Chapter 13

CHAPTERTHIRTEEN

He didn’t stop holding her, not once during the several hours that she cried. They took their rest together. When she roused, it was before dawn. As she left his arms to visit the bathroom, she caressed the firmness of his chest, tugging at the hair there, a habit that was becoming pleasantly familiar. His green eyes showed themselves, and he kissed her hand, letting her go with a lingering grip that told her he expected her swift return.

Yet when she came back to the bedroom, Silas wasn’t there. She found him on her screened back porch, facing the rising sun in the east, the scythe-now-crook in his left hand. He wore just a pair of jeans. Honora was striding away across the back field. As Ramona watched, she disappeared through the quick flash of a portal opening.

Ramona came to his side. “Everything okay?”

“My brethren have dug deeper and found that the Reaper markings are more widespread than we discussed earlier. The younger, less experienced Reapers were not even aware it had happened. It appears this has been going on for some time. Our Wake is the strongest of the Cast. Whatever is doing this therefore chose to target us last, because they knew it would not escape notice.”

Uneasiness gripped her. “So whatever the plan, it’s about to happen.”

“It is likely.” Silas’s expression was tight. “All souls Reaped by the less experienced Reapers have gone to The Gate without a problem. She has checked.”

“Is it possible your being taken off the Reaping schedule may have come from you? An unconscious block to protect the souls?”

“It is the conclusion we’ve reached, because the twelve who are comparable to me in experience and power reported the same silence from the Fates.”

“I’ll bring Raina and Ruby into the loop so they can let Mikhael and Derek know.”

“That would be wise.”

She moved back into the house, but paused to give him a more intent look. He had his eyes closed, but from the rigid line of his shoulders, she expected he was attempting some meditative exercise to keep from losing his mind. For someone like him, the waiting was the hardest part. He was obviously used to doing, fixing. Leading.

The phone in her kitchen had a long cord. She pulled it out to the porch so he could hear her pass the information to Raina, in case he wanted to add anything. When it was ringing, he opened his eyes. “Ask how the young one is doing. Gina.”

“I will.” She reached out, touched his hand on the crook. When Raina answered, she made it her first question.

“Tell Silas she’s doing just fine. She was more worried about him. She also said to tell him she hopes he’ll come back soon. Matilda is going to make him some of her world-famous croissants. Which is a pure bribe, since Gina knows it’s the only thing in the world worth getting endlessly interrogated by a bunch of sex demons again.”

Silas didn’t smile. Ramona kept her attention on him as she relayed Honora’s update. Raina’s thinking on it matched hers. “I think the stronger the Reaper, the harder it is for the mark to stay dormant and unnoticed, because something in them is fighting it, rejecting it. It’s like a monster in a cage, and that resistance is poking it like a stick. So even though my library doesn’t thank him, I think it’s a good sign that it keeps fighting with him. Keep that bitch stirred up, Silas.”

Ramona was holding the receiver away from her ear so Silas could hear. His jaw eased a fraction. “What news from the Guardians?” he asked.

“Mikhael reached out to Derek about an hour ago,” Raina said. “He’s got a solid lead, so Derek’s gone to join him.”

“Do they need any assistance?”

“Last word Ruby got was for you and Ramona to sit tight, and if your people find anything, to pass it along through one of us like you just did.”

“Honora also wishes me to continue to stay here.” Silas’s expression became stone once again. With a curt nod, he exited the porch, the screen door slamming behind him.

“Ramona?” Raina said. “Everything okay?”

“I think…oh.” The word escaped her like an exclamation point. The crook became an axe, so quickly she didn’t see the transition. Picking up a log from her pile of wood waiting to be split for firewood, he slammed it down on the stump and then swung the blade. It went through it like a guillotine. More logs followed, Silas splitting them faster than a chef could dice carrots, back and shoulder muscles flexing.

“Ramona?”

“It’s okay. I think. He’s angry, and frustrated, and taking it out on my firewood. His scythe can apparently be an axe.”

“I appreciate a man who puts his testosterone to productive use.” Yet Raina’s grim tone told Ramona they all shared some of what Silas was feeling. And she echoed her earlier thought. “Waiting is the worst kind of torment. I wish you two would come here.”

“Between the Link and Confluence, we’re as good as right in front of you,” Ramona said. “You’ll know if I’m in any trouble, and I’ll be able to call you as easily as I did on this phone. Easier, actually,” she added as the crackle of static told her that even her ancient phone was protesting prolonged exposure.

“Except in the face of an immediate threat, you’ll be dead long before we arrive.”

“My place is just as reinforced as yours. I need to be here, with him, like this. It’s just something I feel, and I’ve learned to trust what I feel.”

“Doesn’t make it less frustrating. You don’t have that much uncut firewood. Go see if you can distract him. If your distraction tools aren’t too sore from frequent use, that is. I have a great restorative spell, if you need it.”

“Go away,” Ramona told her. Raina tossed her the reassurance of a sultry laugh before she cut the connection.

Silas paused. The jeans rode low on his hips and his back and shoulders gleamed with the perspiration. He disappeared his own axe slash scythe slash crook et al, and picked up her axe instead. Maybe because the stump where she usually cut the wood had a big crack in it now.

Choosing to split the wood with a mundane tool and more proportional strength told her he’d settled some. Leaving the phone sitting on the porch boards, she sat down on her back stoop to watch him.

His hair feathered over his brow, while the short hairs at his nape were damp. She wanted to put her lips there, taste the salt of him, run her hands along his back, his sides, rest them on his hips. She’d curve her fingers over his visible hip bones, press her pelvis up against his taut backside, though she might have to rise on her toes to accommodate the difference in their heights. She could use a log from the woodpile for that.

She was sore this morning, but in a nice way. When Silas had that need again, she would accommodate him however he desired, because she knew he would be gentle if needed. The desire to have her wouldn’t overwhelm the desire to care for her. He’d proven that to her already, and it was the most potent of a Dom’s weapons to win a woman’s surrender. The ones who knew it were damn near irresistible.

