by Cherry Adair
She held up the almost empty bottle of wine. Grant nodded, grinding out his cigarette on the plate before placing it on the bedside table. He was ready to make love again, she saw. As much as she loved him, kissing him after he smoked those vile things was like licking an ashtray. Besides, she was already sore in embarrassing places.
“I’m sorry I asked about him. You’re stressed out enough without feeling guilty over not visiting your mentor.” He held out his hand. “Come here, baby. I’ll give you a massage, just the way you like it. That will relax you.”
And maybe, she thought, padding back to bed, glass and bottle in hand, it didn’t matter what he tasted like. He loved her more than any man ever had. They would do anything for one another. She knew that. God. She was so, so lucky to have him.
She handed Grant the bottle, left her glass on the side table, and slid across the tangled sheets beside him. As it always did when she was near him, her irritability dissolved within seconds. She remembered that it had been there, but only on a cerebral level. It was as if there was a barrier between herself and her emotions.
Whatever it was. Love. Stress. Insanity for all she knew, Grant kept her on an even keel, and right now she needed him.
Tucking her against his body, he sipped his wine. “Do you think a person in a comatose state can hear someone talking to them?” he mused, stroking her arm.
His touch was hypnotic, and the glass of wine she’d drunk earlier had made her sleepy. “I don’t know.” She didn’t want to think of Henry Morgan trapped inside his body, able to hear, but not capable of responding. It would be like being buried alive.
Was this her way to cope with depression? Had she somehow learned to disconnect from her emotions? Joanna wondered about it, not terribly worried one way or another. As Grant petted her, she rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder, and closed her eyes. Then laid her hand on his smooth, sleek chest and stroked his cool skin. No worries, she thought. Grant will take care of everything.
Grant’s hand moved off her arm and onto her breast. He played with her nipple, bringing it to an aroused peak. “I’ve read studies that claim coma patients can hear. That frequently listening to someone talking to them in a normal voice, about things that interest them, could bring them back. I wonder if that’s true. Interesting, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” If she didn’t know better, she’d think Grant was trying to manipulate her into feeling guilty. Which was insane. He’d been to see her twice today. The first time, thank God, right after she’d received her noon video conference call from Casey’s kidnappers.
If he hadn’t been with her, Joanna might never have stopped crying. He calmed her. He soothed her as no one else could. He was trying everything he knew to find her son. He was doing everything he could to help hold her together.
“I’m so grateful I have you,” Joanna eyes welled as she leaned over and kissed his chest. “I love you so much.”
Grant’s fingers gently tugged the back of her hair. “Mm, and I love you. Show me how much, darling, I only have half an hour before I go to my meeting.” He pushed her head down his body.
Duncan materialized at Edridge Castle without fanfare. Despite teleporting together, Lark managed to get there before he did. Because the formality of the room required something more than jeans, he’d replaced his casual attire with black slacks and an open-necked white dress shirt en route. Lounging in the big leather easy chair beside the fireplace, Duncan absently juggled three fist-sized spheres of fire. He sat far enough away from the group in the center of the room to give him a few moments to observe everyone before they noticed him.
His brother Gabriel sent a quick glance at the woman huddled on the sofa across the room, then continued talking to Lark and the others. Duncan presumed the woman was Gabriel’s mission, the scientist Dr. Eden Cahill. Interesting that his brother had brought her here. He and his brothers had never brought women home.
What an odd group, he thought. Lark looked like a sexy Goth princess, Upton Fitzgerald was an old-fashioned cowboy, and Simon Parrish looked like freaking double-o-seven in a tux, the bow tie loosened. Alex Stone, who should have been in Geneva right now, had arrived wearing a hotel bath towel, and was being magically dressed by an amused Lark.
The only thing this bunch of mismatched people had in common was that they were all high-level wizards. There were several people missing who should have been here. Serena was one. His brother Caleb another. He supposed Trey should be here, too, but was just as glad he wasn’t.
