“I can’t look. I don’t have the energy to open my eyes. You have drained me of every last ounce. Besides, I don’t need to see the effect. I can feel it.”
Despite his words, he rolled off her, felt immediately bereft, and pulled her over to him until she lay draped atop him.
“It’s amazing that it doesn’t hurt,” she said, contemplating her hand, which was indeed alight with the short, snapping tendrils of electricity. “It just feels . . . tingly. Oh. It’s going away already.”
“It’ll be back,” he said drowsily, feeling extremely happy despite everything. He hadn’t the slightest idea how he was going to resolve the situation between the Watch and Gwen’s mothers, or how he could protect her from the reclamation agent, but he knew without a single doubt that he would find a way.
He had to. He didn’t think he could live without his Welsh temptress.
FOURTEEN
“Gwen.”
“Mmrph.”
“Gwen, you must wake up.”
“No.” I burrowed deeper into the Gregory-scented blankets on the (surprisingly comfortable) sleeping pallet, and refused all attempts by my brain to wake me up.
“It’s almost dawn, and I must leave before the guards can see me.”
I stuck a hand out of the warm cocoon of blankets and waved it vaguely in the direction of his voice. “Later, tater.”
Cold air brutally assaulted me when the blankets were ripped off my inert form. As if that wasn’t rude enough, Gregory swatted my bare behind, not hard enough to sting but enough that I shot upward and glared at him.
He smiled, the bastard.
“You hit me!”
“I did not. I gave you a tap on your derriere.”
“That, sir, is technically abusive behavior, and I will have none of it,” I said huffily, pulling the blankets up around my breasts.
He cocked an eyebrow and looked down on me. In the dim gray light of the coming dawn, I couldn’t help but notice that he was dressed, and wished wholeheartedly that he wasn’t. “Do you seriously believe I’m the abusive type?”
“No,” I admitted, trying to hold on to my huffiness but admitting to myself that he wasn’t that type of man at all. “I wouldn’t be with you if you were. What is so important that you had to wake me up? I’m not a morning person. I need a long time to wake up and be able to brain things.”
“Brain things?”
I pointed to my head. “You know, do that thing with your brain.”
“Think?”
“Yes, that. Mornings are evil.” I looked longingly back at the pillow next to me. It still bore the imprint of his head. I bet it smelled like him, too.
“No,” he said, snatching the pillow away as I started to dive for it. “Not until we’ve had a little talk.”
I sighed and scooted back so that I was leaning against the canvas of the tent. “All right, but in the future, you must supply me with coffee before you expect me to either brain or comprehend things.”
“Duly noted. Do you remember when I told you how I saved your life by taking the time I needed to stop that mortal from tossing you over the cliff?”
“Yes.” I frowned when he sat at my feet. I’d much rather he sat next to me so I could drape myself over his chest and doze off while he talked. “Do you want me to thank you for that again? I will, but I thought I already did.”
“You did, although it wasn’t at all necessary.” The light was too dim to make out the expression in his eyes, but his voice was filled with wariness that penetrated the dense fog of morning that always seemed to wrap itself around me. “The person who I took the time from was an immortal, of course.”
“Where are you going with this?” I asked, suddenly too impatient to give him a chance to tell me properly. “Does the person want his time back?”
“No.” He looked at me steadily for the count of eight. “She wants you.”
I snorted. “She can’t have me. We may not have a brilliant future ahead of us with you in the Watch and my moms being who they are, but I consider this a relationship until we both decide otherwise.” A sudden fear shook me. “You do too, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said gravely. “What we have together isn’t the point. This woman is a reclamation agent. When you died, she expected to gather your soul and take it to the afterlife of your choice. Perhaps even Anwyn. But she wasn’t able to do that because I manipulated time so you didn’t die in the first place.”
The horror grew until it crawled along my skin like ants. “My soul? This woman wanted my soul? What kind of person—merciful lord and lady! It’s Death, isn’t it?”