Yesterday’s revelation about past lives kept coming back to her, the terrible images, the helpless feeling of guilt. It would take her a while to deal with that. But with Silas’s help and her own lifetime of control, she would manage. For this morning, she simply wished they could resolve the evil bad guy issue. Not to beat a dead horse—what a sick saying—but waiting for the worst to happen seriously interfered with savoring what would ease the wait.

Buford came to her hand for an ear scratching, eying their visitor. When Silas surfaced from his thoughts, he met the gaze of her familiar and acknowledged him as such with a respectful nod. Buford bleated and moved to the fence to nibble at clover growing around a post. Several of her chickens scattered at his passing, though one pecked at his cloven hoof, earning a brush of his horns. Buford hopped up onto a stump and went over the fence to see what her other animals were doing. He liked to stand on top of Esmerelda’s broad backside while the elderly horse grazed. It helped him survey his domain.

“Are you hungry?”

She brought her attention back to Silas, whose gaze was covering the thin robe she wore, the way it split away from her thighs. “For what?” she asked.

His gaze glinted. “We’ll hold that thought until after I’ve gotten a meal into you. I want to take you on that picnic. We can pull a breakfast together here if you prefer, or pick something up on the way.”

“Where are we going?” Though she didn’t want to discourage him, Raina’s observation about the ineffectiveness of backup that was too far out of reach crossed her mind.

“That favorite place of mine. I want to share it with you.” He didn’t smile.

She came to him, stepping on the log to give her those few inches of extra height. It let her slide her arms around his shoulders, hold herself to him, without him having to bend down so far. His hands went to her waist, and she felt their tension, as if he might not let her press herself to his chest. With it so heavily on his mind, she knew he didn’t want the mark near her. But it wasn’t part of him. She pushed against that tension and won the point.

When she let out a little sigh of contentment, he nuzzled her cheek bone, then dipped his head to put his lips beneath her ear, against her throat. She pressed harder against his body, and he muttered, gripping her ass and lifting her up against him, earning a soft breath of pleasure when his wakening arousal pressed against her core.

“We’ll pick something up,” he said.

“I think you just did,” she teased him.

* * *

She’d been right about his gentleness, but he was also thorough and demanding. Once they were done, they showered together. He held her against him like he had when he’d replaced her water visualization, hand threading through her thick hair, helping her rinse the shampoo. He liked touching her and did it a great deal. She wasn’t sure she’d ever want to bring herself pleasure again, because he was so much better at it.

He’d said casual wear would be fine for where he was taking her, so she donned a V-necked thin T-shirt and coupled it with a knee-length knit skirt and sneakers. Her tender tissues wouldn’t handle jeans well. Plus—the real reason—if he wanted her again, she wanted him to have easy access.

When she emerged from the bedroom and he turned to look at her from head to toe, he extended a hand. He drew her to him, his touch on her hips firm, possessive. As he gathered the skirt fabric under his palms, she felt the touch of air high on her thighs.

“Want me to be able to take you where and when I want, don’t you?” He kissed her parted lips, offered a distracting touch of his tongue, his fingers flexing on her hips.

“Yes,” she said.

“I’d tell you to stop being such a damn temptation, but I don’t think you can.” He gave her a censorious look. “Those gorgeous eyes and sweet mouth. Put your arms around me, witch. We’re going for a ride.”

“If you prefer me to drive, we can take my broom.”

A flash of teeth, his heated chuckle, reminded her that laughter was a good distraction, too.

When they’d arrived via portal at his chosen picnic spot, it was a reminder that she was with a male connected to death in intimate ways. Like dating a funeral director.

When she shared that with him, Silas accepted the comparison with a thoughtful, faintly amused air. As he led her through the rolling hills of the wooded grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, with its sobering views of lines of crosses, the sun’s silver morning light touched the ancient ivory of the monuments they passed.

She’d been to DC’s tourist spots when she, Raina and Ruby had visited fellow witches in the area. At that time, they’d had to stick with the rest of the tourists. This time, it was early enough the park wasn’t yet open to visitors, though she saw an occasional maintenance worker at a distance.

“No one can see or hear us,” Silas reassured her. “I have us cloaked.”

A few minutes later, they reached the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A soldier on duty was doing a precise walk along the dark runner before the Tomb marker. Despite bird song and the rustle of the wind, Ramona heard the click of his heels as he executed the steps. At the end of the runner, he stopped, faced the Tomb for a measured set of beats. He changed his weapon to the opposite shoulder, the one closest to the roped barricade separating the pedestrian walkway from the Tomb. Then he faced back down the mat and started in that direction at the same measured pace.

Silas squeezed her hand, drawing her up the steps, past the soldier to a corner of lawn shaded by a cluster of trees. Taking the picnic blanket she’d brought, he spread it out, his long arms making it easy work. It was one she’d woven herself, with a wash of sunrise colors. Silas offered her a hand to sink down on it before sitting next to her.

It made sense that this was a favored spot for him, a place where warriors watched over the bodily remains of the fallen and the spirits that lingered. Being here also seemed to ease the tension he was carrying.

“Hungry?”

She nodded. They’d changed their mind about picking something up after she’d found enough to quickly throw together a meal. Though it was early morning, she’d chosen what she thought they’d like, regardless of the time of day. She set out the two containers of stew, made with her garden vegetables and herbs, plus bread with a chive-flavored goat cheese spread. “It’s good,” he noted, taking a bite and chewing. “From a goat farm in the area?”

“Yes. What I don’t make and grow myself, I get locally when I can. Though I buy lunch from the town restaurants during shop hours. Support local business, keep in touch with what’s happening, networking, that kind of thing.”

“Raina isn’t the only businesswoman.”

She grimaced. “Raina is a shark, I’m a minnow. Compared to her, I’m like a flea market booth.”

“I’ve Reaped plenty of souls from flea market bartering gone bad. It’s brutal.”

