“Entrancement is similar to the state you say Warren is in. But the binding of a practitioner is… a very grievous step.”
“Worse than binding Warren.”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“Why isn’t binding Warren a serious infraction?”
“It could be done to protect the community. Or as a way to stay Warren without harming him. Binding someone who doesn’t have powers is usually a temporary measure and it requires the ongoing energy of the binder to maintain it.”
“And that’s different than entrancement…?”
“Entrancement removes that person’s powers from the community and also requires a price to be paid to keep him… imprisoned for the duration of the sentence. So it is a double-blow to the community.”
Reg tried to wrap her mind around it. She shook her head. “I still don’t understand how it’s okay for someone like Warren but not for someone who supposedly has powers.”
“Binding is seen as a viable solution to keep a non-believer out of harm’s way. Killing him would be…” Corvin hesitated, staring off and searching for the right turn of phrase, “…I guess the concept that comes closest is bad karma. By doing harm to someone else, you do harm to yourself and your future prospects. It’s much better to bind a man than to kill him. But to bind a practitioner… it is a penalty worse than death.”
“Because…?”
“Because those powers are an asset of the community. It’s like cutting off your own arm or leg.”
“Oh.” Reg picked up one of the canapés and popped it into her mouth. The burst of flavor shocked her and for a moment she just stared at Corvin, completely losing track of their conversation. She closed her mouth and just chewed the savory bite for a moment, trying to analyze the complex flavors. “What are these?”
“Just a hint of things to come.”
She didn’t know whether he meant the main course, or some other path he intended to take her down. For the next few minutes, she was completely focused on trying each different type of canapé on the plate. She felt strangely light-headed, even though she had avoided the wine.
Corvin leaned forward in his seat. “There are many other pleasures I could introduce you to, Regina.”
Reg swallowed the last bite. “I’m sure there are.”
“Then why do you continue to resist me?”
“I want to stay in control… and I’ve been warned against you.”
He smirked. “Some old crone who is jealous of the attention you’re attracting.”
“I thought you said crone was a term of respect.”
He shrugged. “It can go either way.”
“Starlight doesn’t like you either.”
“You can’t trust a cat. All they care about is where their next meal is coming from. He doesn’t want you to be distracted and to forget to feed him.”
“I think he has more loyalty than that.”
“A cat? Cats have no loyalty.”
“They said at the shelter that he’d recently lost his owner, and was grieving for him. That doesn’t sound like an animal without any loyalty.”
“People put human emotions onto animals. That’s a mistake, animals don’t have the same emotions as humans do.”
“How do you know that?”
“Years of observation.”
“But you can’t talk to animals, can you?” She remembered their conversation of the night before. “So you don’t really know, you’re just guessing.”
“I’m observing.” He gave a little shrug. “Maybe some cats are loyal to their owners,” he conceded, “but most of them couldn’t care less, as long as they get fed.”
“You don’t like them, do you?”
Corvin didn’t answer immediately. He had another sip of wine. “No,” he admitted finally, “I don’t.”
“Maybe that’s why they don’t like you.”
He shook his head and opened his mouth to object, then shrugged again and left it at that.
“Who do you think hired Warren?” Reg asked. “There can’t be that many people in such a small community who would do this kind of thing. Crash his plane and put a spell on him. You must have some idea of who it is.”
Corvin rubbed his beard. “People come and go. There is a core population that has been here for a long time, but there are others who are—if you’ll excuse the expression—fly by night. They come, check things out, see whether they can get something established, and then move on in a short period of time.”
Reg shifted uncomfortably, recognizing herself in his comment. She was one of those people, coming into town and seeing whether she could make a living there. There were a lot of towns she had blown into, tried out a new scheme for a while, and then left before trouble could catch up with her. If she decided Black Sands wasn’t the place for her, she’d pack her bags and be gone again before anyone could look for her. With Jessup looking at her, she was already considering pulling up stakes before they could stick anything on her.
“So is there any new group like that?” she asked Corvin. “According to Warren, it wasn’t just one guy. There was a man with a long black coat, and another who was skinny and had dreadlocks, and some others. Does that sound like anyone you know?”
Corvin’s eyes glittered, greedy for the information. “Not off the top of my head. But they could be flying under the radar—literally and figuratively—to avoid being identified by the police or the covens.”
Reg nodded. The waiter returned to clear the appetizers, smiling and nodding at them both. Reg expected him to offer her a menu, but he did not, assuring them that their dinners would be ready shortly. She raised her brows at Corvin.
“You ordered my main course too?”
“I did.”
“You know you’re a chauvinist?”
He blinked at her. “I’m a what?”
“Did it ever occur to you that I might not want you to order for me? That it would be a good idea to ask me what I like instead of just assuming you know what I like or don’t like?”
“I know the menu and what’s good here.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You liked the hors d’oeuvres, didn’t you? Don’t you trust me to make a good choice?”
