Chapter Twenty-One
Sebastian led Arthur and Rory past the guest house on its hill and through the gardens, keeping behind the tallest rows of hedges. They’d just come to the garden’s edge in a thick copse of trees when Rory went very still.
“I can feel it,” he whispered.
Arthur touched his arm in concern. “Feel what?”
Rory shivered and rubbed at the arm without Arthur’s hand, like he’d caught a sudden chill. “Magic.”
Arthur looked questioningly at Sebastian, who shook his head. He couldn’t feel a thing. “Where is it coming from?” Sebastian asked Rory.
Rory gestured in front of them. Sebastian could just make out the rounded top of the mausoleum in the distance and the crumbling stone walls of the chapel ruins. “Something up there.”
“Could it be the source of whatever is blocking your psychometry?” Arthur said.
“Don’t know,” Rory said honestly. “This feels like—like when you walk up to the Dragon House, and it’s got all that guardian magic in place that makes your skin buzz.” He shook his head. “I don’t think my psychometry is gonna work on these grounds. I don’t even know if I can call in the wind here.”
“But the Valemount line is descended fromtwoparanormals,” Sebastian said. “Why do we keep running into blocks against magic?”
“Well, you do have an ancestor from that same line that hunted magic for the Spanish Inquisition,” Arthur pointed out. “At any rate, if there’s a new grave, we’ll still be able to see it with our eyes. I say we—”
In the distance, there was an unmistakable howl.
Rory swore. “That’s the hunt back, isn’t it?”
“You two have to go now,” Sebastian said. “Go back to your inn. Wesley and I will find a way to come back out here and search, then we’ll call you.”
Arthur and Rory exchanged some kind of look that seemed to hold a lot of meaning, although what they were communicating to each other, Sebastian had no idea.
But then Arthur said, “Then you meet up with Wesley. And the two of you stick together, all right?”
Sebastian nodded, and then Arthur and Rory were disappearing ahead, into the trees.
Sebastian took a breath and stepped out, ready to pretend he’d been strolling the gardens.
* * *
As soon as they were through the front doors of Valemount Hall, Wesley cleared his throat. “You’ll excuse me while I find something not covered in mud, yes?”
“What’s that?” Valemount made a distracted motion with his hand. His gaze was on his gun, where it was holstered on his hip. “Of course, of course.”
“Don’t tell me you’re injured from a little spill,” Sir Reginald said dryly.
“Not at all.” A slight lie, as Wesley had certainlyscraped and bruised a few limbs on his fall. But he was alive, which very clearly hadn’t been someone’s intent.
He strode up the stairs, but had only just stepped into his own room when there was a knock on the door. He muttered a curse. “Whoever you are, I don’t want visitors—”
But he opened the door to reveal Sebastian, his lip caught between his teeth, his warm brown eyes big and worried. “Wes,” he said. “They said you fell—are you okay?”
The contrast between the others’ mocking and Sebastian’s genuine concern was so obvious that Wesley was once again struck by how much his life had changed since meeting Sebastian. Someone gave a damn about his well-being.
Wesley shook the emotions away. He grabbed Sebastian by the wrist and pulled him inside, before anyone overheard them.
“You’re covered in mud,” Sebastian said, as Wesley shut the door behind them and locked it for good measure.
“That tends to be what happens when one tumbles down a wet moor hill,” Wesley said.
“So you tripped?” Sebastian asked.
