Chapter Thirty-Five

They spent hours meandering the halls and hardly encountered anyone else. At one point, Kierse gave up and took her shoes off, walking barefoot across the polished floors. It wasn't professional, but she just didn't care. As soon as Kingston left, they had to start running reconnaissance on King Louis and deal with Walter's wards, and she couldn't have blisters on her feet.

"One more gallery," Kingston encouraged.

"I can't do it. I'm going to go sit on the steps. You keep on."

"Kingston needs to finish up soon," Graves told him with a pointed look. He also sounded almost eager to leave. She raised an eyebrow. Apparently, he didn't love long walks through museums, either.

Kingston sighed. "All right. This will be the end. I'll look through one more and then we can go."

Kierse felt such relief even as she put her horrid shoes back on her feet and stepped out into the brisk winter chill.

"So you found it as boring as I did?" she asked Graves.

"Or I found exactly what I was looking for," he said with a knowing smirk.

She wanted to ask what that meant, but he just turned his gaze from her.

She hugged her jacket tighter around her as they headed down the Met steps and stopped before Coraline LeMort's statue.

Graves came to her side, his arm brushing against hers. She shivered but not from the cold. His gaze slipped to hers, and without a word, he removed his own overcoat and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"Better?"

She met his usually mercurial eyes and found only warmth there. Maybe last night had changed things. But the way her stomach was flipping said she wasn't sure that she minded.

"Did you know her?" Kierse asked, gesturing to the statue of the revolutionary whose death started the Monster War.

"I heard her speak once," he told her.

"What was she like?"

Graves shrugged. "Too young to understand she was doing nothing but putting a target on her back."

Kierse frowned at that assessment. "Everyone talks about her like she was going to change the world."

"She did, but not for the better."

Well, that was the damn truth. "If she hadn't died, would the world be where it is now?"

"I guess we'll never know." Graves gestured to his phone. "I have to take this."

She waved him off, tugging his jacket tighter around her body and breathing in his purely masculine scent as she leaned back against the base of Coraline's statue. There was no use wondering about the past. They couldn't change it anyway. Only move forward to make sure it didn't happen again.

Right now, her thoughts were trapped by the warlock at her back. The one who had surprisingly given her his coat. She tried to keep the smile from tugging at her lips, but she didn't quite succeed. She just turned her body to face the sun, closing her eyes and soaking up the last of the dying rays.

"Kierse McKenna?" said a voice she didn't recognize.

She opened her eyes and found a frail older white gentleman wearing a kippah standing before her. She squinted as she tried to place him. "Do I know you?"

He nodded. "I work at the bakery around the corner. You used to come in regularly."

"Oh, yes." Confusion and slight panic shot through her. Why was he here? How did he know she'd be here? "Can I help you?"

"This is for you," he said. She saw his hands were shaking with fear as he passed her a small, white paper bag.

She took it in her hands before she could think better of it. "What is it?"

"Your favorite. He... he said it was your favorite," the man said and then hastened away.

Kierse frowned deeply in confusion. Her favorite? Her favorite what?

She opened the bag and found an entire loaf of cinnamon babka. Her mouth watered at the same second she recoiled. She had a feeling she knew exactly who would send her babka from her favorite bakery.

"What's that?" Graves asked, returning from his phone call.

"A man just delivered this to me," she told him.

Graves immediately scanned the crowd. "What man? How did he know you'd be here?"

"I'm not sure."

Graves frowned at that, his gray eyes going dark and stormy. "Point him out to me. We need to question him."

"I knew him. He works at a bakery I used to frequent all the time." She showed him the loaf of sweet bread. "It's babka."

"Doesn't matter. That means you had a measure of trust. We need to know who did this. Throw it out. You don't know who sent it."

"Actually... I think I do." Kierse swallowed. "Lorcan sent it."

Graves went still as night and dark as shadows. His jaw set tight, eyes hard and uncompromising. He was silent for a tense second before saying anything. "How do you know?"

