21

I stepped out into the sultry, jasmine-scented night, waiting for a pair of bodyguards to flank me, aware that, if this was

Jesse and Burke's shift, I'd likely get another offer from the gray-eyed bodyguard/witch who deeply intrigued me—though Devlin,

the warm vampire-witch, fascinated me more. I found the newly refurbished courtyard empty but for me.

The first thought to take shape in my mind was sheer astonishment at the beauty that had been so flawlessly re-created while

I'd been busy in my room. Illuminated by solar torches, strands of fairy lights, and the pale blue luminosity of the pool,

the courtyard was once again a spectacular tumble of lush southern foliage. There was no trace of char or ash. My power had

wrought terrible destruction, but clearly, the power with which I'd been endowed was also capable of birthing magnificent

life (even the blue bottles swaying on jute cords were back!), and I hungered to learn more about that facet of my heritage.

How would it feel to make a tree? A flower? My God, how was that possible? Yet here I was, staring at the evidence that it

was, indeed, and so much more! I wondered where the Kovan had drawn the energy to fabricate so much new life, and how it was

replenished. I had so much to learn!

My second thought was much darker, and I froze, realizing the courtyard had been empty this morning, too, at dawn, while I'd

collected skeletal remains. I'd just been too distraught to notice. Yet Mr.Balfour had insisted there would always be a pair

of bodyguards, front and rear, and that I would never move about unescorted beyond the walls of the manor.

He certainly would have noticed their absence this morning, when he'd plucked the basket of bone and ash from my side, yet he'd made no comment about it. I might have convinced myself he'd dispatched them before approaching me, but why hadn't they been flanking me as I'd gathered the remains to begin with? And why weren't they here now?

I realized I was holding my breath and released it slowly.

There'd been no human remains. Of that, I was certain. I had not killed Jesse, my selfless protector, and his companion, Burke. Nor anyone else. Nor did I have reason to believe that what

the grimoire had told me about the man in the barn was true. I couldn't believe James Balfour would lie to me about Finnegan

Harlow's cause of death, claiming it was an ongoing, chronic condition if the truth were otherwise. Not after I'd looked so

deeply into his heart.

Still, perhaps the coroner had lied to him?

I reached for my phone to text Mr.Balfour and ask where the guards were, then realized if I did, he'd know I was outside.

I mentally stuttered a moment, wondering if by breaking a rule to keep myself from getting into trouble, I might not be inadvertently

setting the stage for precisely what I sought to avoid.

Just as I was about to force myself to turn back for the door and return to my room, a voice issued from the darkness, from

a place I'd have sworn no man stood, empty of all but night, an alcove beneath the wisteria tumbling from the roof of the

garage.

"Balfour pulled back the guards and asked me to watch over you from dusk to dawn, lass," Devlin's voice said.

"I find that hard to believe," I told the empty alcove. "It's clear neither he nor Lennox care for you much. Why is that?"

There was a ripple in the darkness, as if night was gathering itself, stitching together first the faint outline, then the fully fleshed body of a darkly beautiful man wearing only jeans and bare, tattooed skin. He was inhumanly attractive, a force of nature, restrained, graceful, yet redolent of storm.

"For the same reason he chose me to watch over you." Devlin moved forward, stepping into the courtyard's low illumination,

which graced the strong, chiseled planes of his face with the brush of a painter, silvery and dark, highlighting and concealing

features of perfect symmetry. "Because I am older and far more powerful. Balfour cares for nothing more powerful than he.

However, he will certainly avail himself of my aid when it suits him."

"He cares for me." I'd felt it. "And I'm more powerful than he is." At least, allegedly I was.

He inclined his head but made no reply.

I stared at him across the courtyard. "How much older?"

"Ages, dates, true names, places of birth, all can be used for ill in the wrong hands."

"Hundreds of years?"

He smiled faintly. "I'll cede that, lass."

I narrowed my eyes. "Centuries. You're telling me you've been alive for centuries." It wasn't a question. It was sarcasm.

People didn't live for centuries.

"You saw me the other night. I've no doubt your friend, Este, filled you in on the details."

"Where were you born?" I demanded.

He repeated with light mockery, "Ages, dates, true names, places of birth..."

"You can at least tell me what country you were born in," I said irritably. Answers, I was desperate for solid ones anyplace

they might be found.

