Kessian suppressed a snicker. He wasn’t helping us. I might have found it funny, too, if this didn’t involve my family and some last-ditch effort to save me. Seeing a random healer with unique magic was one thing. Spending more time with a man I’d slept with and fantasized about seemed distinctly riskier.
“It’s fine,” Kessian soothed. “I’m a professional. We can still move forward with the treatment plan, can’t we?”
Fae scowled at me. “Can’t you?”
My mortification snuffed out any temptation to argue. I would simply refrain from any kind of intimacy with Kessian. The wraith following me only preyed on people I cared about.
So no more sex. No more fantasies.Definitelynot romantic ones.
“It’ll be fine,” I told Fae. “I’ll be good.”
“Right. Good. I’m going to pretend I don’t know anything about this.” Fae held up their hands in surrender. “No need for introductions. Bye, bye, have a good time, but nottoogood a time, bye!”
They stomped down the stairs. I could hear them puttering around the reception desk. Probably organizing papers and cleaning. Fae cleaned when they were stressed.
“Well, this is a surprise. Not an unpleasant one, though,” Kessian said. “Come in.”
I shuffled in after him and temporarily forgot the awkwardness of our introduction.
Kessian’s treatment room, from the baseboards to the crown moldings of the ceiling, had been painted a deep, dark turquoise. Soft, colorful textiles like the ones he favored in his own home made a cozy sitting area near a pair of sliding doors at the back, leading out to—
I drew up short. Through the glass, the spring’s waters trickled over limestone rocks, a vibrant blue against the creamy stone. A few orange leaves spiraled in the current from its miniature falls.
I studied the deeper shadows around the rocks, the trees, but none of them moved unnaturally.
Kessian handed me one of the spa’s white robes. I clutched it to my chest. “Do I get my kit off?”
“I usually leave the room to let my clients change, but I’ll let you decide whether that’s necessary when I saw it all last night in detail.”
I clutched the bathrobe a little tighter, my face hot.
“Aw, suddenly shy? I’ll step out and give you some privacy. But for the record”—Kessian paused in the doorway, giving me a cheeky wink—“you’re even sweeter on the eyes in the daylight.”
He left, shutting the door behind him.
Still with no idea what my treatment entailed, I shuffled out of my clothes and donned the robe. I always had the ridiculous notion that I needed to fold my clothes on the available chair, which I did. The absurdity of my situation sank in while I was tucking my briefs into my jeans so they wouldn’t be visible.I slept with him yesterday to solve my loneliness problem, and now he’s supposed to solve a nine-year haunting that kept me from coming home.
Nothing in my life had ever been that simple. Uncle Marlowe had hired exorcists, curse breakers, spoken to scholars in wild magic, and none had answers. The wraith was not something common or well-documented like a poltergeist. It was unique, a strange blend of wild and witch magic born from the strid. What it wanted, how it had come to be, they didn’t know. Without a means to communicate with it, they couldn’t find out. Without understanding its nature, they couldn’t hope to kill it, either. Most spirits were exorcised by burning the remains of the dead, but the bodies of those taken by the strid never surfaced.
The only things keeping me from fleeing were my promise to Fae and the fact I was no longer dressed for running.
Kessian knocked and, at my assent, came inside.
“So how does this work?” I asked.
“I’ll explain it all, but I warn you, my magic is a bit unusual.”
“Magic? You’re a witch?” He had no familiar. At least, not one I could see. I’d met a witch once whose familiar was a ladybird, but tiny familiars were uncommon. But then, mine was a caravan.
“Ah, not quite. My magic doesn’t come from within me. It comes from the spring.”
All the hair stood up on the back of my neck. “The spring?”
Kessian’s smile brightened, and I could have sworn the glittery freckles on his cheeks winked like real stars. “Let me show you.”
He opened the glass doors to the spring outside. Numbly, I followed him barefoot across the stone path. The water chanted, shallow falls rippling the uncanny blue. They had not been so bright on the day Laurelie died.
“Since you grew up here, I probably don’t have to explain how the magic of the strid works,” Kessian said. “It shows us visions of the future. Possibilities that may come to pass, if we play our cards right. But for me, it works a little differently. I can focus those visions. It shows me—us—paths we can take to solve a particular problem, heal from an old trauma, or to achieve a greater sense of contentment in our lives.”
