Free Entwined Destinies by Robin Briar Page A

hiding, but it’s pretty damn close. I would say it’s on par with the best copy I’ve ever done, albeit without magical help.
    The painting I used to summon Mason, however, could easily pass for the original.
    I turned that image into the focus of a spell. A ritual where not only was I unaware I could cast such spells, but I wasn’t even aware of casting at the time. And it worked perfectly! Mason turned his car around, wherever he was at that point, and blazed a trail all the way back to my apartment.
    To hear Mason describe it, he made the choice to return. I know better.
    He came back the moment I perfectly replicated his favorite painting. The spell must have been activated the moment it was completed. The timeline adds up, in any case. It certainly didn’t work for any of my previous canvases. None of those attempts had the same effect. Mason only described turning the car around once. Not multiple times.
    Wanting Mason to return was my only thought for days. I obsessively repeated it over and over to myself, that if I could perfectly recreate his favorite painting, he would come back to me.
    It sounds ridiculous, but it worked. I was delirious by the end, but kept that notion alive in my mind. It sustained me instead of food or sleep. I believed it was true and it came true, albeit after burning through a countless number of canvasses.
    I look at Mason on my bed through the doorway, not a care in the world. He’s actually started growling in his sleep now, ever since he admitted to me that he’s a shifter. I’ve seen his hands and legs kick like a dog.
    Mason is back in my life. I got what I wanted and couldn’t be happier about the outcome. Even if I cheated by using magic.
    That surprises me most of all, the fact that I’m okay with the manipulation. Perhaps it would bother me more if I summoned him consciously. I can take some small comfort in knowing that I didn’t do it on purpose, but I wonder if I would have done it anyway had I known. Or even if I would do it again in the future, knowing what I do now.
    No matter what, it all started with his twin sister.
    Sylvia asked me to recreate this painting in particular. She said that if I did, her brother would stay in town, that it would have a powerful sedentary effect on him. It might even convince him to settle down permanently, especially if the idea came from me.
    I thought that meant Mason had been drifting until this point in his life, wandering from place to place, keeping the wolf to himself and protecting people from his feral nature. But that’s not the case.
    Candice found out in one afternoon what I failed to learn after knocking boots with Mason for two weeks. Mason never left the family business. He just doesn’t work locally. He travels with the paintings Sylvia ships around the world. He makes sure they get to where they need to go.
    Not only that, but Mason said that he and his sister trade jobs. So if Mason is here right now, does that mean Sylvia is traveling abroad instead of him?
    My vision did place her in Scandinavia, after all. Sure, she was in a burrow with a red-eyed wolf, but overseas nonetheless.
    That makes me wonder about something else. Was this whole manipulation designed so that Sylvia could switch jobs with Mason? To make him stay in town so she could travel more and leave all the paperwork to her brother? Piper hasn’t been around the studio for a while now. Maybe she’s abroad with her mother.
    I have so many questions, all of which Mason could answer, but I don’t have the heart to wake him up right now. Not while he’s sleeping so soundly. He needs to recover from all the turmoil as well.
    I can’t help but shake my head at myself. I’ve been such a yo-yo lately. I want you, Mason . I don’t want you, Mason . I want you, the person Mason. Just not Sylvia there as well, feeling everything her twin does at the same time.
    That was pretty much the most adolescently absurd stance I’ve taken in decades.
    For all