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Sirus hadn’t seen the mage in several decades, but he knew Levian well. Well enough that, though he didn’t think she was lying, he knew she was withholding.
“You do not hide from anyone,” he pointed out. Not even angry daemon lords. Unfortunately, the mage was quite apt at stirring up trouble, but, to her credit, she never wavered from dealing with the consequences or the fallout. She was formidable when she needed to be. Rarely did she tuck tail and run. In fact, Sirus had always been rather impressed at her ability to soothe even the prickliest of circumstances. She and Barith shared skill in that regard. Even if they did struggle with conflict where it concerned each other.
Levian shifted to the far side of the table, cutting him a haughty look. “Did you really drag yourself out of retirement just to play hero?” she shot back.
Sirus bristled, grating his teeth. He, Barith, and Levian had come to work rather closely with each other over the last several centuries. Though, as was common with immortals, they would go through long periods apart as well. Despite their long-standing working relationship, Sirus never counted on their loyalty. He counted on his instincts. Instincts which, at present, told him she was hiding something. He raised a brow. “Levian,” he said low, both warning and demand. He would not let her deflect.
“You can believe me or not,” she huffed, turning down the hall toward a set of wide stairs that led to the upper floors. Sirus followed closely behind. “You are right that there are countless other places I could have gone,” she went on, gliding up the steps. “But I do find London diverting, and I assumed Barith wouldn’t be at home. Which”—she scoffed a little laugh—“he wasn’t.”
She turned to a set of double doors just beyond the top of the stairs and threw them open. Within lay a vast library, filled to the brim with books and trinkets and artifacts. Though the mage was glamorous and seemed right at home at even the raunchiest of bacchanals, she was an academic at heart. As much as she would be loath to admit it, she was her father’s daughter.
Sirus took in the expanse of her collection. It had at least doubled in size since he’d last seen it. The bones of a wagon-sized two-horned whale hung from the rafters by magick. Worn leather trunks were stacked ten high in every corner, and there was a charred black humanoid skull inlaid with gold symbols sitting in the middle of her reading table, which was stacked with towers of books and scrolls. He caught sight of the edge of a half-covered ornate silver frame wedged beside a cabinet. It wasn’t only the daemon prince she’d been gambling with, it seemed.
“You’ve been busy,” he observed.
“Unlike you and Barith, I’ve been keeping myself productively occupied over the last several decades,” she retorted. The mage slid across the room to her reading table. “I know you only lingered to interrogate me, but it won’t do you much good.” She spun around to face him, holding her hands out at her sides. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
He cocked a brow. Levian always had something to hide. It was in her nature. Even half-blood fae loved to withhold, though they were rather terrible liars.
“You’re the one who came falling into the garden with an innocent in tow,” she reminded him. “That poor creature doesn’t know a thing about magick, does she?”
“No,” he replied, seeing no reason to conceal that fact.
He wished Gwendolyn did know more about magick. It would have made all of this much simpler. It would make what would come next easier as well. Sirus was still not sure how she’d gone so long without gaining some knowledge of what she was. Or at least of the world she’d been born into. The woman was clearly gifted in her ability to deny reality. She’d lived embedded in an epicenter of magickal creatures and hadn’t even realized. She’d lived in the same building as an ancient witch who led a coven, and she’d not seemed to suspect her as anything other than a normal woman. Sirus had thought Gwendolyn’s instincts sharp, but the more he thought on it, the more he was beginning to deduce that she might be quite the opposite. Her reactions to him alone should have been enough to give him pause. Her willingness to be so close to him. Those little brushes of pink on her cheeks.
Levian crossed her arms over her chest. “She must be in shock if she was willing to tolerate you so easily,” she observed, pulling him back to the present.
He tensed. It went against all instincts of preservation to get close to a vampire under such little acquaintance, let alone clutch onto one for protection. When the occasional contract required saving instead of harming, Sirus was never the one the rescued party leaned on. That was Barith. On occasion, Levian. Never him.
It was even more unnerving how he’d responded to her reactions. Gwendolyn was a curious creature who intrigued him. The fact that he thought of her as anything beyond a problem to be dealt with was grating. “Her shock will wear off,” he replied flatly.
Levian rolled her eyes as if he were dense. “I assume your arrival will have something to do with the zephyrs?”
Gwendolyn had told her they’d come from New York. He’d known word was going to spread about the zephyrs. They were reclusive creatures, and rarely seen. Since the treaties were struck amongst the magickal factions, they’d closed themselves off almost completely from the rest of the world, much like the fae. Hidden on their ever-moving magickal island, Strye. So many zephyrs seen in one place was not going to be kept quiet for long, though he’d not expected word to travel quite this fast.
“What do you know?” he pressed.
She fiddled with a few of her tangled necklaces. “I know nothing,” she deflected. A half-truth. “There were simply a few whispers amongst the doves this morning that a zephyr, or a dozen, were seen in New York last night. I could pretend not to make assumptions,” she continued, all sweet innocence.
Sirus watched her. Trying to read her.
Levian knew him well enough that she sensed it. “Suspicious at every turn,” she observed.
“With reason,” he pointed out.
The mage let out a heavy sigh of annoyance. “I’m here because it was a convenient place for respite without the daemons sniffing around. Given the circumstances, I thought it wise to give the freshly dehorned Daemon Lord some time to cool off before dealing with him directly.” Another half-truth. “You know how Carvatticus can be when he’s in a huff. I also happen to like London, and I haven’t visited in years. It’s your problem if you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“Is it a coincidence?” Levian countered with a snarked huff, raising a brow. “Coincidence would imply serendipity rather than annoyance, and so far this little reunion has been nothing but vexing. I was perfectly content before either of you showed up to disturb my peace. Besides, it may not have been a surprise at all if you’d bothered to seek me out before your little adventure in New York. Not that I heard you’d been looking for me.”
And there it was. The crux of her hostility, at least in part. Levian may have changed in the past several decades, but her tells were still the same. She was tense. Her eyes forced calm, but her fingers fidgeted. It bothered her that he hadn’t sought her out like he’d sought Barith.
“I tracked down Barith in a day,” Sirus told her. Which was true. The last he’d heard, Levian was off the grid, and he hadn’t the time to hunt her down.
The mage pursed her lips. “Yes, well. It’s not as if I care a fig about getting involved in whatever you two are up to anyway,” she declared, the haughtiness in her tone giving away that the exact opposite was true. Levian truly was a horrible liar. Sirus wasn’t sure entirely how long she’d been in London, but he got the distinct impression that she was uncharacteristically bored. Which made him wonder all the more about the extent of the damage done with the daemons. It was clearly more significant than he’d understood it to be. Not that the particulars were of concern to him.
“But since I am here,” Levian went on, “I can tell you that poor woman needs rest, and knowing you two, she would probably appreciate another woman’s?—”
