My phone beeped. I pulled it out and checked the message from Corbin. “Where are you? Get back here! Clara’s convinced the Avebury Coven to get us inside the institution for a meeting with Smithers tomorrow. We’re leaving Oxford tonight.”
My stomach fluttered. As much as I’d fallen in love with Oxford, we had shit to take care of. Namely, finding out who Robert Smithers really was, and what.
I tucked my hand into Flynn’s. “It’s time to leave this river of shit behind us.”
“What are we going?”
I grinned. “Toward a giant mountain of shit. But at least we’ll be climbing it together.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
MAEVE
“This is all very exciting,” Kelly said as the train rolled through thatched-roofed villages and rolling fields on our way to Wiltshire. “But when am I going to get to see Briarwood?”
There was an accusatory tone in her voice that I’d never heard before. “Soon, I promise. We just have a few things to do in Wiltshire first, for our research project.”
“You and Corbin?” Kelly’s voice was light, but I remembered what Jane had said to me in the pub in Oxford. I had to be careful or she was going to start trouble.
I shrugged, as if it was neither here nor there to me. “Well, he’s the one interested in history.”
“Why is this project of yours so important? Can’t it wait? Do you have to travel all over the country with all the guys like this?”
“It’s about my mother, Kelly. I’d have thought you’d understand. I never got to meet her. The Crawfords knew nothing about her, but now I find out she was a famous artist’s muse and I just…I need to know more, okay?”
“It seems like….” Kelly played with a strand of her golden hair. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were going out with Corbin, instead of Arthur. But then you seem so close to Arthur, too. All of them, actually. And you barely know the guys. It’s weird, is all.”
“It’s hard for you to understand because you have a mother?—”
Kelly’s face fell. “Fine,” she said shortly, standing up.
Too late I realised what I’d said. “Kelly, I didn’t mean?—”
“No, you meant every word.” She whispered as she grabbed her purse from the seat pocket. “You always do.”
Kelly hurried down the carriage and sat down beside Jane, whispering something in her ear. Jane reached into Connor’s enormous diaper bag and pulled out some baby wipes. Kelly dabbed at her face. Jane glared at me over her shoulder.
I buried my face in my sleeve. How was I messing this up so badly?
Arthur slid across from his seat and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “You okay?” he whispered.
I shook my head. “I’m bollocksing everything up.”
“In what way?”
“With Kelly. She’s asking questions. She thinks I’m cheating on you with Corbin. Jane thinks I should tell her the truth.”
“I heard what she said when Flynn made his polyamory joke. It might’ve just been because it was Flynn saying it, but she didn’t sound like the kind of person who would accept something like this. But she is your sister, and I don’t know how much longer we can hide it. We’re close quarters in the apartments. She’s bound to walk in on something.”
“But if I tell her, and she leaves, then I can’t protect her from the fae.” I rubbed my forehead against Arthur’s Blood Lust shirt. “This is a nightmare.”
“Maybe there’s a chance today to start the conversation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know what Avebury is? It’s the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. Our ancestors – pagans, from before there even was such a thing as pagans – used to perform rituals and fertility rites there, probably involving wild orgies, because that’s what people did instead of watching telly in Neolithic Britain. The stones have been standing for longer than Kelly believes the earth has existed. Maybe you guys can start a conversation.”
I squeezed his hand. “You’re pretty smart, you know, for a Viking.”
