Chapter 45. Grayson
Grayson
Long after Eloise falls asleep, her breath turning even and heavy, I lie awake giving myself hell for what I said.
I’m beginning to suspect she has some weird magic that literally rips my secrets from my chest. Because the Grayson of a week ago would never have told her that.
I still can’t believe I did. And yet for the first time in my life, I hate lying to someone.
When I do sleep, it’s interrupted by moments of panic where I sit straight up.
Only to realize I’m on this dinky couch, with Eloise projecting calming emotions in her sleep.
It helps in a way, scenting what she’s feeling, and I eventually fall back asleep because of it.
Which freaks me out all over again, because I haven’t relied on anyone since my brother.
And I sure as hell don’t want to start relying on the one person I’m bound to disappoint.
No one is more surprised than me that I somehow sleep until eleven thirty, only to be awakened by an insistent knock on my door.
I push up from the couch and rub my eyes. “Coming,” I say, with a rough voice.
Eloise sits up in bed, beautiful with her long braid and my T-shirt slipping off her shoulder. My gaze catches on her bare skin and I have to force myself to look away. Enough, Grayson. You’ve already done too much here.
I pull open the door and Nora stands on the other side.
“Still in bed I see,” she says, getting a good look at me. “Haven’t even wiped the sleep from your eyes.” Then she peers around me to Eloise and raises an eyebrow.
“Can I help you with something?” I ask with a yawn.
“You can clean yourselves up is what,” she says. “Because your uncle’s here and he wants to talk to you both in the drawing room.”
I scent the shock Eloise experiences behind me. “Great,” I say flatly, because this can mean nothing good.
But when the door closes and I turn to face Eloise, I realize I don’t have a clue what to say. I’m completely stumped.
I gesture toward the bathroom. “You can use my shower. I’ll use the one in the hall.”
I let myself out, and by her lack of reply, I’m guessing she doesn’t know what to say, either. She probably hates me. I would if the situation were reversed.
I spend the next ten minutes focusing on the hot water in the shower, trying to regain the calm I’ll need to deal with my uncle.
But by the time I get out and find Eloise standing in the middle of my room with damp waves going down her back, I cannot think of a single thing to say.
She looks so vulnerable here, too good for this house filled with gilded poison.
She still has a slight scent of hurt, but now it’s more complex than that—it’s indecision.
I clear my throat. “My uncle wants to see us.”
“I heard,” she says, and that’s it.
I open my bedroom door for her and she steps out into the hall with an audible exhale.
I lead her down the main stairs and into the formal drawing room, which is as far as I get before my steps falter. My uncle is on one of the tufted silk couches near the fireplace having tea. With my mother.
“Hello, Grayson,” my mother says in a silky tone, her eyes flicking to Eloise. “Would you like to introduce me to your friend?”
“Eloise Belrose, this is my mother, Alexandria Stone,” I say, wanting to grab Eloise’s arm and pull her right the hell out of here.
“Join us,” my uncle says, gesturing at the couch across from them.
My mother pours two cups of tea and sets them on our side of the claw-footed coffee table. “There is milk and sugar, should you so desire.”
“Thank you,” Eloise says politely, adding both to hers and stirring with a small spoon. I, however, don’t touch my cup. I’m too busy watching my family, trying to get ahead of whatever they have planned, especially since my mother’s scent screams anticipation.
“Update me,” my uncle says, and I open my mouth, but he puts his hand up.
“Not you, Grayson. The girl,” he says dismissively. “You’ve been attempting to call the Key for nearly a week now, Miss Belrose, and I’d like to hear if my leniency has been deserved.”
Shit.
Eloise’s eyes dart from my mother to my uncle. “I…,” she says hesitantly.
“You can speak freely in front of me, child,” my mother says, her voice smooth.
Eloise swallows her tea. “We’ve made significant progress,” she says, and I try not to tense. “We’ve called the Key once—”
“At a party,” my uncle interjects.
“Yes,” she says. “But it disappeared too quickly to touch it and—”
“Can you really call that intention?” my mother asks like a sweet-tongued viper. “Or was it more of … an accident?”
“Neither,” I say, jumping in. “It was the logical progression of our efforts. Everyone knows the Key is unpredict—”
“As I said, Grayson,” my uncle cuts me off with a magical command that has my mouth snap shut by force. “The question was not for you. Go on, Miss Belrose. I would like to know what exactly you were doing when the Key arrived.”
Bastard.
Eloise looks down at her hands and back up. “We were, um, dancing?”
“Are you asking us or telling us?” my mother asks, and my uncle smiles.
Eloise exhales, her cheeks going pink and her scent laced with worry. “We were actually kissing.”
My mother laughs. “Interesting.”
Eloise’s embarrassment tumbles off her and I glare at my mother.
“What methods have you tried thus far to call the Key?” my uncle asks, and now I do tense.
Eloise can’t lie. Moreover, why would she even want to?
“First, we tried heightened emotion. We thought the Key might respond to need, but that didn’t seem to work,” she says as calmly as she can.
