Chapter 16
Luther
I pulled out the chair for Jade as though she were made of glass, but that was just my old-fashioned manners kicking in.
She looked anything but fragile, anger flashed behind her brown eyes too often for that, but tonight her edges seemed softened, and a little cautious.
I liked seeing her in my home; the lamplight gilding her hair, and her scent lingered on my furniture.
“Thank you,” she murmured as she sat and demurely folded her hands in her lap.
Her brown eyes shimmered golden in the candlelight, they were also huge.
I poured her a glass of sparkling white wine and watched the bubbles race upward.
I’d picked it because it paired perfectly with the meat, but also because it couldn’t look more different from the deep, viscous red in my own glass.
Let her notice. Let her wonder. That’s what she’d been asking for, hadn’t she?
I tried to ignore how that made nerves spark like the bubbles in her glass, inside my veins.
I had only had this talk once before in my life, with disastrous results.
My mind flashed with images of flames, and my chest burned as it recalled the smoke that had filled my lungs when I awoke from a deep slumber.
The woman I thought loved me was gone, missing, and danger crackled with greedy tongues through the rafters of my home.
No. I took a deep breath, settling my churning thoughts.
That was then, the times were different, and this was now.
Women in this day and age could dye their hair blue if they felt like it and not be branded a witch.
Teenagers swooned over the phases of the moon and novels with titles to match.
Surely… I tried not to feel too hopeful and felt dread again instead.
Her attention shifted from the glass of pale wine I’d poured for her to the food I’d arranged on the fine bone porcelain plate.
“This looks incredible,” she said primly, and that shook me from the darkness lingering in my thoughts.
Jade was not Ilse, and this mild-manneredness was just an act—a test, perhaps—biding her time until she could pierce with her brightly inquisitive questions. I relished the prospect.
“It should.” I set the bottle down on the counter and came to take my own seat across from her.
The salmon looked beautiful, as always, and it would be a lovely palate cleanser after the venison from yesterday.
“Arden caught the salmon this morning,” I added conversationally.
This wasn’t what I really wanted to talk about, but it was a far safer topic.
The troll was an avid fisherman and much happier now that his stream had thawed and his bridge cleared of snow with the spring melts.
“Who’s Arden?” she asked, leaning in as though she were uncertain she’d heard correctly.
Her head was cocked at an angle, strands of her brown hair sliding over her shoulder.
She might as well have been wearing a silk and chiffon evening gown rather than a plain T-shirt and jeans.
That’s how alluring and beautiful she looked to me.
“Arden lives by the bridge to the north, passionate fisherman.” I nodded at the enticing pink bits of fish in her salad. “Somehow, he always gets the best catch in the region.” A little troll magic, that, but I didn’t say so. We’d get over the hurdle of my particular quirks first.
She dug in carefully, the way she did most things, as though she took pride in precision, and I found myself holding my breath. When she tasted the first bite, her eyes widened with genuine pleasure. “Oh my God. This is perfect.” She took another, faster. “Luther, this is… wow.”
Before I could respond, Belfry swooped down from the rafters, landing on the table with the swagger of a creature ten times his size.
You’re showing off, he chimed in my mind, his voice dripping with mischief.
Pouring wine, serving salmon, why don’t you just present her with a diamond necklace and confess your undying love for her?
He snickered as if he’d just thought of something really funny, and then he added, Literally in your case. Get it?
Jade snorted a laugh, covering her mouth. “You do realize I can hear that, right?” she pointed out to Belfry, and while I fought to get my temper under control, the bat had the good grace to bow his head in shame and shuffle his wings awkwardly on the pristine linen tablecloth.
I shot Belfry a glare that made him wither even further against the table, a splotch of black and red against the ivory of the cloth.
“You are insufferable,” I told him, but my voice was filled with a hint of a laugh I couldn’t quite quench.
He meant well, after all, and it was making Jade smile, which was a lovely sight.
“He’s right, though,” she said, her amusement bright as the sparkles in her wineglass.
