“What will you do?”
“Be here when you wake,” he said simply.
“No, I need some time to myself. Can’t you somehow cast your magic around my home, so that I’m protected inside it?”
He nodded, having already done so. “I’ll stay then, only to see you asleep. But before leaving the salon, I will summon guards to patrol the exits to this house. They’ll take you to the salon when you wake this evening. Agreed?”
She smiled at that, snuggling comfortably and fitting her body into the lee of his. Feeling safer than she had in some time, she was asleep within seconds.
Gazing down upon her, Sevin felt a tug at his heart. He smoothed a hand over her hair again and tucked a pale, errant curl behind her ear. Soon, he would take her to her bedchamber, somewhere upstairs. He would undress her and leave her to a much-needed slumber in her solitary bed. He would find his brothers and learn what they’d discovered.
But for now, he only held her to him, enjoying her sweet weight against him, and the newness of their connection. The bond that had formed between them last night would only grow stronger over time. He had heard his brothers speak of this bonding when it happened to them, but he hadn’t understood how strongly he would be affected by it until now.
Sevin shifted, securing Alexa more comfortably against him, as if his hold might guard her from every danger. Because of this woman and his need to protect her, finding a solution that would reverse the trend of hatred and fear toward his kind in this world had become that much more crucial.
Men like the Tivolis were determined to limit the rights of the Satyr and those of all ElseWorld immigrants. Soon they would seek even greater limitations and likely even try to push them back through the gate. Back to a world he didn’t even know. A world that would be lethal to this woman.
She could not survive in ElseWorld; no human could. And although he and his brothers had all been born there, they had no ties to that world. Since they’d left, it had become a war-torn land ravaged by sickness and hopelessness. It was no longer a suitable place for raising a family or for building a thriving business.
He and his brothers must act now to win this fight. They must retain what was rightfully theirs in this world, or lose it all forever.
Growing pensive, Sevin scanned the room. Absently, he traced the slope of Alexa’s waist with one hand, enjoying its feminine curve. Along with marriage to her would come the acquisition of this property. With that realization, a germ of an idea occurred to him and quickly took root. His entrepreneurial mind began churning with possibilities.
“Sevin!”
Hearing his brothers calling him, Sevin loped down the last of the stairs. He’d just deposited Alexa comfortably in her bedchamber and was returning to the main floor of her house when Bastian and Luc appeared from the direction of the library. Both looked somewhat more disheveled and dusty than when he’d last seen them almost an hour ago.
Luc glanced past him toward the top of the stairs. “You found her?”
“She found her way out earlier,” Sevin explained. “She’s resting.”
Gazing at Luc now, he wondered if he would readily accept Alexa when she became a permanent fixture in their lives. And would she be able to reconcile herself to Luc’s place in things? She might assume that last night had been an aberration, but this was not the case. Until he was fully healed, Luc would continue to require fraternal guidance with the coming of each and every Moonful in the future. Sevin would not turn his back on Luc in order to have Alexa in his bed on such nights, nor did he wish to leave her out of things in order to foster his youngest brother.
Sevin shrugged mentally as he joined his brothers, deciding that all would somehow work itself out in good time. Because, for him, things nearly always did.
“What did you discover in the catacombs?” he asked, moving beyond them.
“You and Luc were right,” Bastian said, excitement lighting his eyes as they followed in Sevin’s wake. “Those artifacts down there are of ElseWorld origin. They likely came from the Forum, culled by smugglers or illicit collectors over the years.”
“Smugglers? Modern ones?”
Bastian nodded. “Possibly the Patrizzis. All the artifacts have been well tended, but it’s hard to know how recently. The magic in them keeps them in pristine condition. We’ll need to move everything and find a safe place for it so that I can make a closer study. Although where the hells we’ll stow it all and how we’ll move it will take substantial—”
“I know the perfect location,” Sevin informed him.
“Oh really?” Bastian arched a brow, brushing a cobweb from his shoulder with a flick of his fingers.
“Where do you suggest we take them?” Luc asked doubtfully.
