Page 11 of A House of Cloaks & Daggers
John was clambering around in the office, opening drawers and slamming them shut while he swore in two different languages and continued to mutter nonsense, completely incognisant to who Jonah was or what had happened to him.
Bubbling hysteria began to curdle the blood in my veins. I clenched my fists and shoved it back.
This is on me. Everything is always on me.
Katie was heavily pregnant. Amelia was drunk. Trish couldn’t be involved. I didn’t have the slightest clue how to explain any of it to the police, and my sister…
Brynn would undoubtedly follow our mother out of the house if I asked her to come to the bookstore against my better judgement.
My heart sank beneath the sudden and dreadful weight.
Wren watched me, eyes flitting between my face and the body of my friend like he was waiting impatiently for the hysteria to kick in so he could try his luck on me with another dose of that silver drug.
“I have no one else to ask,” I admitted, shoulders slumping.
Wren took a deep breath, broad chest expanding to twice its size, and nodded once. He stalked around the remains of the caenim and heaved Jonah into his arms. Splinters of glass and wood clinked to the floor as he stepped around the counter,heading towards the back of the store where John was still making a lot of racket.
Arms locked around my waist to hold in any lingering threat of purging myself of my stomach’s contents, I followed Wren as he made his way into the reading nook.
Mercifully, that part of Dante’s had been left untouched. I had a lot of work to do out the front, between the aisles and upstairs, but my safe haven of peace prevailed. The reading nook—a cosy space at the back of the store, walled by bookshelves, with three desks lined up before three couches that were positioned around an antique coffee table.
Wren went to the couch against the far wall and lay Jonah’s body down, his head resting on the cushion I had smoothed over only an hour earlier. He positioned Jonah’s arms crossing his chest like they do in the movies and stretched out his legs before he adjusted his head to look like he was sleeping. When I saw the fluidity with which his head moved—as if his spine had been severed at the base of his neck—I flinched away.
The couch became a coffin before my blurry eyes.
But Jonah can’t be dead. Katie’spregnant.
“There.” Wren flung his hand out towards the body of my friend dramatically. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“Help him.” I stumbled a step closer, my head drowning in tears that I refused to let fall. It was taking everything I had to hold them back. “Please.”
Wren gave me an incredulous look. “Woman,” he said roughly, matching my step with one of his own—twice the length of mine. “I am High Fae, not a cauldron-worshipping death-wielder. And that man,” he went on, pointing to the couch behind him, “is dead. Gone. Tonight’s tragedy, tomorrow’s news. And you’re lucky that it’s notyouon that couch because—”
I slapped him across the face.
It happened so fast, I barely had time to register the thought before my arm came flying up and my palm connected with the edge of his cheek. His jawline and cheekbones were as hard and strong as appearances claimed—as hard as his chest had felt when I’d walked into him earlier—and took the blow like a caress.
But my hand…!
I yelped a curse, my skin stinging whilst my palm turned a nasty shade of red, and the tears finally overflowed.
Wren smirked down at me. “I am going to destroy that portal now, Auralie, and if you try to interrupt me again, I will toss you into another realm and seal you in there myself.”
With that, he stormed off. He left me to scrub the searing tears from my cheeks as I fell to my knees in the middle of the reading nook and handed myself over to a violent assault of spine-warping sobs. I sat there, bent over with my head between my knees until the fabric of reality buckled around me.
Then, silently, I wept and wept.
Chapter five
You Read Too Many Books
Truthfully, it wasn’t hardfor me to believe that Wren, the portal and the caenim were real. I probably would have believed it even if John hadn’t set the example of taking the otherworldly chaos in his stride.
As a genre, I liked fantasy more than horror and self-help books, but less than everything else. However, I’d read enough about faeries to face this one prepared. I knew there couldn’t possibly be so many veracious accounts of them, disguised as fiction, for the one in front of me to be an apparition or a kook.
Wren fit the bill perfectly.
He was obnoxious, rude, and cocky. He had the most mindlessly handsome face I had ever seen. In the short time that I’d known him, I had witnessed his predisposition to violence and cruelty, and it had quickly become apparent that he had very little understanding of his own supernatural strength.