Reg shook her head. “I like to make my own choices, not to have them imposed on me by some paternalistic—”
“Regina.”
Reg stopped her rant.
He spread his hands in a query. “Why don’t you wait and see if you like it?”
“And what if I don’t?”
“Then you can order something else.”
She glared at him. “There’s a difference between charming, old world manners and being a presumptuous—”
It wasn’t his words that stopped her mid-sentence, but his expression and his hand over hers on the table.
“Stop fighting me,” he urged, voice a low croon. He stroked his thumb across the back of her hand, sending a shiver up her spine and goosebumps popping out all over her arms. “You’re here to enjoy yourself, so stop trying to be in control of everything and let it happen.”
⋆ Chapter Twenty-One ⋆
Reg’s nature warred against her undeniable attraction to Corvin. When he laid on the charm, the pull was so strong it left her breathless.
“I’m just…”
“We’re in the best restaurant for a hundred miles. I have arranged for the best refreshment and repast available. You are to be waited on hand and foot. Why would you want anything else?”
“I don’t like you assuming that you know what I like.”
“But I do.”
His tone was so certain, Reg was left with her mouth open, unable to find an argument. Was it possible that he did know her tastes without ever even asking? Had he been able to discern them from some sort of spell or telepathy? Or was he just full of ego and hot air?
“Give me a chance,” Corvin urged. “The wine, the meal, just enjoy it like you were meant to.”
Reg pushed air out, trying to start breathing again. “Fine,” her voice was almost a whisper, “I will try it.”
“The wine too?”
He had poured his out of the same bottle. He hadn’t poisoned or tampered with it. If Reg limited herself to one glass, there was no danger of intoxication. So what was the harm in trying it?
“Yes. One glass.”
He smiled, pleased. Without further urging, he poured her a glass. Reg smelled it and swirled it around. She wasn’t exactly a connoisseur, but she knew the basics. She tasted the wine, holding it in her mouth for a minute before swallowing.
“It’s very nice,” she told Corvin. And it was. It had depth and a pleasant finish. She put it down, not taking a second sip. She would stretch it out to last the full evening. That way she could be certain of staying in control.
“So, tell me about your life,” Corvin suggested. “This profession is new to you. What were you doing before you came to Florida?”
Reg blew out her breath slowly. “Ooh… well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it…”
He smiled expectantly. “Well…?”
“I’ve done a lot of different things. I have… a wanderlust. I like to move around, try out different things. So I’ve never really settled into one career. I just sort of… taste test.”
“Jack of all trades, master of none?” Corvin suggested.
“Yes. Very true.”
“So, tell me about some of them.”
Reg thought about what to share with him. “I have… sold real estate…”
Corvin raised his eyebrows. “Really. And that wasn’t something that you have to stay in long term to make a living at? I thought that you had to do quite a bit of training.”
“If you do it the right way,” Reg agreed. Of course, to do it the right way, one had to actually own the property or have a contract with the property owner. What Reg had done had been more along the lines of selling properties she had access to, but didn’t actually have any legal title to. A few computer-generated reports that looked legitimate, and most people could be convinced to pick up real estate on the cheap without involving a lawyer.
Corvin chuckled. Reg wasn’t sure how much of the truth he was able to read in her face and voice. She was usually pretty good at masking her thoughts.
“I’ve sold all kinds of things,” she continued. “Property, jewelry, cars… umm… antiques.”
“Actual legitimate antiques?”
“Maybe not exactly legitimate.”
“Am I sensing a pattern here?”
“You may be.”
“When you say you’ve moved around a lot, would I be right in guessing that moving on wasn’t always solely your decision?”
“Oh, no,” Reg protested. “It was always my decision. I didn’t wait around for anyone to tell me to go.”
Though Reg had overstayed her welcome at Erin’s. She should have been more careful not to take advantage of her sister’s hospitality. But at least she had gotten out of Bald Eagle Falls before the police department had caught wind of any suspicious goings-on.
“And what about Black Sands? Are you going to stay here long-term? Or is this just another pin in your map?”
“I don’t know. It’s a nice place, but I’ve already had the police knocking on my door twice, and that’s pretty quick… I’m not going to wait until they fabricate charges.”
“Twice?” Corvin repeated.
He didn’t seem surprised that she’d been visited by the police, but her mention of two visits had caught his attention.
Reg nodded. “I guess you’re not completely up-to-date yet. See… after I found Warren… I talked to Ling, and she went to see him.”
Corvin nodded seriously, watching her with sharp eyes. “What happened?”
“Unfortunately… I don’t know. She disappeared.”
“From where? Before or after she got to the hospital?”
“I don’t know. The police were going to go to the hospital to inquire, but I didn’t hear anything back from them either.”
“They came to you to see if you had something to do with her disappearance?”
