"No. It doesn't." Cross tipped his head to her. "So a relic has gone missing, and Drake has sent his right hand scurrying after it. Which one is it? The Circlet of the Dawn Star? The Pentacle of Merlin? The Blade of Altarrh—" Some expression must have given her away. "That's it. That's the one, isn't it?"
"Remy," Miss Martin warned.
Ignoring them as they bickered, Lucien glanced at the miniature portrait again. There was something familiar about it. Nothing tingled when he reached toward it, and frowning, he blew the dust from it.
He was right.
Remington Cross looked back at him, but Luc's psychometric abilities were tingling, plunging him back through images of wet paint and an Italian estate, fat grapes, a painter dressed in renaissance dress as he licked the brush, a pretty blonde woman opening a present and finding the miniature, then blood, darkness, jealousy, and death... Lucien gasped and nearly dropped it. This portrait was over three hundred years old, and Cross didn't look a day older. How—? He looked up sharply, only to find Cross staring at him.
"Nothing good ever comes of it," Cross repeated softly, before turning to Miss Martin. "If you need me, you know where to find me."
"I thought you didn't like meddling in Order affairs."
"Not since the 18th century, at least," Cross's eyelids drooped, "but I would make an exception this one time, just for you. I can feel a vortex of power moving out there, somewhere in London, sucking in mass amounts of energy. It's flares at odd increments of time before vanishing, but it's been there for a week. I've never felt anything like it."
Colors danced over Miss Martin's skin; uneasiness, fear, and something else that he couldn't quite put a finger on. A yellowish-gray color. "Drake knows nothing of this."
"Drake doesn't have my depth of experience," Cross replied, then caught Lucien's gaze, holding it there through sheer force of will. "Nor does he have my scrying abilities. There is a knot of shadows woven around the pair of you, and it has something to do with the Blade and this mysterious vortex of power. Swear to me that you'll keep her safe."
That was the second time someone had asked this of him. "I swear."
"Good." Cross relaxed somewhat, then frowned. "Something dark is stirring in London, and I don't know if either of you are going to come out of this alive, but I do know this—you need each other if you have any hope of surviving."
Chapter Five
Golden light suffused the air around the mansion as Lucien stepped down from the carriage, hinting at a glorious sunset within an hour.
He turned and offered his hand to Miss Martin, her skirts swishing around her ankles as she stepped onto the curb and looked up at Lady Eberhardt's home.
The black wrought iron fence encircled the property like a warning, and the gardens were lush and overgrown, with faint chittering sounds whispering from within its bushes, as if something lay in wait.
"Charming," Luc drawled. "It has the welcoming ambiance of an ambush."
Miss Martin's voice was hushed. "I would be careful with your words here. Lady Eberhardt is somewhat... eccentric. And powerful. We don't wish to offend her."
Lucien pushed the gate open, its hinges squealing. The chittering in the bushes stopped. Not at all eerie, he thought, with a shudder. "I thought the correct term was 'mad as hatters'?"
"Yes, well. They said that about you too, my lord." Miss Martin swept past him, slanting a sideways look up at him from beneath the brim of her jaunty lavender hat. Its black ostrich feather trailed behind her, like a war banner. Everywhere she went, she strode briskly, as if to make her presence known to the world.
Luc followed, allowing himself a tight smile. "And do you find their assumptions correct?"
"I think... that there's a little bit of madness in all of those who choose this path."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're going to get, just now."
Miss Martin rang the buzzer at the door, and an enormous ding-dong sounded from within, its echo vibrating. Their eyes met.
"I've had little to do with Lady Eberhardt over the years, though I know of her reputation," he said. "She's buried three husbands, all in suspicious circumstances."
A frown furrowed Miss Martin's brow. "The first two I'll grant you, but what was suspicious about the third? I believe it was a fall, was it not? He broke his neck."
"He fell off the chamber pot at a brothel."
Those eyebrows rose. "I hadn't heard that part of the story."
"Innocent ears, and all."
