Corrigan Politics by Helen Harper

Author:Helen Harper [Harper, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Mack didn’t trust me. That much was obvious. Bloody hell, it had always been obvious. I didn’t think it was a conscious effort to feel that way though. In fact, I reckoned that if she examined her feelings closely enough she’d realise that I’d done nothing except provide her with help and support when she’d needed it. Let’s face it, it was one of the reasons why Staines was so frustrated by my behaviour around her. But if he could see that I was bending over backwards to accommodate her and her needs, then sooner or later she would too. I just had to be smarter about it. I’d failed with the flowers but that was because the mages and the Fae had sent gifts too. I had to do something more personal. Something more obvious. I had to get her to confront what she really felt and thought. Damned flirt that Solus was, I did think he was being genuine when he’d come to the Tower of London and said she was in love with me. I didn’t want to be overly optimistic, of course. He hadn’t been lying – the Fae couldn’t lie outright, even if they wanted to. Still, unless I could come up with the right plan to get her to recognise her own feelings, then I was never going to win. I knew deep in my bones that getting Mack to trust me would open up a whole world of possibilities.

By the time I reached the clearing again, the two mages were standing on the edge of the blackened ground and chanting. Lucy was only a few feet away, eyeing them with typical shifter suspicion.

‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘They seem to think they can use some kind of allusion spell to cover it up temporarily.’

‘Illusion,’ I corrected, realising just how insular we were sometimes. If we cooperated better with the Ministry then problems like Charles using them to summon a wyrm wouldn’t occur and shifters like Lucy would have a better understanding of their capabilities. The trouble was that I had no idea how to go about achieving that level of understanding. Being able to conduct a civil conversation with the Arch-Mage was one thing. Actually maintaining good relations with all the mages was something else. We needed to see each other as individuals rather than members of separate amorphous groups.

‘What are their names?’

Lucy looked surprised at my question. ‘Uh, he’s Max.’ She pointed. ‘And the other one is Larkin.’

‘They seem nice.’

Her brow furrowed slightly. ‘I guess. They keep getting in my way.’

‘Work with them,’ I told her. ‘Not against them.’

There was a mutter from behind. I turned round, my eyes narrowing as human Aubrey darted back behind his tree.

‘He was that vampire,’ Lucy muttered. ‘But he’s definitely human now.’

‘So I hear.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand it.’

I forced myself to remain where I was. The temptation to go and shake the living daylights out of Aubrey was just far too tempting.

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