Serena had never been to Edridge Castle. She’d find it a kick, Duncan thought. She’d love MacBain, and God only knew, MacBain would adore her.
Jesus. He pulled himself up short.
Was he losing his ever-loving mind? He could never bring Serena here. What they’d already shared was dangerous enough to his future. To his peace of mind. To his sanity.
Damn it. He was not going to bring her home to meet the family so he could get their blessing. Not going to happen.
Ever.
Nairne’s Curse felt stronger here. Even more powerful.
He’d be an idiot if he ignored five hundred years of Edge family history. What the hell was he going to do about her? Just thinking about Serena in the most abstract terms had his blood surging, and his heart beating faster. This…thing they were doing had no future. Was there any point in pursuing a merely physical relationship?
Sex between them was incendiary.
And while Duncan could imagine staying in bed with Serena 24/7, that wasn’t the reality.
They had no future.
That decision had been made for them five hundred years ago.
Dragging his mind away from Serena, he scanned the book-lined walls, the heavy leather furniture, the faded, muted carpet underfoot. On the rare occasions when their father had come from Scotland to visit, this had been his office. It was Gabriel’s now. And his older brother fit the massive chair behind the desk just fine. Duncan was proud of him. Gabriel had had to become both brother and father figure to his two younger siblings when their parents had died.
Duncan loved Edridge Castle. He’d grown up here. There was a comfort, a feeling of continuity, knowing that the place would always look the same. And that was thanks to MacPain in the ass, who kept things running to his high, exacting standards. He’d go and see the old guy as soon as the meeting adjourned.
Watching everyone through a convenient veil of fire, he looked at the wizards his brother had assembled. He knew everyone in the room, except Dr. Cahill huddled under a blanket on the sofa. He could tell she wasn’t a wizard. He doubted she was even a Half. She looked about as out of her element as a hooker at a church social.
His older brother, standing in a group at the center of the room, glanced up and suddenly saw him. “Duncan.” His tight expression eased, and he strode across the room.
Duncan rose to slap his brother on the back.
“Caleb?” Gabriel asked, his eyes dark and haunted.
Christ. His brother was scared. Gabriel wasn’t fucking afraid of anything. Wishing he could contact their younger brother, Duncan shook his head. “He’s hunting for Shaw, and he warned me that he’d be deep undercover. I left a coded message on his cell.”
“Me, too.”
Leaning closer, Duncan lowered his voice. “Don’t go there, bro. If we haven’t heard from him, it’s probably because he had to go back in time, following a lead. Chill. If something,” he implied the wizards’ deaths, “had happened, we’d know.” Duncan tapped his chest, right above his heart.
“You’re right. I know you are, but I’d feel better if I was sure.”
“Ditto. I’ll see what I can find out when we’re done here.”
Lark knew where Caleb was. Duncan would figure out a way to get the woman to tell him. She was a phenomenal control and a powerful wizard in her own right, but the last time he’d needed info it had taken a signed first edition Anne Rice novel to pry it out of her. What next? Bauhaus’
s classic Goth single about Bela Lugosi?
It would be easier if the woman liked chocolate or jewelry.
Not happy, but accepting that there was nothing else to be done, Gabriel nodded, then went to stand with his back to the massive stone fireplace. “Blaine can catch up when he gets here.” He glanced at the wizards. “In the past thirty-seven days, three wizards have been killed.”
“Three?” Simon Parrish asked, sitting forward.
“Thom Lindley’s body was discovered early this morning. The sweepers confirmed ID. Vaporized. Same MO as Townsend and Jamison.” Gabriel searched the faces of the people in the room. “We have a rogue wizard. Either one of ours, or an outsider.”
“Man,” Alex Stone muttered. “What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a major clusterfuck. And, Jesus. Look at the timing. Isn’t the Council sitting right now to install a new Master Wizard as leader?”
“They are. I’ll go talk to them.” Duncan juggled five larger balls of naked flame. They were moving so fast they were nothing more than a constantly shifting arc of orange, red, and yellow. The pattern reminded him of Serena’s hair.
