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It’s work. I can tell immediately by the sharp tone in his voice, the way he straightens in his chair and stares off into the distance. “Right…excuse me? Are you fucking kidding me?”
I jump, surprised, when his voice raises abruptly.
“That’s unacceptable,” Harrison snaps. He’s abrupt and curt, barking orders with a tone of authority that I’ve never heard before. It’s clear that whoever he speaks to on the other end is not happy, but Harrison is relentless.
“Tell Claudius that I have no time for incompetence.” He pauses. “I don’t care if it was already fixed, I want the message received that stupidity is no excuse for laziness. Gods, why am I surrounded by fucking imbeciles?”
I sip at my wine, and sink low in my chair, half mortified, half transfixed. It goes on and on, and my glass is nearly empty when finally, Harrison hangs up, lowering his phone back to the table.
“Sorry about that,” he says, his tone is calm. His smile is light, as if nothing just happened. “You know how work can be.”
I blink at him, still shell-shocked by the extreme tonal shift. “Is something wrong?”
He frowns, looking confused. “No, why do you ask?”
A feeling of dread settles over me like a cloak. “I—you—you sounded mad.”
He just shrugs. “This isn’t kindergarten, Juliette.”
My dread takes shape, a sickening creature crawling around in my stomach. Either he really doesn’t know what I mean and that’s just how he speaks when he’s inconvenienced, or worse, he does know what I mean, and he’s openly dismissing me. He’s assuming I’ll get disoriented and drop the subject, which to be honest, isn’t a bad assumption.
What am I supposed to do? Demand he admit I’m right? He drove. I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere with him.
Part of me says I’m overreacting. Another part knows I’m not.
I always worry I might be being paranoid, or that my intuition is lying to me, but I’m also rarely wrong, and my gut is telling me to get the hell out of here.
My heart starts to beat a little too fast, and I stand abruptly, my chair screeching against the floor. “I’m going to the ladies room. Excuse me.”
ChapterNine
ROMAN
Harrison Dane is the kind of asshole who tags his location everywhere he goes. Normally, I would scoff at that, but today I’m infinitely grateful. Almost grateful enough to reconsider beating the shit out of him at the first opportunity.Almost.
Fog presses in on the windows, and my windshield wipers seem to strain with the effort of trying to shove it out of the way as I drive down the winding back on the edge of town. The scent of rain lingers in the air, and the woods are eerily silent, muffled by the fog, the road dark and empty.
I keep telling myself that I don’t know where I’m going. That I’m just out for a drive, or going to see one of my friends, but it’s bullshit. I know it’s bullshit. I’ve never been more on edge than I am right now. My pulse hums as if it’s trying to escape my body. The sound is so loud I can almost hear it. Like a warning trying to force me to move. To go do something—anything.
Ever since Saturday night, I’d thought of virtually nothing else but her. Heard nothing but her breathy moans in my head, seen nothing but her huge, too-innocent eyes when I close my own. The relentless thoughts of all the things I could have and should have said to her, or donetoher, had crawled inside my brain and taken root.
The moment I heard her whisper my name, I’d planned out all sorts of ways to have her. Considered climbing up to her balcony and announcing my undying devotion right then and there. And then, like some kind of cosmic intervention, there she was in the library. Excitement soared in my stomach—an emotion I almost forgot I was capable of, yet with Etta feels completely normal.
But then, before I can say anything real. Before I can tell her what I heard and admit I want her too, or ask her to leave with me, or any of the other ideas swirling in my overstimulated mind, she pours icy water over the entire thing.
“I have a date tonight.”
I see red for all the wrong reasons. I should care that the closer to marriage Etta gets, the more the walls close in on me. That her engagement will prompt my own. Yet, I’m not thinking of any of that.
She’s reminded me that wanting her isn’t enough. What felt possible in the dark, is more complicated in the light of day. The barriers in my path are more obvious, and now I’ll need to take a more delicate, measured approach.
Delicate, like spending hours obsessing over the date she mentioned. Measured, like breaking my recent referendum on using magic so I could scry for Etta’s location.
“What the hell are you doing?” Bennet asked me, when he walked into our kitchen two hours ago.
I stood from where I was bent over the kitchen table, a map spread out in front of me and a pendulum in hand. I closed my fist around the crystal hanging from the copper chain, as if that would help. “Nothing.”
My cousin raised an eyebrow. “Who are you looking for?”
