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“Always was.” She shook her head, a smile teasing her lips. “I was never sure why, given who he was and who I was. I mean, his parents would have had conniptions if he’d ever dipped the precious Ashworth pen in my well.”
I laughed. “Maybe, but he did have an eye for good-looking women, and you are quite stunning.”
“That may be true now, but it didn’t stop him chasing me when we were teenagers.”
“Maybe he just recognized the potential for gorgeousness within that scrawny bod of yours.”
“Possibly.” She grinned. “You know, if he wasn’t your cousin and wasn’t so damn annoying, I might have considered it. He was never bad-looking, and he’s certainly filled out nicely since then.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure he’ll be pleased to hear you noticed.”
She gave me a deadpan look and slid two coffees across the counter to me. “Tell him, and he’ll be around here every free second. We both know you want that no more than I do.”
“Very true.” I slung the pack over my back, then picked up the coffees. “Have fun with Kash tonight.”
“Planning on it. But I’m only a mind-shout away if you need anything.”
I nodded and headed out. Monty was already waiting at the front of his place, so I undid my seat belt and leaned across to open the door for him. He threw in his backpack and crutches, then climbed in.
“That additional coffee for me?” he said as he retrieved the spell-wrapped feathers from his pack. It was quite intricate, and I wished I had the time to study it more closely.
Wished—probably for the very first time since that fateful day we’d fled Canberra—that I’d been given the chance to finish my studies. Teaching ourselves via Belle’s gran’s books was all well and good, but there was so much we didn’t know. So much that I wanted to know.
“Yes, it is. Where to?”
“Go back up to Duke Street.” He picked up his coffee and then grinned. “How can you say Belle doesn’t care when she made me a coffee?”
I raised an eyebrow. “How do you know I didn’t make it?”
“Magical fingerprint on the top of the cup—yours are only on the sides, indicating you carried but she made it. You’d left Canberra by the time we got to all those lessons.”
Which was just another reminder of how little I knew when it came to magic. “I knew every witch has a distinct magical ‘signature,’ but I wasn’t aware it was evident in our fingerprints.”
He nodded. “Most supernatural beings have specific print characteristics, but they’re harder to record.”
“Does that mean you can catalogue them like regular fingerprints?”
“Yes, but only with a specific spell, and only then if they’re caught early enough. There is, in fact, a database in Canberra containing both finger and magical imprints of some of history’s nastiest witches.”
“Huh.” I did a right-hand turn into Duke Street and then sped up again. “I take it you’ve searched said database to see if there’s a match for our shifter?”
“Indeedy. There isn’t.”
“Did unpicking her magic—or what remained of it on those feathers—give you any idea as to who she is? Or where she might have come from?”
“Not exactly.”
I glanced at him. “Meaning?”
He hesitated. “Her magic feels very old.”
“Some shifters do live for a very long time.”
“Yes, but her imprint just feels… off.”
Like the thoughts of the first one had been. “If she’s a witch as well as a shifter, isn’t that to be expected? The two usually don’t go together.”
“It’s not that. Her energy is almost otherworldly.”
