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Gabriel’s hand stroked up and down my back. “What are you saying, Rose?”
“I guess just… I want to be ready. ForanythingI might have to do. I’m just one witch, and Frankford has a couple dozen families on his side, some of them powerful ones, not to mention the demons and whatever power they offer.”
“It’s not just you,” he said gently. “You have the other witches who’ve come here. They’d help if you asked them. And you have us. You always have us.”
My throat tightened. I hugged him and tipped my head up for a kiss. He offered that without hesitation, his fingers teasing into my hair as the heat of his mouth washed through me. I gripped his shirt and eased up on my toes to kiss him even harder.
The memory of kissing another guy in here tickled up in the back of my head. The things I’d talked about with Jin, after. When we eased apart, just a few inches, I asked, “Do you still have that page from my book? The one I called you back here with?”
Until he’d shown up that day, I hadn’t known for sure he even still had that token I’d given him. While the other four guys had stayed in town, Gabriel had been gone for years when I’d first gotten back. It’d been too painful for him to stay after his father’s depression and suicide.
But he’d been missing from a group, like a hole no amount of closeness between the rest of us could fill. I’d reached out to him, urging him to return to us, with the faint glow of magic I’d managed to kindle with the other guys before we’d been officially consorted. And he’d shown up a couple of weeks later with the folded page in his hand.
Jin didn’t have his page anymore. It would have burned up with everything else in that fire. That thought sent a jab of bitterness through me. I hoped I’d ruined at least one thing really dear to Helen Frankford’s heart too.
“Of course I do,” Gabriel said. “It’s tucked away in my wallet right now. What, did you think I was going to throw it out?”
A blush warmed my face. “Well, no.”
He kissed my cheek. “It brought me back to you. I’d like to know it always could again.”
I cupped his face and brought his lips to mine. A sharper desire rang through me as our mouths melded together. Making love with more than one of my consorts together was something special, but sometimes it was a thrill to focus all my attention on just one of them.
“Maybe more practice can wait,” I murmured. “Would you care to join me in the master bedroom? I have an, um, engine that could use revving.”
Gabriel cracked up with a sputter of startled laughter. Before I could join in, he was kissing me again. “You,” he muttered affectionately. He swept me off my feet into his arms as if he planned on carrying me to the bedroom.
“Gabriel,” I said, half pleased, half protesting. We did still have to keep in mind appearances for the staff.
“I know.” He stopped when he reached the door, kissing me up against it, his hand easing over my hip. Then he set me down. “Let’s make sure the coast is clear.”
I edged open the door and peeked out. No one in the upstairs hall. No sound of anyone puttering around up here. I grinned and grabbed Gabriel’s hand, pulling him with me.
We were two steps from the bedroom door when the buzzer for the gate sounded from below.
I stopped with a groan. The chances that whoever had come calling wanted to see anyone other than me were slim to none.
Gabriel kissed the top of my head. “We’d better go find out who it is,” he said, his voice easy but his body tensed. It could be someone Frankford had sent again. It could be another investigator from the Assembly. The list of bad possibilities was a lot longer than the list of good ones.
I peered down the drive from the window at the front of the house, but I didn’t recognize the car: a navy sedan with styling that looked at least ten years out of date. Whoever had reached out to signal the buzzer was hidden behind the reflections on the windshield now.
Frowning, I headed downstairs. Gabriel came with me, falling back at the sight of the single member of my current cleaning staff just emerging from the living room. Imogen bounded out of the kitchen a moment later.
“Who’s here now?” she asked, her bright red curls bouncing around her face.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you stay in here until I figure that out?”
The younger witch nodded sharply. We’d had a brief talk earlier about which places were and weren’t necessarily safe. I worried about her more than Lesley, who could have defended herself magically at least a little. I wasn’t sure how brightly the other witch’s spark was still lit since her consort’s death, but it was at least kindled. Imogen had never been consorted at all.
The camera feed by the gate control, which had blinked on at the buzz, showed our visitor was still in the car. Bracing myself, I pushed open the door and hurried down the front drive.
She got out when I was halfway there: a tall skinny woman in a slim pantsuit, her posture elegant but a little stiff. A few streaks of gray wove through her cloud of frizzy brown hair. She bit her lip and then seemed to catch herself, releasing it, as I got closer. She looked about as old as my Aunt Ginny, Naomi’s mother: mid-forties, maybe. But there was a weariness in her eyes that struck me as much older than that. My chest clenched.
“Can I help you?” I said.
Her gaze burrowed into me. “Lady Hallowell?” she said. “You’re the one taking in witches who need asylum?”
No one had put it that way before, but I guessed that was what I was doing. “Yes,” I said. “Is that what you’re here for? Are you okay?” The longer I looked at her, the more I got the impression that the stiffness in her stance was the only thing holding her upright—that if she’d relaxed for a second, she might have collapsed.
