After a moment, she set her clothes carefully aside and turned on the shower. She washed away all the evidence of what they had done together, dressed, and got back to work.
Her excuse was, apparently she had no sense.
And his excuse remained exactly what it had always been, inexplicable.
Chapter Sixteen
As evening fell into darkness, clouds amassed on the horizon, and the air grew damp and electric with the energy of impending rain. The puck had disappeared some time ago. Now that Sophie knew what his magic felt like, she could recognize his touch on the wind.
They were going to get a fine storm that night. For someone who was only partially recovered, Robin was exerting a tremendous amount of effort.
At first Sophie thought she would start shouting at Nikolas the moment she laid eyes on him again, but they had no more time to waste on personal issues.
The three of them ate a quick, cold supper. Nikolas slapped meat between two slices of bread and wolfed it down. Gawain ate beans out of the can while he stood at the kitchen counter. Sophie followed Nikolas’s example and ate as much of a sandwich as she could choke down past the nerves tightening her stomach.
“Robin might be able to wash away your scents with his storm,” Sophie said worriedly, “but he’s also exposing himself. If I can sense his magic on the wind, others will be able to as well.”
“If they’re still anywhere in the vicinity, they’ll be out searching for him.” Nikolas’s expression had turned grim. “We have to plan on it and tell the others to hurry. This night could turn ugly.”
Taking his warning to heart, she double-checked the spells she had painted on her arms earlier to make sure they were still viable, and she pulled the Glock out of the micro gun safe, inspected it quickly, and tucked it in the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back.
A gun tucked in the small of the back was not only uncomfortable, it was insecure. It could slip out her waistband in a struggle, and she would have preferred a proper holster, but she hadn’t brought one with her from the States and they hadn’t thought to give her one. She would just have to make do. Last, she slipped extra ammunition into each front pocket. She didn’t want to risk running into one of those monstrous Hounds without being prepared.
Using the wheelbarrow Gawain had found in the shed behind the cottage, they transported things from the cottage to the manor house. They didn’t bother to sort everything in the great hall but stacked things in haphazardly to organize later.
They emptied out the kitchen—all the food, the dishes, pots and pans, the table and chairs, and even the dishwashing liquid. Sophie dragged her luggage across the lawn, while Nikolas swung the settee onto his back and jogged it over. Gawain followed shortly afterward with the armchair balanced on his shoulder while he tucked the sitting room table under one arm.
While Sophie cleaned out the linen closet—sheets, blankets, bedspreads, towels and washcloths, laundry soap and toilet paper—and dumped everything into the wheelbarrow, the men insisted on moving all the bedroom furniture as well, even the bed frame.
“You’re already giving up enough as it is,” Nikolas said over her protests. “The least we can do is make sure you get a comfortable bed to sleep in.”
Gawain even walked his Harley into the great hall. He said to Sophie, “The bike won’t work in the land magic, but at least no one can vandalize or disable it while it’s in the house, so we’ll have it available just in case.”
Straightening her aching back, she nodded. It was a good idea. “I only wish we could do the same with the Mini.”
At that, the two men paused to assess the small car and then look at each other. “If we get both the oak doors open, it might fit,” Nikolas said. “If we get enough momentum with the car, the engine will cut out when it gets close to the house, but it should coast close enough that we can push it the rest of the way.”
“Really, guys?” Sophie didn’t know whether to protest their effort or thank them.
“Yes, really,” Nikolas told her. “It’s a principle of siege warfare. You don’t leave anything out for your enemy to use, dismantle, or destroy, if you can possibly avoid it. The Porsche is going to be toast. It’s too big to fit through the doors, and sooner or later they’ll find it, but we can at least hope to save the Mini. And you never know. We might need it.”
