Obsidian Eyes (21 page)

Marshall’s deep baritone answered the question. “Overlord of the Whisperers, and held his position for ten years. That’s a long time to rule a guild, practically a life time.”

She closed her eyes and took a steadying breath.
Will Jared ask why the overlord bothered to rescue me from Newgate?

“Were the men guild?” Marshall directed to Allie, before Jared could ask any further questions.

She turned back to the room, her mind replaying the scene in the barn. She gave a snort. “They weren’t very good, nor were they marked, but they could have sought favour in the guild. If word is out, who knows who will be after Zeb.”

“Like a Zeb hunting season.” Duncan gave a laugh, his eyes lighting up at the prospect of more excitement.

Allie raised her gaze to Marshall. “Putting a purse on Zeb is breaking the covenant.”

Marshall rubbed the back of his neck and then dropped the hand. “Let’s worry about one thing at a time. I’ll pass the information on to KRAC. Zeb is safe on school grounds, apparently the guilds can’t gain access here.” Humour laced his words. “Stay close to Zeb though.”

The three friends descended the narrow staircase and crossed the polished floor. Pushing through the double doors, they found Madeline staring out the window in the corridor.

She turned on hearing their voices, her gaze and posture focused on only one person, Jared.

“There you are,” she said. Closing the distance, she grabbed hold of Jared’s arm, turning her back to Allie and Duncan. “I started to think you were avoiding me, spending all your time in the gutters.” She leaned her blonde head on his shoulder.

“Not at all. I’ve been busy.” He shot a look over his shoulder at his friends.

Duncan held in a snigger, Allie stared at the toes of her boots.

“I thought we could take a walk outside, just the two of us. It’s such a lovely afternoon and I have managed to lose my chaperone.” She headed down the hallway and forced Jared to choose between accompanying her and wrenching his arm free.

Ignoring the girl’s snub, Allie looped her hand through Duncan’s arm. “You can tell me what creatures my roommate made you hunt. Now she has her own laboratory I fear she will move on to larger prey than frogs and rats.” They walked off in the opposite direction, leaving Jared to his fate.

Monday, 29
^th
August.

A week passed and Zeb recovered from his adventure without any adverse effects. He dispatched a note to his parents ostensibly about arrangements for the forthcoming holidays but in reality to warn his father. The friends were now in a state of limbo, trying to occupy themselves while waiting for any developments to unfold. Dread settled over Allie as she waited to be called into service of the guild, not knowing what decision she would make when the day finally came.

School days blurred into a monotonous painting of classes, the same evening meal and homework. Allie tried to lose herself in riding and hard sparring. She dropped onto the sofa in the library nook with an exhausted body and mind. Eloise curled up in the armchair opposite, engrossed in a novel clutched in her lap. Every now and then she gave a heavy sigh. Allie couldn’t stand the suspense and looked up from the pages of her book.

“What on earth are you reading so rabidly?”

Eloise looked up, a faraway expression on her face. “It’s the latest gothic novel by C. Rainey. It’s so desperately romantic, about this young woman, kidnapped by vampires and she falls in love with the leader of their nest.”

“Vampires?” Allie raised an eyebrow. “She must be desperate then, aren’t vampires all cold and dead? Like week old fish.”

Eloise faltered. “But it’s terribly romantic. Their devotion is eternal you know.” She emitted a deep sigh. “Can you imagine a love that endures forever? And their embrace—”

Allie rolled her eyes. “Cold, clammy, and fishlike? Actually if they are dead why don’t they smell?” Her brows knitted as she tried to figure out why undead creatures weren’t subject to decomposition.
I thought the Frankenstein experiments were bad enough, but maybe Eloise should be working on that little puzzle instead.

Eloise fingers curled around the book as she leaned forward, her eyes shining bright behind the round lenses of her glasses. “You should read it. They are star-crossed lovers from different spheres. Their love is so strong it transcends the restraints placed on them. It endures all the tests it has to withstand.”

Something about Eloise’s statement got under Allie’s skin. Different spheres could never be compatible, no matter how much you might wish it differently.
A fish can love a bird, but what world would they ever inhabit?
Neither could survive in the other’s world, one would either drown or suffocate.

She tried to reason with Eloise over the error of striking up a relationship with a creature that had been dead for centuries. “But you won’t feel the heat of their body when they hold you near. Or their warm breath on the nape of your neck as they pull you close, or feel their heart beat under your fingertips as they—” she trailed off, starting to confuse her literary point with more real recent events.

The colour rose in Eloise’s face and she jumped up from the chair, causing the book to tumble to the floor with a thud. She pushed her glasses up her nose with one finger and glared at Allie. “I think you left your heart behind in a desolate Egyptian tomb, since you don’t understand romance. I have to study, so please excuse me.” She gathered up her fallen book, clutched it to her chest and then hurried out of the library.

Allie gave a sigh at having upset her friend. Everyone’s nerves were on edge. Inactivity preyed on them.
I’ll have to apologise for that later. She’s wrong, I didn’t leave my heart in Egypt. I’m trying to protect it from tomb robbers.
She chastised herself and the source of her building frustration.

