Her hair was long, black, and curling. She kept it pulled back from her pale, angular face by looping it into a short braid. It exploded from the end of the braid in an extravagant cloud of curls. Like the vision, her creamy skin was sprinkled with freckles, her lips were plush and pink, and she looked tired and too thin, almost gaunt. Dark circles ringed her eyes.
There was one arresting change from what he had seen before.
Those eyes. In the vision, her eyes had been pale and uninteresting. In reality, they were spectacular. They might be called pale gray or even light blue—it was hard to tell across the room—but mere descriptive words were inadequate and didn’t do them justice.
Her eyes were brilliant, and not just with the force of her personality and the magic she carried. They seemed to draw from every light around her and sparkled with luminosity, almost like diamonds.
He drew in a deep breath, filtering out the other scents in the pub to bring her feminine scent into his lungs. There was something different about her. She wasn’t quite fully human, and she held a significant amount of personal Power. It would be a mistake to underestimate her.
Gawain persuaded her to join them, and still carrying Robin under her arm, she followed him reluctantly to the corner table where she gave Nikolas one sour, brief glance before choosing a seat to his right, which kept her from having her back to the room as well.
Gawain took the seat to Nikolas’s left, settling his large, powerful body with care into the chair, leaving Nikolas’s view of the room unobstructed.
He completed his study of the female and turned his attention to Robin, who looked strangely small and frail. The puck’s Power felt nonexistent, and there was something wrong with his eyes as well. One of them was off-center, appearing to look off to the side. Frowning, Nikolas cupped his chin in one hand, resting the elbow on the other arm, which he crossed over his chest as he studied the puck.
In a low voice, Gawain said to him, “How long do you think we have?”
“Not long,” he responded. “A half an hour at most. We should not take any longer than that. This isn’t an isolated area, like our gathering was up north.”
“I can leave, while you two talk.”
“Oh no. No, no.” Sophie threw up her free hand in a universal “stop” gesture. She said to Gawain, “If you leave, I’m leaving too. I’m not going to stay here and talk to him alone.”
The emphasis she put on that was most distinctly not a positive one. Nikolas’s eyes narrowed. While he couldn’t care less about what the female thought of him, one way or another, she would talk with him.
He told her, “I am not leaving, and neither are you. You and I have things to say to each other.”
When she finally looked at him, her face was drawn tight with anger and distaste. “What are you going to do to keep me here? This again?” She held up her free hand, showing a pale slender wrist that was swollen and red with his fingermarks.
At the sight, Nikolas’s mouth tightened. The ghost of the man he used to be turned uneasily in its grave.
He had no illusions about himself. Once he would have been filled with remorse at bruising a female, but long ago he had turned cold and hard.
A female had killed so very many of his people. His friends. That female was hell-bent on annihilating an entire demesne, and Nikolas was capable of doing things now that he had never dreamed possible.
He said in a soft, warning voice, “I would do that and so much more if it meant we get answers we need.”
Robin growled while the woman leaned forward.
Forward, toward Nikolas, not away from him in fear. Meeting aggression with aggression. He raised his eyebrows. Usually people didn’t respond to him in such a manner.
She whispered, “You touch me again without my permission, and I will damage you.”
That face. Those mesmerizing eyes. She showed absolutely no fear even though he could detect traces of it in her scent. Surprised, he almost smiled before he remembered she was not someone he felt any inclination to smile at.
Gawain leaned forward too. “We don’t have time for this.” Looking at Sophie, he explained, “When Nikolas and I are together, we raise a discernible amount of energy between us. It is the same when we are with our comrades. The more of us who gather, the stronger the effect. We don’t do anything to generate it. It occurs naturally, although the effect also grows in intensity whenever we use magic.”
As Gawain spoke, Nikolas kept his attention trained on her. He found himself reluctant to look away. The miniscule changes in her expression were fascinating.
Her eyelids lowered briefly. “I think I understand what you’re saying. I can feel it just sitting here with you.”
“Our enemies use that to hunt us. As we are not a strong enough force to defeat them, it keeps us from banding together for any length of time.”
Her attention turned sharp and piercing. She looked interested in their problem almost in spite of herself. “What if you throw a null spell? Won’t that dissipate the energy?”
Nikolas didn’t like how she focused solely on Gawain. He said abruptly, “Yes, but the effect only lasts for a few minutes.”
“Usually, my null spells don’t last long either.” She hesitated, then said slowly, almost reluctantly, “What if I told you I might have a way to hold the null spell in place for longer than a few minutes. Would you be interested?”
“Do you mean like an amulet?” Nikolas didn’t like the sound of that.
No magic user liked null spells in amulets or jewelry. Typically, only nonmagical creatures liked to use null spell jewelry for protection, and prisons used null spells in cells and handcuffs to contain dangerous, Powerful prisoners.
Null spell amulets also worked counter to the Daoine Sidhe purpose when they gathered to cast the invocation to contact Lyonesse. Handling null amulets hampered their ability to cast defensive and offensive spells and to detect dangers around them.
“No,” Sophie replied. “What I can do is not that permanent, and it’s easily negated. Would you be interested?”
Nikolas met Gawain’s eyes. He could see the other man was as intrigued as he was. Gawain said, “Even if you could, it would have limited application. Dampening our Power also means crippling our abilities and dulling our senses. It’s a dangerous proposition to consider.”
“True,” Sophie agreed. “It would really only achieve one thing—it would give you the ability to be together for longer than a few minutes without being detected.”
He glanced at Gawain again. They could have a real conversation, maybe share a meal together. The lure was so strong Nikolas pulled back emotionally from it. In a harsh voice, he said, “What’s the catch to this?”
Sophie’s slender black eyebrows rose. “As far as I can tell, there are two catches. You already know the first. It would hamper your ability to cast spells, at least until you rinsed the spell off, which is easy to do. The second is—you haven’t convinced me yet that I should do a goddamn thing for you.”
She held Robin on her lap protectively as she spoke, while she glared first at Nikolas then at Gawain, who replied with quiet courtesy, “You have every right to feel the way you do, after what just happened. What can we do to convince you?”
She compressed those luscious, sensual lips of hers. Then in a tight voice, she asked, “Did either of you have anything to do with a nasty spell I encountered while I was walking into town?” She looked at Gawain. “You know what I’m talking about. I saw you slow down on your bike and study the area where it landed.”
Gawain’s expression changed. “You were there when I was?”
“Yes.” She looked down at the creature in her lap. “Both—what is his name, Robin?—and I were.”