Page 10 of Enthraller

“You have an alternative plan?”

His eyes flicked over her face, down her body, and then away. “No.” He stepped back. “I think they’re still behind us, so lead on.”

She shivered as she started leading them again. It was as if a big, powerful beast had clamped its teeth ever so gently on her neck.

Just a reminder she had a predator by the tail.

The woman knewthe back alleys of Demeter, that was for sure.

Whoever was following them lost them four or five turns back, but Ed kept an ear out for them anyway.

He wondered where she was leading them, but only out of idle curiosity. He would be going with her, no matter if she told him she was taking him to the Adrasten Wastes.

When she stopped in front of an ivy-covered wall, swept the fall of dark green vines and leaves aside, and pushed through a door as dark gray and mottled as the wall around it, he followed without hesitation.

The door snicked shut behind him, and he found himself in a courtyard flooded with mid-afternoon sun, a blue and yellow mosaic table set under a leafy tree in one corner.

The building in front of him looked old, and the eaves could use a little maintenance, but otherwise it was a charming setting—two steps up to a wooden door set deep in dark gray stone, with a miniature tree growing on either side.

The woman stopped at the top of the steps and looked back, as if to make sure he was following, and then opened the door, leaving it wide for him to follow.

The fact that it wasn’t locked made him wary as he stepped in behind her, wondering who else might be in the house, but he sensed no one.

The Halatian in him appreciated everything about this. They were a people who loved a secret passage or a hidden room, which could only be found by solving a puzzle. The ivy hiding the door was not in the league of Guan, or Ronald Fadal, the Halatian architect of Felicitos, the tethered way station on Garmen, but it did the job.

“You leave your door unlocked?” he asked, as he looked around the cool green and gray kitchen.

“No one knows about this place, and carrying a key isn’t always possible.” She lifted a hand. “If I have to dissipate, my shoulder bag can’t come with me.”

“Dissipate? That a fancy word for you fading into a mist and vanishing?”

She shot him a quick grin. “Yes.”

“And tell me how you do that?”

She hesitated, shook her head. “It’s complicated.”

“What did you do to me?” He did want a straight answer on that. He felt he deserved it.

She waved a hand for him to sit, and went to a cooler unit and pulled out two bottles of hirtsu and set them down, then took a seat opposite him.

She gnawed at her lip for a moment, then twisted the cap off her drink and took a few deep swallows.

He did the same, cooling his throat, enjoying the bitter, dry taste of the icy drink.

“I’m one of Special Force’s expert artifact consultants.” She leaned back in her chair. “I came across something in the course of my duties that has . . . altered me.”

Ed remembered she’d told him she was with Special Forces, and he’d assumed she was a normal unit member, but thismade more sense to him. An artifact appraiser came across all kinds of things that might bring them to the notice of dangerous people . . .

“It altered you, and now it’s altered me?” He threw his conclusion on the table between them as a question but he didn’t think he was wrong.

She gave a slow nod. “I’m altered for good. You, though . . .” She gave a half shrug, and he could tell she was very uncomfortable with the subject. “They tell me they simply boosted your natural protective tendencies, in order to protect me even better, but I think they misjudged the dose.”

They? He let that go for a moment. “Boosted my tendencies, how?”

“I would guess hormonally, and by stimulating the specific area of your brain. It should have already faded?” She sounded so hopeful.

“It has.” He didn’t feel the overwhelming urge to beat his chest and stand over her like she was the beginning and end of his world, but he was uncomfortably aware he was still drawn to her.

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