by Alexa Egan
“And an ally,” he said, a glint of rueful humor in his haunted gaze. “Since events are now officially and irrefutably sticky.”
* * *
After a garbled story of murderous footpads running amok near Cumberland Place, Mac and Bianca had been shown by David’s housekeeper into a downstairs salon to await the master of the house. Mac had barely counted the number of wineglasses on the sideboard when David came bounding in, sporting his usual rakish seediness. Over the years, Mac had witnessed again and again St. Leger’s personal blend of smooth-talking charm and scoundrel’s magnetism that transformed perfectly normal women into giddy trollops.
He cast a surreptitious glance at Bianca and was curiously cheered by her lack of reaction. No blushing. No fluttering eyelashes or tossing of curls. If anything, she seemed to retreat into herself. Her expression hardened into implacability. Her actress’s mask settled into place with the firmness of cement. Yet, he’d discovered her secret: she used that well-armored demeanor not to keep the world at bay but to hold her own fears tight within.
Had any man ever discerned her monumental struggle to bury all doubts and vulnerabilities beneath that famously cool exterior? Had any man ever tried? Or had they all taken her sleek, pleasure-loving façade at face value?
Adam perhaps. No wonder she mourned him. He’d been the only one to truly understand her—until now.
David had only a few minutes to work his charm before Bianca had been taken in hand by a maid to be fretted over upstairs. Once alone, David shed his gallantry, pacing the room like a prisoner.
“You brought her here? Didn’t you hear my warning about Lord Deane? What the bloody hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that if it weren’t for her, you and Gray would be attending my funeral.”
“And she and the earl? How do you explain their connection?”
“I can’t. Or at least, I can’t explain where Deane fits in, but I trust she’s telling the truth. Whatever Deane is up to, she’s not involved.”
David shook his head. “You’ve fallen under the famed ice queen’s spell, haven’t you? I can see why. The woman’s a bloody stunner, and from the looks she kept throwing in your direction, it wouldn’t take much to wiggle your way between those perfect thighs. Or mayhap you already . . . ?” He lifted his brows in question.
“She’s not like that.”
David merely offered a thin, knowing smile that made Mac want to hit him. Hard.
“Fine, if you don’t want to talk about her, we’ll talk about you. You look awful. Like death on a stick. How do you feel?” he asked, handing Mac a whiskey.
“Like I’ve been flattened by a whole convoy of runaway caissons.” Mac accepted the drink but didn’t taste. Instead he toyed with the glass, running a finger across the rim and swishing the amber liquid round and round as he talked: of the ambush at Bianca’s house, the dirty cellar in Southwark, the hours he spent at the mercy of a man who’d unleashed a thousand years of fury with vicious precision on Mac’s body.
David sat silently, only the sharpening angles of his face and the narrowing of his eyes revealing his growing rage. “You’re sure he said ‘she’? ‘She’ wanted you dead?”
“Whoever ‘she’ is, she was going to take great pleasure in killing me.” Mac slumped in a chair, the room spinning enough to make walking straight downright dangerous. He remained weak, his guts cramping as his fever climbed, his shoulder aching down to the bone.
“You’re certain we’re dealing with Fey-bloods?”
“His powers scraped against my mental shields like a saw blade. I felt the mage energy’s vibration all the way back to my fucking molars. They know, David.” Mac closed his eyes as the room spun, the walls sliding into a shimmer of hallucinations. Opened them again at the touch of a hand upon his forehead.
David stood over him, looking paternal. “Your fever’s raging,” he commented grimly. “How long did he have you trapped again?”
“Long enough.” Memories clawed at him. Memories of pain when every breath was agony, the silver eating into his flesh like wires dipped in acid. And always the questions. Over and over, without end. With a what-the-hell last wish, he tossed the whiskey back, the heat scorching his throat to land like lead in his curdled stomach. “We need to send word to the Gather. To warn them.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” David asked, crossing to draw back the curtain on a late autumn morning, the sun climbing through a haze of coal smoke.
