Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“Ma’am, I am deeply sorry for how you have been treated,” the man said obsequiously, offering her his arm. “Please forgive the security team. They’re a little trigger-happy and don’t know how to deal with high-end clientele.”
“As I noticed!” she said as she accepted his help and rose laboriously to her feet.
“Almost there,” Laz said.
But Kierse didn’t have any more time. She was going to have to leave. She’d made enough of a scene to get in the way, and she couldn’t ignore this man who was—finally, annoyingly—treating her like royalty. Fuck.
“I wanted one more minute,” Kierse pouted, hoping Laz would understand.
“My apologies and deep regrets, but we are only showing the auction items as they come forward.” He put a hand gently on her back and directed her toward the exit.
“Where was the restroom again?”
“I’ll have an assistant show you,” he said, snapping his fingers.
An assistant appeared to escort her away. She ground her teeth together as she followed the woman away from the scene.
“I’m out,” Laz said into her ear.
“Did we get it?” Graves asked.
Laz was quiet a minute. “It was closed circuit. They hid most of the information off the system. I’ll have to go through it.”
Graves gnashed his teeth loud enough for the microphone to pick up. “Fine. Wren, make haste.”
Kierse swallowed and continued down the hallway toward the bathroom. She wanted to ditch the assistant, but she was speaking animatedly about the entire collection and what Kierse could look forward to seeing. Since…she had been dumped on her rump before seeing it all.
“Thank you. That will do,” Kierse told her, wanting nothing more than to leave this bullshit behind. She didn’t like to be mean to innocents. It was the monsters and the billionaire humans who had her enmity.
But the assistant nodded and made a quick retreat. Kierse did the same.
Graves’s voice came through the line. “Fuck. We have another problem.”
Kierse burst through the stage door, only to find the problem ready and waiting for them.
“Imani is here,” Graves said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Imani Cato stood gloriously clothed in a white Roman sheath against her brown skin. Her head was shaved close and her expression fierce. She had absolutely not been on the guest list.
Graves’s ex-apprentice was a master in her own right. After they had stolen from her, she had sought revenge against them by dosing Ethan with her wish powder and nearly killing him. Kierse had hoped that would be the end of her schemes.
“What the fuck do we do?” she asked Graves.
But he was already striding toward the other warlock. Graves was more powerful than Imani, but Kierse had a bad feeling about this. Something was niggling at the back of her mind.
Her champagne had been floral. The room had the same scent under the cherry blossoms. Lyra had smelled like flowers.
Imani’s powers smelled like lilies. Kierse had been smelling it all night, but she had assumed it was the cherry blossoms. A convenient cover. She’d been so set on the plan that she hadn’t realized what it was until it was too late.
“She dosed the party,” Kierse said.
The moment the words left her mouth, Imani blew a cloud of red wish powder into Graves’s face. He coughed and sputtered around it, throwing up his defenses to keep it from getting its hooks in him.
Kierse rushed forward. “Do you have the antidote?”
But before she could reach him, she slammed into another body. Strong hands gripped her bare arms. Kind blue eyes found hers. Her heart quickened, and she felt a squeeze in her chest like the air was being forced from her lungs. That smile, ever present on his face. Like he’d known the exact moment she would walk out of that door.
“Hello, little songbird,” Lorcan said, “what trouble are you getting into tonight?”
“Let me go,” she said.
His pupils were blasted out so large there was only a thin ring of blue around the edges. He smelled like lilies. Fucking hell, he’d been affected by Imani’s wish powder, too.
The potent red powder was her signature. She had figured out how to transpose her wish-granting abilities into a powder that could be inhaled or ingested for maximum effect. While she could grant any wish, in theory, her red powder homed in on…sexual desires.
“I’m persistent.”
“This isn’t you speaking,” she told him.
Or maybe it was. Maybe this was what he wanted, but propriety kept him from indulging quite so dramatically. She remembered what it had felt like to be burned alive when she’d accidentally ingested a white powder so potent that it had overpowered her absorption powers and had turned her wish against herself. There was nothing Lorcan could do.
He laughed softly. “Who else do you believe you are speaking with?”
“You’ve ingested wish powder. You can’t control what is happening.”
She tried to move around him, but Lorcan’s hulking form moved with her.