The corners of her mouth turned down, eyes blinking behind those huge glasses. “No,” she said. “Or . . . well, not exactly. This is a one-time thing, Bowen. One last job.”
“That cliché?”
Her scowl deepened. “A cliché for a reason. Because it’s enough money not to ever have to do any other kinds of jobs again. It’s a No More Noodz job, Bowen.”
Bowen had . . . questions, lots of them, but for now, he focused on the simplest one: “How much money?”
He could actually see her thinking about lying to him. Something in the way her gaze slid away just for a heartbeat and the sudden tapping of her heel against the rung of the stool.
But then she shook her head and laid both hands flat on the tabletop, a cabochon ruby winking at him. “Starts at a million.”
“Dollars?”
“Yup.”
“Huh.”
More than he’d thought. More than he’d ever would’ve guessed, if he were honest.
And that worried him. People didn’t go around offering that kind of cash for a ceremonial goblet or a bit of bewitched crystal. Whatever Tamsyn was here to get, it had to have serious magic attached to it.
Tamsyn must’ve picked up what he was thinking from his expression, because she leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper: “It’s a piece of jewelry. Some ugly brooch called Y Seren.”
“The Star,” Bowen translated, and she nodded, pulling her phone out of the little handbag still dangling on her shoulder.
“See?” she said, showing him the screen.
The brooch was definitely ugly, a gaudy cluster of rubies, emeralds, and diamonds, and Bowen was slightly relieved that he’d never heard of the thing before, never seen it. He’d spent his life eyeballs-deep in the arcane—if this thing were dangerous, surely he would know about it.
“What, no gruff warning?” Tamsyn asked, pulling the phone back. “No long and gruesome legend about how this brooch actually melts eyeballs and flays skin or something?”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Bowen replied, scratching the side of his neck. While he’d kept his beard, he’d cleaned it up a little for this wedding, something Tamsyn only just seemed to be noticing.
He didn’t miss it, the way her eyes moved over his face now, just like he hadn’t missed the little flare of . . . something in her gaze that hadn’t just been panic when she’d turned around and seen him standing there in the hallway.
For the first time, it occurred to him that he and Tamsyn would be in this house for the next few days, tucked into this dark and gloomy castle in the Welsh countryside. There would be roaring fires, and walks through the woods, and probably more fucking mistletoe, and yeah, Bowen suddenly realized he had a lot more to worry about on this trip than Tamsyn attempting to steal a piece of jewelry.
Clearing his throat, Bowen sat up straighter, his hands clasped in front of him. “You’ll need my help,” he told her. “Getting that thing. If it belongs to the Merediths, then they’ve probably done Rhiannon only knows what kind of magic on it.”
Tamsyn frowned but didn’t object.
At least not out loud.
Instead, she asked, “Are you friends with them? Is that why you’re here?”
“Never met them,” Bowen said with a shrug, and the silence stretched out between them for several loud ticks of the clock.
“Soooo . . .” Tamsyn drawled, propping her chin in her hand. “No more to that, then? No explanation, no backstory, for what you’re doing here?”
He thought about telling her the truth, thought about mentioning Declan and the whole mess, but instead he heard himself say, “Representing my family. Old witch family shite, basically.”
Tamsyn nodded, those crazy earrings of hers swaying again, and opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, there was a distant howling from somewhere in the house that had her bolting up in her seat, her face going a little pale.
The sound rose: a thin, keening noise that could’ve been mistaken for the wind if it didn’t make your blood freeze and every hair on your body stand on end.
Then it suddenly stopped, and the silence was somehow even eerier than the noise had been.
“What . . .” Tamsyn started, then stopped, swallowed hard, and began again. “What was that?”
Bowen had asked himself that same thing when he’d heard the wailing noise not ten minutes after he’d arrived. He’d also wondered why the third-floor hallway was so cold you could see your breath.
By the time he’d seen an antique vase rise about an inch or so off a rosewood end table in the library, he’d understood.
“Ghost,” he told Tamsyn now, and she turned those wide brown eyes back on him, her lips parting.
Sighing, Bowen sunk lower on his stool. “So we have a wedding to witness, a brooch to steal, and on top of that, place is
haunted as fuck.”
Chapter 6
Sir Madoc had been wrong about the water at Tywyll House—it was plenty hot, steaming up the bathroom and turning Tamsyn’s skin rosy as she lay in a claw-footed tub that was bigger than the Ford Fiesta that had been her first car.
Too bad she was pretty sure lava wouldn’t be warm enough to chase the chill out of her bones.
It wasn’t just the house itself or the frigid and wet December evening, although those things definitely hadn’t helped. It was Bowen’s words there in the kitchen—place is haunted as fuck—that were making her shiver even as sweat beaded her forehead.
“You are a Bad Bitch,” she reminded herself, sinking a little deeper into the water. “You’re not gonna say the I ain’t afraid of no ghosts thing, but you’re going to think it. Except you just said it because you’re talking to yourself again, which is definitely a sign that you are not feeling your Baddest and Bitchiest.”
It was just that . . . well, ghosts freaked her out. She’d never actually seen one, but she’d felt one, and that had been enough to last her a lifetime. Even now, she could remember the heaviness that had settled over her room at the B-and-B where she’d been hiding out after getting the Eurydice Candle from Vivienne Jones. There hadn’t been any floating spirit or strange noises, just that feeling like the air itself was pressing down on her and a frigid iciness that had slithered through multiple layers of clothing.
