Heroic Hearts

DATING TERRORS by Patricia Briggs

Ruby woke up drenched in sweat, the essence of magic in her nose and mouth. She’d been dreaming again—for the last month or more, and that usually meant that a change was coming.

Her dreams were prophetic—which usually meant that after something horrible happened she could figure out what the vague pictures she’d gleaned from her night terrors had been trying to tell her. This time she had an impression of dark fur and golden eyes.

The terrible thing about this dream had nothing to do with its contents. Her unconscious use of magic had undone all the good that living in the middle of Seattle had done. The protection provided by the buildings of steel and cold iron could not keep her magic from reaching out if she used it in the way the dream had made her use it. The tattoo on her wrist, both a sign of ownership and a tracking sigil, burned.

He was coming.

A few wet snowflakes dropped onto Asil’s windshield, making up in mass what they lacked in frequency. Wiper squeaking, Asil drove up the narrow mountain that led nowhere but the house of the Alpha of the Emerald City pack in the wilds outside Seattle.

The log mansion sprawled half-hidden in a canopy of trees, a fair blend of practicality and beauty. He pulled in next to the only other occupant of the fair-sized parking lot, a battered Ford Bronco. The dented rust-red hood sported a layer of snow, indicating that it had been parked for a few hours but not all night.

Asil got out of his car and took a deep breath of the frigid air, testing the smells of the woods of the Cascades against the woods of his home. Against the woods of his current home.

This forest smelled, not unpleasantly, of moist and rotting organic matter, even under its white coating. In Montana, fifteen below zero did not allow for much moisture in the air no matter how much snow was on the ground. He judged the current local temperature somewhere in the high twenties because the snow was what his young friend Kara liked to call “fighting ready” because it would be easily gathered into balls to pelt others with.

One moment he was thinking of a snowball fight Kara had initiated that had eventually enveloped most of the pack, the next he was ambushed by the scent of another wood, the unique smell of his home, his real home. A scent that now existed nowhere in the world.

His breath caught and he closed his eyes, imagining himself . . . home.

For a moment he almost had it. The warmth of the sun, the rich scent of flowers and fruits—his mate’s cooking filling the air. Ah, Sarai. He could feel the stone path under his feet, see the warm glow that leaked out of windows, knew that all he had to do was walk into the house and he would see her.

But part of him understood that the house that had been his home and the fields and groves surrounding it had been gone for centuries. Understood that his mate, his Sarai, was dead.

It seemed like he would be caught forever in that long-ago moment, stuck betwixt and between, unable to walk forward into the home he had shared with his mate or return fully to the present. It was a subjective eon, but only a few seconds in real time before the reliving passed as they all had so far, and he stood, once again, on a mountainside next to his car.

He missed his dead mate so much that his lungs refused to move and his heart forgot how to beat. If he could only turn back centuries and exist in a time where his Sarai lived. He stood beside the open door of his car, put his head down, and fought to breathe through the pain.

He had not been able to figure out if such moments signaled an attack by the wolf who shared his battered, worn-out soul, or if it was some trick of the half of his brain that was human. But he had not had such a strong remembrance since his stepdaughter had died, at last, a few short years ago.

He had hoped he was done with them.

The brisk mountain air cleared his head, but he wondered if he was fit to take a woman on a date today. He needed to go back to the Marrok’s pack where there was someone strong enough to stop him if he lost control of his wolf. Someone merciful enough to end him if he did not emerge from one of those relivings. He would call and cancel this foolishness.

In response to that thought—and he was certain that it was absolutely in response to that thought—a sudden cool shiver traveled through him from head to toe. For that single moment he felt as though something, someone, turned their attention to him. And then the moment was gone.

“Inshallah,” he said, momentarily shaken. Then, a fierce grin, his wolf’s grin, stretched the cold skin of his face. It appeared that he was going on a date.

The door to the big house opened and a man walked out. Unlike Asil, he did not bother with a coat—werewolves don’t feel the cold the way humans do and this wolf had no need to blend in. But he wore boots designed to handle the treacherous ground of winter.

He was bigger than Asil—not an unusual thing as Asil was not a tall man. The stranger’s face was scarred—it looked like the marks of a knife. He carried authority on his shoulders with the unconscious grace of someone who was used to being in charge and getting things done, a mantle worn by people who know what it was to kill in order to protect their own.

What he was not was the Alpha of the Emerald City pack.

The world brightened and the shadows lost their power as Asil’s beast, restless from the last few minutes, rose in affront at the insult. The Moor was not a lesser foe, someone to be handed off to lackeys. Maybe, a small part of him observed, it wasn’t only the wolf who was unsettled.

The big man stopped where he was and his irises glinted with secret gold. He closed his eyes and fought to hold his beast in check when Asil’s wolf’s call had stirred it to violence.

“My Alpha’s apologies,” said the man, keeping his eyes closed. He bit out those first three words as though every syllable caused his tongue to bleed. But he regained control of his voice and muted it to more courteous tones. “He had intended to be here, but one of our pack had a run-in with the police and he had to go negotiate that wolf’s release.”

And he had been deemed the lesser threat? Asil half lidded his eyes to better disguise his next course of action, deliberately keeping his muscles loose so the other wolf would not know when the attack would come.

“My Alpha said,” continued Not-the-Alpha, “if the Moor wishes us to die, we will die. He does not need me to give him leave to come to my city, it is a courtesy that he comes to us. Tell him that he is at all times a welcomed guest to me and mine, a thing freely given that we acknowledge the Moor could have taken if he chose.”

It was truth couched in terms of flattery. Asil relaxed and half smiled in appreciation of the clever wording that had been designed to hold him in chains of courtesy. That the word “guest” bound not only the Emerald City pack but also Asil to an ancient and unwritten set of laws that this pup was probably too young to understand, though his Alpha, a cunning and vicious chess player, well knew how Asil would hear them.

Asil’s wolf was touchy and inclined to violence at the best of times—and after a brush with old memories, the beast very much wanted to put this wolf before them on his knees, presenting his throat.

Asil reminded his wolf they were guests—and moreover that they had things to do. He had that date, one of a set that had somehow altered from challenges to missions. If he’d had any doubt about that at all, it had been banished by the moment where Allah had turned His attention to Asil.

This was not the first time in his long life that it had been given to him to be the hand of Allah. It was merely the first time it had been so clearly indicated. It was wiser, he had found, not to balk at tasks so set.

He contained his wolf after a struggle that was more difficult than he liked. Once that was done, for the moment at least, he considered the words he’d been given.

The Emerald City pack had just offered him a key to their territory, and such things could bite back. He did not intend to do anything this day that should reflect badly upon the pack. And by the nature of guesting laws, if that changed, all he would have to do would be to notify Angus, Alpha of the pack, directly before all hell broke loose. For this short time period, the hospitality offered should pose no trouble.

“I accept those terms,” Asil said.

The other wolf looked at him, his eyes still wolf and wild. Asil’s wolf told him that, though strong of will and power, this one had not yet seen half a century as moon called. He was thus vulnerable to the wild turbulence of Asil’s wolf, especially as unsettled as this other wolf was, a dominant having given a message of submissive to a strange wolf.

It was not Asil’s purpose today to abuse his just-accepted status as guest by forcing this perfectly fine and trusted member of Angus Hopper’s pack to attack him so Asil’s wolf could taste his blood. He had assumed that the brief moment of epiphany, of purpose, had brought his wolf back from instability. But his eagerness to taste this young strong wolf’s blood was proof that Asil’s self-assessment of how well he was controlling his wolf was demonstratively wrong.

If not for his understanding that this mission was important, he would have driven back to Montana. The Marrok was too far away to help him. The Omega wolf Anna was too far away to help him. It was such moments that reminded Asil just why he had given up his Alpha status in Spain to travel all of the way to the backwoods of Montana.

He had only himself here. He pulled that old wolf back and tucked him deeper into his mind, trapping him in the steel of his will. And that will, the will of the Moor, was enough—as it had always proved to be enough. But Allah knew, as did Asil, some time, not too far from this, even Asil would be overmatched against the great old beast who owned his soul.

As soon as Asil battened down his wolf, the other man turned, putting his back to Asil. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. Give me a minute.” And quietly he muttered, “I didn’t expect . . . well.” He shut up.

He had good control for one so young. Asil felt the drop in tension as if it had been a balloon pierced by a nail. When the other turned around, his eyes were human blue and they met his own frankly before dropping in deference to Asil’s dominance.

“I’m Tom Franklin,” he said, “Angus’s second. In the name of my pack, I bid you welcome to Seattle.”

Ruby sat on the front porch of the huge old Victorian mansion that was the subject of their current ghost hunt while winter rain pounded the roof overhead and rushed merrily out of aged, but mostly intact gutters. Normally she’d have been helping to place the team’s cameras and various bits and pieces of electronic gadgetry, but not today.

She should have been traveling in a bus headed for some anonymous city where she could lose herself again. Instead she sat on the railing surrounding the Victorian’s extensive covered porch, her back against one of the square posts facing Alan, who was similarly situated at the opposite post.

