She Blinded Me With Science (6 page)

So that answered that question. But what did Sophie want from him?

Judging from the silver chains and getting him drunk on cola, Sophie knew he was Fae.
She wanted something. Probably it had to do with the research that drove her to the convention
in the first place. It might be fun to answer her questions. He might even tell her the truth.

Kevyn suspected Sophie could understand and accept that magic still existed in a world
that pretty much didn't believe in it, even when people needed desperately to believe in it.

One thing he wasn't going to tell her was how silver cured his hangover from diet cherry
cola, and purified the blood. The better the quality of silver, the faster and more efficiently
healed. Kevyn felt great, clear-headed and refreshed. Even with the nauseating aroma of iron
lingering in the ether.

Until he understood what she wanted from him, he wasn't going to tell her.

Any more than he would tell her she could become a Fae if she wanted to.

The time had come for Sophie to earn her answers. Even though he was grateful she
rescued him from the Enclave Hunters, the fact remained that she'd got him drunk and had taken
him prisoner. There were debts to be paid and scores to be settled.

He just hoped he had the moral fortitude to not cave in, begging for the feel of her soft
fingertips on his ears, and wanting to nibble on the delicate points of her ears.

He had to figure out what she knew and didn't know and what sort of misinformation
she believed. He needed to stay one step ahead of her. Preferably two. And make sure those steps
led her on a merry dance.

* * * *

"You are in such trouble," Sophie muttered, after watching Kevyn sleep in the back of
the van for nearly ten minutes.

She had never let herself get totally loopy, and didn't socialize with people who
regularly drank until they passed out, so she had no standard to gauge his condition. How long
would he stay asleep? What exactly did diet cherry cola do to him? She had thought he reacted to
it like ordinary people--non-Fae, if Great-aunt Serena was right--reacted to lots of booze. What if
she had overdosed him, put him in a coma, or worse?

What if she damaged his brain, permanently?

The thought of Kevyn stuck with her for the rest of her life sounded like a good idea for
about three minutes, tops. Okay, it would be great to look at him, and if he still thought she was
pretty and made her tingle, then there was a plus side to this. But she couldn't spend her life
feeding him and cleaning up after him and keeping him out of trouble. Men were harder to
housebreak than most pets, after all. And she acknowledged that while it might be fun to spend
her evenings necking with him, there honestly was more to life than spending long hours
horizontal and indulging in lip-lock.

Yeah
,
right,
her cynical, romantically deprived inner self snarled.
There are a couple dozen girls back at school who would kill for a chance to have a real,
live, warm, breathing, self-propelled teddy bear to keep them warm at night. And not have to
keep buying batteries.

Still, she liked talking with Kevyn, as well as just looking at him. The thought of
silencing that clever mind and dulling that sharp sense of humor made her feel slightly nauseous.
And guilty. And even though she had never tried it, Sophie suspected she would much rather
have someone who touched her because he
wanted
to, rather than someone who
operated on remote control.

And besides, Dougie knew her name. Eventually, he would get worried about Kevyn
and try to track her down. The convention committee had her phone number and address. If they
tracked her down and found a brain-damaged Kevyn chained up in her basement, she could just
kiss her doctoral thesis and her entire life good-bye.

Get him home and deal with the rest of it later,
she told herself, and turned
around to jam the key in the ignition and start the van.

* * * *

Kevyn had to hand it to Sophie. When she planned a kidnapping, she didn't ignore her
victim's comfort. He kind of liked the vibrations of the van through the mattress. Thick mattress,
a comfy warm blanket, and good shock absorbers, so he didn't bounce all over as the van sped
down the highway. He took advantage of the opportunity and indulged in a long nap. As an
added benefit, Sophie liked the same soft jazz music he did. That and her clean, sweet scent
soothed him and made him feel safer than he had felt since Nanny Esmee kicked him out of the
nursery.

