Read Online The Ruby Kiss by Helen Scott Taylor - Free Book Online

shivered. Devin shrugged off his coat and held it out.
    Nightshade stiffened. “I’d have given you my coat if I had one,” he whispered.
    “I know you would.” She pressed her cheek against the bulge of his pectoral muscle, his heart thumping steadily beside her ear. She didn’t know what she would have done without him tonight. She was deeply in his debt.
    He lowered her to the ground and draped Devin’s coat around her shoulders. Ruby snuggled into the warmth of the oversized garment and closed her eyes. The fabric smelled wonderful, like the incense she burned in her art studio while she worked.
    Devin led them along a corridor of hard-packed earth. Ruby kept a wary eye on her feet, ready to evade any attack by rampant plant growth that might occur. Devin noticed.
    “You can relax. No one’s powers work in the Bunker,” he said. “The place is ensorcelled to absorb all magic to feed its protective spells. Nothing gets inside the Bunker unless Twister wants it in.”
    Magic?
In the back of her mind, she’d known her power to make things grow was magic, but since her mother died in suspicious circumstances she had tried to rationalize magic away. It seemed she couldn’t hide from the truth any longer.
    The short earthen corridor soon gave way to a stone-built hall that sloped down at a gentle angle, taking them deeper underground. Wooden doors were set into the walls at intervals. Every ten yards, a narrower passage led off to either left or right. After about ten minutes, Devin took a turn and opened the door at the end of the corridor.
    “These are Twister’s private rooms,” he announced, holding the door open. Nightshade went in first and checked to make sure it was safe.
    She had no expectations of what she’d find on the other side of the door, so Ruby was momentarily transfixed with surprise when she entered. All green leather and dark wood, the room seemed a masculine study lifted out of a historic house and buried underground. A Chesterfield settee flanked by matching chairs sat in front of a roaring fire in a hearth. The richly polished antique furniture glowed in the firelight, along with gleaming brass knobs and handles. Lights flickered within glass sconces on the walls, giving the room a slumberous glow. The only modern thing visible in the room was an Apple MacBook on a desk at the far end.
    The upside of having no windows was extra wall space. Bookshelves stacked with old leather-bound volumes covered one wall, while a fascinating collection of metal contraptions decorated the other three. Devin dropped into one of the chairs, but Ruby and Nightshade both circled the room examining the whirring, ticking, clicking metal curios: circles spun within circles, hands clicked back and forth, pendulums rose and fell, and small doors opened and closed on tiny figures and animals.
    Nightshade stopped by a leather-topped table holding a complex model of a wheel containing ball bearings. “One of Leonardo Da Vinci’s perpetual motion machines,” he said, dropping to his haunches to get a better look. He glanced around with awed incredulity. “Fascinating. All these devices must be perpetual motion machines.”
    “Are you an enthusiast?” Twister asked from the doorway.
    Ruby turned, surprised she hadn’t heard the door open. Twister tossed her a blanket. She removed Devin’s coat, wrapped herself in the blanket like a disaster victim and, feeling shell-shocked by the bizarre changes in her life, sagged into a chair before the fire.
    Nightshade and Twister discussed perpetual motion, so Ruby sank into a sleepy stupor. She roused when a small creaturewith brown stick-thin legs and arms, which she recognized as a brownie, brought oatcakes and mugs of mulled wine. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she started eating. But as she chewed, a terrible thought hit her.
    “My house is unlocked, and I’ve forgotten about my poor dogs.” She put down her plate and forced herself up on aching