They waited for her Internet date to show up so they could use him to kill a monster.

“It’s perfect,” Alan’s wife, Miranda, had said enthusiastically.

Miranda had caught Ruby packing to run. Her very pregnant downstairs neighbor and best friend was a force to be reckoned with. Ruby found herself making tea and telling Miranda the whole story—something she had sworn never to do again. Miranda had summoned Alan—who had come up with a solution: a blind date.

“Perfect?” Ruby had said, repeating Miranda’s words incredulously. “Take some poor werewolf who is already being pranked with blind dates from Internet dating sites—and throw him into a battle to the death?”

Miranda shrugged. “You don’t know these kinds of werewolves the way I do. Those old ones, the powerful ones, they deserve everything they get.”

Both Alan and Ruby had known that Miranda was talking about Alan’s Alpha.

Alan had laughed. “This will be fine. I called up an old friend who knows this wolf. Unless your captor is one of the fae’s Gray Lords—” He paused with a little question in his voice and Ruby shook her head. He wasn’t that, she was sure. She’d seen him bow and scrape before other fae. A Gray Lord wouldn’t do that.

“Then this Asil Moreno can handle him. My contact was pretty sure he wouldn’t even be upset about it. He has something of a hero complex.” Alan frowned a little. “Unusual first name. I feel like I should know something about that name.”

“He’s old,” said Miranda briskly. “You’ve probably run into someone who told you a story about him or something.”

Ruby thought, I bet he won’t be so quick to use a dating site after we get through with him. And felt horridly guilty.

“Moreno comes here,” Miranda pronounced blithely. “You be nice to him long enough that he likes you.”

“Sort of like a hooker,” muttered Ruby. Being nice to people wasn’t her best thing.

Miranda smacked her hand lightly. “And then you use magic. Your tormenter, called by your magic, appears to take you. And this werewolf kills him. Easy.”

Even Alan had given Miranda a thoughtful look at that. “Easy,” he murmured. “Hmm.”

And that was why Ruby was watching the rain pour down instead of being miles away. She had her earbuds in, listening to music, because music calmed her down and Alan had warned her that she didn’t want to be in a full-blown panic when her date appeared.

She didn’t hear Alan’s phone ring, but she saw him put it to his ear. After a moment, his head tilted just a little away from her as if he was watching the rain fall on the mostly quiet road. If she hadn’t known him so well, she probably wouldn’t have known he was making sure she couldn’t read his lips.

It was a moot gesture, because half a second later, quiet, sweet Alan said something in Mandarin in tones that made the words a universal curse.

Her noise-canceling earphones were not designed to quiet raised voices. She pulled them off as soon as he disconnected. He grimaced. “Stevie Nicks? Really?” Alan liked his music modern and raucous or classical, and nothing in between.

“Stuck in the eighties,” she said without apology. “Do you need to go? Family emergency?” More quietly, “Miranda?”

She didn’t think it would be Miranda. If something had gone wrong there, he wouldn’t be hanging around with that look on his face—he’d have been off the porch and running for his car. But Alan’s family owned an herbal shop and Alan should have been there helping out. He’d taken the day off for her sake.

“No,” he said. “That was Tom.”

Tom was Alan’s packmate, second only to Angus Hopper in the pack that ruled Seattle.

“What did Tom have to say?” she asked. “Pack business?”

Alan sighed. “I wish. Sort of. Your date—”

“The werewolf with the hero complex and the kind of friends who set him up on blind dates for their own entertainment?” she inquired.

Alan was upset enough he didn’t snark back. Instead he said, “You know when werewolves enter another pack’s territory they have to check in with the Alpha.”

She nodded. He’d already told her that was going to happen.

“Angus was tied up and he had Tom do the welcome.” Alan said. “Tom just got through talking with him. We might have to rethink this whole thing.”

“He’s not strong enough?” Ruby asked.

“Tom said Moreno is scary as hell.” Alan’s voice was neutral.

“Which is what I need,” Ruby said slowly, wondering not for the first time why she’d let Miranda talk her into this. “Scary as hell” did not sound at all reassuring.

Alan nodded. “Yes. But maybe not this scary. I think I’ll call my packmate, the one who let me know about the way Asil Moreno was set up with these dates. He’s met this wolf. He’s the one who told me Moreno could run off anything bad we were likely to run into. Let me grill him a bit. If I don’t like his answers, we’ll call the whole thing off.”

“Can we?” she asked. Alan was a submissive wolf—low in the pack power structure. She was pretty sure that her blind date wasn’t a submissive wolf.

Alan dropped his chin and looked away. “Maybe. Probably. Go back and listen to some Air Supply and I’ll figure something out.”

She’d met Alan and Miranda a half dozen years ago. He shouldn’t have belonged to the small group of lesser magically enhanced people, including Miranda and Ruby, who had clustered together for mutual protection. As a werewolf, Alan was much more capable of defending himself than any of them were, and he also had a pack of stronger wolves to back him up.

But a couple of the witches in Ruby’s group of friends bought herbs from his shop and brought him with them to one of their meetings. His soft, unthreatening manner had quickly led them all—Ruby included and she was as wary as a beetle in a henhouse—to consider him one of theirs. He’d married Miranda, the only one of their group with enough magic to mix anything stronger than sleeping draughts, a couple of years ago. There was no question that Alan made their little group of mostly powerless misfits safer than they’d ever been.

Alan never complained about playing guardian, but he’d also never claimed to be a power in his own right. The werewolf part was enough to keep most of the other predators at bay, though. Larger predators walked warily in Seattle because his pack was diligent about removing anyone who made trouble on that scale.

She worried someday they’d ask Alan to help them—and he’d get hurt or die trying to keep one of them safe. She hoped it wasn’t today.

She should have left Seattle already. She was going to get someone killed. Again.

Ruby hadn’t stayed alive and free as long as she had by playing long shots. She’d agreed to this ridiculous scheme because Miranda had been frighteningly adamant—and there wasn’t much Ruby wouldn’t do for her. And because the only bit of her prophetic dream, the one that had cost her so much, that Ruby remembered was the dark fur and golden eyes of a werewolf—and that werewolf had not been Alan Choo.

She rubbed her wrist, feeling guilty, scared, and unhappy. Well, the guilty she might be able to do something about. Alan seemed pretty sure Moreno would help if asked. She just wouldn’t ask him.

This wasn’t the first time she’d escaped—though this was the longest her escape had lasted. She wondered, bleakly, if she shouldn’t stop trying to get away. He would, eventually, kill her. The first time he’d caught her, she’d had people who tried to help her—they had all died. She hadn’t tried to find help again. Until now.

She rubbed her wrist where the tattoo burned.

“This is wrong,” she told Alan. “I can’t bring someone else into my trouble. And this poor man doesn’t even know what he’s getting into. He thinks we’re going to explore a haunted house and eat dinner.”

“Ruby,” said Alan in the tone of a man called upon to use more patience than he had.

“He’s a werewolf. Not someone who uses magic as a weapon,” she said, as she had when this had first been proposed. She hoped Alan would be more reasonable than his wife had been. “That’s like wielding a club at a submachine gun.”

“Hold up,” Alan said. “I understand you are having second thoughts—I might be too, if for a different reason. I need to make a call before we have the wolf, himself, at our door.”

Moreno was supposed to be here in a half hour.

Alan met her eyes. “Ruby, I have been assured this wolf can help. He apparently is a most efficacious club. But I need to make sure you will be safe with him.” His eyes narrowed and he brought out the big guns. “Afterward feel free to explain to me why you aren’t going to try everything we can come up with in order to be here for Miranda when the baby’s born.”

She gave a huff of frustration. “All right,” she said, because her common sense was no match for Alan’s ploy. They both loved Miranda.

He nodded. “Okay. I can’t have you overhearing our secrets, Ruby. Not even you. Put your earbuds in and let me make a call.”

She did as he asked—though not Air Supply. Twisted Sister seemed more appropriate somehow. She closed her eyes because she didn’t want to betray Alan by reading his lips—because he was right, she could do that.

But not even “Hot Love” could keep her from hearing Alan say, “What do you mean Asil Moreno is the Moor. You had me arrange a date for Ruby with the Moor?”

Ruby pulled out her earphones and met Alan’s horrified gaze.

Problem? she mouthed.

He nodded, looking wild-eyed. He concluded his call but kept his phone in hand. “I’m canceling this,” he said. “Dangerous is one thing. Messing around with the Moor is out-of-the-fire-into-the-frying-pan business.”

Unfortunately, before he could make a call—or explain to Ruby who the Moor was and why that had changed Alan’s mind, the Subaru with Montana plates they’d been told to look for splashed through the temporary stream where pavement met sidewalk and stopped. Her date was here. Twenty minutes early.

Alan gave a frustrated growl and said hurriedly, just before the engine stopped, “Treat him like you would Angus, if Angus were both crazy and ten times as dangerous as he is.”

