Chapter 8
After making sure Collins remained in his office working on his next sermon, I proceeded to the doors to the church. I held my palm against the old wood to avoid the squeak from the ungreased hinges as I cracked it open.
I looked out into the barren fall yard beyond the door, the cool air blasting against my cheeks. “Frank?” I whispered.
“Enjoying your day, Mary?”
I turned to find him leaning against the building in a dress shirt, suit jacket, and slacks. A half grin pulled at his lips.
I glanced at my plain sweater and jeans. “You didn’t have to dress up just because we’re meeting at a church.”
Laughter resided in his warm, dark eyes. “I came from work. I took a late lunch break.”
I clutched my hands behind my back to hide my embarrassment. “Oh, that makes more sense.”
Everyone knew that after his mom died when he was a baby, Frank’s father had given him to his aunt and uncle who had adopted and raised him. He now worked for his aunt’s business in the creation and selling of high-quality perfumes.
His smile spread across his face, as if my mistaken assumptions charmed him somehow. But then worry pulled at his brow. “Are you sure this is the right place?” No doubt he was reviewing all the past sermons against werewolves and other creatures given behind its doors over the years.
I nodded. “Come, I’ll show you. But you must be quiet.”
“As the grave.”
I guided him down the side of the pews, watching Collins’s office just visible beyond the raised podium. The human pastor that also gave addresses here never came in on Thursdays.
We’d progressed three-fourths of the way down the aisle when Frank stepped on the old creaky board that I’d sidestepped without thinking.
“Mary, is that you?” Collins’s voice issued from his office.
Oh, hex. Panic washed over me. How would it appear if I were secretly bringing a man into the stacks during my workday? Collins wasn’t the kind of person to give the benefit of the doubt.
The squeal of the pastor’s chair told me he’d risen. His sharp steps grew louder.
Frantically, I reached out and gripped Frank’s hand. He stiffened in surprise, but his warm fingers clasped around mine, as if he didn’t want it any other way.
“Don’t move, don’t speak,” I whispered. I lit my candle, lighting my fae power. Fade. Fade both of us, I begged.
Collins came into view. I froze, not daring to breathe. If he saw me holding Frank’s hand, my body as straight as a rail, we’d look as guilty as sin.
Collins’s gaze swept around the chapel, his lips turning down in confusion. “I could have sworn I heard someone…”
Fade. Fade. His eyes landed right on me, then Frank.
I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Had it worked? Did he see us?
Pastor Collins shrugged and returned to his office, snapping his door shut behind him.
I sucked in a breath and dropped the candle, then hurried to the hall that led to the basement. We passed through the glamoured entrance. I pulled Frank down the steps before summoning the courage to breathe normally.
He looked at me with wide eyes. “Did you glamour us invisible?”
“More like made him forget me. Same with you. He saw you, but because you had a hold of me, he forgot about you in the same instant that he caught sight of you. It’s my one fae power.”
He ran a thumb over the back of my hand in a soft caress. “You are something, aren’t you?”
My chest lightened, and I suddenly felt as if I walked on a cloud. I didn’t drop our connected grip, and he didn’t seem to want to, so I selfishly held on and pulled him further into the stacks. “Do you have the wolfsbane plant?”
He nodded, lifting it from his jacket in a small Ziplock bag. “Retrieved it last night. It grows near the stream outside of town. I used to get it for Isabella.”
“Good. I’ve started the potion. We just need to add it in and let it steep for eleven to twelve days, while adding more wolfsbane, witch’s enchantment, and a little bit of fae magic.”
“It will be close.”
It would be close. Twelve days remained until the full moon appeared. There’d be no margin for messing it up.
I opened the door into the back room, revealing the potion in the cauldron on the ground.
Frank eyed it, apprehension causing a muscle to jump in his jaw. “Tell me why you’re brewing this right beneath the feet of the fae who condemns my kind with every waking breath?”
“Pastor Collins never comes down here,” I explained.
“Whenever he wants something, he always sends me or Brexton. And Brexton rarely enters this room. After the obituaries are removed and stored next to information about the gravestones, the leftover sections are stacked here. Plus, on Thursdays, he likes to go out on visits.”
“So you knew we would be alone.”
I gazed down at the potion. “I was saying that the potion won’t be discovered. If we were found, Pastor Collins would freak out, and I’d lose my internship.” At the very least.
