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We hardly know each other, I thought.I didn’t even know his last name until ten minutes ago.
I reached for a mug and poured coffee into it. Refilling Matéo’s mug was second nature, and he seemed to appreciate it.
But mostly, he appeared too preoccupied to say anything else.
All sorts of thoughts danced through my mind. Many of them were images that I desperately wanted to sketch, plenty of them involving Matéo. I knew that now wasn’t the time for that, but my fingers itched for the sturdiness of a charcoal pencil all the same.
I tapped my mug. “Matéo?”
He looked at me as if he was just noticing my presence.
Well, that made me feelgreat.
“Apologies,fleur,” he stated. His voice sounded far away like he was lost in another time. “I need to head back to my cabin.”
“But you just got here.”
He stood up. “Thank you for breakfast. Thank you for trusting me with your research.”
“We hardly discussed it. There’s so much more.”
He studied me carefully. “Like what?”
“Like the tale of the betrayed bride. We haven’t figured out who she is or what exactly happened to her. We don’t even know why her tomb had a book of spells.”
“Spells,” he repeated curiously. “Go on.”
I gestured to a folder on the right. “There are some copies of the pages in there, I’m sure. I think the only thing Adam could get was the reversal spell for the curse before Lorena grabbed it.” I rolled my eyes. “I mean, that’s what I’m told, anyway.”
“Somebody was cursed.” Anger flushed his face. “Who?”
“The kid you met, Henry.”
His eyebrows twisted up. “I didn’t sense anything on him.”
“No, he’s fine now. They did the reversal spell. Everything worked out. But it was a close call. He almost died.”
“And I suppose Domingo was the ring leader of that little stunt, wasn’t he?”
I nodded. “It’s been hard lately. The attacks on the ranch are doubling. It’s the worst it’s been in years. Even the tavern downstairs has been getting rough with activity.”
“Tavern?”
“Yes, our inn is in neutral territory. Remember?”
He frowned. And something about that look of disappointment made my stomach turn. I didn’t like it.
Not one bit.
“No good can come from providing vampires neutral ground,” he spat. “They’ll take what they can get and abuse it.”
“They haven’t once done anything here to warrant—”
He slammed his fist on the table. “But they can, Rose. They can and theywill, neutral agreements be damned!”
Agony laced with fury infected my body with a heaviness I couldn’t hold. It wasn’t until my phone buzzed that I realized I had backed away from the table and huddled into the corner of the conference room with my hands folded toward my chest. Those emotions, thatpain, was too unbearable.
And I didn’t understand how the hell I was feeling it.