“Can’t get anywhere near them until a new leader has been chosen. Caleb first,” Gabriel instructed.
Duncan shook his head meaningfully. If they had any hope of vanquishing this rogue wizard, they couldn’t do it if the three of them were together. When he, Gabriel, and Caleb were within visual range, they cancelled out each other’s major powers. The thought sent a chill down Duncan’s spine.
Losing his powers was his biggest fucking fear.
So while he and Gabriel wanted to make sure Caleb was okay, they couldn’t have him with them now anyway.
“One more thing—” Gabriel said grimly. “Tremayne and I are currently working on replicating a robot stolen from Dr. Cahill’s lab. Until half an hour ago we didn’t connect the deaths of three wizards to our current op. That changed when a man morphing as the Homeland Security agent tried to kill Eden while shimmering.”
“Impossible!” Lark slid off the arm of the chair she’d been perched on. “If there’d been anyone but us in this house, palace, castle, whatever, in the last twenty-four hours, I would have felt him. There’s not a particle of residue indicating the presence of an unfamiliar wizard.”
“Cloaked,” Duncan murmured, adding a gleaming silver dagger to his fireballs. It caught and reflected both the lights and the orange of the fire as it flipped and wheeled high in the air above his head.
“Impossible,” Simon inserted. “Okay. Not impossible with the right device, but pretty damn improbable.”
“Improbable or not,” Gabriel told him, “it’s fact. He was here. Which means he wants what we want. Intel on this bot.”
“No,” the woman on the sofa said flatly. “He didn’t want anything to do with the robot. He wanted me dead.”
The chill skimming Duncan’s spine turned to ice. If the rogue wizard had attempted to kill this woman, then it was feasible that he was also responsible for trying to kill Serena.
If the two attacks were connected.
He wasn’t the target. Serena was.
Or was he getting soft? There didn’t seem to be any correlation between the op Gabriel was working on, Artificial Intelligence, and what he was working on, wandering satellites.
“He wanted to frighten you enough to lower your guard so he could extract the data for Rex,” Gabriel told the doctor. Duncan looked at his brother’s face as he spoke to her. He sounded casual, like his usual controlled self. But his eyes…Duncan had never seen that heated look in Gabriel’s eyes before. Not ever.
“Excuse me? I was the one struggling to breathe as he squeezed the life out of me. You didn’t see his eyes.” She rubbed her upper arms. “He was…shimmering so you couldn’t catch him.”
“What kind of device?” Yancy asked. “What kind of device would be capable of cloaking him from us?”
“Something ancient,” Lark offered, her expression guarded. “An amulet of some sort?” She glanced at the other woman. “Was he wearing anything out of the ordinary? Jewelry of some kind?”
Dr. Cahill frowned. “Nothing I could see.”
“Something in his pocket?” Peter Blaine moved to the center of the semicircle. Short and muscular, he was dressed in a slightly too-tight dark suit, and conservative tie that made the pale skin on his neck roll over his yellow collar.
“You’re late,” Lark snapped, sounding cranky and very unlike her Goth persona.
“Sorry. I’ve been here long enough to get the gist.”
“The gist,” Gabriel said in a hard voice, “is that we now know that the missing bot and our mysterious intruder are inextricably linked. We know that this person is capable of cloaking himself and blending right in. We know that he’s capable of murder. And we know—” He looked from face to face.
“We know, unequivocally, that he’s assimilating the powers of the wizards he kills.”
Joanna poked her head around the door of Serena’s small office. “Hi. Do you have a minute?”
“Of course! I was looking for you earlier. Sal mentioned you’d gone upstairs with a headache.” Serena rose. “Are you feeling any better?” At Joanna’s nod she smiled. “Good. How about a nice hot cup of tea? I just made it.”
