by Unknown
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TALON LOOKED AT Kenna’s pinched features. She was afraid to tell him the truth about herself.
Fighting to keep his voice even, he asked, “I don’t suppose you know anything about a box buried in the woods?”
The quick change of subject left her looking genuinely confused. She had secrets she wasn’t willing to share, but from her reaction he was pretty sure they didn’t have anything to do with the money he’d turned over to the state police.
Relief flooded through him. She wasn’t here to spy on him. Or was he seeing what he wanted to see on her face?
Remembering why they were standing in the dining room, he looked down at the table where her belongings were spread out. Quietly, he began to stuff everything back into the knapsack. When he was finished, he said, “Let’s go have breakfast.”
She scuffed her sandal against the rug. “Does that mean you’re going to let me stay?”
“Yeah,” he answered, watching the hope bloom on her face. “We’ll work out a barter system. Room and board in exchange for work.” He didn’t mention that the gold beads could easily have paid for her room and board. What the hell would he do with gold beads?
“Yes. I want to pay my way.”
“After breakfast, you can help me do some laundry. I had a group here last week, and I left the sheets and towels for later.”
“Just show me where to find the washtub,” she answered, then looked toward the window. “And I didn’t see your clotheslines. Do you put it out each time?”
“Washing machine and clothes dryer,” he corrected, struck once again by her lack of familiarity with the simplest accoutrements of the modern world. What the hell kind of community did she come from? Apparently, one where cheap manual labor took the place of modern conveniences. When was she going to tell him about it? He started for the kitchen, weighing the advantages of turning the meal preparation into a cooking lesson.
TRYING not to be too greedy, Kenna ate scrambled eggs, bacon, and the toasted bread that Vandar had asked her about. Back then she’d thought the idea was weird. Now she realized you could get used to the stuff, particularly when it was slathered with butter and something called blackberry jam.
Talon had taken the slices out of the freezer and put them into the toaster thing.
He’d showed her how to do everything, and she was hoping she could accomplish it by herself next time.
He ate only a bit of eggs and a lot of the bacon, but she didn’t ask about his expensive dietary habits.
Then he took her to the laundry room and showed her how to use the washing machine and the dryer. If machines like that had existed in her world, an adept with psychic talent would have run them with mind power. Here, the power came from electricity.
It could do a lot of things. But it was dangerous, too. Talon had showed her where the metal prongs on the end of the cords plugged into the wall and warned her not to poke anything in there.
The morning set the pattern for the next few days. Polite interactions, work assignments, lessons on life in his world, and more leisure time than she’d expected.
She’d pictured herself sweeping his floors with a broom. Instead, he pulled a vacuum cleaner out of a closet. Another machine. It picked up a lot of dirt, but it was clumsy to drag around.
He had a special brush to scrub the toilets. And another brush for the shower and the sink. And cleaner that came out of a bottle when you pumped the top.
When she wasn’t working, Kenna spent hours watching and learning from the television and reading the magazines that were stacked around the house.
And Talon—she was getting comfortable calling him “Talon”—didn’t confine her to the house. In the afternoons, she started taking long walks in the woods where she discovered there were several other dwellings within a mile of Talon’s lodge, although none was as nice as his.
Their days settled into a routine. Talon was outside most mornings, using a loud kind of saw to cut up the fallen tree and maybe going off in his pickup truck for food or other supplies. He brought back frozen food he thought she’d like. Something called twice-baked potatoes was wonderful. So were pizza and apple pie with vanilla ice cream. You baked the pie, then put the ice cream on top.
In the afternoons, he did office work at his computer and on the telephone, ordering supplies and talking to clients. She gathered that he had a trip coming up, and he was finalizing the details.
TALON stepped out of his office and walked down the hall, checking the rooms. He’d thought he heard Kenna go out half an hour ago, but he wanted to make sure she wasn’t around.
When he established that he was alone in the house, he consulted his phone book and found the name of Ross Marshall. He hardly knew the guy, but he’d decided it was time for a call.
Still, his chest tightened as his fingers hovered over the phone buttons.
“Either make the call or forget it,” he muttered to himself. Finally, he pressed the buttons, then stood up and looked out the window so he’d see Kenna if she came back. Because the back door was locked, the only way she could get in was through the front door. Which meant he’d have plenty of time to terminate the call if he needed to.
“Hello?”
He took a breath and said, “This is your cousin, Talon Marshall.”
