Gawain breathed. “The lass makes magic bullets.”
If she’d had their full attention before, now they caught fire.
Yes, she promised to make them magic bullets. Yes, she would teach them how to make magic bullets for themselves. Yes, they would need to order a good amount of magic-sensitive silver, along with all the tools she would need for silversmithing. Yes, of course she would make a list—she wrote it out for them while they watched, then Gawain took the paper and pocketed it.
At that point, she held up her hands, stood up from the table, and said, “I’m done. I’m all done today. I haven’t even showered or gotten dressed properly yet—and I still need to go into town to check in on Maggie, set up a bank account, and buy coffee. You kids are going to have to go outside and play on your own.”
Nikolas stood as well. “We got sidetracked by a great deal more information than we were expecting. That’s not a bad thing. All of it is useful, but I was going to ask you to do a reading.”
Now that she was no longer focused on something else, her hyperawareness of him returned. Not quite looking at him, she asked, “Can it wait until this evening?”
“Yes, it can. I need to find someplace to hide the Porsche.” He looked at Gawain. “We also need to show you the great hall in the manor house.”
“I poked around early this morning,” Gawain said. “There’s a gravel access road that goes to the back of the property. It leads to a field that’s lying fallow, so the road is a bit overgrown and obviously unused. You could tuck your Porsche back there, and nobody would be the wiser.”
“Sounds good.” Nikolas looked at Sophie. “Would you let us into the manor house before you leave for the afternoon?”
“Sure,” she said. “Let’s do that now.”
Together they walked across the lawn to the front doors of the house. Now that Sophie had felt her way to coming into alignment with the house once, she was able to do it much quicker a second time.
Nikolas braced his hands on the oaken door. When she gave the word, he shoved it hard and it opened with a creak. He said, “We need to oil those hinges. Not only will it make the doors quieter, it’ll make them easier to open.”
As Gawain peered inside, Nikolas twisted to pick out another broken flagstone, which he used as a doorstop to keep the door from shutting and locking the men out of the house again.
Now that the prospect of going into town was so close, Sophie felt eager to get some space from Nikolas’s intense presence and baffling behavior. As she turned to leave, Nikolas took hold of her arm. His fierce frown was back, making his handsome features intimidating.
“I don’t know that I’m comfortable with your going to town by yourself,” he said almost to himself.
Raising her eyebrows, she pulled away from his touch. “I don’t know that I care if you’re comfortable or not.”
“Sophie,” he said in an abrupt, clipped voice. “There may be Hounds in the town. Remember, we don’t know what they might know about you, and they can change at will. And you don’t know who belongs in town and who doesn’t.”
She squared her shoulders at the reminder, and after a moment, she nodded. “Point taken,” she muttered. “I’ll go armed, and I’ll be careful.”
He angled his jaw. “I still don’t like it.”
“We all have things we don’t like,” she replied with rather more acerbity than she had meant to. “I’m sure you’ll deal with it.”
As she started to turn away, he caught her hand. He tangled his long fingers through hers, and the warmth of his touch reverberated through her. She stared at him with a combination of exasperation and pain. He was the one who had walked away from her, so why did he keep touching her?
His dark, fiery eyes met hers. “Why didn’t you sleep well?”
Her mouth tightened. Maybe if she told him, she could get him to back off and leave her alone for a few damn hours.
“Because I don’t. I just don’t,” she whispered, the words exploding out of her with staccato force. “Every time I close my eyes I see that gun pointed at me. Every time I fall asleep, I try to run away from him, but I never get away, because that didn’t happen. I didn’t get away. He shot me, and he shot me, and I remember every single one. And my brain won’t let it go, so I keep reliving it.” She paused to take a breath. His expression had tightened, and she didn’t want to read what was in his eyes. If it was pity, she might haul off and hit him. Pulling her hand out of his, she told him, “When I’m ready to let it go, it’ll fade. Until then, I just grit my teeth.”
“Sophie,” he said.
“I told you I was done,” she snapped. “I’m really done. Back off and let me have a couple of hours to myself.”
“We’re not done talking,” he told her, even as he took a step back. “This is just on pause for now.”
If she said another word to him, she thought she might do something horribly humiliating and burst into tears. What the fuck, Sophie. So she turned her back and stalked away.
Back in the cottage, she caught Robin eating a pie. It looked like it might be the steak and kidney pie Nikolas had bought for supper the night before. It looked massive in his little monkey hands.
As the puck froze, she told him, “Eat it, sweetheart. Eat whatever you want. Is there anything you want from town? Just tell me, and I’ll bring it back for you.”
For a moment the monkey’s eyes lingered on her expression, and she thought he would finally break through his silence and tell her. She held her breath, but then he tucked his wizened face down to the pie he clutched close to him, and the moment passed.
“Never mind,” she said gently as she passed a hand down his small back. “You’ll talk when you’re ready. I’ll bring you back a cake.”
As the monkey’s eyes flashed with interest, she knew she had struck the right chord. Smiling, she went to shower and prepare for her trip to town. Taking Nikolas’s warning to heart, she painted both offensive and defensive spells on her arms.