He was silent a moment, then, "In what you would call Ireland."

" I would call Ireland," I echoed dryly.

"It has been known by many names: Eire, Hibernia, Ogygia, much as Scotland was once Caledonia or Alba. The precise naming

of a place contains information."

"As in, it might betray which century or, even, millennium?" I said with a snort.

"Aye, lass."

"I refuse to believe I'm staring across the courtyard at a man who might be centuries or, even more inconceivably, thousands

of years old."

He shrugged. "Believe what you will. Your choice. But then, everything is." He flashed me a look of such frank carnality,

it was nearly the Look. "Such as, the moment you choose to share my bed."

Now he was sounding entirely too much like Este and the grimoire. Why did everyone keep telling me everything was my choice,

when it felt as if nothing in my life, to date, had been my choice?

" If , not ‘the moment,'?" I corrected pissily, despite the fact that I'd come for precisely that.

His smile faded. Eyes narrowing, glittering, he stalked toward me, spitting his words out staccato fast. "Do you think me fool enough not to know what you came outside for, Zo-d'kai? You want honesty? Give me honesty. You came because you have a storm inside you, one you worry you can't contain, and you fear your potential for destruction. You came because—despite the enormity of power you possess—you feel powerless, lost, afraid of yourself, doubting who you are and who you might one day be. You came because your heart is shattered by your mother's death, your mind fractured by traumas and revelations. You came because you don't have anywhere else to go, orphan Zo. You came , fierce lass, to dump the violence of your emotions on some lucky bastard's body, and that lucky bastard is me. I read it

in your eyes the moment you stepped out the door. I accept, asking nothing in return, and will keep you safe as long as need

be."

By this time in his rapid-fire and fiery speech, he'd eliminated all distance between us. He stood a breath from my body,

and I could feel him throwing presence, his energy, the immensity of the passion rolling off him. It was like standing in

the midst of a full-blown lightning storm before the rain has begun, the air charged and crackling, something explosive about

to happen.

"You came," he continued in a low, intense voice, "because you've not yet fucked since you've been fully awakened as a witch,

and I assure you, it will exceed your wildest dreams."

I shivered. I would always shiver, I would soon learn, anytime Devlin said the word fuck , and I knew we were about to. We think we want a man who sees us , I thought, every bit as incensed now as I'd been when Kellan had seen into me so clearly.

"I do have somewhere else to go," I informed him tightly. Kellan was never far from my mind. That man had turned me inside out,

met me measure for measure, left me hungering for so much more of him. "There's a different man I'd like to see. But seeing

him would require leaving the estate. I'm willing to break some rules tonight, not all." Boy, did the bitch in me come out when a man saw me too clearly, I thought, as amused as I was mortified

by it.

Devlin arched a brow and said softly, "Woman, I don't care why you fuck me so long as you do. Go ahead, make me feel like second choice, second best. It'll only make me work harder to prove you wrong. I like to win. And I'm good at it." Challenge blazed in his eyes as he stared down at me. "You'll never see me in the light of day. Come share my dark erotic night. Use me as you desire, for anything you desire, Zo-d'kai." He offered his hand.

"I thought you didn't shit where you eat," I said flatly.

"You might be the exception to everything," he retorted, just as flatly, with a flash of ire in his gaze.

Inevitable, I acknowledged. Sex with Devlin Blackstone had been inevitable since the moment I'd seen him. Even before I'd

known he was a warm vampire and powerful witch. "You said you would teach me to put up barriers. What else will you teach

me about the craft of the Cailleach?"

"Anything you wish that does not place either of us in jeopardy. You've but to ask."

Levelly meeting his gaze, I said, "Invite me in."

"I think that's my line, lass."

"That's true of warm vampires, too?" I was fascinated. "Not just cold ones? If I weren't in a heavily warded manor, you still

wouldn't be able to come in without invitation?"

"All is choice, especially those matters that spring from ancient powers and rites. I invite you in."

I intended to push forcefully into that fiery burnt-umber gaze but ended up melting the moment I slid into the sheer heat,

lust, and desire he was feeling for me. To undress me slowly, to taste every inch of my body with his tongue, his kisses.

So many erotic images buffeted me, my knees went soft, as if saying, Yes, yes, drop down, here onto the ground, right now, sink into the fragrant soil with this man, let go, let go, become something

else, wild and free.

