Cold Iron (3 page)

She stood at the window, her temple resting against the smooth pane, her fingers wrapped around the brass latch. She thought it would keep him out. He would show her otherwise.

“
How did you get in
here?” she asked, wondering at what point it would be appropriate to scream. If this was a prank, some tasteless joke cooked up by Frank, she would look like a fool.

Her question seemed to amuse him. “I
passed
through the door.”

“Get out,” she said. She ran through all the possible explanations for this man in her head. A crazed reenactor. One with an improbably thorough knowledge of the grave goods she’d excavated only hours ago, and a lot of free time to spend at the gym. A thief who had plundered her discovery, and then come straight to visit her, decked in the loot. None of it made any sense.

Unless she was delirious. She’d contracted malaria in the Yucatán last year, but an attack in this climate seemed unlikely. Perhaps she was really out of her mind with fever and this was all a bizarre dream, her mind conjuring a hero to fit the discoveries she’d made in the tomb, a body to fill that empty bier.

And what a body. Biceps she wouldn’t be able to circle with both hands, whorled with sinuously inked tattoos. Thighs like tree trunks, sturdy, muscled, virile. The drumbeat between her legs sped faster.

She realized she was staring, openmouthed, at his body. Just short of panting.

Over a complete stranger who was probably some local lunatic with a fetish for Celtic jewelry and—dear God, were his nipples pierced beneath that shirt? And why did the thought make hers contract to hard points? What was happening to her?

“Speak your name.” That voice again.

She obeyed before she realized what she was doing. “Beth.”

“Beth,” he repeated. “It tastes like a meadow after rain. Beth. It pleases me. Show me your breasts.”

She reached for the shoulder of her blouse, started to push it down, then stopped. What was she doing?

“Go ahead,” he instructed. His voice was music that reached deep into her soul, made her want to join the dance.

She shook it off, said, “No,” but it was like the tide, lapping at her, and the urge came back even stronger. She
wanted
to expose her breasts. Because she wanted him to touch them. She fought it.

He knew. “Why resist,” he asked, “when surrender will bring so much pleasure? When you want to be on your back, beneath me, filled.”

She almost came from the thought alone and remembered with frightening clarity that she had never experienced a climax with another person in the room. She’d never come with a man. Or, at least, she had never come with Frank, the only man she had ever been with. And this one was a total stranger, and probably deranged. The thought was a tiny spark of sanity, and she clung to it. “Who are you?”

“I’m Conn.” As though that explained everything.

“Conn who?”

That seemed to amuse him. “Of the
Aes
.”

“
Aes
,” she repeated the syllables. “That just means ‘people’
in Gaelic.”

“You are pedantic as a Druid,” he said drily, but he also sounded amused. He crossed the room and touched her hair, stroked it.
And she let him.
She enjoyed it, was lulled by it. And by his voice, which went on, “You came to the mound looking for me. Surely you knew what you would find there. Only the
Aes Sídhe
, the people of the mounds, the
Tuatha Dé Danann
dwell in the hills.”

He was smug, like Frank, because he was handsome and women threw themselves at his feet. She hated that. And herself, a little, because she’d fallen for it, once. She latched on to her irritation, tried to use it to keep her head clear. “I am not some gullible tourist. I have a PhD in archaeology,” she snapped. Or tried to snap. It came out more of a moan. She leaned into his touch, so sure, so deft. “The
Tuatha Dé Danann
are not real. They’re a myth. The old Celtic gods recast by Christian monks as early Irish kings and heroes. The Fair Folk. The Good Neighbors. The Lords and Ladies . . .” she trailed off, blinked, looked down to find his hands at her collarbone. “The Fae.”

“Who worship beauty. Their own,” he said, sliding the soft cotton off her shoulders, letting it rasp her nipples, exposing her to his hungry eyes, “and that of others.” His skin brushed hers, an electric jolt, accompanied by a whisper in her mind.

Never let them touch you.

