possible—that I would sound so much like my sister had with Emma, but here I was—sounding every inch the mom. Mom tone and all.
“Not frog parts,” Rowan corrected me. “Frog toes.”
“Toes, then. Regardless, why are they in my kitchen?”
“It’s nothing fancy, just an elixir for luck.” She smiled broadly. “Mathilda said I was ready to learn this one.”
Mathilda was the oldest of the fae and she lived in a little cottage just beside the main house of Kinloch Kirk, where Rowan and I lived.
“Frog toes are lucky?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
Rowan tucked her long black braids behind her shoulders. She hopped over to the stove in two steps and looked directly down into the boiling pot.
“Want some eggs?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Scrambled?”
“Scrambled.”
Not that I had the power to make the eggs do literally anything else. I wasn’t much of a cook. Never had been. I preferred the more… utilitarian arts such as defence training.
The doorbell chimed.
“Want me to get it, mum?” Rowan asked in her chipper voice with her thick Scottish accent.
“No, I’ll get it,” I answered quickly. “Here, take the eggs, and try not to let them stick. Don’t let your frog legs boil over either.”
“Frog toes.” Rowan took the pan from me and flipped the eggs into the air. She caught them and everything. Then she gave me this big, cheeky smile. One that reminded me of her father. I felt my stomach drop.
“Show-off,” I said.
She smiled, perfectly smug, and I walked to the front door. I opened it and noticed the hinges weren’t creaking anymore. God bless Rowan for having domestic instincts. I certainly didn’t.
“Hullo!” A red, round, ruddy face beamed at me from outside the double doors.
“Hi, Seamus. How are you this morning?”
“Och, verra well indeed, ma’am.” Seamus said, his Scottish accent so thick, it was always a struggle to understand just exactly what he was saying. Sometimes I found myself just nodding with a smile, hoping he didn’t catch on that I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Glad to see the weather’s been kind to oos.”
Seamus always had a way of greeting the morning like an old friend rather than the convicted felon with a chainsaw everyone else thought it to be. The hazy mist of the early Scottish morning clung to his skin, giving him the dewy appearance of having just been for a jog.
“Today’s post for ye, Miss Bryn.” He rolled the R in my name so severely, it was almost a D sound. “Seems yer a popular address this week.” He reached into his saddle bag and handed me a cluster of envelopes, each a slightly different shade of white. Eggshell, cream, beige, chalk. The federal equivalent of a rainbow.
“Thanks, Seamus.”
“Yer most welcome,” he said, tipping his hat. “Cheers!” He spun on his heel and walked away, a happy, almost cartoonish jaunt in his step. Seamus was one of those people who left emotional glitter everywhere he went.
I stayed in the doorway for a moment, breathing in the morning. It was damp outside. Rain hung heavily on the air. From where I stood, I could see Seamus disappearing slowly down the winding path to the village, bouncing like a balloon. It was a quiet morning and I found myself standing in the doorway, admiring the heather from across the fields in front of Kinloch Kirk.
I was happy to be here. Even though so much had happened in the walls of this mansion house, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Not when I could still feel my sister in the halls of Kinloch. The memories of her were so thick here, oftentimes I found myself reliving them, getting lost in the moments of the past.
It wasn’t so long ago that Kinloch Kirk had burned completely down. But we’d rebuilt it, just as we’d rebuilt the Underworld league of creatures, when my sister had still been queen. But that time was long since past and Kinloch Kirk was now the home to spirits of the past. Well, and Rowan and me.
I inhaled deeply and closed the door.
I walked back toward the kitchen, absently flipping through the stack of letters Seamus had brought. Most were bills. Electricity, water, cable, one of those rustic furniture catalogues, a letter from Sinjin Sinclair…
My hand froze.
I plucked the offending envelope from the pile by its pristine white edge. The envelope was a thick, silky kind of parchment, weighty and expensive, like everything else the vampire’s vanity ever compelled him to purchase. There was a red wax seal on the back—the