The Subaru’s door opened. Alan shut his mouth and visibly tried to get control of himself.

Out of the mud-spattered car, the most beautiful man she had ever seen emerged. He glanced at them, then walked around the front of his car. He strode through the downpour with no more notice than if he’d been walking through dry sunshine as his shirt darkened and clung to every cut inch of him. It was an effect she’d have expected in a men’s cologne commercial or one of those racy Calvin Klein ads. She’d never seen anything like it in real life.

He stepped across the torrent of water without visible effort or a break in stride. His movement made her mouth dry and her pulse speed up—not a reaction she welcomed just now.

His skin was dark and his features were Arabic—“the Moor” might be as much a description as an epithet, she thought. As he got closer, she could see his eyes; the color made her think of liquid bitter chocolate. It made her nervous that her mind was giving her edible similes to describe him. This wasn’t really a date.

The photo on his profile had been a rose. She’d thought, casually, that it might be to conceal a blemish. She hadn’t considered that it might be to keep him from getting millions of queries and unsolicited offers of modeling contracts.

He was no more than average height, maybe less. His hair was short, as dark as his eyes, and it curled just slightly in the rain. There were no age lines on his face, but she knew better than to expect that with a werewolf.

He didn’t look crazy. Or even particularly dangerous—or at least not dangerous in any way that didn’t have to do with sex.

The address Asil had been given belonged to a grand old Victorian that reigned supreme on a quiet street of lesser houses. The light snow in the mountains had given way to a heavy, cold rain and he was soaked to the skin before he had even shut the car door.

His date sat on the wall of the porch, safe and dry. A man with Asian features stood near her. The man was a werewolf. Even the rain could not hide his scent from Asil.

He considered how that changed the game he was playing as he made the wet journey onto the porch. The werewolf kept his gaze on Asil’s shoes—but the woman had no trouble meeting his gaze; her own carried a challenge and, he thought, a reluctant interest. The werewolf, on the other hand, smelled terrified—but Asil was used to dealing with such a reaction.

Ruby Kowalczyk looked a lot like her photograph—which people didn’t always. She wore tight pants that followed the muscled curves of her body until they—the pants and the curves both—disappeared into the loose flowing blouse hanging halfway down her leg. The feminine blouse was balanced by black combat boots.

Her red-brown hair was in a neat braid, revealing her strong jaw and straight nose without precisely flattering her. Her ice-blue eyes were framed in dark lashes sparkling with glittery mascara. She looked, maybe, nineteen.

But Asil’s wolf knew better. The air carried her scent to him through the winter rain—something magical and old—though not anywhere as old as he was. Fae, he thought, or half-fae. Enough blood to give her long life and the power that roiled and coiled about her but was oddly contained. Trapped. He didn’t know how his wolf knew all of that, but he’d long since ceased doubting anything the old beast told him with such surety.

Her profile had said she was around thirty, a bookstore clerk and amateur but experienced ghost hunter. His had listed his age as thirty-five, a financier with a yen for adventure. Ghost hunting experience: interested novice.

He was pretty sure she had only lied about her age—which was a woman’s prerogative, after all—and the mealy word “around” could be stretched to gossamer to prevent a lie. In his experience half-fae could lie—but most of them tended not to. His own profile had been a lie from start to finish, but then, he wasn’t fae and he hadn’t written the cursed thing anyway.

Asil ascended the stairs and when he’d reached the dry boards under the porch roof, the other werewolf held out his hand, his gaze never rising above Asil’s shoulder.

“Hello,” the wolf said. “I’m Alan Choo.”

His fingers shook only a little, but his breathing was ragged and Asil could feel the other wolf’s tension rocketing to the sky at Asil’s touch when he took the offered hand.

Which was unacceptable to Asil and his wolf. The submissive wolves were the heart of the pack, to be protected above all others.

Asil let go of Alan’s hand, then reached up to touch his throat with light fingers.

“You are in no danger from me,” Asil told him—a little surprised to know he meant it.

It had been a long time since he’d been able to make such a promise to someone who was not an Omega wolf. Alan must be very submissive for Asil’s wolf to be so certain—especially after his almost disastrous meeting with Angus’s second. But his wolf’s determination resonated in a way that Asil had almost forgotten, as if his wolf were stable and sane once more—as it had been a century or two . . . no, four. Four hundred years since he’d felt like this. Calm, centered, certain.

Interesting.

Hearing the truth in Asil’s words, Choo took a deep breath and straightened, his body still obviously wrung with adrenaline but settling into calmness, which said good things about how well Angus watched over his wolves.

“Mr. Moreno,” said Ruby briskly, dismounting the porch rail and starting toward the door of the house without pausing to actually greet him. “The others are working on setting up our cameras and sound equipment. How about you come with me and I tell you what we are doing and why?”

Gone was the reluctant interest, the nervousness . . . the fear he’d seen in her. She might have been a real estate agent—or a tour guide—surface friendliness used as a barrier to prevent any real interaction. Any intimacy.

It was so forcefully done that Asil felt an involuntary smile spread across his face. Alan Choo made a small, defeated sound, as if he expected a disaster.

“Wait, Miss Kowalczyk.” The command in Asil’s voice was enough to pull her to a reluctant halt. “We need to discuss a few things first, I think. No?”

Ruby didn’t know why she stopped in her tracks. It wasn’t because he said her name correctly despite his faint Spanish accent. Spanish was about as far from Polish as it was possible to get.

No. There had been something about the way his voice hit her nervous system that caused her to do what he said without thinking about it. Power with a capital P. Fear had her spinning around to face him, unable to let him stand at her back even with Alan there.

He watched her face, the beautiful dark man, frowning a little. For all of Alan’s reaction and Moreno’s obvious ability to command her movement, she couldn’t feel anything odd about him. She could tell when someone had supernatural abilities: witch, werewolf, or fae. She couldn’t always tell what someone was, but she could tell they were something. In this moment, he seemed no more than human.

She tried to remember if she’d felt his wolf when she’d first seen him—the way she’d understood Alan was a werewolf before he told her. Because she couldn’t feel any of the wildness that usually surrounded werewolves, and that was one of her few talents, even if it worked best on dead people.

She waited for him to do something else to her, but he just watched her with liquid dark eyes. She met his eyes, knowing it was a foolish challenge to a dominant werewolf. For a moment nothing happened—and then she felt as if a veil he held around himself opened to her in a way she wasn’t used to with living beings.

Instead of the usual jumble of emotions and thoughts, she received only one overwhelming impression: age. Years and time so deep it caused a resonance in her bones and sent her magic humming—and her wrist burned as if the tattoo caught fire.

She froze, suddenly not at all concerned with the danger in front of her, or the reaction that her instant obedience to his voice had caused in her belly. Because her magic had moved, flexing against the binding, and she felt him. Not Moreno, but her monster.

This was not the faint touch of the beginning of a hunt—as she’d felt two weeks ago. He was somewhere near—and he was so hungry. The tattoo on her wrist flared with brutal intensity and she broke into a light sweat as her stomach roiled in terror.

“Ruby?” asked Alan, reading her reaction.

But Moreno just waited. Asil Moreno, who was now her only option for freedom because she’d left running until too late. She looked at the beautiful intruder she’d invited into the one positive thing she managed to do in the world and wondered if she should drag him into her own personal hell.

His lip, she noticed absently as she examined him, was starting to tighten along the edge, hiding a smile—or anger. It was hard to say. But she thought his eyes warmed a bit—though not, she thought, deeply. He held out his hands and, moving his feet minimally like a model, he spun in place until he was facing her again.

Apparently, her examination had been too obvious.

“Ruby,” said Alan again—and she heard the alarm in his voice.

“My apologies,” she told Moreno. “I—”

He shook his head and raised a hand. “Obviously there is more going on here than a blind date, Miss Kowalczyk. You know who and what I am—” He waved at Alan, indicating without words that she wouldn’t have had Alan, the werewolf, with her if she hadn’t been expecting a werewolf. “And I know you are of fae lineage.” He tapped his nose with one elegant finger as a wash of gold spiderwebbed across his eyes and faded, leaving the original inky brown behind.

She’d never seen anyone’s eyes do that; that was not how werewolf eyes turned to wolf. She became aware that Moreno was patiently waiting for her response—so she nodded slowly.

“Really,” he said, his voice resigned, “I no longer expect these things to even feel like dates.” He considered her, glanced at Alan, and said, “I presume you need my help.”

Alan nodded.

“No,” she said—responding to his taking her choice away from her. It was irrational to be angry with him for that—he had driven all the way here from somewhere in Montana thinking he was going to go ghost hunting and have a nice dinner. And when he figured out they’d had different plans—he’d jumped right in with graciousness she should be grateful for.

She was aware of Alan’s mute dismay as she continued, “I don’t think my problem has a solution, Mr. Moreno. It is unfair to bring you, a stranger, into my private battle. How about I show you something of what my team can accomplish—let you finish this date without incident as I’m informed there is a betting pool of some sort? Then you can return home in time for your next dating adventure.”