“Are you trying to improve your standing with me before I ask whether that’s wine or blood in your glass?
” Her gaze settled boldly on the crimson liquid in my hand.
She wasn’t trembling, and she definitely wasn’t recoiling.
No, impossibly, she was teasing me; I felt a slow heat curl in my chest.
“I’ve always admired your way with words,” I said, my voice lower than I intended.
“And your mouth.” Heat sizzled through my veins, and my fingers tightened around the stem of my glass.
The blood inside it was not half as enticing as the siren across the table from me.
She blushed, lovely and sweet, heat streaking across her cheeks.
Belfry made a scandalized little squeak.
Oh, good heavens. If you and your girlfriend start flirting any harder, I’ll melt right off the table, Luther.
He made the most disgusted noise, a cross between a hiss and a belch, and the fur on his head stood on end.
He even drooped his impressive set of ears back as he gave me a glare of his own.
I gestured at him with my fork. “Perhaps you should go find one yourself. Or at least harass someone else over dinner.” Who knew what kind of havoc the little fellow would unleash with that kind of permission?
At least I knew no one in town would hurt him, even if he could be a little in the way.
The truth was, I stayed out of the city for Belfry’s sake as much as for my own.
He didn’t mix well with the haughty familiars we’d known in our last city coven.
I rather liked that he had all the freedom he could ever want out here, and friends to boot, even if most were goats that couldn’t talk back.
Gladly, Belfry preened, cackling as he leapt into the air.
Don’t wait up! He vanished into the rafters, laughter echoing long after he was gone.
As far as I knew, my roof was sound and whole, and I had left no window open.
Yet Belfry always knew the way out, ways even my vampire-sharp eyes could not track.
My librarian had also tracked Belfry’s fluttered exit from the apartment, her mouth still curved in a wide smile. Then she settled her eyes on me and arched a brow. “Girlfriend, huh?” she asked, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking about what I’d said to Belfry or the crack my bat had made.
I groaned, the sound rumbling up from deep inside my chest. “Absolutely not. Belfry lives to cause trouble.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking about the bat or her, either.
Girlfriend? That’s not what I wanted to call her at all, and the idea of Belfry with a friend…
that was most disconcerting. Imagine all the chaos they’d create if there were two of them.
“We have that in common.” She bit into a slice of bruschetta, and I forgot all about my own tempting slice.
It was much more pleasurable to watch her chew and savor each taste.
“Though, I suppose I can understand why we got off on the wrong foot,” she added once she’d finished chewing and taken a sip of the wine.
“You mean when you broke into the library,” I couldn’t help but point out.
I knew that wasn’t what she’d been doing; after the fact, I could even admire her good sense to do a little recon.
Still, it wasn’t exactly safe, what she’d done, either.
What if someone other than me had seen her?
Jackson might have arrested her, Drew would have tried to deport her from town, and Kai?
I shuddered to think of what Kai might have done if he’d seen her snooping around.
“I wasn’t breaking in, I was just looking around,” she corrected sharply.
“You’re the one who stormed over there like some overdramatic gargoyle and threatened me.
” Oh yes, I remembered that all too well.
Belfry warning me there was something going on outside, the sight of her in the library’s backyard, and the visceral response I’d had to that.
In hindsight, I could recognize that perhaps I’d felt a bit territorial; she had enticed my mating instincts.
I had not been acting entirely like a rational being.
“You were skulking,” I defended, but I was smiling, a hint of self-recrimination mixed in.
I’d been an ass, and she knew it—we both knew it.
The threats to the town were still too recent, too raw, and I’d reacted before I’d thought it through.
That reminded me there was a good reason I had brought her to my home, a shadow I didn’t want to think of just yet.
“I was working.” She pointed her fork at me.
“You’re lucky I didn’t report you to the Mayor.
” Oh, Liz had known. She’d definitely heard me making threats with those sharp wolf ears of hers, and she’d put me in my place when she told us we had to work together.
Too bad I’d enjoyed every agonizing minute with my librarian; that couldn’t possibly have been an outcome Liz could have predicted.