everything else.

” His eyes moved to her body, running over where her hip leaned against his desk.

She tilted toward him like a flower toward the sun.

“I spoke to Edgar last night after you retired about the incident with your parents.”

Kierse stilled. “What did he say?”

“He showed me the memory where he discovered the scene. There were three bodies, including a young girl.”

“What?” she asked. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m aware.”

“And you believe him? He couldn’t have altered his memory? Maybe someone else did?”

“There weren’t any indicators of tampering, and I trust him with my life.”

“So…they killed the wrong girl?”

“Or a body was planted on the scene. Or it was an illusion.”

Kierse furrowed her brow. “I don’t know what to make of any of that.”

“We need more information,” he agreed. “We’ll figure it out, okay?”

She nodded. Her mind was swimming with the information.

“Was there a reason that you came to find me?”

Kierse pulled herself out of her thoughts and met his gaze. “Checking to see if you’re actually going to include me in your business.”

He spread his arms wide. “I’m a man of my word.”

She choked on a laugh. “We’ll see.”

“And speaking of that,” he said, picking up his bourbon and swirling it, “I reached out to the Covenant to see Dr. Mafi.”

Kierse’s eyes widened. “I thought we were going to do memory work together here?”

“We are,” he said smoothly. “But I want to exhaust every avenue.”

“Are you saying your knowledge is limited?”

He smirked. “No. We assume that because the spell broke, it triggered your memories. That it is simply a magical problem.”

“You don’t think it is?”

“That’s what I want to find out,” he said, taking a sip.

“Memory isn’t just magic. Yes, the spell likely damaged something.

But then I started thinking about that damage and how it could also be physical or mental.

” His tone softened as he added, “You were very young and encountered a lot of trauma.”

“Oh,” she said as she realized what he meant. “You think that there’s something wrong with my brain.”

His gaze was unguarded when he said, “I think we don’t know if your brain was injured. After all, you told me yourself that you were thrown off of a building to ‘cure’ your fear of heights.”

Kierse winced at the memory of Jason. “Yes, but…”

“So wouldn’t it be better to know? It might be some form of traumatic brain injury, or repression, or just good old fashioned Monster War PTSD. The fact of the matter is that we don’t know, and I don’t like not knowing things.”

“Okay,” she said slowly.

He was right. And more than that…he could have told her it was a magical problem and solved it with his own powers. The fact that he was going to involve someone else, different kinds of magic and science, showed that he would leave no stone unturned. He was looking out for her.

“When do we go?”

“Next week. I wanted to give you time to settle in.”

She tapped her fingers against the desk. “Well, with that, Gen and I are about to leave.”

He tensed. “To see Colette.”

“Yes and then Ethan,” she told him with a shrug.

“And Lorcan?”

She nodded. “We need answers.”

Graves replaced his drink on the table and stood to face her.

His body was large and domineering, caging her back against the desk.

She stilled under the gaze of a predator, lifting her chin just enough to let him know that she would not back down.

But the pounding of her heart betrayed her own bravado.

He rested his hands to either side of her on the desk and leaned her back into it, towering over her. She swallowed as her body came alive. Her core pulsed in response to his nearness. His lips so close. His eyes devouring her whole. She existed nowhere except in this moment.

They weren’t even touching, and all she wanted to do was rip his clothes off and give in to this temptation.

Forget the goblin market with its litany of temptations.

Hers was directly before her, body so hot that he was an inferno raging in his precious library.

And if she gave in, they’d burn the whole place down.

He brushed a lock of her dark hair off of her face. His fingers ran down her neck, feeling her jumpy pulse, going lower, lower, lower, to the spot between her breasts where her wren pendant rested. She felt him graze the side of her breast as he examined the precious metal with a dangerous smirk.

“My wren,” he said like a caress.

He closed his fist around the pendant and slowly but inexorably pulled her forward against him, crushing their lips together.

His heat enveloped her. Soft and hard and wanton all at once.

A temptation more seductive than the most enticing incubus.

A desire more potent than water in the desert.

An ache that no touch had been able to satisfy.

His tongue darted into her mouth, commanding and controlling, overwhelming her senses and besieging her mind. She was putty in his hands, and a low moan escaped her, unbidden. Her fingers dug into his sides, dragging them closer, wanting so much more.

And then, he released her, leaving her reeling.

“What was that?” she asked.

He let the metal fall from his fingers. “Just a reminder before you go.”

She swallowed, prepared to tell him that she didn’t need any such reminder, but she couldn’t get the lie past her teeth. She wanted every reminder. Damn him.