His dark hair had fallen onto his brow with the expenditure of effort. He looked handsome, dangerous, and kissable all at once. Having sex in the bathroom might have turned into a debacle, but in spite of that, she had managed to fall even deeper in love with him. She was afraid she had gone well past the point of it being a bad, bad cold. This feeling was turning into a life-threatening, flu-strength illness.
Then she flipped over to a kind of cheerful, macabre train of thought. Oh, well, they probably weren’t going to survive the siege anyway. Because none of them were talking about what might come next, after they had been in the manor house for so long their supplies had run out, while they could very well discover that the broken crossover passageway magic was just that—broken pieces that lead nowhere.
They were throwing everything they had at a mere possibility. They would be blockading themselves into a dead end with no proof of an emergency exit.
We’re all insane, she thought. So I might as well enjoy loving him while I can, because it doesn’t make any less sense than anything else we’re doing.
In the meantime, she threw up her hands. “If you guys think you can fit it in through the doors, by all means. It’s only a rental, but I didn’t take out extra insurance for siege warfare and decimation caused by Hounds of the Light Court, so you’ll be saving me some money.”
Once they had cleared everything moveable out of the cottage, even the curtains, Sophie shooed the men outside.
She told them, “Don’t step back inside now. We might be preparing for a siege, but we can also work on some misdirection. For whatever good it does, I’m going to clean everything with as many household chemicals as I can. Hopefully by the time Robin and I are done, nobody will be able to pick up yours or Robin’s scents, either in the cottage or anywhere outside on the property. The storm might bring Hounds nosing around the property, but with any luck, if Morgan doesn’t find anything, he should go away again, right?”
“We can hope,” Nikolas said, giving her a dark look. “Unless Morgan gets information from another source.”
By the mystified look on Gawain’s face, Nikolas hadn’t had a chance to tell the other man what they had learned from her most recent vision.
Her shoulders drooped. “Well,” she said tiredly. “We’ll do everything we can, and then we’ll see how things play out.”
Gawain patted her back. “That’s all anyone ever can do.”
Pulling out an extra burst of energy through sheer will, she attacked the interior of the cottage. Through the kitchen window, she paused briefly to watch Nikolas and Gawain force the second oaken door open in the deepening twilight. Then Nikolas loped back across the lawn to start the Mini and drive it toward the open doorway.
Sure enough, within fifteen yards or so, the car’s engine died. It rolled a little farther, but the thick turf and the broken flagstones must have provided too much of a barrier, because it stopped well back from the doorway.
Nikolas leaped out, and Gawain joined him at the rear of the car. Together they pushed the Mini, seemingly without effort, into the house.
Mmm-hmm, that show of masculine strength wasn’t sexy in the slightest.
Sometimes she cracked herself up. She turned her attention back to cleaning the cottage. Basically, she threw bleach on everything that could take it and lemon floor polish on everything else. By the time she was finished, even she couldn’t handle the smells inside. Stacking the cleaning supplies outside the door, she backed out of the cottage and locked it.
When she turned around, she found Gawain striding toward her. By the hard, tight expression on his face, she could tell that Ni
kolas had finally talked to him.
He put an arm around her and squeezed her against his side tightly enough to make her grunt. “You’re going to be safe with us, lass,” he told her. “I swear it.”
Sighing, she let her head fall onto his shoulder as she slipped an arm around his waist. “I didn’t believe anything otherwise,” she told him.
“Good.” Unexpectedly, he turned his head to press a kiss against her forehead. “We’re all at sixes and sevens right now, but you should know—you matter to him. You matter a great deal. He has to work through some things, so he might not be able to tell you that himself. If it matters to you enough to do it, lass, try to give him some time, and hopefully he’ll work his way through the heaviest of it.”
At his words, the starch went out of her spine. She turned into him to give him a full-bodied hug. “Thank you for saying that, Gawain.”
He returned the hug and patted her back. “You matter to me too, you know. Have faith, stay the course. We’ll do right by you.”
“It’s okay,” she told him. “I don’t know the others, but I believe in you, and I believe in him. Whatever that means.”
