“I don’t want to sell it.” She looked back at the house. “Don’t ask me to explain, but I love every crumbling, creepy, unlivable inch of it.”
She said that so fervently he had to grin. His attention traveled back to that open, inviting door. He said, “Why don’t we see what’s inside those walls?”
“I can’t wait.” She turned to lope back to the house, and he caught up with her and kept pace easily.
When she stepped across the threshold, he was half a step behind her. A deep silence filled the large space they entered. Sophie walked into the middle of the area and turned around, looking around her with wide eyes.
She said in a hushed voice, “It feels funny to be walking somewhere no one has been for centuries.”
“Yes, it does.” The interior looked very solid, with a flagstone floor and walls made of stone. There was a raised dais at the far end of the open space. He tilted his head to study the high rafters overhead, looking for any potential weaknesses, signs of rot, or water stains that might indicate a possible collapse.
When he looked at her again, she was regarding him curiously. “Even for someone of your age?”
His mouth tilted. He told her wryly, “Several hundred years is a long time for any creature.”
A touch of pink washed across her cheekbones. She nodded, then looked around. “This is a very large space, and I don’t know where to go from here.”
“This is the great hall,” he said. “It would have been used for formal occasions, to receive important visitors, and for the whole household to eat together. It looks fairly barren right now with all the stone, but there would have been tapestries hanging all along the walls to give them color and help hold in the warmth.”
“They must have taken the tapestries when they left,” Sophie said, staring around her.
“There might be some tapestries still hanging elsewhere,” he told her. “With a manor house of this size, there will be private rooms, a family sitting area or drawing room, which was sometimes called a solar, and bedrooms, a kitchen, pantry, a buttery, smoke room, a larder, servants’ quarters, possibly an inner courtyard, and the Shaw family clearly had wealth and education, so I suspect there’ll be a library, a chapel, and even an armory.”
She blew out a breath. “All that.”
“Yes. All that. This didn’t shelter just a family household. It housed an entire small community.”
The hall itself looked to be in surprisingly good shape. The roof didn’t appear ready to collapse. Above, a balcony ran the length of the hall, where people could gather to watch events below. He could see a hint of shadowed hallways between stone arches. If the house was like other manor houses of the time, they would lead to the private family rooms.
There was a massive stone fireplace at one end of the great hall, big enough for a man of Nikolas’s height to stand upright inside. It had been swept clean when the family had left, but a shadow from the fires stained the stone.
He stepped inside and craned his neck to try to see up the chimney, but it was too dark to see past a few feet. It was possible something could have nested in the crevice. Could there be any creatures living inside the house? How would they exist, and what would they have fed on? He could always light a fire to find out.
All in all, the hall looked plenty big enough to hold eight men who were used to living in rough conditions. It was thick with dust but dry, with no sign of stains or mold, and with modern camping gear, they could actually make it pretty comfortable. Propane stoves should work. They weren’t technologically complex enough to stop working around the magic of Other lands. Basically all one did was open a valve to release the gas, light it, and set it under a grill. And the fireplace itself might be viable.
So, they could have shelter immediately and explore the rest of the house at their leisure. They could cook. They needed a clean water source and a latrine. Camping gear, firewood, and a big enough supply of food to last them through a lengthy siege, if necessary.
It was doable. The setup would be relatively primitive, but it was defensible, and eminently doable.
When he stepped out of the fireplace and looked around, Sophie was nowhere in sight. “Hey!” he called out sharply. “I thought we agreed this house wasn’t safe. No disappearing! Where are you?”
Quick, light footsteps sounded in the hall off to his left, and she stepped into view. “I didn’t go far,” she said. Her eyes had gone wide again. “Just down the hall a little way. Nikolas, there’s a shift about twenty feet down the hall.”
He strode rapidly over to her, still feeling irritated that she had gone out of sight. “You didn’t step into it, did you?”
“No! Oh, no.” She shuddered. “I don’t think anybody should go off by themselves in here. Kathryn said there was a pair of children who disappeared for weeks. When they reappeared again, they were dirty and starved and babbling about strange things.”
He rested his hands on his hips as he looked down the hall. “We need to map out the house and mark off where the shifts occur.”
“Yes!” When he turned his attention back to Sophie, her eyes had lit up. “We need different colored chalk or better yet, paint. The great hall can be the green zone. Down there can be the red zone.” She waved her hands in the air. “The colors don’t matter. I’m just being random. Then the next zone can be blue, and yellow, and orange, and so forth. When we have a floor plan, we can draw in the zones and see if we can detect any patterns.”
“And because we don’t know what happens when you cross from one zone to the next, nobody goes exploring alone,” he told her.
She cocked her head and angled her jaw out. “Who owns this house again?”
“Sophie,” he snapped. “This isn’t worth arguing over. It doesn’t matter if you own the house. Don’t risk your life over it.”
