“What has got you in such a huff tonight, Graham?” Agnes asked, pulling her scarf more tightly around her neck as icy wind buffeted the hills around us.
“You,” I answered, honestly, and fell into step beside her.
“Uh-huh. Try again.” Agnes rolled her eyes and shoved her hands in her pockets, her expression mulish.
“Agnes, you saw what happened in the loch just a few weeks ago. Surely you can’t think that nobody cares about you. There’s stubborn and there’s stupid. And it’s stupid you’re being to crack on into the dark night on your own when there’s a very real threat out in the loch.”
“And what will you do about it if somethinghappens?” Agnes whirled on me and I shrunk, hating the fact that she was, as usual, right. I had no magick. I had nothing in my toolbox to fight against a Kelpie, or God forbid, a Beithir.
All I could offer was my heart.
Not that Agnes would ever accept that, stubborn woman that she was.
“I’d step in front of you, Agnes. I’d go first, hold it off best I could, while you saved yourself.”
Her eyes rounded and she shook her head, muttering something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like “stupid eejit.”
“Well? That’s the way of it, isn’t it? At the very least, it would buy you some time to get the others.”
Agnes huffed out a small sound of annoyance, but didn’t respond, burying her face more deeply in the scarf wound around her neck instead. There were times I wanted to shake her and demand more from her, but I’d learned long ago that patience was the only tool I had to win at anything with Agnes.
Silence drew out between us. The sky was clear, stars scattered across the darkness like broken glass. Our breath fogged in front of us as we walked, the crunch of gravel beneath our feet the only sound.
MacAlpine Castle loomed behind us, its windows glowing gold, and ahead the village waited, lights twinkling in the darkness. Beside us, Loch Mirren stretched out like a sheet of black silk, perfectly still.
Too still, maybe.
I couldn’t look at the loch the same way anymore. Not after seeing that massive serpent roar up from the depths, alllightning and ancient fury, while we’d scrambled to protect Zara and fight off the Kelpies.
The Beithir—basically a dragon—one of the great beasts of Scottish legend.
She’d known what it was. Of course she had. Agnes knew everything about this place, its history and myths and secrets. It was one of the things I loved about her—that endless well of knowledge, and the way her eyes lit up when she talked about old stories and even older magick.
But tonight, walking beside her in the darkness, I wondered if she knew more than she was telling me, because she was like that. Always shielding others and yet refusing the shield when I offered it. Frustrating woman.
“You left earlier than everyone else,” I said, after we’d walked in silence for a few minutes. “Is something wrong?”
Agnes’s step faltered almost imperceptibly. “I’m tired.”
“Wrong answer. Try again.” I knew Agnes’s malarkey as well as I knew my own.
She sighed, the sound heavy with exhaustion. “It was just... a lot. All the couples. All the happiness.” She waved a hand vaguely. “Sometimes it’s overwhelming.”
I knew what she meant. I felt it too—that particular loneliness of being surrounded by people in love when the person you wanted was standing right next to you, unreachable as the moon. Not that I could ever tell Agnes that. She’d made up her mind about us a long time ago.
“It doesn’t have to be?—”
“Graham.” She said my name like a warning.
I should have let it go. I should have nodded and made some joke and walked her home like a gentleman, and then gone back to my empty flat abovethe pub and poured myself a whisky and stared at the ceiling wondering what the hell was wrong with me.
ButIwas tired. Tired of pretending. Tired of watching her from across rooms and aching for something I couldn’t have. Tired of being kept at arm’s length by a woman who sometimes looked at me like I was the answer to every question she’d ever asked—and then looked away as if the answer terrified her.
“Something’s going on with you,” I said, letting my frustration bubble over. “Bloody hell, Agnes, I can see it. I’ve been able to see it for a while now. You’re upset. And I know you’re not going to tell me what it is, because you never tell me anything, but I want you to know that I see it. I see you, Agnes. Even when you don’t want to be seen.”
She stopped walking.
We’d reached the edge of the village, the cobblestones beneath our feet, the streetlamps casting pools of golden light. Agnes stood frozen in the space between one pool and the next, her face half in shadow.
