Free Witch Fire by Anya Bast Page B

crowded restaurant that day with her, sitting in the corner, judging by the angle of the shot. The place had been filled, but she’d been alone in her booth, staring out the window. He’d focused in on her, blurring the people around her. Her reflection in the window appeared bleak.
    Did she really wear that expression on her face so often?
    Mira closed the album, swallowed hard, and stepped away from it. The first shots were businesslike, but toward the end Jack had used her as a subject for his art. He’d seemed to capture things about her that no one else saw. Feelings and emotions she’d never shared with anyone. He’d captured her intimate moments without ever having spoken to her.
    She turned, flipped off the light, and locked the door.
    Her mind a jumble of confused thoughts, Mira headed back downstairs.
    She understood why he’d originally begun taking the photos. Those were for surveillance purposes. She should feel creeped out, since he’d followed her around snapping photos of her like some stalker. That fact pissed her off, but the other, later photos muffled that response. Why had his focus shifted to such an intimate angle toward the end? What had made him view her through a more personal lens?
    For now she wouldn’t tell Jack that she’d seen the photos. She had enough on her plate dealing with everything else. Not to mention she’d have to admit she broke into a locked room in his residence. Although in light of things, that seemed hardly to compare as far as intrusions went.
    Still distracted, she wandered over to the bookshelves, which seemed to house every classic title ever written, along with a few political thrillers and a mishmash of horror novels.
    On a lower shelf, she spied a leather-bound copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . She grabbed it, knocking a small wooden box off the shelf and onto the floor in the process. A silver ring rolled out onto the floor.
    Holding the book in one hand, she knelt and examined the piece of jewelry. It was a man’s ring, heavy and well crafted. A C marked the flat of it in fancy script and arcane symbols ringed the edges. She frowned. C for what? The Coven , maybe? Maybe it was some nifty secret decoder ring that she might eventually also receive. She deposited the ring back into the box and replaced it on the shelf.
    After fetching a glass of water from the kitchen and tidying up from breakfast, she curled up on the couch with the book. It engaged her for a while, until weariness took over. Nodding off, she set the book aside and lay down for a nap, her head on one of the fancy throw pillows.
    The sound of the door opening woke her. She looked up drowsily at Jack as he dropped a bunch of shopping bags on the coffee table in front of her. He wouldn’t even meet her eyes.
    Maybe the kiss really had repulsed him and he couldn’t bear to look at her now.
    Her body still felt the press of him against her. The memory of his warmth, the feeling of his body, had clung to her all afternoon. A lazy, honeyed heat seeped between her thighs when she thought about his mouth on hers. It eclipsed everything, even finding the strangely intimate photos he’d taken of her on the sly.
    She was so pathetic.
    She sat up and peered into one of the bags, seeing fabric folded in tissue and a tangle of sales tags. “You bought everything new? That must have cost a fortune! I just meant you should go to my apartment and grab some of my stuff!”
    â€œCouldn’t do that. Crane is most likely watching your place. He probably doesn’t know where you are, and it’s better it stays that way.”
    Oh. “ Probably doesn’t know where I am? That’s not very comforting. So what did you get?”
    Self-consciously, she ran her fingers through her sleep-tangled hair, remembering she wore his clothes and probably looked ridiculous in them. He wasn’t answering her, so she glanced up and found him staring