Chapter 12
GAbrIEL
“Tell me what you found?” She curled into me as I carried her up the stairs.
I should have reveled in her flushed and breathless state—warm and pliant and mine—and triumphed in her surrender. Instead, the world tilted on end.
I had lost control.
Abandoning my plan to take her against the table because of a simple touch?
Even pleasuring her again had gone upside down.
The noises she made, the control she relinquished, the trust she gave—I had used her surrender to push her own magic through her and extend the tendrils she had opened on her own.
And I had almost pushed myself through, sharing in her refinement. Madness.
What would happen if I lost control entirely? Would she entangle a piece of my soul?
I couldn’t let that happen again.
“A man was seen repeatedly lurking around the last victim. We need to track him down.”
I laid her on my bed and shoved the fear away. I was in perfect control. I always was. Nothing had changed.
She slid under the covers. “How did you discover that?”
I wanted to follow. I forced myself to undo my shirt instead.
“The necklace on the victim was distinctive. I had inquiries made with several jewelers. One gave a name and address. Neighbors around the address confirmed a woman matching the description lived there and said a strange man had been following her.”
“What about the second and third victim?”
“Still no word.” There hadn’t been. I didn’t count that I already knew their names.
“Will you tell the inquisitor what you found?”
Inquiries into the necklace would lead to Octavia’s father, and a purchase two decades old.
Cold sweat broke out on my forehead, and I surreptitiously wiped the side of my hand across it. Always the problem with lies—the further you went, the more likely the catch. I flexed the estate veins that I had carefully cultivated beneath the row. They pulsed, answering back. Control.
“Not yet. We need to establish evidence first. He’ll never believe us otherwise.”
Disappointment, trust. She sighed against my pillow and shivered as the magic raced through the beams of the room.
There was no way I was telling Dresden anything. I wasn’t even sure why I was telling Marietta this. Better for me to sequester her with her brother and carry on myself.
I tried to say that. My mouth opened but nothing emerged. I tried again.
“Gabriel?”
“Nothing.” I shed the rest of my clothes and slid inside, pulling her against me.
It wasn’t healthy, this want, this hunger, to have her beside me.
What was it that made me unable to let her go? Because she could decipher me with an ease that eluded every other woman in my considerable acquaintance? Because I liked sparring with her? Because she made me want to tell her things I’d never told anyone?
Why did my hands curl harder around her?
She said she wasn’t beautiful.
My mind was already conjuring images of her face lost to lust. How she responded to my touch. How she looked as she broke apart. I had never seen anything more beautiful.
She said she was too opinionated.
I hated doormats. I liked her spark.
She said her magic was weak.
The gilded and their ignorant notions of family magic be damned. The skills she’d naturally perfected were exactly the ones most suited to my work. And her core and veins opening beneath my hands was addictive.
She wanted control.
The voice in my head stayed silent.
“Gabriel?”
“Yes?”
“You haven’t said a word for an entire minute. And you are looking at me as if I’m a summer roach.”
I wiped my face of expression. “We should search the address and see what we find. Perhaps we find nothing on the stalker. But perhaps we do.”
I could spin a tale no matter what we found, leaving out John and anything to do with either me or my family.
I’d protected Lucian my entire life. I would take the fall, if it came down to it. No question. No hesitation. My brother came before everything.
“Should we go now?”
I traced the shadows beneath her eyes with my thumb, the fragile skin betraying exhaustion and worry. Was it any wonder, after all, that she had sparked something in me from the first? Concern for her brother outstripping everything, including self-preservation.
“In the morning.” I dipped below the covers, making her arch again, sending magic racing along her skin. “We can use the daylight instead of having to rely on lamps and lights. The neighbors might notice.”
“And how are we going to get inside?” Her breath hitched. Her fingers twisted in the sheets.
“Leave that to me.”
~*~
MARIETTA
I looked around frantically as Gabriel did something to the door of number six. No one seemed to be paying us any mind, but it felt as if any minute there would be a caller on the corner yelling for the watch.
Relief hit as the lock clicked open. I hurried inside after him and he shut the door.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Most houses had spells against thieves.
