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I collapse, and Nathan follows me down. I don’t care that he’s crushed me, I don’t care that I’ve squirted all over a stranger’s floor, all I want is sleep.
“That… should give me enough to go on,” Jonah says, as if in disbelief. “I’ll invoice you for all the shit you broke.”
Once I get to my feet and head to the bathroom to clean up, it takes me a while to work up the nerve to show my face again. I’m mortified to my bones about what we just did, despite how necessary it was, and I’m still picking little polystyrene balls out of my hair.
“Bailey?” Nathan asks through the bathroom door.
“I’m having trouble with my dress,” I tell him. “Someone shredded it and I’m basically naked.”
He opens the door and hands me his jacket. I pull it on and zip it up with some difficulty before I come out.
Jonah’s little work room is destroyed. Beanbag filling covers the floor in drifts. Shelves half-hang from their brackets, contents scattered and smashed on the floor. Jonah and Nathan are ignoring it all, leaning over the laptop.
“That’s it, right there,” Jonah says, and he spins the computer so I can see the screen, as well. Not that what I’m seeing makes a lot of sense to me; it’s some kind of glowing sigil in orange against a grainy blue—
“Is that a picture of us having sex?” I shriek.
“It’s a picture of the signature left by the magicians who bound you,” Jonah says, turning the laptop back to face him. “You’re welcome.”
“He’s not saving it for salacious purposes,” Nathan reassures me. “It would be foolish for a human, no matter how adept they were at magic, to make an enemy of a werewolf.”
That second part isn’t directed at me.
“So, now what?” I ask. “What did it tell you?”
“Nothing, yet. This was step one in a process. I need to sit down, analyze what I’m seeing, refer to notes and arcane records, you know. All the bullshit wizards do and get zero thanks for,” Jonah complains. “You know, ninety-nine percent of what I do, magic wise, is reading stuff dead guys wrote.”
“You and every English major alive,” I snort.
Nathan keeps us on topic. “You know how to reach us when you have the results. We’ll stay in London until then. Tell Dan when you want us to return.”
“No, no, don’t come back here. I’ll come to you,” Jonah says, pausing to give Nathan a brief, pointed once-over. “You look like a cop.”
I hold back an “I told you so.”
CHAPTER 60
We stagger back into Wyrding House just before sun-up and strip out of our “disguises.”
“I need to take like four showers and burn this dress,” I say with a grimace, holding the garment up with two fingers. “I cannot believe how foul that room was.”
“Blacklight is perhaps not the best choice of illumination there,” Nathan agrees. “But you should consider getting some sleep before showering.”
“I just shot-gunned a Red Bull two hours ago,” I remind him. “I’m up.”
He glances toward the bathroom. “What about a soak?”
There’s a jacuzzi tub big enough for two in the bathroom, and just the suggestion of it is a siren call to my sore body. “You’ve convinced me.”
A little while later, Nathan and I are immersed up to our necks in the ridiculously deep tub. We lean against opposite sides, his legs on either side of me, my feet on his shoulders.
“Do you think the spell will still work, now that we know it’s there?” I ask, wriggling my wrinkly toes against his cheek playfully.
He pushes my foot aside with only partially-feigned disgust. “Not if you insist on doing that.”
I giggle, but it’s mostly nerves. The fact that he won’t give me a straight answer isn’t reassuring. “Seriously, though. It’s basically the only thing keeping us together.”
“The baby might be a factor,” he reminds me.
“Oh. Right.” Sometimes, I forget it’s there. “I can’t really get my mind around the fact that it exists.”
“You probably shouldn’t have had the Red Bull,” he muses aloud.
“I’m sure it’ll be easier to remember all the rules when I can remember that I’m pregnant. Like, when my pants don’t fit anymore, or I start puking everywhere.” Mornings are becoming somewhat dicey, but a carbonated water usually clears things up.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he confesses. “That’s not to say I’m already a much better parent than you are—”
I splash him.
He wipes water from his face with a laugh. “What I’m saying is, I’m constantly worried about the baby, and about you, and the reality that we’re a royal couple in the middle of a dicey situation. We need to have things under control before we have an heir who’s a potential target.”
I hadn’t thought about our situation like that. What happened to Marie Antoinette’s kids?