He nodded, placing his hand on my leg so that the warmth of his palm seeped through to my suddenly chilled flesh. “She works for Death, yes. Evidently she was tracking you in the mortal world. I ran into her in the park in Cardiff shortly after you ran off.”
I felt sick. “I don’t want her to take my soul. I like it. I think I need it, don’t I?”
“Yes, you do, and I won’t let her take it or you. Gwen—” He leaned forward and pulled me onto his lap, wrapping a blanket around me. “I’m not telling you this to frighten you, merely to warn you so that you’ll be aware of your surroundings. I can’t be with you every minute, much though I would wish otherwise. You need not be scared, just more aware of things. If you see this woman while you are away from the camp, return here immediately. She has some sort of allergic phobia to cats, and I doubt if she would try very hard to penetrate the depths of the encampment.”
“She’s here?” My voice rose on a squeak. “She’s in Anwyn? Goddess! Is everyone here?”
“What do you mean, everyone?”
“There’s two hit men here, too. They work for Baldwin, that lawyer who has it in for my moms and me because I wouldn’t let them deliver the magic they sold him. He’s the guy who threw me over the edge of the cliff.”
“Two men with no necks?”
“That’s them.” I shuddered despite the warmth of his embrace and the blanket. “Irv and Frankie are their names. They have an obsession with heads in duffel bags. I can’t tell you how that makes me feel.”
“I can tell you how it makes me feel,” he said grimly, his hold tightening painfully around me. “I will simply forgo my pledge to Aaron and stay with you. You must be protected.”
For a moment, I wallowed in the sensation of being cherished, but I’ve never been a woman who shoved her responsibilities onto others. “You can’t do that, although I appreciate the sentiment.” I kissed him gently, then scooted off his lap, taking the blanket with me. “Aaron would be pissed if you broke your promise to him, and as for Irv and Frankie, I’ve already taken care of it. Doug sent out guards to nab them when they followed me to this camp.”
Gregory chuckled. “The reclamation agent will have trouble gelding them as she wishes, then. I’ll have to tell her that they are out of her reach.”
I gathered up my clothing and began to put it on, feeling that further sleep was not going to be in the cards. “I suppose you could, although I don’t see why you’d go out of your way to tell her anything.”
“Er . . .” An odd expression akin to embarrassment crossed his face. “As it happens, I was supposed to report to her last night about what happened to the two men.”
“Why?”
“I ran into her as she was about to enter the camp, and played upon her feline phobia in order to keep her from hunting for you.” He made a face. “It seemed preferable to having to run through the camp attempting to make sure you were out of the way.”
I shivered again, slipping on the long linen tunic that was among the clothing Seith had left for me the night before. “Definitely. Doug has issues where you’re concerned, and he wouldn’t hesitate to carry out his threats of jailing you if he sees you. Which means,” I said, pulling aside the tent flap enough to peer outside, “that we should get going. It’s getting lighter.”
“We?”
I pulled on the pair of leggings and
my tennis shoes. My sword had been cleaned and set just inside the tent. I hesitated a second, then strapped it around my waist, feeling that it was better to have it with me than not. “I don’t have to be on duty until late this afternoon, and besides, I’ve always wanted to see what a thief does. I can shadow you.”
He stood up and pulled me against him, his lips curling when I melted into his chest. “Not while I report to the reclamation agent.”
“What is her name?” I asked, giggling when his hands went exploring down my back to my butt.
“I haven’t a clue, and I don’t particularly care. You can help me find the bird if you like.”
I wiggled against him, wondering if there was time for a quickie before too many people were awake. “Did you find the dog and the deer?”
“No and yes. The dog is long since deceased, although I suspect a puppy from one of its descendants will stand in for it. The deer I left outside your tent.”
“You did? Did you feed it? What are people going to say when they see it?”