She smiled at him, inviting him to accept her word on the matter. “I’ve had this—” Her tongue stumbled as she tried to find a way to word it so it would not feel like a challenge to him. And it had to be the truth because werewolves could smell a lie. “—problem for a long time, and it is unlikely to kill me.” No matter how much death would be preferable to the endless cat-and-mouse game.

“You do not know who I am,” he said slowly.

“The Moor, right?” Ruby said, hoping—after she said it—that it wasn’t really an epithet.

But he didn’t appear offended. He looked at Alan and, evidently seeing something she didn’t in her friend’s face, Moreno shook his head and changed whatever he’d been going to say.

He gave her a charming smile, which made him even more beautiful—and she was sure he was secretly laughing at her.

“By all means,” he said. “Let’s go hunt ghosts.”

Behind him, Alan’s eyes widened in surprise at Moreno’s response. She wondered what Alan had expected the other werewolf to do.

Asil decided not to argue with her determination to push him away from whatever she’d originally wanted from him. His experience in the past three dates indicated he did not need to force matters—disaster would come in its own time. He braced himself for the rebellion of his wolf at his decision to be patient—and it did not come.

The wolf agreed with his assessment. And he’d scared her once already when she’d instinctively obeyed his command. His wolf was unhappy about that. Asil was intrigued by the strangeness of sharing his skin with a reasonable being.

Today’s date was only minutes long, and already it was shaping into something at least as interesting as his last three dates had been.

He followed Ruby and Alan into the mansion and found himself in a large, lightly furnished room awash in colored light filtering down from two gigantic Tiffany stained-glass windows. The effect was modified somewhat by the sound of someone in the heights of the building swearing like a sailor.

Alan and Ruby exchanged a look. Alan said, “Someone needs to keep Terry from killing Peg. If you two will excuse me?” He didn’t wait for a reply before running lightly up the stairs.

Ruby watched Alan leave as if he were a life buoy sliding out of her reach. Asil’s wolf wanted to go grab Alan and stand him back beside Ruby so she wouldn’t be unhappy—but, and this was the amazing part, did not make any move to make that happen.

When Alan disappeared above them, Ruby swallowed. Then she turned to Asil with a bright-fake smile. “Okay, Mr. Moreno—”

“Asil,” he told her silkily. “Please.”

“Asil,” she said without dropping her smile a single watt or making it a degree more real. “Every ghost hunting team I’ve ever spoken to has a routine they follow when they are looking for hauntings. We start with a walk-through—”

“For psychic impressions,” Asil said, not quite interrupting her, but disturbing her rhythm, pushing at her in a way not quite flirtatious. But not quite not flirtatious, either.

She gave him a wary look. “Yes.” At least the plastic had gone out of her expression.

“I’m not a psychic,” he told her.

“No,” she agreed dryly, “it wasn’t on your profile.”

He almost grinned at the bite in her voice. There she was—the real person beneath the mask and the roil of fear and uncertainty.

“I cannot apologize for the profile,” he said, a purr in his voice that caused a flush of something she almost controlled. “I didn’t write it.”

Arousal, his wolf assured him. The binding spell she wears sometimes hides things from our sense of smell, but look at the darkening of her eyes and the warmth of her skin.

If the ground had rolled under his feet, he would not have been more startled than he was at hearing his wolf speak to him. He hadn’t spoken to his wolf this way since his wife had last walked beside him. The only other werewolf he knew who spoke to his wolf like this was Charles—one of the myriad of things that made Asil dislike Charles. He was not above admitting to jealousy.

Ruby drew in a deep breath. “Alan’s wife and I did a walk-through on this place a couple of weeks ago when the owners first asked us for help.”

She paused as if she were waiting for him to throw her off her game again. But he was too busy trying to regroup. He let her proceed unhindered, even though it irritated him when she dropped back behind the safety of her tour-guide mask again.

“We aren’t proper psychics. I’m not even sure what makes a ‘proper psychic’ anyway,” she said. “Though I wouldn’t admit that in front of another ghost hunting group on pain of death. Miranda is a witch—a white witch, but powerful enough for her kind.”

She didn’t, he noticed—though he was still half-distracted—say what she brought to the table. The fae were a varied group—and the half-fae were even more so. That her powers were wrapped up so tight meant all she’d have to work with was what managed to escape.

“We also come prepared with the history of the house,” she continued briskly. “Some of that we get from the owners, but we do record searches, too. Mostly we don’t find anything too useful that isn’t already well-known to the owners. A complete history with names and dates isn’t necessary to help the spirits anyway.”

“Help them?” he asked.

“That’s what we do,” she said. “Help trapped spirits.”

Because you can’t free yourself, he thought with sudden understanding as to why she would feel driven to take up such a hobby. But he didn’t say that aloud.

She waited expectantly, but when he kept silent she shrugged and led him into a smaller room off of the entry room.

“This house was built in 1898 and was restored in the eighties by the grandmother of the current owner. There are plans to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast, but those plans are on hold until they can deal with a restless spirit or two. This is the reception room—where the original owner, one Eben Mercanter Benson, welcomed important guests.”

Asil looked around the octagonal room. It was a fine example of its type—a room designed to impress guests with the wealth and power of the homeowner. He counted six kinds of wood in the ornate floor, and the oak fireplace mantel made seven. Arching high ceilings were adorned with painted Italianate scenes. The fireplace had been converted to gas sometime in the fairly distant past but still had the original surround.

He touched a sparrow carved into the corner of the mantelpiece with a little smile—it was a charming creature.

Our kind of space, said his wolf. Beautiful and skillfully wrought—as we are.

Asil thought a question at his wolf—a wordless, infinite question encompassing the utter strangeness of speaking to each other once again, the change from broken beast to coherent thought. What had changed?

I don’t know, the wolf answered. But it has something to do with her.

Asil realized abruptly that Ruby had quit talking and turned his gaze from the sparrow. She was watching him with an odd look in her eyes. He gathered together the things she had been saying and came up with a cogent question.

“Are not ghosts an asset in the world of bed-and-breakfasts?” he asked. “Were you asked here to prove it is haunted? And if you free the trapped spirits here, won’t you be making their enterprise less successful?”

She smiled and relaxed a little.

Appreciating that we are letting her keep her distance, observed his wolf. But we are patient hunters.

Yes, agreed Asil, not at all certain he wanted to take this hunt the same place his wolf did. But he wasn’t certain he didn’t either.

This was a date, no? He was careful not to smile at Ruby just then; she might notice his sharp white teeth.

“Well-behaved ghosts are welcome,” Ruby told him. “But apparitions who won’t allow guests to sleep are more problematical—and this house has a troublesome poltergeist, a spirit who throws things. My team and I aren’t here to provide proof of ghosts, we look specifically for trapped spirits and we find a way to let them rest.”

“So why the cameras and microphones if you don’t intend to prove anything?” He nodded toward the camera in the corner of the room.

“Ghosts aren’t like a mouse infestation,” she told him. “They aren’t always present. We’re going to try to contact something today, but we’ll also leave the cameras in here for a couple of days. If we find a particularly active spot, we’ll come back for a second try. We are looking, in this case, for a spirit who sobs brokenly or screams in the middle of the night. And whatever likes to throw sharp things like scissors, kitchen knives, and apparently, once, a hammer.”

She continued to educate him about what she and her team did as they strolled through the old, empty house, visiting formal and informal dining rooms, bathrooms, a billiard room and a modern kitchen, a laundry and an old-fashioned butler’s pantry. Not much of it was unknown to him. He disliked being ignorant and had spent several days researching ghost hunting, watching several television shows because apparently this was a thriving industry.

But while she told him about this thing she loved to do, her body relaxed, her voice softened, and she forgot to keep him at a distance. And she forgot to be afraid of whatever it was Alan Choo had gone to great effort to save her from.

While she talked of EVP (electronic voice phenomenon), EMF detectors, and other alphabet soup devices, he took in details of the house. He’d always had a fondness for Victorian architecture—it was as excessively gorgeous as he. This particular house was a grand example of its kind. Every room, including the bathrooms, had a transom panel over the top of the door filled with etched amber glass. Plaster walls were worked into patterns covered with bronze leaf. Ceilings were painted or frescoed. Everywhere one looked, there was attention to detail.

“Our team has a ghost box,” she was saying, as they started up the narrow servant stairs in the back of the kitchen. “But we don’t use it much. We have better luck with dowsing rods and EVP. And all the static hurts Alan’s ears.”

She looked at him and then away as if mention of Alan reminded her that he was a werewolf.

On the first floor . . . ah, he was in America . . . on the second floor, the excesses of the lavish ground floor gave way to common sense. There were two more bathrooms, one modern, one charmingly original with an odd spiral-shaped pipe that created a surround shower with rudimentary shower heads placed more or less at random all over the pipe. A person showering in such a contraption would find themselves uncomfortably deluged by water. It was a ridiculous thing—something he’d never encountered—for all he’d lived through the years when it had been built. Perhaps it had been invented for this house. The thought pleased him.