From behind came a deep chuckle. Jared stepped out from the shadow of the stacks as though conjured by her wayward thoughts. A book dangled from his long fingers and the lock of black hair hung over his face. “I think you’ve ruined vampires for her.”

Allie rose from her seat, uncomfortable with being alone with Jared after what she said to Eloise. She turned to pick up her own books from the table. “She needed to be disillusioned. She has her head full of romantic notions that are completely impossible and will never happen. Let alone with some long dead creature.”

As she turned, she found Jared stepped closer. She could smell his warm clean scent. She breathed him into her lungs, wanting to hold him deep within her and not let go.

No cold fish.
She remembered how after their ride he drew her to his chest, a mere fraction of an inch from kissing her. Under the oak tree, he left a row of kisses up her arm, hotter than any caress from the Egyptian sun.

Treacherous body. Why does he have to feel so good?
She thrust the thoughts to one side before she gave herself away by blushing like Eloise.

“Yes, a warm body is infinitely preferable.” He took another step closer, which brought him within touching distance of her.

“I’m sure you’ve never suffered a shortage of warm bodies,” Allie reminded him.

Ignoring her comment, he reached out and ran the back of his fingers up her exposed arm, from wrist to elbow. Mimicking where he trailed kisses. She drew in a sharp breath. A line of goose bumps appeared on her skin, following the path of his caress.

“Are you going to lie and tell me you feel nothing?” His hand dropped back to his side. “Your body betrays you every time I touch you. The only thing I can’t understand is why you’re being like this.”

Allie took a deep breath and tried to hold her emotions in check.
It’s too hard!
She wanted to scream.
You will break my heart and grind the scattered pieces
into the dirt.
“Because you are the son of a duke, and I am guild. We have no middle ground; our worlds are kept apart by covenants and rules. There is no place we could ever be together.”

Being born guild was like being born noble - a permanent condition. She could run away from her family but their blood still flowed in her veins, a connection she could never escape. The guild would seek to use any relationship to its own ends, even if Jared’s family could overlook her underworld connections.

But there was another impediment in their way, a far more spiteful one. “And besides, you belong to someone else.”

Jared frowned. “I don’t belong to anybody.”

“Have you had that conversation with Madeline? She certainly believes otherwise.” Clutching her book like a piece of armour, she spun on her heel.

With a rustle of skirts and the faint scent of spiced vanilla, she walked away from him.

Damn it.
Jared turned and slammed his fist into the grinning maw of a fireplace gargoyle. Letting go of a deep sigh of frustration, he spun and dropped into the large wing chair in front of the fire, still warm from Allie’s body. He stretched his long legs in their fine boots and staked his claim on the leather ottoman.

He knew she felt the same way as him. Her body clearly showed him what she wouldn’t acknowledge out loud. He couldn’t figure out why she resisted him. If she would meet him half way, they could create their own middle ground.
Noble, common, or guild, I don’t care. I just want her.

Zeb appeared from the stacks and collapsed in the chair opposite. A clinking and whirring noise came from the contents of his ever present pouch as it objected to being dumped so callously. The whirring abated as the contents settled on the chair next to him.

“Why are the simplest appearing things the most complex to understand, while the most complicated appearing, turn out to be simplistic and one dimensional?” Jared hypothesised at his friend.

Zeb readjusted his glasses. “Is that an engineering conundrum or an existentialist one?” As he shifted, the library door banged shut, followed by a squeak as Weasel halted at the door and then scuttled back into the stacks. “Aha!” he cried, as his brain had a eureka moment. “A natural problem, not mechanical at all.”

“She is the most infuriating, frustrating, and contrary girl I have ever encountered.” Jared stared at the spot where her slender form disappeared from view. He willed her to return and answer his questions.

Zeb frowned. “Does this mean you don’t like Allie?”

“I can’t decide if I like her or want to throttle her. All I know is she makes my fingers itch whenever she is around, and it’s not always because I want my knife in my hand.” He remembered what it felt like to gather her near. He had been so close to kissing her, twice now. A part of him longed to know if she would taste as good as she smelt, and his desire grew louder by the day. He spent hours in the gymnasium, working himself to exhaustion, trying to take the edge off his need.

His brain didn’t want to contemplate his commitment to Madeline. He preferred to let his mind skirt around the practical issue and linger on the more pressing physical one. Or the physical one he wanted to press.

“If you don’t like her, are we still friends?” Zeb still wore his frown.

“Of course I like her,” Jared admitted. “I just don’t know if I
like
her. Do you understand?”

His friend shook his head. “No. I don’t really do biological problems, sorry.” The frown looked like it would become a permanent resident on Zeb’s face.

Jared threw up his hands and growled.
That’s the real problem here, too much thinking.

“Which reminds me, Madeline was looking for you earlier. How are things with her?” Zeb said.

Jared narrowed his gaze and shot his friend a look; he skated on thin ice bringing her into the discussion. “Madeline is my parents’ choice, not mine.” He dropped his fist on the arm of the sofa.

Zeb knitted his brows. “You agreed to the contracts and as I recollect you were certainly willing at the time.”

Jared gave a long sigh. “I was fifteen and infatuated. How could I predict how her character would develop? She has shown herself to be shallow, vacuous and unexpectedly cruel.”