He kissed me quickly, then took my hand and led me toward the tent opening. “That you have exceptionally bad taste. Behold, the famed roebuck of Aaron.”
I gazed upon a stained, broken marble statue that was propped up against a tent pole. “That’s his valuable deer?”
“According to Ethan it is, and I don’t think he was lying about it. He seemed much too preoccupied with himself to care what happened to the spoils of war, so to speak.”
“Hmm. It’s kind of a letdown, to be honest. I was hoping for a magnificent, randy buck.”
“And you have one, my vixen,” he said against the nape of my neck, pulling me against him.
I thought seriously of pushing him back into the tent and having my womanly way with him, but voices from the tent beyond had me quelling that idea. “Come on, let’s get out of here before someone sees you. You can tell me about the bird on the way over to Ethan’s camp.”
We managed to make it to the stream without being seen, and while we crossed it and skirted the edges of Ethan’s camp, Gregory told me about his meeting with Ethan.
“I didn’t realize he named his hand. To be honest, I didn’t think Alien Hand Syndrome was real until Colorado said that’s what the problem was with Ethan.”
Gregory looked askance while I explained my experience with Ethan. “He is an odd man.”
“Yes, but he does seem to be kind of helpful. At least you got the deer, and he said you could get one of the dogs. Oh! I think that’s the tent where my moms are. Peaseblossom said it was next to Ethan’s.”
Gregory looked toward where I was pointing, to a purple and white tent. “Why don’t you visit them while I hunt out the reclamation agent? I don’t want you wandering around the camp until I know where she is.”
“You’re cute when you’re overprotective,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze.
“One moment.” He moved ahead of me, checking down first one aisle, then the next before beckoning me forward. “Stay at your mothers’ tent. I’ll find you once I’ve spoken to Death’s minion.”
A chill went down my spine at his words. I didn’t want to lose my soul any more than I wanted my head in Irv’s favorite duffel bag. “All right, but if you’re not back in a couple of hours, I’ll have to risk leaving on my own. I want to check with Doug that those two hit men are safely confined and not likely to get out. I don’t need them telling this woman that I’m just a stone’s throw away.”
He glanced around quickly, then pulled me into a kiss so hot it left a little shimmer of electricity snapping and crackling along our skin.
“Show-off,” I whispered against his lips as the charge faded away.
“You bring it out in me. Stay safe, sweet Gwen.”
I watched him walk away because . . . well, because he looked really good from the rear and I enjoyed the view. That thought had me pondering, on the way to my moms’ tent, just how I was going to fix things so that we could have a future together.
“There’s got to be a way,” I muttered to myself, my gaze skittering from person to person in search of the woman Gregory had described. “I won’t ask him to leave the Watch for me—not that I know if he would . . . no, he would . . . maybe—but there has to be something we can do to get the Watch to ignore Mom and Mom Two. Hmm.”
No solution had struck me by the time I entered my mothers’ tent, but I had resolved two points: I was going to warn them about the woman who wanted my soul, and I wasn’t going to tell them about Gregory and me. Over the course of my life they had both, singly and jointly, gone into periodic matchmaking modes, trying to hook me up with men and women . . . and one or two androgynous individuals about whom I was never really certain.
Usually I resisted their efforts, but sometimes, when I was feeling particularly lonely, I’d go out on a blind date or two just in case they were right and they really had found me the perfect person.
They never did. Trust the one organization that made my life a hell to bring my attention to a man who actually might well be the person with whom I wouldn’t mind spending the next few hundred years. Regardless of whether he was or was not a life mate, I wasn’t going to inform my moms about him. They would be merciless in their attempts to find out information about Gregory and would probably demand that he do something silly like marry me. They were very big on binding ceremonies.
“I’ll just keep mum about him, and focus their attention on ways to deal with the Death woman,” I told myself, slapping on a carefree smile when I entered their tent. “Mom! Mom Two!”
