by Jenna Kernan
He hesitated.
“A long time, then?” he asked as if taking a stab.
She lifted her gaze to meet his, seeing that he did not understand her any better than she did him. It stole all her outrage, transforming it into melancholy. “Pleasure is not all that comes from lovemaking.”
His brow wrinkled.
When she spoke again, her voice came in a humiliated whisper. “I could get pregnant.”
“No, rabbit. You could not.”
He sounded rock-sure. Little needles of uncertainty prickled her neck.
“How do you know?”
“Do you love me?” he asked.
“What?”
“Answer the question.”
“I want to punch you in the face.”
He smiled a sad little smile. “Then I can’t impregnate you.”
“Vasectomy?”
He winced. “No. I can only sire offspring with a woman who loves me and whom I love. Wanting to punch me doesn’t qualify.”
“You get that from the book about storks?”
“Storks?”
“It’s bullshit.”
“No, it’s not.”
She almost believed him, did believe him enough to have doubts. She stared a moment too long at his curving mouth and felt the touchdown of another tornado of longing.
“Sometimes I don’t have to touch you to know what you are thinking,” he whispered.
She dropped her gaze to her toes. He’d caught her ogling him only moments after telling him to keep his distance. She was acting like a schizophrenic. This time, when she spoke, it was from the heart.
“I don’t understand what is happening. I just want to go home.”
He could not explain why the pain in her voice cut through him like a weapon. But it did. “You cannot go home because the Spirit Wound is not healing.”
She gave her shoulder a tentative shrug. It did nothing more than answer with a dull ache. “It doesn’t feel so bad.”
He reached and she evaded.
She met his frustrated gaze.
“It is bad, Michaela. You know this.”
She set her jaw in stubborn refusal to concede the truth.
“I must take you north.”
“When?” she demanded.
“When you have more strength.”
“I had enough strength for you to sleep with me.”
She watched that poisoned arrow hit home. He frowned and scratched his neck at the hairline.
“We will go tomorrow.”
“Why wait?” She folded her arms in challenge.
He stared at her, letting his gaze travel from head to toe.
“You sure about the babies?” she asked, her voice losing its bravado.
He nodded.
She shook her head in confusion.
A large bird flew by the window, dipping a wing and calling. Sebastian’s attention shifted to the black shadow until it disappeared from sight, and then he glanced back at Michaela.
“Do not leave the lodge.”
The muscles around her mouth grew tight.
He pointed a finger at her to make certain she understood. “You must stay here.”
And then he strode from the room and out of the lodge without a backward glance.
Michaela stood on the deck facing the lake. She had hastily drawn on her hiking boots as she scanned the sky for the raven that she was certain triggered Sebastian’s hasty withdrawal.
Her attention moved methodically over her surroundings. On the lake a pair of loons swam low in the water, their beaks lifted as if in disdain. Along the shore a blue heron walked with practiced stillness, his sharp yellow eyes scanning the water for breakfast. The world looked at perfect peace.
Staring out at the calm of the morning, she could hardly believe everything seemed so normal. But like the glassy surface of the lake, it was an illusion. Below the surface, out of sight, monsters prowled.
She felt she was being watched and glanced around, finding the raven eyeing her from atop the tallest pine. They stared at each other for a moment, before it stretched its wings and glided silently through the trees and out of sight.
She had not seen Sebastian, who had vanished like the wind on which he traveled. But she felt certain if she just followed that damned bird, she’d come upon him. Michaela descended the stairs, pausing at the last step as she recalled Sebastian’s orders. Were they spoken to protect her or his secrets?
She wanted answers and that meant finding what he was up to.
Michaela set her jaw and stepped off the bottom stair, traveling along the lakeshore in the direction the bird had gone.
She shortly found a trail, evident in the dewy grass.
She scrambled over a fallen tree and paused a moment to lean against the sturdy trunk. From the corner of her vision she saw movement. She turned, half expecting to see the raven flitting through the branches, but that was not what caught her eye. Something like a wisp of smoke from burning leaves hovered, there by the tree line! She stared at the spot but now saw nothing. Fog? She hurried on, suddenly rattled by her unfamiliar surroundings.
Her imagination, she decided, all this talk of ghosts.
It made no sense that Nagi should want her. She hadn’t killed anyone or done any great evil. Until yesterday, she had believed that Nagi was just a means to frighten children into behaving themselves, the Sioux version of karmic justice.
Now she entertained terrible possibilities. She actually wondered what the heck Nagi, warden for all bad ghosts, was doing in this circle? She paused, recognizing that she believed it—all of it.
Her skin tingled a warning. Was he pursuing her even now? It accounted for the creeping sensation and the smoke.
She glanced down the shoreline, surprised at how far she had walked from the lodge. Something wasn’t right. Every nerve in her body screamed a warning. She turned back, suddenly anxious to reach the safety of the deck.
Sebastian’s warning replayed in her mind. Don’t leave the lodge.
Why would he trick her?
