“You were right,” she said as soon as he ushered her inside, and as he locked the door behind them, he raised his eyebrows.
“First off, can I record you saying that? Secondly, right about what?”
Sighing, Vivienne threw her hands out to the sides. “We can’t just keep putting out the fires this curse causes. Especially since it turns out that in trying to put them out, we might just be starting more, and . . . your house is weird.”
She’d moved into the living room, and was looking around with a confused expression, no doubt taking in the heavy iron chandelier, the oxblood leather furniture, the genuine Gothic nightmare of the whole place. “How do you sleep here?” she asked, then pointed at a painting on the wall. “I mean, I may never sleep again just from seeing that.”
“That is my great-great-aunt Agatha, but fair point.”
Moving into the kitchen, Rhys called over his shoulder, “Is this a conversation that requires wine?”
He heard Vivienne sigh again, then the squeaking of the leather as she flopped onto the couch. “Yes.”
When he emerged with a bottle and two glasses, she was leaning back, studying the ceiling, and it was the strangest thing, seeing her in this setting, her and her polka dots in his father’s lair. And he didn’t like the way it made him feel . . . better.
Happier.
Those are lingering sex hormones from last night, mate, he told himself, but he knew it was more than that.
Problem was, he didn’t know what the fuck to actually do with any of that. What had happened at the store had been a one-off, needed to be a one-off, because all of this was entirely too mad to add shagging back into the equation.
Much as he’d like to.
Crossing the room, Rhys handed her a glass of wine, and she took it gratefully, taking a deep sip before sitting up a little and saying, “We fucked up.”
Rhys perched against the arm of the wingback chair next to the couch, crossing one ankle over the other. “Is this about last night?”
“Obviously,” she said with a little scowl, and then her expression cleared. “Oh. You’re asking about the . . .”
Cheeks coloring, she took another sip of wine. “No, I didn’t mean that. That’s a whole other fuckup.”
The words shouldn’t sting. Lord knew, he’d just been thinking the exact same thing, so it was ridiculous to feel hurt.
But he’d made a habit of being ridiculous where Vivienne was concerned.
“Remember how one of the witches from the college gave us the Eurydice Candle to capture Piper McBride’s spirit?”
“Given that that was literally yesterday, I do recall it. Fairly vividly, actually.”
Vivienne rolled her eyes and drank more of her wine. “Well, turns out ‘Amanda Carter’ doesn’t work for the college. In fact, she’s not even a witch, which I should’ve been able to pick up on, but I was so relieved to have help with all of this that I ignored it.”
Shaking her head, she looked darkly into her glass. “The jeans should’ve given it away.”
Bracing one hand on the chair’s arm, Rhys looked at her, sitting there nearly swallowed up by his father’s insane couch. “What do you mean she wasn’t a witch? How on earth did she have a Eurydice Candle, then?”
Vivienne raised her head, soft blue shadows under her pretty hazel eyes. “She’s a con artist. A famous one, apparently. Her real name is Tamsyn Bligh. She deals in magical artifacts, and had been sniffing around Graves Glen for a while. The college witches were keeping an eye on her, but she somehow slipped past them and made a beeline straight for me.”