Wesley glanced back at Jade. “Well, if it’s Sebastian’s gift, is he ever coming back to give it to me, or do I just, I don’t know, thank the astral plane or that floating teapot?”
Jade pursed her lips, again looking in what Wesley presumed was her unseeable man’s direction. “Ah,” she said awkwardly. “I still don’t know where Sebastian is, but it seems your footman is now standing by your front door.”
Wesley’s stomach gave a sharp twist.Helooked at the empty wall again, and gritted his teeth. “Excuse me.”
He quickly stood from his chair. His brisk steps took him down the hall to the front door, but the foyer was empty save for a glum-faced Ned.
“Where’s Sebastian?” said Wesley, his stomach strangely leaden and heavy.
Ned pointed at the front door.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Did he say where he was going?”
Ned shook his head. “Cook was making breakfast too,” he said, with an obnoxious and unnecessarily dramatic sigh. “Poor Elsie’s probably going to cry again when she hears she missed him.”
Wesley yanked open the front door.
“My lord, your coat!”
Wesley ignored Ned’s call as he took the steps down to the walk. He strode to the curb—
But the only person to be seen was seventy-one-year-old Lady Pennington, in a smart green coat and matching hat, a flowered umbrella in one hand and her ridiculous dog’s pink leash in the other.
“Well met, Fine,” she said cheerfully, and Powderpuff yipped.
Wesley stood at the edge of the road for a moment, the misty rain dampening his hair and face.
Of course Sebastian has gone,his mind pointed out.You called him a paranormal bully. That doe-eyed softie who let you put a gun between his eyes but couldn’t bear it pointed at a dog. He isn’t going to stay if he thinks he frightens you, and you made sure that’s what he thinks.
You’re simply reaping what you sowed, Wesley. Wasn’t it what you wanted?
Jaw tight, Wesley turned around and went back inside.
Jade was talking to the air as he returned to the morning room.
“—if he’s willing, it’s our best plan—” She broke it off when she saw Wesley. “He left, then?” She sighed. “He really can’t bear to make you nervous, not when you don’t have magic.”
“And I don’t suppose he stopped to think, for a single second, that if he actually made menervousI would never have brought him to my home.”
He crossed the room, to where the covered painting was propped on a velvet chair near the bookshelves. “Miss Robbins,” he said, finding a polite voice for Jade because perhaps magic was real but so was the Fine lineage and he wouldnotfray completely at the seams, “will you tell me about this painting, please?”
Jade folded her hands on the table. “I mentioned Sebastian’s cousin, Isabel de Leon, is a paranormal painter,” she said, as if the bloody sugar cubes weren’t floating through the air while her teaspoon stirred itself. “Her paintings only work on other paranormals. They can do marvelous things, like make anyone with magic forget they were looking for you.”
“Is that what the painting of Barcelona was doing?” Wesley asked. “The one I—well. Perhaps you already know.”
“I do,” she said neutrally, because of course Wesley had upended a bottle of turpentine over a paranormal painting, and of course she somehow knew. “This painting is a bit more dangerous. Its presence will not only hide your home from magic, it can apparently trap a paranormal in their own mind, making them very difficult to bring back.”
The cloth hiding the painting appeared quite thick. “What happens if I look at it?”
“You see a lovely painting and nothing more,” said Jade softly. “The de Leons have a legacy of their own, you see. Their magic is only dangerous to other paranormals.”
Wesley snorted. “I’m afraid my joints would disagree.”
Jade made a soft half laugh. “Fair enough. Sebastian can’t do you any lasting harm, but I imagine his magic hits auras hard enough anyway. Now you see why I told you he was dangerous.”
I might also understand why you called him a marshmallow. Wesley stared at the cloth for another moment, then reached for the corner. He waited until Jade was carefully staring in the opposite direction as he pulled back the edge of the drop cloth.
Bright turquoise ocean stared back at him, rolling up on creamy sand under a cloudless blue sky. Palm trees lined the beach, their brown trunks topped with broad green leaves. A row of straight houses bracketed the road, one with a Model T in front, and an old stone fort sat up on a green hill, overlooking the sea.