Though he was teasing her, and he’d told her they couldn’t be heard, she noted he kept his deep voice low. She determined it was out of respect for their surroundings, the sentinel’s purpose. The energy that hovered here.

“Isn’t this sort of like a busman’s holiday? Did you take any of the three souls here to The Gate?”

“No, but I like the inscription, about their identities being ‘Known But to God.’”

“And Reapers,” she added.

“And Reapers.” He gestured to the soldier. “This place says no death goes truly unwitnessed, no name unknown. They aren’t forgotten. No one is forgotten. Like I told Gina.”

Several times, when she’d been putting together their lunch, she’d seen him take out his journal, hold it, fingers passing over the cover. “Wherever you came from, however you were chosen,” she said, “this is a calling. You love what you do. You know why it’s important.”

He sent her a sidelong glance, nodded. “Death is what people fear most. We can’t tell them there’s nothing to fear, because the transition can be unsettling, and there’s almost always some redemption owed, but beyond that…there’s an order to it, indescribable in its peacefulness.”

She saw him recognize how she might interpret that, but before she could reassure him she wasn’t offended, he added, “Order doesn’t always look like one expects. It’s a lot of different things, depending on the death.”

“How so?”

He considered. “You’ve witnessed birth. Ruby’s son.”

“Yes.” Ramona remembered the wonder in Derek’s eyes, a male who’d seen over a thousand years in his current life, but never the birth of his own child. Ruby’s tenderness had eased her usual sharp edges. The emotions emanating from her had tangled and integrated with Derek’s, settling around the sharing of responsibility for this new life, the celebration of Jem’s arrival.

“The rising of a soul from the flesh, its coming to The Gate, to see what’s next…it’s a birth, too,” Silas said. “And while a babe comes with newness, the imprint of its past lives not obvious, in death, that imprint is there. I witness what has been, who the soul is becoming, where they might go next. They handle their body’s parting, those they must leave behind, for now, in many ways. It’s a library that never fails to fascinate. Or inspire.”

“Unexpected?”

“Often. And also reassuringly the same.”

“Hmm.” Her gaze moved to the soldier as he pivoted, followed the same measured pace again. He took twenty-one steps in each direction, she realized. The pause to face the Tomb was also twenty-one seconds. Ritual could provide the foundation to potent magics. And resolves.

“Tell me more about this. How long does a shift last?”

“Thirty minutes to an hour, depending on the seasons. If we’re here long enough, you’ll see the changing of the guard.” Something difficult seemed to grip him. “Would you like to hear the Creed they follow?”

“Of course.” Following an instinct, she put her hand over his, braced on the blanket.

Silas’s gaze never left the soldier, the rhythm to the words seeming to follow the cadence of his steps, the click of his heels. “My dedication to this sacred duty is total and whole-hearted. In the responsibility bestowed on me never will I falter. And with dignity and perseverance my standard will remain perfection.

Through the years of diligence and praise and the discomfort of the elements, I will walk my tour in humble reverence to the best of my ability. It is he who commands the respect I protect, his bravery that made us so proud. Surrounded by well-meaning crowds by day, alone in the thoughtful peace of night, this soldier will in honored glory rest under my eternal vigilance.”

She gazed at Silas’s profile. Yes, she could understand what he found here. And why he had refused to destroy or abandon Cal.

“It’s said that every man or woman who patrols here has to be a certain size.” The lighter note in his voice told her he’d stepped back from the solemnity that had gripped him. “Women have to be between five-eight and six-two.”

“So I have no chance.”

His attention slid over her. “Somehow I doubt your height would be the main reason.”

She made a face. “Just because the words regulation and structure are like flags to the charging bull of Chaos magic doesn’t mean I should be discriminated against. Sheesh.”

When she bumped his side with her shoulder, he pressed a smile and a kiss against her hair. He’d finished his stew, put it back in the basket she’d used, so she scooted into the shelter his braced arm provided. “Why does he change the gun to the other shoulder when he turns?”

“The sentinel always keeps the weapon between the viewers and the Tomb. Because he’s guarding the remains.” A pause, then Silas spoke carefully. “Will you tell me, Ramona?”

“Tell you what?” His tone made her wary.

“You told me you never relinquish responsibility for your magic. You hinted that was about more than what happened when you were a teenager. About more than the sex.” He held her gaze. “I want all the way inside, Ramona.”

“Have you earned that?”

She didn’t mean for it to come out defensively, and the second she said the words, she flashed to that past life. Of course he’d earned it. He’d earned the right to her life if he no more than asked for it.

“Hey.” He touched her face, a firm admonishment, drawing her gaze to his steady one. “Don’t do that. The past doesn’t impact the present. Not for this. If it’s important for me to earn the knowledge, then tell me how I might. But I also know for some things there is no earning. They’re offered as a gift or not at all. A gift because the giver wants the pleasure of the giving.”

“There’s no pleasure in what you’re asking.” This was a peaceful place. They’d enjoyed one another. There might be a shitstorm ahead. She resented having to kick one up.

“Is it something too painful to open? Or does it just need time between us?” He pressed onward, though his tone stayed gentle. “Does anyone else know?”

“Yes. Raina and Ruby.” She tried not to twitch away from his touch, but she was unsuccessful. He let her shift so she could fuss with putting away her finished lunch containers. She tossed an apple core to a squirrel, remembering when the squirrel seemed to ignore it that they were invisible. Silas leaned over, picked it up and tossed it even further away. It appeared outside the cloaking field and two squirrels raced each other to snatch it up.

“Ruby understands certain parts better than Raina and vice versa.” Because of that, they didn’t require her to discuss it. Sometimes silence was the best gift to offer someone’s truth. A response required another response, and some stories took up all the room inside when shared, leaving nothing, no energy to give after the telling.

She tipped her head up to the sky. “You’ve witnessed so much, so many things. My story won’t be unique. Only to me. Do your souls treat you like a confessor? Do they ask you to absolve them?”

