“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 badwhen 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 atfirst 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.Knewit.
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 ropethrown over a steep embankment, something to grab as she overcame an imposed inability to discuss certain things.