“She’d told her parents that she was coming to see me, and that was the last anyone heard of her, so naturally, they came to talk to me.”
“Naturally,” Corvin agreed.
“But they were pretty hard-nosed about it,” Reg said. “They started out with… misconceptions… and were pretty insistent that I had to go to the police station to be questioned.”
“You don’t have to go with them if they don’t put you under arrest.”
Reg took another sip of her wine. Dinner had been delectable stone crabs. She was full and satisfied, but not stuffed. With something in her stomach, the wine shouldn’t go to her head.
“I don’t like having the police poke their noses into my business,” she told Corvin. “And it’s not good business if people seeing the police coming in and out of my place all the time. They start to think that there’s something shady going on.”
Corvin’s smile was ironic. She’d just been confiding in him the different rackets she’d been in, so he wasn’t buying the plea of innocence.
“Well, if they didn’t come back, that’s a good sign, isn’t it? They must have found a lead in another direction, or evidence that what you told them was true. If they got to the hospital and everyone disclaimed knowledge of Ling going there, they would have been back to question you further.”
Reg nodded. She had been holding out hope for that reason. On one hand, she was grateful that Jessup and her partner had stayed away and not thrown any further accusations around, but on the other hand… she wanted to know what they found. She wanted to know they had found out about Ling and that Warren was still at the hospital where she had left him. Maybe even that they had found Ling at Warren’s bedside, where she had fallen asleep holding his hand, and that was the only reason she hadn’t been home to her parents.
“Yeah. It’s good… but I want to know what’s going on.”
“Not really any of your business,” Corvin said. “You didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Warren, so why should you be concerned?”
Reg took another drink, but was really just trying to cover up the fact that she was studying him, reading his body language, trying to decide whether he was telling her to stay out of it because it was his own caper and he didn’t want her screwing it up.
“Like you said about karma,” she said slowly, after putting her glass down again. “You do harm to someone, and it comes back to bite you. You do something nice for someone when you don’t have to, and maybe the universe throws some of that good stuff back your way.”
“Uh-huh.” His tone was unconvinced.
“I don’t like thinking that Ling could be in trouble because of something I did. She was safe thinking that Warren was dead. When I opened my mouth… she disappeared.”
Corvin nodded. “You should have just stayed out of it.”
“And why were you following me yesterday? You weren’t exactly minding your own business.”
His lip curled up at the corner. “I was just keeping an eye on you. Making sure you didn’t get yourself into any trouble.”
“Again, why? I’m not a little girl. I’m a full-grown woman and I’ve had plenty of experience taking care of myself. I don’t need a man to protect me.”
“You may have experience in the outside world, but you don’t have experience here. You don’t know the first thing about protecting yourself against spells and enchantments.”
“I was with two witches. Or so you all led me to think. They seem to be pretty competent.”
“There’s competent… and there’s skilled.”
“Letticia is the leader of the coven, doesn’t that mean she’s skilled?”
Corvin rolled his shoulders in a dispassionate shrug. “I don’t see why you would object to being protected by me, but accept them. My skills are… not insignificant.”
He slid his hand over hers again. “Why let these women’s petty jealousies control your appraisal of me? You can make decisions based on your own experience and intellect instead of listening to someone who has an ax to grind.”
“Yes…” He had a point there. She was a grown woman. She might not have a lot of experience in paranormal circles, but she had life experience. What Corvin said made sense. All of her senses drew her to him. People talked about chemistry, about falling in love, meeting Mr. Right, and she had never understood it. Her relationships with men had always been careful decisions, weighed on a balance.
But her body was telling her that Corvin was the one for her. Her soulmate. Sarah had refused to give Reg any real answer about why she shouldn’t have a relationship with Corvin. She just kept repeating general warnings without any kind of backup. She had admitted that, even as an older woman, she was attracted to Corvin. Maybe that was the key to why she kept trying to push Reg off. Jealousy, just as Corvin had suggested.
Corvin wrapped his fingers around Reg’s, forming a comforting shield around them. She leaned closer to him, wanting that feeling to envelope her entire body. The smell of roses filled her nose and she wondered whether it was a cologne or whether it was actually his natural scent, some kind of pheromone. It did seem to increase in more intimate circumstances. Corvin lifted his other hand and traced Reg’s breastbone with the lightest possible touch. It raised delicious shivers all up and down Reg’s spine and arms. She closed her eyes, savoring it.
Corvin’s fingertips touched the chain of the locket, and he suddenly jerked back as if burned. Reg’s eyes flew open and she looked at him, concerned.
“What happened?” He was holding one hand in the other, his face contorted. “Did you cut yourself?” Reg ran her finger down the chain where he’d touched it, searching for a burr in the metal links.
Corvin rubbed his fingertips, then shook them as if trying to flick something off. “Where did you get that?” he demanded, glaring at the locket. “Where did that vile thing come from?”
What the Cat Knew Page 16
