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Or maybe I was simply anxious.
His driving didn’t typically bother me, and I’d been raised partly in a bayou. Land and water mingled. I ought to feel at ease here.
“We should turn back,” I pronounced. “Leave here entirely.”
My hand clutched the door. My skin felt like it was itching from some pressure I couldn’t define. Clearly, this was a terrible idea. I toyed with the thought of opening the door. I could throw myself into the sea. That was better. Safer. Wiser.
“Stop!” I yelled.
In a split second, Eli pulled the car over. Luckily, there was little to no traffic on the remote island, and he had a sliver of earth to stop the car in.
“Bonbon?” He turned toward me and took my hand in his. “Talk to me.”
I concentrated on taking deep breaths. “Back up some. Go back the way we came. Please?”
As soon as we started to drive back away from Skara Brae, the tightness in my chest loosened. It felt like a corset that had been bound tighter than any ought to be was slowly loosening, letting me inhale freely.
It hit me suddenly that this was magic, a magic that I had caused.
“Chester had begun a bond with me,” I explained to them. “To keep me from harming him. I didn’t take it, but I expressed that Iwould.”
“How desperate did you feel?” Iggy asked from over my left shoulder.
I glanced back. His face was twisted into an expression that was a mix between fascination and worry. For all that he was an irritation, Ignatius Blackwood did care for me. That was often obvious. Healsowas a knowledge junkie, and this situation had his eyes glassy as an alcoholic watching a drink.
“I considered throwing myself into the sea just now.”
At my side Eli swore in a language I was just beginning to learn. I couldn’t swear to it, but I was fairly certain that it was something about feeding a dick-weasel its own testicles. I reached out and squeezed Eli’s arm. Somehow the fact that he was adopting my own odd cussing patterns felt sweet to me.
“We cannot refuse to stop him.” Beatrice pointed out. “I willflowand uproot the place until we find this rock, paper, scissor weapon.”
“Or,” I started, glancing at my husband as I said it, “Iggy can bind me or knock me out.”
Eli pressed his lips together in an expression that wasn’t hard to interpret.
“Atta girl,” Iggy said in an artificially cheerful voice.
An odd noise filled the vehicle.
Iggy glanced at Beatrice, who was growling at him.No, seriously.My grandmother was growling like a Rottweiler spotting an intruder.
“Bea . . .” Iggy scooted toward the door, putting as much distance between them as he could. “Tossing me to wolves, Hexen. Help?”
Beatrice followed him as he retreated, crawling toward him and growling louder. I was half-convinced she was about to turn him into a pig.
“Grandmother of Mine?” I said.
No answer.
I exited the car,flowedaround it, jerked Iggy’s door open, and stepped between him and my sometimes creeptastic grandmother. “Beatrice!”
She blinked up at me.
“I need to get to that site, and if I throw myself out of a moving car, it willhurt.” Obviously hurt was an understatement, but I think that we all knew that.
“I would enter a faery bargain with you, Geneviève of Crowe,” Iggy said from behind me. “What terms?”
I was unsure whether or not Iggy knew that I would see his greatest desire if we did so. I didn’t truly care either. If he would make himself vulnerable to me, more power wasn’t bad. If he thought to trick me . . . well, no one actually tricked the fae who made the vow.
