Page 70 of The Guardian's Curse

Ruby chuckled. “I’ll let the others know. Auntie K keeps a loaded gun under the counter. She would be thrilled to use it.”

“I’m serious. Be careful,” Shoshanna said.

“I will,” Ruby said.

“One other thing. What do you know about curses?”

“I know that you shouldn’t be fucking with people’s lives like that because the universe will always pay you back for it,” Ruby said sharply. Her gleeful tone had completely evaporated. “What are they asking you to do?”

“I’m not trying to make one,” Shoshanna said. “I’m trying to break one.”

“That’s your field, friend. Way beyond what I do,” Ruby said. “Come to me if you need a tea to get your man hard.”

“Not a problem,” Shoshanna said. She shivered at the memory of him sliding against her and clenched her thighs together. “Definitely not.”

“I hate you!” Ruby said. “But seriously, be careful. You know the rules. Never mess with things you don’t understand.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ll be careful.”

Shoshanna spent the next few hours inscribing sigils on the window frames of the ground floor, each intended to strengthen the glass and ignite a daylight shield like the one she’d deployed against Alistair. They required little magic energy, just a lot of patience and meticulous measuring. She completed half of the bottom floor, then carefully began tying the threads of loose magic to the central sigil in the living room. When she was done, their house would be a fortress.

Their house.

The thought had felt so natural, but it was shocking. Why had she instinctively thought of it as theirs? His house. It didn’t quite fit when she thought of it that way.

She shook it off as she went to make herself a salad for a late lunch, which she carried to Lucia’s alcove. Bright light poured through the open window, casting a harsh white glow on the stone surface. She winced, shielding her eyes as she closed the curtain. Even with the window closed, there were still pulsing spots in her vision like she’d stared at a camera flash.

She opened her large sketchpad and reacquainted herself with Lucia’s magical signature. As a tisserand, Shoshanna had been trained to observe the flow of magic in all things living and otherwise. Different creatures had patterns and flows that could be represented with the large geometric sigils she drew. As Madame du Mourier, one of her novice trainers, explained, the sigils were useful tools that gave their minds a way to comprehend the incomprehensible. Magic did not actually flow in such precise shapes, but it gave them a way to handle the ephemeral, mysterious power.

Most humans had similar patterns, with only minute variations. Vampires were different from humans, though quite similar to each other. And on the heels of a fifty-year research project, several tisserande had recently discovered that the longer a witch studied and practiced magic, the more her pattern diverged from that of a normal human. As far as Shoshanna could tell, Lucia wasn’t a human or a vampire, but she certainly wasn’t a witch.

Like choking vines, the dark blue-black energy of Lucia’s curse radiated throughout her entire body, entangling her true essence. And there was that strange red thread that made no sense.

Her arcane sight didn’t reveal the mercurial changes in emotion, though there were witches who could read emotions. This red wasn’t something Lucia had once felt, but something much more powerful.

Vampires showed signatures of red, but it was typically a dark crimson, not a lively, glowing fiery red like this. Was this an element of the Night Weaver’s magic? She wasn’t certain if it even mattered, but she’d learned that it was better to find useless information than to act on ignorance.

After four hours of intense work, she had sketched the entirety of Lucia’s curse. She couldn’t begin to guess at the elements used to create the curse, nor the rituals the Weaver would have used to put it in place. This was less reverse engineering and more defusing a bomb. The longer she worked, the more certain she became that she could unravel it. The question was whether it would blow up in her face, and what effect it would have on Lucia. There was no point in breaking the curse if it killed the poor woman in the process.

Around nine fifteen, she took a break to prepare Alistair’s breakfast. She hummed lightly to herself as a pleasant warmth ignited between her legs. The mere thought of him made her heart race.

As she stirred, a pair of arms slipped around her waist, and lips pressed to her cheek. She smiled and wriggled back against the solid body. “Good evening.”

“Good evening,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a rock,” she said. “You?”

“I slept well, but I would much rather have been with you,” he replied. He reached around her to dip a finger into the pan. “I’m starved.”

She tilted her head. “Do you want...”

“At least a day between,” he said, squeezing her waist gently. “It’s lovely of you to offer, but you need time to heal each time.” He kissed her neck. She turned slowly, looking up to see his face concealed by the dark hood. Red eyes glowed faintly within the shadows. “You’ve got sixty seconds to put that in a glass.”

Her stomach churned at his firm tone. “Why?”

“Because that’s how long I’m going to wait before I carry you off somewhere to put my hands all over this body,” he said.

She laughed. “Maybe I have things to do.”

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