Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
We stood there together, warmth and love gathering around us, drawn there, like sitting around a fire on a cold day. I felt the house itself respond, savoring our closeness. I also felt a pulse as though it was trying to breathe, to get its heart beating again, but it was being smothered, suffocated by something else.
After a minute, he parted his lips from mine, staring down at me with darker eyes than usual, pupils blown.
“You were worried when I was outside alone.”
Perceptive man. “Yes,” I croaked out, licking my lips, noting that his gaze was instantly there. “Stay here with me.”
He nodded. “I bet the basement in this house is creepy as hell. But I will go down there if you want me to.”
I shook my head, smiling as he slipped a hand over my ass. “No, now we just need to get the front and back doors open, and along with what we’ve already done, that should be enough.”
“Okay,” he agreed, giving me a last kiss before stepping back, or trying to. Hard to do with my arms still wrapped around him tight. “You gotta let go.”
But I needed the connection. “One more.”
Deep, husky chuckle that I loved because it was so very smug, his certainty of my love there in the sound. “It’s a hardship,” he teased before he bent and kissed me again, taking my mouth, my tongue, and I felt the power in the man as he clutched me to him.
In the middle of uncertainty and a mystery, I needed the grounding. When everything was whirling around me, the bedrock of Lorne’s love was even better than being home on Corvus. Because Corvus calmed the river of magic that flowed through me, but the human part of me remained fearful and on edge. Lorne could soothe my magic, as it connected to that which lived in him, and then reminded me that I was loved as well. The primal pull to be close to him assuaged my fears, which in turn helped me focus on what I could control.
When I eased back, he followed, keeping our lips sealed together, and when I laughed, he smiled as we parted.
“We have to cleanse this place,” I told him. “Because I think there is something in here that needs to be driven out.”
His brows furrowed. “Like what? A ghost?”
“No. Something alive.”
“Okay,” he whispered, glancing around. “That’s not scary at all.”
“It’s going to be all right,” I assured him. “We can do this. We can purge whatever is in here.”
“Listen, I don’t wanna stay here while you go home to get smoke wands,” he informed me. “Because again, this house is creepy as fuck.”
“Not as much as you think,” I asserted because I’d felt the house respond to having people who loved each other on the premises. “I mean yes, there’s something more than heavy, sticky energy that’s never been purged, but whatever is in here with us is not corporeal. It’s still made of shadows, nothing tangible.”
“So what’re you gonna do?”
“We’re gonna go to the kitchen.”
“Which is where?” A flame was suddenly at his shoulder, answering him, as my magic was compelled to do. “Okay, show me,” he directed.
Always amazing when Lorne took my magic in stride.
As the flame left, he took hold of my hand, and the two of us followed it out of the sitting room, through a large living room, and down a short hall to a massive kitchen. Once there, I started looking through cupboards for spices.
“I’m gonna go get the doors open while you get whatever you need in here.”
“Promise me there’s nothing outside that can hurt you.”
“There’s not. I swear. Just an owl, some bats, and a seriously overgrown backyard.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah,” he said with a grimace. “The front looks great, but the back is giving big-time horror-movie vibes.”
I snickered.
“It’s a total metaphor for life,” he commented.
“In what way?”
“In the way that what people can see is manicured perfection, but what they can’t see is wasting away behind the facade.”
“Huh.”
“I’ll stop now. This lesson on outward appearances is lost on Lynette anyway, since she’s passed out.”
“Then hurry up and get the doors open, Chief MacBain.”
He grunted and left me in the dark kitchen, not helped at all by the fact that it was painted black, with black marble floors and black quartz countertops.
I suspected that some of the ambience of the house would be destroyed once I cleansed it, but I had no choice. Lynette had lingering pain and sadness that had basically absorbed into the walls, now made manifest by whatever else had either slithered into her home or been placed there on purpose. This was what came of never doing anything as simple as airing the place out, as well as not being vigilant with wards if you gave séances. Either way, I would purge the house of the persistent gloom that had probably sunk down into the earth itself. I had to wonder, if I communed with it, what it would say.