They settle on a small seaside hotel called The Pearl. Its facade is similar to the Whitmore house but it is painted white and polished from years of ocean wind.
The inside is not a quaint seaside cottage, however, and Harvest suspects there is a hint of mischief in the wooden beams and limestone walls. The front hall is adorned with seaside landscapes that, if stared at for a little too long, begin to reflect the weather outside, with a shoreline that looks eerily similar to the one that stretches beyond The Pearl’s back patio.
There is a crack of lightning as the door closes behind them, and Harvest brushes her hair out of her eyes, wiping a few stray raindrops from her cheeks. Quinn slicks back his hair, looking oddly composed despite the annoyance rolling off his shoulders. The employee at the front desk greets them warmly, ignoring Quinn’s icy glare while she confirms vacancies and takes their details. She reaches out to accept payment, her fingers curled with one too many knuckle joints. Quinn relents with a huff, handing over his credit card while mumbling about expense reports.
By the time Harvest finds herself in the cozy single room with a handmade green quilt and plush pink rug, the storm is directly over the island. She plugs her phone into the complementary phone charger, ignoring several texts from Ezra. She sends a quick message to Ronan, letting him know that she won’t be home tonight. He responds with a frowning face, followed quickly by But is there only one room available? It is punctuated by a winking face, and she laughs despite herself.
Quinn’s room is next to hers, so she knows he has the same view of the beach below. She peers out of the balcony doors, watching the palm trees bend against the squall. A boom of thunder reverberates against the windows. She doesn’t realize that she’s clutching her torso so tightly until her wrist begins to bother her.
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Although his back is to the door, he knows when Harvest enters the hotel bar. He can smell her floral scent—white flowers in the morning—and hear the particular timbre of her heartbeat.
For a minute, he thinks that she hasn’t seen him, or perhaps she doesn’t want to sit with him, but then she slides into the chair across from him with a glass of white wine for herself and a whiskey for him.
She’s removed the bandage from her neck, and Quinn can see the bite from Roderick, now just two pinpricks of red scabs nestled in a pale green bruise. It’s healing quickly, thanks to Burrows’s expertise, but the sight of it still causes a clenched sort of anger in his chest. Still, Harvest’s eyes are framed by dark smudges, and her smile is thin, fighting against a yawn at the back of her throat.
The bar is warm, and Harvest has left her jacket upstairs, leaving her in a form-fitting long-sleeve shirt. Quinn feels oddly formal, even though he has foregone his waistcoat and tie, leaving him in a white Oxford with the top few buttons undone and sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
He thanks her, and they clink their glasses together. The whiskey is a poor substitute for what he actually needs, but the bar is out of stock for the evening. He lets the liquor slide down his throat, coating his gums with notes of cinnamon and oak. His phone buzzes, and he looks down at it briefly, reading the I can’t do this anymore from Burrows before he turns it over, screen down.
He doesn’t miss the slight arch of Harvest’s eyebrow, as she, too, sees the message, noting how quick he is to dismiss it.
“We had plans,” he finds himself saying. “She’s not happy I canceled.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize you two…”
He shrugs. “It’s casual.”
“Does she know that?”
He makes a vague noise in the back of his throat and takes a sip of whiskey. “Ezra called me earlier.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you want to know what we talked about?”
Not that it was anything particularly interesting, he thinks. Ezra had only called to ask about Harvest since she hadn’t been answering his phone calls, a fact that made Quinn inordinately happy.
He always knew his friend had a bit of a temper, but the anger that flowed so easily the other night was disconcerting at best. She’s better off without him.
She shrugs and looks away, watching raindrops pelt against the window. “Only if it’s related to the investigation.”
He rolls his eyes. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“So?” She looks at him sharply. “Lying isn’t an admirable skill.”
“Sure it is,” he says. He leans forward, elbows on the table. “Lies keep relationships intact. It’s honesty that tears people apart.”
Her eyes, forever giving away her thoughts, narrow. “And forces sisters to skip town without a forwarding address, right?”
“Exactly,” he says with a smug smile. “That’s where you went wrong.”
“I didn’t do anything. Ezra is the one who told her.”
“Yeah, but you would have told her eventually. You’re not made for guilt.”
She holds his gaze for a second longer before sighing heavily and turning her head away with a shake. The storm outside seems to be lessening and moving toward the mainland. Her mind is lost, drifting away like the storm above.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Silence grows between them until she reaches for her glass of wine and inhales sharply against a sudden jolt of pain in her wrist.
“What’s wrong?”
“Spell-burn from earlier.”
“It’s not healing?”
She shakes her head, peeling back the sleeve of her shirt. “It’s almost getting worse.”
“You’ll get it checked out when we get back?”
She nods, pulling her sleeve down again. She takes a sip of her wine before glancing out of the window. “I can’t stop thinking about Amy,” she confesses quietly. She looks at him, her eyes too bright in the low light of the bar. He can feel her tears even though they haven’t spilled from her eyes. “I know I shouldn’t make assumptions, but what if she had been in trouble when we questioned her? I was so focused on looking for Hazel, that I didn’t really look at her.”
“It’s not your fault,” he says. “Unless you’ve been hiding something from me. You can’t see the future, right?”
“No, but I could see her aura.” She takes a deep breath, looking down at her wine glass as she twists it between her thumb and forefinger. “I completely dismissed her because of it. Because I couldn’t see any magic in her.”