Her heart pounded as she stood perfectly still. The calm now seemed ominous rather than peaceful, like the anxious lull before battle.
He had told her something else, back at his home. Ghosts could not reach her there. The structure was protected by some means, and she had left it to go on some half-cocked spy mission.
When she came to the largest of the fallen logs, she slowed to throw her leg up and over, but before it touched down on the other side, she heard the ominous rattle.
She had never heard a rattlesnake before, but she recognized it instantly. The papery shudder, like dried beans shaken in a paper bag, was unmistakable. She froze with one foot on the ground and one across the log as she scanned the ground beneath her. It was there, coiled to strike with its wide, flat head raised, a huge snake, with a body as thick as a vacuum hose. She stared at the flicking red tongue and the unnatural yellow eyes.
Chapter 11
T he reeds lashed Sebastian’s legs, soaking his trousers as he made his way along the shoreline. The rocks scraped the unprotected skin of his feet and so he transformed before continuing at a lope.
When he had come a half mile, he sat on a mossy patch of rock to wait. Better that he let her find him.
Sebastian barely noted the rustle of wings as the large raven alighted on the stump not five feet away. She regarded him with her bead-black eyes and then spoke.
“I understand you have a visitor.” Her voice was strange and crackling, like a myna bird’s. Bess had the power to speak while still in animal form.
He raised his head, calling for the power to change, enduring the familiar electric buzz that rippled through him as he transformed back into a man. “Hello, Bess.”
The feathers on her head lifted. “Nicholas is behind me, but some miles back. He said you witnessed a human attacked by Nagi.”
Sebastian nodded, suddenly feeling tired.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Why is he in this plane?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does she have some special gifts that might appeal to him?”
Sebastian had thought of that. “She can see Spirits when she is awake.”
Bess flapped her wings in surprise, causing her to lift an inch from the stump. “Really?” She landed and folded back her wings, wiggling to adjust them. “Nicholas said to tell you that he could not find her parents.”
Sebastian nodded. If Nicholas could not find them, they were both dead. He brooded a moment.
Bess transformed so she was now sitting on the stump. Her long black hair was drawn into an impossibly long braid that was as thick as the body of a weasel and just as glossy. Her winged brows swept over her dark eyes in a troubled expression as she leaned toward him, making her billowing black blouse gape in the front to reveal impressive cleavage.
“Why did you interfere, brother? Humans are not our affair.”
“We’re half human, Bess.”
She stood. Bess was a surprisingly tall woman, but thin and fine-boned, making her look like a dancer. Her fanciful skirt only added to her grace as she swept forward.
He told Bess of Nagi’s failed attempt to possess him and of his choice to take Michaela in rather than leave her to die. He explained his limited success at drawing the poisons from her wound. Finally, he told her of his plan to take her to Kanka.
Bess nodded her agreement to this. “Kanka has the power to heal this wound if she chooses to help a human. Likely she will also know why Nagi wants this one. Whether she will consent to tell you is another matter.”
“Michaela has some power,” he offered. “Perhaps she’s not human.”
She swept an index finger over the hair at her temple as if preening. “Perhaps she is a human who got knocked on the head, died and then somehow escaped from the Circle of Ghosts.”
“No one escapes the Circle. You know it.”
“I know only that no one ever has.” Bess cocked her head, keeping her bright eye on him. “But if that is where she belongs, Nagi is entitled to have her back.”
“No.”
“No, because it is not so, or no, because you do not wish it to be so?”
“She is not evil. If her soul was black, I would know.”
“How?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I sense her thoughts.”
Bess’s dark brow lifted over her startled eyes. It was an expression he had not seen for she was so rarely surprised.
Now her brow swept low over her dark eyes, making her look fierce. “Are you the only one who can sense her thoughts?”
“I do not know.”
“I would like to meet her.”
“No.”
Bess’s sharp eyes turned knowing. “You care for her, this little one.”
“I do not.”
“Yet you shelter her, even from me.”
It was true. Michaela made him feel more defensive than he had ever felt about anyone or anything. Some of the fight drained out of him. “I don’t understand it.”
Bess’s smile turned sympathetic. “Then, don’t try. Just follow your instincts. They are true, even when your mind is divided. But, Sebastian, you cannot tell her you are Inanoka. I never even told Gordon.”
“Gordon was a raven.”
“And smarter than most people I know.”
He held his tongue. Bess still missed her mate; he could see it in the tightening of her mouth and the defiant lifting of her chin. She was ready to defend him even after death. Sebastian suppressed a twinge of jealousy.
He respected that kind of pair bond, envied her that.
“What do you know of her people?” asked Bess.
“I once saw her mother. Human, I think, and followed the ancient ways.” He told Bess where she lived. “All I know of her father will come from you.”
“Ah,” she said. “You are sure the mother was human?”
“Fairly.”
“Then, if the woman has special abilities, they came from her sire. Do you have his name?”
“Michael Proud.”
“I will fly to the Spirit Road and call his name. I might be able to find him.”