“Your krythos. We can summon them with the far-seeing disk.”
David dropped the curtain in place. “And have the Ossine’s enforcers down on us like a pack of damned hounds? You know the penalty for contacting the clans. Exile becomes extinction. And despite the shithouse my life has become, I still like living it, thank you very much. If you’re so determined to end on the point of an enforcer’s sword, why don’t you use your disk?”
Mac dug his hand into the borrowed coat pocket out of habit. He’d not noticed his krythos’s loss until this morning. And then it was far too late to go searching for it. His last link with home and family was no more. He shook his head. “Gone.”
David shrugged, his dismissive indifference infuriating Mac.
“We have to do something,” he chided. “We can’t just sit back and let the worst happen without trying to stop it.”
“Why not?” David argued. “Adam massacred an entire family of out-clans to keep our secret. Don’t you find that disgusting and slightly hypocritical? That we destroy to keep from being destroyed? We’re as guilty as the Fey-bloods.”
Caught by surprise, Mac fell back on tradition. “Adam did what was required to keep us safe. The laws were put in place for a reason. The Gather acts only for our survival.”
David sprang to his feet, the wolf revealed in his fierce gaze, bared teeth, fangs white as pearls, a quiver of rage surrounding him like an aura. “And will you enforce them, Mac? Will you do as Gather rules demand and take a knife to Bianca Parrino to claw your way back into their good graces? She helped you escape. Will you return her courage by slitting her throat?”
“No! But . . .” Mac collapsed into his chair, heart pounding, head blasting with a new fire. “It’s not the same. She’s different.”
“Of course she is. But so were many who met their deaths because they discovered what we are.” David resumed his seat, dropping his head in his hands as if he bore a great weight. “The Gather elders are fools and old men, frightened of their own shadows. So lost to stories of ancient treacheries, they can’t see our race is dying now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Imnada are failing. How many of us are left? How many births replace those who have died? One to replace ten? And our powers? They’re dwindling just as we are.” David lifted his head, face ashen, eyes lost and staring. “This constant hiding in the shadows is dooming us to certain extinction.”
Mac had never seen David like this. Never heard him utter such a blatant heresy. Not even during the first frenzied shock following the Other’s curse. Even then he’d possessed a will of steel, holding longer than any of them to the hope their affliction could be overcome by their Imnada strength, their Imnada power. Perhaps that was what made his rage burn higher and hotter after that hope had been cruelly dashed. Shattered faith in his race and his own invincibility.
“You just said you didn’t care what happened to the clans,” Mac challenged.
David’s dark eyes shone, and for a moment he looked as if he might continue to argue. Instead, he rose to pour himself another drink. Mac had lost count of how much he’d taken in just the few hours they’d been together, but surely it was more than enough. Hell, it wasn’t even noon yet.
“I’ll send word to de Coursy,” David said. “And I’ll get you to Wallace’s before nightfall.” He rang for a servant, passing Mac on his way out the door. “Even with all Adam’s notes, do you really imagine you’ll find a way to break the curse?” The desperat
e hope in the question twisted Mac’s insides. “There must have been a reason Kinloch didn’t tell us what he’d learned. Something you’ve overlooked.”
“Only one way to find out,” Mac replied. “But it’s one more way than we had before.”
David nodded, dropping a hand on Mac’s shoulder. “Sorry to burden you with my moral quandaries, old man. Suppose it’s an argument without an end. Stay here and rest while I have a chamber prepared and a bath sent up.”
Mac nodded, slumping into his chair, letting the last frenetic hours spin away in a feverish haze. “David?” he asked, breaking the brittle silence.
St. Leger swung around, a brow raised in question.
“If you’re right about the Imnada, what can we possibly do about it?” Mac asked. “We’ve been cast out. We’re as good as dead.”
David took a long time to answer, his gaze trained on some far-distant invisible point, a wild light in his dark eyes. “Perhaps that’s our greatest strength, Mac. No one expects the dead to cause trouble.”
