Fountain Square.
The curse.
She pulled away, though everything in her rebelled against it. Her breathing was too shaky to form words for several seconds, so she rested her forehead on Sean’s chest and drew in a long, deep breath.
“Never before. I’ve never forgotten myself and the curse like that, not even for a second. Sean, you’re—”
“I’m the man who wants you in his life,” he rasped, and she felt a moment of sharp pleasure that the kisses had affected him as much as they had her, but the curse’s demand increased, overwhelming everything else, as it always had.
Brynn’s eyes burned, and she was shocked to realize she was fighting back tears of loss and longing. Longing for the normal life she could never have.
“I never cry,” she said, but it was too late. The warm wash of sadness overflowed, and she tried to turn away from Sean, but pushing against his hard, muscular chest was like pushing against the marble statue.
“Don’t cry,” he said, and his voice was almost frantic. “Damn me for a fool. Brynn, I’m sorry. I should have asked your permission or—”
“Let. Me. Go,” she said urgently, and he released her, clenching his hands into fists at his sides.
She ran for “her” bench, tearing her clothes and shoes off, but she barely had time to reach her backpack before the transformation took her. The moon was jealous of her songbird, and evidently Brynn had delayed the moment for too long.
She stood, naked and shivering, while the brief agony of the shift took her, and the last sight she saw through her human eyes was Sean, pain stark in the grim lines of his face as he watched her.
Once she was a swan, she didn’t care about anything except reaching the water and beginning her song, but the wisp of human consciousness that floated in the back of her brain thought that both song and water were especially icy that night; cold as the deep reaches of a solitary heart.
Sean shoved Brynn’s clothes in her backpack and then tossed it on the marble bench and sat next to it, all the while cursing himself for being an overbearing buffoon. He’d rather face a raging fire without any of his safety gear than ever be forced to see Brynn crying again. His chest ached, and he didn’t like it one bit. How could her tears have so much power over him that they reduced him to helplessness?
He should have asked, or warned her, or something. Anything. Except—she’d been kissing him back. Her sweet mouth had dueled with his, and she’d held tightly to him with the same ferocity he’d felt as he kissed her.
Claimed her.
Claimed? He jumped up off the bench, suddenly unable to sit still. Where had that thought come from? He’d only just met her and hardly knew anything about her. It was definitely not time to think about claiming.
His gaze arrowed to the elegant black swan floating serenely in the waters of the fountain, raising her head toward the moon, and a fierce wave of protectiveness swept through him. Claiming might be a good word, after all. There were other words that he’d thought of, too, when he’d looked into her silvery blue eyes.
Holding. Touching. Keeping.
Mine.
The otherworldly sound of her song wove through the strands of his consciousness, tantalizing and seducing, and it took him a few beats to realize that he’d never heard a swan actually sing before. It must be a side effect of the magic. There were no words, of course, but Brynn—as a swan—was singing; her song was an ethereal, plaintive melody that tugged at his heart and wound its way into his soul.
He wanted to keep her. The shock of the discovery rocked him back on his heels so hard that Sean didn’t pay much attention to the tall man in the long black coat until he’d walked to the edge of the fountain and stretched out a hand toward Brynn.
“Get the hell away from that swan,” he told the intruder, his voice cold and deadly.
The man turned to face Sean, who recognized him instantly and prepared for a difficult and possibly fatal disagreement.
“Luke Oliver,” Sean said. “I heard you were running for sheriff. Shouldn’t you be off somewhere kissing hands and shaking babies?”
Oliver bared his teeth in something that might have been called a smile. “I never shake babies in Bordertown. Who knows what they might transform into?”
Sean didn’t think the man whom everyone called the Dark Wizard of Bordertown had said transform by coincidence. The fire demon inside him wanted to blast the wizard, but he fought back against the rage that was jacking up his body temperature to a dangerous level.
“You’ll be leaving the swan alone,” Sean said evenly, as he advanced on Oliver.
Oliver raised his eyebrows and then laughed. “You’re as fiery as your grandmother was, aren’t you?”
Sean abruptly stopped. “You knew my grandmother? Which one?”
None of the boys had ever met his dad’s parents. They lived deep in Demon Rift and had disowned their son for marrying a human. His mom’s mother had lived in Bordertown but had died several years before.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I knew her. I met your grandparents once, when I was traveling through the Firelands,” Oliver said, his face shadowed with memory. “She wanted to singe my ass for me when I accidentally walked through the edge of her garden.”
The corners of the wizard’s mouth turned up in a wry grin. “And I mean singe literally, as I’m sure you know, fire demon.”
Sean folded his arms across his chest, wariness replacing anger, but he didn’t bother trying to lie. “So. You know. What do you want?”
Oliver studied him. “I don’t want anything. I damn sure don’t want to be sheriff. I have no interest in telling Bordertown about your heritage, if that’s what you mean.”
Something in Sean relaxed. “You mean you don’t think a fire demon is behind the arson?”
“No, I do not,” Oliver said grimly. “But when I find out who is, he won’t be long for this world—or for any of the three realms.”
The remaining traces of Sean’s wariness vanished, replaced by a feeling of kinship. “If I don’t find him first.”
Oliver nodded and then headed off to wherever it was that wizards went at midnight. When he reached the edge of the square, he stopped and looked back at Sean.
“I was wrong. I do want something from you, O’Malley.”
Sean tensed. “Of course you do. That’s the way of life, isn’t it? What is it?”
“Be good to Brynn,” Oliver said. “I’ve known her since she was a baby, and I wouldn’t be . . . kind . . . to someone who hurt her.”
“Neither would I,” Sean said, and the words were both a promise and a threat.
TEN
Brynn hopped up and out of the fountain, transforming back to human as she moved, and headed straight for Sean. He sat, unmoving, on the same bench where she’d dropped her clothes, and even in swan form she’d known that he’d stayed and watched over her the entire time. She was naked, but she didn’t care. She needed to touch him, hold him, reassure him that it hadn’t been his presumption that had caused her tears, but his passion.
“You stayed,” she said, her voice breaking. “You stayed.”
He leapt up and strode toward her, holding out his arms, and she flew into them.
“Nobody has ever stayed,” she whispered. “Nobody but Scruffy, and I kept him, and now I think I have to keep you, too, because—because—”