Chapter 8
“That covers a lot of territory,” Kellen growled, despite having known from the onset that the visit was a longshot.
“Not as much as you think.” The astrologist retrieved the orb and returned it to the chest, then lifted what would look like a thick, rolled cloth to Analia, but was really created by strands of woven magic. “The artifact or those pursuing it will be familiar to you. One or both will be found in the myths, legends or realms that overlap with those of fey hounds.”
Kellen suppressed a sigh of frustration. That still covered a lot of territory, too much territory.
The astrologist created a bridge to the center of the scrying circle and Analia rejoined them. Kellen took her hand, an automatic gesture that had the astrologist smirking.
Fuck. He was rapidly becoming as bad as Taine, who couldn’t keep his hands off his mate.
That thought had Kellen’s heart pounding faster. It was one thing to make a show of possession around humans, but to do it around those who were part of the supernatural world…
It’d taken everything he had to step away from Analia rather than lunge at the astrologist and tear his throat out for looking at her in a way that suggested the slow peeling away of clothing.
Kellen silently growled. The astrologist’s smirk reappeared. As soon as he escorted them out, he’d probably call Gaige or Crew or Maksim to report that there’d soon be a mating.
Rather than give into the temptation to snarl a denial, Kellen turned his attention to the charm bracelet on Analia’s wrist—and felt an exploding ache in his heart.
The translucent green-apple charm wasn’t on the bracelet.
The suspicion he’d avoided in her apartment returned with a vengeance, bringing with it the visceral memory of confronting Cosette about the overheard conversation with Cason—and how desperately he’d wanted to believe her claim that she’d been telling his brother what he wanted to hear. How even as he knew deep down she was lying to him, he’d craved the continued feel of her hands as she’d stroked his chest, wanted desperately to lose himself in heated passion and offer comfort as he’d stared into eyes that shimmered with manufactured tears.
He flashed back to the resonance that had awakened him and sent him searching Analia’s apartment. To the moment he’d returned to bed, felt the resonance briefly—and then been distracted by the feel of her hand on his cock and the ecstasy that followed.
In that moment, he hated her for fooling him—and hated himself for believing she was different than Cosette.
He released Analia’s hand and erected an emotional wall. Shoved a fist into his pocket and caught the astrologist’s quizzical expression.
He refused to acknowledge either the unspoken question or the howling sense of loss in his chest. Instead he concentrated on when he’d last glimpsed the charm. It was in the car, when she’d lifted her hands, carrying the Egg McMuffin to her lips.
His own lips formed a grim smile. How she’d removed and hidden the charm while sitting next to him, he didn’t know, but he would find the charm and present it to the astrologist.
Turning away from the circle, Kellen spared a glance at Analia and refused to let the hints of confusion and hurt in her eyes touch him. He’d given her a chance, a chance he’d sworn never to allow another female.
They left the room, and when they reached the astrologist’s front door, Kellen said, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Analia give him a quick look, but she didn’t tense and her expression held only curiosity.
Uncertainty pressed along the edges of his suspicion. It beat back some of the anger and hurt.
Was he wrong to suspect her?
“You’ll have a long wait,” the astrologist said. “I’m expecting someone to arrive momentarily. I’m no longer available for an IRE consultation.”
Kellen didn’t bother suppressing the growl of frustration. The astrologist only laughed and said, “Whatever’s gotten your tail in a sudden twist, I hope you get it sorted out before irreversible damage is done.”
The astrologist turned toward Analia and took her hands in his, and despite the confusion of emotions in Kellen’s chest, he had to stifle a snarl.
“The visit was far too short,” the astrologist said. “I hope to see you again.”
“I’d like to come back, and bring a friend.”
“Do that.” The astrologist gave her a warm hug before stepping back into his house and closing the front door.
Fucking player, Kellen silently growled.
He strode purposely toward Analia’s tin can of a car. He alternated between anger and hurt with each step, only to reach the fence and have uncertainty swell, blocking out the other emotions.
The apple charm lay on the walkway between car and short wooden gate. Analia caught up to him and he heard the catch of her breath when she saw the charm.
She opened the gate and stepped through, immediately swooped on the charm and examined the clasp, eyebrows scrunched together in the way he found adorable.
His chest felt hot and tight. Was he wrong about her being untrustworthy? Or was she a superb actress?
“Let me see it,” he said, and saw her tense.
He reached for the charm, determined to take possession of it and steeling himself to wrest it from her if necessary.
She relinquished it, reluctantly. And the words were ripped out of him. “Did you take it off and drop it?”