They returned to the hall and entered the library. The room was well-lit and lined with fumed oak, leaded glass-fronted bookcases. A Persian rug covered the red oak floors nearly wall to wall. A few comfortable-looking chairs provided places for visitors to read.

Ruby took a step into the room and paused. As she did so, Asil’s nose was flooded with rose perfume, of a variety he hadn’t smelled for years—ambergris perfumes were no longer common. Ruby’s face relaxed into a real smile and she reached out to touch something he could not see, though his wolf told him there was something . . . someone there.

“Well, hello, you,” Ruby said, her voice darker than it had been. Asil’s wolf wanted to roll in that voice. “We aren’t here to bother you and we should be out of your way soon.”

She glanced at Asil, who nodded. Yes, he knew there was someone here, too.

“Housekeeper, I think,” she told him. “She feels like someone who takes care of the house. She might be a maid, but she carries an aura of authority I don’t think a low servant would. Miranda and I have met her before.”

“Do they speak to you?” he asked.

She shook her head, her attention still mostly on the spirit who was starting to fade—if the perfume scent was anything to judge it by.

“There are people who can speak to them,” she said. “Peg can—you’ll meet her in a few minutes. But I’m not one of them. I get . . . a feeling. Emotions and stray memories mostly. Psychic impressions. I have a little psychometry, too. Just a touch, but it can be—” She paused. “Gone.” She turned her attention to Asil again and the softness he’d seen in her retreated as she completed her last statement. “Psychometry can be useful in some circumstances.”

She led the way out to the hall and opened a door to the master suite, which was, as most of the house had been, furnished in period furniture, though, as he recalled that era, the house lacked the authentic overcrowded feel.

Here, all the luxury of the ground floor had been allowed back in. There were etched ruby glass transoms over the doors, these tilted open to allow for better air flow. In the sitting room and bedroom the walls above oak wainscoting were covered in gold-embossed leather. The ceilings were frescoed nature scenes in the sitting room and bathroom. But in the bedroom there were naked nymphs and fawns dancing through the imaginary forests in a most un-Victorian manner.

“That is unusual,” observed Asil.

Ruby laughed. “I loved the Victorian period. All very proper in public, but hidden depths where no one could see.”

It might have been a crude remark—the Victorian era was famous for the pornography it produced. As if all the sexual repression needed an escape valve. But that was not what was in her face.

She loves the hidden things, his wolf told him.

“Like beautiful mahogany tabletops buried under runners, vases, figurines, and bric-a-brac?” he observed dryly.

She laughed. “All the clutter.” She smiled at him—and it was a real smile, mischievous and glorious. It made him understand exactly why Alan Choo, submissive werewolf, had snuck behind his Alpha’s back to pull the second most dangerous werewolf in the world to save this woman.

“I don’t miss corsets either,” she told him.

“I wouldn’t think so,” he said, his revulsion immediate. He loved the shape of women as Allah had intended—all shapes of women. Strapping them into the distorting cages of the late nineteenth century had been disgusting. But . . . “They weren’t so bad when they started out, though—when they enhanced the female form rather than twisting it into something grotesque. I loved the court fashions of the Renaissance—that was an era for glorious clothing. I had this coat . . .” He hummed happily.

Her smile faded and she stared at him, her mouth falling open a little. She cleared her throat and said carefully, in the formal tones of an earlier, more mannerly era, “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me.”

“Ah,” he said. “With your power, it is difficult for me to tell how old you are. The fae have interbred with humans since long before my birth, but since the Guerra de Brujas—” she looked bewildered so he translated “War of the Witches,” which did not seem to help. “Inquisition?” he tried, and that seemed to be something familiar to her. “Since the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the fae banned interbreeding until quite recently.” He paused. “Though there is some debate about whether either the Guerra de Brujas or the Inquisition had anything to do with it, or if it was something entirely internal to the fae.”

He shrugged. “At any rate, my point is that you are an outlier. I can tell from the feel of your power that you are older than thirty—”

She grimaced apologetically.

“Well,” he said, “your profile was better than the pack of lies that my profile is.” He was pleased when she laughed.

“And you have too much power to be less than half fae—and that fae could not be one of the goblins or lesser folk who sometimes ignored the edicts of the more powerful fae. Therefore someone like you should have been born no later than the fifteenth century or less than thirty years ago. Maybe forty—I don’t keep time in decades much anymore.”

She stared blankly at him, as if she didn’t understand what he was saying.

“I have never met a half-fae of anywhere near your power born between the fifteenth century and the twentieth century,” he clarified. “And I have met a lot of half-fae.”

“What,” she said slowly, “do you mean about my power? I have a half-assed touch of empathy and an even lesser touch of psychometry. And sometimes I get prophetic dreams that I only remember in bits and pieces—mostly about nothing important.” There was a certain grim acceptance on her face. “If I had power I wouldn’t have—” She stopped talking. Not because she didn’t want to talk to him, he thought.

Because there were no words for how different her life would be if she had power, his wolf growled.

She didn’t know.

“I am no magic worker,” Asil told her apologetically, spreading his arms to indicate his unworthiness. “But I can tell you are powerful, though trapped behind some dark weaving.”

She wrapped her arms around herself—one hand clasping the leather-bracelet-covered wrist. She turned to look through the window at the sheets of water pouring from the skies. Her breath was a little shaky and Asil could not tell what her reaction was because the scent of acrid foreign magic filled his nose.

Not her magic, the wolf said, agreeing.

With that in mind, Asil gathered power. It was true he could not work spells, but this was werewolf magic, a hunter’s beguilement—there was no finer hunter in the world than he.

“Who bound your gifts?” he asked her.

She’d kept Alan’s warning in the back of her head, but Moreno just didn’t feel dangerous. He asked good questions, laughed when she wanted him to laugh—and made her forget that oddness at first where he seemed to be challenging her—maybe flirting with her. He meant her to be at her ease—and he put her there.

It only just this moment occurred to her that his ability to do that might be part of his danger.

And then he . . . he lied to her? She knew she had no power. Knew it.

Her wrist had been burning but it eased enough that she could rub it. Asil’s question wrapped around her somehow, but she couldn’t quite remember what he’d asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said . . . she lied—though she hadn’t meant it to be a lie. She rocked a little on her feet, like a child waiting to be called in for punishment.

Asil watched her, his brown and gold eyes mesmerizing. Her wrist still hurt, but she was able to stop swaying.

“There are people in this city who are good with magic,” he suggested, and she had the feeling he was being careful. “Angus uses a witch named Moira, I believe.”

Her throat tightened and the tattoo around her wrist flared. “I can’t do that,” she whispered in a voice she hardly recognized as her own. “I have to stay away from powerful creatures. They will hurt me.”

“Yes,” Asil agreed, and for some reason that agreement made the pressure that had shrouded her head, without her noticing, ease just a little. His voice was very soft when he asked, “Why did you agree to meet with me today? Alan knows what I am.”

She blinked at him. “But you’re a werewolf. You aren’t an Alpha.”

His eyes narrowed—briefly displeased, she thought. But then he tilted his head. “Who have you been told not to approach? What geas was put upon you, Ruby Kowalczyk?”

There was a thread of enchantment in his voice—not like that shove of power on the porch. This was an invitation, a rope thrown over a steep embankment, something to grab as she overcame an imposed inability to discuss certain things.

She clung to his gold-washed eyes for the resolution she needed to give him her list. “I need to stay away from powerful magic users who are witches, vampires, fae, and werewolf Alphas,” she told him. It was a safer thing to talk about. Sometimes she woke up whispering that list to herself.

“I see,” he said, as if he did. “I imagine you want to talk about something else.”

“Oh yes,” she agreed wholeheartedly, feeling a rush of relief. “Please.”

“Were we going to meet your team?” he asked.

She blinked at him, having lost track of their conversation somewhere. “I’m sorry,” she said, not quite sure why she was apologizing.

“There is nothing to be sorry for, surely,” he murmured.

His eyes were very dark, and they seemed to hold safety in their depths.

And she wasn’t supposed to stare into his eyes—he was a dominant werewolf and they viewed such things as a challenge. She dropped his gaze and swallowed. “Uhm. The team. Right.”

The ornate staircase was less ornate as it rose from the second to the third floor, where servant rooms had been remodeled into a kitchenette and two bathrooms marked with “Ladies” and “Gentlemen” signs. Most of the floor was a grand ballroom. The family had been renting it out for events for years.

Her team was gathered here.

Alan looked up and waved from the floor before turning his attention back to untangling The Beast, a carrying bag with eight one-hundred-foot electrical cords that liked to turn into one large Cthulhu-like monster. That they hadn’t even managed to get the cords untangled meant they were experiencing technical difficulties.

The others were huddled around the newest of their cameras, its innards spread out across one of the folding tables. They’d bought it used, and when it decided to run, it took really terrific video. But it was huge and cranky. Miranda was the only one who didn’t have trouble with it, but she was working today.