“No. But they tell me things, and the telling is often enough. If it isn’t, sometimes they refuse to go through The Gate. They wander a while first. That is permitted if it’s part of what they need, part of their transition.”

“How many stay behind to be restless spirits?”

“As a Reaper gains experience, not as many. You learn how to help with the letting go.”

“Do you seek to be my lover or my confessor?”

He grasped her hand, drawing her attention to the tense fist it had become, and caressed her white knuckles. “I’ve never heard mockery in your voice before. It’s an angry, bitter thing you carry.” Before she could marshal a response, he pressed on. “From the moment I saw you, I wanted…this. The ability to be near you, marvel at your complexity, how unexpected you are.”

His lips curved, humorless. “Your beauty, your life. You make no sense, nothing I can predict or anticipate. It’s wondrous, strange. Unsettling. And yet, at the center, there’s something like this.” He nodded to the soldier. “An order aligned with honor, and all that is supposed to mean.”

When he met her gaze again, she saw the emotions behind the words. “I want to do and be whatever brings you happiness, Ramona. Joy, peace, pleasure. I want to be the reason you smile, that you sleep easy, that you are able to find hope when all else seems lost. I seek to love you, by whatever path that takes.”

Words deserted her, the bitter anger draining away. It didn’t have anything to do with him, and he’d ably reminded her of it. “That’s a gift,” she said at last. “Love. But the why is important.”

At his curious look, she gave him an even one in return. “Every soul is remarkable, which means none of us are. Yet you find something quiet and still when you look at me.” Humor tugged her lips. “Words no one has ever used to describe me.”

“Yet it’s your essential core,” he said. “You hold the center of that whirling, chaotic energy. The sun at the center of a galaxy. It warms me.”

“You can’t see my death.” A last-ditch attempt at defensiveness. “That’s why you feel all that around me.”

“No. That was the threshold to my interest. It’s not why I stay.”

She cursed herself for needing him to say it. She’d learned to let men go, never expect much from them except brief, limited pleasures, some basic companionship. And here was one who not only wanted to hang around, he wanted to move in and explore all the rooms. Even the scary basement with the padlock on the door, crime scene tape and danger written across the panel in blood.

Though it was important for their spellcraft, she thought the divine forces of creation had been doing a hey, y’all watch this moment when they gave Chaos witches such creative skills, because her powers could trigger and conjure with the prompting of the slightest bit of mental imagery.

Was it a cue in her face, or could he tap into the outer realms of her thoughts? Perhaps he was just that intuitive, due to his vast experience in reading body language. His cocoon of shielding tightened around them, so whatever crazy thing had been about to happen from her horror movie visualization didn’t. A good thing, because she didn’t want to put that vigilant sentinel on hyperalert due to blood raining from the sky, or the appearance of a tourist in a ski mask with a big ass knife. Et cetera.

She took a breath. “It’s not a room I’d ever invite anyone into, no more than I’d invite you into a nightmare.”

“You do not have to tell me now,” he said, surprising her. “I’d like to know, but I demand nothing from you that strips armor from your soul and subjects it to such obvious pain. I don’t want you to remove it just to satisfy my curiosity.”

It was a relief, but coming in behind that surge was the surprising realization that maybe she did want him to know. She just didn’t want to go there herself. Maybe she could have Raina or Ruby tell him.

Or maybe she could suck it up and just do it. “I know curiosity isn’t why you want to know. You said it. You want behind the armor. You want all that I am.”

“You said I hadn’t earned that.”

“I questioned if you felt you had.” She looked down at her hands, now twisted in her lap. “Earning is a separate act and choice. The telling is an offering of trust. An offer I have to believe you will earn, but should put no obligation on. Love is constant steps of faith. And failed expectations.”

“Expectations are a spiral. The failure today becomes the foundation for success tomorrow. I’m pretty sure that’s on a corporate poster somewhere.” A tinge of a smile, and he squeezed her hand again. Waiting for her decision.

Maybe that was the problem. Underneath his mild tone, no matter how gentle or patient, was the male who had claimed her. To give him everything he wanted from her, she needed that part of him.

“Sometimes,” she said slowly, “it’s better if you demand.”

An intrigued light kindled. “Is that so?” he asked softly.

Leaning in, he took her lips in a thorough kiss, one that held through all twenty-one steps of the sentinel in one direction, then the other. One full rotation, during which Silas’s hand rose to clasp the side of her throat, letting her pulse beat against his rough palm. When he met her gaze again, his held the steadiness that made things inside her not steady at all. “You asked if I seek to be your lover or confessor. I seek neither. I want to be your Master, Ramona.”

The words rose, an ocean wave ready to crest, but then it kept building. Panic joined the mix, emotions rising too high.

“Ramona.” He had his hands on her. “You’re inviting me behind the armor, not removing it. Start with the easier part. A corner of the tapestry, the first threads.”

* * *

Silas wanted to pull her into his arms, onto his lap, cradle her there, but memories as painful as these obviously were often didn’t permit touch. Not until they were shared, the sharpest pain of their telling purged. She had his full attention, but he split it between her emotions, what he could do for those, for her heart, and what she needed if they stirred up the world around them.

He considered taking them away from the Tomb, since having her tell the story a rock’s throw from a soldier with a loaded rifle might not be the wisest choice.

But she cupped her hands before her, slow and stiff, like she was balancing something fragile but with substantial weight in her palms. He felt the swirling energies pause, re-channel, slowly fade away, though the effort cost her. It was a reminder that she knew how to do this without him. That she would not fully rely on anyone for it. And she was about to share with him how she’d learned that painful lesson.

“I was raised by pixies. The Spiraling Wind clan. My mother…I have a few memories. Pieces. She liked cereal for dinner and drove a car with a faded rainbow sticker on the back.” She lowered her hands. Beside the blanket, she drew patterns in the grass. The patterns changed, like a snake writhing at her prodding.