She ignored it. Nothing had ever felt so sweet as his hands on her breasts. Lifting them, testing their weight, rubbing the sensitive curve beneath the areolas, thumbing the tight nipples. Murmuring approval and admiration. Frank had always called her breasts teats and jugs, said they were too large to be tasteful. Had handled them roughly, as though annoyed with himself for being drawn to them despite their gaucheness.

This was different. This was . . . worship. This man—
no
, that joy-killing voice whispered,
this is not a man
—compared them to summer fruit, then bent his head and tasted them, his tongue latching on to her swollen buds and suckling, first gently, then with greater force. A hint of teeth, sharp, smooth, scraping over her sensitized flesh.

She was losing herself to his touch and his voice. “Your man leaves you wanting,” he murmured. “Let me ease you.” He pressed her down to the bed and she went willingly. Or part of her did. Another part of her was screaming inside, telling her this was all wrong, that she had to stop him, that something irrevocable would happen if she didn’t.

But the mischievous voice, the voice that wanted to know what it was like to enjoy a man, said,
he’s a handsome stranger. You are having a casual hookup. Women do it all the time. Frank cheated you of this in college, stole your youth. Take it back.

“Frank isn’t my man,” she said, wondering why it was so important she tell him that.

“Lie down,” he coaxed. God, he was gorgeous. He was kneeling on the bed, his golden braids falling like silken ropes over her breasts. His eyes had appeared amber when she first saw him, now they were golden, catlike, feral. Wrong. But she no longer cared if this was wrong, so she didn’t look in his eyes. She looked at his chest—strong, muscular, only the finest scattering of golden hair over his pecs, leading down, down, where her hand wanted to go.

She pushed at his shirt. He obliged her and pulled it off, smiling down at her. His regard warmed her, made her feel alive and free and comfortable in her body. Beautiful, even. Though nothing could be as beautiful as his body. She ran her hands over his torso. Yes, those were tiny golden rings in his nipples. And a swirling pattern of scars, whorls, and dots that stirred some memory she could not quite grasp, over his rib cage. She ran her fingers over the rings and he hissed, a sharp intake of breath that told her he was pleased, and that made her feel powerful.

She couldn’t stop herself. She spread her legs, felt him push her skirt up and cup her sex. His touch felt like fire through her wet curls. She writhed, and her hand brushed the iron bedstead.

Cool and rough. Cold iron. Cleansing. She opened her eyes to see the creature poised over her with crystal clarity. Still blond. Still beautiful. With his hand between her legs. But fox faced. Cruel. It hurt to look at him. His eyes were cold, the planes of his face sharp and merciless. A perfection so alien it stopped her breath.

His fingers stroked. So good. She wanted this. Her grip loosened on the iron. His image blurred, became seduction itself, and she teetered on the edge for a heartbeat. Then she gripped the bedstead hard and screamed.

The words that came out were not English, and the sound was not her voice. But the meaning was clear:
GET OFF ME!

Her cry threw him across the room. He hit the wall like an earthquake.

And the bastard laughed.

She’d tossed him across the room with the force of a geological event and all he did was throw his shoulders back and laugh. Never mind that she had no idea how she had done that.

He wiped a trickle of blood away from the corner of his mouth, then licked it off his hand, seeming to savor the taste and the violence at the same time.

She shivered, frustrated desire and revulsion making her sick. “What are you?” she asked.

He smiled. “You know what I am. And you were enjoying it. But the question is, what are you?”

“I’m an archaeologist,” she said, although it was hard to stand on her dignity with her arms wrapped convulsively around the iron headboard. Topless. “And I’m done with your little role-play. I’m sure the Lord of the Fae thing goes over big at your D and D game, but I’m an academic, not some American rube susceptible to your made-up Celtic mysticism.”

“Then let go of the iron.”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Because you know that cold iron has power. It lets you see clearly, hear clearly, think clearly. It cuts through
glamour
like a blade.”

