“Renni? Is that a person?”
“It’s… yes!” The name unlocks a flood of memories. “Renni was an old witch on the Upper East Side—one of the healers my father used to bring me to when he was still trying to figure out why I didn’t have magic. She was the only one I liked. She was always nice to me, and instead of poking me with hot needles or forcing me to drink nasty-tasting potions, she would just hang out and talk to me. She’s the one who showed me how to read Tarot, actually—she used to let me play with her decks.”
“Was she close with your father?” Rook asks. “Is there any reason you can think of that he’d leave that message on a photo from the races that day?”
“I don’t know. He used to say that to me… Be good for Renni.” I close my eyes, letting the memory come back to me. “She lived in this big high-rise on Lex and Fifty-Ninth, right near the six train. He’d bring me up to her apartment for the session, but it was kind of like therapy—he wouldn’t come in with me. He’d wait for me in the lobby of her building until the time was up. But now that I’m thinking about it… That’s the weird thing.”
“How so?”
I open my eyes and meet his gaze. “He’d come up at the end of the session, only to tell us he had an errand to run. That’s when he’d say it to me—be good for Renni. Then he’d leave me with her for like fifteen or twenty minutes, and we’d just keep hanging out, drinking tea, practicing Tarot. He’d come back, pay her, and we’d be off.”
“Every time, it was like that?”
I nod. “And I saw her once a week for the longest time. Probably for about three years, maybe more. But that was a couple of years after the day at the racetrack, so I’m not sure why he’d write about her on the photo of Shoot the Messenger.”
“What was the errand?”
“I have no idea. He never said.”
“Does the key look familiar?” he hands it back to me, and I look it over, my mind churning with possibilities. A hidden locker? A secret cache squirreled away for a rainy day? A hope chest of my mother’s witchy stuff?
“I’ve never seen it before,” I say. “Not that I remember. But this feels important, Rook. There’s something to this. I’m sure of it. And Shoot the Messenger showed up in my nightmare. That has to mean… I don’t know.” I laugh. “But it’s right there in his name—Messenger. I’m totally taking that as a sign.”
Rook beams at me, his honey eyes shining. “You are a regular little Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you?”
I stretch up on my toes and loop my arms around his neck, and he strokes a massive gargoyle hand down my back, unleashing a soft sigh, our horse-and-key mystery momentarily forgotten.
“I’m learning from the best, professor peepshow,” I tease.
Rook laughs, but he doesn’t release me. Just keeps stroking me up and down, his claws scraping gently. “Is that a thing now? We’re making that a thing?”
“Just between us. Besides, you got to watch me doverydirty things to Auggie. The least you could do is let me have a few naughty professor fantasies aboutyou.”
He tightens his arms around me, his cock stirring beneath the loincloth, pressing against my stomach. “You have naughty professor fantasies about me?”
“Sure do. I’m having one right now, actually.”
A soft moan rumbles through his chest, his eyes darkening with lust. “Tell me,” he whispers. “Tell me what I’m doing to you in your wild little fantasies.”
“Well, you… you’re kissing me,” I whisper, then close my eyes, a spark of hunger sizzling through me—the same kind of hunger I felt last night. Untamed. Insatiable.
Goddess, I should shut it down before it gets worse, but…
“That’s how it starts, anyway,” I say. “A kiss. Our first kiss, right here in the library.”
“And then what happens?”
I swallow hard, my pussy clenching at the sultry tone of his voice, at the sudden brazenness from my otherwise sweet, reserved, hyper-logical book nerd.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I haven’t gotten that far yet.” I let out a soft laugh. “Truth be told, I think about kissing you alot. Way more than I should.”
Heat spreads across his cheeks, darkening his gray skin with a hint of plum. “I think about it too,” he admits. “Way more than I should.”
“Maybe we should stop thinking about it,” I whisper.
He cups my face, lowering his mouth to mine. “Maybe we should.”
Butterflies tumble through my stomach, but at the very first brush of those soft, sexy lips against my mouth, the door bangs open, and Auggie barges into the library, his eyes wide.