Only Inanoka of the Raven Clan had the power to cross the Way of Souls and return. Her other gift was meddling in everyone’s business. But for once he was grateful. He would take any help he could get.
Bess cocked her head, listening. “Is she safe?”
“Yes. I ordered her to stay at my home.”
Bess’s expression registered alarm.
Sebastian now heard the sound of something clumsily making its way along the lake trail, snapping branches and rustling leaves as loudly as a buffalo. “Damn it!”
Sebastian set off at a dead run. Behind him, Bess lifted into the air, flying straight up to the top of an oak above them.
Michaela stared unblinkingly at the coiled serpent.
So this was the ghost, possessing a creature, using it for its purpose. It would not retreat and it did not matter what she did. It would attack and she knew she could not move fast enough to escape before it sank its poisonous fangs into her exposed calf.
No, this was no longer just a snake. It was a ghost, a ghost that had once been a man. Not Nagi. She knew that, but she did not know how. This had been a man, had been…oh, no, a rapist who had attacked many women and had beaten his wife with…It came to her in flashing pictures, like a slide show. He had used the base of a brass lamp, still connected to the wall, to crush her cheekbones and flatten her nose to raw meat. And he had enjoyed it. He’d gone to jail for a time, but he had no regrets. He enjoyed the violence, relished the power. It was why it had not yet struck. The thing waited merely to increase her terror, savoring her panic, toying with her, all the while knowing she could not move fast enough to escape him. Yes, this soul belonged in the Circle of Ghosts.
But Nagi had sent him instead to hunt her.
She could feel his anticipation and his anxiousness to taste her. He congratulated himself with smug satisfaction for his control at not taking what he wanted until he had squeezed all he could from her anguish. This thing thrived on fear and she gave it exactly what it craved.
His head drew back, lifting farther from the coiled, muscular body. She braced for the strike and the pain that would follow as she stumbled backward off the log.
Chapter 12
A tremendous crash preceded the grizzly’s emergence onto the path. The snake turned to face this threat and struck with such speed that Michaela saw only a blur and the slashing of a great paw. One of the bear’s claws hooked into the snake’s pale underbelly, gutting it with a single stroke. The snake writhed as it sailed through the air. Black smoke billowed from the wound. Was she seeing a ghost?
She lost her footing, fell and then scrambled to her feet, running from the bear and into the lake. Her legs bogged down and she dove, fearing the creature would follow, knowing bears had no fear of water. When she surfaced, she saw a raven grip the inert carcass of the snake in its claws as it rose to the treetops. The bear stood on the shore, its attention focused on her for a moment, and then returned the way it had come.
Sebastian had sent them. She was certain.
“Thank you,” she called.
At her words, the bear paused and glanced back at her before disappearing into the woods.
She could not keep a shiver from dancing up her spine. She recognized that bear, had seen it when Nagi had first attacked her. But they were miles from that place now, weren’t they?
Honestly, she didn’t know exactly where she was. Somehow she had fallen through Alice’s looking glass into a world that seemed familiar, but was not. The rules she had followed all her life were now turned upside down and she was lost.
Suddenly sleeping with Sebastian seemed like the least of her worries. Whatever he was, he had acted to defend her. But it was difficult to trust a man knowing that he might pull up stakes at any time and pull the same disappearing act as her father. Aft
er that, how could she count on any man to be there when she needed him?
As if summoned by her thoughts, Sebastian loped up the shore wearing his low-riding green cargo pants, high fringed moccasins and nothing to cover his magnificent chest. Sunlight danced across his golden skin, showing the contraction and relaxation of his muscular bulk. His expression was concerned, but not frightened, as his gaze stayed focused on her.
The flood of relief buckled her knees, dunking her again in the icy water. She surfaced, sputtering, and waded out of the lake. She had never been happier to see anyone in her entire life. Michaela ran the last few steps to meet him and threw herself into his arms. She pressed her cheek to his warm chest and squeezed her eyes shut against the nightmare of the past few minutes.
His arms came around her, cradling her tenderly. Tears welled in her eyes as he stroked her hair, hushing her as she cried.
“Thank you for sending them.”
He said nothing.
She leaned back to gaze up at him. “The raven and the bear, you sent them. Didn’t you?”
His eyes evaded hers. “You left the lodge.”
“I’m sorry.”
He drew her away and gazed down at her, cocking his head, and she knew he saw her thoughts.
“Trust,” he murmured. “You didn’t trust.” His eyes rounded. “I’m not your father. I won’t abandon you.”
She gaped at him. She hadn’t been thinking that—had she? But then where did he pull that from?
Her head drooped and she sagged against him.
“You’re safe now.”
“But for how long?”
He did not answer, and she felt her security slip away like sand through a sieve. She broke the embrace.
Motion caught her eye. The raven drifted through the trees, now holding the snake in its shiny black beak. The bird landed on a branch above them and ruffled its feathers.
“How did you know about the snake?” she asked.
The raven shook the grisly trophy. A familiar rattle issued from the dead snake.