Page 28 of Bombshell

I felt disgust for the man in front of me.

My vines slipped out from underneath my blouse and shoved James away hard enough to make the wizard stumble back and nearly fall flat on his ass. It was only my vines wrapping around his arms and legs that kept his tailbone from connecting with the fancy herringbone wood floors.

“I see that’s one part of you that hasn’t changed, Finch,” James said, staring balefully at the vines. “Still haven’t cut those off yet?”

My back stiffened at the mention of it. It had been decades since someone suggested cutting off the eight vines that had lived on my back since birth. Many of the older witches in the coven used to whisper behind their hands wondering why Alexander had let me keep them in the first place.

A few weeks before I ran away from home I’d actually considered it and had even tried to hack at one with a pair of manicure scissors but had stopped when it hurt too much. That vine still bore the scars from it decades later and it had been the beginning of the end of my time here in this mansion.

Shaking off the haunted memories I glared at him. “I’m not the same girl who you and your cronies used to bully, asshole.”

James’ lips thinned as he pressed them together. “Effie—”

His words were cut off by the sound of rapid footsteps coming down the hallway. “James, are you bothering Effie?”

Odette flew into view as she came from around the corner, the long golden plait of her hair flying behind her as she skidded to a stop in front of us, her blue eyes flashing with irritation at the wizard currently still wrapped in my vines.

“Clearly I’m not bothering her. Can’t you see I’m the one in vine bondage?” James asked dryly, grunting when the vines tightened even more. “Finch, I gotta say this is not something that turns me on, I much prefer being stepped on instead.”

I grimaced at that, my vines coming undone and curling back up underneath my shirt. “You are disgusting.”

“He really is.” Odette said as she slid her arm through mine and tugged me away from James and down the hallway toward her bedroom. “Don’t talk to Effie, James, she doesn’t like you and neither do I.”

As if to punctuate her words, Odette stuck her tongue out at him like a small child before her pretty wings flipped up and blocked James from looking at either of us.

“Oh, come on Odie, I get you’re mad but do you really need to do the wing privacy screen?”

Odette ignored him, pulling me into her bedroom and shutting the door with asnap.

I turned to gape at her. “Odie? Don’t tell me you’re actually friends with him? You used tohatehim.”

“Well, when your father only lets a very small number of people in the mansion and even fewer are allowed to see you, then you make do with who you have to talk to,” Odette sniffed primly, turning her irritation onto me. She looked more stressed than I’d ever seen her—her usual fluffy sundress and ridiculously coiffed hair gone and in their place was a pair of yoga pants and a flowy top.

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” I surrendered, immediately feeling guilty because I’d been the one to leave Odette behind. “But, still,Jamesof all people?”

When I felt lonely fifty years ago I’d been able to run away without Alexander dragging me back. But Odette? Odette was truly stuck in this mansion. There was no mistaking that Arsenio loved his daughter—in fact I was pretty sure she was the only thing the mayoractuallycared about—but that also meant that he kept her in this very pretty gilded cage when most fae children were able to leave their parents after their first few decades of life.

Odette was only a few years younger than me, but she hadn’t changed much in the time I was gone and Arsenio was to blame for that.

“He’s not that bad,” Odette said, rolling her blue eyes as she returned to sit at the stool pulled up at a massive drafting table that had several layers of sketches strewn across it. “He comes to visit and tell me stories. Did you know he’s traveled to every country in the world to train with other witches?”

I really didn’t care what James Reid did in his free time as long as he stayed the hell away from me.

But despite the decades between our friendship Ididstill care about Odette.

Or, at least I cared enough to change the subject to something lighter.

“Are these the sketches you wanted to show me?” I asked a bit too loudly, cutting off whatever she was going to say about James and his travels next.

Odette blinked because, while she was naive about most things in the world, even she knew when to let something go.

“Right, yes these are them!” Odette flipped the cover on the massive sketchbook and I immediately recoiled from the imagery on the page. It was the image of a man dragging his fingers down the flesh of his face, pulling his lower eyelids taut as he screamed.

Odette, oblivious to my shock, began to chatter excitedly about her art. “I go back and forth between drawing on my tablet and paper and pencil, but this week I’ve been working with charcoal…”

She continued to flip, showing gory image after gory image, her blue eyes sparkling with happiness as she talked about the composition and pointed things out to me.

Meanwhile I was too busy trying to reconcile Odette’s sweet image with the dark portraits in front of me.

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