* * *
In a mad scramble, Bianca retreated from the library door, hoping to make it seem she’d only just arrived at the bottom of the staircase as Mr. St. Leger emerged. In reality, her hand gripped the banister to keep her steady, her head swimming with snippets of the overheard conversation between Mac and this man.
Gathers, curses, the dying out of a race that until last night she’d assumed lived only within the pages of a picture book—why did every answer she gain only spin off a dozen more questions? She hated this constant state of confusion, this loss of control. It harked back to a time when these were all she felt and her life had been in someone else’s hands. If she was ever to wrest herself free of the mess she’d fallen into, she would have to turn the situation to her advantage. She needed answers.
And she’d begin with Mr. David St. Leger.
His gaze brightened upon spotting her, and he came forward, hand extended. “Simply stunning, Mrs. Parrino. The color matches your eyes as if made with you in mind.”
“Is that what you told the courtesan who wore it last?” she asked tartly, wishing she had her wreck of a morning gown back instead of this translucent confection of silk and lace and ribbons. It made her feel like the icing on an unusually erotic cake.
“Actually, I warned her she’d been nibbling between meals and was beginning to look a bit like a partridge, which is why the gown is here and the lady is not.” He offered her his arm. “You must be famished. Breakfast is laid out in the dining room.”
“I should see to Mac.”
“Don’t bother. He’s sleeping, and if he feels half as bad as he looks, he needs all the rest he can get.”
He seated her at the table before taking his own place, watching as she helped herself to eggs and ham, toast, and a restorative cup of tea. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she began to eat, interrogation taking second place to her empty stomach. Seeming amused, St. Leger leaned back, now and then sipping from the cup of coffee in front of him. She refused to allow him to discomfit her and even offered him a narrow smile as she plowed through her second helping.
“Mac claimed you were different,” he commented. “I’m beginning to believe he was right. Any woman—hell, any human—who isn’t blubbering into their porridge or clawing the walls to escape is definitely one of a kind.”
“Would either of those activities do me any good, Mr. St. Leger?” she asked over the rim of her cup.
“No, but they might make you feel a damn sight better.” He leaned across the table to snatch a piece of bacon from a platter. “And please don’t call me Mr. St. Leger. That was my father.”
“What should I call you?”
“How about David? It’s easy. Two little syllables.”
She poured herself a second cup of tea. Or was it her third? Doctored it with plenty of sugar and milk. “I assume you’re Imnada too?”
He smiled, giving a low whistle. “The papers didn’t lie. Cool as a cucumber.”
If St. Leger knew half of the whirlwind of thoughts racing through her skull, he’d sing a different song, but Bianca acknowledged his compliment with a gracious nod. Looking the part was half the battle. “So, are you?”
St. Leger straightened. “That depends.”
“On?” she prompted as she studied him for signs of otherworldliness. Nothing jumped out at her unless one counted unearthly good looks as a clue. And yet, while Mac’s saturnine features and forbidding expressions hinted at an ancient battle-ax-wielding paladin, David St. Leger possessed the golden, sun-kissed visage of your average Greek god: square jaw, piercing gray eyes, and a wide-shouldered, athletic build any tailor in London would drool to dress.
“On whether you plan on running to Lord Deane as soon as I let you out of my sight.”
“Mac trusts me.”
“Mac’s not a cynic like I am. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, he still believes in outmoded ideas like loyalty, faith, devotion, and the love of a good woman. I’ve read the papers, Mrs. Parrino. I hear the talk at my club and the chatter in the park. And where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.”
“I had nothing to do with Adam’s death, and I won’t tell Deane or anyone about Mac or you. How could I without sounding like a bedlamite?”
“Wait a few hours and you’d have all the evidence you’d need,” he mumbled.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Has Mac shown you this little trick?
Her cup poised at her lips, she stiffened as the voice slid like glass across the surface of her mind. “My thoughts are my own, Mr. St. Leger. Not toys for your amusement.”