The voice on the other end of the line was enthusiastic. “It’s good to hear from you!”
“You’re probably wondering why I’m calling out of the blue.”
Ross waited a beat before saying, “No. I figure you’re looking for a private detective who will understand your unique situation.”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“You live up in Pennsylvania, right? Bedford County.”
“Yeah,” Talon answered, thinking that his cousin probably knew exactly where to find his den.
“What can I do for you?”
“A woman showed up at my house last week, and I can’t figure out who she is.”
Ross was silent on the other end of the line.
“She may be hiding out from a closed community up in the hills. She doesn’t have a driver’s license. She doesn’t know much about modern conveniences, like washing machines and toasters.”
“You looked her up on the Internet?”
“Yeah, but I can’t even be sure she gave me her real name.”
“What is it?”
“Kenna Thomas.”
“How did you meet her?”
“Under rather strange circumstances.” Talon recounted his meeting with Kenna in the storm, pretty sure that Ross was taking notes.
“You may know my wife owns a medical lab. I’d like her to do a DNA test.”
“On what?”
“Can you mail me a sample of Kenna’s hair? Preferably with a hair follicle attached.”
“I can do that,” he said thinking about the comb Kenna had left on the bathroom sink.
Ross gave the address of the lab, then asked, “Does she show any psychic abilities?”
The question took him by surprise, but he thought back over the time he’d spent with Kenna. “I . . . don’t think so,” he murmured. “Why do you ask?”
“You made me wonder about her,” Ross answered.
Talon hadn’t said much, and he waited for his cousin to make some crack about werewolves and bonding. When Ross remained silent, Talon asked carefully, “Wondered about what?”
“I’d rather not speculate until I have more information.”
“You like being mysterious?”
“There are some cases that have come up,” his cousin said. “And she could fit the pattern. But I don’t want to suggest anything that turns out to be leading in the wrong direction.”
“Okay.”
Talon didn’t press.
“Anything else I can do for you?” Ross asked.
Talon thought about it for a moment, then told him about the box of money he’d found in the woods, the visit from the cops, and the guy who’d
taken a shot at him a week ago.
“Did you talk to the authorities about the shooting incident?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“First place, the guy was shooting at a wolf. Second, I don’t want the cops messing in my business,” he snapped, then wished he’d kept his voice under control.
They spoke for a few more minutes, with Ross asking more questions both about Kenna and the box of money.
When Talon hung up, he stood at the window, wondering if there was more to his houseguest than he’d imagined.
Ross had mentioned psychic abilities. Talon had said that Kenna didn’t have them, but that had been a knee-jerk reaction. Had he spoken too quickly?
What abilities, exactly?
Staring off into space, he thought of the time he and Kenna had spent together. Had she read his mind?
He didn’t think so. If she could, wouldn’t she have picked up clues to modern life from him?
Could she predict the future?
Again, he couldn’t find any evidence. She’d been worried about his letting her stay here, which meant she hadn’t known what he was going to decide.
Another power was the ability to make someone follow a course of action that they hadn’t thought of for themselves. That possibility made the back of his neck prickle. Was he keeping her here because she’d compelled him to do it?
He shook his head. He was acting out of character, all right. But he was pretty sure she wasn’t compelling him to do it. Not by mind control.
He got off that track and focused on another psychic talent.
What about shape-shifting? She certainly hadn’t changed to some other form, not in front of him. Of course, he hadn’t done it in front of her, either.
She was going for long walks in the woods. Could she be turning into a bobcat when she was out of his sight?
Somehow, he didn’t think so. Okay, why?
For one thing, she seemed to have only normal human senses while he had a heightened sense of smell, for example, even as a human.
As he stood staring through the window, he ran through other talents she might have, but he couldn’t come up with anything that made sense.
KENNA walked through the woods near the lodge, thinking about Talon. As she’d watched him in his normal routine, her admiration for him had grown.
If she had to give him a familiar label, she’d say he was like someone who was highborn back in her own world. A man who was his own boss. A man who knew what he wanted and got it without asking permission from anyone else. And he had a confidence she’d rarely seen in Breezewood. When something went wrong, he fixed it on his own and moved briskly on to the next task.
If he had any doubts about a course of action he’d selected, she couldn’t detect them. But he wasn’t interested in power over other people. Back home, a man like him would have been on the city council, if only to protect his own interests. Here, Talon didn’t worry about that kind of security.