He drifted in and out of sleep, lulled by the muffled music and the humming of the tires,
only waking fully when Sophie dictated notes to herself. At first he had jolted awake, thinking
she talked to him. Then he feared she was talking to herself; that the stress of her academic
pursuits had damaged her mind. When he scooted around enough to watch her, saw the little
machine she held close to her mouth when she spoke, and realized she was working through her
doctoral thesis. And he was part of it.

He knew Sophie was smart, but he was impressed that she had gotten past the hurdle of
accepting the existence of Fae and believing he was one. She had kidnapped him as a study
object, to learn about the Fae in a scientific manner. He thought it rather sweet that she spent a
large amount of the six-hour drive to her apartment considering his comfort, feeding and
entertaining him, how to make sure he had enough exercise, and what she would do if he got
sick.

At least I'm not an overgrown lab rat. She sees me as a person. Which is amazing,
considering how some of my relatives were treated when they were caught in the Human
world.

Kevyn stretched out on his back and did some analyzing of his own. Maybe revealing
Sophie's Fae blood wouldn't be such a great shock to her, after all. If she could believe he was
Fae and still see him as a person, then she wouldn't be upset to learn she wasn't fully
Human.

And maybe she wouldn't be revolted at the thought of becoming a Changeling and
embracing her magical heritage.

The thought of spending the next fifty or hundred years teaching Sophie to embrace her
Fae self would be interesting. A challenge. A delight. A task he wouldn't want to share with
anyone else.

He just hoped she wouldn't be one of those Changelings who held onto the false image
of Fae spread by the Misinformation Ministry, and demanded antennae or wings or a wand. Fae
could fly without wings. He looked forward to teaching her all the ways to fly that they could
share. Human speculation about making love in zero gravity had nothing on Fae making love in
mid-flight.

And if things didn't work out... Well, he could always erase her notes, her videotapes,
her computer and her memory.

"I don't suppose you want my help unpacking?"

Sophie shrieked when Kevyn's clear, richly amused voice came out of the darkness of
the van behind her. She stumbled, nearly falling out of the van. The last thing she needed was to
roll across the floor. Her neighbor, Tony, had borrowed her garage to work on his car while he
was watching her house and there was grease and other unidentifiable junk all over the
floor.

"Um, no. Thanks." She swallowed hard and turned to look back into the van.

Kevyn sat upright on the mattress, looking deliciously tousled and alert. The overhead
dome light showed him clear-eyed, and his color was good. Relief made her feel hollow. She
wanted to laugh and burst into tears at the same time.

Honesty compelled her to admit she couldn't have cared less about the damage to her
research. Damage to Kevyn mattered most.

For half a second, she considered apologizing and unlocking the chains to let him go.
And then begging him to stay, promising him anything he wanted, if he would just help her with
her research. And maybe snuggle with her at the end of a really long, exhausting day?

The concrete existence of the van, the chains, all the receipts for her purchases spread
out on the passenger seat and Kevyn himself squashed that impulse. She had invested too much
in this project already. She couldn't abandon it just because Kevyn looked at her with those
gorgeous, puppydog warm eyes full of laughter sparks. As if he knew exactly what she was
thinking. Especially the daydreams she had indulged for the last half hour, wondering how it
would be to kiss him.

Back to business,
she scolded herself.

"You probably won't believe me, but I really don't want to hurt you," she said.

"Aw, shucks, I was hoping you were into bondage. Haven't been whipped good in a long
time. I've been such a bad boy and I really need to be punished." Kevyn waggled his eyebrows at
her and grinned, baring his teeth. For just a few seconds, his teeth looked very sharp.

Sophie stared, her heart thudding so fast and hard she thought it would leap out of her
chest. An image of Kevyn begging her to hurt him filled her mind. Just long enough to startle a
shriek out of her. She stepped back, stomach churning, revolted. And, infuriatingly,
fascinated.

No. It was sick. She didn't want to go there. She wanted laughter and a little wrestling
and lots of warm kisses, and curling up next to someone and knowing he would never hurt her.
Pain had no place in the kind of euphoria she wanted with a man. Teasing, yes. Playing at being
the boss, sure, no problem. Hot and heavy, great.

