Page 41 of Wretched Thorns

His mouth did the corner thing again.

“During,” he said.

She closed her eyes for a count of three. The hand was warm. The hand was unmoving.

Eventually, he had to shift again.

The hand had to move.

When it left, the warm place where it had been stayed warm for another long minute. She watched the road. He watched the road.

Thirty miles to Magnolia Creek.

***

The wrought-iron gates of Thornwood came up out of the dusk like old things came up out of dusk in this country. Low. Dark. Sure of themselves.

Sigils ran through the metal like bright lines, brighter than any ordinary metal had business holding.

Her shoulders dropped two inches as the truck rolled past the gateposts.

She hadn’t realized she’d been carrying them up around her ears.

The drive curved through magnolias and live oaks. The house came up at the end of it: two-story white clapboard with a wraparound porch, lit warm against the dark. The kitchen window glowed a warm yellow, which meant somebody had put a kettle on and was already thinking past the next hour.

A figure waited on the porch.

Tall, long-legged in jeans and a soft cotton shirt the color of wet moss. Dark hair shot through with silver, pulled back from a face Tara would never forget.

Dex killed the engine.

For a moment, nobody moved. The cab smelled of coffee, pine, and that maddening scent that seemed to belong only to him, familiar already despite the fact she couldn’t have described it if someone put a gun to her head. From the back, Grandmère said softly, “We here, baby. Now we go in.”

Tara opened her door.

The night air came in warm, wet and with a smell of honeysuckle. Above the porch, the wrought iron caught the porch light strangely, the sigils picking up and holding the light a half-second past when the light should have crossed the metal. She stood with one foot on the running board and one foot on the gravel.

He didn’t look at her.

He didn’t have to.

Grandmère reached the porch first. She didn’t hurry. She hadn’t hurried in seventy years.

Tara followed her up the steps.

Behind her, just at her shoulder, Dex Fontaine’s voice, low enough that Rowena would not catch it from the porch.

“Chère.”

“What.”

“Breathe.”

“Fontaine.”

“Mm.”

“Fuck you.”