Page 7 of Amber Gambler

“Laughing? No. Smiling? Yes.” He tapped his stylus. “You’re on a roll. Don’t stop now.”

All I could figure was he found it amusing for a former con artist such as myself to try thinking like a cop.

“I should have called Carter,” I grumbled, aware his redcap training officer wasn’t an option until after she detoxed from getting a small taste of my blood. “I could have bought her help with cheddar puffs.”

“I sent her a care package full of them last week.” His gaze went distant. “She’s due back in a few days.”

“Oh?” A lump wedged in my throat. “And is she still feeling…murderous…toward me?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

As my mouth dropped open and hung there, he released a rusty chuckle while savoring my shock.

“Do you honestly think I would let her anywhere near you if she wasn’t cured?”

“I don’t know.” I studied his familiar and yet unfamiliar face. “You tell me.”

“You’ve seen the lengths I’ll go to for you.” His voice turned hoarse. “Carter has her urges under control.”

Uncertain if he meant breaking up with me when we were young, his moving to Seattle to put the entire country between us, or coming to my rescue the night he lost his only family to his own bullet, I couldn’t find words to make any of that better or easier for him. So, like a coward, I focused on the second halfof his sentence and slapped a smile on my face to mask the other competing emotions.

“Are we talking blood or cheddar puffs?”

“Definitely the former.” He took the out he was given. “The latter is what keeps her sane.”

“I suspect you and I have very different ideas of what qualifies as sanity.”

A shadow crossed his features, and he dipped his head, burdened with heavy thoughts.

Too late, I bit my tongue, but there was no salvaging the mood. I had to forge ahead. Or pretend to go to the little necromancer’s room then slip out the back door, drive to Maine, and start a new life under an assumed name. I could always send for my siblings later, right?

“I have all I need to get started on locating Audrey.” He rose from his chair slowly, eyes on me, giving me a chance to voice some magical combination of words that would convince him to stay. “I’ll call after I’ve dug around some, okay?” He pushed open the door, breathing in the fresh air. “It was good seeing you.”

From the direction of his gaze, and a familiar indignant squawk, I wasn’t sure if he meant me…or Badb.

The driveto Bonaventure that night left me melancholy for reasons I didn’t want to examine too closely. Sure, I rocked out with Badb and Pascal, I smiled and I laughed, but a cold stone had settled in my belly. I couldn’t get Harrow out of my head since he left, and not for lack of trying. I wished I could rewind time. I would take back the desperate call and let him return to a life that didn’t include me.

Learning the truth might have changed my perspective of him, of our tangled past, but he had lived with the knowledge all these years. It no longer held sway over him. He had moved on, and I should have too.

All thewhat-ifsandmight-have-beensin the world couldn’t fix us. Breaks that weren’t set properly don’t heal right. And losing Lyle? That had shattered Harrow. To be the one who killed him? Yeah. Harrow was better off sticking to Savannah while I kept to its outskirts. Maybe I would get lucky and he would sell his inheritance—his childhood home and cars and whatever else—then return to Seattle for good.

But that was selfish thinking. He had already given up his hometown for me once. I would never ask that of him. I didn’t have the right, though he wouldn’t see it that way. He was free to pursue his life any way he chose. He could embrace his witch heritage without shame, settle down without harsh judgment on who he chose to love, fully come into himself without criticism or prejudices tearing him down.

“You still care about him, huh?”

Pascal, unable to quit meddling, another trait he had in common with Matty, eyed me with pity.

“Hard not to when you have a past like ours.”

“No matter his reasons, no matter the circumstances, he chose to leave.”

I hummed in answer, not ready to explain Harrow had been given two bad choices.

Stay with me, knowing Lyle wouldn’t have stopped until I was behind bars, or let me go, knowing I would hate him for breaking my heart. He would have lost me either way. His sacrifice was for me. Not himself.

“That’s the sound of you ignoring my sage wisdom.” A sigh whistled between his teeth. “I know that you see me as I was—young and delicious—but I’m older than you. That makes me wiser. You should listen.”

“Wait.” I tapped the brakes to let a possum hustle across the road. “Did you just call yourself delicious?”

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