"Give me your list of things to buy for the colloidal silver," he said. "I"ll send Gawain after them."
She nodded. "Okay. I brought magic-sensitive silver with me, so he doesn"t need to waste time looking for that. I know it"s pretty rare and expensive here since most of the mines are in the States. You"ll need to get some, but for now we can use mine." She thumbed the screen of her phone on. "What"s your number? I"ll text the list to you."
He told her, and she keyed the numbers in, copied the list she had already made for him, and sent it in a text. When he received it, he studied the items. "Interesting."
"We"re going to be building a machine," she told him. "It"s a very simple one, but this version won"t work in an Other land because it requires batteries. There"s another system you can set up that doesn"t require batteries, and I can show you how to make that too. In the States, I could pick up everything I need at a local hardware store. I"m sure there"s a version of something like that here, but I don"t know where to look for it."
"Not a problem." He worked briefly on his phone then slipped it in his pocket. "Gawain will pick up everything we need. I also rang the local butcher and the grocer while you were dressing. They"re putting packages of groceries together. The orders will be ready to be picked up in a few hours."
Not what would you like to eat, Sophie? Do you drink coffee? Are you allergic to nuts? Of course not.
He was so arrogant she was beginning to suspect he didn"t even know when he was being arrogant. Was she even going to bother to point it out, yet again? Gritting her teeth, she decided not to waste the time or the energy. If she wanted to buy herself groceries, she was by G.o.d going to go into town and buy herself some f.u.c.king groceries.
Shaking her head, she stalked out of the cottage, and she didn"t stop walking until she stood a few feet in front of the manor house.
Nikolas caught up with her and stalked along by her side. After a minute, he said between his teeth, "I took care of all your needs with a few phone calls, and you"re acting like I committed some kind of crime. What on earth is your problem now, woman? Because clearly there"s a problem."
"I"m not talking to you. Hush, and let me think."
He muttered something in his language. It sounded beautiful, and it probably had something to do with her being insufferable again. She curled a lip at him and turned her attention back to the house.
The day was gorgeous, a perfect hot summer day in England. Bees droned by. Lavish, untamed greenery spilled from underneath trees, barely held in check by the simple, crude mowing job that kept the wide lawn from turning into an overgrown pasture.
Soon her shirt began to stick to her back, and she almost wished she had put on a pair of shorts. She asked him, "How many gables do you see?"
He had crossed his arms again and stood with his chin tucked close to his chest. At her question, he gave the house an indifferent glance and shrugged. "Five."
Smiling, she shook her head at him. "There"s more than five. I want to walk around the whole house."
His attention sharpened, and he gave the house a second, more thoughtful look. "How many gables do you see?"
"I"ll tell you after I"ve gone all the way around."
They strode the circuit around the ma.s.sive house in silence. For the first time since she had arrived, she caught a glimpse of the small lake behind the house. Nikolas remained watchful, his expression grim. It must still be difficult for him to be in the place of such a painful defeat. He had lost friends and comrades here. She couldn"t imagine how that must feel, actually, and since she couldn"t find the right words to say in sympathy, she left him to his own thoughts.
When they finally stood in the same spot in front of the house again, she said, "How many did you see?"
"Still five," he told her. "What about you?"
"On this side of the house, I can see seven. But there"s an eighth gable tucked around the back."
"I want to say that"s impossible, but mostly I think it"s inexplicable," Nikolas muttered. "How do you see more gables than I do?"
She held up her hands and gestured around her. "I think it"s the land itself. The crossover pa.s.sageway is broken, but all the pieces of that magic are still here. Kathryn, the surviving member of the Shaw family, said that when her father was young, he was able to get into the house, but that was quite some time ago. She didn"t say exactly when, but she indicated it had been hundreds of years ago."
"They"re not human," he said.
"No, they"re Wyr. From the story she told me, I gather her ancestor fought for the Light Court. The last time her father tried to get into the house, the key turned in the lock but the door wouldn"t open. n.o.body can break a window, she said, or make the door budge." She turned sparkling eyes to Nikolas, who was listening to her with close attention. "I think it"s because the house isn"t fully here. It"s mostly here, but it"s slightly-ever so slightly-not in sync with this Earth where we stand."