“We don’t. We’ll leave them right where they are,” said Sevin. “In the catacombs under my wife’s home. Although some will fit nicely into my new
Salone di Passione
. That Bacchus fountain, for instance.” Entering the library, he crossed over to the shelf that served as a door to the catacombs.
“Did you acquire a new wife and a second salon while we weren’t looking?” Bastian asked, offering assistance.
With a forceful nudge of their shoulders, they closed it. “The formalities will take place as soon as Alexa agrees,” Sevin declared. “And the catacombs below us can continue on as a hiding place thereafter. They can even serve as storage for any new discoveries you make.”
Assuring himself that the shelf-door was flush with the wall once more, he dusted off his hands and eyed his brothers, willing them to share his enthusiasm for his plan. “Think of it—until now, you’ve been relocating any artifacts with magical properties to your home and various other locations that are not as secure as we might wish. Now they can come together here, where we can keep a close eye on them, and where they’ll be readily accessible to you for study. It’s the perfect solution—one handed to us on a platter by the smugglers.”
“You’ve forgotten something,” said Luc. “Those very smugglers will return for their booty at some point.” Sevin noted that their youngest brother had leaned his tall frame against the far wall, instinctively choosing a strategic position that offered a good vantage point from which to observe all angles of the room and which would allow him equidistant access to both door and window exits.
“Our magic and a half-dozen guards will be enough to keep such a cache safe,” Bastian mused. “I think Sevin’s onto something here.”
Luc shrugged. “Regardless, the way the government is eroding our rights, we’ll find ourselves incarcerated or forced back to ElseWorld before any of your plans can come to pass.”
Sevin threw himself onto the sofa and gave a mighty stretch of his well-muscled arms and back. “I think I have a cure for that as well.”
Both brothers stared at him. “And that would be?” Bastian prompted.
“While we’ve flourished in this world, ElseWorld has meanwhile deteriorated,” he replied. “Infighting, war, the Sickness—a veritable dark ages has begun there. There’s no question of us going back. Agreed?”
Bastian nodded. “I’ve come to believe that it’s no coincidence that our parents came here when they did. I don’t think it was only because our father was attracted to the Forum excavations.” Taking a glass from the drink cart, he searched out something that looked like water and began pouring. “No, I think they saw what was coming. They wanted us all out of ElseWorld.”
“So what do you propose?” Luc asked Sevin.
“That we put an irresistible temptation before these Romans. A new
Salone di Passione
. One that will employ ElseWorld staff, but will cater exclusively to human clientele. One that will woo them to our way of thinking.”
“And you think it will be so easy?” Luc countered. “That this new salon will somehow magically render us safe here? That it will make the Roman government decide we are an asset instead of disciples of the very devil himself?”
“I do. Sex is the great leveler.” Sevin leaned forward, his enthusiasm for his plans increasing with every word. He was confident of his ability to convince even the most doubtful. After all, at the age of eighteen, with no business experience under his belt, he’d convinced the Council to finance his first salon. “The passions of government officials run particularly high, and they are always eager for new diversions. They’ll be susceptible to the lure, if we offer it.”
While his brothers digested this, there came a knock on the front door. The one-eyed sentry from the salon appeared moments later along with two other guards under his command. He nodded to Sevin. “Following up, as ordered, signor.”
Further discussion was put on hold as Sevin made arrangements for the safekeeping of the sole occupant of the house and for her delivery to him later that day. Afterward, as the three brothers locked up in preparation for departure, he took up their earlier conversation again.
“We’ll make the new club an exclusive one, with memberships by invitation only,” he went on. “Word will spread. And curiosity. Demand will build exponentially. And very quickly, this world will decide that our kind has much to offer.”
“An interesting proposition,” Bastian put in. “However, there’s the edict, remember? We cannot purchase property in Rome any longer. So where do you plan to build this diversion?”
As the three brothers stepped outside on the porch of the Patrizzi mansion, Sevin smiled, his silver eyes alight. “Right here,” he proclaimed, spreading both arms wide to encompass the entire town house.