As he let her go, he smiled and touched the tip of her chin with his knuckles. As she looked up at his rugged, handsome features, she thought, oh Gawain, you’re such a good man. You’re not an asshole in the slightest. Of course I couldn’t fall for you.
While Gawain helped her to load the last of the cleaning supplies into the wheelbarrow, the first fat splash of raindrops began to fall. She warned, “Your null spell is going to wash off in this rain.”
He paused, considering. “Maybe it doesn’t matter, as long as Nikolas works inside the house,” he said. He narrowed his eyes at the manor house. “I can’t sense anything with the null spell on my hand. Can you sense his presence?”
She tried and couldn’t. “I can’t sense anything but the land magic.”
“That’s good news, lass. Maybe it means the house will cover our presence like we’d hoped.”
They jogged over to the manor house as the first few raindrops turned into a steady rain; then quickly it became a downpour.
They tossed everything through the front doors. As she peered inside, she saw that Nikolas had lit a small fire to one side of the massive fireplace, and he stood beside it, head angled as he peered up at the chimney.
“Is it running clear?” Gawain called out.
“There’s some kind of obstruction,” Nikolas shouted back. “I’m going to have to climb up to clear it.”
As they watched, he reached up to grab hold of something high inside, and he levered himself up until he had completely disappeared.
“Go on inside now,” Gawain told Sophie as he took the handles of the wheelbarrow. “No need for you to get any wetter.”
She had to raise her voice to make herself heard over the rain. “What are you doing?”
“Gathering as much wood as I can,” he replied. “I found a couple of deadfall trees earlier in the north copse. They’re already down. They just need to be harvested.”
“Are you crazy?” she said as lightning flashed overhead. “This is turning into a serious storm.”
“It’s not my first storm, lass,” he said, giving her a wink. “Nor will it be my last. We need as much fuel as we can get. Wood will dry out, and so will I.”
“Well, when you put it like that.” She stepped back out into the deluge. “Let’s go.”
Within moments they were soaked to the skin. It had been another long day, and it wasn’t long before exhaustion set it, narrowing her thinking down to the immediate.
Put one foot in front of the other. Stack the wood Gawain chopped. Push the wheelbarrow another yard. Strain built up in her back, shoulder, and arm muscles, and soon the sites of the old gunshot wounds radiated a hot fire. Consumed by misery, she gritted her teeth, ducked her head, and endured it.
Gawain soon stopped trying to chop the wood into neat logs. Instead, he hacked at the deadfall just enough to break it into transportable pieces.
While they worked, lights appeared, shining through the woods. Breathing hard, she paused to stare, and Gawain did too. It was a large vehicle, traveling down the road that led to the front gates.
“Is that good news or bad news?” Her voice had gone hoarse.
He dug in his pocket to check the screen of his phone. “The men met up in Telford and got their hands on a lorry. They’re here.” In the faint light of the cell phone screen, he looked at her sharply. “We’ll need everybody to get the truck unloaded, but your trick with the colloidal silver won’t work in this downpour.”
“No,” she said, swiping at the water running off her nose. “But my trick with the nail polish will.”
It would also use up the last of her supply. She had enough silver to make more shavings, but she would need more bottles of nail polish, damn it. She had never imagined she would use the bottle up so fast, and she hated to let go of it.
Put one step in front of the other. Fix one problem at a time.
Gawain said, “They took a risk, banding together. We’re even more traceable in a group. They never would have done it if they hadn’t been on the move.”
As the lorry turned onto the drive and passed between the gateposts, Gawain ran toward it while she raced back to the manor house. Dashing inside, she paused to look at the piles of furniture and supplies they had stacked everywhere. The small fire Nikolas had started was a pitiful light source, and it was hard to make things out in the semidarkness.
“Nik, they’re here!” she called out. “Where’s my stuff?”
