Looping my fingers through his hair, I snort a laugh at that, some of the tension bleeding from my shoulders.
The moment my foot hits the first step though, that feeling of dread is back tenfold.
Six
“Oh, this is bad bad,” I tell Gunner.
“That doesn’t mean you need to pull my hair out,” he says placidly.
“Sorry. Have you felt something like this before?” I ask him, loosening my grip on his fur just a smidge. I really don’t want to break an ankle.
Caleb does not get to be right about that.
Also, it wouldreallycramp my style.
So, I carefully step up the stairs, Gunner at my side while I hold my breath.
“Don’t hold your breath.” Gunner nudges me with his cold nose. “Fainting won’t help either, you know.”
“Don’t boss me around,” I mutter, one hand outstretched as I reach for the next set of stairs.
“Don’t try to hurt yourself and I won’t.” It’s affectionate, and I sigh, knowing he has a point and annoyed by it all the same.
My fingers grasp around the wrought iron stair rail, and Gunner and I ascend the next flight. Then the next, until finally we’re at the top of the lighthouse.
Stars twinkle overhead and on the surface of the ocean, jewels in the jet black of night.
Without the beacon shining over the water, it’s eerie and quiet, made worse by the blanket of wrong emanating from the light itself.
“Oh.” It’s not just strange magic leaking off the light — no, there’s some kind of sigil or rune glowing faintly on the mechanism itself. “What the hell is that?” I whisper, stupidly, considering there is no reason to whisper.
It’s not like the symbol has ears.
Probably.
“It’s a ward,” Gunner says, sniffing at the symbol and growling faintly.
“A ward,” I repeat.
“A magical barrier for protection.”
I give him a long, annoyed look. “I know what a ward is.”
“I never said you didn’t.”
“You implied?—”
“Ivy, focus. You’re not allowed to take out your complicated feelings about Caleb on me.”
I suck in a breath, temporarily stunned into silence. “I do not have complicatedanything.”
Gunner rears up on his back legs, putting both paws on the light. “That’s why you’re ignoring this ward and arguing with me?”
“I don’t know what to do with it,” I tell him, then snap my mouth shut, because dammit, I am not arguing with adog.
Even if that dog is my magical familiar.
Wards, wards, wards. Wracking my brain, trying to remember anything my grandmother told me about them, I circle slowly around the darkened light. The symbol on the metal looked etched in at first, but upon closer inspection it’s hovering just over it, an opalescent green with hidden fire.
