“There are people who can talk 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 primary 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 architectural luxury of the ground floor had been allowed back in. There were ruby glass transom windows over the doors, these tilted open to allow for better airflow. In the sitting room and bedroom, the walls above the 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 andfawns dancing through the imaginary forests in a most un-Victorian manner.
“That is unusual,” observed Asil.
Ruby laughed. “I love the Victorian period. All very proper in public, but hidden intimacies where no one could see.”
It might have been a crude remark—the Victorian era was famous for the pornography it had 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 in the second most dangerous werewolf in the world to save this woman.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she told him. “I wouldn’t have wanted to live back then instead of now. Sanitation for one.” She wrinkled her nose, though the Victorians had made the world a more sanitary place for everyone. “Corsets for another.”
“Corsets were an abomination,” 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—when clothing was glorious. I had this coat…” He hummed happily.
Her smile faded and she stared at him, her mouth fallingopen a little. She cleared her throat and said carefully, “The Renaissance.”
“Ah,” he said. “With your power, it is difficult for me to tell how old you are, and it is impolite to assume. 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. “Around 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 perhaps older than thirty—”
She grimaced apologetically.
“Ah,” he said, “your profile is more accurate 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. 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. But you aren’t that old or that young.”
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.”
“I was born in 1923,” she told him. She took a deep breath, frowning at him. “What do you mean about my power? I have a half-assed touch of clairvoyance 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 are no words for how different her life would be if she had power, his wolf growled.
She didn’t know.
“I am no magic wielder,” Asil told her apologetically, spreading his arms to indicate his unworthiness. “But I can tell you are powerful, though trapped behind some dark working.”
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 like a witch, but this enchantment was a hunter’s beguilement—and there was no finer hunter in the world than he.
“Who bound your magic?” he asked her.
She’d kept Alan’s warning in the back of her head, but Asil Moreno just didn’t feel dangerous. He asked good questions, laughed when she wanted him to laugh—and made her forgetthat 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. Charm was a formidable weapon in the right hands.
Then he…he’d lied to her? She knew she had no power.Knewit.