He was right. His voice did sound different. It was still musical, but no longer a haunting melody, more like listening to an orchestra tune, when you could hear all the individual instruments. And some of them were shrill, ugly, dissonant.

“Fine. I’m sure this is a dream or a delusion, but we’ll play by your rules. The iron has power. I can see you clearly now. And I don’t want you.”

Without his glamour, his face was far more expressive. More human. And right this second, a surprising mix of disbelief, wounded pride, and puzzlement. “Then why did you come to the mound?”

The floorboards outside her door creaked. “Beth?” It was Frank, his voice muffled by the door. “Is someone in there with you?”

Conn raised an eyebrow. “Your man has found his courage.”

The doorknob rattled.

“I told you. He’s not my man.”

Then a higher pitched voice, Mrs. McClaren’s, said, “I can’t be giving you keys to another guest’s room.”

“She’s not another guest; she’s my wife.”

Her Celt raised an eyebrow. “We’re divorced,” she said in response.

“Then he has given up his right,” her mad Celt came to the bedside, “to see you like this,” and pulled up her blouse, then stepped away. Her hands were still wrapped around the iron, so his proximity had only a muted effect on her, but the casual kindness of the gesture made her want to cry for all the years of her life when she had received none. And this, from a mad stranger.

The key scraped in the lock. Conn stepped back and settled his wide shoulders against the cracked wall. A casual pose, entirely at ease, like he owned the place. Like he owned her.

The door opened.

Frank barreled in, ready to play the hero, then stopped when he saw Conn. “What the hell is going on here?”

Mrs. McClaren bustled in. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop him,” but she said it more to Conn than to Beth, and she said it with decided deference, and that was decidedly odd.

“I’m fine, Frank. We were talking about the mound. And the
Aes Sídhe
.” Both true. “But we’re finished here,” she said.

It was a dismissal.

Mrs. McClaren drew in a sharp breath and held it. Frank looked confused. And her enigmatic visitor cocked his head. “If you wish to know more about the mound, you know where to find me.” He bowed. It was a small gesture—courtly, rigid, and fraught with hurt pride. Then he walked out the door.

Beth watched him go, and felt bereft.

“You could have answered the door, Beth.” Frank chided. “That guy broke somebody’s arm downstairs.”

“I’m fine,” Beth said. She wasn’t, but the last person she wanted help from was Frank. She wasn’t certain herself whether she’d almost had a one-night stand or nearly been assaulted. But his concern surprised and touched her.

“That’s what you get for picking up locals in bars,” Frank said.

So much for his concern. Frank turned on his heel and left.

Mrs. McClaren lingered and cast a knowing eye over all the things Frank had missed: the crack in the wall, the drooping shoulder of Beth’s blouse, her white knuckles still clutching the iron bed frame.

The old woman sat on the edge of the mattress, her expression puzzled. “He let you go. I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“Do you know him? Conn?” Beth loosened her grip on the iron headboard but found she wasn’t ready to let go altogether.

“That one, no. He hasn’t been about since before my time. His kind, yes. And I can tell you this: they’re as rotten inside as they are beautiful without. I always envied my sister her looks, until she captured the fancy of one of them. She went off with him in sixty-eight. They could hide in plain sight in those days, with their fancy clothes and their long hair. But our mother knew what he was. She tried to warn her, but my sister wouldn’t listen. When I finally caught up with her, she was living on the street in Dublin, nothing but skin and bones. Wouldn’t eat or drink. Didn’t sleep. Just sat there waiting for
him
to come back. There was nothing to do but bring her home to watch her waste and die.”

Then she looked Beth straight in the eye and said, “Lord only knows what possessed him to let you go tonight, but you can’t count on his mercy if you should meet him again. Run. Now. As far and as fast as you can.”

Chapter 2

S
o you packed up and ran away from the biggest find of your career because a hot local tried to pick you up?”

“When you put it that way,” Beth admitted, “it sounds crazy.”

