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Nothing in his face shifted. Not one muscle nor flick of his eye gave any hint as to what he was thinking. He merely watched her. Gwen fought the impulse to squirm, instead settling on a scowl. He shifted his gaze toward the fire before offering placidly, “If there’s someone you need to contact, it can be done. The witches will deal with your apartment.”
Gwen knitted her brows together. “What does that mean? The witches will deal with your apartment. My apartment is missing most of a wall!” she hissed, the fantasy finally wearing off enough for some shreds of reality to seep in. “And aren’t you worried about the cops? Don’t you think they’ll start looking for me when they realize I’m gone and half my place was blown up? Weird shit happens all the time in New York, but that’s pushing it.” Not that they’d ever find her in London, she recognized with a wave of nausea. Not that they’d really bother to look that hard.
“The police won’t be notified.” Said as fact.
Her mouth fell open. “My landlord will call them just based on the damage alone.”
Saying it was all it took to open the floodgates, and a bevy of anxieties washed over her like waves in a storm, each one plummeting her deeper and deeper underwater until she felt like she couldn’t breathe. The fantasy had been distracting, but the reality was that her apartment was a disaster! She had no savings. No job. What was she going to do after all this?
“The witches will take care of it,” he repeated.
Gwen scoffed sharply. “Do witches just show up and fix everything in your world?” she bit out.
Those silver eyes were locked on her, and for once she wished he would look somewhere else. It was only making her feel more like she was drowning.
“You lived amongst witches and other Folk,” he told her. “Given what happened, the local coven will handle the details. Your landlord is likely of magickal ilk as well.”
Actually, Gwen wouldn’t be entirely shocked to find out Mr. Kregel was secretly some weird magickal creature. Hell, she wouldn’t be shocked if half the people of New York were. The idea that it was entirely possible made her feel even more sick to her stomach; the hot chocolate rose bitterly into her throat. “So everything will just be handled?” she snapped. As if it were so simple.
“Yes.”
Her anxiety boiled up like an overflowing kettle. “What about my life?” she pushed, standing up suddenly to pace back and forth in front of the table. “I can’t just leave everything?—”
“You can, and you did.”
Gwen’s mouth fell open again. The way he’d said it made her legs feel like jelly. Like it was finite. As if going back to her life was impossible. She shifted to lean on the back of the chair where she’d been sitting in order to hold herself upright. Things were happening too fast. Things she hadn’t thought were even possible hours ago were now real. Magick was real. She’d had her life literally blown apart. She’d left only because Miss Jones had told her to.
Gwen recognized the lie and her stomach constricted, acid churning within. Her eyes darted up from the fabric of the chair, her head dizzy and her vision hazy from the dim light. He was watching her, his light eyes filled with unreadable darkness. He was why she’d left it all behind. She’d followed him as if she’d had no choice. She’d followed him because she’d trusted him, had believed him when he told her she was in danger. She’d followed him because she’d known he would protect her.
It was stupid.
Gwen fought the urge to groan, and instead a small, panicked breath of sharp air filled her lungs. She’d done this to herself, by choosing to follow him, but she refused to believe there was no going back. Besides, he was wrong. “I already told you this is a mistake,” she said hollowly. “I’m nobody. Won’t these people just figure that out and leave me the hell alone?”
“No.” He said it without question.
“This is crazy!” she croaked after a few shallow breaths. “I’m not just going to give up everything because you suddenly showed up and told me I have to. I—I have rights, you know!”
Gwen knew she was grasping at straws, but it was all she had. Not that it would do her much good as she drowned underneath the weight of it all. Sirus didn’t bother to say anything. He just watched her. Unbothered. “What does any of this even have to do with me?” she demanded. “Explain why I have to give up my whole life just because some crazy magickal people are after me.”
He stood. To her utter annoyance, her heart fluttered when he took one single step and stopped on the opposite side of the chair. So close she was washed with his scent of sandalwood and spice. His face was still unreadable, but his voice was laced with irritation. “As I said,” he told her, low and dark, “this is your reality. I suggest you accept it as such.”
Gwen struggled to catch her breath. The way he stared unflinching into her eyes made her guts churn. She’d wanted reality, and she was getting it like a kick in the stomach. Delivered by the black boot of her dreamy, shadowy vampire.
Her face twisted. “Prove it,” she demanded, the words slipping out without thought. Her heart was beating way too fast. “Prove that any of what you’ve told me is true.”
Sirus leaned back on his heel, straightening himself up to his full height. He didn’t say a word. Just looked down at her as if she were no more than a stubborn child. Gwen fisted her hands over the back of the chair so hard her knuckles ached. “I’m twenty-eight,” she snarled. “Don’t you think if I had any magickal powers, I’d know it by now? It’s not like I couldn’t have used them.” The idea that she had magickal powers was beyond ridiculous. It was flat-out laughable. All of this was laughable. She didn’t laugh.
Sirus cocked his head, and something like emotion flickered through those frigid eyes. “Your life will not be as it was, Gwendolyn.” A shock of nerves cascaded hearing him say her name. She wanted to hear it again. “But if you do as I say, you will remain safe.”
“How? How do I know that?” she demanded, her breaths short, urging him on. Needing the answer. “How do I know you’re the good guy, that it’s not these zephyrs or whoever they are?”
“I suspect you have good instincts since you chose to follow us,” he reminded her. “I also believe you trust the witch who helped you and will heed her advice.”
It was true, she reluctantly admitted to herself. He hadn’t forced her to follow him. She’d jumped into this mess headfirst. And he wasn’t wrong about Miss Jones. Gwen did trust her. She’d been the closest thing to family she’d had in years. Thinking that she might never see her again made her heart feel heavy. Gwen combed her fingers through her disheveled hair, pushing some stray strands back behind her ear. Maybe all of this was real. Maybe Miss Jones was a witch, and Barith was a dragon, and Sirus was a vampire—her skin prickled—but that didn’t mean she was a part of this world. She was nothing more than a boring data analyst with a mediocre education, no money, and no particularly endearing life skills. She was, at best, moderately attractive. She didn’t even have any interesting hobbies. Gwen had no boyfriend, no family, and only one friend (not counting Miss Jones’s two cats). Her life was dull. She was dull. Realizing it made a hollow feeling open up in the pit of her stomach.
Gwen shifted awkwardly on her feet, tempted by the idea that maybe she wasn’t as boring as she’d always thought. That maybe there was a reason she’d never quite fit in anywhere or with anyone. If only the answer were so simple.
“None of that means I have—magick,” she told him, the word sour on her tongue. The word that kept getting thrown around to explain away everything fantastical.
