Authors: Christine Warren
Call me an optimist.
Three people looked up when Tess entered the room, none of them appearing very pleased to see her. Not that she’d expected anything different.
“Good evening, Granddad. How are you tonight?”
She crossed to where the old man stood in front of the fireplace and extended her hands to him even as she reached up to kiss his weathered cheek.
Lionel Menzies was a tall man, a hair over six feet, and still had the posture of a general. He didn’t bend down to make it easier on Tess.
“I’m fine,” he dismissed. “Gentlemen, I don’t know if you remember my granddaughter, Tessa. Tessa, this is Jeremy Knowles and William Bambridge.”
Tess nodded to the two men, both of whom had been at her grandfather’s seventy-fifth birthday celebration just six months ago. The one she had planned, executed, and hostessed. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”
The men nodded at her and turned back to the conversation she had clearly interrupted. Tess sighed. She had known it would be that kind of night.
* * *
Rafe memorized the information Graham got for him before he left his apartment that evening, but in the end, his nose led him to her.
He followed Graham’s directions to a very nice neighborhood on the Upper West Side, setting out once dark had fallen and making good time sticking to shadows and traveling silently through mostly deserted alleyways.
He preferred to remain hidden while he tracked her, since he hadn’t told her of his intentions to spy on her during her meeting with her grandfather. Somehow, he didn’t think she’d appreciate the gesture. He did not intend, however, to let that stop him from following her. After the information Graham had dug up on Lionel Menzies, Rafe wasn’t quite sure he wanted Tess getting all that close to the man, blood relation or no.
According to the Silverback Clan’s huge network of informants and observers, Lionel Menzies wasn’t just a former member of the Witches’ Council. He was the former High Authority, although he’d stepped down some time ago, rumors claimed he had merely gone behind the scenes, where he continued to manipulate people and events to suit his own purposes. And right now, his purposes had something to do with the Others.
Last night’s note had certainly come as a surprise, and Rafe still hadn’t quite been able to pin down the motive behind it. Why, after nearly four hundred years of diplomatic silence, did Menzies want to reopen relations between the two governing bodies? Why now? And why contact Rafe the way he had? Why not approach the Council as a whole, or approach Rafe personally? It wasn’t as if Rafe would have turned Menzies away if the man had appeared on his doorstep.
Rafe shook his head and crouched deeper into the shadows. There was something odd going on here, and he intended to find out what it was. He had already agreed through Tess to appear at the next Witches’ Council meeting, but until then he wanted to gather as much information about them as he could. It never hurt to be prepared.
He just wished he’d been more prepared for Tess.
Helpless, Rafe sighed as his thoughts drifted back to the same place they’d been all day—on Tess. Though come to think of it, that was right where he wanted to be, and where he intended to be again before the night was over.
Her taste had lingered in his mouth all day, and as soon as he’d scented her again this evening, his body had begun aching to have her. He hadn’t been prepared for the power of his reaction to her. How could he have been when he’d never felt this way about another woman in his life? Tess was unique, and so was his response to her.
Rafe wasn’t a man to put much store in legends. He considered himself a modern fellow, and he lived his life according to modern principles. He paid little attention to stories told by old men over pipe smoke and chessboards, but he knew something about his reaction to Tess set her apart from other women. Maybe the part where he didn’t get bored with her the minute he’d had her. That might be a clue that she was different, but it didn’t have anything to do with the ridiculous legend Graham had seemed compelled to bring up. Of that, he was sure.
He shifted restlessly in his hiding spot and tried to gauge the time. He’d arrived around eight thirty when Tess’s scent had already begun to fade from the air, and he estimated he’d been waiting for somewhere just past an hour. He pushed aside a wave of impatience and sat back to wait some more. He wasn’t sure just how long the meeting would take, but he was prepared for another hour at least. Either way, he would be waiting when Tess came through that door.
Graham had warned him that information on the Witches’ Council was scarce, but what the Lupines had discovered painted an interesting picture.