There was so much silver in the nail polish the runes shimmered in the light, so she dug out one of her favorite pieces of clothing, a gauzy, semitransparent top with long sleeves that flared at the wrists, with a tight, black spaghetti strap camisole underneath. She paired it with a pair of stonewashed jeans and the Doc Martens, and she even took a few minutes to stroke on some makeup, enhancing her eyes with a smoky pewter color, while brushing a fire-engine red lipstick on her lips.
The makeup made her look different, sultry. Who was she trying to impress with all this?
Nikolas’s dark, intense eyes came to mind.
“Fuck you for walking away,” she whispered to him. “I put on makeup. I look like a million bucks.”
So. It appeared she wasn’t over what had happened last night, not in the slightest. Sighing, she dug out her messenger-style purse and put every piece of identification she had into it, including her passport. Last of all, she checked her new, beautiful Glock to make sure it was loaded and all was in order, and when she was satisfied—and because all her purses had a concealed-carry pocket—she slipped it into her purse.
When she tucked her cell phone into the back pocket of her jeans, she was finally ready to head into town. Her spirits lifted as she drove away from the property. The English countryside was gorgeous, and as she drove into town, for the first time since she arrived, she was able to see it in the sunlight and appreciate how picturesque it looked.
She stopped at the pub first to talk to Arran and Maggie. They were busy working on repairs, so she didn’t stay long, but they both gave her hugs so tight it warmed her heart. Arran whispered in her ear, “Thank you for my wife.”
She patted his back and smiled at him. “You are so welcome.”
“Aren’t you lonesome out there at that old place?” Maggie asked her curiously.
She laughed. Oh, if she could only get some real time to herself. “Not at all,” she told the other woman with complete truth. “I’m enjoying the space.”
“Anything ever,” Arran broke in to emphasize.
“I promise, I will. When are you going to open again?”
They looked at each other, and a shadow fell across their faces. Arran said, “We’ll have to open soon. It’s tourist season, and we need the business, but we’re going to hold off until a week after the funerals.”
She touched Maggie’s arm. “Good luck, and I’ll stop by again in a few days.”
“It’ll be good to see you, lass,” Maggie told her. “Maybe by then, this place will be looking good enough I can make you a cuppa.”
“I’d like that.”
As she walked out, her phone buzzed. It was a call from Paul, the solicitor, offering her congratulations. Pausing to talk with him for a few minutes, she promised to get him the information on her new bank account when she had it, and then she headed to the small Barclays Bank to open a checking account.
When that business was complete, she browsed through some of the local shops and took some time to read and respond to Rodrigo’s email. He had sent a quick query, asking how her trip was going, and she got excited all over again as she wrote about becoming a landowner.
Nikolas’s warning stayed with her, so she kept a wary eye out, but everything in the town seemed so peaceful and normal she relaxed her hypervigilance as she stopped at the grocers to buy coffee. There wasn’t a coffeemaker at the house, so she settled for instant coffee, while she made a promise to herself to buy a percolator soon.
Then on impulse, she bought hot chocolate mix, a bunch of fresh flowers to brighten up the cottage kitchen, and Black Forest gateaux cake she thought Robin would like. As she was walking back to her car, a small shop featuring children’s clothes caught her eye. There was the most darling little navy blue jacket in the window that looked like it might fit Robin. Her gaze lingered on it while she struggled with temptation.
He’s not really a monkey, she scolded herself. And he’s certainly not a child.
But the jacket was so cute, and maybe he got cold sometimes. He might be healing at a magical speed, but he was still so underweight. Ugh. She pushed through the front door. As she bought the jacket, she told the friendly shopgirl, “It’s for my nephew.”
“It’s a lovely prezzie,” the girl said as she wrapped it carefully in tissue paper. “He’ll look so cute in it.”
“Yes, he will. Thank you.” She tucked the shopping bag into the crook of her arm, picked up the cake box, and pushed outside again.
As she slipped out the door, the bunch of flowers tipped over and fell out of the grocery bag. Muttering a curse, she juggled packages while she squatted to reach for them.
Dark boots came into view, and a man’s strong, tanned hand beat her to picking up the flowers. The man said in a pleasant Welsh accent, “Please, allow me.”
“Thank you,” she said.
She and the man straightened at the same time while Sophie took in details of his appearance. He was tall and broad shouldered, although not quite as tall as Gawain, and deeply tanned. He wore tailored gray slacks woven with a silver thread and a matching shirt that was open at the neck, with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms.
The understated elegance looked good on him. She took in other details. He had chestnut hair, a strong face with good bones, and wore an intelligent, even contemplative expression, and while he appeared to be a human man in his midthirties, when she looked into his brilliant hazel gaze, she felt such a roar of Power coming from him, she staggered back a step.
Frowning, he held a hand out to her but checked himself. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said tightly, staring.
She hadn’t sensed his Power until she had looked into his eyes, which meant he must have a titanic amount of control over himself in order to keep it so tightly contained. How could one person hold that much Power and still remain sane?