Locking my legs, I probed deeper. Oh, yes, definitely a very, very old soul, one that brought to mind circles of enchanted stones and bonfires, runes chiseled by hand into rocks and potions mixed amid meetings in secret catacombs; of rounded mounds with slatted openings that caught the moon just so on winter's solstice; savage drums and orgiastic dancing on a hallowed night's eve; and as I'd sensed before, 100 percent devotion to that which he committed, an unwavering arrow to a goal, fiercely protective, fiercely loyal.

"Enough?" he said, coppery eyes glittering, a smile curving his lips.

More than.

I took the hand he offered, gasping aloud when his fingers twined with mine.

"You've no idea what sex is like, fully awakened. I'm honored to be the man who will be your true first time."

Okay, seriously melting. "Honored" to be the one.

I had no idea what sharing his bed would bring, but sensed that it might be redefining, life-changing.

I was a fully awakened witch, a powerful woman who would master her power, who would learn to make trees and flowers and birth new things, not harm them, about to make love for the

first time, with full cognizance of what I was. Oh, God, had I really thought make love ? I never used those words. It was always just sex and most definitely would be this time, too.

Devlin was an outlet, a diversion, a never-to-be-repeated event, and as far as I was concerned, a frank necessity right now

to make it through the next twenty-some hours without imperiling myself or anyone else.

How sweet the lies we tell ourselves.

How convincing.

That night, and many beyond it, the damned vampire would get so deep inside me he grazed my soul.

Had he said later, in bed, May I drink your blood? I might well have simply replied, Which thigh?

But he didn't, because Devlin never asked for anything. He gave and gave, then gave more.

Such seduction.

Both manor and man.

The garage inside was nothing like I'd imagined beyond the ground level floor, which was almost exactly as I'd envisioned,

with stalls of one luxury car after the next.

Beneath the ground floor, down a hidden staircase (each tread chiseled with strange markings I suspected wouldn't be quite

so easy to navigate were I not being carried in the vampire's arms), was Devlin's home. He lived on the estate in a palatial

underground abode. This, too, I would come to learn when I desperately needed them, had hidden connecting doors and concealed

rooms.

Two floors beneath the main, his bedroom. He tossed me onto the bed, then was on me like a dark sirocco, sans dust, only heat

and primal overload.

It was wild, the most visceral, raw sex I'd ever had, every sensation exquisitely heightened, in a place that felt hidden

and tucked away and free. No holds barred, we burned up his bed—literally. I didn't know if it was him or me, but somehow,

at one point, the sheets were actually ablaze, and we had to tear ourselves away from each other while he murmured something

that extinguished the flames.

"Wasn't me," he growled.

"Well, I sure as hell don't know how I did it, if I did," I growled back, aching from the interruption. "Just keep putting it out if it happens again."

"Stop manifesting metaphor, and fuck me, woman."

I had been thinking we were burning up the sheets.

"You're thinking too much," he said irately.

"You're talking too much," I snapped back, and then we were both laughing, then we were on the floor and he was inside me

again, and I wasn't laughing anymore.

Or thinking. Just dumping, venting, pouring all my anguish and confusion, my fear, my pain and grief onto his body, with anger,

with violence, with frustrated rage as we ranged from room to room, from bed to chair to counter to couch, then finally with

all the tenderness in my soul, because I hungered to feel some kind of tenderness in this strange, new brutal and frightening

world in which I, orphaned Zo Grey, felt so damned alone and lost, stripped of my mother, bereft of my best friend, adrift

with no idea who or what I truly was.

It was when I turned tender that he inhaled sharply and fell back onto the couch staring up at me, his gaze inscrutable. "Didn't

expect that," he said roughly.

"Don't move. Let me do whatever I want. Do nothing. I want control."

"As you wish, Zo-d'kai."

God, every time he said my name that way, I felt I'd never heard it correctly before.

I was tender with Mom. Such a gentle woman, she brought out the gentle in me. I'd never been gentle with a man I took to my

bed.

This time I poured wonder and reverence, appreciation, respect, honesty into my every touch. Just Zo. No games. I'd always promised no games in the past with my Look but it had still been just a game to me. A one-night stand, a finite event. I would rock their world while taking what I wanted, getting what I needed. All my tender was used at home.

But now, with Devlin, I dropped all pretense. I touched him with just me.

