Spell of the Highlander (11 page)

Shaking her head wonderingly, she pushed off the bed—she’d slept fully clothed but for shoes and socks—and went to stand in front of the mirror. She studied the fabulous frame with its odd symbols, stroking the cool gold of it, trailing her hand down over the silvery glass.

Inside the mirror, Cian raised his hand, too, and traced the path of her passage, making it appear as though their fingertips met. She felt only cold glass.

When the tips of her fingers passed over the black stain at the edge, she snatched them hastily away. It had felt icy, just like that strange E-mail, and it had seemed to almost . . . well, kind of . . .
stick
to her skin like a psychic leech as she’d pulled away, as if reluctant to release her. She made a mental note to tell him about the Myrddin-guy and his goose-bumpy E-mail. But first, more questions.

“‘Tis because it is an Unseelie Hallow, lass,” he said softly.

“What?”

“The chill. Dark power is cold. Light power is warm. A Seelie artifact exudes a gentle heat. Mere rubbings of a page from the Unseelie Dark Book suck the heat from a man’s body. ’Tis said handling the Dark Book itself turns a man into something no longer human, day by day, robbing him of all remnants of inner warmth and light.”

Jessi absorbed the information but refused to get sidetracked from the issue at hand. She needed to regain a measure of control that could only be achieved via a thorough understanding of her immediate situation, and as far as she could see, this Dark Book, whatever it was, had nothing to do with her problems.

“So, all we have to do is keep you away from this Lucan person until after the tithe is due, and the spell will be broken? We just need to hide for three weeks? That’s all?”

“Aye.”

“Then what—once the spell is broken and you’re free?” Could he get rid of this man who wanted her dead? Assure her return to a nice, normal life?

He inhaled deeply, his whisky gaze gleaming with sudden, chilling brutality. When he spoke, his voice was hard. “Then you’ll never have to worry about Lucan Trevayne again. No one will. This I swear.”

Jessi stepped back, in spite of herself. With those words, he’d transformed from sexy man to savage beast, lips drawn back in a silent snarl, nostrils flared, eyes narrowed and not quite sane. Madness born of a thousand-plus years of captivity flickered in those whisky depths, shadowy and cold as the inky stain on the perimeter of the Dark Glass.

She swallowed. “You sound pretty sure of your ability to defeat him, considering that he’s the one that stuck you in the mirror,” she felt obligated to point out.

A wicked, feral smile curved his lips. “Ah, Jessica, I’ll win this time. Of that you may be certain,” he said with soft menace.

His words chilled her to the bone. There was such implacable surety in his voice, such savagery in his eyes, that she no longer entertained the slightest doubt whatsoever about Cian MacKeltar’s ability to keep her alive.

She had a feeling the man had a few tricks up his proverbial sleeves. Even stuck inside a mirror. Tricks she probably couldn’t begin to imagine. Again, she had that sense of something
more
in him.

Oh yes, one way or another, this man would keep her safe.

And how are you going to keep yourself safe from
him
?

Good question.

Twenty more days. And he could be released from the mirror for at least a portion of each day.

God help her, she had no idea.

Cian MacKeltar attracted her in a manner that defied logic or reason. Then again, she thought wryly, that shouldn’t surprise her too much, because
everything
about her current situation defied logic or reason. She was chagrined by the sudden sinking suspicion that her intact hymen was probably due less to her impressive moral fiber than to the fact that she’d simply never experienced such intense, brainless chemistry before. If she had, she highly doubted she’d have lasted so long.

“Room service!” The cheery call was accompanied by a sharp
rap-tap-tap
at the door.

Brightening, Jessi turned away from the mirror. “Thank goodness,” she said. “I’m starving.”

Cian eased back, just behind the silver, where he could still see but couldn’t be seen.

As Jessica walked toward the door, his gaze fixed on her luscious little ass. He’d had that silken-skinned, sweet bottom in his hands only that morning, a cheek of it in each palm. He’d been about to make her his woman, fill her with his cock and pump deep inside her. He’d touched those heavy, round breasts, kissed those full lips, tasted the honeyed sweetness that was Jessica St. James. And soon he would taste the sweetness between her thighs, while he lapped and nibbled and sucked her to shuddering orgasm after orgasm.

A soft growl built in his throat. Christ, he loved to watch her move! Her stride was determined and purposeful, yet graceful and sexy. With a body like that, she couldn’t help but be sexy. Her short dark curls only made her seem more womanly, showcasing the delicate, creamy nape of her neck, the fine bones of her shoulder blades, and the sweet slender bow of her spine.

I do
not
want to talk about what just happened,
she’d snapped.

Fine with me, woman,
he’d thought with a silent laugh and a shrug. They didn’t need words.