Her breath caught again though this time it was a sharp sound of pain and not the sound of surprise. “No.”
He glanced down at the charm between his fingers, turned it over, rubbing his fingertips against its smooth surface, searching for some indication of magic he’d missed earlier.
There was nothing. If anything, the charm felt inert, as if it held less than the little bit of magic needed to find it at the beach.
He thought again of the magical resonance that had caused him to awaken. There were artifacts that were, to some extent, sentient.
Blades that hungered for blood were fairly common when it came to the artifacts IRE agents confiscated and removed from the human world. Chalices that could mesmerize unwary victims who looked at their reflection in gold or silver were less common but still findable in this realm, as were books that had the power to send humans on various tasks.
Was it possible the charm had some awareness? That it’d dropped away from Analia’s bracelet during the mugging to prevent itself from being found by whoever had paid her assailant? That it’d fallen from the bracelet before passing through whatever wards or magic the astrologist had in place at the boundary of his property?
“Where did you get this?” Kellen asked.
“It might have come from The Magic Shack.”
It might have come from The Magic Shack sounded like an evasion. Just as It might take some effort had rubbed against his hound senses like the backward stroke of fur when he’d asked her if she remembered where she’d acquired each of the charms she’d claimed held special meaning.
Suspicion beat back some of the uncertainty, allowing pain to edge in. He’d been a fool to start believing again in love—not that he loved her, or that she’d claimed to love him—but…
He shook the thoughts off.
Obviously he’d been spending too much time around Taine and Saffron.
Rather than press Analia for answers about the charm, and risk hearing her lie, he opened the passenger door and said, “Get in. We’ll head to The Magic Shack next.”
She held out her hand. “My charm.”
He knew his smile was more a baring of teeth. “Not until I get better answers.”
The lick of her lips still had the power to send a surge of blood into his cock, though the anxiety in her eyes said the swipe of tongue over luscious mouth wasn’t an attempt at seduction.
“I can’t give you better answers,” she said, her voice strained, a silent pleading in her eyes. “I need to keep the charm in my possession.”
He pounced. “Why?”
“I can’t tell you.”
He pocketed the charm on a silent howl of frustration at not having her trust, a frustration tinged with hurt. He spared a glance at the astrologist’s house and very nearly gave in to the urge to jog up the red-stone pathway and pound on the door until he got a response, followed by some answers.
Instead he got into the driver’s seat. And if he slammed the car door, he had reason to. But damned if he was going to rub the place above his heart—though he caught himself doing just that and jerked his hand downward, aggressively starting the car. Fuck!
The drive was done in tense silence, her anxiety seeming to increase the longer he had the charm in his possession. Several times he opened his mouth, determined to get the truth out of her, only to shut it on a wave of emotion he didn’t want to name.
They reached The Magic Shack, the drive there ending with the stomp of his foot on the brake. “Time for some answers,” he growled, thrusting the car door open, her increasing agitation the longer he kept the charm like a continued backward stroke to fur.
As places catering to those who believed in magic went, The Magic Shack was more thrift shop than boutique. It was in an old section of town, one that hadn’t yet been revitalized and gentrified.
The two-story building was narrow, the white paint of its exterior walls faded in places to reveal gray stucco. It was separated from a pawn shop on the right and a sewing repair shop on the left by alleys with weeds emerging from cracks in the pavement.
Kellen shoved his hand into his pocket and fisted the charm. Had she really gotten it here?
His thoughts flashed back to the supernatural fair, and the first time he’d encountered her scent. Woman and magic.
But all that gained him was a renewed surge of demand from his cock, to ignore everything else but the rightness and bliss it found while held deep inside her. A demand that only intensified when she caught up to him, put a tentative hand on his arm and said, “The charm was supposed to lead me to my perfect mate. Please, can I have it back?”
A growl tried to surge up his throat, not because he feared the charm was responsible for his interest in her, but because she might even now be hoping to meet some other male, might even now be fantasizing about that perfect mate instead of recognizing that he—
“No,” Kellen said, the growl escaping with his answer.
Her hand fell away from his arm, producing a protest from his heart and his cock.
Fuck!
She was twisting him up inside, putting him at odds with himself. He reached the glass door to the shop, with its etched scene of unicorns and flying horses in an idyllic, flower-carpeted meadow.
There were protective sigils hidden in the imagery, though previous encounters with those managing the shop made him suspect it was more luck than design that this particular door had ended up at The Magic Shack.