He frowned. "But we can see and touch it."
"You can see some of it and touch some of it. I can see more of it." She put her two fists together, side by side and aligned the knuckles of each finger to their opposite. "Think of tectonic plates, and then the earth moves. Maybe it"s a ma.s.sive earthquake, or maybe it"s just a small shift." She moved one fist slightly. "Then all of a sudden, the two plates don"t match up the way they had before and the land isn"t quite aligned as it was. I"m wondering if this is something like that, only more so. This isn"t just a place shift. This is a time, place, and dimension shift."
He was wholly engaged now, listening closely to every word. He jerked his chin at the house. "Do you think you can see more of it because you"re part Djinn?"
"Yeah, maybe. If I"m right." Looking back at the house, she chewed on a thumbnail. "Kathryn said the family had gotten experts to try to get into the house, but she didn"t say who those experts were or what they were experts in. It had all happened so long ago, and n.o.body had kept decent records of what they had done. I"m guessing they didn"t engage a Djinn as one of their experts. Why obligate yourself in an unnamed, possibly dangerous favor to a Djinn for something that was, to them, merely an exasperating mystery?"
"And why would they consider a Djinn for the job anyway?" He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "They could see and touch the house, just as we can."
She nodded. "Exactly. But I noticed the anomaly in the photos Kathryn showed me. The camera had captured something of the magic in this place. I"ve been thinking about it ever since, and I"ve been dying to see it in person."
His dark eyes studied her. "And you still think you might be able to get into the house."
"Maybe. I"m not a full Djinn. I can"t dematerialize-not fully-and whisk off to the other side of the world within a few moments, but I do have a certain affinity for manipulating my placement in time and s.p.a.ce."
"You can"t dematerialize fully," he repeated. Fascination gleamed in his eyes. "Are you saying you can dematerialize partially?"
"No, not that." She paused, frustrated with the limitations of language. "I can slightly shift things around me. Or a better way to say it is, I can shift myself in relation to everything else around me. Slightly. Not enough to really dematerialize, but enough sometimes to go unnoticed when I want to."
"Is that how you hid with Robin from Gawain?"
"Yes. In my mind, I say that I pulled shadows around me, but really what I"m doing is stepping into shadows that existed at some time in that specific place. It"s-it"s like turning a corner. I know that sounds kind of mind-bendy, but believe me, it"s nothing like listening to full Djinn carry on a conversation. They literally don"t experience reality the same way we do."
He shifted his weight onto one hip and gestured to her. It was as princely a gesture as she"d ever seen him make. "Show me."
She scowled. "I"m not a trick pony to perform on your command."
"No, a trick pony doesn"t know how to talk back like you do." The exasperation was heavy in his voice.
What on earth did he have to be exasperated about? It was enough to make her exasperated with him.
She rolled her eyes. "Besides, it doesn"t work very well out in the open, in full sunlight. You know I"m standing here, and you"d be watching for it, so I wouldn"t be able to fool you. So getting back to what is actually relevant, what if the house is ever so slightly out of alignment with this Earth? And what if I could shift slightly enough to align with it, open the door, and get inside? If I"m right, a full Djinn could do it, but again, who wants to owe an unnamed, possibly dangerous favor to a Djinn? I certainly don"t want to ask one, and I don"t want to suggest it to Kathryn, because if I can do it, I win the land and the annuity."
"If you"re right, the house is dangerous and probably unstable," he pointed out. He turned to study it again. "According to the story Kathryn Shaw told you, it shifted even further while her father was alive. Parts of it must exist in different broken pieces of land magic."
"Kathryn called it a Rubik"s cube, but all the colors don"t line up. It might be more like a jigsaw puzzle, with pieces sitting on different planes. All the pieces together make up a full house, but the separate pieces themselves exist in different time-s.p.a.ce-dimensional realities." She shrugged. "As far as it being unstable goes-it hasn"t gone anywhere for several hundred years, so I"ll take my chances. I mean, who knows what"s still inside there? There could be anything. The family didn"t keep records of what they had left behind."
"You said n.o.body could break a window when they tried," he said slowly. There was something dawning in his expression, an extra alertness or a comprehension.