“A good ser—” he fiddled with the tool he had used, closing it. “A good sir always knows how to pick a lock, even one enchanted.”
“A good sir? That makes not a whit of sense. Did you study under a lockmaster?”
He smiled wolfishly. “Only for matters of the flesh.”
I had no response to that other than heat. I followed him as he prowled the front hall. There was a table stand containing an enchanted basket of unopened mail and a ring of keys. The hall had a crisp feel, as if a cleaning spell had been recently run.
“It smells and looks clean, but there are no servants?” It was a big enough place to require at least one, and in a neighborhood that straddled social strata—not quite gilded, not quite non.
Enchanted baskets pulled notes through tubes that connected directly to a slot at the side of the door—no butler or service required—but someone had cleaned.
I knew cleaning spells, because I had made it a priority, knowing I would likely at some point be the one having to do it for all of us, without help. But most gilded didn’t use their magic for things that the non could do. Spells were exhausting without a deep well.
Gabriel lifted the key ring. “Housekeepers don’t leave house keys behind. There must have been one at some point. Perhaps on call? I will see if the servant network knows anything.”
Not one to question the value of servants’ gossip, I pawed through the invitations. “Octavia Winstead was a member of society. Not widely connected, from these, but there are a few decent invites.”
She had been in an age bracket that I didn’t have much contact with—already established and off market.
If someone established was keeping pace with the marriage market, they were invariably trying to meddle for a family member or protégé.
The established kept to each other, just as the younger groups stuck to their own. I had never known Octavia Winstead.
I fingered a gold filigreed invitation with bitterness. “The Shossers didn’t see fit to extend an invitation to us.”
“They can’t allow someone who might know how to vein rip to cross their threshold.”
“As if we are the family who threatens all.”
“The gilded thrive on secrets. It would not be a stretch to think a family has kept dark knowledge, and only in their downfall are they desperate enough to use it.” He tapped the stand.
“Your brothers happened to be in the worst spot for this. If your family had dark spells, they would have tried them. Your family’s desperation is obvious. ”
I threw the invitation down. “Some are probably waiting in the wings to offer compensation for our dark spells and learning.” It was something I was going to have to pry out of Ferris.
“My men have intercepted no fewer than thirteen inquiries, discreetly written, of course.” He hummed in agreement and poked through more of the unopened mail. “Shall we see if we can find a writing desk?”
I found the lovely mahogany box with mother of pearl inlay in the sitting room. A jumble of papers packed the inside, as if hastily collected and stuffed within. I unearthed a leather-bound book from the mess, hoping it might contain a more coherent accounting.
“What did you find?” Gabriel was looking through a desk, where items were almost militantly arranged.
“A journal?”
His head shot up. “A personal journal?”
“Yes.” The initials engraved on the cover confirmed it. Excitement built. Maybe it would name her stalker. Maybe we could free Kennen by nightfall.
“Let me see.”
Not a chance. I pulled it out of his range and opened to the front page. “January 2nd, in the year celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the March. M.N., C.F., E.M., I.F., T.R., and I have taken it upon ourselves to indulge in some fun. We have formed a club with the utmost discretion. We—”
The journal was torn from my hands. I gasped. “How rude. Give it back.”
He held it out of my reach and flipped pages quickly. Creases deepened the edges of his eyes.
“Gabriel!”
Page after page flipped as I inelegantly reached for the book—even going so far as to use a chair to stand higher. He simply stepped aside.
I sat and crossed my arms. An eternity passed before he stopped.
“It’s just a silly personal journal. An old one. Nothing has been written in years. We need to find out if she kept another—or any correspondence about her fears.”
I held out my hand. He paused a moment, then tossed the journal to me.
I sniffed and tucked it into my bag. I wasn’t sure why, but I wanted to read it later.
I began sifting through the loose sheets in the box.
Gabriel sat next to me to help. His warmth seeped into my side as we rummaged and sorted bills, letters, and notes.
I leaned into him.
If only Kennen weren’t in prison, and people weren’t being murdered, the whole thing would feel like a grand adventure.
“She owed a lot of creditors.” I set down a debtor’s note and scanned the room. “From these notes I would think her in dire straits, but the house is well-appointed.”