Grave Visions (Alex Craft #4)(16)

By noon Rianna hadn’t shown, nor had Ms. B. I had no clients on my docket for the day, and I was seriously considering locking up and taking a nap on the love seat in the waiting room when the chime on the front door sounded.

I reached with my senses as I stood, my magic sensitivity scanning the unseen visitor for spells. Nothing. The lack of magic confirmed it definitely wasn’t Rianna, but didn’t tell me much else about my visitor. Stepping out of my office, I found a man in a dark suit standing just beyond the doorway. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place his face.

“Ms. Craft?”

I nodded, summoning my professional smile as I crossed the room. I made it only halfway before he spoke again.

“Governor Caine requests your presence at his estate.”

I ground to an abrupt halt. That was where I’d seen him—he was one of my father’s drivers. The smile fell from my face and I crossed my arms over my chest.

“You can tell him—” I started, but the man interrupted me.

“He was most insistent. You have been dodging his calls.”

My shoulders hitched, just a notch, because it was true. And as it was true, I couldn’t deny it. My father wanted me to come by for more glamour lessons, which I desperately needed to learn to control, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to learn from him.

My father was an enigma. He played the long game, and apparently had been doing so for quite some time. I wasn’t sure exactly how old he was, but I did know he was once Nekros’s first governor, and at that time he was openly fae. Fifty years later he was once again the governor, with a new name and face, only this time he was with the Humans First party, an antiwitch antifae organization. He’d disowned me when I was younger, distanced our known association as much as possible, and I would have said hated me for being a wyrd witch. Now I knew it played into his long game. I just didn’t know how.

Even scarier, I’d also recently learned he’d had me spelled most of my life, which was why I hadn’t known I was fae until the spell began breaking under the Blood Moon. I’d washed away the remaining effects of the spell at the Harvest Festival when Falin had tricked me into drinking Faerie wine. Which was when I’d started shimmering like a glowworm and I’d had my first glamour lesson with my father. I’d agreed to call him to schedule another lesson, but I never had.

The man opened the front door, motioning me to exit. Beyond him, I could see a black town car idling at the curb.

I hesitated and the driver turned toward me. “I’m to remind you of his promptness in responding to your recent calls.”

I wasn’t sure if that was meant to guilt me or was a threat that I might owe my father a favor, which he could call in at his discretion. Either way, it was a true enough statement. I’d called him several times when all other avenues had closed on me. With a sigh, I retrieved my purse.

It looked as if I was off to see daddy dearest.

? ? ?

It wasn’t until the driver showed me into the house and led me all the way to the second floor to stop in front of the suite that had, until recently, belonged to my sister but now contained an accidental pocket of Faerie, that the nagging suspicion at the back of my brain beat through my exhaustion and screamed that something was off. Cracking my shields, I studied the driver’s profile. Under the generically familiar face was another, stranger, more striking face. A face that hung in a place of honor at the statehouse.

My father’s face.

“I should have known,” I whispered as he opened the enchanted locks on the door. “You never would have sent a staff member to retrieve your witchy daughter from the Magic Quarter. Tongues might wag.”

My father glanced over his shoulder and grinned. It was one of the most genuine expressions I’d ever seen on him. “You do have a bad habit of seeing through glamour. I simply wanted to test the ability. I take it by how long it took that you have to See intentionally.”

I didn’t answer. I don’t think he even expected me to, because his grin only grew at my silence.

“Come in, come in,” he said, ushering me into the room and shutting the door behind us. I felt the magic in the door relock as it closed.

I shuddered at the feeling. I didn’t like being locked in this room. Well, honestly, it wasn’t this room that was the problem. It was the next. Formerly Casey’s bedroom, it was now the scene of some of my worst nightmares. Mostly because a few months ago I’d nearly died there. As had my sister. Oh yeah, and I’d nearly been the trigger that could have ended the world. Nothing big, right?

It took more effort to cross the sitting room and enter the bedroom than I’d like to admit, each step twisting my stomach as my clenched fists shook by my sides. But when I crossed the once-invisible line that marked the circle, everything changed.

I’d been here a few weeks back, so I already expected the maddening mix of merged realities. The pockets of Faerie and the land of the dead that spilled into human reality were splashed around the room like a Pollock painting, the realities bleeding and merging in ways they were never meant to do. But no, that was no surprise to me. What stopped me in my tracks was the sudden lightness I felt. Like my exhaustion had fallen from my shoulders and I could float if needed.

I don’t know if I made a sound or if it was simply my expression, but my father stopped and his grin fell away. He didn’t just look at me, his eyes scrutinized me, a frown growing across his face.