Shadow’s Edge np-1

by J. T. Geissinger

  But once Leander picked her up in his arms and ran with her through the restaurant to the back patio, she remembered. As her hand rested against his chest, she’d felt the beating of his heart, felt the heat of his skin under her palm, and the smeared blurs of color came again. But this time they cleared into visions of things she’d never seen before.

  Memories, though not her own.

  His.

  So many things at once. So many people and places and a crush of sensation and strange power and throbbing desire but always this:

  An elegant manor house, set back on wide, sweeping green lawns, vast and mysterious inside with columns of alabaster and huge gilt-framed paintings of unsmiling people and priceless antiques scattered throughout. A dark forest, dense undergrowth, ancient trees so tall the tops were lost in shrouds of mist with moss draped over the low-hanging boughs, swinging in a night breeze, ethereal. Fangs and claws and muscled sleek bodies, creatures on four legs undulating silently over the forest floor, creatures that growled and roared and disappeared into smoke when they heard an unknown noise.

  A wild, faraway land of lush green vales that led to the ancient forest, a surging river with water so clear you saw the mirror flash of trout far below against its rocky bed, a low range of smoke-purple mountains darkening the far horizon. A land filled with people so beautiful they didn’t seem real.

  People who all looked just like her father.

  After the earth stilled, after Leander called the authorities, when he came striding back through the unstrung chaos of the restaurant like some ancient god of war—lean and muscled, body hammered like a blade, face glorious and beautiful and terrifying all at once—he kneeled down in front of her and grasped her arms in his hands.

  “Everything is going to be all right,” he said, velvet smooth and calm. In spite of his reassuring tone, his expression was hard and severe like a winter-cold beast. His ferocious green eyes stared out of that chiseled face like the eyes of a wild, starving wolf.

  But she knew it wouldn’t be all right. Because now his palms were burning hot on her bare skin and she saw his memories and his thoughts and his fantasies all at once, flashing before her eyes in a panoramic and terrifying display of movement and color and light, as if she were seeing a three-dimensional movie, as if she were somehow inside his mind, at the point of origin.

  Jenna had to run away to stop the onslaught of visions. She thought she might never stop running.

  But stop she had. And now she was here, waiting for him in the elegant, bustling lobby bar of his hotel.

  Her calm suddenly vanished, her heart began to hammer in her chest, her mouth went dry, and her face blazed with heat as Leander came into view around the corner of the room.

  She saw him brush past the artfully arranged potted palms as if in slow motion, moving with grace and stealth, exuding a current of raw power and danger, turning heads as he came. His eyes met hers across the empty space between them, and she clenched her hands into fists in her lap to keep them from shaking.

  He was alone. He looked as if he’d had a bad night.

  “Jenna,” he said, coming to a graceful stop at the side of her table. He slanted a cool green look down at her. “The lovely sommelier from Mélisse. What a pleasant surprise.”

  She looked up at him.

  He appeared totally at ease and in control, as if he’d happened upon a casual acquaintance while out for a stroll. But under the elegant and restrained exterior, the suggestion of aggressive action held just barely in check. He carried with him the fresh scent of night.

  “Are you feeling better today? I’m afraid you gave me a bit of a scare when you ran off like that. I hope you didn’t—”

  “I know what you are,” Jenna said, soft and very still, staring up at his face.

  He froze for one long moment, his cool detachment undisturbed but for a tiny twitch in a muscle of his jaw.

  “Do you?” he murmured. The chandelier above threw sparks of blue off his black hair as it caught the flow of warm air. The light in the room seemed to grow even brighter and everything smelled of blooming jasmine and relentless heat.

  Jenna could not read his expression. It was utterly neutral.

  “Yes. You’re what I’m supposed to be running away from.”

  This seemed to startle him as he stood blinking down at her, his lips parted.

  He gathered himself and motioned to the chair opposite her. “May I?”

  She nodded. He sat down and crossed his legs, letting his gaze fall to the cut glass bowl of mixed nuts on the table-top between them. He was casually dressed today, in fitted beige trousers and a white silk shirt, sleeves rolled up over his tanned and muscled forearms. A shadow darkened his jaw; he hadn’t shaved.

  He plucked a walnut from the bowl and began rolling it between his fingers.

  Jenna was abstractly aware of the sunlight slicing through the massive glass doors of the lobby behind him, the muffled din of conversation and high heels clicking over marble tiles, the heat that crawled down her back until she could barely breathe, but every molecule of her body, every atom, was focused on him.

  “I’m not quite sure how to respond to that,” Leander said carefully. He raised piercing eyes to her face, his tone still so neutral. “Perhaps you’d like to elaborate?”

  Jenna kept her lasered focus when she answered. “If you’re going to play games with me,” she said quietly, staring right into his eyes, “I won’t go back to Sommerley with you.”

  His expression still blank, his gaze sharp and frozen green on her face, Leander crushed the walnut to dust between his fingers.

  “Excuse me?” he whispered.

  She smiled in grim triumph. Not so cool after all.

  “Did you think I’d be totally unprepared? Did you overlook the fact that I might have thought about how this moment would play out—that I might have even been expecting you, or someone like you, for years? Do you take me for a complete fool?”