“How else would you put it?” Helene Whitney, director of development at the museum where they both worked and Beth’s best friend, picked a leaf of wilted lettuce out of her salad. The museum cantina was awful, but it was quick and cheap.

Beth couldn’t say what she was thinking. That Conn hadn’t
felt
like an ordinary local. That his glamour, his power, had seemed real. At the time. And she certainly couldn’t tell Helene about the voice that had emerged from her mouth and thrown a grown man across the room. Helene knew about Beth’s talent for finding sites, but she ascribed it to instinct coupled with hard work and research. Not supernatural woo-woo.

“You had to be there,” Beth said at last. “His clothes, the dagger, the torc . . . everything about him was pitch perfect. He wasn’t just some gothed-out poser. No ordinary reenactor could have produced that level of detail. If it was a prank, it was a pretty elaborate one.”

“If I had been there, I wouldn’t have passed up a night of wild sex with a handsome stranger.”

Beth sighed. “You don’t need handsome strangers.” Helene was tall, blond, slender, and gorgeous. “You can have any man you want.”

“You wouldn’t have any trouble attracting men if you didn’t spend all your time in your office or in a hole underground.” Claustrophobic Helene shuddered at the thought. “You haven’t dated anyone since the divorce. How long has it been? Three years now?”

“Four,” Beth admitted.

“Not every man is like Frank. There are good ones out there.”

“This was
not
one of the good ones,” Beth said, remembering the way he’d licked his own blood off his hand. She knew a bad boy when she saw one.

“Have you considered,” Helene said carefully, “that Frank might have been behind this? Think about it. You find a horde of Celtic gold in the morning, and the same evening the tomb’s supposed owner shows up in your bedroom and scares you all the way back to Boston.”

Beth thought back to the incident in the tomb, the hand brushing her breast. Frank flicking on the flashlight from the other side of the chamber. She felt like a fool. “He played me,” she said. “Earlier that day. In the tomb. He pulled this trick where he groped me in the dark and tried to make me think . . . oh, God. He’s there alone with the gold. The sticky-fingered bastard.”

Helene gave up on her salad. “Then there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it, unless you want to play the role of bitter ex-wife. Accusing Frank of pilfering from the horde when he’s there with his latest floozy will only make you look crazy. Chalk it up to experience, and move on. And away from him.”

“I can’t. You know I can’t. Archaeology is my life. But thanks to Frank, I have no independent publication credits. And no one will sponsor me for a dig without a big name attached. Academia is all about credentials and connections. No one wants to fund Frank Carter’s ex-wife when they can fund Frank Carter.”

“It’s a two-way street,” Helene pointed out. “Frank married you because you always know where to dig. You can take your ball and go home, refuse to find any more sites for him.”

“I tried that once.” Beth took a sip from her glass of tea to cover the wave of nausea, wash away the taste of bile that rose in her throat. That had been the worst day of her life. Not the day she had decided to withhold her abilities from Frank and refused to locate another site for him, but the day he had vowed to make it all up to her.

Her memory was spotty after he’d come home with flowers, champagne, steaks. He’d made her dinner. She remembered the wine swirling in her glass. The peculiar taste of it, and then, only fragments. Frank showing her a map, barraging her with questions, repeated, insistent. His friend, Jack Egan—a doctor who ran a rehab clinic in New Hampshire—a man whom she had never liked, turning up later. Her mind skittered away from the rest of it. But she’d woken up on the sofa the next morning, her clothes on wrong. She’d packed her belongings, and filed for divorce.

“Maybe you don’t need Frank or academia as much as you think you do,” Helene said, interrupting Beth’s dark thoughts. “There are other sources of funding out there. Martin Hale’s last dig in Syria was paid for by private donors and Kelly Winestrap’s Mayan expedition was underwritten by a cable documentary series.”

Beth groaned. “I’m not good at the schmoozing.”