I would wonder about it later and decide it was because, since Mom was gone, I couldn't show that part of myself to anyone.

I had no one to be tender with. And tenderness is a strength. It isn't pity, as some like to claim, or weakness, as others

like to say, and it certainly doesn't pity or weaken the one receiving it. On the contrary, that kind of intimacy restores

parts fallen away, stripped from us, or given away in reckless, unthinking moments; a little tenderness can gather and restitch

the scattered bits of the soul.

That was when Devlin got to mine.

When, at last, I stopped, he gave back in kind.

Laid me back on the couch and touched me the same way. With infinite gentleness, as if I were made of delicate porcelain,

tracing every inch of my skin, ending with my face, running his fingers butterfly soft over my nose, my eyes, brows, cheeks,

and lips as if memorizing every line and curve, savoring them to the depths of his being.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

For the first time in my life, I wondered if I'd bitten off more than I could chew.

Thoughts of staying. Of a second time. Of... caring about the man in my bed blossomed in my—

Oh, damn it all to hell! My heart . The lightest, the gentlest of touches, that was the one that got inside me.

Easy to fuck.

But to make love ?

Only the greatest risk of all.

Much later, I lay with my head on his chest, listening to the steady, powerful beat of his heart, lightly tracing my fingers over one of the archaic-looking tattoos on his arm. "Does it mean something?" I asked.

"It's this branch of the Cameron family tree's motto, in Gaelic. You'll find it around the estate in many places."

Devlin Blackstone sported the Cameron family motto on his skin. I wondered why. "What does it say?"

"?‘Where there is love, there is no law.' Some claim long ago, it used to be ‘where there is clan, there is no law.'?"

I inhaled sharply. My mother's words. An uncanny coincidence or much more? Was I truly a Cameron?

"Did Juniper give you her blood?" The words were out before I even knew I was thinking them. Why was he here? Why was he so

committed to the Camerons? Why did Mr.Balfour dislike him? Was it truly so simple as Mr.Balfour resenting Devlin's greater

power? Somehow, that didn't compute for me.

He glanced down at me. "On occasion. Not often. Why?"

"I'm trying to understand how you fit in here."

"Och, that's easy, lass," he said with a laugh. "We all benefit from tribe, a clan. There's safety, a sense of belonging,

in numbers, even more so in the witching community, and the Camerons are one of the finest, if not the finest, light houses

in the world. Easy to pledge to. Easy to stay. You'll see. Come," he said suddenly. "I want you to see something. I go often

to watch, and it's nearly time."

"You mean leave the garage?" I was dismayed. Not only did I have no desire to stop having sex with Devlin, it somehow felt

like "out there" was unwise and unsafe. I needed to, as Mr.Balfour had said, stay small and still, and while I'd certainly

been neither, I was in a very private, tucked-away place where I felt it prudent to remain.

He smiled faintly. "We'll be back quickly. It's nearly dawn, and you'll pass the day with me until it's time to open Juniper's letter. Then Balfour begins teaching you and preparing you for the pledging ceremony."

A shadow flitted through his eyes as he spoke, and I said, "Is something wrong?"

"Not at all. Just not a fan of Balfour," he replied tersely.

"Why?" I pressed.

"We've butted heads a few times. He has his ways. I have mine." Then we were dressing, and he was tugging me back up the stairs

and out the door, through a gate and yet another, into the Midnight Garden.

Here, the bright gibbous moon barely penetrated the dense overhead canopy, yet the thickly carpeted floor of the garden gleamed

with a luminous silvery light all its own, rather like the lambent forest floor in the dream I'd had about the hounds hidden

in fallen yellow leaves.

"Witches are deeply connected to nature. We all have our affinities for various elements and animals. You'll find yours."

"Was Juniper's an owl?"

"Aye, among others. She had affinities with many animals. Mine is the stag. There's a grand one on the estate with too many

antlers to count. Sometimes I peg it at thirty-four or -five points, other times I'd swear he's got more than forty. He's

a great, regal beast, and the number of decades I've watched him is impossible, given the life expectancy of a stag. He meets

a doe in the garden shortly before dawn every night, and they leave together." He glanced down at me. "I wonder if he'll come

with you here. He never appears if someone else is with me."