“Hey,” Ruby called, and they all looked up, their faces reflecting various states of frustration, except for Becky’s. Becky never got ruffled. “Everyone, this is Asil, my date today. Asil, the grumpy old guy in the Seahawks shirt is Terry.”

Terry held out a hand and Asil shook it, smiling. “Good to meet you,” Asil murmured. “Sorry to interrupt.”

Terry grunted. “Glad to meet you, too. ’Bout time Ruby caught some luck. Probably good to have an interruption before someone tossed that old thing into the nearest wall.”

“And Max,” said Ruby.

Max had huffed a laugh at Terry’s words and held out a hand. “Good to meet you.”

Asil shook his hand, too. Ruby watched Max’s face—sometimes Max caught things when he touched people. But nothing but casual pleasure showed on his face. At least he hadn’t run screaming, which he’d done on one memorable occasion. They never did figure out what was wrong with that guy, but they hadn’t let him join their team either.

“And last but not least, our computer guru, Peg.”

Peg did not reach out to shake hands. She didn’t touch people unless she had to. In her case it wasn’t any psychic sensitivities but shyness. Asil won points by giving her a simple bow that smoothed over any awkwardness caused by her mumbled welcome.

“It is my pleasure,” he said, and it felt as if it might be the truth.

Ruby took a step toward the camera—not that she knew as much as Peg or Terry—but the compulsion to try to fix something other people were struggling with was an inborn condition she was afflicted with as much as anyone else.

“Aren’t you going to introduce him?” Asil asked in tones of mild puzzlement, his eyes focused just beyond Peg.

Peg said with sudden animation, “That’s my twin brother, Dusty. Most people can’t see him.”

Ruby was the only one of the team besides Peg who caught more than occasional glimpses of Dusty, who’d died in a car accident when he and Peg had been thirteen. In fact just now, Ruby couldn’t see him herself. When she and a couple of friends had started ghost hunting, Peg had been their first client. Asil gave Dusty the same shallow bow he’d given Peg. “Pleased to meet you, too, Dusty,” he said.

A notebook fell off the table where it had been sitting next to the dissected camera. Peg giggled as though she were still thirteen instead of fiftysomething. Sometimes Ruby’s teammates were the creepiest thing they ran into during ghost hunting.

Terry cleared his throat. “So?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

Ruby shook her head. “He hasn’t asked.”

Alan gave a soft laugh. “Pay up.”

Max collected from everyone—Ruby included—and Alan was four bucks richer.

“Dare I ask?”

Ruby looked at Asil. “Everyone asks why we’re here hunting ghosts in the daylight.”

“Daylight doesn’t affect ghosts,” said Asil, sounding taken aback. “The dark just makes it easier to scare people.”

“And trip downstairs,” agreed Max heartily as Alan folded the bills he’d collected with great ceremony and put them in his wallet.

“Ah,” said Asil. “That sounds painful indeed.”

And over the next half hour Ruby watched from the sidelines as her Internet date charmed his way effortlessly into her team’s good graces. Even Peg—who generally had no liking for any member of the opposite sex—opened up to him shyly as they bonded over a dislike of Max’s favorite coffee brand.

He was gentle with her friends—and she finally admitted she was glad Miranda had talked her into this date. But there was no way she would ever let this sweet and beautiful man meet her nemesis.

She shivered and worried at the steady burn on her wrist.

Asil could have been of help fixing the camera—modern gadgetry was one of his many talents—but his prey was not the ghosts who lived in this house.

He gave half a thought to his still-damp pants, which would doubtless pick up every speck of dirt on the ballroom floor. Ah, well. He sat down beside Alan and started with a plug and began to work backward in the tangle, moving as quickly and efficiently as he could without tearing the cord in half. Apparently they all needed to be separated and then strung throughout the house—and Asil had decided that was how he was going to get Alan alone.

“There are better ways to store extension cords,” Asil observed to Alan in the nonthreatening voice he’d been using since he’d entered the ballroom.

“Dusty likes to tangle them,” Alan explained. “Or so I’m told. I’ve actually never seen him—caught a whiff now and then. But my wife says he tangles the cords, so I believe he tangles the cords.”

“And thus you stay married,” murmured Asil.

He knew his voice was light and his body language was neutral, but Alan angled his head to expose his throat without even being aware he was doing it.

Watching the geas work on Ruby and getting an inkling of how she’d been living since she’d . . . escaped? The situation had that feel—of an interrupted hunt with wounded prey. Then meeting Ruby’s team—her collection of broken people—had just about been the cherry on top of his gathering rage. And Alan had sensed the edge of Asil’s anger.

It was a good thing Asil’s wolf had decided to revert to the partner he’d not been for the last few hundred years. If he were still dealing with the rabid fiend, even his amazing control might be strained.

Ruby had gathered together a band of misfits and given them a mission, an odd mission of rescuing miserable spirits. Still, no one who spoke to any of them for longer than half a minute could doubt their dedication. Caring for others, even if those others were dead, when they could hardly care for themselves—it touched Asil’s heart.

Peg was a white witch who used up all of her meager power feeding the shadow of her brother. Terry was a white witch too, and he had less than half the power of even Peg. Normally he did not like witches, but not even his wolf could find anything threatening about those two. Max had some sort of lesser fae somewhere in the family tree. With Ruby’s power straightjacketed, the lot of them had about enough magic to light a witch lantern.

Allah in His infinite wisdom knew that a little magic was so much worse than no magic. There were dozens of types of creatures out hunting for victims with just a little magic.

He no longer wondered why Alan had been the one waiting for him on the porch with Ruby. In this group, the submissive werewolf had been the most powerful guardian they owned. Without Alan, this lot were bait looking for a big bad shark to eat them.

“You are going to help,” said Alan, very softly. If Asil had not been sitting next to him, he would not have heard him.

“I am,” Asil said. He had two of the cords untangled—and reached for the next to see that the rest of them lay in neat bundles. He stilled for a moment, unhappy to have had such a thing happen without his notice.

He looked into the face of the shadowy boy and said, “Thank you.”

You are going to help, the boy said, though his still mouth never moved.

To that spirit, Asil said, “Inshallah.”

“And that’s not weird,” muttered Alan, staring at the tidy cords.

Asil stood up and gathered cords. “Come, my friend. You and I can lay these while the others work on that poor camera, no?”

For all that it was gently said, Alan heard the demand in it. He nodded, grabbed the two cords Asil had not, and followed him out of the door and down the stairs.

“I don’t actually know where these cords go,” Alan said.

“It does not matter,” Asil said. They were far enough away from the ballroom that their voices would not carry if they were quiet. “We need to talk and this is an excuse. You need to tell me what Ruby’s troubles are.”

“No.” Alan stumbled—not from clumsiness; he was not clumsy. He was a werewolf. But he was torn between loyalty to Ruby and the demands of a dominant wolf. The power gap was so large between a submissive wolf and Asil that Alan’s resistance was impressive.

His refusal could not last, but Asil decided to wait until they were off the stairway before he forced the issue. If Alan fell all the way down the stairs he’d make enough noise to summon the others. He would try persuasion first.

“I can help,” Asil assured him instead, knowing Alan would hear the truth in his words. “I understand you wish your Ruby—”

Our Ruby, growled his wolf. And it was far too soon for that.

“—would tell me everything herself,” he told Alan as they came to the ground floor. For lack of another goal, he continued into the reception room and dropped the cords to the ground. “But I do not think we are going to have so much time.”

Alan shook his head, hunching his shoulders as he dropped his cords onto the ground on top of Asil’s. “It isn’t my place—”

Asil could make him—they both knew it.

“You must,” Asil said, his voice gentle.

But he backed off again because the pressure he was putting on the submissive wolf was bothering his own wolf—submissives were to be cared for.

He said, “There are few others in history who have been as strong, as capable as I.”

It was not his habit to affect false modesty. That others were unused to meeting someone of his abilities—of his beauty—was not his problem. That did not mean he didn’t understand how his statements of truth affected people.

He expected to amuse Alan, to soften the atmosphere so they could better converse.

“I know,” said Alan.

Pleased, Asil continued, “It is my place to protect the innocent because they cannot protect themselves.” He tipped Alan’s face up to meet Asil’s eyes, knowing that his wolf peered out, too. It was not a threat—and it was something he had not dared do since before this city was built on a swamp—to allow his wolf such freedom. “That is your job, too. Protect your people, Alan Choo. Tell me what you know.”

Alan’s lips parted—and closed again as they both heard Ruby running down the stairs.

Ruby held a wire for Max and privately came to the conclusion that by the time they were through fixing the camera, not even Miranda would be able to get it to work again. Something tugged at her shirt.

She looked over her shoulder to see Dusty, his face expressionless as always, pointing to where Alan and Asil had just been.

He is questioning our wolf. Though Dusty’s face was several feet from her, his voice whispered directly into her ear and let puffs of air brush past her cheek. From long practice she didn’t jump. Dusty was harmless. Mostly.

