Castlebury squinted at him through the mist. “She yours?”
A pause.
“She is,” Alaric said softly.
Another sigh. This one… not unkind. “You marry her,” Castlebury said, “you’ll never have a peaceful day again.”
“I know.”
“She’ll probably fake her own death just to photograph the ghost of her own damn funeral.”
“That makes sense.”
Castlebury grunted. “Good. Long as you know what you’re in for.”
Alaric blinked. Then blinked again. “That’s it?”
Castlebury leveled a look at him. “Son, I married a woman who once faked a demonic possession to avoid dinner with my mother. You think I’m going to judge you?”
*
The fog hadthickened in the cemetery while he was gone.
Alaric’s boots struck the cobbled path with heavy certainty, each step pulling him deeper into Highgate’s belly, where the air clung damp to his coat and the trees whispered things norational man wanted to interpret. He raked a hand through his hair, still disheveled fromher, and tried not to think about Thea’s mouth. Or her corset. Or her bloody lip nibbling that made his spine melt and his temper coil.
But no, of course, hewasthinking about her. Thea Blackwood, plague upon his peace, current possessor of his heart, and his patience.
He had never been a man who questioned his instincts. Not when they told him to duck, or strike, or pull his revolver at the edge of a breath. But as the fog curled thick and soupy round his boots, and the iron gates of Highgate groaned open with the kind of theatrical menace his fiancée would no doubt narrate aloud, he began to suspect that what he was doing, in full daylight, on All Hallows’ morn,alone, was more than instinct.
It was insanity. And devotion. Maybe both, in equal measure.
His steps were silent, but the weight of what he carried—Thea’s bag, a camera case, a few loose film plates she’d abandoned in her haste—felt like a ghost pulling at his shoulder. Or perhaps it was just the knowledge that he was head over damned heels for a woman who routinely trespassed, instigated the supernatural, and made every rational thought in his head spiral into ruin.
She’d promised not to come back. He’d told her—orderedher—not to. And yethewas here. At her mother’s grave. At her grandmother’s. Athers. Collecting her things.
And God help him, he’d do it all again.
The air reeked of damp stone, turned earth, and distant lantern smoke. Trees loomed like sentinels, bark slick and weeping with the last of the mist. He passed the angels carved in sorrow, the urns perched on marble pillars, and the ravens—watchful, silent, judging.
His boots crunched to a stop by the crooked yew at the Blackwood family plot. The bag slid from his shoulder. Hecrouched, brushing away the leaves near the headstone. Her grandmother’s. Alice Blackwood. The stone gleamed faintly in the light. Recently cleaned, he noted, with a pang that struck far deeper than he expected.
He adjusted his waistcoat, flicked a glance around. Still alone. Still quiet.
Then the wind shifted. A prickle crawled up his spine.
Not wind.
Not alone.
He turned, hand instinctively going to the cuffs on his belt. Something had moved just beyond the angel statue. A scrape. The faintest grunt. And something else—
That was when he saw them. Two men. Hooded. Half buried in shadow. One holding a pickaxe. The other crouched at the lip of a freshly disturbed grave.
Thea’s mother’s grave.
Alaric surged forward. “Oi!” he roared, voice slamming through the stillness like a bell in a tomb. “Step away from that grave or I swear to God I’ll put you down where you stand!”
The taller one froze. The shorter bolted—but not fast enough. Alaric’s boots hit the earth like judgment itself, and hell followed after.