Their bodies spoke the same language, used identical vocabulary.

Desire. Lust. Need.

He looked at her and something hot and possessive flexed inside his chest.

It wasn’t about
wanting
to bed her. It was about answering an ancient, undeniable call to mate.

It was about raw, animal passion. It was about—

Food.
Bloody hell. His mouth began to water. He smelled meat.

“You can put it here,” Jessica was saying, gesturing to the table by the windows.

A slender, thirtyish woman with shoulder-length brown hair wheeled a tray into the room, pushing it down the narrow aisle between beds and furniture.

Red meat. She’d not ordered fish or fowl, bless the wench! It had been over a century since he’d eaten, and he wanted meat with blood. The last time Lucan had freed him, he’d managed to wolf down a meal of bread, cheese, and ale. To his deprived palate it had been a feast of divinely varied flavors and textures, but it hadn’t been rich, juicy, tender meat. That was a memory that had been tormenting him for more than 427 years.

Though inside the glass his existence was suspended and he suffered no bodily needs—no hunger, no thirst, no need to sleep or piss or bathe—that didn’t mean he suffered no mental ones.

He hungered. Holy hell, did he hunger! He’d whiled away entire weeks at a time, conjuring the memories of the tastes and scents of his favorite foods.

Closing his eyes, he savored the aromas currently wafting past his mirror as the woman began unloading the cart.

He had no idea what tipped him off.

He decided later that mayhap the woman’s intentions were so intense and finely focused that he’d inadvertently deep-listened, catching them even through the glass. Such had happened on occasion with Lucan, usually when his emotions had been strong because he’d been in a fury over one thing or another.

Whatever it was, Cian acted on it instantly, without hesitation.

His hand went to his thigh sheath.

Snapping his eyes open, he whipped his selvar free, hissed the chant to part the veil of silver.

And flung the eight-inch, razor-sharp blade, end over end, through the glass.

11

Jessi backed away from the room service lady, shaking her head from side to side, mouth open on a scream.

One moment she’d been making small talk with the hotel employee, the next something hot and wet and unexpected had sprayed her, splashing her face and hair, her sweater, even splattering her jeans. She’d squeezed her eyes protectively shut against it.

When she’d opened them, it had been to find the woman, standing, eyes wide and glazed, lips moving soundlessly.

With Cian MacKeltar’s jewel-encrusted knife protruding from her throat.

Belatedly comprehending what had sprayed her, she’d almost thrown up. But when she’d opened her mouth, a scream came out instead.

“Jessica, you must stop screaming!” came the sharp command from inside the mirror.

She knew that, and she was going to any second now. Really.

The woman staggered back into the TV armoire, knocked her head against it with a solid
thud,
collapsed, and slid down. Her body jerked convulsively, and she went abruptly still, half-sitting, half-lying, hotel uniform twisted about her hips.

As Jessi stared in shock, blood suddenly bubbled between the woman’s lips, and her eyes went eerily empty.

Oh, God, she was dead; the woman was
dead
!

Cian pounded on the inside of the mirror with his fists. “Stop screaming, Jessica! Bloody hell, listen to me, if you draw people to us, they’ll think
you
killed her. No one will believe your story of a man in a mirror and I will not show myself. I’ll
let
you go to prison, Jessica!”

Jessi jerked, his harsh words a bracing slap in her face. She stopped screaming so abruptly it turned into a screeching hiccuping noise, then silence.

He was right.

If her screams drew neighboring guests to her room, she would be found covered with blood, in possession of a stolen artifact, with a dead woman on her floor—said woman having been killed by yet another artifact Jessi wouldn’t be able to explain having in her possession.

She’d be arrested in a heartbeat.

And not just for theft, as she’d worried about earlier when leaving campus, but for murder.

And she couldn’t see a thing he might have to gain by showing himself and taking the blame.

In fact, considering that all he wanted to do was to hide for another twenty days so he could have his millennium-old vengeance, he’d probably be
happy
to end up in the Chicago Police Department’s stolen-goods/evidence lockup. He could hide really well there, under police protection. No, he certainly had no incentive to save her ass.

Shit, shit, shit.

She clamped her lips shut, unwilling to risk so much as another peep.

“Shut the door and bolt it, Jessica.”

She scrambled over the bed so fast that she fell off the other side. She’d left the entry door cracked, with the security bolt flipped between door and frame when she’d let the woman in. Leaping up from the floor, she hurried to the door, eased it open only as far as necessary to flip the metal latch back in, ducking well back from the line of vision of anyone who might be beyond it, closed it, and secured the lock. She could hear voices murmuring down the hall and footfalls approaching.