"Well, I told him this was my favorite food."

Graves clenched his hands into fists. He looked ready to snatch the babka from her and toss it himself. "It seems he has an... interest in you."

"Yes. It seems that way."

"I don't like it," he said, meeting her eyes.

"That's probably why he did it," she said.

He straightened, scanning the area. "I'm sure it is."

And yet, he still looked furious.

No, not just fury. He looked jealous.

But that couldn't be possible. Not Graves. She had no idea why he would even feel that way. Was this part of his feud with Lorcan? Or was this about her? Was this about last night?

Kingston traipsed down the steps to meet them at the base of the statue. "Well, well, that was invigorating." Then he seemed to sense tension between them. "What's going on?"

"Lorcan sent Kierse a present," Graves bit out.

Kingston sighed. "Well, he does like to addle you. You know how he is. It's like the wildflowers he used to send."

Graves glared at his mentor for the suggestion but then slowly released the coils of tension in his shoulders. His face returned to its neutral blankness. No anger, no displeasure, no... jealousy. He'd been angry... angry at the thought of Lorcan giving this to her? Or Lorcan putting his own power on display?

Kierse didn't know. But it certainly felt like both.

"Let's just go," Graves said, striding toward the limo.

Kierse followed in his wake, considering Graves's masked fury. Lorcan had done this to get to him. To get to her. She didn't like being caught in his little game. She was supposed to be the player, not the other way around.

When they passed a trash can on the way back to his limo, she dumped the babka inside. She didn't want to think at all about where that left her loyalties. Or why her stomach flipped when Graves looked back at her with approval.

She slid into the seat beside him in the limo, and he leaned in close until his mouth was nearly against her ear. Her heart leaped at the nearness. Memories from last night flooded her mind. "You didn't tell me you like babka."

She blinked. "You didn't ask."

He nodded. "Well, now I know."

He pulled away as Kingston dropped into the backseat beside them and said cheerfully, "Time to go, Georgie-boy!"

They made it back to the brownstone later that evening. Kingston stretched, hemming and hawing about getting the portal just right.

"Maybe I should do it tomorrow," Kingston said. "Just to be sure."

"You're getting cautious in your old age," Graves said with an arched eyebrow.

Kingston's nostrils flared. "I can do it just fine. No need to be belligerent."

"Of course," Graves said, but his glance cut to Kierse, and she stifled a smile.

Clearly, he was ready for Kingston to be gone. Urging him along in his own way.

"I won't wait another year," he promised Graves. He held out his hand, and they shook.

"I'll believe it when I see it," Graves replied.

Kingston tipped his hat at Kierse. "Good luck with your training."

"Thank you," she said.

Then he sketched a doorway of his own making. One second, he was on the sidewalk outside of Graves's house, and the next, she could see that he was on a different continent. The doorway winked back out of existence behind him.

"That must be the most useful ability ever," she breathed.

Graves shrugged. "It makes things too convenient."

"Too convenient?"

"All magic comes with a price. Every power is as much weakness as strength. I have become immune to how humans interact. You will become immune to the dangers of magic. Kingston is immune to consequences."

"You were certainly ready for him to go," she said.

"I usually am," he said with a shrug at the empty space where Kingston had been standing. "I had a thought about Lorcan."

"That I should stay away from him?"

"Maybe we can use his interest in you to see what he knows about you, the mission, your friends."

Her smile turned lethal. "I like how your mind works."

"The feeling is mutual," he admitted.

High praise from her reticent warlock.

"But we'll have to discuss it at a later time. Emmaline called while we were at the museum. She found something interesting in your blood."

Her heart soared. "Really?"

"Yes. And the last thing I wanted was for Kingston to look too closely at you."

She bristled. "What does that mean?"

"He has a history of killing things that he doesn't understand and asking questions later."

"Oh," she whispered.

"Now that he's out of the way, we're leaving."