“Italian?”
“Pizza?”
“I was thinking a little bit fancier than that, but I am more than happy to accommodate?—”
“If you took me to a pizza place, there definitely wouldnotbe any other meetings.”
“Conceding there might be others is a step in the right direction. Shall I research and send you the time and address? I take it you don’t want me to pick you up.”
“You take it right.”
“Then I shall see you soon.”
And with that, he hung up. I took a deep, somewhat quivering breath and released it slowly. Damn, I was in deep, deep trouble when it came to this man and the attraction I just couldn’t deny. I knew it and, worse still, he knew it.
“Date set?” Ginny called from the kitchen.
“It is not a date. And yes.”
“Good. In the meantime, what’s next?”
“You mean aside from a long hot shower?”
“Shouldn’t that be a longcoldshower?”
“You, my good woman, can get fucked.”
Her laughter warmed the air, and I grinned. “I’ll ring the National Witch Library and see if I can speak to Luke’s boss while you contact Mark’s family in Canberra and see if they know why the hell he was up here in the first place.”
“We can ask him that when he wakes.”
I placed my phone on the bedside table then pushed off the bed and wandered through the mess on the floor to find undergarments. Why on earth couldn’t those two idiots have just emptied the drawers and wardrobes rather than throwing them all over the place? “Yes, but what he tells us might be different to what he told them.”
“True. I’ll do some research and get a number.”
“I’m headed for a shower.”
“Don’t use all the hot water.”
“It reheats fast, and it’s not like you won’t have a second cup after that one.”
“Also true,” she replied, with a laugh.
I headed into the shower and spent the next ten minutes just standing there, letting the hot water run all over me in an effort to stop the deepening of any muscle aches. When it finally showed signs of cooling, I hastily grabbed a scrub and the soap, cleaning every inch of me to be sure I erased the foul scent, then stepped out and dried off. Once I’d donned undergarments and found a dressing gown to wear until I was ready to get dressed for my “meeting,” I once again grabbed my phone, sat down on the bed, and called the National Library. Several redirections later, I was eventually put through to the man who was Luke’s boss.
After yet again explaining who I was and what I wanted, I added, “What can you tell me about him? What has his behavior been like in recent weeks?”
“Can’t tell you much at all,” he replied, voice seeming to come from the vicinity of his boots. “He left us some six months ago.”
I blinked. “Really? He’s been telling his girlfriend he still worked there.”
“The lad is a liar. He’s also a thief—it’s the reason he was sacked so unceremoniously.”
“What did he steal?”
“He wasn’t stealing, as such. He was copyingTheSmall Book of Runestones, and that is a sackable offense.”
In the human world, runestones were basically used as problem solvers; you ask a question or think about an issue, ensuring your conscious and unconscious minds are centered and focused, then cast the runes in front of you to find your answer.