“Then get good at it. Start now. Be my wing-girl at the opening of the Maya show tonight.”

“Helene, I was just snookered and humiliated by my ex-husband. I’m still jet lagged, and I left my luggage to the tender mercies of an Irish landlady who either believes in fairies or was part of the plot. I just want to spend the night at home.”

“Eating frozen pizza in your pajamas and falling asleep in front of the television will only make you feel worse. Throw on an evening gown and some mascara and take one for the team. This shindig is being sponsored by the Maya doc producers. You can brush up on your schmoozing skills and drink the equivalent of your annual departmental budget in free champagne.”

The idea held a certain appeal. Enough that Beth found herself, after a quick trip home to shower and don her standby black evening gown, back at the museum by six in the evening, just in time to sign for her suitcases. She hadn’t expected them so soon, and when she reached the loading dock and saw the price on the shipping manifest for expedited service, she was mortified. She hadn’t left Mrs. McClaren anywhere near enough money. Then she looked at the manifest again. She knew that handwriting: Frank’s.

“Need some help, Mrs. C?” The museum’s security guards were pensioners, older than some of the objects in the collection, and while it irked her that they still called her Mrs. C, she appreciated their ingrained chivalry. Dick Chandler, known to the staff as Dick Fuzzy Ears, was at least seventy, but he was a healthy seventy, and hefting two dingy suitcases was unlikely to do anything good for Beth’s evening gown.

“Thanks, Dick,” she said. “I can get one if you can get the other.”

“It’ll have to be two trips, then,” he said, lifting Beth’s familiar blue duffel. “You’ve got four bags.”

Beth scanned the packages lined up on the dock. There was her battered green suitcase, partner in crime to a dingy blue duffel. The other two bags were shiny, black, new, and definitely not hers. “Those aren’t mine,” she said.

“You signed for them, Mrs. C. They gotta go somewhere.”

Ten minutes later Beth was staring at the contents of the four cases, laid out on the table in her pokey little office. The door opened and Beth’s heart skipped a beat, until she saw who it was.

“You look great. Very Madame X, very John Singer Sargent, that gown,” Helene said, resplendent in pale-blue chiffon. Then she stopped short when she saw the gold. “Oh no.”

“Yup,” Beth said. Her clothes were all there, and the books she’d brought on the expedition, the maps and charts she’d used to find the mound at Clonmel. But she’d found that damned gold torc wrapped in one of her sweaters. The dagger down the leg of a pair of cargo pants. The drinking vessels muffled inside her socks. “He planned this. The whole thing. So he could get me out of the way, and implicate me at the same time.”

“Is that what I think it is?” Helene reached out to touch the gleaming sword, silver chased with gold and, instinctively, Beth stopped her.

“Don’t touch any of it,” she warned. Fingerprints. She was concerned about fingerprints, and the damage that the oils from her skin could cause. Not because the gold belonged to a Fae Lord she had barely escaped and could not, if he exerted his power, resist, without the defense of cold iron.

And not because of the strange shimmering awareness that had flowed down her spine the moment she’d spied her suitcases on the loading dock. That was the autumn chill in the air, the bare arms and neck of her gown, she reassured herself. It was
nothing
like the sensation she’d felt in the window seat at Clonmel.
Nothing.

This was America. Boston and Cambridge. The home of Yankee common sense, not Irish fancy. The dangers here were mundane, but real. Frank had embroiled her in a crime that at best might end her career and at worst would send her to jail. Unless she played along with him. Or outsmarted him. “I signed for it,” she said. “All of it. The bags came through customs with my name attached. Frank planned all of this.”

“What are you going to do?” Helene was biting her lip, a nervous habit Beth rarely saw her indulge.

“I’m going to fight back.”

“Beth,” Helene said.

“Go on to the party without me. Frank is going to turn up looking up for this gold. And I’m going to be ready for him.”

