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But I wasn’t a normal witch. And I did want romance. With Rook.
Goddess, there was something seriously wrong with me.
“No promises,” Morgana said with a carefree laugh. “See you tonight, Depraysie. Pack every potion and crystal you can. We’re going to need them.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Cute sweater,” Morgana said around a mouthful of brownie. “Where’d you get it?”
Normally, a compliment from her would have made me beam with pride—because she looked like the poster child for the word ‘fashionable’. But I was too nervous to fully appreciate her comment.
As to my sweater, I’d knitted and enchanted almost every sweater I owned and sold a few others to some of Wanda’s clients. The fact that Morgana couldn’t tell that it was homemade was a compliment of the highest order. Unfortunately, I couldn’t relax enough to take the compliment. The realization of what we were about to do was now fully sinking in. Morgana and I had just made our escape from her room.
We were about to skulk around under the establishment’s nose to solve a case they didn’t care about. Or worse, that they were involved in. Morgana’s attitude toward the Thornes and Grimsbanes made sense, given her situation, but I couldn’t shake the feeling there was more to this. Even if the non-vampires and witches were second-class citizens, surely, they’d look into the case more thoroughly, just in case the culprits decided to take their prized students next. The only reason I could think of for the lackluster attempts was chilling… Someone on staff stood to gain from the faeries’ deaths or disappearances, and they were dragging the investigation out in order to hide it. I really, really hoped I was just paranoid, but the quivering feeling in my gut told me I was onto something.
Morgana was staring at me expectantly, and I scrambled to come up with an answer that would satisfy her. I eventually came up with, “Wanda’s Witchery. She has a limited stock of sweaters, so you’d have to give her advance notice if you want one.”
And Wanda would have to send me yarn and one of her tags to sew into the sweater when it was done. I didn’t want my newfound ally to think I was vain, so I’d let her go on thinking Wanda was the brainchild behind my clothes. Which was half-true. Wanda had spent weeks designing pieces especially for me to show off at school. It was half charity and half marketing ploy to show off her wares at an elite private school, where many witches would be willing to mail in orders. What kind of surrogate daughter would I be if I didn’t play along?
“I’ll have to look into that,” Morgana said, happily devouring the last of her triple fudge brownie. “And I’ll definitely have to order more pastries from the kitchen from now on. This is amazing stuff.”
“I’ll tell Mads you approve,” I said dryly.
Oleander had curled into a ball beside one of the statues that lined the dusty hall. Even his tall, gawky frame looked petite when contrasted with the larger-than-life statue of an angel kneeling in supplication. It leaned against a stone sword almost as tall as I was, eyes screwed shut and wings folded neatly against its back. Deep furrows had been carved into its side, its armor dinged and rent in places. The inscription read, Zaquiel, a Watcher, seeks penance.
“We shouldn’t have brought her here,” Oleander muttered. “Rook is going to be so pissed.”
Morgana rolled her eyes. “There will be time to make up with your boyfriend later, Ollie. Do you want to find your missing countrymen or not?”
Oleander slid further down the wall, muttering sullenly. But it wasn’t an outright ‘no’, which I took as assent.
Five minutes passed in silence, but for the gurgle of my stomach. Between work and preparing for this outing, I hadn’t had time to eat more than an apple for dinner. If we came out of this in one piece, I was ordering more brownies for Morgana and then I planned to eat every last one of them myself. I deserved chocolate. Speaking of, Goddess, I missed Libby’s brownies. The zombie housewife had spoiled me with her cooking.
Footsteps came toward us, muffled by the layer of dust that coated the entire hallway. It seemed that the lower you went in the castle, the less care the cleaners took. They seemed to have given up entirely four floors down, leaving anything past the kitchens to molder.
I tensed as Rook came into sight. Like the rest of us, he’d doffed the school uniform in favor of something darker and more casual. He looked younger than his four hundred years, wearing dark wash jeans and a black t-shirt. It had a black and white version of the Red Cross logo on the front, followed by the words, ‘Save a vampire, donate blood.’
I couldn’t help but laugh at the joke. I could have sworn I’d heard Lorcan or one of my cousins saying something similar months ago. My laugh drew Rook’s eyes to where I sat, bulging backpack on my lap, trying not to grin up at him.
Seeing me, he froze in place, dark eyes going wide, before wheeling around to fix his suddenly irate glare on Morgana. His lips lifted off his teeth, which were sharper than I’d ever seen them. Oleander was right. He was pissed, and I couldn’t understand why he’d decided to hate me personally. His distaste for witches? Totally understandable. But why did he seem to have a hate-erection for me specifically?
“I told you ‘no’, Morgana,” he hissed. “She doesn’t belong here.”
Morgana flipped her dark curtain of hair behind one shoulder and stared back at him, supremely unconcerned by the venom in his tone. “And I told you I needed help for this part of the mission. I’m not confident I can take on Aurea’s wards alone. So… Astrid’s the logical choice.”
Rook’s teeth ground audibly. Lorcan would have been horrified by the damage he was doing to his molars. “Bullshit. You’re one of the most powerful witches in the line, and we all know it. It’s why Aurea chose you, instead of her own daughter. You were too much of a threat to her power.”
“Your point?” she asked, inspecting her fingernails.
“You can do it alone,” he snarled. “You’re just bringing Little Orphan Annie to annoy me.”
“Hey!” I started, sick to death of his pet names for me.
Morgana smirked and held up a hand at me to signal that she had this conversation under control. “I’ll admit annoying you is a perk,” she said to Rook. “But, unfortunately, I don’t have your confidence in my abilities. I want backup, just in case. So, the question now becomes: are you going to use up what little time we have bitching about this, or do you want to accomplish something tonight?”
If looks could exsanguinate, Morgana would be a bloodless corpse splayed out on the dusty stone floors.
“Just once,” Rook responded, sending me a quick glare before he turned his full wrath back on Morgana. “When we clear the dungeon, she’s gone.” His words came out through his teeth, harsh and ringing with cold finality.
