“No,” she answered immediately. “Blind obedience is for horses and children.”
A corner of his mouth turned up, a rueful smile.
“You are neither,” he said.
They stared at one another, finding their way toward a new understanding, no less complicated than anything that had come before. Each of them resisted neat definitions, both within their worlds and to each other. Yet things that were neat and easily understood were often dull. Nothing had been dull since Whit swept into her life, and she had the distinct impression that nothing ever would be again.
Before he had met Mr. Holliday, and Zora, Whit’s life had settled into a kind of routine. Admittedly, what he deemed routine found a different definition in the scandal sheets: the wild revelries engineered by Bram, midnight brawls, fortunes won and lost at the gaming tables. Yet for Whit, such things had long ago lost their sheen. His hours in sundry clubs and gaming hells proved the only aspect of his life that gave him any exhilaration. Even that could develop a pall. He had begun to wager larger and larger sums to seize a measure of excitement.
Since that night almost a week ago, nothing in Whit’s life had been standard. The discovery of magic, of supernatural beings, of demons and ghosts and sinister twins and the Devil himself—it tended to recontextualize one’s old perspective, so that what had been thought of as the entire world was, in fact, a child’s marble. Easily displaced, knocked aside by something larger, with the potential to roll away and be entirely lost.
The past twenty-four hours destroyed any sense of stability. He was no longer James Sherbourne, Lord Whitney. His title meant nothing. His estates and their vast incomes did not matter. No one cared if he attended Parliament. He was only a man. Battling for his very soul, trying to prevent the Devil from creating a literal Hell on earth.
As a gambler, he knew that the odds were against him. He had his ability to manipulate the odds—though that could not be relied upon—and his own skill as a fighter.
He also had, as an ally, Zora.
They shared a meal in the tavern’s lone private dining room. They were both famished, and the mad Roman ghost—a
ghost
, with whom he had
conversed
—had exhausted her supply of energy. The spirit had winked out suddenly. Whit and Zora had been left alone in the room, and the air had shimmered not just with the ghost’s residual magic, but also with the tangled desire he and Zora felt for one another. A meal was a much easier and less complex hunger to satisfy.
More curious and suspicious gazes followed them as they moved through the inn’s main taproom. Whispers buzzed like dung-loving flies around the fine gentleman and the pretty but certainly devious Gypsy. Considering that not twelve hours earlier Whit had battled with genuine hellspawn, such petty comments by rustics ought not to trouble him.
“You and I have far greater enemies to contend with than these
baulos
.” Zora kept her voice low, her words only for him.
Yet it
did
trouble him. As he guided Zora through the taproom toward the stairs leading to the first floor, he sent every one of the whispering fools his coldest, sharpest, and most aristocratic stare. It was a look that said, quite plainly,
You are nothing. You are all nothing.
The taproom fell silent, and many pairs of eyes returned guiltily to contemplation of shoes.
He wrestled with the notion of standing in the middle of the room and announcing that Zora had shown more valor and character in a week than any of those miserable curs might demonstrate in the course of their entire lives. She had claw marks from
demons
on her flesh. The best the patrons of The Red Hart might claim was a gouty leg or an abscess from a rotten tooth.
“Come upstairs,” Zora murmured. “These situations get dangerous quickly.” She glanced around the room. “Outnumbered, our chances here are bad.
Wafodu guero
isn’t the only creature with darkness inside.”
He let himself be led, her fingers threaded with his. Followed her up the stairs, where shadows were thicker and smoke from the taproom hearth gathered. Voices downstairs recommenced, first with trepidation and then returning to usual levels. Gossiping, no doubt. Speculation. Whit decided that he didn’t care. There
was
far too much at stake besides the good opinion of The Red Hart.
At the top of the stairs, in the dark hallway between rooms, Whit stopped. Zora, feeling the tug on her arm, also stopped walking. She half turned to him, and he saw in the dim hallway that she raised one questioning brow.
“Zora,” he said, because saying her name gave him pleasure. It was so like her. Hard and soft. Exotic yet accessible.
“Whit,” she answered.
He went to her. Stalked her. She kept her ground until their torsos met, and they moved together—he forward, she backward—stopping when her back met the wall. She tipped her chin up, keeping her gaze locked with his. Enough firelight filtered up from the stairs that he saw the gleam of her eyes, as dark and alluring as secrets. The light also revealed tantalizing glimpses of her throat, her upper chest, and the delicious rise of her breasts above the neckline of her blouse.
They pressed close together. He felt the rise and fall of her breath, a counterrhythm to his own. His hand rose up to trace from her jaw to her neck to just above her breasts, then back up again. She felt like hot silk.
He lowered his head. Their lips met, mouths opened. Their tongues stroked against each other.
Her lips were silken beneath his, full and warm. Within, she tasted of wine and her own flavor. Spicy and lush. His head spun, and he let himself spin with it.
Their hands still clasped, and he brought his other hand down to claim hers. Arms straight down at their sides, bodies pressed fully against each other, chest to chest, stomach to stomach. Her thighs beneath his. Her hips cupping his. Only their mouths moved, drinking deeply of one another.
Need for her spiraled through him in torrid currents. He had wanted her from the moment he had seen her. Beautiful girl. Wild thing. Dark hair and dark, taunting eyes. It had been a covetous wanting, based on instinct. He saw. He wanted.
Now ... now he knew her. The cutting edge of her temper, the forged steel of her spine, her clever mind and pleasure in cunning. And it stoked the fire of his desire, for she was not a novelty but a woman, with the depth and frailties and strength of a woman.
Balance shifted, and she met his power and insistence with her own, her body alive and demanding. An unexpected equality.