One thing she’d noted was his self-control. On the surface, things between them seemed calm, but every moment they were alone in this house, she felt the tension between them. They were both being careful not to touch, not to delve into the deeply felt needs that had bloomed from a simple kiss.
But it wasn’t just the physical relationship that he kept under control. He had to be curious about her background. Who wouldn’t wonder about the strange woman who knew so little about ordinary life?
Even so, he didn’t bombard her with questions. Instead, he seemed to be waiting until she trusted him enough to tell him the truth.
She wanted to do it. So much. Not just for him, but because living in this world had given her a taste of freedom she hadn’t known in months.
But the freedom was just an illusion unless she could break away from the monster that held her captive.
She moved her arms, trying to dispel the restless feeling that tightened her chest. Her life had taken on the unreality of a waking dream, but she knew the dream had to end. She wanted to stay here. With Talon. She wanted to change the equation between them into something real. But the only way to do it was to free herself from the compulsion Vandar had laid on her.
If she had the courage to do it.
Her hands squeezed. She couldn’t go on like this. And she had been trying to solve the problem.
Sitting down, she pressed her back against a tree trunk, breathing in the scents of the forest—the vegetation, the earth, and the dried leaves. And the air that now seemed normal to her.
Everything here was so different from any place in her own world, and the reality of this new environment helped separate her from the other universe.
Once she felt mentally grounded, she went back to what she’d been practicing over the past few days—putting up a wall in her mind to shield her from Vandar. If she could make the wall strong enough, she could get out from under the spell he’d placed on her.
In school, she’d taken classes in erecting a barrier against a strong psychic threat, usually provided by the instructor. She hadn’t been the best student, but she’d been fairly successful, and she’d always had good feedback from her teachers.
She grimaced as she reminded herself that her biggest failure had been when Vandar had initiated her into his cadre of slaves, and her defenses against him had crumbled. But he’d been right there in the ceremonial chamber with her, his dark eyes boring into hers as his mind sent out its deadly tentacles.
She looked up at the tree branches above her. She was miles away from Vandar in another world. Surely, that gave her the separation she needed to break his hold on her.
Once again, she worked on a mental image of building a stone wall, block by block, like the solid walls of Talon’s house.
Then she added layers to the back and front, so that it felt like her mind was inside a fortress so strong that nothing could crack through.
Was that an illusion? She hoped not. She wished she could practice with one of her teachers, but in this universe, there was only one way to test her mental handiwork.
Standing up, she looked at the shadows filtering through the leaves above her. It was getting late, but her practice session had made her nervous. Instead of heading directly back to the house, she walked down to the small river that ran through the forest. She liked wandering along its banks, stopping at a place where the water ran deep. It looked like she could swim there if she knew how. But that was a skill they didn’t teach in Breezewood.
She also liked looking at some of the other houses that backed on to it. None of them was as nice as Talon’s lodge, but they were all large and sturdy compared to the average house back in her own world.
As she walked, she silently debated the course of action she was contemplating.
Could she really sever Vandar’s control? Or was she going to end up with her mind fried and her body lying on the floor like a dead husk?
The image was all too real, and she shuddered. Feeling pulled in one direction and then the other, she kept walking. Finally, she knew she couldn’t stay out any longer. She was usually home by now, and Talon would wonder why she was out so long.
Retracing her steps, she hurried back toward the lodge. When she stepped out of the woods, she spotted Talon. He was standing on the brick paved area that he called the patio, in front of some kind of round table that she’d seen out there. It had shiny metal legs and a black body. When she’d passed it before, it had been covered by a black dome with a handle in the center.
This afternoon, the dome was sitting by itself on a built-in bench.
Wondering what Talon was doing, she kept walking toward him. He had a rectangular can in his hand, and he pointed it downward, shooting a stream of liquid into the curved bottom of the table. Even at this distance, the liquid gave off a sharp smell that she didn’t like.
Curious, she came closer, just as he pulled a box out of his pocket and dragged something across the edge. A small flame sprang up, and he held it toward the
table.
As she stared in horror, a great mass of fire leaped into the air.
“Talon!”
At the sound of her voice, he spun toward her, but he was still so close to the flames that she knew his clothing was going to catch on fire.
CHAPTER TWELVE
KENNA’S HEART BLOCKED her windpipe as she took in the terrifying scene. It flashed through her mind that she could use her talent to shove Talon away from the fire, but he was still fifty feet away, and at that distance, he was much too heavy for her to push him to safety.