“I was relatively normal until I was five. Then I changed. On a playground, I turned a swing into a bird and launched it fifty feet into the air. The spiral slide started moving, twisting, becoming a circle, letting the fun go on forever. The merry-go-round spun like a top, and the sand in the sandbox became figures. Dinosaurs. Snakes.” Her gaze went to the grass, and longer strands climbed on top of one another, arched in a braided strike pose. “No one was hurt, luckily. The children liked it.”

“But not the parents.”

“When it was understood I was the source, people came to my mother. Pretended what had happened was something else, said I had special needs. They would pay for me to go to a top hospital, care for me. My mother played dumb, acted like it was a relief, and said okay. Set up a day for them to come get me. Then she packed us up and ran.”

Ramona’s eyes were sad. “She recognized a threat against her child and responded accordingly. It didn’t matter that she had a daughter she didn’t understand, that she had no idea how to help or protect me. She tried. She bought an old camper with cash and she moved us from campground to campground, each one more remote than the last. Wild places where I wasn’t around other people.”

Ramona’s right hand lifted, sketched a scene before her, a miniature diorama, her intent face the Goddess of its creation, hovering above it. He saw a river flanked by forest, a blue sky above. She expanded the river so she could put both hands in it, watch the water pass over her fingers. Then it dissipated, though she kept her hands there, as if reaching for something long gone.

“My mother, she prayed. She knelt by a river and prayed what to do, for she was running out of resources, and they had plenty more. They were getting closer.”

Some of that urgency, the desperation, came into her voice. Silas held his place. Watched and listened, as he’d done for so many other souls. Though in this case, just like the strength of his impatience to remove that mark, do something to help Honora and the Guardians, he was nearly overwhelmed by the wish to go back in time to help protect Ramona’s mother, help her feel not so alone.

The way he wanted to do for her daughter.

“A log floated by, bumped up against the shore. She’d read me a story about sailing away into a rose-colored horizon, so the log became a boat filled with flowers, blooms growing out of the wood. The boat was small, only big enough for a child. She saw it and wept. Great, heaving sobs. I’d unwittingly given her an answer, but it broke her heart.”

Ramona’s voice hitched. “She picked me up, hugged me so tight. Told me how much she loved me, and that everything would be fine. ‘Use your magic, find your way.’ That was what she whispered to me.

“She put me in the boat. Her tears were on my face, my shirt. I clung to her hands, tried to get her to come with me, not let go. She pulled free, had to do it with a hard jerk, because I was frightened, crying, but she blew me kisses, told me it would be okay, that Momma wasn’t mad, Momma loved me, it was all okay…Momma…”

She closed her eyes, spoke the name in a whisper. The energy around her was dense. Reaching out to her was like putting his hands through a swift current. He did it slow, shifted her so she was between his bent thighs.

When he did, everything around them changed. As if they’d been transported into that diorama, they were on the riverbank, deep in a forest. He knew they were still on the blanket, at the Tomb, but their surroundings said otherwise.

Her shoulders eased some, telling him the illusion had been deliberate, channeling the surge of magic expanding with her emotions. He rested his hand at her waist, his other stroking her hair. A woman’s laughter was in his head, that elusive scent of raisins. Origins were a connecting thread in the tapestry of souls, whether Reaper or Chaos witch.

“Tapestry. Threads. It always goes back to weaving. Connection and patterns hold all the answers.”

He didn’t interrupt her, point out their energies were so interwoven—another weaving reference—that she’d pulled that right from his surface thoughts, as he sometimes did with her. It was just there, offered for those with the skill to detect it. Or the strength of the binding between them.

“There are thousands more maternal chromosomes in your DNA than paternal ones,” she said. “Did you know that? Makes sense. We start as an egg in our mother, grow there, whereas our fathers provide that single ambitious sperm. Not to say a father is any less loved or important,” she added. “Just an explanation for why it’s so hard to let go of that cord to the mother. Like the soul to its body, right? It’s biological. Guess that’s why we think of the Earth as Mother, Fates as women.”

She moved her hands in a wheel motion around one another, as if weaving energy over and under her fingertips. “I floated, fell asleep in the flowers filling the boat. When I woke, I’d bumped up under a tree that had fallen into the water. It had been lightning-struck, forming a child-sized alcove, hollowed out by the elements. The branches still had leaves, providing shade, coolness. A screen. I crept in, let the boat go, spin away, become a log again. I was there a couple days, I think. I lost track of time. Dehydration. Hunger.”

He lifted his gaze as the tree appeared close to them, hanging into the water, a new element in the scene. As was the pixie, wearing a yellow dress in a fabric that flowed over her slim figure. Her long hair was piled up on her head, fastened with sparkling combs and decorated with tiny blue flowers. Her four wings, overlapped like a dragonfly’s, were glistening green with traces of blue.

“I heard this fluttering, like a bird, only the wings had a papery sound to them. The tree was Crescent’s favorite place to sit and do her spinning. She was the Clan’s weaver. She made most of the fabric for their clothing.”

He pressed a kiss to her crown. “She found you.”

“Yes.” Ramona paused, and darkness moved in her, gave her magic an ominous vibration. He surrounded it, let her know his was there to lean upon. Count on.

“For a long time, I wished I’d drowned in that boat. Or died before my powers came to me. I wished I’d been a changeling, given to the Fae as an infant, so my mother didn’t have to suffer.”

“Is she still alive?”

She shook her head. “Crescent took me to see her months later, when the flowers were growing over her body. She lay down in a meadow, and simply…died. She lost the will to live when she put me in the boat.”

She swallowed. “When you said you remember your mother’s scent, I have that, too. Coffee with a lot of creamer, vanilla. Cigarettes. Butterscotch. She had a sweater with those scents. She wore it a lot.”

“Your father?”

“A boy who died in a car wreck. She had me at seventeen, while she was still mourning him. He was a bard, a Renaissance Faire player. A poet. When I come up with my rhymes, I imagine him wincing, for she would sing his songs to me, and they were true poetry, songs of nature.”

