Magic Rises

Kate. The fresh young thing on the pier? She even wore white.”
    “And?”
    “Nothing at all, dear. Just reflecting on the color. How virginal and bridal.”
    Yes. I’d noticed. If they were trying to influence Curran by shoving Lorelei under his nose, they weren’t very subtle about it.
    “Yours is the first door on the right. Andrea, you and Raphael are across from them. The rest of us are just down the hall,” Aunt B said. “The sound really carries through here. You can hear practically everything, so if you call we’ll come running.”
    Got it. Nothing said in the rooms would be private, and our hosts were likely listening really hard. “Good to know.”
    “I’ve checked and the dinner is a formal affair. Do wear a dress, Kate.”
    I killed a growl, and Andrea and I went down the hallway.
    “We’ve worked worse jobs,” Andrea said.
    “Mm-hm. This whole place doesn’t feel right to me.”
    “I’m with you,” she said.
    We reached my door. I waited until Andrea opened hers across the hall and went inside, and then I stepped into our room and shut the door behind me.
    A sizable room, as far as bedrooms went, with tapestries and rugs on the stone walls. An open door offered access to the bathroom on the left. A large wooden poster canopy bed waited in the center, complete with silk pillows and gauzy purple curtains. It looked like something out of the historical romances Andrea liked to read.
    Curran came out of the bathroom.
    I nodded at the bed. “Someone robbed an ancient music video.”
    “I know. It creaks like a sonovabitch, too.”
    “Great. If we decide to make love, we might as well just get down to it in the hallway. Half of the castle will know about it anyway.”
    Curran closed the distance between us. His voice was a quiet whisper in my ear. “There are no peepholes that I can see, but someone is listening to us. I heard him breathing through the wall.”
    So we were trapped in this stone cage, with a pack of unstable shapeshifters, trying to protect a woman in need of urgent psychological help, and spies were listening to our every breath.
    I put my arms around Curran and leaned my head against his shoulder. “Have I ever told you how much I like the Keep?”
    “No.”
    “I love it.”
    He grinned. “Even the stairs?”
    “Especially the stairs.” The stairs separated our top floor from everybody else, and the walls were soundproof.
    He kissed me. His lips sealed my mouth and the world stopped for a long moment. When we came up for air, I didn’t care if anybody was listening to us. Little golden sparks danced in Curran’s eyes. He didn’t care either.
    “Do we have time?” he asked.
    I looked at the clock. Twenty before ten. “No. We’ll be late.”
    “Tonight, then.”
    I grinned at him. “It’s a date.”
    Guard Desandra, get the panacea, go home. A simple plan. All we had to do was get through it.
    * * *
    The dinner took place in a colossal great hall, and I walked into it with my hand on Curran’s arm. The Beast Lord wore a black suit and a gray shirt. Curran always stopped me in my tracks, whether he wore jeans and a T-shirt, sweatpants, or nothing at all, but this was new. Custom-cut, the suit flattered him while allowing for freedom of movement, and if he had to change shape, the weak seams ensured that the suit would come apart with minimal effort.
    In all of our time together I had seen him in a formal suit exactly twice, including today. Curran could be described in many ways: dangerous, powerful . . . insufferable. “Elegant” usually wasn’t one of the adjectives used, and as he walked next to me, I wished I had a camera so I could commemorate the moment. And then blackmail him with it.
    He shrugged again.
    “You keep doing it, the suit will fall apart.”
    “I should’ve worn jeans.”
    “Then I’d look ridiculous next to you.” I should’ve worn jeans, too.
    “Baby, you never look ridiculous.”
    “Smart man,” Aunt B volunteered behind us.
    I wore a black dress. Like Curran’s suit, it was custom-made for me by the Pack’s tailors specifically for the trip. The elastic fabric hugged me like a glove, giving a deceiving impression that it was constraining. The artfully draped skirt fell in straight lines, hiding the fact that it opened enough to let me kick an attacker taller than me in the head, and the diagonal strap over my right shoulder ensured that the dress wouldn’t fall off if I had to move fast. The dress also had to