Wolves at the Door - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,22

looks. I could see the excitement in Billie’s eyes, and the surprising anger in Jasper. He was the sweeter of the brothers, but he’d been hurt by a member of my own family. The same way my brother was hurt by our family.

The scary thing was that I had to trust in this path without actually knowing what it was.

“This—thing we’re doing,” I said. “It might mess up Etherium, but it won’t kill my parents or sisters, right? I know they’re not always the best people in the world, but I’m not sure I can hurt them.”

“It won’t,” Byron said. “As long as they stay out of the way.”

I was getting the disconcerting sense that everyone at the table understood this mission except me, even if no one else knew what it was either, besides Byron. I was a royal, at the party where people started talking about how the guillotine was a cool new invention. And of course I knew the magical world was messed up. Of course I hated how my cousin treated the Sullivan brothers and how I would never see my brother at a family Christmas again.

But while my brother ran toward the danger and joined the faeries, I just wanted to flip houses and mind my own business, for crying out loud.

I was afraid of what happened if I had to make a hard choice.

But you could have walked away from Pandora’s Box. You knew it was dangerous. Why didn’t you?

“Hey, on sort of a side note,” Jake said, “did the rest of you notice the old cemetery?”

Chapter Eleven

Helena

Man, I hope faeries liked creepy wizard cemeteries.

I wasn’t touching that thing. I had always loved creepy old cemeteries. The older and weirder the better. Sagging stones with old faces on them, unsettling religious inscriptions etched out in a 1700s font, and vaults surrounded by fences. All awesome…until I found out that we needed to find Byron’s body.

Suddenly it all lost its luster.

“I don’t see any stones that could possibly be from the seventies. You’re not buried here, are you, Byron? Tell me you’re not,” I said.

I was surveying the backyard now, while the Sullivan brothers and Billie walked the house. I hoped they didn’t formulate any plans without me. I still hadn’t actually seen the upstairs yet.

“No one is really buried here,” Graham said. “It would be easy enough to open a crypt, at least.”

I ignored him and the disconcerting casual attitude toward grave-opening and studied Byron’s face. This was never a chore. I had never noticed just how many shades of gold shone in his eyes like some precious gem, and his eyes seemed more amused by my fear than concerned over the graves.

He put a hand to my waist, becoming briefly solid. “You can see the dates on the crypts, can’t you?”

“So you’re not buried there?”

His dark brows lifted.

“Phew.” I waved at Graham. “He’s not here. They’re just old graves. So stop touching them, ya creepy demon.”

“That’s not good news,” Graham said. “We need to find him!” He planted a dress shoe on the decorative fence surrounding a low crypt and studied the swan perched there. “And what are these swans?”

Byron’s hand had crept up my dress to cop a shameless feel of my breast and when I tried to give him a swat, he became transparent again.

Incubi. I swear. I widened my eyes at him and shook a finger.

Not that I really minded the warm, tingling sensations that shot through me and made me want a lot more attention than the barest graze of my nipple.

He chuckled and whispered in my ear, “Tonight…you dream.”

“The swans are probably low Ethereal spirits,” I said, thoroughly flushed but trying to act like I was actually paying attention. I walked over to him and sort of brushed him to make him back away from the creepy swan before it bit his nose off or something. “If they were Sinistrals, we might have crows or vultures or eels or jackals or…you know. Something people don’t generally welcome.”

“Are they intelligent?” Graham asked.

“I doubt they understand our language,” I said. “But I wouldn’t mess with them. They might be scouts for…something or someone else. An Ethereal spirit.”

“And what are they, like angels?”

“You’re getting the hang of it,” Byron said. He approached one of the swans and smoothed a hand down its feathers. The swan tried to snap at him but went right through his arm.

“So that’s how you treat me,” he said, the corners of his lips twisting up with