Giving her a pleasant smile, the man said, “Would it be all right if I carried your flowers for you to your car?”
Her options ran through her mind at supersonic speed. The gun was buried deep in her purse, not her best, first choice should he try to attack. She would have to hit him with either the confusion spell or with the telekinesis, but with his kind of Power, he might shrug off the spells. So the gun might be the only effective weapon against him.
If it came to that.
Belatedly, she realized she hadn’t answered his question. “No,” she told him bluntly. If he was going to try to do anything to her, she would make him do it on the high street, in front of everybody, not tucked away in a side parking lot. “It’s not all right with me. Who are you, and what do you want?”
His smile never dimmed, and his body language remained open, easy. There were slight lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes. If he hadn’t been setting off all the alarm bells in her head, she would have found him quite attractive.
“I want a few moments of your time, that’s all,” the man said. His quiet voice remained as nonthreatening as his body language. “Just a quick conversation, I promise. Are you by any chance Sophie Ross?”
“How did you learn that name?” she countered, taking another step back.
“The people in town speak highly of you,” the man said. “They say you saved the lives of the pub owner and his wife during an attack from lycanthropes. That was very brave.”
“You still haven’t told me who you are,” she said, eyeing him narrowly. She was going to have to drop the cake to get the gun, and she didn’t like what that would signal.
His smile never wavered. “My name is Morgan.”
Morgan.
The sound of his name was like a punch to the kidneys. The town wavered around her. Oh God, no wonder he held such Power. If he chose to do anything to her, she was toast.
She whispered, “Could there possibly be more than one Morgan in the UK who carries the amount of Power that you do?”
His smile dimmed. He said, “It was not my intention to frighten you. I apologize.”
“Why are you here, talking to townspeople about me?” she asked through numb lips. “What do you really want?”
“I meant what I said, Sophie Ross,” Morgan replied. “I just want to talk and to ask you a few questions, that’s all. I mean you no harm. For the moment, you are safe.”
“For the moment?” she echoed. Then because he had frightened her so badly, a wave of anger hit. She held the cake as if she might throw it at him. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the shopgirl watching them worriedly. Morgan noticed her too, and as he waved the fingers of one hand in a subtle gesture, the shopgirl appeared to lose interest and wandered into the back of the store.
Morgan turned his attention back to Sophie. The smile in his eyes had disappeared. He said in a quiet, courteous voice, “Right now, my Queen knows nothing of your existence, and I am free to act as I choose. And I choose to wish you no harm, Sophie Ross. But if my Queen does learn about you, and she orders me to do a thing, you must understand—I will do it. I must.”
As reassurances went, this one basically sucked donkey balls. Still angry, she asked, “Why would your Queen learn anything about me? What am I to her?”
“She has misplaced her pet, and she wants him back,” Morgan said. “She wants him back badly enough, she sent me to search for him. At the pub, the owners told me that you had brought a stray dog into town when you arrived. If I might ask, what happened to him?”
The question fanned her anger into outright fury, and she jettisoned straight into Stupid and Crazy™.
Advancing on one of the most dangerous men she had ever met, she said between her teeth, “That dog was a pathetic mess. He had been tortured and starved. What kind of man are you to serve someone who could treat a creature with such cruelty? Do you have any ethics or morality, or any sense of decency?”
His expression slammed tight as a vault, while a muscle flexed in his lean jaw. Morgan said, still with that terrible, even courtesy, “My Queen commands, and I must obey. Do you still have the dog?”
“No, I do not still have the dog,” she snapped, throwing the weight of all her fury into a perfect blend of truth and misdirection, and she knew instinctively that she had hit the exact right note. “It disappeared at the time of the pub attack, and I haven’t seen it since.” Looking him up and down, she added contemptuously, “But if I did see that dog again, you can be sure as fuck I wouldn’t tell you anything about it.”
“No, I can see that you would not,” Morgan said, holding his body still, his expression calm and stony. “At any rate, not by choice.” He offered her the bunch of flowers. “I wish you well, Sophie Ross. Enjoy your day. Pray there’s no need for us to meet again.”
Breathing hard, she accepted the flowers gingerly, as if they might bite. In an archaic-seeming courtesy, Morgan inclined his head to her, then strode away.
She stood staring until he disappeared around a corner. Only then was she able to get her feet unglued from the pavement. She made it back to the car, tucked her purchases in the back, then sat in the driver’s seat and shook. When she felt she was capable of driving safely, she started the Mini and pulled carefully onto the road.
Her mind was leaping around like a scalded cat. Maybe she shouldn’t drive back to the property. But everybody in town knew she was staying there. Maybe it would look worse if she didn’t go back.
Maybe Hounds had already been to the property to search the cottage. Maybe Nikolas and Gawain had already been attacked. By the time she parked at the cottage, she was in a clench of worry. Already familiar, the scene looked peaceful, untouched by violence, but as she knew from bitter experience, looks could be lethally deceiving.
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