He opened the door, setting crystal chimes in motion. The nervous swipe of Analia’s tongue over delectable lips had him fighting against grabbing her arms and holding her against the door as he plundered her mouth and got the truth from her.
She preceded him into the shop. Dust motes floated in the air, visible because the shop’s lighting came from old-fashioned lightbulbs set in a wide variety of sconces, each light source sporting a small, white price tag hanging from its base.
Mismatched bookshelves probably salvaged from Goodwill stores and found along curbsides ahead of garbage collectors were placed back to back without regard to height, forming rows. The shelves were loaded with merchandise, some of which had no obvious scheme for sorting, other than by item color.
Along the wall to the left, an old woman stood in front of a display, dusting a collection of ceramic gnomes, elves, leprechauns and other of what the humans called small people. Near her, but at the front and behind a counter with a cash register, a thin, red-headed and freckled teen stood with a phone pressed to his ear. He glanced in their direction, smiled a greeting than went back to describing something to whoever was on the other end of the phone.
Kellen didn’t have cause to visit The Magic Shack often, but on each occasion—at least during the last hundred years or so—the shop had been run by the Tallard family.
He felt a shock of cold, the touch of mortality, at remembering the old woman as a baby in her mother’s arms, then later as a rebellious teen the same age as the boy. They were human and had been of little interest to him, so he hadn’t given that girl any thought when she’d disappeared. Or when she’d returned a decade later with a daughter of her own—the boy’s mother.
If he took a human mate, her mortality, at least in this realm would become his own. It was the only way to sustain the magical balance. That’s what Taine had willingly embraced in binding himself to Saffron, that he’d age and die.
True, both Taine and Saffron would be reborn in the dragon’s realm, and because of the mating, her first form would be dragon and her second human. The same was true of the fey, though the vainer of them—the Sidhe in particular—often took their mates back to the fey world while in the prime of their lives.
There was truth in myth. And if a human ate or drank in certain of the fey realms, they stopped physically aging, but paid the price by not being able to return to their own world.
He turned his attention to Analia, felt the squeeze of his heart at imagining her aging, dying, lost to him forever if they weren’t a mated pair.
She moved away from him, heading right, toward the back corner. He’d seen charms in that area before, though he’d seen charms scattered throughout the shop.
Some of the ache in his chest eased. Maybe she hadn’t lied about getting the charm from The Magic Shack.
Possibly getting, he thought, reminding himself of the way she’d carefully phrased her answer.
He hardened his heart against trusting her again, asked, “Who was working the day you bought the charm?”
She tensed, glanced in the direction of the old woman and teenaged boy. “An old man.”
Kellen’s hand snapped out, locked around her upper arm and jerked her to a halt, facing him steps away from a standing, full length antique mirror set in a carved wooden frame.
“You’re lying,” he snarled. “The only people who work here are the ones you just saw.”
She wrenched her arm out of his grasp. “Then I didn’t get the charm here, because I distinctly remember getting it from an old man!”
“At the supernatural fair.”
She flinched, the guilt there and gone in her expression. And he wanted to howl at being proven right. All along she’d lied—if not directly, then by omission and misdirection.
Fury had him saying, “Is it all a lie, Analia? Am I just a means to an end for you?”
“No,” she whispered. “You have to believe that. All I wanted… All along, all I’ve wanted was for this,” she motioned weakly between the two of them, “to be real.”
Her eyes glistened with sudden tears, sending shafts of pain through his heart—a heart he hardened with memories of Cosette standing tearfully in front of him, pleading with him to believe her feelings for him, and not for his brother Cason, were real.
“I don’t believe you,” he said, though fuck, a part of him—a large part of him—wanted to ignore all evidence and believe every word that left her lips.
He turned away from her, fist tightening around the charm. The need to put some distance between them drove him forward a step, a second step, a third and he stumbled as magic slammed into the charm with a force that jarred his entire body.
He pulled the charm from his pocket, heard the shattering of glass then Analia’s shocked gasp and stifled protest.
Kellen wheeled around. His heart leapt upward in his throat.
Analia was gone.
The antique, standing mirror was now jagged edges of glass framing a view of the bookcase behind the mirror, the shelves stuffed with old, wind-up mechanical soldiers and porcelain dolls, many with thinned hair and visible cracks on their painted faces.
Kellen lunged forward. But there was no foe to fight or magic to grasp and use to catch Analia and pull her back into his presence. Only her scent remained, mixed with that of apples.
Fuck!
