With a final huff, Madame Morella gathered her mystic paraphernalia in a rustle of velvet and dismay and swept toward the front door, only to yelp as it creaked open on its own.
Thea didn’t bat an eye.
Alaric did. Slightly.
“Leave your card,” Thea called after the retreating form. “So I know whonotto recommend.” The door slammed shut behind Madame Morella with such force the hall mirror wobbled.
Silence fell.
Thea let out a long, slow breath and rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Well. That was humiliating.”
“I’ve seen worse,” Alaric said mildly, moving toward her. “Once arrested a man for impersonating a goat and summoning weather. In Brixton.”
She blinked. “Summoning—what?”
“Don’t ask.”
There was a beat of quiet.
Then Thea tilted her chin. “I suppose now you’re going to say I told you so.”
Alaric’s gaze softened. “No. I’m going to say I’m sorry she didn’t come through.”
Thea’s throat caught.
He said it so simply. No pity. No posturing. Just quiet understanding. The kind that felt like balm over every raw nerve.
And then, because she couldn’t look at him a moment longer without doing something utterly stupid, like kissing him again or crying into his lapel, she cleared her throat and turned toward the kitchen. “I need tea,” she muttered.
Her hand brushed the edge of her camera bag as she passed. The weight of it stilled her. Her fingers closed around the satchel, and she turned. Alaric was watching her. Just watching.
“I never checked that plate,” she murmured. “From the cemetery. The one that you said went off on its own.”
He nodded once. “Then let’s see what ghosts your lens caught.”
*
“Thank you fortelling me about the attempted grave robbing, and for arresting those fiends,” Thea said, leaning over the tray as the image slowly bled into existence, shadows gathering, outlines blooming in silver and black.
Her breath caught. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the basin.
“Oh.” It escaped on a whisper. Not fear. Not sorrow.
Awe.
Because there he was. Alaric Ward, inspector of Scotland Yard—and apparently an absolute menace to anyone who dared disturb the dead—standing in the center of the photo like a god of judgment and justice.
The camera had gone off at the exact moment he’d turned toward the robbers, cuffs already out, coat flaring behind him like the wings of vengeance. One boot forward. One arm braced like he’d just thrown a man off balance—and his eyes?
His eyes werefire.
Not the color, no. But the look. The fury. The bone-deep promise that no one, not on his watch, would so much as scratch the headstone of someone Thea Blackwood loved.
And there—there between the faint, curling mist that edged the frame—hovered two other shapes. Blurred. Wispy. Just outlines, really, faint as breath on glass. But unmistakable.
Alice Blackwood. Celeste Blackwood. Thea’s gran and her mother.
Flanking him. Beside him. Smiling.Like they’d chosen their champion.
