Chapter Seven
“Kingston,” Graves said, his shoulders tensed at the intrusion. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean? You told me you were coming,” Kingston said. He leaned on a black cane and ripped a top hat from his head. Why he was in a full suit at some ungodly hour of the morning was beyond her.
“You did what?” Kierse asked as she surreptitiously checked her ears. Graves had not mentioned that.
“Ah, hello, my dear,” Kingston said with a wide grin as he bowed over Kierse’s hand.
Graves sighed as if he were long suffering. “I told you that I would visit London after I was finished in Edinburgh.”
“Close enough,” Kingston said dismissively. “London. Edinburgh. It’s all the United Kingdom, after all.”
Graves ground his teeth together. “You made it quite clear that you believed we were rude for not visiting when we were in Dublin. So I gave you a courtesy call to let you know I’d swing by.”
“Well, you took too long,” he said, gesturing behind him.
Graves rubbed his temple. “You could have called.”
“Honestly, what did you expect with the engagement news flying around?”
Kierse’s eyes widened, and Graves blew out a breath. “So you’ve spoken with Estelle?”
The Paris warlock had played a game with Kierse and Graves when they had visited her thinking that she had the cauldron. Their ruse had clearly worked if she still circulated the news of their engagement.
“Quite right,” he said, then gestured back into the museum.
“Come along. You can’t truly resist London.
I know you too well. We’ll walk the British Museum, get afternoon tea, and the like.
I still have my box at the opera house. Or if you prefer the West End, we could take in a play.
None as spectacular as your old friend William at the Globe, but alas they have renditions of his works still. ”
“We’ll fly in tomorrow,” Graves said.
Kingston ignored him. “Miss McKenna, have you ever been to London?”
“I have not.”
“Edinburgh, Dublin, and Paris but not London? Sacrilegious,” he declared. “We must educate your apprentice, Graves.”
“We can fly.”
Kingston pointed to the open portal. The lingering scent of gunpowder and charcoal wafted in at the gesture. Kierse didn’t remember having scented his magic, but it was old. “Or you can take one step through and be there. Have you ever traveled by portal? It’s the only way to travel!”
Graves’s careful plans had all gone up in smoke, but he never seemed to be able to resist Kingston. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Are you going to insist on dissuading my hospitality?”
Graves would have kicked anyone else out of his house and never spoken to them again.
But not his mentor. Kingston had trained him to be a warlock.
And they’d cohabitated for hundreds of years before they’d both realized they were too powerful for the other to remain.
Graves left to find his own city and ended up in New York at its rise.
But he and Kingston remained on remarkably good terms. It was the first person she’d ever seen him like.
And while she’d seen many people since then, Kingston was still the easiest for him.
“Well?” Graves asked Kierse.
She wasn’t sure it was a good idea, considering she just killed another warlock. Kingston didn’t know she was a wisp, and she wanted to keep it that way, but Graves looked at her as if he had a very good reason for agreeing to see Kingston, so she relented. “All right.”
Kierse went to style her hair back in a way that covered her ears, then grabbed her leather jacket. Graves took his suit coat, and then they stepped through the front door. Kingston grinned the entire time.
“Here we go,” he said.
Kierse could see the golden frame of magic around the portal. It emanated from Kingston, too, but she couldn’t seem to grasp how it worked. Still, it was beautiful and mesmerizing to feel the traces of magic. She held her breath as she stepped across the threshold.
For a moment, it was like she was sucked backward.
The thing had an almost sticky resistance, like pushing through molasses.
When she got through the other side, it kicked her forward, and all her energy propelled her.
She jogged a few steps before tumbling across the hardwood and colliding with a small bench.
“Ow,” she groaned, holding her head as she sat up and checked her hair was covering her ears. All good on that front.
Graves stepped through and took quick strides to her side. “Probably should have warned you about the impact. It’s like all the energy it would have taken to get to the other place is forced into you as you exit.”
“Physics?” she asked as she rubbed her aching head.
