Blake tapped the corner of the canvas. “You realize this is a painting?”
“Yes, thank you, Blake. Idorealize that. But I’m telling you, I saw it move. And now I want to know why that happened. Is it some kind of fae trick, like a glamour?”
Blake frowned at the picture. “It’s the kind of prank Daigh would approve of. He fancies himself a bit of an artist, so he loves screwing with the human works he considers inferior. On one of his forays into this realm, he once cast a glamour that removed all the fig leaves from the Renaissance exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. It caused quite a stir if I recall. Blushing art historians everywhere.”
“But how could a fae cast a glamour through the castle’s wards?” Arthur narrowed his eyes at Blake.
Blake shrugged. “Maybe your wards are weakening. Or maybe the fae gave that haughty woman some charm to hide in the castle that’s allowing them to project a glamour.”
“Ormaybea witch who can perform fae magic thought he’d play a little trick.”
“You can waste your precious breath accusing me.” Blake tapped the edge of the portrait again. “That’s a thing you could do. It’s not like I’ve already proven my use to you several times over. But you go ahead and raise your fists to the best weapon against the fae you could have and see how that works out for you.”
And just like that, I realized what we needed to do.
I grabbed Arthur’s shoulder, pulling him back just as he raised his fist. “I think we’re going about this all wrong.”
“All what?” Flynn waved around a tiny spell book he’d carried up from the library, the open pages flapping in the air. “You mean how Arthur’s about to rearrange Blake’s face? You think his tongue should go behind his ear or something?”
“Don’t do that.” I gripped Arthur’s arm and met his eyes. A maelstrom of rage circled inside his irises, and heat surged from his fist. I jumped back as a tall flame leapt from his closed fist, licking at the antique hall table beneath the painting. Quick as lightning, Flynn darted forward and sent a spray of water from his palm. With a sizzle, the flame died out.
I rubbed Arthur’s arm, keeping my eyes trained on his. The muscles beneath his skin remained taut. His whole body stiffened in attack mode. The anger in his eyes scared me even more than my mother’s contorted face.
“Arthur, please, come back to us.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “Blake’s not our enemy. We need him.”
The muscles in Arthur’s arm relaxed a fraction, but the storm didn’t leave his eyes. Beneath my fingers, his skin crawled with heat.
He’s moments away from unleashing another fireball.
Not knowing what else to do, I reached up and pressed my lips to his, pouring all my feelings for Arthur – my awe at his strength, my desire for him, my admiration for what he’d made of his life, my fear of the tsunami of anger rising inside him – into the kiss, curling my body around his. Desire shot through me, drawing up heat from deep inside me that sizzled under my skin.
The magic.
It pulsed and raged in my veins as I curled my tongue around Arthur’s, drinking in all his darkness and transforming it into raw energy that built inside me, pulsing between my legs, begging to be released.
Arthur’s whole body shifted, the tension flowing out of him as he responded to my touch. My fire witch channelled all that rage into our kiss, mashing his mouth against mine, sweeping me up in a wave of passion so intense it left me panting and breathless as I swallowed his anger into me and drew away.
I glanced up at him and there was Arthur again, his eyes calm, his beard a wild tangle, his mouth curling up in a satisfied smile. “Remind me to threaten Blake more often,” he grinned.
“Do I get a kiss if I turn Arnold into a frog?” Blake asked, a salacious grin stretching across his face.
“I’d threaten the English every single day,” Flynn added.
Arthur glared at Blake, but the malice had gone from his eyes. “For the last time, it’sArthur.”
The mood in the hallway changed. Now the very air sizzled with sexual tension. I glanced from Flynn to Blake to Arthur, aware of the hunger in their eyes, the way their bodies surrounded me, and if Blake or Flynn took another step closer, they’d be pressed up against me. I’d be the meat in the world’s most delicious sandwich.
And then I remembered the horrible expression on my mother’s face in the painting, and Daigh’s terrible laugh when we were performing the ritual, and how tired and drawn Corbin looked when he left, and I knew this was not the time to get distracted.
“Now that we’ve got that sorted,” I leaned against Arthur’s body, letting him hold me upright as the heat swirled inside of me. The thought entered my head that with Jane downstairs I could take all three guys up to my room and do a little group experimenting, but I pushed it down.Concentrate.“I think we’re going about this all wrong. It might take us a year to go through the library and there’s no guarantee we’ll find anything of use.”
“Finally, a voice of reason.” Flynn tossed his book over the balustrade, where it landed on the flagstones below with a loudSLAP. “I’m so bored that the BBC marathon of David Attenborough documentaries is starting to sound like fun.”
I decided not to tell Flynn that I’d happily watch an entire weekend of David Attenborough documentaries, especially ifmy favourite red-haired Irish boy was beside me making funny monkey noises. Instead, I balled my hands into fists to try and quell the heat, and said, “I think we need to take a more practical approach. I want to set up my monitoring equipment by the sidhe,today. And I realized something else. We’re doing this because we need to figure out what the fae are planning, right? The quickest way to get that information is to go straight to the source.”
“You mean, back into the fae realm, the same way you did before? Corbin won’t like it,” Flynn said. “Especially when he’s not here.”
“Corbin’s not in charge of this coven, I am.” I turned to Blake. “Would you be willing to do it? You know your way around there much better than I do.”