  She raised her eyebrows at him, waiting, but he only gaped at her in silence, utterly astonished.

  “My mother warned me this day would come, though I’m not sure I ever really believed her,” she said, her heart hammering against her ribs. “She told me to run, she showed me how to live a life in hiding, but quite frankly, I got tired of running a long time ago.” She paused. When she spoke again, her voice had dropped an octave. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to hide, from you or anyone else.”

  Jenna was finished with hiding. Finished with secrets.

  Since she was an infant, her father had moved the family every few months, never staying anywhere long enough to set down roots. Her childhood was a constant blur of strang-ers. A succession of transient faces—neighbors, teachers, classmates—materialized in and out of her life as if they were apparitions on a merry-go-round. They made one quick turn then vanished into thin air, never to be seen or heard from again.

  And then her father became an apparition as well and vanished like all the rest.

  “You are different from other girls, Jenna,” her mother would say, which was more than obvious in a thousand different ways. “But you have to pretend you are not. No matter what happens, you have to blend in. Like your father did. It’s the only way to stay safe. It’s the only way to stay free. And if they ever find you...run.”

  She was utterly certain that something she was supposed to run from was now sitting across the table from her, exotic and coiled and still, like a cobra before it strikes.

  “I want to make a bargain with you.” She reached over to brush the dust of the crushed nut into a little pile on the starched white tablecloth beneath his frozen hand. “Tell me the truth, and I’ll go with you without a fight. I’ll go willingly. If you tell me the truth. What do you say?”

  He didn’t move, or blink, or speak. He only stared at her with narrowed eyes, calculating.

  “I know it wasn’t what you were expecting, but I hope you’ll consider it. It’s a damn sight better than your
own plan, at any rate.”

  Jenna kept her face carefully neutral and didn’t allow the fact that she was mostly bluffing to distract her from what she wanted. She’d seen bits and pieces, had gotten so many images and impressions that much of it had been horribly garbled. But there was no way he could know what she’d seen.

  She wanted answers. After that...he could go back to Sommerley, wherever that was.

  Or he could go straight to hell.

  Leander slowly leaned back in his chair and stared at her. He released a long breath through his nose. After a minute in which neither of them spoke and the rising tension in her body felt like a wire pulled close to snapping, the barest of smiles lifted his cheek. His voice, however, did not sound amused. It sounded guarded and shrewd and almost...admiring.

  “You can read minds.” His fingers unclenched and he brushed the walnut dust from them without moving his appraising gaze from her face. “How very inconvenient.”

  “Only yours so far. And this is a new development in my life so don’t expect too much.”

  He reached down and began idly tracing an invisible pattern on the tabletop, his gaze following his finger, and when he looked back up at her again everything was between them, everything she’d felt since the first time she’d seen him, the hum of electricity and magic and the menace he exuded like perfume. “You seem remarkably serene for someone who’s just discovered something so unusual,” he murmured.

  A knot formed in her stomach. “My entire life has been unusual. Moving from place to place, running from some phantom menace, a father who disappeared without a trace, a mother who drank herself to sleep every night, knowing I was different but never having any answers, never, ever knowing the truth.”

  She stopped herself abruptly, looked down at the table, and blinked away the sudden moisture in her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice came in a whisper. “And believe me when I say I’m not serene. In fact, my breakfast is having some serious thoughts about making a reappearance.”

  Leander leaned forward in his chair. “Jenna—”

  But he broke off as someone new appeared at their table, a handsome young man, lithe and black-haired like Leander, with a widow’s peak and knife-blade, lingering eyes that hinted at ruthlessness and sensuality in equal measure. He lowered himself onto one of the chairs, sighed, and stretched his arms over his head.

  “Couldn’t resist getting out of the room for a bit. Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” He grinned at her with an open voraciousness that belied his casual demeanor and slung his arm over the back of his chair.

  Jenna knew this one. He was the other one from the parking lot, that first day.

  Another followed just after, the stunning dark-haired woman who’d been with Leander that day also, wearing a dress so provocative a man walked straight into a wall as he gaped at her when she passed by. She gracefully sat down at their table as well, disregarding the look of icy fury Leander shot her.

  Jenna ignored both of them and shifted her weight forward in the chair. A rush of rash determination flooded through her veins.

  “All you have to do now is tell me the truth and I’ll keep my word,” she said to Leander. “I’ll leave with you. I didn’t see anything in your mind that made me believe you want to hurt me.” A flush of scarlet darkened her cheeks. “Quite the opposite, actually. I believe you may be the only person I’ve ever met who can answer the questions I have. And I have a lot of questions. But if I think you’re lying, or holding anything back, there is nothing that will compel me to move from this chair. There is nothing you’ll be able to say or do once my trust is gone to get it back. I chose a public place for this meeting for a very good reason. I will sit here in this chair and scream bloody murder until the police come and then I’ll run so goddamn far away you’ll never be able to find me again.”

  The sounds of people talking and footsteps echoing and the clink of glassware seemed amplified in the sudden hush that followed. The woman and the younger man sat unmoving in their chairs, surprised. They glanced at each other, then at Leander.