“My apologies,” Kingston said. “It’s been some time since I’ve taken someone new through a portal. You handled it well.”
“I fell head over feet and collided with a bench.”
“The first time Graves did it, he landed in the Thames!” Kingston said on a laugh.
She glanced to Graves, and he shook his head, but there was a smile tugging on the corners of his lips. “Really?”
“He did it on purpose,” was all he said.
Kingston chuckled. “Perhaps I did.” He removed his top hat and set it on a table before continuing through the museum that was his house. “Come along. It’s a beautiful day for a tour of London.”
Kierse dusted her hands off and followed with Graves at her side.
The museum room reminded Kierse of Graves’s library. Since Kingston recharged his magic through looking at artwork, it made perfect sense for him to have an entire hall full of art.
“The pieces are changed out regularly,” Kingston explained. “It helps me recharge faster if I don’t know what I’ll be looking at.”
Kierse understood that. “Like stealing from someone who doesn’t care.”
Kingston raised an eyebrow. “That could be similar, I suppose.”
“She’s always like this,” Graves said affectionately.
“Finding ways to steal things?”
Kierse shrugged, showing off the watch she’d filched from Kingston before stepping through the portal. “Like this?”
Kingston looked flabbergasted, then began to applaud. “Excellent work, my dear. Excellent work. No wonder Estelle was furious with you both.”
“Because of the pin I stole? It’s not my fault that she didn’t keep count of what I was taking.”
“I think she was more upset that she lost,” Kingston said. He patted Graves on the shoulder. “She should be used to it by now with knowledge before her.”
Graves shrugged. “She didn’t want to play with me.”
“Sore loser,” Kingston said with a laugh.
They walked from room to room, all of them covered in paintings that were probably worth more than the house itself. It was impressive. Though Kierse noted that she didn’t see any people. Whoever Kingston employed to keep the place spotless and change out the artwork certainly weren’t seen.
“Well, I wouldn’t be a good host if I didn’t offer you morning tea,” Kingston said, passing a massive dining room set for twenty. She wondered when he’d last thrown parties of this size.
Then they entered a maximalist’s dream for a sitting room.
Everything was dark, lush, and evocative.
The chairs were a deep emerald green. The curtains a dark ruby red.
And the walls the darkest sapphire with decorative wainscoting.
Gilded and filigreed portraits hung inside the open spaces on the wall, and a large window opened to a park beyond.
Kingston chimed a bell when he entered the room and a harried woman in a black suit rushed inside with little cakes on a tray.
“Tea is on the way, sir,” the woman said, bowing and hurrying back out.
Kingston lounged back in a chair, his gaze drifting across to the view of the park. “No rain in the forecast. It’s a miracle.”
“I assume you didn’t drag us all the way here to discuss the weather,” Graves said. He stood next to an antique fireplace, his expression guarded as he looked upon the portraits above the hearth.
“That’s more your forte.”
As her mind turned to the seasons, she put her hand to her chest. For a moment, she realized her connection with Lorcan had subdued. Was that because of the distance between them? She was used to him being somewhere else in the city.
The woman appeared in the room again, head down, carrying a tray for tea. She set it down on the table, pouring black tea into a cup and adding cream and sugar for each of them before leaving the room.
“Now,” Kingston said jovially, “tell me this engagement story. Should I be receiving an RSVP soon? Is this happening in New York?”
Kierse took a sip of her tea. “We’re not engaged.”
“It was part of the game with Estelle,” Graves told him. “You could have simply asked on the phone, Kingston.”
He waved that off as preposterous. “Yes, but you seemed different with this one. It seemed like an actual possibility.”
“If we were engaged, you wouldn’t hear it from Estelle.”
“Fine. Fine,” Kingston acquiesced. “I never thought I’d see you with a warlock again after what happened at the World’s Fair.”
Graves shrugged. “That was a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Yes, but doesn’t it feel like yesterday?”
“No,” Graves said. “Last I saw Imani, she was nearly dead, and I told Montrell if she came into my city again, I’d kill her myself.”