He inched a little closer to me. “You seem like a rule keeper.”
“I am,” I said as his warmth enveloped me. Then I added under my breath, “Normally.”
Frank squeezed my hand, his eyes dark and teasing. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary.”
My heart beat hard at his nearness. I reluctantly withdrew my hand and sat next to the potion. “Can I have the wolfsbane?”
He handed me the purple helmet-shaped plant as he settled across from me and the cauldron. Duchess came out of the stacks and rubbed up against Frank’s side, purring.
His gaze held mine with that intensity that stole my breath as I slipped the plant into the brew.
“Has anyone told you, Mary Bennet, that you are nothing short of amazing?” He reached over the cauldron and brushed a stray hair out of my face, his fingers gliding over my skin, scalding me. “And you’re quite beautiful, too.”
I ducked my gaze, letting the steam hide my blush. “I’m sure you tell all the girls that.”
His brows pulled together. “Why do you say that?”
Kitty’s accusations played through my mind. “I notice the way women flock around you.”
A grin spread across his face. “Are you calling me a heartthrob?”
“I don’t blame you for wanting to make them feel good about themselves.”
His smile faded. “I see.” He reclined onto his hands and looked at the ceiling, as if deep in thought. Then he leaned forward, his expression more serious than I’d ever seen it. “I dated this girl throughout high school.”
“Drina Lexter,” I said, unsure where this was heading.
He paused, startled, and I lowered my head, the burning in my cheeks spreading to my neck and ears.
“Yes,” he said. “Drina. She was a high fae, I was a high fae. Much expectation existed concerning our shared future. As graduation drew near, there was more and more talk about marriage. I’d climb the ladder in my aunt’s company while doing schooling online and she’d go to the local college, working on her degree in marketing so she could join me in the family business. It was all planned out.
“There was only one problem. The closer we came to graduation, the more uncertain I felt about the plan and our relationship. I informed Drina of my concerns, proposing a temporary separation so I could sort things out. She seemed like the perfect girl, so kind and understanding. A bit possessive, but I found that endearing.” He shrugged.
“I didn’t think much about it. Except that next full moon after we had broken up, she begged to meet me out in the woods.
She said that it was important and if she ever meant anything to me, then I would come. ”
A knot of apprehension formed in my gut. “So you went.”
He swept a hand through his hair and met my gaze with the most solemn one of his.
“I went.” Pain etched over his features.
“When I arrived, she was there, but also had this werewolf chained to a tree. I don’t know who it was or how she got him that way.
It was possible he voluntarily restrained himself.
He was snapping and raging. She said that if I didn’t want to be with her, then she’d ruin her life, that she’d let the werewolf bite her.
I tried to talk her out of it, but once Drina set her mind on something…
” He shivered. “She stepped right up to it and I lunged forward to stop her, to pull her back… at the last minute sh-she jerked to the side and shoved me toward the wolf.”
I stared in horror. “And you got bit.”
He nodded, rubbing his right shoulder. Perhaps it was the spot where he’d gotten bitten all those years ago. “She dragged me away from the werewolf and told me that she now had a secret on me. That if I didn’t agree to be with her, she’d tell everyone what I was.”
“But you didn’t stay with her?”
“Oh, I did,” he said. “But afterward I became so cold and passive toward her that she eventually initiated the separation and left town.”
I lacked words. I reached out and laid a hand on his arm, my heart breaking for him.
“After that,” he continued. “Even though I was in other relationships, they were on and off. I found I was never able to trust them enough after what Drina had done to me.” He took a slow breath.
“So I flirt and act like the person who everyone likes, giving them what they want. I have to be at the center of everything because… because I can’t give them any reason to doubt, to grow suspicious, you know? I can’t let them suspect my secret.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“I’ve never told anyone what happened that night.” He looked down, a sad smile coming to his lips as his hand covered mine. “So there you go, Mary. I may be a flirt, but now I’ve given you a piece of me I’ve never given to anyone.”
After an hour of stirring the potion, I led Frank up and out of the chapel. This time Collins, with his door shut, didn’t catch wind of our sneaking.
We slipped out the church doors into the cool autumn air. “We’ll need to meet here every other day,” I said. “Bring fresh wolfsbane.”