they found a baby under a cabbage leaf. Except, I wasn’t a baby when she found me. Later, I realized her story was true.”
For a long moment, Chandler was too stunned to speak. “You’re kidding? On a ferryboat in Burlington?”
He nodded. “She’s never actually told me it was here. But I know it’s true.” He looked down. “When I was a kid, I liked to pretend my adoptive mom worked for the FBI, that I was a famous child who got handed off to her on a boat and sent into hiding. Or, I was an alien child, a black Superman.”
Chandler would have laughed, except Lionel’s tone was dead serious. Besides, maybe he wasn’t a witch and didn’t have magic in his blood, but this foundling story was strange. In fact, it qualified as uncanny, especially when combined with him developing the sight from being bespelled by Rhianna. “What makes you so sure it’s true?”
“I vaguely remember the ferry,” he said. “For a long time, I thought it came from hearing my mom repeatedly tell the story of finding me on the wet deck and hiding me under a blanket.” He stared past her toward the monkey heart. His voice quieted, barely above a whisper. “In my heart, I always knew the memory of the ferry was real. Um—I lived a lot of places, but that ferry was always in the back of my mind. Finally, I decided to write a travel article to justify searching for it. “Car Ferries of New England.” I thought, if I visited all the ferries in New England, I might recognize one. If that didn’t work, then I’d expand my search westward until I found the boat.”
“But aren’t all ferries pretty much identical—other than size?”
“Some are on fresh water. Some ocean… Different smells. Different vibes.”
Different vibes. Chandler rubbed the triskelion’s cord between her fingers. Now he was sounding like a witch. “And you found the ferry. Here. In Burlington?”
He nodded. “My birth certificate says Boston, Massachusetts. I started my search there, then I went to Connecticut and Maine.”
Chandler thought for a second. “Does your mom know you’re here now?”
“She thinks I’m in Stowe working on an article about tourism.” He hesitated. “But there’s something about Burlington that speaks to me, beyond the ferries…”
She handed Lionel the necklace. “Like black dogs?” she said it jokingly, to clear the tension from the air. But she’d noticed something else. His speech was smoother, and his thought process faster than it had been earlier. “Are you feeling better?”
“Very much so. It’s from being around all of you. I felt this way with the goth, too. And when I came here to the complex last night, and the other time, before the high priestess—I mean, before Rhianna put the spell on me.”
Before she put the spell on him? “I didn’t think you had a hard time putting your thoughts together until after the spell?”
“I didn’t. But I’ve always daydreamed a lot, zoned out. But not with the goth or here.” He slipped the leather cord over his neck and tucked the triskelion under his shirt. “It’s the magic. It keeps me in the moment. Totally present.” He rested his hand against his chest, pressing the triskelion over his heart. “This feels wonderful, like the chime of grasshoppers on my skin and in my head. It is like yoga without the work.”
She did laugh at that. “That’s the strangest way anyone’s ever described my energy.”
His eyes met hers. And in the soft light of the workshop, she could see what a truly beautiful man he was. Everything about him was long and narrow, but all the proportions worked. The smoothness and tone of his skin was more stunning than the darkest brushed bronze she’d ever seen. His lips were satiny. If she’d drawn a likeness of his face in college, her art professors would have criticized the bone structure for being too impossibly flawless.
A gleam sparked in his eyes and his lips twitched into a goofy smile. “Um—sometime, would you like to go out for dinner?”
She stared at him, shocked. Okay, she liked him. Physically he was more than a little appealing. But where had that come from? “Ah—no.”
He raised a hand to ward off the words. “Sorry. I thought… I am an idiot. I completely get it. I am not exactly—”
“It’s not you. I just—” Shit. It was her fault. He’d misinterpreted the way she looked at him, again. “I couldn’t even consider going out with anyone right now, not with everything that’s going on. I need to focus on Peregrine.” That was politely general and true. But it also wasn’t the answer her body wanted to give. It whispered that spending alone time with Lionel could be a lot of fun. She liked tall men. She liked thin men. He made her smile. She’d dated black men before, and guys with energy that hadn’t been anywhere near as tempting as his. For Goddess’s sake, the guy had thrown himself over her and Peregrine in the alley to protect them from a hellhound. Peregrine even seemed to like him.
However, there was a huge issue. Once they corrected the damage Rhianna’s spell had caused and were satisfied that Lionel would remain quiet about magic and the witching world, then he’d have to go back to Boston or even farther away—somewhere his connection to them would be permanently severed, like Gar had suggested. Severed so completely that the Council could never catch wind of any involvement between him and their world. It wasn’t fair to encourage Lionel into thinking there could ever be a place for him here, by agreeing to a date or even a one-time fling.
“Hey,” Devlin said, walking into the workshop.
Chandler let out a relieved breath. “Perfect timing. I was about to call you.”
Devlin frowned as if he sensed he’d intruded on something. “What’s going on?”
Chandler glanced toward Lionel, careful to not let her eyes linger this time. Now that she thought about it, Lionel wasn’t so much a good-looking version of Ichabod Crane as a wild-haired version of a taller and younger John Legend. Really nice.
She clenched her teeth, driving that thought from her head, and instead focused on Devlin. “I finished the charm. It should help until Chloe and Em find the spell.”
“That’s great.” Devlin turned to Lionel. “I’m not sure if you’re fully aware of the extent of the danger the sight poses. Fae don’t like it when people can see them. They don’t just attack. They’ll aim to kill, or at a minimum, blind you.”
Lionel’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “More like a horror movie than Disney?”
“Exactly.” Devlin rested back on his heels. “After you left to come out here, we discussed your situation a bit more. If it’s okay with Chandler, we’d like to invite you to stay at the complex until we find the spell and perform it. No charge. Free food and wi-fi. We’re worried about your safety. Wearing a triskelion is smart. But it’s not a guarantee.”
“Good idea,” Chandler said. After the “want to go to dinner” thing, him staying at the complex would be a little awkward. But they were adults and she didn’t want to see Lionel in danger. Besides, last week when Brooklyn and Midas had paid Lionel a visit to discover if he truly was a threat to the witching world’s anonymity, they’d said the motel he was staying at was a cockroach pit.
Lionel shook his head. “I appreciate the offer. But I have to say no.” He hugged his arms close to his chest. “I want to go
