“A girl, who died a long time ago,” Talia replied, without taking her eyes off the shade, her fingers combing through its plume of ghostly hair. “In childbirth, maybe, or from some disease antibiotics would have knocked out in a week. Old-timey bullshit of that nature, probably. I don’t know any of the details, it’s all too faded. But I know she went down kicking, and she’s still too stubborn to consider crossing over fully. Gotta respect that kind of grit.”
Based on what her spirit was making the tree look like, I thought it might be time to entertain other options—but hey, that was just me.
“Good night, sweet pea,” Talia said, lowering her hand. “Back to bed. And see you again soon.”
The shade gave a distinctly skeptical wail, cocking its head at her.
“Soon, I swear,” Talia said, laughing. “Upon my witch’s soul.”
The shade bobbed once in acknowledgment, then turned away and drifted toward the tree, losing cohesion slowly until it dissipated altogether, sucking back into the bark.
“Well, that was horrifying,” I breathed with a half laugh. “And extremely rad. I had no idea you could talk to ghosts like that.”
“That’s who we were, before Margarita came here,” she said, turning to me, her face still dreamy from her communion with the shade, her eyes aglitter with that ineffable tenderness. “Speakers to the dead. Necromancers, if you want to get technical about it. It’s much more diluted now, no longer our main thing. But most of us can still do it to some degree.”
“You didn’t seem afraid of it—her, I mean—at all.”
She shrugged one shoulder, a delicate, birdlike flick. The rustling canopy above us parted just enough to let the moon pick out a single stripe of shine in her inky hair. “I wasn’t. When I’m talking to one of them, I can feel an echo of who they were in life. It’s . . . intimate. A little bit like love.”
“Then they’re lucky to have you love them,” I said without thinking, a blush igniting in my cheeks as soon as the words were out.
Talia’s silvery eyes widened, lips parting. Then she smiled at me, slow and lush, reaching up to brush away a strand of hair the breeze had strung across her mouth. The atmosphere between us altered in a breath, as if the barometric pressure had dropped precipitously, turning charged and unpredictable like a coming storm.
She shifted her weight toward me a little, one light hand settling on my knee. “Harlow,” she said, her voice throatier than I’d heard it before, “would this be way too weird a time to kiss you?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. A dazzling smile streaked across her lips like a lightning bolt. Then she closed the space between us, her mouth settling over mine.
Heat ignited in my belly, fanning out and spreading toward my thighs. She kept the kiss light, only grazing my lips with hers, fingers stroking underneath my chin and trailing toward my throat. Her lips were a softness beyond soft, plush and smooth and tasting of lipstick and red wine. That bewitching perfume crept into my lungs with every unsteady inhale hissing through my nose. It made me feel giddy and undone, so drunk with want I all but forgot where we were. For all I cared, we could have been in one of those outer rings of hell I’d have followed her into just as readily.
If anything, the whisper of the leaves and the unyielding dark beyond the lantern’s strange light only added to the thrill, whetted it more keen.
Me and Talia Avramov, like some rare magic I could never have foreseen, even if I had her scrying gift.
I laced my fingers around her wrist, running my other hand up the length of her neck before burying it into her upswept hair. My palm cupping her nape, I pulled her closer, drawing her deeper into the kiss. Her lips parted, tongue warm and velvety against mine, searing like a fever and delicately deft. I drew her lower lip through my teeth like I’d seen her do so many times herself, nibbling until I could feel the gentle give beneath.
When she gave a hitching sigh against my mouth, I lost any of my remaining cool.
I slid my hands to her waist and pulled her onto my lap. She gasped against my mouth as she shifted to straddle me, her dress pooling around my legs, arms winding around my neck. The position put the curve between her throat and shoulder, that delicious spot I’d been coveting since the gala at The Bitters, directly in front of my lips.
And it wasn’t like I was running high on restraint.
I leaned forward and kissed that enticing curve with parted lips, skimming my tongue over it. Her skin smelled like confectioner’s sugar but tasted just a little salty, and I couldn’t help myself. I bit her exactly like I’d wanted to, deeper than a nibble but not hard enough to hurt. She arched her back a little, shuddering, arms tightening around my neck. So this was the kind of thing that gave her tingles, very good to know.