Could it have been spider instead?”
“No. I’d stake my reputation that it was a snake. But that’s not to say that the spider couldn’t have injected the venom with a needle. I didn’t examine the body, after all.”
He unbuckled his seat belt and quickly reached behind the seat to remove the shopping bags. She got out of her side and waited to go in with him. He started to stalk through the snow, but then stopped and turned to her. “Tahira, you need to know that I’ve told you far more than I plan to tell any other person in the house, save Ahmad. I just… couldn’t let you step into the unknown without some knowledge. But please, if nothing has happened, please don’t reveal anything I’ve said. I won’t be able to think, much less plan a strategy, if the entire house reeks of fear.”
“But what about Giselle and Larry? Won’t they know I’m afraid? I can’t change that. The thought of Rabi, hanging like a fly in a web—I mean, I can even smell it myself!”
His look was haunted when he reached up to touch her face with the back of his hand. The bag of clothing bumped against her shoulder, but she didn’t care. There was something in the look that made her legs turn rubbery and her body clench despite the terror that still raced through her.
“You can tell them there was another attempt, but you don’t know who the woman was. That much is true. But my vision might have been of a different time, or a different woman from the one you saw. It’s highly unlikely but possible that all spiders have a single scent. We know little about them. For now, spend your time researching the books that Ahmad found for you. Find out anything we might be able to use, or block, if you do happen to get captured.”
“And what will you be doing?” she asked, as he lowered his hand to his side.
One deep breath was followed by another, and then by a shake of his head. A trick of the yellow lamp near the door made his pupils glow an amber that lit up his whole face. His indecision was nearly an emotion of its own, and she couldn’t think past the scents for a moment. Perhaps it was because the moon was still nearly full, but his essence seemed to surround her, steal the breath from her lungs.
“If nothing has happened inside, I plan to speak privately with Ahmad and explain what I’ve seen. We don’t like each other, but he does respect my seer abilities and might listen to a plea for action. After we’ve made a decision how to proceed, I plan to spend the rest of the night guarding you. If you’d rather not share my bed, then I’ll sleep on the love seat, but we should stay in the same room. It’s too risky not to guard you, because it’s obvious they’re getting desperate.”
They had just turned to walk to the front door when it opened in a rush. Matty came racing out, flew off the icy stone sidewalk, and landed on his back in the snow. They ran over to him as quickly as they could, but he was already getting up and brushing snow off his pants.
“They’re gone, Antoine! Something took them!”
Antoine started to mutter in French under his breath, and she didn’t think they were endearing comments. “Who’s missing, Matty, and who came for them?”
Tahira reached out her hand to help him pull his legs out of the deep pile of snow, and they followed him inside.
“Giselle, Bruce, and Larry are all gone. Bloody hell! It just happened so damned fast. I was sitting in front of the fire. Margo was helping Giselle get dinner ready, and Larry had just come upstairs with Bruce. We heard a pan drop and then a scream that was cut short. We all raced in there and saw a pair of lions pulling Giselle out the door. She was unconscious, and Margo was knocked out, too. Larry jumped on one of the lions and tried to pull her away, but a tiny, dark-skinned sheila picked him up like he was one of Babette’s cubs and squashed him up against the wall by his neck.”
Antoine had already dropped the bags near the staircase, and was moving from room to room, his nostrils flared. Power began to roil around him, making the air feel heavy. When he entered the kitchen, he went immediately to the spot where the struggle had taken place. Broken dishes and copperbottomed pots were strewn across the floor and the scent of anger and fear hung in the room like a cloud. “Merde! Where was Ahmad during all this?”
“He and his men were in their room, so I figured they hadn’t heard it happen. I ran to get him and he came flying down the stairs, but by the time we got back to the kitchen, they’d all left, and Bruce was gone, too. Ahmad and his men are outside now, tracking them. He was mad as a cut… well, snake. I grabbed my jacket and went out too, but the tracks just stopped when we got to the trees, so Ahmad told me to come back and tend to Margo and they’d go on. Margo was already waking up when I got back, so I gave her a quick look over. She didn’t seem to be in any danger, so I put her upstairs in her room to rest.”
