“No,” I say, stepping away from him.
I pick up my to-go soup cup and step out of his gravity.
“There were only three women in the century I lived there that successfully seduced me,” he says.
“Successfully…How many tried?”
Ugh, I don’t want to know this!
“Many,” he says, his smile growing wider.
“And so what did you do with the girls when you were done with them? Eat them?” I ask spitefully before shoveling in another spoonful of soup.
“I would give them a little currency and take them wherever they wanted to go.”
“Back home?”
He shakes his head. “I learned the hard way that if I ‘rejected’ an offering, it didn’t end well for the girls.”
A vision of all the horrible things that could happen to a poor young woman in a bygone age where dragons were real, and so was magic, flit through my head. Burned her, maybe? Beheaded? Abandoned in the woods?
“When was this? Where?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Many centuries ago, across the ocean. I made the crossing two centuries ago when stability came to the United States—along with rapid printing presses and bright young minds to spin stories for them.”
“So that’s why you have an accent?” I ask.
He quirks an eyebrow. “I don’t. You do.”
“Pft. I don’t have an accent.”
“You do.”
I roll my eyes. “Anyway, the spell. How do I use my magic for it if we don’t know what it is or how it works?”
“If you’re willing, I can inspire your magic to move to the surface, just the way the spindle on the ritual book does.”
I look at the needle sticking out of the front cover. “It’s magic?”
“The whole book is, of course. Forged with magic. The specific words you spoke were the unlocking incantation, but the magic was pulled from your blood by the book itself because you indicated you were willing.”
“How do you ‘motivate’ my magic?”
Bastian takes the soup from my hand and sets it on the counter. “Come with me.”
He stands behind me, guiding me to the door of the apartment. Each step feels charged, like any second our feet could explode offthe ground, and we’d soar through the air. Would I ever be able to come back down if we did?
When we reach the end of the hall, he takes my hands in his from behind, and plants them on the frame of the door. He lowers his lips to my ear as he presses his chest against my back.
“Trust me now, Kitty.” His words flutter over me like silk.
“Okay,” I say.
“Tell me,” he says, his fingers sliding between mine.
“Tell you what?” I ask, my breath coming in shallow pants.
“You trust me.”