Not that she had even gotten to lukewarm. She had known a grand total of two kisses on
the lips in her entire dating life.

What's wrong with me, that guys won't even try to get to first base, let alone a home
run?

"Hey, Sophie?" Kevyn scooted forward and rested a hand on the back of the driver's
seat. She jumped back two steps, startled to realize he could have touched her during the long
drive from the convention hotel. "Want to tell me why I'm here? Somehow, I don't see you as the
type to go in for white slavery. I mean, usually they sell pretty blondes as sex slaves."

"No!" She swallowed a nervous laugh. "It's all purely scientific. I swear. Just
research."

"Heck, you could have asked."

"And you would have vanished before I finished asking." She shook her head. "I know
you're a Fae, Kevyn. My Great-aunt Serena was crazy. Everybody thought she should have been
locked up. But I'm starting to realize she knew the truth. I'm doing my doctoral dissertation on
magic as a psychological phenomenon."

"I've always wanted to be a phenomenon." He waggled his eyebrows again, this time all
in mischief. And something else that made her heart suddenly pick up pace and sent a warm rush
flooding through her entire body. "Some people think I'm slightly psycho... But what does that
have to do with you?"

"That's what I intend to find out." She swallowed hard and bolstered herself with a
mental image of Jennifer Montcrief shriveling up in fury, when she presented all her scientific,
documented and verifiable proof. "You're going to help me prove magic is real."

"And when you're done with your research?" He lifted his wrists, making the chains
chime. "Take me out somewhere and bury the evidence?"

"No!" She caught herself just before she shrieked. "I'll let you go."

And I hope you don't want to go,
that hungry, lonely part of herself added.
Sophie nearly burst into tears.

Because she knew she had already ruined all chances of that the moment she poured that
first cupful of diet cherry cola in Kevyn's glass.

* * * *

Kevyn wavered between laughing aloud and feeling sorry for Sophie. For the first time
in his life, he was truly grateful for the Ministry of Misinformation. Sophie actually believed
silver chains would keep him prisoner. Her hands shook as she unlocked the iron and silver
chains and led him out of the van. Her belief in the power of silver to negate his magic was
strong, but obviously not strong enough. Or maybe she had enough common sense to realize that
even if silver took away his magic, he still could physically fight her and break free.

He amused himself with imagining her reaction when he told her all the things she did
wrong. He hoped she would laugh, rather than be embarrassed and never wanted to see him
again. He couldn't take it if she broke into a fury and blamed him. It really wasn't his fault, was
it?

Besides, he was using her just as much as she thought she was using him. It was all for a
good cause. He needed a place to hide. She needed to pursue her doctoral research. Kevyn
simply had to persuade her not to include him in her final product. He would tell her anything
she wanted to know. Except, of course, the things she did wrong right now.

Kevyn bit his lip to keep a straight face as Sophie anointed the walls of the basement
room with holy water, placed silver crosses and rune stones around the room, and burned
incense. The silver and incense combined made him sneeze.

She flinched and gave him a worried look. Kevyn decided to play the stoic instead of
pretending the incense hurt him. He could live with the scent. Just how many different cultures
and mythologies had she referenced to negate his magic? The Ministry of Misinformation had
outdone itself.

Didn't it ever occur to Humans that there should have been some consistency? Magic
didn't change to follow different rules when the geographic boundaries changed. Yes, some rules
were different, depending on whether a magical creature was created by magic--like werewolves
and vampires--and whether they were innately magical, like the Fae.

He was going to enjoy teaching Sophie all the things she believed that were wrong.
Heck, she could do an entire doctoral dissertation on that alone.

At the end of two hours, she finally had the room magic-proofed to her satisfaction.

"Nice digs," Kevyn said, when Sophie sat down on the daybed, which he assumed
would be his for the duration. She looked good sitting there, a little pale, with dark smears of
weariness and strain under her eyes. He almost suggested she take a nap.