She finally looks up at him, and Quinn is struck with the realization that Harvest feels guilty. She dismissed Amy due to a preconceived notion of what she should have been looking for and, in turn, only perpetuated the feelings of isolation that Amy’s parents had mentioned.
The thought lodges itself in the back of his throat, and he shifts forward in his chair, marginally sorry for needling her about guilt only a few minutes before.
“Could she have had magic, then?” he asks cautiously. “Maybe you missed it.”
“Magic just doesn’t show up, though. You’re born with it or not.”
“What if it’s something new? Angel called earlier and said the portal analysis showed signs of witchcraft. Maybe Amy had a gift you’ve never seen before?”
“I suppose that’s possible,” she says quietly. “What good will I be as an agent if I come into crime scenes expecting to see something? I should have kept an open mind. I should have observed more before passing judgment and moving on.”
He nods slowly. “Yes.” He finishes his whiskey, setting the glass down with a thunk. “But it wasn’t a crime scene. It wasn’t even an investigation. You weren’t on the clock.”
She hums reluctantly. “But I am now—on the clock that is—and I won’t let you down.”
“It’s not me you have to worry about. It’s Amy,” he says softly.
She nods, eyes downcast. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to apologize to you.” She looks up at him. “I’m sorry for getting you involved in this. It’s gotten a bit bigger than I thought it would.”
“Why did you ask me?” he asks. “You could have gone to your Aunt for this.”
She shrugs, cheeks flushed. “I didn’t want to get my family’s hopes up. If we started looking for Hazel again and we didn’t find her…plus, you were interested. In me, that is. Before Ezra and I got engaged. I thought you’d be more willing to help me than other agents.”
He grins. “And you thought what? You flutter your eyelashes a bit and I’m willing to do anything? Give me some credit, Rosenbloom,” he says. “Herman’s investigation never sat well with me. I wanted to give it a proper go.” He shakes his head and picks up her empty glass. “Next round is on me.”
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They stay chatting at the table by the window for another round of drinks before moving to sit on a couch on the opposite side of the room. The storm is still going, turning the sky into a bloom of purple flecked with pale green clouds. The bar has filled up. Soft murmurs and the clink of glasses mix with the patter of rain against the window.
Altogether, the small crowd is a vigil burning in the depths of the descending night, from the group of witches huddled in the corner to the demon and pixie talking to the bartender, heads thrown back in laughter. There is even a vampire and a witch huddled in the corner, clearly on a date that is going well. Harvest whispers that she thinks it’s a first date, but Quinn is adamant that it’s a third date. “Too familiar with each other,” he says into his whiskey.
Quinn goes up to order another drink and some food for Harvest. Does she ever eat, he wonders as he tries to ignore the sound of her stomach. Then again, he isn’t much better than her. He knows it was his hunger that made him short with Amy’s parents earlier, not to mention his outburst with the ferry attendant.
His teeth are sharp and ready for a meal he won’t get tonight.
He pushes the emptiness aside and chats with the bartender for a few minutes, engaging in random bits of small talk that he immediately forgets.
Quinn returns with another glass of white wine and a sandwich for her. Perhaps it is the three glasses she has already had, but the food is an unexpected gesture that makes her blush. That is, until he says, “I could hear your stomach growling from across the room, little witch.”
She scowls at him but still takes a bite. “You know, Dominic told me about you,” she says.
“Oh, yes?”
“He told me he’s known you since before you both became vampires, which, as he hinted, was an extremely long time ago. He told me you weren’t hired under the normal Bureau employment contract. You swore an oath, which is why you’re an agent in the first place. He wouldn’t say why you swore the oath, though.”
“And you want to know?”
She shakes her head. “Only if you want to share with me. Though I am curious about that ring of yours. No, he said that I could trust you to always do the right thing. Eventually.”
He laughs lightly. “And what else did dear Dominic tell you?” he asks, leaning closer to her. He knows it’s a dangerous thing to do, filling his senses with her scent and letting the tingle of her body heat linger on his skin. He’s far too hungry, and he’s only putting them both in a precarious position.
But it is his hunger that encourages him, his hunger that reaches out and brushes the back of his fingers against her neck, just beyond the fading evidence of Roderick’s bite. It would be easy to reopen those wounds. The skin is already broken. He trails his fingers upward, settling them right below her earlobe. His thumb rests right behind her ear, feeling her pulse through the softness of her skin.
Harvest’s caramel eyes sparkle with mischief as she leans closer. But it’s not the magical spark of a witch. It is a glint of playfulness, accompanied by a teasing lilt of her lips as she brings them closer to his ear. He can feel her heartbeat echoing against his sternum. “You really are just a shameless flirt and I shouldn’t trust any compliments from you,” she says.
He laughs softly and leans back, schooling his expression into something more professional. After all, he is still a senior agent. “You’re one to talk. Fluttering eyelashes, remember.”
Yet the boundary his distance puts between them doesn’t soften the suggestiveness of his smile or the piercing gaze of his eyes, half-lidded and slightly golden in this light.
She can tell he’s hungry, and he registers the sudden stiffness of her posture as she realizes how close her neck is to his mouth and how quickly he can reach over and sink his teeth into her flesh. He thinks briefly of grabbing her wrist, sending his thoughts into her head, telling her that his bite isn’t something to be afraid of.
But blood taken by force never tastes quite as good to Quinn.
And besides, he would never do that to Harvest. He pushes the instinct down.
“It’s late,” he says. “We should get to bed.”
The frankness of his voice seems to shift something in her, and she lets out a breath, eyebrows raised at his phrasing. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she says, standing up and moving toward the exit.