At first she thought he didn’t hear her, but then in a shower of debris and soot, he landed light as a cat in the huge hearth and scrubbed his face with the bottom of his shirt. “I don’t know. Where did you last set it?”
“I thought I put it over here. We need the nail polish if we’re going to use the null spell in this storm.” She jumped onto the settee and rummaged blindly in the shadows behind it. Her questing fingers brushed a hard, pebbled surface she recognized as her suitcase. “Got it!”
While Nikolas stacked more logs on his small test fire, she hauled the suitcase over the back of the settee and wheeled it over to the hearth, where she knelt to open it to rummage through her things. A chill had set in the house with the storm, and fine tremors ran through her muscles. Soon her teeth were chattering. Her body was a mass of aches and pains.
Then Nikolas walked up. He squatted to wrap a blanket around her. For a moment his arms remained around her torso, then they loosened. “You look like a drowned cat,” he said, his eyes both shadowed and lit by the nearby flames. “Stay by the fire and warm up. Gawain and I can spell the men.”
She felt spent, and she wasn’t going to argue with him. She located the bottle of nail polish and gave him a pointed look. “Have either you or Gawain ever used nail polish before?”
His eyes narrowed. “I think it’s safe for me to speak for him when I say no.”
Giving him an exhausted grin, she slapped the bottle in his hand. “Don’t apply it to wet skin. It takes a few minutes to dry, then you’re good to go. Nobody should go back out in the rain until their rune is dry to the touch. Gawain and I think the land magic is going to mask the group’s presence when you’re all in the house. I couldn’t sense you in here.”
“We’ll double-check when we’re all together, but that’s good to know.” He started to rise.
“Nik.” She took hold of his wrist, and he paused. Her smile died. “Don’t waste what’s in that bottle. That’s all I’ve got.”
He frowned. “Understood.”
Lightning flashed overhead, showing through the thick, archaic glass in the windows and briefly lighting the interior. Nikolas strode across the hall and disappeared outside. Left to herself, she pulled the blanket more tightly around herself and dragged one of the sitting room chairs over as close as she could to the growing fire. From that vantage point, she curled in a ball and watched as seve
ral men converged on the doorstep.
Between the distance and the deep shadows, she couldn’t make out many details of the newcomers. They conversed quickly in the area just inside the doors, then one ran outside again. She heard a distant shout, “Can’t sense a thing. We’re good!”
Several of the men looked her way curiously. She could identify Nikolas easily enough. His tall form and catlike grace were indisputable, as he moved through the men, bending over their hands. She knew what he was doing—he was casting the null spell—and she hoped she would have a little of the nail polish left when he was finished.
It was a good thing the land magic didn’t block magic as well as technology. Shifting to get more comfortable, she felt the Glock dig into the small of her back, but she didn’t move to set it aside.
Even though the gun was useless in the house, she wasn’t convinced that she was inside for the night. She was worried about Robin. He was expending so much energy on the storm, and even now, they had to be hunting for him.
After a lull of five to ten minutes, the men exploded into furious activity. They backed the lorry up to the house as close as they could without the engine cutting out. Then while it sat idling, they raced to unload the contents from the back, carrying heavy armloads of supplies into the front hall at a dead run.
Indirect light from the lorry’s headlights lent a sharp, slanting illumination to the scene, bleaching everything into black and white. Out the front double doors, she could see the outlines of the men’s figures working furiously in the driving rain. A couple of them gave her a nod in greeting as they came close, but nobody paused to talk. Talking could happen later.
She watched as stacks of supplies grew around her, everything from camping supplies to cases of bottled water, cans of food, boxes of pantry items, and stacks of weaponry. They even brought more fuel—cords of firewood, what looked like bottles of propane, and other things she couldn’t identify from where she sat. As large as the great hall was, it was beginning to resemble an overcrowded warehouse, especially with the Mini and Gawain’s Harley tucked against one wall.
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