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
The mirror had to be, what? A portal? A magical gateway to somewhere in this world or another?
There were myths to that effect, but in the centuries he’d worked for IRE, he’d never encountered such a thing. And even now, he couldn’t sense or scent any magic around the mirror, though the charm in his fist throbbed with it, seeming to grow heavier and heavier with each pulse.
Footsteps pounding toward him had Kellen whirling to face an attacker. The teen skidded to a stop, hands lifting though his gaze went to the broken mirror and his voice held determination when he said, “You’re going to have to pay for that.”
Someone would pay. If anything happened to Lia…
Kellen shoved the charm into his pocket, pulled his wallet and flipped the kid three crisp, folded hundred-dollar bills. “Stay away from the mirror. Do not come any closer. Do not allow your grandmother to get near the mirror. Touch nothing. Clean up nothing. Understood?”
The boy’s eyes had widened with each of Kellen’s orders, making the freckles on his face more pronounced. His gaze flicked to the mirror and back to Kellen, flicked and returned and Kellen could read the exact instant when the teen realized a man and a woman had entered the shop, but now the women was nowhere in sight.
The teen’s mouth opened, his gaze dipped to the money in his hand, then returned to Kellen. “The mirror was five hundred.”
Despite everything, Kellen barked out a laugh. Apparently the shop was going to be in good hands when the boy eventually took over its operation.
Kellen peeled another two bills from the folded bundle in his hand, added a couple more, though he’d have given the teen the entire wad of cash for answers to where Analia had been taken. He stepped closer to the boy, catching the flicker of fear and excitement in the teen’s eyes.
“This is officially IRE business,” Kellen said, offering the additional cash. “You’ll stand there and keep the scene from being contaminated until another agent relieves you from the duty. Understood?”
A nod from the boy and Kellen strode toward the shop’s door, shoving the remaining bills back into his pocket and retrieving his cellphone. Maksim answered on the first ring, “What do you have?”
Ache flared through Kellen’s chest. “Analia’s been taken.”
“By who? Or what?”
“I don’t know. I turned my back for a fucking minute and someone or something came through a mirror and snatched her. All they left behind was the smell of apples.”
“A mirror? Where?”
“The Magic Shack.”
“Anything trigger the grab?”
Kellen’s hand dropped to his pocket and the ache in his chest deepened. “I’ve got one of her charms.”
He couldn’t bring himself to admit that all along, she must have known that’s what someone was after, that she’d played the innocent so convincingly he’d been taken in. “Until a few minutes ago, it was dormant, a little residual magic, but that’s all. Now it’s like a fucking beacon.”
“What kind of magic?”
He pulled the charm that had gone from feather-light to brick-heavy from his pocket and brought it close to his nose. He inhaled. “A combination, sorcerer and something fey. The second scent confirms what the astrologist said, that interest came from one of the fey realms.”
“Nothing more specific?”
The ache in Kellen’s chest grew claws and dug into his chest. If he’d known about the charm, if it had gone into the astrologist’s house, if Analia had trusted him…
“No. The astrologist didn’t have any more.”
“You still claiming she’s not your mate?”
Kellen swallowed against the sudden burn in his throat, then forced the answer out. “Yes.”
“Your call. I texted Kristof. Luck is finally smiling on us. He’s close and on his way to The Magic Shack. The scene secured?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Come to headquarters. Now. We’ll get the charm into one of the vaults and figure out who’s after it. Chances are they’ll release Analia once they determine it’s not in her possession. She’s human and not tied to the supernatural. They won’t want the trouble that’ll come with harming her. But just in case, Crew or Gaige can take charge of this investigation and recover her if necessary.”
“The fuck they will,” Kellen growled. “This is my hunt.”
“Was your hunt when I believed Analia was your mate. But if you haven’t claimed her, then I must have been wrong. Get to HQ. I should already be hearing the sound of a car engine.”
Kellen’s lips pulled back in a savage baring of teeth. He didn’t bother to remind Maksim that rather than driving the Hummer, he had Analia’s ecofriendly vehicle, which was almost completely silent.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said, ending the call and very nearly tossing his cellphone to prevent being tracked and brought back to headquarters in magical cuffs.
The fuck he was going to trust anyone else with finding Analia, even his best friends. She was his concern. His to fetch.
He reached the Prius and got in, started the engine and stomped the pedal, peeling away from his parking place along the curb with an unsatisfying lurch forward.
In the rearview mirror, he caught sight of Kristof about five blocks back, driving the crime scene van, and a block behind him, Crew in a dark silver Lamborghini Veneno.