He deepened the kiss, and she made a sound, part moan, part growl. The sound traveled directly to his groin, drawing on his cock with invisible velvet hands.
All he wanted was to be inside her, yet the sound of a footstep on the stairs below caused him to break the kiss.
Her eyes were heavy lidded, her mouth was swollen. They walked together to their room. Hand shaking, he found the key and unlocked the door. As he did so, he calculated the number of paces from the door to the bed.
The door unlocked, he slipped inside, Zora right behind him.
Livia, the mad Roman ghost, waited for them.
A week earlier, Whit would have disputed the very existence of ghosts. Now, he not only believed in ghosts, he hated them.
“Is there a rule that ghosts must appear at the most inopportune moments?” Zora demanded as Whit lit the candle.
Livia eyed both Zora and Whit, her gaze lingering on Zora’s swollen lips and mussed hair, then traveling down the length of Whit’s body, dallying at his groin.
Zora risked her own peek and wished she hadn’t. The bottom of Whit’s waistcoat perfectly framed the thick length of his erection pressed tightly against his doeskin breeches. A mouthwatering sight. She tore her gaze away, knowing that she would be denied use of that gorgeous cock for the foreseeable future.
“The heat of them,” Livia murmured to herself. “The brand and the girl of flame. They draw me.” Her eyes closed in misery. “Remind me what I cannot have, what I crave. Flesh to flesh. I cannot remember their names, those men I took to my bed, but I remember their bodies. Memories ... all I have. Not even a body. Nothing. Only deprivation and want.” She pressed her knuckles into her eyes.
Zora understood the priestess’s torment. Livia had no physical body, but Zora did, and it literally ached with need that, once again, would go unsatisfied. An ongoing condition, ever since she had met Whit.
He appeared no better, looking as though on the verge of leveling the inn with his bare hands. Yet he seemed to gather his focus through force of will. “You said we cannot summon the
geminus
. Yet we need a means to locate it without Mr. Holliday knowing.”
Livia lowered her fists. “Magic finds magic.”
“A spell?” asked Zora.
The ghost glanced around the room, the trappings of mundane life. Bed, washstand, chamber pot, curtains to block the morning sun. “Not here. Heavy and small. Too much mortal incredulity.”
“Behind the inn stands a forest,” Whit noted.
This seemed to satisfy the ghost. “There it shall be, in the shade of night.” Her shape dimmed, and just before she vanished, she called, “It seeks to drag me back into oblivion. We must act quickly, quickly before—”
And then she was gone.
Whit and Zora stood alone in the bedchamber. She glanced longingly at the bed. The bedclothes lay in twisted heaps, holding the patterns her and Whit’s bodies had made as they had writhed together. By
gorgio
standards, it was not a large bed, but it would be more than sufficient for two to lie close together, if not atop one another.
“Don’t,” Whit warned lowly.
Muttering curses in Romani, Zora gathered up her few belongings. She had not taken much, only changes of clothing, needle and thread, small mementos of home such as her mother’s hairbrush and her grandmother’s ebony fan.
Whit also had a pack, which he slung over his shoulder after buckling on his curved sword.
“You did not take any of the gowns I had made for you.”
“Impossible for me to accept them.” Though it had been torture not to do so.
His face was carved of candlelight and shadow as he stared at her. “I cannot help but picture you in that golden silk dress. How like an otherworld enchantress you would have looked, all dark and gold. I would have been the envy of every man who beheld you.”
She fought against a surge of longing, not just for the beautiful gowns, but for a path she and Whit could never walk together.
“Envy is a sin,” she said, hefting her satchel. She stepped back when Whit tried to take the bag from her. “I carry my own burdens.”
He sent her a speaking glance but did not again attempt to take her satchel. They exited the chamber and moved quickly through the hallway, past the memory of themselves kissing passionately, then down to the main floor of the inn. Silence from the taproom greeted their reappearance. Whit did not bother to settle with the landlord. Instead, he left a pile of coin on the desk.
They left the inn without speaking, and the ostler soon brought their saddled, rested horses from the stable and secured their baggage. Whit handed the man more coin, which the ostler received gratefully.
Whit turned to her, but Zora had already swung herself up into the saddle. Rom men were most adept with horses, and many Rom women knew their way around the animals. Zora had been riding soon after she learned to walk. Her cousin Ajan had even secretly taught her a few trick riding moves, though he begged her not to tell anyone lest he incur ridicule, a thrashing, or both.
She watched Whit leap into the saddle with an agility and speed any
Romani chal
would envy. Once he was mounted, they walked their horses out of the yard and toward the forest.
Had she been inside too long? Trapped within
gorgio
walls? For she never did find the woods a frightening place, not until this moment. They loomed dark and sinister just beyond the ring of light thrown by the inn. To her, the trees were tall skeletons rattling their bones in anticipation, expecting her.
She began to talk. “I saw a play about a knight and a lady at a fair. A wicked sorcerer kidnapped a lady and had her guarded by a pasteboard dragon. The knight killed the dragon while the lady screamed.”
They guided their horses off the main road and onto a lane that led toward the waiting forest. Wind stirred the branches, and they scraped against each other like fingernails scratching the inside of a coffin.
“What good does screaming do?” Zora could not stop her tongue. She talked to beat back her fear, though it was a paltry defense. “At the least, she could have distracted the dragon so the knight could get a decent shot with his lance. But no, she just stood there and shrieked while the knight defeated the sorcerer, too. Then he brought her the dragon’s head and she still spurned him for letting her be kidnapped in the first place. He lay down on the floor and died from a broken heart. Then she died. It was the most ridiculous spectacle I’d ever seen.”