Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Luna settled into her new routine for a few days before she panicked. Yes, she was supposed to stay here for a week until his aunt showed up and then she could prove that the Earl was a normal man in a normal setting and wasn’t it so lovely that he’d settled down?

But she wasn’t... capable. She wasn’t the young woman that anyone would want to see a powerful man had settled down with. And she didn’t know how to be that person.

Pacing between the walls of her room, she felt as though Luther had stuck her in a cage and she couldn’t get out of it. The bars were the pretty pale blue wallpaper and the dirt floor was warm mahogany floors that likely cost more than she’d made in her entire life.

And to make all the matters worse, that damned diamond kept singing to her.

“Luna,” it called out, repeating her name until she thought she’d go mad.

“What do you want?” she snarled, trying to keep her head on straight while she planned her escape from this maddening place.

“Don’t you want to put me on? You could come and get me, you know. I’m right here. Waiting for you.”

She wanted to. Hell, she would have given her right arm if she could put her hands on that damned diamond. But she couldn’t find it. The Earl might not be very good at keeping thieves out of his house, but he was very good at hiding his valuables. Sure, there were a hundred things around that she could steal. Decorations, though, and those were too easily tracked.

Jewelry ended up out of the country at first. It circulated the world, passing between sellers until it could finally reach someone who had ties with nobility. And at that point, everyone forgot about the lost item. At least, until someone wore it to an opera and was seen by the wrong person. Then that seller disappeared to have yet another replace them.

Her world wasn’t complicated. Until now.

Blowing out a breath, she sat down at the pale yellow vanity and stared at her reflection. She only knew one person who could help her right now, and that was the last person she wanted to talk to.

Maeve.

Her sister had rubbed elbows with the world’s most incredible people and was now in love with a Duke for all eternity. Literally. The vampire blood that ran through her veins would keep her alive for centuries now that she’d pledged herself to a vampiric lord.

Regardless of all that, Luna disliked talking to her sister because Maeve had a tendency to want to fix. That’s all she knew how to do. She was so serious as the oldest of the three, but she never saw anything in shades of grey.

She could call Beatrix, she supposed. But that one had spent her entire life in a convent and really knew nothing about being a real person.

So.

Maeve it was.

Luna leaned forward and exhaled onto the glass. In the fog, she wrote her sister’s name and muttered a simple spell. It was one her mother had taught her long ago, one that all witches seemed to know. Mirrors could be used for scrying, but they were also portals to another realm.

The mirror shimmered, warped, and then her own reflection disappeared. Instead, her sister looked back at her.

“Well, you look healthy.” Luna tried hard not to think about what that meant. If Maeve was particularly robust looking, that usually meant they hadn’t been feeding off each other, but off some poor sap who’d stumbled into the castle.

“Don’t think about it,” Maeve muttered. “It’s the only way to get through. Trust me. Now, why are you calling me? I thought you were going to steal that diamond and be home days ago.”

“Unfortunately, the situation has changed.” She cleared her throat, then realized with no small amount of clarity that she should have gotten her story straight before she reached out to Maeve.

What was she supposed to tell her adoptive sister? That she’d made the worst mistake a thief could make, broke this poor man’s ceiling, and then ended up in a strange deal where she pretended to be his fiance? It sounded far-fetched. And she couldn’t tell Maeve that the leader of the most powerful gang in all of London was hunting her down because she’d stolen a piece he wanted and sold it to the highest bidder.

Perhaps only a small amount of the truth was best.

“The situation changed?” Maeve repeated, lifting a brow. “Care to elaborate on that? Do I need to send Martin to come collect you?”

“Good lord, please don’t do that.” Raking her fingers through her hair, she then slashed the hand through the air. Dismissing the thought of sending a vampire lord to collect her. “I made a couple mistakes, ended up making a deal with the Earl. I have to stay for a little while until I get everything sorted.”

Maeve’s face went even paler, if that was possible. “You aren’t... He didn’t ask you to...”

It took a while for Luna to follow her sister’s thought process. When she realized Maeve was asking if the Earl had bargained with her body, the mere thought had her bursting into laughter. “Oh, goodness no. I don’t think he’d even consider it! Look at me, Maeve, do you think any man would want that?”

Relief flooded her sister’s expression. “Yes, I think many men would request that of you. Just because you don’t find yourself beautiful doesn’t mean others can’t see how stunning you are.”

Right. That was almost as crazy as Luna pulling all this off without getting caught by Luther’s demonic aunt.

“I didn’t call for you to tell me I’m pretty,” Luna snarled. “I actually had a reason for calling you.”

“I assumed so.” Maeve didn’t like being told what to do, but she still nodded as if she were directing the call herself. “What do you need help with, then?”

“I’m supposed to impress some aunt of his so that he can live his life without her breathing down his neck about getting married.” She took a deep breath and then rushed through the last words. “I have no idea how to make her think that I’m worth a noble’s attention.”

A long pause was her only response. Maeve seemed frozen on the other side of the glass.

Luna tapped the glass with her finger, trying to shake the spell back to life. “You still there?”

“Yes, I’m still here.” Maeve blinked a few times before shaking her head. “Are you kidding me? That’s the entire situation you’re in?”

“Not kidding, yes that’s what’s happening.”

“I’m sending Martin. You can’t be there with this madman any longer. He wants you to pretend to be engaged to him? Luna, you have to hear how insane that sounds.”

