‘No,’ Nicole said aloud, shoving down the urges.
Luxurious hallways blurred past – marble busts and painted ceilings like the swarming, majestic realms of her dreams. Instead of going back out into the dew-glittering grounds, she found herself walking beneath the arched entrance of Elisabetta’s studio.
The large rectangular room was flooded with natural light from windows that overlooked the inner courtyard of the house, granting a warm reprieve from the dark, overcast days they’d waited out over the winter.
Nicole had set up an easel and some of her own painting supplies for when her mind wouldn’t quiet and her body needed something. The only thing that worked was the soothing dip and stroke of a paintbrush from palette to canvas. She’d been painting till late last night, a streak of cadmium red still on her wrist.
A paint-smeared notebook rested beside the easel in case she had any particular revelations. It even contained some scribbled Irish she’d tried to learn, before feeling foolish and stopping. A chaise coveredin blankets sat to the right, for when Bells wanted to talk or doze while Nicoleworked.
Otherwise, the space was untouched, as if Elisabetta had up and left quickly. Portraits of supernaturals sat unfinished, and sculptures morphed themselves from great blocks of marble, now frozen without her. A hoof here, a wing there – so thin you could see the light through – and the curve of a Mermaid’s scale-slick hip. In an attached room was a pigment-creating station where Elisabetta made her paints from scratch.
Nicole looked at it all again. There had to be something she was missing. A detail, a thread …
‘Are you hiding in the studio, or are you coming to eat breakfast?’ Dylan asked distantly.
He didn’t have to speak loudly or even be in the same room as her. After her transformation, she could hear him clear across the house. Focusing her hearing, she located him in the kitchens.
‘I’m going for a jog,’ she shouted for his un-awakened Empyrean senses.
‘I’ve got croissants hot from the oven and filled yours like a sandwich.’
Her lips pursed.
‘It’s going to go cold …’
Nicole smiled reluctantly, the prickling tension in her chest easing. She grabbed her notebook, the scraps of extra paper and copies of paintings stuffed inside curling out and stroking her palm with their time-softened edges. ‘Fine. I’m coming.’
Her skin tingled as she wove towards the kitchens, sweat cooling down her spine.
She pressed the binding scar on her forearm as she walked, reminding herself that everything that had happened months ago had beenreal. That she really had been bound to Kyan in an autumn wood, her arm painted with blood in a Celtic knot; the ancient magic of the first of three ceremonies completed while Remi’s words rang with power.
Nicole made a note to check in with her friend later. They shared a set of old burner phones with scramblers to communicate, but didn’t risk calling or writing out the details of their discoveries.
Well,Remi’sdiscoveries.
When Nicole arrived in the colossal Tudor kitchens, she found Dylan with a tea towel over his wide shoulder and a half-smile on his lips. The room was unpainted so its old sandstone was discoloured in places, but it only added to the majesty of a space that looked more like a temple to the culinary arts than a kitchen.
His dark gold hair caught the light from windows that stretched the full three-storey height of the room. They stretched up to an octagonal mirror, which crowned the apex of a vaulted ceiling and reminded Nicole of the oculus in the Pantheon. On the walls, copper pots and pans gleamed like mirrors, and a fire crackled in the old furnace, its great pulleys and roasting spit currently dormant.
Despite the healthy strength in her brother’s body and decent colour to his face, she knew he was tired, haunted. Could see it in the shadows beneath his eyes, which looked more blue today thanks to the navy apron over his short-sleeved shirt.
He stood before an enormous wooden table, which was scarred by centuries of use, a creamy cappuccino already waiting for her and a plate clipping down beside it.
Her stomach cramped sharply enough to make her feel nauseous: a not-so-welcome quirk of a new metabolism.
Nicole beelined for the steaming croissant he’d filled with thin slices of fresh ham and a fried egg, dimly realising that she’d need two more. Before she could ask, a second plate was placed next to the first, and Nicole looked up at her amused brother.
‘Good morning to you, too,’ he said.
She climbed onto a stool and grabbed the croissant. ‘I love you.’
He smirked. ‘You love me because I feed you.’
‘It’s the one and only reason.’
The spark of amusement in his eyes tempered some of the shadows. Similar ones had been haunting Bells, and Nicole had been feeling increasingly restless, unable to help. She wasn’t as skilled a Seer as her sister and father, and whenever she tried to talk to Dylan about the night their mother died, he gently brushed her off.
‘Where’s Bells?’ Nicole asked.