Kellen floored the pedal, weaving among cars and speeding through a yellow light. He turned a corner, then another, and another to make it more difficult for Crew—if in fact the dragon had orders to catch him and take possession of the charm.
The conversation after finding the charm beyond the astrologist’s fence played out in Kellen’s mind. He heard the strain in Analia’s voice, saw it on her face when she’d claimed she couldn’t tell him more about the charm, her desperation when he wouldn’t return it to her.
Why? What did she know that she couldn’t reveal?
Houses and shops, humans and cars passed in a blur. His urgency to find her intensified with every mile, with every minute. The astrologist better be able to provide some answers.
Kellen wrenched the steering wheel to the right to avoid a human looking down at his phone and stepping off the curb without waiting for a light.
Fucking fool! Kellen silently shouted, the hollowed-out feeling in the pit of his stomach indicating he might be the true target of the curse.
He detoured around Old Town rather than risk slamming into a tourist. Finally reached the astrologist’s yellow adobe house.
A stomp to the brake and he was parked and out of the car. A few steps and he jerked the short gate open.
At passing through whatever wards the astrologist had set in place, cold extreme enough to feel like a flash of heat accompanied the pulse of magic that emanated from the charm.
Kellen was reminded of the possibility that the charm had some awareness, that it’d dropped away from Analia’s bracelet during the mugging to prevent itself from being found, that it’d fallen from the bracelet in proximity to the astrologist’s magic.
Kellen jogged to the astrologist’s front door, waited a heartbeat before pounding on the sigil inscribed wood. A minute passed, then a second.
It was impossible to remain motionless. He paced the area in front of the door. Three steps left, turn and pound, then three steps right, turn and pound.
Two minutes became four, then six, then ten.
He fully expected Crew to show up, maybe accompanied by Taine and Gaige. It’d take all three of them to secure the charm and take him into custody, and even though they were friends, someone was likely to get hurt.
“Fuck it!” Kellen growled, leaving the porch and weaving through cactus plants to reach the part of the yard landscaped with thick manzanita and chemise.
Out of sight from anyone who might be watching, he released his human form and became fey hound. He trotted out of the protective foliage, eyed a front window, and backed up, nearly to the gate.
He’d lose some advantage going uphill, but the added traction of four paws, the added body mass and the lower center of gravity of his hound form gave him the advantage. Regardless, it was going to hurt.
He charged forward, muscles bunching with each stride, heart pounding faster, harder. Images of Analia drew upon every reserve of magic and strength, hound instinct feeding a determination to find her, fetch her, secure her as his mate.
On a savage growl he leapt, eyes slamming shut an instant before he crashed into and through the glass.
Pain slowed time and narrowed his existence to one where there was only agony. He writhed as phantom whip strikes hit him repeatedly, digging into skin and muscle and bone.
It went on forever.
And then some.
He snarled and snapped.
Growled and whined and howled, the sounds torn from him as the whip strikes continued and continued and continued.
Then as abruptly as the excruciating pain had hit, it disappeared, leaving him lying on cool ceramic floor, his chest heaving up and down and his legs running.
Kellen opened his eyes. The astrologist stood with arms crossed over a bare chest. “This had better be good.”
The scent of sex reached Kellen. He scrambled to his feet, wobbled, then shook, sending small pieces of glass to ping against the tiles. It took effort, long moments of fierce concentration but finally he was able to draw and focus his magic and shift form.
“You owe me a personal favor for the intrusion,” the astrologist said, eyes flicking upward as his thoughts went to whoever was waiting for him in bed.
“Agreed.”
The astrologist’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve got a magical artifact with you that you didn’t have before, but you’re missing your companion. Interesting. I would have sworn she was your mate.”
She is, instinct growled and the heavy beat of Kellen’s heart sent a surge of fear through his chest. It was possible she’d be killed or trapped in some other realm. “She’s been taken by whoever is after the artifact.”
“This way,” the astrologist said, leading him down the same hallway they’d traveled earlier, only this time, they entered a small windowless room.
Four wooden chairs surrounded a circular divination stone, though to humans it would look like an ancient sundial, a relic of the Mayan civilization.
Kellen pulled the charm from his pocket and surrendered it, placing it on the astrologist’s outstretched palm. It glowed in a way it hadn’t previously, the light seeming to come from within, from a core that was now darkened.
Rather than being reminiscent of an apple, the green of the charm made him think of the deep lakes of the fey realm. They were places that had helped sustain him when he’d struggled to survive, early on, in hound form. He’d hunted around those lakes, supplemented his diet of rodents, insects and berries with fish.