Antoine’s head moved from side to side, pulling in the various scents. He nodded, mostly to himself. But Tahira could already smell the tell-tale sweet, decaying odor that reminded her forcibly of the rancid bottom of a Dumpster. Bertha, or whatever her name was, had been here.
His voice was cold but calm. “It will be harder to track them if they’re moving through the trees, but it can be—”
They all turned as the back door opened and Ahmad walked in with a snarl and a hiss that made Tahira shudder. “We lost them. They took to the treetops and then just seemed to vanish. Even their scent disappeared. We couldn’t follow fast enough because the snow had drifted and my men soon tired.” He turned to the pair of pale, shallow-breathing guards behind him and fixed them with an annoyed glare.
“We will need to discuss a training ritual for you both that includes cold weather endurance and tracking. Your performance out there was dismal.”
Watching their reactions was like watching molasses pour in the cold. It was startling to see the difference from their normal, nearly blurred movements. She could watch each blink of their eyes, like flowers slowly opening their petals.
Antoine’s fists were clenched and he snarled lightly. “We should have come straight back without making that last stop. We might have been able to prevent this.”
Ahmad raised his eyebrows and dropped his head. “You knew someone was going to attack us?”
Tahira shook her head and answered before he could speak. “No, we didn’t know. But someone tried to grab me from one of the stores, and ran when Antoine came in.”
“We stayed in town specifically to avoid them learning where we were staying,” Antoine said angrily.
“But apparently they already knew. Ahmad, we need to talk immediately. I’ve instructed Raven to fly here as fast as he can, but we must make plans.”
He started to turn and walk through the doorway, expecting that Ahmad would follow as he commanded. Tahira touched him on the arm as he went past. “Library?”
He nodded once sharply. “We’re all going to the library. It doesn’t matter if people hear at this point. Ahmad and I will be able to protect you and the others,” he said, and reached for her hand. “Ahmad, post your men in the great room near the fire. They can see the library doors from there, and they need to warm up before they’re of any use to us.”
“You’re making many presumptions, Antoine. You do not command my men. I think that we need—”
Antoine’s voice and scent were calm, and his golden eyes were unblinking as he stared at Ahmad. “I think you need to listen to what I have to say if you want to survive until morning. We have to put aside our differences. For once, Ahmad, be a councilman for all of the Sazi.” He turned and pulled Tahira out the swinging door, throwing his final words over his shoulder. “But if you don’t feel you can cooperate so that the people in our care survive, then at least have the dignity to leave this house so I can make plans without your interference.”
The thick scents of anger and frustration from the exhausted cobra were followed by a searing rage of power that followed them out the door. Antoine ignored Ahmad’s bellow for them to return this instant and, instead, guided Tahira and Matty to the library, after first carefully sniffing around the room and picking up one of the plastic shopping bags from the staircase.
He turned to the stocky Australian. “Matty, could you go downstairs and get Babette and the cubs, please? Bring them here to the library. We need to all stay in one place for the time being.”
Tahira cocked her head a bit as Matty quickly went to his task. She started walking toward the leatherbound books still on the table where Ahmad had placed them. “Do you really think we need her to protect us?”
Antoine’s voice and scent were still calm, which seemed strange to her. “No, she needs me to protect her. I’m her Rex, so just as I plan to protect you, Matty, and Margo, I will protect my cats. I can’t do that if we’re all in different places.”
She picked up the book on top of the stack and turned to stare at him. His features seemed chiseled in stone, and the play of light from the fireplace highlighted every angle. He slowly removed a box from the shopping bag and began taking off the outer wrapper. “Are you okay? You seem … odd.”
Antoine smoothed his hand over the black box and shifted the lid back and forth until it pulled away from the bottom half. Terrace was, by far, his favorite strategy board game, and he needed to step away from the emotions that were clouding his judgment—from fear and anger that his friends and family had been taken to a self-righteous satisfaction that Giselle could no longer stab at him with her accusations. Memories of happy times, playing this very game with Larry as Giselle stitched on a quilt in the corner of their main trailer, fought with the scent of terror and pain that lingered in the kitchen.