Kingston laughed. “Always so touchy.”
Kierse didn’t think it was after the bullshit Imani had pulled dosing an entire party with her magic powder. It had incapacitated Lorcan and Graves, leaving Kierse to track down Imani alone. A car chase, a blown tire, and a crash later and Imani was out of the picture. She just hoped for good.
“A warlock is a better companion anyway,” Kingston said. “Humans live such short lives. They’re like ants swarming the world and using up all its resources.”
Graves shot him a pointed look. “Is that why you’ve settled down with a warlock all these years?”
Kierse’s eyes widened. “Are you with a warlock?”
Kingston waved his hand, finishing his tea. “We aren’t talking about me.”
“Of course not,” Graves said under his breath. His eyes raised to Kierse, and he had a wicked glint in them. “We won’t meet him, but he’s had an apprentice for a very long time. Longer than I was here.”
“Preposterous,” Kingston said.
Kierse grinned. “I would like to meet him.”
“There’s no one for you to meet, my dear. Graves is being Graves.”
Graves winked at her.
Kingston cleared his throat dramatically. “Well, if no engagement, then how goes the training? Figure out how to unlock that immunity yet?”
“No,” Graves said.
Kierse shook her head slowly. They needed to be careful how they discussed her powers.
She had just killed a warlock with them.
Not that she thought she could kill Kingston or even wanted to.
But if he found out what she was, it could ruin everything.
She didn’t think Kingston would hold back from killing her, and she knew what Graves would do if he tried.
So they had to continue with the lie that her magic was immunity.
“She has a second ability, though,” Graves said.
Kierse’s head whipped to the side. It was not at all subtle.
But she couldn’t help it. Graves was telling Kingston that she had another ability.
She had thought it strange that he had even reached out to Kingston when they were going to be in the UK, but to willingly offer information to him? What in the hell was happening?
“Ah, keeping this one locked up?” Kingston asked.
“We weren’t going to discuss it with anyone, but it hasn’t been working properly,” Graves said.
Kierse looked at him as if he had grown a second head. “I didn’t realize we were going to tell anyone about this.”
Graves took her hand, gloves off, and she would have killed to know what he was thinking in that moment.
But she had to trust him. She did trust him.
They’d fought for that trust, and he’d earned it.
If he was telling Kingston about her—something he never would have done before—then he was doing it for a reason.
“The real reason I called and planned to visit was because we are having difficulty unlocking her second ability,” Graves admitted.
Kingston’s grin widened. “And you wanted help.”
“A second opinion,” Graves amended.
“Help,” Kingston shot back.
They stared at each other, neither breaking, and for a moment, she thought that Graves might say, “Fuck it,” and give up. But after a moment, her unbreakable man bent just a little.
“Fine. We’d like your help.”
“Excellent!” Kingston said, clapping his hands together. “How can I help?”
“She has overlapping abilities with you.”
Kingston’s eyebrows shot up. “Truly? That is most unusual. Portaling or persuasion?”
That was the question—portaling or persuasion? They were both valuable in their own right. It was honestly obscene that someone as powerful as Kingston had both. While persuasion could get her out of a lot of situations, she always wanted an easy exit. She was still a thief, after all.
Graves looked to her. He couldn’t read her mind, but he still allowed her to guide the conversation that he had walked her into. He trusted her to make the decision. He trusted Kingston to help them.
“Portaling,” Kierse said.
Graves nodded once as if that was the right answer.
Kingston’s eyes widened. “As a secondary power?”
“Yes,” Graves said. “I can help with her immunity. I thought a master would be better for portaling.”
Kingston preened. His eyes were now alight, and he leaned forward. “Well, I would be a better teacher for that than knowledge over here, wouldn’t I?”
Graves looked to the ceiling. “Here we go?”
“You would teach me?” Kierse asked.
“If your mentor allows it,” Kingston said with a wide grin.
Graves looked like he’d rather eat glass, but he gave a curt nod. “That’s why we’re here.”
“Great!” Kingston said. “Let’s get started.”