“I was a ‘loose end?’” I spit his choice of words back at him.
“I wasn’t . . .” Luca sighs. “I didn’t mean you. Just . . . everything about our lives here.”
“I assume I didn’t go into this memory-erasing thing willingly?”
“No. My father would have blindsided you, same as he did me.” Luca holds my gaze intently as if pleading with me to understand something I can’t begin to comprehend. “I didn’t know what he had arranged until it was too late.”
“Why wait three years to tell me?” I wonder.
“He insisted you would be safe hidden here, amongst the humans, if you forgot your connection to our family,” Luca explains. “No one in the shifter world knew you were here, and no one would know until you turned eighteen.”
“That’s when you came back,” I recall.
“Yes. I came back the night of your birthday.” He grins. “It took some magical influence, but you eventually remembered who I was. As expected, you weren’t happy with me.”
“Apparently, I had good reason,” I mutter under my breath.
“I know, and I’m sorry.” His hand flinches as if he intends to touch me in some way. He pulls up short, and I’m left wondering.
Is he a gentle caress kind of guy? A fingers through the hair guy? A hugger?
The answers to those questions are not something I want to be told. I want to remember.
“You said I remembered you on my birthday,” I point out as an idea forms. “How? Is it something we can repeat now?”
Luca gives me a small smile. “You want to remember?”
“I need to,” I tell him.
“Unfortunately, magic is the only—” He stops and looks at the ceiling as if remembering something. “The necklace.”
“What necklace?”
“Magic is the only thing that can weaken the spell. It’s like fighting fire with fire,” he explains. “There are no natural sources of magic in the mortal realm, but enchanted objects can be used here.”
“Such as a necklace?”
Luca nods. “You remembered everything on your birthday because you were immersed in magic for several hours. I suspected the memories would be temporary and you would lose them again once you came home, so I returned your necklace to you. The magic in it helped. You did remember.”
“So what happened?”
“When I came back again a few days later, the necklace was gone along with your memories,” he tells me glumly. “I don’t know where it is now.”
“You think this necklace could give me my memories back?” I wonder.
“I don’t know.” Luca shrugs. “It’s worth a shot.”
I don’t have much jewelry, so it shouldn’t be hard to find. Everything I own is held in a small porcelain container that I think once belonged to my mother, and stored under a mound of socks in a drawer.
I jump up, find the container, and dump the contents on top of the dresser.
“What does it look like?” I pick up a ball of gold and silver chains twisted around each other and pull an earring from the jumbled mess.
Luca comes to a stand behind me, and peers over my shoulder. I breathe through my mouth so I don’t have to smell him. Not that he smells bad. Quite the opposite, actually. He smells so good I struggle to concentrate on the task.
Look for the necklace. Don’t think about how close he is to touching me, or how my skin flames in anticipation. Don’t lean back. Don’t make contact. Don’t give in to the desire no matter how much I want to.
Focus. Necklace.
I’m looking for a necklace.
His voice is nearly a whisper in my ear. “It’s not in there.”
“How can we be sure? I don’t even know what it looks like.” I spin around hastily.
I’m not prepared for our sudden nearness. He is standing closer than I thought, and we are now face to . . . neck. Right where he must have splashed some cologne yesterday. The scent is barely noticeable now, but it’s there.
I lean against my dresser with a gulp. There is nowhere else for me to go. I’m not so sure I want to.
God, he smells so good.
He pulls the wolf fang pendant out from under his shirt and shows it to me. “It looks like this. The magic in this enables me to shift in the mortal realm with ease.”
“You keep saying ‘the mortal realm’ like it’s not the only realm,” I point out.
Luca grins. “You noticed that, huh?”
“One of many things floating around in my head.” I can’t tell him about most of them, because they’re far too embarrassing to admit. Instead, I pause to gather a little composure before I ask the first of several questions I have. “Luca, is there another realm out there I should know about?”
He steps back like he knows exactly what he has done to me, and he has determined now is not the time to tease me, or my hormones. “We call it the Imperial Kingdom,” he answers. “It’s another realm full of fairies, and magic, and every shifter breed ever created living under the rule of a King.”
I blink a few times as I absorb all the information unloaded on me in that one sentence. I don’t even know where to begin with the new questions popping in my head.
“One thing at a time, Sav,” Luca suggests before I start firing away. “That necklace could be the key to your memories. We need to find it.”
I nod absentmindedly, wondering if it is possible to spontaneously combust from an overload of impossible-to-believe information. Then I remember the other pressing question I had before he dropped the “another realm” bomb. I’m almost afraid to ask, but I have to know.
“This necklace we’re supposed to be looking for, with the wolf fang,” I start slowly. “Where did it come from?”
“The kingdom,” Luca answers, distracted by a particular book on the shelf. He picks it up to fan through the worn pages. “Just how many times have you read Wuthering Heights anyway?”
I ignore his question since mine is far more important—not that I can accurately answer his question anyway. “Why would I have one of those necklaces?”
Luca stares at me. He doesn’t move.
“You said it was my necklace,” I remind him. “You said you returned it to me that night, but I don’t remember ever having it.”
Luca clears his throat, and I dread the response he is working up the courage to tell me.
“It wasn’t yours originally,” he explains carefully. “It was your mother’s. You inherited it when she died.”
“Half of this is my mom’s.” I thrust a cluster of jewelry under his nose. “She never had a wolf fang necklace.”
“She did,” Luca insists. “You found it three years ago, hidden with some of her other belongings.”
“No,” I scoff. “I never—”
“I planned to tell you what I was that summer,” Luca cuts me off. “I made a deal with myself that when you found your mother’s necklace, I would tell you everything. We left before you found it, and that was my excuse for not telling you what you should have known from the very beginning.”