“I like your rhymes.”

“Men like everything about a woman when they’re first having sex with her. Raina says so. You can’t help it.”

Though the barbed humor was an attempt to ease some of what was going on inside her, it was the wrong path, one he wouldn’t let her go down. “Ramona.”

She glanced at him, and the image wavered. “Sorry.”

He helped her steady it, put both of his arms around her to hold her closer. She tucked her head under his chin, her gaze on the river, on the image of Crescent.

“Another clan told Crescent where to find my mother, what had happened. They’d seen her stumbling through the forest, weeping and talking to herself. She laid down and died in a meadow on a full moon night. The clan covered her with flower petals and pine branches.”

The meadow appeared to their left, amid a swirl of white flower petals. Daisies. “Probably due to the trauma, the memory of my mother vanished from my mind for a while. As a cushion for that, Crescent told me a dozen different origin stories.”

“That was when you came up with the story of being born from the tears of a Goddess.”

“Yes. Crescent’s favorite was the wind played with fall leaves on the forest floor, and after they swirled away, there I sat, crusted with moist earth, like the birth of a new plant.”

She absently fingered her blonde hair. “I had brown hair, dark as that soil. Same color as my mother’s. The memory of her returned when I was twelve.”

He stroked her hair. “Tell me of the pixies. I know little of them.”

“Their language…it’s thought and feeling, gestures, flight. So much communication in the movement of their wings, how they dance through the air. There were about fifty members of the clan, spanning four generations. I couldn’t fly with them. At first, they always had someone stay with me, keeping me company, so I wouldn’t be afraid when they crossed the threshold to the Fae world, a place they couldn’t take me. Predators were only a danger if I was left completely alone, an opportunity. Nothing attacks a human when it has a better option. My magic proved far more dangerous.”

She curled her fingers into his forearm. “I told you my memory of my mother returned at twelve. I became a confusion of emotions. Anger, impatience, sadness. Nothing I did was intentional, but negative Chaos took the upper hand. Hormones played havoc with any benevolent intent.

“I would send the pixies spinning on erratic air currents, dash them into trees. Drop them into the river. Food stores turned to rocks and feathers. As soon as I had a thought, a fear, some manifestation of it would come to pass. It drove me into a cave, and I made it collapse, lock me in. Crescent and the others unburied me, one rock at a time, coaxed me out.”

Her voice had dropped in volume, become emotionless, but he heard the loneliness, the struggle. She hesitated before speaking the next words.

“When my mother held me, I felt a joy. Like birds. As I said, my magic started manifesting regularly at five, but I remembered one earlier instance, inspired by the intensity of that feeling. I had a bird mobile over my crib, so I spread out my arms like wings while my mother held me…and flew. We were floating, at the ceiling. She got frightened, and I dropped us. Because she cushioned me, she was knocked unconscious. I sat next to her crying, joy gone. When she woke, she rationalized her memory of it as a dream. Nothing else happened until I was five.”

The images died away, leaving them on the picnic blanket. The park had opened, because a trickle of visitors passed by the velvet rope, watching the sentinel perform his duty. As the day waxed, the numbers would grow, especially when it was time for changing of the guard.

Ramona didn’t seem to notice. She tipped her head up from his shoulder, apparently listening to the birds in the trees around them. Her hands rested in her lap, the fingers still knotted. “If you believe in an order to things, it’s hard not to blame the gods, to see things as a mistake, where there’s fault to place,” she said. “But instead, the whole world and everyone in it are a big mash between order and chaos, joy and fear. It’s when you know nothing, really realize that, that you can let go and be part of everything. It’s not just flying and joy all the time. It’s also crashing, and accepting that as part of it, too.”

The light around them dimmed, the volatile cauldron of emotions he’d sensed on simmer suddenly increasing in heat. He adjusted his protections accordingly, but kept his hands light on her. Though her mother’s end was bad enough, he expected they were getting to what made her most not want to tell this story.

“Pixies can be mischievous, but they’re not clandestine or duplicitous. They saw no reason to conceal their care of me. A High Fae discovered they’d taken me in. He said they needed to turn me out. Leave me in a hospital or church if they wished, or abandon me to the coyotes. He didn’t care which option they chose, but he called their compassion a betrayal of their people.”

“Sounds like he had a massive chip on his shoulder against humans.”

“Understandable, since we mostly drove them out of this world.”

“Not understandable if his hatred would cause him to harm a child.”

She made a noncommittal noise. “I would shut down around him, become as non-magical as a beer can. Though he didn’t doubt it when the pixies said I was magic born, that I was safer among their people than with my own, he didn’t see the scope of it. Not that that should have mattered.”

“They refused him.”

“Yes.” She went silent for another few minutes. “In the Fae world, time is different. When he issued his ultimatum, I was eight. He returned when I was fifteen. He was an authority figure of some kind, had the right to impose penalties for violations of laws. He cared nothing for the pixies’ arguments. Their beliefs. He was going to take me, end me himself, handle my execution.”

Another pause. “They piled on me. The clan had increased in numbers over the years, to sixty-three. I’d been present for the new births, helped care for their young. All of them, the whole clan, every age, covered me like your bees, cloaking every spare inch of me they could.”

He drew her closer as she spoke the words in a trembling voice. “I heard him say, ‘so be it.’ Just three words, stated without any real emotion, which only added to the awfulness. Then there was fire.”

She clasped his forearm, drew his hand down to her lap, played with it on her thigh as she stared at the ground. “Like that battle you took me into. A corner of the world removed from everything else, one clan among many. Some Fae treat pixies the way humans treat insects. Knowing that, I’ve never been able to do the same. Ants have communities, they care for their young, build them nurseries, have warrior clans and a queen. We think we’re so different, we think our lives are somehow more precious to us than an ant’s is to him, or a butterfly’s is to her. Or a tree’s.”