She didn’t bother stepping away from the door. Though she’d been screaming for only a few seconds, she had good lungs and knew how loud she’d been.

A few moments later there was a firm knock.

“Is everything all right in there, ma’am?” came a man’s worried voice. “We’re in the room a few doors down and heard you screaming.”

Her heart hammering against the wall of her chest, she took two slow, careful breaths. “Uh, yeah,” she managed, “I’m fine. I’m sorry I disturbed you.” She forced a shaky, self-deprecating laugh. “There was a spider in the shower and I have a touch of arachnophobia. I guess I kind of freaked out.” She injected what she hoped was a convincing note of embarrassment into her voice.

There was a silence, then the sound of soft male laughter. “My friends and I would be happy to take care of it for you, ma’am.”

Men.
They could be so condescending sometimes, even when they thought they were only trying to be helpful. She’d never been afraid of spiders in her life. And if she was, that was still no reason to laugh at her. Dead bodies—
they
threw her. But she was no sissy about bugs. People couldn’t help what they were afraid of. One of her good friends, Cheryl Carroll, was afraid of flowers, and there was nothing funny about it.

“No, no,” she said hastily, “it’s all right, my husband took care of it.”
Say something,
she mouthed over her shoulder at Cian.

“All is well now,” Cian boomed. “‘Twas good of you to inquire.”

She scowled at him.
All is well. ’Twas?
she echoed silently, wrinkling her nose. Could he have sounded more archaic?

At the sound of another man’s voice, a note of cordial reserve entered her would-be-savior’s tones. “You might want to call the front desk and let them know. There shouldn’t be any bugs in the rooms. My girlfriend hates spiders too.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks.”
Go. Away.

As the footfalls faded down the hall, she sagged limply against the door. She made the mistake of rubbing her eyes and compounded it by looking at her hands.

Her lips parted. Breath rushed into her lungs, prelude to a scream.

“Doona
do
it, lass,” Cian hissed. “He won’t believe you twice.”

Pursing her lips, she forced the air back out in small, silent explosions. She puffed short, shallow bursts, as if breathing in a paper bag.
I am not going to scream. I am not going to scream.

“Why did you kill her?” she asked a few minutes later, when she trusted herself to speak.

“Look in the woman’s hand. I cannot make out what it is, but she meant to harm you with it.”

Steeling herself, Jessi moved reluctantly back into the room and gazed down at the dead woman. Her left hand was closed around something. Jessi nudged it with her foot. A syringe spilled from her fingers and rolled across the blood-spattered carpet. Jessi shivered.

“Jessica, try to summon me out.”

Neither of them expected it to work. It didn’t.

“Remove the comforter from the bed and cover the body with it.”

Gingerly, she did so.

It didn’t help much. Instead of a dead body in the same room with her that she could see, now there was a dead body in the same room with her she
couldn’t
see, and that creeped her out even more. Everybody knew villains never really died. Just when you thought you were safe, they got up again, eyes terrifying abysses, arms sickly groping for you like in
Night of the Living Dead.

“You will go bathe now, Jessica.”

She didn’t move. She wasn’t about to go off and get in the shower, only to end up having a
Psycho
moment.

“She’s dead, lass. I swear. She was human, nothing out of the ordinary. Now go bathe,” he said in a voice that brooked no resistance. “I will protect you.
Go.
”

After searching his burnt-scotch gaze a moment, Jessi went.

Near dawn on Friday, October thirteenth, Jessi stared into the mirror, blew out an exasperated breath, and muttered the spell to release Cian for the gazillionth time.

It
finally
worked.

Hours had passed since the long, scalding shower she’d taken, using up two entire bars of those little pink soaps.

Cian had kept her occupied with tales of life in the ninth century. He’d told her of his seven doting sisters, his mother who tried to manage them all, of his eventual attempts to secure them worthy husbands.

He’d spoken in great, loving detail of his castle in the mountains, and of the rugged bens and sparkling burns surrounding it. It was obvious he’d adored his home, his family, and his clan.

He’d told her of the heather that grew wild along the hillsides and so fragrantly scented a fire; he spoke at length of the savory Scots meals that he’d been missing for centuries.

His words had brought the Highlands brilliantly to life in her mind’s eye, and the constant purr of his deep rich burr had soothed. She knew he’d been trying to keep her from going nuts while killing time in a room with a dead body, and it had worked.

As the shock of yet another attempt on her life and Cian’s swift dispatch of the would-be assassin faded, Jessi faced the cold, hard facts.

Fact: The woman had intended to kill her. Fact: One of them had to go. Fact: Jessi was glad it hadn’t been her.

