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He stilled at the thought. “Perhaps. I wasn’t sure how much more powerful you would be now that the spell is gone. You did that faster than I anticipated.”

“That’s good, right?”

“It’s good. But…” He wavered a moment as if he wasn’t going to finish his thought.

“But?”

“That is how wisps have killed warlocks in the past,” he said slowly, as if he didn’t want to give her this information.

“By touching your magic?”

“And then draining it.”

She blanched. “I’d never survive absorbing all that magic.”

“Let’s hope we never have to test that,” he said, brushing his hands down his suit pants.

He looked…uncomfortable. And how could she blame him? When he had offered to teach her magic, she had panicked about lowering her guard and letting him into her mind. But this was something else altogether. He had taught her how to…hurt him.

He could have skipped this step. He could have not told her what the end result would be, but he had. A light switched on in her mind. He’d handed her a truth that could hurt him. And he’d done it willingly.

She needed to trust him to do the same when she switched her powers the other direction and let him in. A vulnerability for a vulnerability.

“Now turn the powers off.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

She closed her eyes this time. She didn’t want to dive back into that rush of magic. To get lost in the currents of the enormity of him. All she wanted to do was feel…nothing. No absorption at all.

She wanted to let him in. Graves could come in. She would allow that.

The magic appeared to her like something she’d always known how to find. The off button slid into place like breathing. Graves’s hand on her wrist was fire hot. She opened her eyes to see the gold of his magic sliding past her defenses and into her skin.

She lifted her chin to meet his eyes, and suddenly the memory of them in this room rose to the surface.

Him on his knees before her. Her looking down at where his fingers invaded her core and brought her to ever-higher peaks.

The look on his face as she came. The torture of not going further. The want. The need. The…

The memory switched off, and with it her absorption came back online. Her cheeks were flushed. His eyes blazed with an intensity she almost couldn’t handle.

“Well, well, well, that was a pleasant memory.”

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” she snapped.

“That isn’t how memory works.”

She felt in over her head. “I don’t want you to see memories like that.”

“Then concentrate on what you do want me to see,” he said. “Think of your parents this time. Guide my powers to where you want them to be.”

“Is it that easy?”

He flashed her a dirty smirk. “Never.”

“Reassuring.”

“Most people think of what they don’t want someone to see, and then when I’m in there, that’s what I see. That’s how minds work. You need to concentrate on the memory you’re looking for. What are you looking for?”

Kierse tried to clear her mind. “My parents.”

“Be specific.”

“The room with the hole under the floorboards.”

He nodded encouragingly. “We’ll go back to the floorboards and we’ll try to see what comes after your nightmare. It might take a few tries.”

“I’m ready,” she told him, fear creeping through her at the thought of going to that dark place.

This time she kept the floorboards in her mind as she lifted her absorption again. This time her magic felt a little less like glue and more like peeling back layers. It was still sluggish, but it came more easily.

Graves’s magic touched her, and suddenly she could see darkness. There were screams in the background. She was under the floorboards. Now that she looked around, Kierse could see dim light coming from the room above her. It was cold. Winter. She wasn’t wearing a jacket.

The memory shifted to last winter. Lorcan’s magic rushing into her body, and Graves’s haunted face begging her to give him the magic.

Kierse gasped and released her powers. She was panting, bent over the couch as that memory sliced through her. The pain was visceral.

“What triggered the shift?” he asked.

“Winter. It was cold in the dream.”

“Ah,” he said easily. “You think of me with winter.”

“How could I not?”

A small smile crept onto his face. “We were there. Try to stay in the moment. See what happens next.”

Kierse nodded and pulled her absorption up again. It was even easier than the last time. Easier every time.

She was back under the floorboards. This time she kept her focus on what was happening. The yelling continued. A body thumped nearby. She couldn’t see who it was from her hide out. She couldn’t see anything. And yet something was happening. Her parents were gone and she was here.

“We know she’s here, Adair,” a smooth female voice said as heeled boots clicked on the hardwood.

“She’s long gone. We sent her away.”

The woman laughed, high and disbelieving. “You put up a valiant fight, but even I know you wouldn’t send away your precious daughter.”

“Maureen,” a female voice pleaded. Kierse’s mother. “Just let us go. We aren’t harming anyone.”

“Not you. But the child,” Maureen said. Kierse could hear the sneer in her voice. “The relationship is doomed anyway. He will wither and die, and you will stay young forever. Not much of a life.”

“It is our life,” Adair snarled.

Kierse shook under the floorboards, wanting to come out and be brave like her parents. Suddenly she was trapped in another room. In a jail cell after the bank robbery had gone all wrong. Jason’s face staring down at her through the bars, his sweet scent wafting toward her.

“Guess you’ll have to get out of this one yourself, kid,” he taunted.

Kierse shut it off, and reality rushed back in. “Fuck him.”

“I agree. It was the trapped feeling?” he guessed. She nodded. “I felt the thread pull you through. Memories are like dreams in that way.”

“We were almost there. Do you know who Maureen is?”

“She was a wisp council member,” Graves said solemnly. “A powerful one.”

“And she wants to…kill me? For existing?”

“I would suspect so, but I don’t have enough information to speculate. Why don’t we continue and see?”

She shivered, not wanting to go back in there and at the same time wanting answers to this nightmare.

Her absorption popped free seamlessly this time. She dropped back into the memory. Maureen was chiding them for their arrogance, believing they could get away with it.

“The Fae Killer is out there. You won’t be able to keep her safe.” Her heels stopped over the place where Kierse was hiding. “You should come back with us, Shannon.”

“It’s all of us or none of us,” Shannon told her.

“I’m afraid that’s the wrong answer.”

And then there was a loud bang. Fear ripped through her, and she bit her lip to stop from crying. She wanted to call for her parents. To beg them to let her out of this hole. To know what was happening up there. If they were all right. But she wouldn’t jeopardize them.

Time moved slow as glue and fast as a rapid river all at the same time. The floorboards were pulled up, and her father’s face was there.

“Come here, my wee darling.”

He hoisted her small form out, and she buried her face into his shoulder and sobbed. “Dada, I was so scared.”

“I know, but you don’t have to be scared any longer. No one is going to come after you now.”

“Hurry, Adair,” Shannon cried. “I already got ahold of Bram to fly us to New York.”

“I’ve got her,” he told his wife.

Kierse shouldn’t have looked back as he carried her out of the room, but she did. It was the first dead body she’d ever seen. Maureen was blank-faced and prone. She’d been rolled out of the way. Her unseeing eyes accusing Kierse of this murder. What her parents had done to protect her.

The memory vanished a moment later.

Kierse had tears in her eyes. They’d killed another wisp, a powerful council woman. They’d done it to protect her, and all this time she’d had it in the back of her mind as a nightmare. And it was. But it was also a blessing. They’d done this to save her.

Graves cleared his throat. “We’ll stop there,” he told her, rising to his feet easily.

“Graves,” she said, looking up at him with tears in her lashes. “Thank you.”

He nodded once. “You were very lucky that your parents loved you so much.”

And she felt lucky when she had never felt lucky before. She still had so many questions—all the why and how and who of the situation—but she couldn’t deny that this felt like a gift, and it was still worthwhile.

“You got through what I planned for today. Faster than I thought,” he admitted.

She picked up the book. “Good. I guess I should proceed to the homework portion of the evening.”

“I had something else in mind.” And for a second, she couldn’t breathe, wondering if she would be able to resist him. He smirked as if he could read her mind in the gutter. “Are you up for a road trip?”