"You've brought others to see him?" The witch whose blood he'd been drinking at the Gossamer? Was this just a night like any other for him? I despised the barb of... yeah, not even naming that word... that pierced my ego. I didn't feel that word. Ever. Because I didn't make love, and I didn't go back a second time.

Yet the searing, haunting intimacy that had passed between us on the couch...

I was beginning to regret being tender. I regretted opening that door. I wondered if he was regretting it, too.

"I brought Juniper several times; she would have loved him. He didn't come. The stag has rich meaning in Celtic mythology.

There are legends about them appearing at pivotal times or choosing certain estates to... protect and guard. They're seen

as a symbol of the fertility of the forest, the rebirth of nature, the cycle of the seasons. And, of course, male virility."

"I get your affinity now." He certainly packed a punch of male virility. We'd gone through multiple condoms, and I'd considered

asking him to double up, as energetically as we'd gone at it. "How do the stag and doe get into the garden with the walls?"

"Yet another of his mysteries."

As we moved deeper into that hushed, verdant place, he took my hand in his, lacing our fingers together. I'd never held hands

with a man before. I'd done everything else a woman could do, but never this simple intimacy. It was... almost frightening

to me, but it was also comforting, quietly intoxicating. To feel so casually yet freely connected. Not about sex, about liking

each other. I shivered.

"Cold, lass?" he asked instantly.

"Not at all."

He paused and glanced down at me. "Tell me what you feel in this place."

"As if it's enchanted. That there's power in the soil here that isn't beyond these walls."

"Aye. The dirt in the garden was imported from Scotland. Long ago, one of the first Camerons had the stones for the churches

shipped, along with an entire boat loaded with Scottish soil."

"I find devotion to building churches in a town of witches unusual."

"We practice our ways; the townsfolk practice theirs. The way of the Cailleach is not exclusionary. Those who seek light,

in all manners, are to be respected."

"Why did the Camerons leave if they loved their home so much?"

"The Cailleach will never be like those who persecute us, who thrive on being exclusionary and use it to torment others. Countless

men, women, and children were tortured, convicted, killed." His gaze turned bitter. "So many fine people—diviners, healers,

even heart witches, willing to die for their lieges—brutally murdered. The village would love them at first, care for them,

as the witches cared for the inhabitants, without ever uttering words such as Cailleach , demon spawn , or crone . Then something would happen," he spat. "The winter would last too long. Their crops would fail. The milk might sour. Someone's

child would die. And suddenly the healer, the one who lived alone or was different in any way they could latch on to was the

one to blame for their troubles. Only by purging them and, often, their entire line or circle of friends from the village

could prosperity be restored."

"Ergo, the safety in numbers," I murmured. "In creating a place like Divinity."

"Aye, far from the memories of those lost. A place with naught but possibility. Hush, I believe he comes." His voice dropped to a whisper, and he sounded deeply surprised.

He drew me back against a tree, and as we stood motionless, something moved behind the great sweeping limbs of the Sylvan

Oak just as an owl hooted softly. I glanced up into the branches to see a pair of round vermillion eyes staring directly at

me.

"Rufus," I whispered, delighted to see him alive, perched in the cleft of a limb of the mighty ancient oak.

Then the most enormous stag I'd ever seen, with a thick shaggy collar and too many antlers to count, stepped out from behind

the tree and into a shaft of moonlight.

A graceful, equally regal-looking doe joined him from the other side of the tree.

They touched noses, then the stag turned to look straight at Devlin, after lingering just an instant on me. Devlin nodded

to him, then stag and doe melted beyond the tree and into the night together.

"Why do you come?" I asked in a hushed voice when they were gone. Hushed because the moment seemed somehow magical, their

meeting meriting reverence.

"I don't know," he replied, sounding slightly irritated.

I smiled faintly. Was Devlin Blackstone, beneath those tattoos and vampire skin, despite the countless centuries he'd lived

and the wars he must have seen, perhaps even participated in, still a romantic at heart?

"He draws me. He ran with me once, long ago. Only once. Perhaps I come hoping it will be repeated."

"Ran with you?"

"I can take other forms."

"Tell me," I demanded.

He glanced sharply up at the sky. "Run with me now. Dawn is nigh."

Turning, we fled. I had no idea what might happen to Devlin if touched by the light of day, and no desire to find out. I felt...

protective of him. Not a thing I'd ever felt before for anyone but Mom.

Damn, but the man had gotten under my skin.