“None of that,” Wesley warned. “You’ve had your cock in my mouth, don’t tell me you’re getting shy on me now.”
Sebastian was going to blame it on being tired, that he was confessing this. “I was going to say that maybe it’s because you have good eyes.” He shrugged, too lightly. “Or that maybe you can see it because, um. Well. Maybe my magic just likes you. That, um. Supposedly that can happen. But maybe—”
“Not so fast, de Leon,” Wesley interrupted. “You don’t get to say something as outrageous likemaybe my magic just likes youand think you can blithely carry on without more explanation.”
Sebastian made a face. “Magic is hard to explain. It is wild, like the woods, or like your garden in Yorkshire. So often it is dangerous, but then, sometimes, the flowers grow.” Then he quickly added, “But this is fanciful stuff paranormals say to explain their own unexplainable powers. You are a farsighted sharpshooter, yes? Perhaps that is why you saw it.”
It was a flimsy excuse, considering Wesley’s eyesight made it difficult for him to see things up close, and Wesley’s expression said he knew it. But all he said, very lightly, was, “Interesting,” and then moved to press even more firmly against Sebastian and share his warmth.
After the ferry, there was yet another train from Calais. Sebastian couldn’t have used magic if he’d tried, and he tried not to let the loss bother him, but his attempt at sleep was fitful and unsatisfying as their train rumbled on to Paris.
It was fully night as they emerged from the train station and into a taxi. “Where are we going?” Wesley asked, after Sebastian gave the driver an address.
“We have a family apartment in the fifteenth arrondissement, not far from the fair’s pavilions.” Sebastian was slumped against the taxi door, his exhaustion too overpowering to hide. “It’s a safe building,” he told Wesley. “We bought it three generations ago and added all sorts of guardian magic. It can’t be found by paranormals who don’t already know where we live.”
The taxi pulled in front of the awning of their building, four stories with terraces on the top floors and carved moldings around every window. Despite the late hour, Paris felt awake. Couples walked hand in hand down the street while friends sipped wine at outdoor tables at the café next door, its warm yellow lights casting a soft glow on the autumn leaves of the tree in the sidewalk.
As they climbed out of the taxi, the doorman opened the building’s front door, and Isabel came running out, straight toward Sebastian and Mateo.
A moment later, her arms were around both of them. “Mateo, lo siento, I would have come for you,” she said, her grief echoing Sebastian’s own.
If they’d known sooner—
But they hadn’t. Sebastian grabbed Wesley’s wrist. “Isabel, this is Lord Fine,” he said. “He helped me rescue Mateo.”
“Miss de Leon,” Wesley started to say.
She threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek. Wesley’s eyes widened.
“Thank you so much,” she said.“Please, come upstairs.”
They piled into an elevator, and the operator pulled the doors shut and took them up to the fourth floor—third floor, Sebastian guessed Wesley was going to call it. As they stepped out onto the blue-and-gold carpet laid over the marble floor, an Irish brogue joined them. “Isa, luv, your cousins are nothing but handsome trouble.”
“Hello, Molly,” Sebastian said weakly.
Molly held out her hand, her sleeves short enough to show the beautiful Celtic harp tattoo on her inner arm. “Look at you stumbling. Come on, in you get.”
Moments later, they were all in the apartment’s parlor. Sebastian hadn’t been back to any of the family homes in three years, and it put a lump in his throat to see a place that looked so wonderfully familiar. The parlor held the same chaise and settee in matched dark wood and golden velvet, and they’d brought bits of Spain and the Caribbean to France in the art around the room, the sculptures and mosaics and paintings. The phonograph in the corner of the room was playing a contradanza, and the glass doors to the balcony were open, letting in occasional snippets of French from the sidewalk café below.
Isabel had turned the dining room into a makeshift studio and piled the large wooden table with familiar art supplies—tubes of paint, a palette, brushes, and her tattoo equipment from America, half pen, half machine. The only things Sebastian didn’t recognize in the apartment were the swirls of color painted on the striped wallpaper around the windows and doors.
“I got the telegram from your friends,” Isabel said, gesturing to the doors. “I did what I could for tonight, but Sebi, if your magic wasn’t enough to keep him out of the future, nothing I can do in a single night will be either.”
Molly sat on the edge of the chaise. “Isabel thinks you should take him to her townhouse in Barcelona.”
“You should take him tomorrow.” Isabel gestured at Wesley as she helped Mateo down onto the settee. “But what of your friend? Would he rather stay here?”
Sebastian hesitated, but Wesley said, “I’m with Sebastian, wherever he goes.”
Isabel and Molly exchanged a glance. Sebastian barely had time to feel a pulse of thankful fondness when Isabel said, “He’s going to sleep.”
“Isa—” Sebastian started.
“No me digas que no lo necesitas, you’re falling over,” she said, because of course she was going to saydon’t tell me you don’t need it. She added, in a softer voice, “There is nothing more you can do right now. I have been in Teo’s shoes, lost to my colors. That he’s come out of the future at all—that’s your doing.”
Sebastian swallowed. It was so hard to watch the subordinate paranormals he knew buried under their own magic. He ought to be able to stop it completely, but he’d poured all his magic out, and nothing had helped, and nothing was left.
A hand came to rest on his shoulder. “Perhaps I may be of service, Miss de Leon,” Wesley said, in a voice fit for a king’s court. “If you’ll point me toward a private bedroom, I’ll make certain Sebastian is flat on his back straightaway.”