She let the wire go and ignored Max’s indignant exclamation. “Peg,” she said. “Take over here. Terry, don’t let Max kill Peg or vice versa. I have to go hunt down my date.”

She thought Dusty might come with her—he tended to follow drama—but she was alone as she ran down the stairs. Charming and sweet he might be, but Asil was more dominant—and in her limited experience, dominant wolves didn’t even know when they were being overbearing.

She heard Asil say, his voice warm and soft, “Tell me what you know.”

Ruby found them in the reception room and took in the body language with something approaching fury. “Are you bullying Alan?” she asked—though it wasn’t a question.

“No.” To her surprise, when Alan turned to her there was a smile on his face. His smile widened and his voice was peaceful when he approached her. He kissed her cheek. “No, he isn’t. You need to tell him about your problem. He’s promised to help. I’m going upstairs to keep everyone in the ballroom until you’re finished.”

And he left her alone with her date.

Asil raised an eyebrow at her. “What do you have to lose?” he said. “Whoever has you bound is coming, no?”

“I can run,” she told him.

His liquid eyes grew sad. “No, querida mía. You are tired of running. This is why you have summoned me.”

She stared at him, feeling tears gathering in her eyes, and she did not know why, except she wanted—oh, how she wanted to give him her trouble. And it had nothing to do with him—and everything to do with the burning sensation radiating from her tattoo.

“He is nearly here,” she told him, whispering it. “He isn’t supposed to come yet.”

“Tell me,” he said, his eyes the color of Medici gold—old, violent, and compelling. His voice was rich with invitation, coaxing her to trust him.

“He told me he was my father,” she said, her voice and body stiff. She didn’t know why she started there when the story could be boiled down to the few sentences she’d told Miranda. She looked away from Asil’s exquisite face because there was no beauty in this story. “I don’t know. I don’t think he is. But I don’t remember anyone else. All I remember of being a child is him—and being sick all of the time.”

Impulsively she struggled with the laces on her wrist covering, but they wouldn’t cooperate with her tear-blinded eyes and the shaking clumsiness of her fingers. Asil’s graceful, well-kept hands closed over hers, stilling them. Then he made a single, elegant gesture and the leather separated and fell away from her wrist, revealing the ugly black lines of symbols on her skin.

“He did this after the first time I ran away. I was still a child.” She tapped one of the dark lines. “This is his blood. He told me I could never escape him with these. Then he quit locking the door.” She didn’t want Asil to think her weak—though of course she was. “I tried removing the skin—but the marks go all the way to the bone.” She paused. “I could cut the whole thing off.” She had thought about it more than once.

Except for when he’d broken her wristband, Asil had not released her hands, though his grip was soft and she knew she could pull away if she wanted to. But somehow, she had the feeling that as long as he touched her, nothing could harm her.

“A possibility,” he murmured, but there was a velvet growl in his tone. “But not a good one. No need to be hasty just yet. What does he want from you, Ruby? Why does he bind your magic and try to keep you close?”

But that wasn’t the question she wanted to answer. “Do you think I haven’t had people who tried to help me before?” She turned away, pulling her hands free and rubbing at her eyes. “Good people who were hurt—killed—because of me.”

He didn’t ask why, if she was reluctant to put anyone else in harm’s way, she had agreed to arranging this date. She answered him anyway.

“If it weren’t for Miranda, I’d never have agreed to asking you to come,” she said. “You’d have to meet her. She’s about four and a half feet tall with a temper like a wet cat. When she’s really mad, she screams at you in Mandarin.” Ruby heaved a sigh. “And she’s six months pregnant with a baby who isn’t sure he wants to hang in for the finish. I didn’t want to upset her.”

He was so quiet that she wondered if he was still there. She turned around finally to see him standing patiently, exactly where he had been when she pulled free.

“I was supposed to beguile you with my wiles,” she told him. “So that you would want to help me. Then I would do magic, any magic, and he would come. Hopefully while you were still here and willing to fight for me.” She swallowed. “It was not fair. I wasn’t going to let it happen.” She wanted him to know that. “He wasn’t supposed to come unless I did magic. A lot of it.”

“Inshallah,” said Asil with a graceful shrug. He didn’t look at all upset. “Who is he?”

She bowed her head. “A monster,” she told the werewolf, and was rewarded with a smile that displayed very white teeth. And she gave in. “I don’t know what he is, other than fae.” She paused, and then whispered, “He feeds from me.”

Asil tilted his head so she knew he was listening. He didn’t say anything—probably because he judged she was more likely to tell him more that way.

“He lets me escape sometimes,” she told him, knowing that it was true. “I think it’s because if he didn’t, I would have died a long time ago. It is hard to live without hope.” And didn’t that sound pathetic and helpless. She grimaced at herself.

“Fed how? Like a vampire?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It isn’t . . . isn’t usually physical—though he does that sometimes, too. Drinks my blood, eats my flesh.”

The lines around her wrist suddenly lit from within, as if they had been inked with blue neon instead of blood. Her world stopped.

Did she really hear the creak of wood? Or did her imagination supply the sound of his feet on the front porch?

“He is here,” she told Asil.

She’d locked the main door of the house, but it didn’t surprise her when she heard the door open and shut. She couldn’t move, couldn’t look around. She heard and felt him walk into the reception room. Her eyes held Asil’s as hands closed over her shoulders.

“Ruby, my Ruby,” her captor said. She’d always thought his voice beautiful, but compared to Asil’s, it was thin and a little harsh. “I named her so because her price is above rubies,” he said conversationally. “Ruby, don’t be rude. Introduce me to your werewolf friend. Is this Alan?”

Wendigo, said Asil’s wolf. Wechuge. Jikininki. Preta. A hungry ghost.

None of those terms was precisely correct, Asil thought, but they weren’t wrong either.

The one who held Ruby was taller than Asil, but not a big man. His face was chiseled and masculine—and looked to Asil’s cynical eye as if he’d tried a little too hard to resemble an old-time movie star. There was a little too much Cary Grant in his jaw and Montgomery Clift in the mouth. He wasn’t as beautiful as Asil, even while using magic.

But Asil was old and he didn’t need any fairy ointment or special magic to see through a fae glamour to the real creature beneath.

Addictions were terrible things, and immortal creatures were not immune. Ruby’s enemy had once been some kind of goblin, Asil thought, or maybe another lesser fae type. He could not be sure because there was not much of the original creature left.

Some of the greater fae could feed upon others with no harm done to themselves—and perhaps if this one had stuck to feeding upon those lesser than he, he would have been safe. But though Ruby had been young and vulnerable when this creature had found her (because there were no blood ties between them), her power was far greater than his.

And it had eaten away at him until there was not much of the original fae left. As soon as the creature had touched Ruby’s skin, he had begun to feed, filling himself with Ruby’s magic to fill the gaps his feeding had caused. There were other bits of foreign power that clung to the fae’s inner being—but Asil could sense the deeper, older scraps of Ruby’s power.

Asil was pretty sure he could kill the fae—as long as he did it before the creature absorbed very much of Ruby’s magic, though fae could be terrible foes.

But.

He flexed his hands lightly and consulted his wolf. This morning at Angus’s house, where he had so nearly lost control, so nearly slayed Angus’s second, he would never have considered this path. But in Ruby’s presence, his wolf had been healed, and with an able partner . . .

Yes, agreed the wolf.

“He’s not Alan,” said Ruby, answering her captor’s question, her voice taut, her eyes wild—though she did not struggle against the hold the fae had on her. “It doesn’t matter who he is. I will go with you if you leave him—leave them be.”

She was trying to protect him. His wolf all but purred—though he liked the idea of the fae touching Ruby no better than Asil did.

“No, I’m not Alan,” said Asil in pleasant tones that would have sent anyone who knew him running for cover. “You may call me Mr. Moreno.”

His last name was not well known because he had used it for less than a century. His prey would not know he was the Moor—would not fear him properly.

Montgomery Clift’s famous lips smiled. “You may call me Mr. Smith, then.”

“His name is Ivory Jim,” Ruby told Asil, and winced as the fae clamped his fingers down with punishing strength.

She didn’t know why she’d bothered correcting him. Asil was neither fae nor a magic user who might be able to use a true name to lend more power to his spells. Maybe it was because Ivory Jim was here—and saying or thinking his name would not call his attention to her more than it already was.

“Ivory Jim,” purred Asil, smiling with white teeth. “I am so happy to meet you.”

And then he moved.

Everything happened so fast she never could remember exactly what Asil did. She wasn’t sure she even caught anything with her eyes—it was like living through a stop-motion scene. One instant she was trapped beneath Ivory Jim’s hands. She heard a great booming sound. Then she was free, still in the entryway of the reception room, but facing the opposite direction she had been, as if she had simply turned around, though she had done nothing of the sort. In front of her was the entry hall, large enough to hold several dozen guests at once, but now holding only Asil and Ivory Jim.