The deep breath she took held a shudder. The curve of her back against his side was rigid. “I’d been learning about my magic, how to work with it, encouraged by Crescent and the others. Any stumble I had, they took in stride. They understood learning magic the way my mother would have understood me learning to walk. But I hadn’t yet found that center you talked about.”

Her raw emotions spilled into her voice. “I lost control. No, that’s wrong. I didn’t lose control at all. It was when I found it. I became the pin holding the wheel in place, no matter how fast it spins. I learned how to find the focus in the storm, the target of the tornado that seems random but isn’t. I took that fire he’d used, its wrongness, and turned it on him. He died where he stood, a pillar of ash.”

Silas didn’t speak, but shock went through him. Killing a High Fae was almost an impossibility for a mortal. And she’d been an untried teenager. He was right, what he’d thought about her power level. It also told him the Fae had never learned who’d killed the male, because they would have come after her with a vengeance.

“My scream of anguish created a blast of wind that scattered him. Whatever Reaper was in charge of his soul, I have no idea where it landed, where it found him.” Her expression hardened. “Nor, to this day, do I care. He treated them as nothing. So to me, he will forever be nothing.”

Her hands passed over herself, an absent stroke, then rubbing into her skin. “I was coated in their ash. I didn’t bathe for days, wandering, crying, the coyotes singing with me. Woodland creatures, even the predators, are mostly friends to pixies, so as I’d grown older, they were no longer a threat to me.”

She held her arms out before her. “Eventually, I bathed, watched the ash flow away. But I was left with these.” She touched the scattering of freckles on her arms, a light cinnamon gray color, flames and ash mixed. “There are far more now, but that day, I counted. Sixty-five.” At his look, she managed a tremulous smile. “One of the clan was pregnant with twins.”

“Ah, gods.” When she folded back against him, pressing her face to his shoulder, he stroked her back. “I’m sorry, Ramona. I’m glad they gave you so much love that you carry the proof of it, but I’m sorry you had to lose them that way.”

Her arms slipped under his, and they held one another for a while without saying anything else. The river scene reappeared, the current carrying its message of change and movement. She was cleansing the emotions, giving herself the strength to restore herself to her usual calm.

“When you hold a power no one else can control, then there is no full surrender,” she said at last. “There can’t be. Not until death.” She lifted her head and their gazes locked. “But I do understand that we all choose our path, make our decisions. We have to allow one another that.” Her voice became harsh with pain. “Crescent’s last words were, ‘We do not regret loving you. Not one of us. We’re your family.’

“Knowing what I am, what it attracts, can endanger those I care about, I have to remind myself that if someone who cares for me understands the risks, it’s not my place to push them away out of fear. Or guilt over the past.” She bit her lip, that recent revelation in the gesture. “But I will protect those who matter to me. Including you.”

The dangerous resolve he suspected that long dead Fae had seen flashed through her gaze. “Can you accept that, and not stand in my way?”

He met the challenge with his own. “Everything I do will be in my capacity as your lover. Your Master. I have my own desire to protect those who matter to me.”

He wanted to say soulmate. But Master was enough.

He could tell she was tucking her past back into that room, the curtain drawn again. But it was done. He knew what was there.

At one point or another, they all fought for something they were willing to die for. He looked toward the soldier, then touched her face. “Would you like some ice cream? I believe you like the place near your store.”

“You offer me ice cream for one of the worst memories of my life.” A ghostlike smile crossed her lovely features. “Perhaps you do understand the nature of Chaos, how complicated and simple it can be.”

She looked toward the sentinel, noticing the gathering of people. “It’s almost time for the changing of the guard?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s watch that. Then we can go.”

* * *

Her chocolate-dipped waffle cone contained vegan vanilla fudge swirl. They sat at an outside table, saying little. Though she greeted a few familiar faces, she noted Silas rarely made direct eye contact with anyone who passed.

A couple with a stroller went by. Though tired-looking, they appeared happy, his arm around her waist, their hands overlapped on the stroller as they pushed it together. It reminded her of Derek and Ruby.

“It’s a nice picture,” she said.

He nodded, but his gaze was on her as she put a spoonful of ice cream between her lips. Taking pleasure in her enjoyment of the sweet was all he’d said he desired, not wanting one for himself. Just in case he’d changed his mind, she offered him the next bite, but he shook his head. On a partly playful, partly serious thought, she extended the spoon. “Would you like to give me some?”

She’d anticipated him correctly. He took the utensil from her, fingers brushing hers. A handful of semi-sweet chips was precariously perched in the thick chocolate syrup she’d had them drizzle on top. As she parted her lips to take the bite he offered, he held the spoon just out of reach, so she had to lean forward. When she did, he curled a finger under her shirt’s V-neckline to caress her sternum, her cleavage. She gripped the edge of the table, savoring the lower abdomen quiver that his interest in her response gave her.

“Take it slow,” he said. “Make it last.”

She did, putting her lips over the tip of the spoon, drawing the ice cream in, neat and easy. As he turned his hand over, his knuckles sliding over the top of her breast, she licked the spoon and then her lips. As he withdrew the spoon slowly, her eyes half-closed. She was holding her breath, and he slid a single fingertip so close to a nipple it drew up in response. “Breathe,” he murmured.

After a lingering moment, he sat back, returning control of the cup and utensil to her. Just those few seconds, and there was enough heat around the table to set the awning above them on fire. But a wet, damp wind blew over them, making the striped fabric awning above them flap. His energy settled around her, cooling her, but not too much. His other hand rested on top of hers on the table. The wrist marking was prominent under his touch, the heat of the letters branding her skin.

“You think I followed you back into the store because I couldn’t see your death. I followed you back into the store because you are a beautiful woman who intrigued me. A Chaos witch who talks about grilled cheese sandwiches and wears zebra striped sneakers. Who has hair the color of sin. Who lowers her gaze when she meets a Master she wants to touch her. Kiss her. Explore her submission and cherish it.”

As if he’d ordered it, she found herself lowering her gaze while he spoke. His foot pressed next to hers under the table. When he leaned forward again to wind a lock of her hair around his fingers, she couldn’t think of anything but what her Reaper wanted.

