“Trick? Why the hell did you no’ use that trick a hundred years ago to get me out of here? I took the fall for us back then.”
Guilt flashed in Loki’s dark eyes. “I didn’t have it then. In fact, I only recently obtained it.”
Ian
frowned. “The trade with the god? That was about getting me out of prison? I thought you planned for me to escape after I retrieved the book.”
“You’re right. I hadn’t intended to come here.” Loki looked around the small stone cell, his brow furrowed with distaste. “I wanted the charm that gets me past the university enchantments for other reasons. But my damn conscience kept tugging at me.”
“You do have one, you know, no matter how much you might protest.” And Logan always did protest. True, he did whatever the hell he wanted and his own endgame was always of the utmost importance, but whenever he’d been given an opportunity to do right, Ian had watched him take it.
“Thinking of you still in here, after all these years.” Logan shook his head, regret plain on his face. “You saved my life when we first met, and again when you took the blame for what happened at the museum. And you’ve kept my identity a secret. I should have tried harder to do something sooner. To get you out of here. We were partners.”
“Aye, we were.” They had been good times.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on Fiona.”
Ian’s heart thudded.
“She’s miserable,” Loki said. “Tries to visit you, weeps all the time in her cottage. She recently left Scotland, headed I don’t know where.”
Misery surged through Ian’s veins. “Then let’s get out of here.”
“We can’t.”
“Shite. ’Course not.” The cell had magic in place that would alert the guards if it were ever empty when it wasn’t supposed to be. “Why the hell did you join me here if you canna get us out?”
Green mist swirled around Logan until Ian was looking at a mirror image of himself. Same face, same build, same clothes covered in the dirt of hell.
“Because it’s my turn.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Three days later
Off the coast of Spain
Fiona stared morosely at the horizon. Blazing sun beat down on the little boat, a rusted barge that had seen better days and now floated tranquilly on the deep blue Mediterranean. Spain could be seen a couple miles away, flat and baking in the sun.
The tropical heat should have made her feel better. It didn’t.
“Are you okay?” Claire asked.
Fiona turned to look at her colleague. She’d been paired with Claire on this project a week ago. Their job was to find an ancient Greek artifact on the shipwreck below and return it to the university for conservation. They were based in a little town called Murcia that was so full of pink British tourists that Fiona felt like she’d never left Scotland. Even the nice weather and nicer food couldn’t keep her mind off home.
“Fine,” Fiona said, trying to distract herself from her misery. The fact that she didn’t have the clearance to visit Ian made it even worse. No one could visit prisoners in that ward. She’d tried every day to visit him and been stopped at the desk. It had driven her crazy with misery until she could barely get off her couch.
When the university had wanted to send her on this project with Claire, she’d jumped at the chance to get into a new environment, hoping that it would break the cycle of ice cream eating while sniffling—she was a total cliché—and weeping into Fluffy Black’s fur.
Her heart had stung unbearably when she’d boarded the plane for Spain, and landing in Cartagena hadn’t made her feel any better. At least Fluffy Black could come with her. Years ago, after a terrible illness, Fluffy had been bespelled to be immortal. Like a witch’s familiar, but without the magic. She was connected to Fiona in a way that allowed her to follow Fiona on her trips, move from place to place, and not get put out like a normal cat.
She helped Fiona cope, even when she felt like an idiot for mourning a man she’d known for so short a time. And Claire had been really nice, she realized absently. She’d kept Fiona company while she’d drowned her sorrows in pints of Estrella and plates of tapas in the evening. The chill water always snapped her into work mode the next day, and it became easy to help Claire find the historic treasures she sought for the university collections.
The artifact at their feet was their biggest find of all, easily located at the edge of a small ballast pile and under some sand. Without her bloodhound senses for artifacts, it would have taken mortal archaeologists months or years to properly excavate and find the thing. For Fiona, it was the work of a dive, even when she was distracted by thoughts of Ian. The artifact they’d just found—another ancient computer-like device like the Greek Antikythera mechanism—should have thrilled her. It didn’t. She could barely care.
“Seriously, Fiona. I haven’t known you long, but I can tell you’re totally bummed about something,” Claire said.
Bummed was one way to put it, Fiona thought, as she looked out at the flat blue ocean. She’d been reinstated as an Acquirer for the Department of Magical Devices for two and a half weeks. Ian had been back in prison for three.