In the kitchen doorway, a flurry of airborne small appliances heralded Isadora’s stomping form before she vanished to the far side of the room—presumably in search of something else to throw.
The moment I opened the front door, I had to duck. A teapot whistled past my head and shattered against the doorframe, porcelain exploding across the floor at my feet.
“Isadora? What’s happened?” I asked, keeping my voice low and soothing.
“What’s happened?What’s happened?” she echoed.
A cold knot twisted in my gut. Had she already realized I’d failed her? The thought of being the cause of her fury was crushing. My body wanted to fold in on itself—to kneel, to apologize, to beg, to offer her anything that would make this better.
“I’m sorry, Isadora,” I said quickly. “I tried, but the hob—”
“Forget about thefuckinghob!” she snapped.
She seized the vase of forget-me-nots and hurled it to the floor. It shattered, flowers, shards of glass, and water radiating in all directions as she let out a hair-raising scream.
Then, abruptly, her voice dropped, eerily calm.
“All this time,” she murmured. “All this time I’ve been forced to live like a common peasant. Doingeverythingmyself.”
I bit back the instinct to remind her that she’d had a hob until recently. And now she had me.
Her voice rose again, fury lacing every word. “And there was one just sitting there—only a few hours away—all this time?”
She sucked in a slow, deliberate breath. In one smooth motion, she fixed her hair, straightened her blouse, and reached into her pocket. When she pulled out my phone and glanced down at the screen, her lips tightened before she began typing furiously.
She lifted the phone to her ear, her red heel tapping against the floor as she waited, debris crunching beneath it.
“Get here.Now,” Isadora said, her voice glacial. “And you better have one hell of an explanation for me, you little bitch.”
Chapter 10. Caitlyn
I sucked in a sharp breath as I tentatively opened the kitchen door. To my surprise, Creep—who had never lifted a finger for me in the entire time we’d been bonded, aside from that first cup of cocoa—had magicked all my candy-making cauldrons from my car back to their proper places.
A small part of me was relieved. Packing thirteen cauldrons, along with countless utensils, potions, ingredients, and camping paraphernalia into my beat-up car had been bad enough; unloading it all again was a task I’d been dreading. But relief quickly gave way to wariness. Creep was never nice without a reason. There was usually a prank involved.
Was she trying to impress Blaise? Would he have more luck forming an emotional bond with her than I ever had? Or would this burst of cooperation be just as short-lived as it had been when I first bonded with her?
“Um... thank you, Creep, for unpacking the car,” I said into the gloom.
The candles dotted around the room flared to life, their flames sputtering aggressively.
A knife slid free from the wooden rack and embedded itself in the side of the butcher-block island with a loudthump, followed by a metallic wobble—Creep’s way of reminding me not to get used to her doing things for me.
I threw an apologetic glance over my shoulder at Blaise.
To my surprise, he didn’t wear the expression of unfettered fear I’d expected in response to the house’s casual violence. Instead, his features were soft, the corner of his mouth twitching into a bemused smile as if he were watching a toddler do something adorably chaotic, rather than a creepy, possessed dollissuing thinly veiled death threats against the fated mate he’d met mere moments ago.
Candlelight flickered across his golden eyes as they tracked around the room, taking everything in, and the faintest flush bloomed across his cheeks.
Goddesses, he was handsome.
My gaze drifted along the sharp line of his jaw and down the sculpted curve of his neck, my mouth practically watering at the thought of tracing that path with my tongue. But just as my eyes reached the crisp collar of his pristine white shirt, they caught on the thick band of scar tissue peeking out above the fabric.
Blaise shifted, rolling his shoulder just enough for the collar to ride higher and conceal it.
I snapped my gaze down to the grimy tiled floor, giving him a moment to compose himself while my mind snagged, unhelpfully, on the question of how he got the scar, and why did he not want me to see it. Finally, when his fidgeting subsided, I cleared my throat.
“Do you want some hot cocoa?”