But he wasn’t her Reaper. Or was he?

“I’ve never met anyone who made me believe I could reach for that outside my fantasies,” she said. “Gave me the faith that level of trust was possible. Are you sure we’re not soulmates?”

He shook his head, regret on his face. “But I can be drawn to you, fall in love with you, want to be with you. Same as anyone else in your world.”

“Right. No reason to put labels on things.” But why did she feel he was just as disappointed about it as she was? “I guess I just thought… When you first said it, there was this leap inside my chest. Derek always knew Ruby was his, and he was hers. She knew it, too, even though she didn’t acknowledge it for a long time. Raina and Mikhael…they had a rocky beginning, but their relationship was a baptism by fire that burned everything away but the obvious. They were fated for one another.”

She frowned, suddenly angry. “I thought it would be the same for me, because that’s the way I’ve felt, the whole time I’ve been with you. ‘Yes, this is him. This is who will get me, and I’ll get him.’ But no. Your soulmate is still out there.”

A woman she hated without knowing her. When tears sprang into her eyes, she was appalled with herself. She averted her face, swiped at it. “Wow, I’m being stupid about this. I’m sorry. Why don’t you take a walk, go see what’s in Cordelia’s window? Leave me alone for a couple minutes. I’ll pull myself together.”

He shot her a look, then took the cup and napkin from her, tossing them in a nearby trash can. Recapturing her hands in one of his, he reached forward and passed a thumb over a tear track. “Leaving your side when you are unhappy is the last reason I would do so.”

He was perfect. Mysterious, commanding, humorous, intelligent, scary, sexy. She shook herself, ridding herself of the negative energy like a dog shaking a wet coat. “No, I’m being worse than stupid. You’re immortal, I’m not. Your soulmate might cross your path a hundred years from now, when I’m long gone to dust.”

She set her jaw. “As they say, ‘You may not be Mr. Right, but you can be Mr. Right Now.’ Maybe I’m your Ms. Right Now for the next few decades, until I wither up and die. Which still makes you my Mr. Right, at least in this lifetime. So for me to act like an idiot about not being your ‘soulmate’ makes no logical sense. You have more right to be upset about it than me.”

And he was, she could tell. It bugged him a lot. Which meant he likely wouldn’t be staying long, after the mark issue was resolved. She was wasting valuable time.

She erupted from the table, intending to draw him into a walk, but abruptly swung around, almost slamming into his chest, because he’d risen to follow her. “I know why you brought it up that day, because you thought maybe…but I wish you hadn’t.”

Her topsy turvy logic had upended several parking meters. And the big blue postal mailbox. It had pulled its bolts free and turned over. At least there were no cracks in the concrete.

Muttering an oath and then a spell, she righted them as subtly as possible, hurrying forward to retrieve the few envelopes that had fallen out of the mailbox.

“Ramona.” Silas held the slot open for her, then seized her arm and yanked her against him. The kiss was forceful enough to stop the spinning in her head. He gripped her upper arms, drawing her fully against him. When he lifted his head, his eyes were determined as the desire she could feel vibrating from him, wrapping around her.

“This is physical attraction. But my sexual needs do not rule me. Any more than I expect yours do. What is between us is important, and real. I don’t care to speculate on how much time we will have that gift. I’d rather simply be glad to have been given it.”

An echo of her own thoughts. But hearing him say it helped take the tension away, a sign she’d accepted the words, taken their truth into herself. When he cradled her cheek, she closed her eyes. She’d had to define herself when she knew nothing about what she was. So that was what she pulled on now, as she lifted her gaze back to those devastating green eyes.

Slaughter is in those languid eyne whene’er a glance they deal.It was from Book of a Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade. Ramona wondered if the famous storyteller, who might have been real or fictional, had ever met Silas in one of the lives that predated her storytelling marathon.

“Speak for yourself on the sexual needs thing.” She cleared her throat. “Mine take me over easy as a demon-possessed baby.”

When he chuckled, she laid her hands on his forearms. “I’ll take what you can give. And I’m not selling myself short or too cheaply, because I know you’re not using me, and you care. So far, you seem wonderful and extraordinary. To turn my back on that because of bullshit hang-ups would be foolish.”

“I am glad to hear it.” He gave her a look. “But do not call yourself stupid or treat your feelings as ‘idiotic.’”

She lifted her shoulder. “I’m sorry I snapped at you for the soulmate mix-up, though. Because our lives are short, mortals can get crazy while waiting for the right person. Whereas it’s probably worse for an immortal, who knows just how long life can be.”

His gaze flickered, suggesting the hard truth of it. She bit her lip, crossed her arms. “Okay, now that I’ve poked that sore spot, my place or yours? Do you have a place, when you’re not Reaping souls?”

“There are many places I seek respite when the opportunity presents itself. But our kind are travelers.” He lifted a shoulder. “Another commonality we share with Guardians.”

Home was a state of mind, and a fluid one. She loved her work, what she did. Being in her own skin, with her magic. Sharing company with those who loved her and whom she loved. All those things meant home to her, as much as her house and shop. When she shared that, his green eyes locked upon her.

“I don’t disagree. I want to take you to your home.” He tightened his grip. “I want to be in your bed, with you.”

“Well, if you had said you’d wanted to be in my bed with someone else, we would have had a problem. Unless it was another equally hot male, and you wanted a threesome with me in the middle.”

He gave her a somber look. “There is no one as hot as me.”

It startled a laugh out of her, and he broke his serious mien with a smile. If the definition of home was a place of welcome, of comfort, joy and pleasure, then his smile now qualified as a home to her as well. She wanted to give him the same.

“Everyone needs a place they can go that they can call theirs.” Sobering, she clasped both his hands, brought them up to her chest, bowed her head over them. She rested her lips on his knuckles, a formal gesture she intended to reinforce how much she meant her next words.

“As long as we last, my home is your home.”