Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
“No. No blood. But I found DNA samples from four other people in the residence.”
“Let me guess. Graves and Kierse.”
“Yes. Both of them matched up. One was Walter Rodriguez.”
“Hmm. He’s an old apprentice of Graves’s. They’re working together again. And the last?”
“Lorcan Flynn.”
Kingston nearly dropped the phone. Now that was the surprise of all surprises. Lorcan and Graves had hated each other for hundreds of years. This Oak and Holly King business had been messing up Graves’s life for nearly as long.
“Was anything taken of note?”
“Not that I could find.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, I found the body, sir. It was in a grave six feet under thirty minutes out of town.”
“They buried him?” Kingston asked uncertainly as he put the pieces together. “How did he die?”
“As far as I can tell, his magic was drained.” He was silent a beat. “But I don’t know what could do that.”
Kingston did.
Kingston knew all too well what could drain the magic of a warlock and then kill them. And they were supposed to all be dead.
“Sir?”
“Bring the body here,” he said. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kingston hung up and looked at Andrew. His golden locks fell forward into his face, and there was a furrow between his brows.
“Everything okay?”
“I’m not sure.”
He pushed away from the man and went to the museum room. Andrew followed him at a distance, but he was lost to the artwork as his mind raced ahead. As far as he knew, only a Fae could drain the magic of a warlock. A will-o’-the-wisp was particularly adept at doing so. And they were all dead. No one who could kill him.
But there were too many pieces he didn’t understand. Graves had never shown much interest in anyone. Not since his precious Emilie.
Then Kierse appeared. This magic creature who had changed his world. He had kept his tabs on them, as he always did with a new warlock on the scene. Lorcan was obsessed with her. It was likely he who had been following her that day she managed to portal alone.
Why would a Druid be obsessed with a warlock girl? A wren, no less? He was the Oak King. He had his robin. Kierse should have been of no significance except that Graves was interested in her. That was what he had concluded last year.
But now?
He was not knowledge personified like Graves, but he could put the pieces together all the same once they were laid out.
Kierse had the same power as him.
But also the same power as a wisp.
Portaling was a wisp ability. Immunity wasn’t…but absorption could look the same.
Had Graves brought a wisp into his house and asked him to train something that could kill him? That had to be beyond him. Didn’t it?
“Darling?” Andrew asked gently.
“She’s a wisp.”
“Aren’t wisps supposed to be dead?”
“Yes,” he said, low and dangerous.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Correct a mistake.”
Part II
The Ash Door
Chapter Eleven
Kierse grasped the doorknob to Graves’s brownstone and pushed through his wards before he could even pull them down, using the full momentum of Kingston’s portal to roll into the foyer. She crashed into the bottom of the stairs with a groan.
A voice cleared, and she opened her eyes to see Edgar, Graves’s butler, standing over her. “Welcome home.”
She rubbed her head and came to a seat on the stairs. “Glad to be back.”
They’d left the evening gloom in London for a sunny New York City afternoon in one step. Kingston was not lying when he said that was the way to travel.
Meanwhile, Graves stepped through the front door like getting off an airplane. No tension propelled him through like a freight train. He smirked at where she rested on the floor and offered their coats to Edgar.
“Was your trip pleasant, sir?” Edgar asked. “Walter and George returned a few days earlier without you and said not to worry about your trip. I chided them for not flying into London to accompany you anyway.”
“I told them to go home. I’ve known Kingston long enough to know that he wouldn’t let us fly home,” Graves called from the downstairs study. He appeared a minute later with a stack of very old books that he held against him like his most prized possessions.
“Walter is upstairs in his room. He said that he was working on the assignment you left him about his force fields.” Edgar looked at him blankly. “Should I tell him you’re home?”
“Do that. I’ll check in on him later.”
“Very good, sir. Is there anything else you require?” he asked.
“Have Isolde send up some tea and scones. I like hers better than what we had in the city.”
Kierse’s hand went to her chest, and she rubbed the center of it where it connected her to Lorcan. She could sense him in the city, somewhere in Lower Manhattan.
A part of her ached to walk down the street and keep walking until she was there. The other part tried to force down that feeling with everything she had in her.