Insular, secretive, and bordering on paranoid, the Witches’ Council had been operating in Manhattan since just after the time of the last diplomatic relations between witches and Others. They had formed from the most respected elders of the community at the time, and created a sort of governing body to police the affairs of their own kind. Viewing mundane humans and Others alike with deep suspicion, the thirteen-member council—a bit clichéd of them, Rafe thought—saw to it that the secrets of true magic remained hidden from the outside world and that any crimes perpetrated by witches were answered by witches. It became a xenophobic little culture, simultaneously progressing with society and shunning it.
“From what I hear, they aren’t fans of ours, either,” Graham had said. “When they’re not pretending the Others don’t exist, they’re letting their kids get their education about us the same way the humans do. Which is to say, not at all. They have some limited contact with Faerie, though. To tell you the truth, most of the good info I got, I got from Luc. You ought to talk to him yourself, when you have the time. He says he’s met this Menzies guy—Lionel, by the way—once or twice. Doesn’t seem all that wild about him, either. He called him, and I quote, ‘an arrogant, unbending old bastard with a stick up his ass and the sense of humor of a three-day-dead golem.’”
Rafe tried to reconcile the image of Lionel that Graham and Luc had painted with what he knew of the man’s granddaughter and found himself baffled. How in the world could someone as quick and lively and vibrant as the Tess he’d known last night possibly be a blood relation to a man like Lionel Menzies? Not only that, but have been raised by the man, according to Graham.
“He’s her only living relative,” the Lupine had reported with a grin. “Which means that when you petition for her hand in marriage, he’s the one you’ll be petitioning to. Good luck. Hopefully he’ll take the news better than Missy’s dad did. She still claims I nearly gave him a heart attack. Humans.”
Rafe waited for the instinctive denial he always felt when someone uttered the words
marriage
and
him
in the same sentence. It hadn’t come when Graham had first said it, and it didn’t come now. What was wrong with him?
He’d check himself for fever if it wouldn’t make him feel like an idiot.
No, scratch that. He knew very well he had a fever. He’d been burning for Tess since the moment he saw her. Even when he’d taken her, he’d burned.
Shit. Something weird was happening to him.
Eleven
By the time Tess let Howard help her into her coat to leave, her face ached from maintaining her polite smile, and her jaw ached from being clenched for the past three-odd hours. If she didn’t get out of her grandfather’s house in the next fifteen seconds, she thought she might scream. She felt like she’d been questioned by the CIA, and thought she might just have the bruises to prove it. The mental scarring went without saying.
“Thank you for dinner, Granddad.” She gave him a polite peck on the cheek as they stood in the foyer. “You didn’t have to see me to the door, but I appreciate it. I’ll call you next week.”
Lionel waved that aside. “Yes, yes. I wanted to have the opportunity to remind you of what we said, Tess. Establishing a relationship with the Others is very important to us just now. The seers are certain that the time when we will all be exposed to society is drawing nearer. Unless we all band together now, we risk a very unfavorable reaction to our existence.”
Since her grandfather, Senator Knowles, and Judge Bambridge had spent nearly every minute of the past three and a half hours impressing that very point upon her, Tess didn’t feel she was likely to forget.
“I know, Granddad, and like I said, I got the impression that Rafe was not averse to the idea of speaking with you. I’m sure when he comes before the council, you’ll all get things sorted out.”
Lionel’s head turned and his gaze sharpened on Tess’s face. “Rafe?”
Tess swore at herself, and fought the urge to blush. Like that would go over well. “Yes. Like I said, I spoke to him and to several of his acquaintances last night. Rafe seems to be what he prefers to be called.”
Lionel raised an eyebrow. “It sounds very familiar.”
Not as familiar as I’m sure it sounded when I was screaming it last night—
“Don’t be silly, Granddad.” She lifted her wrist to glance at her watch. Pointedly. “Now it’s getting late, and I have to open the shop tomorrow morning. I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I rush home.”