"That"s what Kathryn told me. Apparently, the house as it stands right now is pretty impregnable." It was her turn to watch him closely. What was he thinking?
He said, "Okay if I give it a try?"
Chapter Ten.
She c.o.c.ked her head and shrugged. "It"s not my property... yet... but Kathryn"s family already tried it before, so I"m going to take a chance and say sure, go ahead. Besides, if you can break a window, I can crawl through it and get inside, and then the house will be mine anyway."
This time she was the one to follow him as he stalked slowly across the lawn, looking at the ground. When he came to a broken piece of flagstone, he squatted, pried it up, and hefted it. The stone was big enough it would have been uncomfortably heavy for her to lift, but he carried it as if the weight was no big deal, a small but telling piece of evidence of how different they were.
Once he had selected a stone, he strode closer to the nearest window. Then he whirled like a discus thrower and hurled the stone at the window. He moved so impossibly fast she felt both a shock and a thrill just watching him. The stone shot like a bullet, and when it hit the window, the sound of the impact rocketed across the clearing.
But the window didn"t break.
Excited, she jogged over to him and took his arm. "That"s exactly what Kathryn described."
He didn"t seem to mind that she touched him. Rubbing the back of his neck, he muttered, "But if it connected, why didn"t the window break?"
"It hit," she said. "It just didn"t hit exactly right."
He tilted his head. "But we can actually touch the house. The stone hit the house. We heard it."
She rubbed her face as she tried to formulate the right words. "You know how in a fight, you might throw a punch, but you are only able to land a glancing blow? Or if you brush against something-you"re touching it lightly but not completely."
"You"re saying we"re not fully touching the house," he said.
"I think so." She paused. "Or maybe this is a better explanation. I"ve only traveled down a crossover pa.s.sage a few times, so I"m no expert, but I know if you come at one from the wrong direction, you don"t enter the pa.s.sageway. a.s.suming the terrain will allow for it, you can walk right across one and never go inside. It"s part of the land magic. You"re touching the land-you"re walking on it-but you"re not in alignment with the pa.s.sageway."
"The house is inside the crossover magic, so it"s the alignment that matters."
"Yeah." She nodded. "Except the crossover pa.s.sageway is broken. It"s in pieces, so there"s no smooth entryway like there is with pa.s.sageways that function normally."
"I"m going to try one more time," he said. "Stand back."
She skipped back a step, watching him curiously. This time he didn"t reach for anything to throw. Instead, she felt a ma.s.sive surge in his Power. Suddenly light appeared in the palm of one of his hands, and he threw it. Like a bolt of lightning, the Power snapped across the s.p.a.ce to the window and impacted it with another crack that echoed across the clearing.
A chill ran down her spine as she watched. That bolt of lightning-that had been what he had thrown at her two weeks ago.
She was a good, competent magic user. She had her bag of tricks: an affinity working with silver and with runes, a certain ability of prescience that she had honed over the years, a decent repertoire of spells, and a nice little bit of time-s.p.a.ce-dimension woo-woo from her Djinn heritage-not a lot, just a little. She was talented enough that, so far, she had made her skills work to her advantage.
But in terms of raw strength, she had nothing to compare to this. Nikolas"s Power was world-cla.s.s, and he would be able to hold his own among the heaviest hitters in any of the demesnes. What else was he capable of doing?
He turned to her and caught her staring at him. For the first time, she saw real excitement in his eyes. "I threw as much Power as I could into that morningstar, and it still didn"t break."
Was that what the spell was called? She glanced at the intact window, then back at him. Why was he so excited? She murmured, "That"s not really a surprise at this point...."
"This building might be dangerous," he told her. "But unless you have Djinn magic, the inside has got to be one of the most secure places on Earth. Virtually a fortress."
"Sure," she said, watching him uncertainly. "Probably. That"s what it looks like, anyway."
He advanced to grab her by the shoulders. His handsome features were ablaze. "And one of those pieces of the jigsaw puzzle must connect to home. That"s where the old crossover pa.s.sageway here used to lead. Right?"
She took hold of his wrists, gripping him as he gripped her. "I-I don"t know. I guess it might be possible? But the operative word here is might."