Oh, she heard it. That’s why it took her such a long time to agree to the whole plan. Normally, she jumped into crazy situations like this with both feet. But this one? It made little sense. Although, the longer she was around Luther, the less the man made any sense to her at all.

“I already said yes,” she scolded her sister. “I will not back out now. So tell me what I need to do to convince this old lady to leave him alone.”

“And the diamond?”

Right, that was the hard part. “I’ve already heard it singing and the damned thing won’t leave me alone. It wants to be found, so this was a perfect reason for me to stay in his home and snoop while I try to find it.”

“You haven’t even found the diamond yet?” Maeve’s face turned red, and that never boded well. “You’ve been gone for almost a week and you seem to have only dug yourself into a worse situation.”

“Please don’t scold me right now. I need to focus on what I’m doing and make sure that I don’t step in it any more, apparently.” Luna tossed her hands in the air. “Listen, Maeve. I get it. I’m the one that always seems to make these mistakes, but you can’t fix it. Tell me what to do to convince the old lady and I’ll be home before you know it.”

“I knew I never should have sent you on your own.” Maeve stood up from her mirror and started pacing back and forth. “This was too much for you to do. Martin was right. The dangers of stealing from an earl were all too apparent, and we all ignored them. Now you’re going to end up dead or in jail and there’s nothing I can do to stop that from happening.”

“Maeve,” Luna tried to interrupt her sister’s dark thoughts. “I will not die or go to jail if I convince his aunt, so if you don’t mind...”

“I’ll talk with Martin. I see now that you’re right. He can’t come get you because you’re in far too deep. But he might be able to make a deal with this earl. Perhaps we could bargain for your life? Nobility doesn’t mind doing that sort of thing with each other.”

The thought was laughable. “You’re going to bargain for my life? With what money?”

But Maeve wasn’t listening to her anymore. She’d gone deep into the fear that she had to save her sister and nothing would break her out of it. No matter how hard Luna tried to get her to even look at the mirror, her sister was already gone.

Damn it, the last thing she needed was a vampiric witch meddling in what she’d already fixed.

Luna sighed and tapped the glass. “Martin, are you there?”

The vampire was never far from her sister, so she didn’t doubt he was in the room, listening behind the glass even though Maeve would never admit it. They were both far too secretive and loved snooping in the shadows.

His face appeared way too close to the glass for her comfort. “Sorry.”

“I know you’re always there. If you weren’t, that would be more surprising.” She scrubbed a hand down her face and then pointed at Maeve. “This was a mistake, obviously. I’ll figure it out on my own, but please don’t let her ruin this for all of us. She worries too much.”

“There will be no meddling from the Crimson Castle.” He pressed a hand to his chest, as he always did when he swore on his honor. “But if I may be of some assistance? In my experience, the elderly ladies of the ton are less interested in young women who fit a mold. I think if you are yourself, the Earl’s aunt will find you delightful.”

“Being myself means talking about sleeping in attics and stealing from people just like her,” she replied with a snort. “I don’t think she’ll like that.”

Martin winked. “You might find yourself surprised. Those women have a lot of fight in them still. Now, I promise I won’t let your sister meddle unless I hear something about you being locked up behind bars. How does that sound?”

“That would be the perfect time to meddle, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He waved a hand over the glass and the spell melted away before she could even say goodbye to Maeve.

Honestly, considering the mood her sister was now in, Luna wasn’t all that sure she even wanted to say goodbye to her vampire sibling.

Sighing, she left the vanity and flopped down on the ridiculously comfortable bed the Earl had given her. What was this, down? The entire thing? How many birds had to die to fill this with a cloud-like amount of feathers that cushioned her every single night? Probably not enough to make him feel guilty.

As she stared up at the ceiling, she couldn’t help but marvel at the lovely wallpaper there. Tiny cherubs held bows and arrows in their hands, sending out the heart-shaped arrows to mortals that danced below them. She’d seen a mural like this before, when she was early in her thieving. She remembered looking at the paintings and wishing she had enough money to buy one.

Luna could have stolen countless of them. She could have hung them all from her walls as though she were one of the elite who could afford to hire an artist like this. But something always held her back. The artists had worked hard for a piece like this. Stealing such a masterpiece felt... well, wrong.

Not that everything she did wasn’t wrong.

Squinting her eyes, she met the judging stare of a naked cherub baby who pointed its arrow directly at the viewer. Hadn’t she seen that judgmental stare before? She swore she had. But maybe a lot of these nobles had the same wallpaper.

Except... She sat up and took in the details around her one more time. She’d seen that music box on the shelf that was shaped like a swan. Luna remembered thinking she could get a pretty penny for it, but then noticed the engraving on the bottom was too specific. And the vase in the corner... Hadn’t that been on the opposite wall?

“Oh no,” she whispered. “Why does everything keep getting more complicated in this damned place?”

She’d been here before. And not just been here. She’d stolen something from this house before.

Flopping back down onto the mattress, she covered her face with both her hands. “I hate it here,” she snarled, pressing the words into her palms like that would make any kind of difference.

The worst part about all this was that she didn’t hate it here. It was nice to be on a soft bed for once. Magda had fed her food from her own homelands, far in the north, where the bees buzzed through the fields and cold snow turned bread into bricks. She had felt like she’d returned home for the first time in years.

Yet, every time she thought she was settling into some kind of routine, she was thrust into the memory that she was a bad person. She stole. She made everyone’s life harder.

Hopefully she didn’t ruin this plan for the Earl and both their lives, too.