He jumped when he felt Tahira’s hand on his arm. “Antoine? Are you okay?”
He nodded, afraid to speak, afraid he might say things that should never reach air. He sat down, his back still to her, and started to open the individual packages of black and white dome-shaped pieces. As he was pulling the square, three-dimensional board from the box, he felt strong arms slip around his shoulders, and the scent of smoked cinnamon and sandalwood filled the air next to his neck.
She wouldn’t remove her arms when he reached up to pull away, but instead tightened them, pressing her chest tightly against his back. Yes, she was no match for him in strength, and he could easily pull away. But it would probably hurt her. He took a frustrated breath. “If you’re trying to distract me, Tahira, this isn’t the time for it. I need to concentrate and we need to get some answers—any answers—
from the books you should be reading.”
Her voice was strong and solid, an anchor in the swirling tide of emotions. “Yes, you need to concentrate. But you can’t do that if you’re spending all your time beating yourself up about this. There’s something deeper going on with you than just the danger from the spider, or just me. I really think you need to talk about it before you go out there to save the others and wind up getting killed because you think you deserve it.”
Antoine unconsciously raised his hand and began to stroke her hair. He found himself leaning into the softness of her cheek against his jaw. He opened his mouth to repeat that he was fine, and to thank her for her concern, but it was not what came out. “Today in the store was the first time since I was five years old that a vision was in real time. I’ve fought for my whole life to keep the visions under control, burying them in the darkest depths of my mind so they didn’t make me go mad like my sister—or my mother.”
She brushed her hands over his chest and squeezed. It was a comforting gesture rather than a sexual one. “What happened when you were five that was so terrible that you had to bury them?”
“I watched my world end, and I couldn’t shut my eyes or hide from it. The vision made me see, made me watch my mother drown my sisters and brothers in the bathtub. It made me see my twin, Fiona, screaming in fear while I deserted her to hide in the ductwork behind a furnace grate.”
There was a long pause and he could feel her face muscles working as she tried to grasp the image.
“Antoine… you … you were a child. How could you be expected to do anything else but try to survive? I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been. I… don’t know what to say.”
A puff of breath that wasn’t quite a chuckle moved her arms on his chest. “There’s nothing to say. Until just days ago, I thought I knew the villains in my world. My oldest sister, Josette, called the men who came to kill my mother, and I hated her for it. I hated Ahmad for his role in my mother’s madness. I hated the entire concept of a Sazi law that would murder a woman in front of her children. And mostly, I despise this thing that hides inside me that makes me watch people in pain when I don’t know when or where it will happen, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Grand-mère, Bruce, your brother and… you. All a seer can do is watch and pray and try not to think too much about it.”
Tahira shook her head in tiny little movements and sighed. “The horse is riding you.” When he turned his head in confusion, she pulled back from him and stepped around to the front of the chair. Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned against the edge of the table and stared at him. “Look, I might not know much about how to be a good tiger yet, but I’ve really got a handle on psychoses after spending my whole life in California. You’re concentrating so much on one tree that you can’t see there’s a whole forest around you. The bad things that you’ve seen have made you skittish, like getting thrown from a horse.”
“It’s not the same thi—”
She held up her hand and raised her eyebrows. “Yes. It is the same. You get visions, Antoine! You’re a ruhsal, a seer, a psychic. No matter what you call it, do you have any concept of how amazing that is?
The rest of us are plodding along in the world, whispering little prayers each time we turn a corner, while you have this amazing horse to ride that tells you what’s around the bend.”
He snorted in derision. “Yes, it’s quite amazing to see people you care about being chained down and tortured, or drowned by their own mother’s hand, while I can do nothing! Do you grasp that at all? If I know that a person is going to die a horrible, painful death—but only if they happen to take a trip they haven’t even considered, or if they happen to be on a particular road someday—how can I tell them? I might as well say, ‘Oh, but don’t worry about it, and have a nice day!’ You can’t possibly understand what it’s like.”