T
aking the gold home with
her was out of the question. Her apartment was the first place Frank would look. And if she refused to hand it over, he could always threaten her with the police, make it look like
she
was the thief. Her office wasn’t safe either. Frank was a renowned scholar with ties to the collection; he had the run of the museum.

So she hid the torc, the drinking vessels, and the small ornaments in plain sight: in the overstuffed cases of the poorly lit Near Eastern Gallery. It was nineteenth-century exhibit space, quantity over quality, and the displays were such a jumble no curator in living memory had tried to sort them out. No one would notice a few extra pieces amongst the Scythian gold. She took care to reset the motion detectors when she was done so that even if Frank sussed out her hiding place, he wouldn’t be able to take the gold without alerting security.

The sword presented different problems.

For one thing, she was afraid to touch it. Even wrapped in her shawl, muffled by layers of cloth, it seemed to vibrate, to resonate through her body with the same strange tension she’d felt in the window seat at Clonmel. She needed to get it away from her. She could think of only one place to hide it where it wouldn’t stand out: the Arms and Armor Room.

At least she told herself that was why she chose that place. It wasn’t because there was an iron altar gate in the room, relic of some medieval cathedral. It wasn’t because she wanted to hide behind it. It wasn’t because of the voice in her head whispering insistently:
Cold iron
.
Get behind the gate.

That voice was talking nonsense. Cold iron was nonsense. Fairies were nonsense. Her bizarre visitor in Clonmel had been a perfectly ordinary nut job. The real danger now was Frank, and she was determined to outwit him this time. The sword was just a sword. Nothing more, nothing less. The hum was the air-conditioning. Or the heat. Climate control of some kind. Nothing supernatural at all.

She hid the sword among the other weapons, pocketed the iron gate key, and hurried back through the museum’s darkened halls, the silk of her gown swishing noisily. The galleries were an unfamiliar landscape at night, a rabbit warren of interconnected buildings and projecting wings, confusing by day, nearly impossible to navigate in the dark. She paused to get her bearings in the museum’s rotunda, where moonlight flooded in through a glass dome.

To her left were the pitch-black galleries of the old museum, where she had left the sword. To her right were the lighted corridors of the new American wing, all sleek white walls and soft gray carpet. The distant clink of glasses and the occasional bubble of laughter indicated that the Maya exhibit party was already in progress. She’d left the sword several galleries behind her, but the feeling, the tension vibrating through her body, was growing.

She ignored it, smoothed her gown, swiped her ID badge past the electronic lock on the door, and stepped through.

It was like entering another world. The old galleries had been cool and silent. The new wing was warm and loud. The dull roar of the party rushed down the corridor to meet her, and somehow, instead of offering comfort, the light and warmth only increased her unease. Beth wished she could go home, put on her pajamas, and spend the night in front of the television. The idea was a lot more appealing than what she was about to do.

The gallery was crowded, but mostly at the ends of the room, where the bars were set up. She searched the crowd for Dave Monroe. She needed to talk to the museum’s director now, before Frank turned up and used his charm to twist the truth.

Helene appeared beside her, a glamorous column of pale-blue silk holding a glass of red wine in each hand. “Here. You’re going to need this.”

Beth groaned. “Why? What now?” But she took the drink, hoping it might blunt the keyed-up, edgy feeling she couldn’t shake.

“Frank got to the director before you. I heard it from his admin. He called Dave Monroe this morning and told him you fled Clonmel one step ahead of a drug charge.”

“What?” She couldn’t believe it. “I barely drink, Helene.”

Helene pursed her lips. “
I
know that, but you haven’t been yourself since you got off the plane from Clonmel. I’m not saying that there isn’t a good reason. If my ex-husband tried to gaslight me, I’d be out of sorts, too. But you have to think about how it looks to Dave. And you have to be strategic if you want to outmaneuver Frank.” Helene nodded to where Dave stood beside a Mayan relief. He was staring up at a taller man, and seemed to be listening enthralled. Then Beth looked at the man.