The mention of the shop had the desired effect. Lionel’s mouth twisted in distaste at the memory of Tess’s chosen career path, and he nodded briskly. “Fine. Just remember what we’ve told you, Tessa. We expect to hear from you if you have any further contact with De Santos or the Other Council members. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly,” Tess assured him, nodding to Howard who opened the door for her. “I’ll call if I hear anything, or failing that, I’ll call as usual next Sunday. Good night.”
Her grandfather didn’t respond, but Tess considered that a good thing. She hurried down the stairs, taking her first deep breath when she heard the front door close behind her.
“God, I’m glad that’s over!”
Her statement was accompanied by a low growl, too loud to be her stomach and too quiet to be a passing motorcycle. Besides which, her grandfather’s cook had prepared an excellent rack of lamb, and the only traffic she could see on the street consisted of an elderly woman and the Pomeranian she held on the end of a six-foot leash. That growl had definitely not come from the Pomeranian.
Tess pulled her coat more snugly around herself and looked up and down the street. Between the puddles of light cast by the streetlamps, the sidewalks looked ominously dark and deserted. Tess snorted at her own fanciful thoughts. This was not the sort of block that deserved a description like
ominous.
Besides the fact that it was solidly upper class and well patrolled by the police, it housed three high-ranking witches, including her grandfather. It had wards up the wazoo.
Shaking off her paranoia, Tess shoved her hands in her pockets and turned toward the corner to catch a cab. If she was lucky, and the taxi gods were looking out for her, she might just make it home in time to watch the episode of
Good Eats
she had recorded before she called it a night.
She listened to the rhythm of her heels clicking against the concrete as she strode up the block. Maybe she listened too hard, because she didn’t hear anything else. She certainly didn’t hear the sound of a three-hundred-fifty-pound jaguar leaping out of the cover of two parked cars and herding her sharply into the mouth of a service alley.
If she’d had the breath, she probably would have screamed, so maybe that was why the jaguar made sure she hit the wall squarely between the shoulder blades, driving the wind out of her and rendering her momentarily breathless. It backed off as soon as it had her where it wanted her, sitting back on its haunches in front of her and watching her with intent golden eyes.
Tess stared at it while she struggled for breath, and it was the eyes that clued her in. Well, the eyes and the statistical chances of any other jaguars roaming the streets of Upper Manhattan on any given evening.
“Rafe?”
The jaguar didn’t say anything, of course, because that would have really freaked her out, but it licked its whiskers and got up, crossing the narrow space separating them to nudge her hand with its broad, furry muzzle. She laid her wondering fingers on his skull and felt the rumbling vibration of the mother of all purrs coursing through him.
Oh, my God. It’s really Rafe.
He stared up at her, amusement somehow clear in his feline expression. He looked like he was laughing at her, and the purr suddenly made Tess very suspicious.
“Get your chuckles while you can, buddy,” she warned, though she couldn’t stop her hands from stroking his thick, velvety pelt. “I’m going to get you for scaring me like that. You
will
pay for it.”
He purred louder, and a long, familiarly rough tongue swept out to lave the inside of her forearm while she learned the textures and planes of his new form. He sat patiently before her while she stroked his head and shoulders, running her hands down his muscular back and legs.
He felt like velvet-covered granite, muscles hard and solid under her fingers, even more powerful than they were in the man. She found out quickly that he purred louder when she rubbed the base of his ears or stroked his throat or the incredibly soft patch of fur on his chest and between his front legs. When she tried to pet his tail, though, he pulled it away and she found it quickly wrapped around her, flicking teasingly against her legs.
She let out a deep shaky breath and stepped backward, dropping her hands while she tried to register how huge he really was. The top of his head came up to her breasts, and if he were to stand on his hind legs, he would have towered over her. His paws were nearly the size of her head, and his forelegs were almost as thick around as her thighs. He was massive and very nearly terrifying. If she hadn’t spent all of last night with him, she figured she’d be running away screaming right now.
At least for just about as long as it took him to chase her down and rip her throat out with those sharp, white teeth of his.