Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
It was now or never.
“I’m going to find a bathroom,” she said, pressing her lips to Graves’s ear.
“Do you need an escort?”
She shook her head. “Entertain the hosts.”
He arched an eyebrow and then nodded. “Be quick.”
Kierse blew him a kiss as she walked away. But before she could go, he said her name: “Wren?”
She turned to face him in confusion, and then his lips found hers. The only thought in her mind was of him against her.
“Very quick,” he said firmly against her lips.
Her head went fuzzy all over again. She was going to need to masturbate after all of this. She bit her lip to keep it from showing on her face and then took a step back. She needed to find her business sense. She and Graves couldn’t work in any capacity. But all she felt were coals that he was fanning with his tongue. Maybe she’d find that reality again after she wasn’t so damn turned on.
Kierse swept across the room without a backward glance. She didn’t dally in the hallways. She went straight for that study door. Imani had made it clear that this was where the information must be. Why else would she have forced them out of it in such haste? Maybe there was even some ward on it that Graves had triggered. Well, if that was the case, she could slip by unnoticed.
She used her handy-dandy bobby pin to pop the lock. Graves had said that magic was everywhere in the house. Though she couldn’t sense it like he could, Imani’s eyes had drifted to the bookshelf behind them not once but twice. Kierse was good at reading people, and that meant that what they wanted was here. Right here.
After closing and locking the door again, Kierse headed straight for the bookshelf and ran her hand along all the edges of every volume. Nothing seemed out of place. No hollow books. No reason to think that the information they needed was here. Except that Imani had made it clear that it was.
Then Kierse felt it.
A smaller book that she’d skipped over. It was pressed farther back than the rest. Purposely so.
She reached for it, but when she tugged on it, there was a click. A hidden door opened behind the bookshelf.
Her jaw dropped. Imani hadn’t been looking at the bookshelf because what they wanted was hidden there. It was because what they wanted was hidden behind it. Kierse had stolen from a lot of places before. She’d broken into museums and carved her way through warehouse concrete and climbed across ceiling tiles, but she’d never seen a secret passage.
And she was about to venture into one.
Chapter Twenty-Four
A giddy bubble of laughter surfaced as she pushed aside the bookshelf and stepped into the darkened room. She closed the door behind her, running her hand along the wall until she found the catch that released it. She’d need a quick escape, and she couldn’t use the precious time on the way out. Light bulbs glowed faintly, revealing a set of stone stairs. Apparently, this glass house had been built on top of something already in existence. Pre-monster housing, likely. Nothing glass like this could have survived those tumultuous times.
There was only one option—down.
Kierse descended into the warlock’s lair. The steps were smooth as if feet had trod on them for centuries, wearing them away in the middle. She could hear noises ahead. Not voices, exactly, but something out of place. She steeled her nerve, loving every minute of unease that swept through her as she reached the bottom of the steps. She entered a hallway that split into diverging paths. The noises were coming from off to the left. Silence to the right. Knowing what was happening would be to her advantage, even if it likely meant going deeper into the lion’s den.
Her feet were silent on the stone floors as she veered to the left. It wasn’t long before she saw a wooden door at the end of the hallway. Her heart thudded in her chest. All sounds from the party above were gone. It was just Kierse and whatever awaited her. She turned the knob and opened the door a fraction of an inch. Enough so that she could peer into whatever lay ahead.
Her eyes rounded when she took in the enormous underground chamber. Crates that matched the ones upstairs were neatly stacked along the perimeter, and the interior was full of six-foot-long metal autopsy tables. Thankfully, they weren’t being used for their practical purpose, but instead for the hundred people inside cutting, packaging, and crating a fine red powder.
Kierse had one guess for what that was—wish powder. This was not some small operation. This was . . . a whole business. Did Graves already know about this? Was this the “business matters” he was talking to Imani and Montrell about? Was this what they needed to keep from Kingston? Whoever he was . . .