“How can you be sure?” my uncle asks. “You just said it appeared when you were kissing. Does that not count as heightened emotion?”
Eloise chews on her lip. “Well, yes. But days before, Grayson threw me off a five-story tower onto a glass platform. My emotions were flying and there was only a shimmer of the Key. It never fully materialized.”
My uncle’s eyes flick to me. I never told him about the shimmer.
“What else?” my uncle asks, and I brace for the inevitable.
Here it comes.
Eloise glances at me and back at my uncle. “And, um, we tried Grayson doing a spell and then me. We tried casting at the same time,” she says. “But nothing made the Key materialize the way it did at the party.”
Hang on, am I hearing this correctly? Did Eloise just … omit the touching part? The twenty shimmers we conjured last night? Is she helping me?
My uncle pauses and I swear I can hear my own heart beating in my temples, but remarkably there is nothing in Eloise’s scent that gives her away.
“And the cobbler?” my uncle asks.
Eloise freezes. “He, um, he…,” she stumbles, and I’m about to interject when she says, “He was actually really grumpy. He told us to get out when we asked to talk.”
I release my breath. Maybe we’ll get through this. Maybe Eloise is a better omitter than I’ve given her credit for. If she can just keep talking around things for a little while longer—
Eloise reaches toward her teacup, but her fingers miss its handle. She tries again, but she fumbles it and tea spills on the table. “Sorry, I don’t know what’s…”
“Wrong with you?” my mother offers with a perfect smile.
I stare at the pair of them, suspicious. “What did you do?” I say carefully, but neither of them answers.
“Grayson?” Eloise says my name like a question and her look is equally perplexed.
I grab Eloise’s teacup off the table. There’s no residue in the bottom and no noticeable scent. She tries to grab the arm of the couch for balance, but once again she falters. Yet her skin looks rosy and she’s not gagging or coughing.
“Slurring syrup?” I guess—the magical equivalent to being drunk. Short acting and leaves you with a nasty headache.
“Very good, Grayson. A-plus,” my mother says with a little clap.
“Give me your hand, Eloise,” I say in a tight voice, standing to help her up. “I’m getting you out of here.” In fact, I can’t believe I brought her into a room with these two in the first place.
But again, my uncle uses a command on me. “Sit,” he says, and my body is forcefully pushed down to the couch with a wind spell.
I start to weave a spell of my own to counteract it, but before it’s halfway formed, he says, “I’d like to show you something, Miss Belrose,” and flicks his wrist.
An illusion materializes in front of the fireplace, and I freeze. It’s a woman with a little girl, and I spot their resemblance to Eloise immediately.
“Mom? Delilah?” Eloise says, standing on wobbly legs.
But it’s not a happy scene. Delilah is cowering behind her mother’s legs and her mom’s eyes are wide with her hand stretched out in front of her.
“What’s wrong. What’s happening?” Eloise asks hurriedly just as one of my uncle’s snarling illusion dogs appears in front of them.
“What do you know about your daughter and the Key?” someone says out of frame, and I recognize that voice—Damien.
“Nothing, we know nothing,” her mom says, and her little sister starts crying.
I scent Eloise’s fear spike like it was happening in my own chest and I stand, reaching for her. But Eloise bats my hand away.
My mother laughs and I glare at her.
Delilah moves behind her mother, burying her head in her mom’s skirt as the dog stalks closer.
“Stop!” Eloise yells at the illusion. “Stop moving!”
“Eloise, give me your hand,” I say, trying to get her attention. “Walk out of this room with me.”
But between the slurring solution and the horrific illusion, she can’t hear me. She casts a shield even though it’s useless, throwing it up in front of her holographic family. My mother snorts.
I could kill her.
Eloise’s mom reaches behind her to comfort her crying daughter and the dog springs forward. Just like the one in my uncle’s office, it aims for her mom’s neck.
“No!” Eloise screams, and my heart tears right out of my chest. She takes a step forward but trips on the rug and falls just as the illusion disappears.
And the careful facade I curate around my family shatters. I cast a spell, fast as lightning, lifting everything in the room that isn’t furniture.
“Did that actually happen?” I demand through gritted teeth, asking the question Eloise needs to hear the answer to.
“What happened is that this is my favorite tea set. Don’t you dare break it, Grayson,” my mother says with a barbed tone.
My uncle leans back on the couch. “You should be thanking me. You weren’t sure if emotion was a trigger, and well, now you know. Because here you both are and there is no Key present.”
It’s so like him, I don’t know why I’m surprised. But screwing with me is one thing—he just broke Eloise’s heart. I release all the objects in my spell, smashing them downward and destroying every single piece of my mother’s china.
My uncle’s jaw tics.
But I don’t care. I move to Eloise, who’s crying on the floor. “It’s all right, Claws. I’ve got you,” I say, gently lifting her up in my arms and walking toward the door with her cradled against my chest.
“You’re weak, Grayson. Just like your brother was,” my uncle says, and my step falters as I very strongly consider killing him. “I’m sick of waiting while you coddle that girl. I’m shortening the time frame. You produce that Key in the next forty-eight hours or I’m taking over.”