“Impressive. Not a twitch,” he said, his tone warm with approval before adding, “Your skeletons are safe in their cupboards, Mrs. Parrino. The Imnada can path mind to mind, but we’re not psychics.”
More’s the pity, he added, his thought brushing against her consciousness with the same lewd invitation she’d experienced a hundred times in a hundred crowded ballrooms.
She gently placed her cup upon the table. “If you’re looking for a replacement to wear this gown, I’m not interested.”
“Spoken for already?”
Her gaze sharpened. “I speak for myself.”
He scooped eggs onto his plate. Poured himself another coffee. “I can see why Mac’s attracted to you. You’re no shrinking wallflower. And you’ve made it this far, which means you’re capable and quick thinking. All good assets. I’ve a feeling you’ll need them before long.”
“I’m certainly glad I’ve won your approval,” she answered sarcastically.
“Unless”—he rubbed at his chin, eyeing her with new suspicion—“perhaps you were meant to get this far. You claim you speak for yourself, but Lord Deane’s already shown a weakness for actresses. In fact, he married one. Perhaps he’s pulling your strings and your arrival here is part of a larger plan.”
She clenched her fork and knife in hands gone bone-white in anger. “Sebastian didn’t send that brute after us. Whatever’s going on, he’s not involved.”
David leaned in, a harsh light entering in his eyes. “How can you be certain? The earl is Other and, as Mac may have told you, the Fey-bloods nearly exterminated us once. What’s to stop them from finishing the job?”
“Seb’s no murderer. He’s a gentleman.”
“Evil can easily cloak itself in wealth and breeding, Mrs. Parrino.” St. Leger’s gray gaze seemed to penetrate her brain. “While the heart of a hero can beat even beneath the skin of a beast.”
* * *
“Mr. St. Leger said you wanted to see me.”
Bianca stood in the doorway, dressed in a gown that looked as if it had been intended to entice rather than conceal. A sweeping low neckline of shimmering white seeded with pearls, the translucent skirts threaded with gold thread and more pearls. No one who saw her slender, gilded beauty would recognize the sweat- and dirt-stained woman who had risked her life to save him and fought like a
lioness against a murderous Fey-blood. Like the mountain lakes around Concullum, Bianca held startling depths beneath her placid surface.
She lifted her chin, a small frown puckering her forehead. “Mac?”
He cleared his throat, shifting in bed, glad for the heavy shield of blankets. “We leave for Surrey in an hour.”
Her frown deepened. “But we killed . . . I mean I . . . that is . . .”—she took a slow deep breath—“the Frenchman is dead.”
“He is. But he wasn’t working alone. There’s a woman. I felt her malice and her resolve in my head like a stain. She watched as he . . . as he questioned me. I could almost feel her hand guiding his knife, sense her pleasure at my screams. Whoever she is, she’s responsible for Adam’s death, and if I’m right, she won’t stop just because she failed to kill us. She’ll send others, and they’ll assume you know my whereabouts. They’ll force you”—he closed his eyes against the bile clawing its way up his throat—“they’ll force you to tell them,” he whispered. “I won’t let you suffer because of me, Bianca.”
“I’d be safe with Sarah at Deane House,” she answered just as softly.
“No,” he snarled before taking a deep breath. “No. You may be certain of Deane’s innocence, but I can’t take that chance. Not until I completely understand the threat. Not with the lives of so many at stake.”
“But how can I disappear to the wilds of Surrey and not expect anyone to notice? What will people say?”
He handed her a copy of the morning paper lying on the bed beside him. “David brought this up. I didn’t want to show you, but perhaps it’s for the best.”
“ ‘Butcher of Barleymow Court Found Butchered in Back Alley’?” she read.
“Above that.”
“ ‘Mrs. P—, late an actress of Covent Garden theatre, has left London in some haste. Is it to recover her health as some claim, or does she wish to escape the long arm of the law?’ ” Her jaw tightened, the paper trembling in her hands as she read.
“They’ve offered you the perfect excuse to quit the city.”