He said, "Djinn can"t dematerialize and travel from Earth to Other lands, and back again. They can only travel within a certain dimension. They have to use crossover pa.s.sageways just like everyone else. We all knew that. None of us ever considered, in all of this time, that a Djinn might still be able to use the pieces of broken land magic to make the trip from here to Lyonesse."
She sucked in a breath. There was so much hope in his face he looked like an entirely different man from the hard, closed-down stranger she had first laid eyes on. It was painful to look at him. In the intensity of his hope, she saw the true depth of the tragedy he had endured and the heartbreak.
Gently she said, "Oh, Nikolas, this is all just a theory. We still don"t know if I"m right. Please don"t let your hopes get too high."
In response, he hauled her close, kissed her hard, and then looked at the house again. "Too late."
Sophie looked worried. It was not an expression he was used to seeing on her face. Strangely, it made him want to pause long enough to pa.s.s his hand over the heavy, curling ma.s.s of her hair.
A better man than he would remind her again of the increasing danger she faced as she grew more and more entangled with the Dark Court.
But he was not a better man. He would do anything, use anyone, and use himself hardest of all, in order to break through to home, to find that safe fortress for his men, to turn the murderous tide that had all but washed the Daoine Sidhe away into memory.
And he knew what she would say if he did try to warn her. He would get another old-timey folk lecture. She was suicidally brave, he had to give her that.
Obeying an instinct he couldn"t put into words, he pressed his lips to her forehead. "Break into that house," he told her. "Claim it. Own it. And I will rent it from you for a fortune. I"ll get you anything you want. Money. Jewels. A villa in Capri. I"ll build you a house that is actually comfortable and safe to live in."
She lifted one shoulder and gave him a sly, mischievous smile. "I don"t really want a villa in Capri. I just like to say that to a.s.sholes."
He bit back a returning smile. "And you do like to call me an a.s.shole, don"t you?"
Her eyes widened. "I do. In fact, it"s become one of my favorite pastimes." That caused him to laugh out loud-something he couldn"t remember doing for a very long time. Her eyes twinkled in response, and then she sobered to say, "I"m not the kind of person that likes to take advantage of other people"s misfortunes, and I have no interest in taking a fortune from you. If I"m able to break into the house, I"ll consider renting it to you for a fair price. I don"t even know what that means or what a fair price would be to rent a hulking, magical, dangerous, unlivable pile of a building. Let"s take it one step at a time, okay?"
She wasn"t just suicidally brave. She had a good heart. Nikolas didn"t believe that about many people anymore, but he was starting to believe that about her. Lightly he placed a flattened hand over the middle of her chest, covering where her heart lived and beat its strong, true, steady beat.
Her expression softened and grew puzzled, but she didn"t push his hand away. Instead, she patted it, then she turned to give the house a determined look. He turned to look at it too.
He said, "If worse comes to worst, it would be worth it to me to bargain with a full Djinn to try to break through to home."
"You don"t know that it would work," she warned. "Don"t waste a costly, unpredictable bargain on such a big gamble. Let me try first. I won"t make you promise to do something random, like give up your firstborn son or a.s.sa.s.sinate a head of state, or make me a bowl of homemade guacamole. Djinn are weird. Trust me. I lived with them for a couple of years. I know."
It was hard to rein in his galloping thoughts, but after a moment, he nodded.
As she crossed the lawn back to the big, double front doors, he followed. Placing both hands on one of the doors, she stood for a while with her head bowed.
He would not interrupt her like some undisciplined, half-trained youth. He would not. Crossing his arms, he glared out over the clearing while he clenched down on the powerful, uncontrolled emotions coursing through his veins.
Enough time pa.s.sed that he was beginning to rethink that position and ask her what she was doing.
Then something happened. Something so fine and subtle that if he hadn"t already been hyperalert, he might have missed it.
He whipped his head around to stare at her. "What was that?"
She shook her head. Now she leaned her whole body against one of the doors, and she had inserted a large, old key into the lock. "I"m trying to shift into alignment with the door," she muttered. "I got close enough to turn the key in the lock, but I can"t push the door open. I might not be aligned well enough, or the door might be stuck. It hasn"t been opened in a really long time."