Problem: In a short time, she’d be slinking out of a room that had blood splattered all over it, leaving a dead body in it. Even if they somehow managed to get the body out of the room—and she couldn’t see how they could possibly sneak it from the hotel without being seen—there was no way they could get rid of all the blood.

Fact: She was now a fugitive.

That
was the fact that could make her nuts. PhD, life, future—all of it gone to hell.

What was she going to do now?

She had a sudden, horrible vision of herself at some point in the not-so-distant future, calling her mom from a strange, frightening foreign country where the beetles and roaches were the size of small rats, trying to assure Lilly St. James that she really hadn’t done whatever the police were saying she’d done.

On top of it all, she didn’t even have clothes to sneak out of the hotel in. Though she’d been able to get some of the blood out of her jeans, her sweater was a lost cause. Though her panties had been salvageable, her bra was not.

She could hardly walk out into downtown Chicago in the blanket she was wearing. One might be able to pull that kind of thing off in New York City, but not in Shy-town.

As brilliant golden light blazed from those mysterious runes on the frame, and the sensation of spatial distortion grated across her already frayed nerve endings, she tugged the blanket more securely around her.

She began to push herself up from where she’d been sitting, cross-legged, on the bed, as far back against the wall as possible, so she could pretend the lump on the floor wasn’t there. Suddenly, he was standing beside her.

Before she could so much as squeak a protest, he cupped her shoulders, dragged her against his body, and kissed her hard, fast, and deep, before dropping her back onto the bed.

He looked at her a moment, then he plucked her back up and did it again.

This time he drew her into his arms, one arm around her waist, the other hand palming the back of her head, and kissed her so deeply and passionately that she could have sworn she was throwing off steam, sizzling like an iron on the High Mist/Steam setting.

She clung to him, taking all he was giving. Sinking into his body, absorbing the steel and heat of the man.

When he released her this time, she plopped back down on the bed, kissed breathless.

She felt infinitely better than she had moments ago, as if some of his formidable strength had seeped into her through their kiss. God knew the man had strength enough to spare.

He stared down at her, his whisky gaze narrowed with desire and something else, something she simply couldn’t quite define; an emotion that eluded her. It almost seemed like regret, but that made no sense to her. What could he possibly be regretting?

When he lifted his hand and traced the backs of his knuckles up her cheek, slipping his fingers into the short dark curls at her temple, she dismissed the odd thought from her mind. He threaded his fingers through her hair slowly, as if savoring the silky texture of each curl.

It gave her a tiny chill, the lightness of his touch.

The man was a walking dichotomy. Those powerful neck-snapping, knife-throwing hands that did murder without pause were equally capable of tenderness and delicacy.

“Lock the door behind me when I leave, lass. I will be but a short time. Doona open it for anyone but me. Will you obey me?”

She opened her mouth to ask why, and what he was going to do, and just how he thought they were going to get out of the mess they were in, but he pressed the tip of his finger to her lips.

“Time is truly of the essence,” he said softly. “I never ken how long I’ll have. ’Tis action that will serve us best here, not words. Will you obey me for the now, Jessica?”

She blew out a pent breath and nodded.

“Good lass.”

She stuck her tongue out and mimed panting like a dog, grasping for any shred of levity she could find.

He gave her a faint, approving smile. “Keep your laughter, Jessica. ’Tis a saving grace.”

Her thoughts exactly.

He turned, scooped up the comforter with its bloody burden, and stalked from the room, closing the door behind him.

“Lock it,” came the soft, low command from the other side.

Jessi slid the bolt and flipped the latch. Only then did his footfalls fade down the hall.

Forty minutes later, Jessi and Cian stepped in tandem from the elevator.

He was holding her hand, and although she’d never considered herself much of a hand-holder, she thoroughly liked the feel of her small hand in Cian’s big, strong one, and the snug interlacing of their fingers. She felt dainty, girly—actually, more like consummately womanly—beside this man.

She glanced up at him and inhaled a swift, shallow breath. He was devastatingly attractive. He was wearing faded jeans and a much-washed black
Ironman
T-shirt. His kilt was tossed over a shoulder, and his knife sheath was strapped blatantly around his thigh, the lethal blade now cleaned and returned to its protective casing. She’d tried telling him he couldn’t wear it that way, that he’d get them arrested. He’d replied that she could save her breath because Cian MacKeltar obeyed no laws but his own.

She’d not found that particularly surprising.

His muscular body rippled beneath the thin cotton fabric. With those crimson-and-black tattoos licking up his neck and encircling both powerful biceps, those wicked-looking wrist cuffs, his long braids, and his imposing height and brawn, he looked downright dangerous.

Considering that the clothing fit him, she wondered how he’d gotten it off of whomever he’d gotten it off of. It must have been one heck of a fight.