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There was no way to text her back and the note vanished, but I was quick enough to snap a screen shot of the message before it disappeared. A memento.
A promise. Right up there with a pinky swear.
I glanced out the window at the darkening sky, gathered up the books I was taking with me, and went downstairs to find bags to toss them in. I was rummaging behind the cash register when Barrons and Ryodan walked in.
Barrons took one look at my books and growled, “Those were in a locked case.”
Duh. “I’m the one that took them out.”
Dark eyes bored into mine. “No way you picked that lock.”
“I know, right?” I replied crossly. I’m a superb lock picker. It’s one of my specialties and the damn thing had defeated me. “I broke the glass with the hilt of my sword.”
“You. Broke. The glass.”
Good grief, Mac told me Barrons got pissy when you messed with his stuff. “You may as well know I took your bike and Land Rover, too, before the garage disappeared,” I informed him, just to clear the air between us.
He stared at me as if I were a specimen on a slide.
“Mac texted,” I said to distract him. “She’s okay.”
He went preternaturally still, so motionless he vanished from my sight for a moment, melting into the wallpaper behind him. Then he was back, saying softly, “She texted. You. Let me see it.”
Ow, I guess she hadn’t bothered to text him. Just sent him Christmas trees and lemurs. I handed him my phone, with the screen shot thumbed up.
He stared at it a long moment, shadows swirling in his dark eyes, and I saw a flash of such pure, unguarded hunger in them that it staggered me. Theirs is unity, a symbiosis, a partnership I dream of, wolves that chose to pack up and hunt together, soldiers who will always have each other’s backs, no matter what, no sin, no transgression too great.
He ran his thumb over the screen as if he might somehow touch Mac through it. And I thought, Holy hell, Jericho Barrons has a…not a vulnerability but yes, that. A weakness, a need. Mac. I’d seen it in her, too. It was what bothered me about love. Wanting someone so much that you felt like you couldn’t breathe when they went away, so intensely that your world lost hal
f its colors and you were oddly suspended until they returned. Like my past two years. Vulnerability any way you looked at it. I glanced uneasily at Ryodan then quickly away. Losing Shazam had nearly destroyed me. Losing Dancer had taken me down again.
Then Barrons’s face was remote, cool and unreadable. He pivoted sharply, stalked to the rear fireplace, rummaged about on the mantel then returned and handed me my phone back, along with an envelope. “Mac asked me to give you this when I next saw you.”
I took it, a sealed white envelope with no writing on it. “What is it?”
“I have no idea. She merely asked me to make sure you got it.”
I wanted to tear it open right then. I didn’t. I would look at it later, in private.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” he demanded.
“If it’s anything to do with Mac, I’ll text you.”
He inclined his head. “And the moment she comes out, I’ll let you know. Until then, give the bookstore a wide berth. Draw no attention to us. The Fae haven’t found her yet and I intend to keep it that way.”
I nodded. “Feed the lemur. Surely you have food in here somewhere. At least put a bowl of water out.” Poor little guy had sat on a bookcase above my head the entire time I’d read. He was lonely. And hungry.
I tucked the envelope in my pocket, packed my books in BB&B bags, and Ryodan and I left, pushing back into the mirror, returning to dusk-cloaked Dublin below.
* * *
p
Later I sat at what remained of my dining room table, sans several leafs, with my books spread out, the envelope from Mac in my hand.
Shazam was nowhere to be seen but last night he’d promised to hang around more. I was counting on that. He was the only living thing I could hug.
Ryodan had been adamantly opposed to me returning to my flat but I’d insisted, reminding him of the stellar warding job he’d done on my bedroom, affording me a place safe from the Fae. If he had his way, I’d be living at Chester’s. Nothing new there. He’d been trying to effect that change of residence since I was a kid.