Kellen sat in the chair meant for supplicants. The astrologist moved around the divination stone and claimed the opposite chair.
He placed the charm in the center of the round stone, then reached beneath it, his hand emerging with what looked like a fistful of dried grass.
The astrologist piled the grass on top of the charm, reaching beneath the divination table several more times before he was satisfied by the pyramid of grass covering the crystal apple.
A murmured word and the grass caught fire, sending puffs of white smoke upward and filling the room with a scent Kellen had never been able to identify, despite having witnessed this divination many times. It wasn’t the smell of burning grass, nor was it the scent of magic and sorcery. If he were to guess, he’d say it was an herb found in some other realm, but the astrologist wasn’t one to reveal secrets.
The flame burned out, its fuel spent, leaving behind a white pyramid of fine ash. The astrologist placed both hands on the divination table.
The stone was like a huge roadmap marking the various realms. Kellen recognized many of the sigils carved into its surface.
Small lines formed troughs that connected the realms in a complex collection of spiderweb patterns.
The ash began slowly sliding down the right side of the pyramid and into one of the channels. As more ash followed, it pushed what had come before deeper into the channel, forming a trail.
Kellen’s gaze moved ahead of the ash, finding the sigil that marked the realm of his origin, and scanning those fey realms nearby, given what the astrologist had said during the reading with Analia.
Some of the tension in his chest eased. He could navigate those realms. He could retrieve her—if she didn’t eat or drink while among the fey.
The thought nearly had him surging out of his chair. He needed to get to her, now!
His gaze snapped to the ash, and worry mounted. Rather than continuing in the direction of the hound realm, the trail had taken a forty-five-degree turn and was heading toward clusters of unfamiliar sigils.
He rubbed his palms against his jeans, willing the ash to change direction, to hurry up. It did neither.
Minutes crawled past. His ability to remain seated was tested with each one of them. He was on the verge of losing control when the ash finally stopped moving, leaving a trail from a symbol he didn’t recognize back to the apple-shaped charm.
The astrologist, who’d been seemingly looking inward, blinked and met Kellen’s gaze. At reading dismay in the astrologist’s eyes, Kellen surged upward, sending his chair tumbling over and clattering against the tile floor. “Tell me.”
“The charm originated in a realm that’s home to grigs. That’s where Analia was most likely taken.”
“I don’t recognize the name.” Perhaps he would have if not for his isolated childhood. “What type of fey are they?”
“The humans have some notion of them in their fairy tales, so at some point they came into contact.”
“What are the myths?”
“The most prominent feature them as little merry folk who wear green clothes and red stocking caps. Way back when, small apples were left hanging on the trees during harvest time for them, eventually they became known as griggling apples.”
That explained the shape of the charm, the scent near the mirror—and he remembered where else, upon entering her apartment. They’d been there searching, had probably sent the assailant after her. He fisted his hands, braced himself at seeing the astrologist’s expression, one that warned he wasn’t going to like hearing the rest of it. “Tell me.”
“They’re clannish by all accounts. Unless you’re with a grig, there is no direct portal to their world. Myth has it that when enough of them are present, they can create their own portals.”
“What about going through other realms?”
“Costly.”
Kellen was waiving the concern away before the astrologist finished.
The astrologist shook his head. “Costly not only in magic and wealth, but in time. There won’t be a direct portal anywhere close for at least a week.”
A chasm opened in Kellen’s chest. “If she eats or drinks while she’s in the grig world?”
“I don’t know.”
The astrologist brushed away the ash covering the charm and returned the green, apple-shaped crystal to Kellen. “Good luck.”
A nod and Kellen left the room, a howl welling up inside him. He stepped into sunshine, but a world that seemed dimmer thanks to Analia’s absence.
He caught himself rubbing the spot above his heart, as if he could drive back the ache. Then caught sight of Crew, leaning against the dark silver Lamborghini.
The dragon prince’s arms were crossed, as were his ankles. “Took long enough,” he said, glance flicking to the astrologist’s broken window. “And I feel compelled to add, you’re acting like a male who has lost his mate.”
“This is a job, that’s all. A job I screwed up,” Kellen snarled, unwilling to admit the true depth of his mistake but acknowledging to himself that his words didn’t explain the mounting panic, the driving urgency, the growing sense of loss expanding in his chest.
Crew shook his head and sighed. “If you say so. Maksim wants you at headquarters.”