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“In my own room?”
“Which just means you’ve had more practice making graceful exits.” One more distinctive rustle—a good thing, since it mutes my small chuckle—as Veronica pops twice on tiptoe to air-smooch my tall demigod. “Hello, Maximus. You look lovely.” She pats at his neatly styled ponytail. “I trust the tux alteration meeting went well?”
I suppress another giggle as he flounders like a five-year-old at church. “Uhhh, everything fits,” he finally utters, squirming again when Mother appears to wait for more. “So…yeah.”
“Excellent.” She pats his cheek. “See you both tonight, then. I’ll text with any last-minute changes to the itinerary.” With the same hand, she points back at me. “Kara, don’t take that off. I’ll send up the seamstress right away for the last-minute adjustments.”
“Adjustments to what?” Maximus growls as soon as the door clicks shut behind her. “Sweet little demon, that dress was made for you.”
I sigh. “If one’s into looking like a target for Jack the Ripper, I suppose.”
He approaches, yanking me off the raised box with such force that I’m airborne for a few seconds, clutched hard against his big body.
“Just let the bastard try.” His possessive rumble sends delicious shivers through my form, and that’s before his lips totally claim mine. When he’s done, I’m physically unable to answer for the better part of a minute. There’s definitely advantages to being a breathless and swoony mess in Victorian garb.
“Well…only if he’s capable of time travel,” I rasp at last. His taut grunt is a hotter-than-hot reply.
“At this point? Wouldn’t rule it out.”
“You probably wouldn’t be alone.”
He pulls up by an inch. Scans my face. I’m not kidding so much this time, and he nods to acknowledge it. The moment is sobering for us both, like a pause in a cavern with no discernible way out. We can’t map the way back to where we once were, but we have no idea where we’re headed. It’s one terrified step after the next. But thank God we’re taking them together.
I want to put all of that into words, but his tense vibrations have me thinking twice. He calms by a few degrees when I slip a hand up the middle of his chest, pressing assuring fingers atop the heavy beats between his pecs.
“Did you have a chance to connect with Jesse?” I murmur for his ears alone. “Was he able to help with theories about the grimoire?”
It’s an awesome surprise to watch some warmth move into his features. Here come the crinkles I adore at the corners of his eyes, as well as hints of a smirk on his lips. Still, I tilt a dubious scowl for his full view.
“Oh, no. Should I be excited or scared about this?”
“Full disclosure?” And he’s chess-match serious again. “Healthy doses of both.”
I push my brows together. “So, what’d he say? He had some ideas, then?”
“He did after Regina got to the apartment.”
Just as fast, my gaze flares. “Reg showed up? Why?”
He has a new half grin, though the temperature is definitely cooler. “Why do you think?”
Just when I thought my eye sockets couldn’t accommodate a wider gape. “She was acting on orders? Were they fromZ? Do you think he suspects…about the baby?”
He shakes his head with adamant force. “His concern is solely about Hecate’s next move. At the moment, you and I are his strongest conduit for that.”
“But we can’t be the only ones.”
“Of course not. But he’s not fatuous. He knows an easy information pipeline when he’s got it. Reg is the obvious appointee for security duty on theasset.”
His air quotes on the word send clenches down to my belly. I swear that I can feel our twiglet shifting as well, beating at me with instinctive tumult.
“So what did you tell Reg? Everything?” My second question is filled with rhetorical hope. The grimoire isn’t mine, but it’s impossible to shut down this possessive connection to the book. The mystical threads that reached out since the moment I put my hands on its precious leather cover. Hecate must know that too. She had to have felt it even back at Iremia.
But if she had a problem with that knowledge, she could have sent someone to take the book right then. Surely she already knew it didn’t come with us to the compound out in the canyon and was likely stowed back at Maximus’s place. During any of the hours she’d made sure that Maximus and I were lost in each other in our little cottage, she had ample opportunities to go back for it. More directly, she could’ve simply magicked it out of the apartment last night when standing only six feet away from it. The grimoire was there at that point, and after she left, I checked for it myself.
There’s something else going on here. Something that even the magic goddess isn’t aware of. It might have nothing—or everything—to do with her grand plot. But orchestrated by whom? And why?
I’m rescued from that confusing scourge by a closer embrace from Maximus. Better yet, from the firm and reassuring words he offers. “Jesse and I laid the whole story on Reg. We’re glad we did, all things considered.”
