Chapter Seven #3
“Reasonable.” Elle reaches for my notes, turning the grimoire to face her.
A flush of embarrassment washes through me to have her hands on something so personal, but I can’t find the words to ask her to stop.
I don’t want to dim her curiosity. Her interest. “What’s four hundred seventeen hertz for? ”
“It’s the frequency that best resonates with spectral energy.” A flutter of something tightens my chest. “It also corresponds to the sacral chakra. The one responsible for creativity, emotional resilience, and pleasure.”
“What does it feel like?” Elle looks up at me then, and I realize how closely we’re leaning together. Mere inches separate us. The spice of her scent envelops me. “Magic,” she clarifies when I’ve gone too long without answering.
It’s a complicated question. It depends on how much magic I’m channeling and for what purpose. Whether I’m using crystals as amplifiers. Rather than try to put all these variables into words, I hold out my hand. “It’s easier to show you.”
Elle hesitates, her gaze flicking to my hand, before ultimately sliding her palm against mine. “Now what?”
“Depends,” I say, suppressing a shiver. “What would you like to feel?”
Her brow furrows, and she shudders, fingers trembling against mine. “What did you do for Alex the other night?”
My heart clenches at the memory. Fucking Barrett. I hate how cruel he was, how careless with Xander’s heart. “It was a calming sigil. It files down the worst edges of tough emotions.”
“Something like that would be okay.” Elle glances from our hands, pressed palm to palm, up to my face. “What’s next?”
I suck in a lungful of air, drawing magic into my body as I do. “Now, I channel the magic to the tips of my fingers.”
“The opening of the straw,” she says, nodding.
Warmth creeps up my neck. It’s such an odd analogy, but she’s taken it to heart. “Right, and then I draw the appropriate sigil along your skin so the magic knows what to do. Sound good?” I wait for her to nod, and then trace the calming sigil along the back of her hand.
A gentle sound, caught between a moan and a sigh, escapes her lips.
Her voice dances down my spine, my heartbeat suddenly settling between my legs.
Elle’s entire body seems to deflate, and she braces her free arm on the table, resting her head on her bicep.
“Fuck, I feel boneless.” The hand that rests in mine inches up my wrist, up my forearm, as the top half of her melts against the table.
“A good boneless, I hope?”
When she flicks her gaze to mine, her pupils have expanded to blot out all but the tiniest edge of green. “Very good.”
We sit there, her hand curling around my forearm, and I can’t stop myself from brushing the hair out of her face. I want to ask if she’s okay. To ask what emotion weighs so heavy on her heart that the sigil has left her like this, but my phone alarm blares loudly between us, shattering the moment.
Elle pulls herself away from me as she leans back in her chair. I ignore the way my heart lodges itself in my throat as I silence the alarm and gather my books.
“Going somewhere?”
“I found a couple a few towns away who have a poltergeist in their home. I’m going to remove it for them.”
She scowls, all the connection I thought we’d shared evaporating in an instant. “When I hired you for the month, I expected your undivided attention.”
Frustration builds in my chest, the static before a storm. Her lack of trust is borderline insulting. “I’m going for you. There’s only so much I can learn from books. This is the perfect opportunity to test my research.”
“I don’t want a poltergeist in my home, Pippa.”
“Obviously, I have no intention of letting a poltergeist stay here. I need to bring it in to test the security measures, and then I’ll banish it over the veil, like I would in any other cleansing.” The storm in my chest whips into something fierce. “Despite what you think, I’m not incompetent.”
Elle maintains the challenge in her glare.
My second alarm—the get your ass out the door now one—rings. I silence this one, too, and step away from the table. “I have to go.”
“Pippa, wait.” Her chair scrapes against the floor, and then her touch is back, fingers slipping around my wrist. “I’m sorry. When I’m worried, I get snippy.”
Her fingers linger on my skin, gentle but there, and curiosity curls around my heart. “Worried about what?”
“Besides everything?” The ghost of a smile crosses her lips.
“Alex and I put everything into this B&B. Every penny we’ve ever saved, including our retirement accounts, despite the penalties.
I gave up my apartment. We both moved several hours from the lives we’d built down in the city.
This is it for us, and whenever I think it might not work, that it might fail spectacularly… ”
“You worry,” I say, understanding settling around my ribs.
“I get that. I love my business, and the thought that I could lose it all in a matter of months…” Grief pulses in my chest, but I shove it down.
I refuse to accept a future where I lose the life I’ve built a second time.
“I get it, is all. And I promise, I’m doing everything I can to haunt this place for you.
I think this trip will move us closer to a solution. ”
Elle nods and finally releases her hold on my arm, a flush of pink brightening her cheeks. “Do you know when you’ll be back?”
“Sometime tonight. Why?”
“I’m making chicken and dumpling soup for dinner,” she says, and I swear that bit of pink in her cheeks deepens. “Alex said it’s one of your favorites. Will you be back in time?”
My heart does a dangerous little flip in my chest. “I’ll try.”