“So
that’s
it,” said Luc, crossing his arms. “You plan to wed Signorina Patrizzi simply to get the use of her home.”
“That’s a high price to pay even to safeguard our family, isn’t it, brother?” Bastian asked.
As Bastian and Luc took the steps to the street, Sevin only smiled to himself, locking up with the spare house key he’d procured from the kitchen. Afterward, he cast out a reinforcement of the bespelling that encircled the entire perimeter of the house—one that would keep its single, precious occupant safe there until nightfall when he had instructed that she be delivered to him at the salon.
The slam of the carriage door behind the three Satyr lords and the clatter of its wheels as they departed was loud in the fashionable street a short time later. As it faded, there came a voice from the second-floor balcony off Alexa’s bedchamber. She stood there even now in her nightgown, with her arms wrapped around herself as if she sought to contain her tumultuous emotions within them.
“I quite agree,” she said, in belated reply to Bastian’s departing comment. Noting the sentries Sevin had posted outside her home, she stepped back inside and
snick
ed the balcony door closed. “And it’s a price I will never pay.”
She’d woken from her troubled sleep to the sound of male voices and had ventured onto the balcony to eavesdrop. Having overheard their plans, she was too keyed up to sleep now. Yet she was too tired to think and desperately craved the release slumber would provide. Wandering into her mother’s bedchamber, she located a sedative there in the drawer of her dressing table. Taking it, she then crept back into her lonely bed and fell into an uninterrupted, dreamless sleep.
But when she awoke again early that evening, Alexa found that she was no longer alone. There was a man lying in the middle of her floor, his head bleeding out on the tasteful carpet her mother had chosen, and a bloody poker beside him.
It was none other than her ex-husband, Laslo. Dead.
S
evin looked up from his desk on the third floor of the salon to see a woman standing in the doorway of his office, her expression condemning. Ella Carbone.
“There’s news floating around that you plan to wed,” she accused.
He tossed down his pen, having finished the last of the letters to officials in this world as well as the one beyond the gate. They would all be posted tonight, putting his plan in motion. As evening approached, budgets, columns of figures, and other salon business still sat on his desk, awaiting his attention. However, even an angry woman was preferable to more paperwork at the moment.
He eyed her. “The salon rumor mill is alive and well, I see. However, I
don’t
see how that’s your business, Signorina Carbone.”
A variety of conflicting emotions flitted over his employee’s pretty face, then she seemed to forcibly corral them and calm herself. “So formal.” Adopting a teasing smile, she slipped inside uninvited, nudging the door closed behind her.
Sevin glanced at the clock on the wall beyond her. The guards who watched over Alexa had not yet brought word of her awakening, but he planned to visit her home again himself within the hour if she did not arrive here first.
Coming nearer, Ella straddled his lap, stroking his nape with long fingertips. He allowed her to do so only because something about her had suddenly captured his notice. For just an instant, she had reminded him of someone else.
He sat back in his chair to study her, trying to hold on to the fleeting sense of recognition. “You seem different somehow,” he murmured.
She preened, taking his interest as a compliment. “Maybe you never really looked closely enough at me before,” she purred.
He did now, trying to shake years of cobwebs from his mind. Then, abruptly, he lifted her away and stood towering over her.
“You’re human,” he accused. “Or at least partly so.” He could see that his words startled her. She looked secretive and caught off guard, but quickly recovered.
Canting her head, she attempted to appear charmingly confused. “What? Don’t be ridiculous, Lord Sevin. My blood is fey.”
“You lie. There’s human in your recent lineage. A grandparent, at least. It goes no farther back.”
Panicking, Ella lowered her lashes, hoping she looked coy. She’d made a disastrous miscalculation coming here before she’d bathed. But she’d heard the rumors just now upon her return from a furtive assignation on Aventine Hill, and hadn’t been able to wait before ferreting out the truth of them.
Although the rules of the salon forbade it, she entertained men on the sly. Often, as on this afternoon, they were human. There was a brisk trade in catering to such men. They paid exorbitant fees to lie with an ElseWorld creature. Little did they know that she was
not
one, but only acted the part with great conviction.