She’d taken one of the smaller rooms on the ground floor as an office because it was one of the few spaces in the old building that had a working fireplace. The little fire was blazing nicely, and she crossed to the electric kettle to pour water into a waiting teapot.
Serena frowned slightly as her friend walked past her to get to the seating area. Had Joanna suddenly taken up smoking? It seemed unlikely. But her clothing smelled strongly of French cigarettes. A smell Serena distinctly remembered because she’d had a boyfriend in college who’d smoked the things.
“Sure,” Joanna blushed and said hurriedly. “Why were you looking for me?”
The blush was interesting, Serena thought, amused as she glanced at her friend just in time to see her cheeks turn bright pink. Had Joanna’s “headache” been Denny? She certainly deserved all the joy she could get. She’d wondered if the two of them were having an affair. She’d heard a man’s voice late one night as she’d passed Joanna’s bedroom door.
“Just a visit, actually,” Serena told her easily, fixing the tea. “Sit over there by the fire, I’ll bring it to you. Milk, one sugar, right?”
Joanna nodded.
Serena carried two mugs over to the chairs she’d pulled up to the fire. Thank God Joanna had finally come to her. Whatever was putting those dark circles under her friend’s eyes needed to be resolved. And Serena had a pretty good idea what the problem was. But how to approach it? Usually she didn’t have a problem being confrontational. She preferred things out in the open, and under a bright spotlight. But in this instance she needed to take a gentler approach. Joanna looked ready to collapse.
Handing one of the mugs to her friend, Serena sat on the opposite chair curling her legs under her and leaning against the soft cushions. “After a while it feels a little like a bad reality show out here, doesn’t it?”
Were the isolation and loneliness getting to Joanna? Serena came and went as she liked, but the team only took one week off in three. It must feel interminable to have to wait three weeks to be with family and friends.
“I don’t mind it.” She lowered her eyes.
“You’re a stronger person than I am, then.” Serena glanced toward her cell phone.
“Are you expecting a call?” Joanna asked, almost hopefully. “I can come back later.”
“No, stay. I’m just waiting for a call back from my attorney; we’ve been playing phone tag.”
Joanna sighed, and it had a desperate sound to it. “I hate that game.”
Inhaling the calming scent of chamomile wasn’t helping Serena’s stomach unknot as she wondered what the brothers Grimm were planning now. Which made her think of Duncan, and the real reason he’d shown up here earlier. Taking a si
p of her tea, she was grateful for the break Joanna provided. Someone else’s problems were usually easier to solve than her own.
“You must miss Casey,” she said easily, trying to keep her distraction out of her voice. “How’s he liking the new school?”
Joanna’s eyes grew damp. “I m-miss him terribly.”
Serena leaned over and touched Joanna’s cold hand. “Take a few days off. Go and see him.”
“I—I can’t.”
“Of course you can. I’ll cover the unloading in the morning. When you get back we’ll have the blanket in place.”
“Can we talk about something else?” Joanna asked almost desperately.
This was a first. Joanna always wanted to talk about her son. “Sure. What would you like to talk about?” Had the boy gotten in trouble at boarding school?
Joanna set her mug down on a nearby table, and stood. “Never mind. This was just—it doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” Serena said gently, even though her emotional radar was suddenly picking up a huge distress signal. “Please sit down and drink your tea. If you don’t want to talk about what’s bothering you, we’ll talk about something else.” She shot the other woman a teasing grin. “We can talk about your new boyfriend.”
Joanna, having picked up the mug again, almost choked on a sip of tea, and her eyes went wide. “Boyfriend? What makes you think I have a boyfriend?”
Serena lifted one shoulder slightly. She wasn’t going to embarrass Joanna by telling her she’d heard a man in her room the other night. “Nobody here smokes, and unless you’ve started puffing on Gauloises, I’m guessing it’s your friend. I must admit, I do wish you’d talked to me before bringing someone here. Until we can show the world at large that we have a practical way to produce crops, this is still a top-secret project. Which is why Henry and I handpicked everyone on the team.