  But he was gazing serenely at her, effortlessly handsome and controlled, his composure recovered. “I must admit, I’m...almost at a loss for words. I can’t recall the last time that happened. If ever.”

  “Tragic,” she said, to the obvious enjoyment of Christian.

  Leander’s expression soured. “Just to clarify,” he said with an exaggerated patience that suggested his composure wasn’t quite so solid, “you will leave your home—all your friends, your work, your life—for places unknown, with persons unknown...just for answers to some questions?”

  “Yes,” she lied. She had no intention of going anywhere with him.

  He shook his head slowly back and forth. “You’re making things much easier for me, but, honestly, I don’t think I understand your reasoning.”

  Jenna sat back in her chair, relieved and terrified in equal measure that he didn’t deny her accusations, didn’t try to assert his innocence, didn’t call her crazy.

  For better or worse, so far he was going along with her demands.

  She brushed her hair away from her face again with a flick of a wrist and gave a one-shouldered shrug. “You’re a man. I’m a woman. I’m sure there’s a lot of things you can’t understand about me.”

  The beautiful dark-haired woman began to giggle, a soft, girlish laugh she tried to hide behind the perfectly manicured hand that flew to her mouth. But it built to a loud, delighted guffaw, and she threw her head back and gave herself over to belly-clutching laughs while Leander and Jenna stared at each other in silence.

  “I think I’m going to like her, Leander. I think I’m going to like her very much,” the woman said when she could speak again. She wiped a stray tear from the corner of her eye and regarded Jenna with a new appreciation through her warm green gaze.

  “Forgive me,” Leander said to Jenna, “for not introducing my companions.” He shot a steely glare at the woman first. “This is Morgan.”

  Morgan smiled wide, her teeth a perfect sheen of white behind scarlet lips, and stuck her hand out, her expression open and direct. Before Jenna could even think of reacting, Leander’s hand shot out and snapped Morgan’s fingers together in his fist. Morgan froze and glanced over at his face but said nothing.

  So he guessed how she had seen his thoughts. Clever. Very well, then. He still couldn’t know how much she had seen.

  “And this is Christian,” Leander said, with a sharp nod toward the younger man seated next to him. Their similar features spoke to their relation, but Leander did not add more.

  “I must tell you,” Christian drawled, gazing at her intently from beneath his lashes. A rakish smile played over his lips. “What a pleasure it is to finally meet you.” He broke into a huge grin. “The mysterious little stray gone so long from the nest is finally coming home—shouldn’t we have a party or something?”

  “Christian,” Leander warned, his lips pressed to a thin line, his gaze turned to flint.

  Morgan clapped her hands together in delight and sat up in her chair. “Yes! A party! When we all get back to Sommerley I’m going to organize a ball in honor of Jenna’s return and we’ll have dancing and music and—”

  “Stop this, both of you,” Leander hissed through clenched teeth. His face had gone dark with a cold fury that silenced them both.

  Jenna shifted in her chair, aware on a visceral level of the power play Christian had just orchestrated, of Morgan’s innocent accomplice to it, of Leander’s outrage with both of them.

  “Are you related to my father?” she said to him abruptly, pressing her advantage.

  “Yes,” Leander said, answering roughly, out of anger, before he could think. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and closed his eyes. “No, I mean. Not like you mean it anyway. It’s not as simple as that, it’s very—”

  “Do you know what happened to him?”

  He looked up at her and his eyebrows drew together, casting a shado
w over his eyes. “Again, it’s not as simple as—”

  “Do you know where he is? Is he alive?” she said, her voice rising.

  “Jenna, for God’s sake, this is not the place to be discussing—”

  Jenna shot up from the chair, her face blazing in the sudden burst of anger that surged through her. The chair fell over and crashed against the marble floor with a sharp clatter that turned heads around them. She ignored every-thing else and focused her vision like a laser beam onto Leander’s unsmiling face.

  “Why have you been following me? What do you want from me? Where is my father?” she demanded.

  He knew. He knew everything. He knew and he remained silent as a statue, staring at her with that infuriating look of cold condemnation, as if all he cared about was the scene she was making, as if all that mattered was maintaining decorum.

  The truth, you bastard, she thought, bile rising in her throat, that’s what matters.

  Her hands began to tremble, as did her lower lip, her knees, and every nerve within her body. Something inside her snapped.

  “Who the hell are you people?” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

  Everyone and everything in the bar fell into abrupt, complete silence save for Leander’s heart. This she heard as clear as a bell, thumping hard within his chest, strong and loud and filled with blood.

  He stood up from his chair with an unhurried luxury of motion, every muscle flexed taut as he rose to face her. He regarded her with a gaze so icy it would have frozen molten lava.

  “I am willing to answer all of your questions, Jenna, as you requested,” he said quietly, the anger obvious beneath the soft tone. “But perhaps it’s time we went somewhere less public to continue our discussion, as it seems to be getting rather...heated. I suggest my suite.”

  Jenna bristled at this, still shaking. “You expect me to go with you, alone, to your suite, where you could do God knows what? If you think I am that gullible, you are sadly mistaken.”