“Hello, Gwenny, dear,” Mom said, not glancing up from a large mixing bowl where she was vigorously beating a viscous pink liquid. “Eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety. There, that’s the sleeping draught finished, Alice.”
“Did you make it into a batter so we can bake little Eat Me cakes?” Mom Two asked. She had her back to me and was busily measuring various powders and liquids and placing them in little stoppered vials. “Gwen, you’re just in time. The alchemist has a tiny supply of fey motes in, and I told him you’d like to buy it from him. I know how hard it is for you to find them.”
“Yes, absolutely.” The only other person in the tent was the tiny form of Mrs. Vanilla, curled up in a voluminous armchair. Her hands flitted about in quick little movements, knitting small octagons one after another in a giant object so massive that it spilled out over her lap and onto the floor. I relaxed, the sight and scents of my mothers busily creating potions and physical manifestations of spells making me think of home. How many years had I perched on my favorite three-legged stool and watched as they practiced the physical side of their craft? I dipped a finger in the pink batter and touched it to my tongue. It tasted of peppermint. “How much does the apothecary want for them?”
“Now, Gwenny, that’s not for you. Lady Holly asked us to make something that would cause all of those nasty soldiers to the north to fall asleep so she can capture them all and force the evil king into subservience. You don’t want to be falling—” My mom looked up in midsentence, and froze, her eyes growing huge. “Alice!” she shrieked, making me spin around in fear that something horrible had crept in behind me.
There was nothing, just the tip of the tent flap—pulled aside to let air and light into the interior—gently moving in the breeze. Behind it, a couple of dogs rolled on the ground outside, and a weary-looking old man wandered around with a bucket and a metal scoop, the latter obviously used to keep the grounds poop-free.
“What is it—” Mom Two started to say, but then she, too, stopped and stared at me. Mrs. Vanilla glanced at me, made a few squeaking sounds, and returned to her knitting.
Mom pointed a shaking finger at me. “She’s found him!”
“Or her,” Mom Two said sagely. “Is it a her, Gwen?”
“She’s found a man!” Mom said, still pointing.
I gawked. “How the hell can you tell that just by looking at me?”
Mom dropped her finger, and Mom Two str
ode over to give me a hug. “Oh, Gwenny, dear, you should know better than to ask that.”
“We’re your mothers,” Mom Two said, as if that explained it.
“We can tell these things,” Mom added, wiping her hands on a cloth before coming around the table to give me a hug as well. I hugged them both back, giving them each a kiss on their respective cheeks before shaking my head.
Mrs. Vanilla got creakily to her feet and shuffled over to us. I hugged her as well, and even gave her wrinkled cheek a little peck. She made happy noises and returned to her chair.
“It’s like it’s witchcraft,” I said with a smile. “It is a him and not a her, Mom Two. I’m sorry.”
“Eh.” She patted my cheek and returned to her worktable. “I had hopes that someday you’d find the right woman, but so long as this man makes you happy, I can live with him being male.”
“Who is he? Where is he? Is he here with you in Anwyn?”
“He must be here, Mags. We’d have known if she’d met him before.”
“You tell us all about him, dear,” Mom said, leading me over to a small love seat in the corner of the tent. The interior was quite large, consisting of the main work area and what looked to be a smaller sleeping quarter that was hidden by long silken draperies. “Although you’re going to have to be quick, because Lady Holly likes to see us directly after breakfast, and it’s almost that time now.”
“As a matter of fact, I did meet him before we entered Anwyn, although I hadn’t realized that he was—” I bit off the word “good” and tried to think of a way to explain about Gregory without mentioning the fact that he worked for the Watch. I had a feeling they would plan copious ways to take advantage of him if they knew who his employer was. “I hadn’t realized he was quite so wonderful at that time.”
“What’s his name?” Mom Two asked, packing a bunch of bottles into a wicker basket.
“Gregory Faa. He’s a Traveller.”
The Art of Stealing Time t-2 Page 23