Ivory Jim was scrambling to his feet, having apparently been flung into the sturdy front door—possibly the source of the sound she had heard. Asil waited for him, his back to the doorway of the formal dining room. His eyes shone bright gold in the complex light of the stained-glass windows—for that moment, the uncanny beauty of his face looked almost savage.

“Watch out, Asil,” called Alan from the stairs, where all of her people gathered on the landing halfway between the second floor and the first. “Magic attack.”

And at Alan’s warning, she realized why Asil’s pose worried her. His only chance was to keep this physical—and he had given Ivory Jim time to gather magic. Asil covered his eyes before the invisible blow struck him—and then the magic became visible as his body jerked taut. For the length of a lightning strike, Asil glowed with a brilliant blue light.

She could smell burnt flesh and ozone as Asil’s body dropped to the ground—a smoking, blackened heap that still, unbelievably, moved. With a crunch of skin or fabric, Asil lifted his head and looked toward the stairway.

“Alan Choo,” he said out of a mouth that was blistered and bleeding, his voice a rough sandpaper roar, “keep those people back and safe.”

Ruby looked at the stairs, too. Asil’s words had caught Alan as he leaped off the landing. The impact of the command looked almost as if Alan’d been hit in midair by a baseball bat. He was already spinning around as his feet hit the ground and he rebounded back up to the landing like a gymnast on a springboard.

The distraction gave Ivory Jim time to hit Asil with a second blast. Her nemesis strode forward, a smile growing on his face as he closed in on Asil. Ruby caught a flicker of movement—and then Dusty threw himself at Ivory Jim’s feet. The fae stumbled, his magic faltering and dying with the distraction. Dusty disappeared from the floor and his cold presence resonated from just behind Ruby—as if he’d taken refuge.

Ivory Jim snarled and reached one hand out toward Ruby—and she felt the razor-pain as he stole her magic wholesale. Stole it to kill Asil. The beautiful man whom she had helped lure here—because he helped those weaker than himself.

She stared at Asil’s scorched body—naked now with clothing burned away and blistered skin still bubbling in reaction to the last strike of magic. Impossibly, his eyes opened and met hers. She was sure there was some message in them, but she could not read it.

Ivory Jim had come again. Had captured her again. He was going to use her magic to kill a man who had done nothing except offer to help her.

She would not, could not let that happen.

Asil prepared to defend himself. He would give Ruby one more strike—and then he would do what he had to do. But as he met her eyes, he saw his intervention might not be necessary.

It began in the pupil of her eye. The black expanded and then reshaped itself until it was slitted like a cat’s eye. Then the ice blue of her iris darkened to deep velvet gray. The color did not stop there, rolling over her skin and hair and clothing as if an ocean wave had drenched her with gray rather than water—though he could smell water in the room now, as if his thoughts had brought it to life.

There was a whoomp in the room, the sound of her magic freeing itself from its bindings. It made his chest tight as if a heavy weather system had just made itself felt in the room—like a forming tornado.

Asil, not one to forget his enemy, glanced at Ivory Jim. A flicker caught his eye—and thirteen steel knives apparated in front of the fae before flashing into motion and burying themselves in the fae’s body. Blood burst from the wounds as Ivory Jim looked down at himself in surprise. Stainless steel was as fatal to the fae as cold iron, and the fae’s knees buckled.

Asil moved, rolling off the floor, crossing the room and grabbing the dying fae without wasting any effort on gentleness. He tossed the body onto a carpet—one he was fairly sure was a reproduction of an antique.

The floor in the entryway was parquet—if blood spilled on the wood, it might ruin it. The craftsmanship of the people who’d fitted that floor made it as much a piece of art as anything in the Victorian mansion, and he would not let it be damaged if he could help it.

Asil’s burnt skin cracked as he moved, but he was not concerned. He was powerful, he had been hurt worse before—he would heal. He looked at the floor—there were a few drops of blood, but not so much it would soak into the wood through the finish.

“Asil!” Alan’s voice cracked a sharp warning.

Asil caught the knife out of the air before it could strike him and looked to Ruby.

She stood where he had left her, in the wide doorless entry of the reception room. Her brilliant eyes were black with power and her hair moved as if she stood in a wind. Dusty curled around her left leg. They weren’t the same color—Dusty’s skin was a few shades darker and a hair less blue.

Her power didn’t smell of death and the dying; he rather thought it had more to do with water of some kind. But she’d spent a long time with the dead and she knew how to communicate with them. It made sense that she had instinctively called upon them for aid.

Asil had dealt with a few poltergeists in his time, though they hadn’t been so named. There was a limit to the harm such a spirit could do at any given time—Asil had been attacked with one knife, not a baker’s dozen like the fae who was even now breathing his last.

Alert to it, Asil could feel the amassing of power—so much less than what surrounded Ruby—but it still made the room smell of ozone. He thought it would take a few seconds—maybe a minute—before the creature could manifest another weapon.

Asil strode across the floor to Ruby, put his hands on her icy cheeks, and kissed her.

There were other things he could have done to pull her back to herself. He could have shouted her name with his power to back it—the same way he’d driven Alan back to protect Ruby’s people. But he wanted to kiss her.

It was a chaste kiss, a brush of lips, no more. She was in no condition to give consent. But the contact allowed him to wrap her in his power, in the warmth of his wolf, to make her feel safe.

“Asil?” she said, blinking at him with eyes that were once again blue, almost human.

He stepped back—and slapped aside a flying pair of knitting needles with the knife he still held.

“Stop it,” she said. He wasn’t sure it had quite dawned on her yet that the poltergeist—and Dusty—were acting on her behalf. But her words were nonetheless effective.

The vase that had been flying toward him dropped like a stone. He caught it before it hit the ground and moved away from her to set the vase on the mantel. After a moment’s thought, he set the knife beside it. He didn’t think the poltergeist would throw it at him again. He left the knitting needles on the floor where they had fallen.

Ruby stared at Asil, breathing hard, glorious in her power. If he had been more presentable, he’d have preened a bit under her gaze. But he wouldn’t be beautiful again until he sloughed off the burnt bits.

“You did that on purpose,” she said, her voice hoarse.

He smiled at her. “Of course. It is a lovely vase. There was no sense in letting it break.”

She shook her head. “You could have killed him in the first attack, couldn’t you? You moved so fast.”

“My mission was not to kill him,” he told her peacefully.

Ours, said his wolf. Our mission. Our Ruby. She makes us whole.

“You offered to help me,” she said.

The ache of the burns was fading already.

“I did,” he agreed.

“If you had killed him it would have freed me—and you wouldn’t have been hurt.”

“I offered to help you,” he said again. “I didn’t offer to kill the monster for you. Though I would have, of course, had it been necessary.”

“Thank you,” she told him—and he could see from her expression she was a little shell-shocked. Understandable, he thought. A lot had happened in a very short period of time—much of it would change her life forever.

Us, said his wolf joyfully. We will change her life.

Alan quit stopping them, so Ruby’s people trampled down the stairs. Asil stepped back so they had room to surround her. They needed to be sure she was safe too.

“I will leave you now,” he told her. “The threat is gone and you need time to process what it means to your life.” Asil looked at Alan. “You should stay with them. I will dispose of the body.” Angus had acreage in the mountains for more than one reason.

Alan gave him a nod of thanks.

Asil rolled the dead fae in the carpet—noting that he’d been right about it being a reproduction. Using a carpet to carry a body was a cliché, and he didn’t enjoy resorting to clichés. But carpets were useful in soaking up blood as well as masking the body, though this one was not big enough to swallow the fae whole—Ivory Jim’s polished dress shoes hung out of one end of the roll.

But Asil’s scorched and naked body was going to need disguising every bit as much as the dead creature he carried away with him. He began the look-away magic—it was a little reluctant to come to his call until Alan joined in the casting. The submissive wolf had a fine touch with magic. Maybe it was because his wife was a witch.

Outside, the rain soothed Asil’s burns as it washed away soot and the last vestige of Ivory Jim’s magic. Alan accompanied Asil to his car and opened the hatch for him.

Body safely stored, Asil faced Ruby, who had trailed out after them. The rain fell slower against her than it should have, clinging to her cheeks and neck in heavy droplets as if it loved the touch of her skin, too.

“I owe you dinner,” she said, her voice ragged. “Not tonight. I couldn’t . . . not tonight.”

He smiled, took her hand in one of his, and kissed it. “Not tonight,” he agreed. “But if you are willing, I would love a second date.”

Ours, said his wolf fiercely.

Patience, he counseled.

She stepped closer to him and leaned forward and kissed him. An exact match to the kiss he’d given her—except for the cool rush of her power flowing over him like a waterfall in the rain, mending the few burns which were not mended already.

On the porch he heard Peg giggle. “Naked. He’s naked out there and she’s kissing him.”

He did not mind being naked. He liked clothing, but he was beautiful when he was naked as well, especially since the blisters were no longer distorting his features.

Ruby pulled back, raised her chin, and said, “What are you doing on Saturday?”

To Asil@marrok.com

Congratulations! One more date to go!

To ConcernedFriends@marrok.com

No.