She blew out a breath. “Okay. Okay! This one time you happen to be right. It’s the law of averages. Eventually you were going to be right at some point, but really, you shouldn’t expect that to happen again now for years and years—”
There was only one way he knew of to shut her up. He grabbed her by the wrist, hauled her against his chest, and as she oofed at the impact and laughed, he snaked his other hand around the back of her neck and kissed her.
This time there was no surprise or uncertainty. He knew what to expect, and it happened. Like striking a match, sexuality flared to life and shot along all his nerve endings. Her plush, full lips were still trembling with laughter.
He ate it all down. He devoured her, greedily. His cock stiffened into a painful hard spike of desire, while she slipped her arms around his waist, molded her body to his, and kissed him back. She met him, greed for greed, ragged breath for breath. He had never felt so alive, so connected.
So perplexed by all of it. By her.
Lifting up his head, he glared down at her. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
There was something vulnerable in her face, like fine, thin crystal. For a moment she looked blinded, lost, and her lower lip trembled before she sucked it between even, white teeth. The sight bothered him greatly. He wanted to tuck her face into his neck and shelter that fragile vulnerability from the rest of the world so no one else ever saw it.
As he stared, the expression vanished and she snapped back to alertness. The mischief came back slowly, but it did come back.
She laughed up at him. “I’m still jet-lagged. It’s going to take me three or four days to get over it. But there’s still no excuse for you.”
Lightly he touched the dark smudge of shadow underneath one of her eyes. All joking aside, she did need more rest.
“Sophie,” he said seriously.
At his tone, her humor faded. “What is it?”
“I didn’t know I was looking for you, but I was,” he whispered. “You might be the key to keeping my men together and alive. You might be the key to everything.”
Her eyes darkened. “Don’t put that kind of burden on me. I’
ll do what I can to help you, and it will be what it will be. Maybe it will be enough. I hope so. That’s all.”
“It’s more than enough.” His fingers were too callused to fully sense how soft her skin was, so he stroked the back of his fingers down her cheek. “How does five thousand a month sound?”
She blinked. “For what?”
“For renting the house, of course.”
“You mean, five thousand pounds? A month?” Her sleek dark brows pulled together. “I don’t know, that doesn’t sound right. That’s too much.”
“You’re a lousy negotiator,” he told her. “I would pay twice that and say thank you for the opportunity.”
That sly humor slid back into her expression. “Well, I don’t know. There’s no central heating, no warm water—no water at all that we’ve found yet—no toilets, no phone or cable. And I don’t think the bus stops out here.”
He couldn’t smile back. “This place is impregnable from most, if not all, forms of attack. With your colloidal silver and the null spell, my men can rest here in some safety and regroup. And who knows what else we might be able to achieve if we can figure out how all the puzzle pieces fit together.”
Bowing her head, she smoothed her hands over his chest and patted him very gently. “I’m really afraid your hopes are much too high.”
Her touch soothed him in a way he had never experienced before. He covered one of her hands with his, pressing it harder against his skin.
“Maybe they are,” he said. “But I’m finding I would rather live in too much hope than exist the way I’ve been living these past few decades. So can we rent the house from you?”
“You can use the house,” she said firmly. “I’m not at all sure about the rent though.”
“Lousy at negotiating,” he told her.
She made a face but didn’t bother to fire back with anything. Instead, she looked around with an eager smile. “I can’t wait to do more exploring.”
“Let’s leave it for now,” he said. “I need to get in touch with my men, and we need to collect a whole new set of supplies, including the different colors of paint. When we’re prepared, you and I can go through the house together. We’ll map it as we go and mark the shifts. Okay?”
“You sound so boringly sensible!” She rolled her eyes. “I bet you were in middle management at some point in your life.”
“Also,” he added in a relentlessly even tone of voice, “if two children disappeared and came back starved after two weeks, we shouldn’t go anywhere in here without backpacks filled with supplies. Right?”
Heaving a sigh, she conceded. “Right.”
“Good.” Keeping one arm firmly around her shoulders, he steered her in the direction of the great hall and the open door. “And Sophie?”
“Yeeeees?” she replied, drawing the word out in a tone of long suffering.
“Keep quiet about this, okay? Don’t tell people in town that you got into the house. Those Hounds attacked for a reason last night, and we might see more in the guise of men, asking questions. What people don’t know, they can’t tell others.”
Her playful attitude fell away, leaving behind a sober, alert look. She said, “Of course.”
They stepped out of the house, and she pulled the door shut behind them, then pulled the key out of her pocket and considered it. As she hesitated, Nikolas said, “Let me check something.”
Obligingly she stepped to one side and watched as he tried to open the door. He put his whole weight into the effort, but the door didn’t budge. When he turned to face her, eyebrows up, she smirked and pocketed the key. “You’re not in alignment. Nobody is getting into my house without my say-so.”
He grinned. “Apparently not.”
Chapter Eleven
As they walked back to the cottage, the excitement slipped away, and suddenly Sophie was so wiped out she could barely keep her eyes open. Yawning, she said, “You mentioned something about groceries.”
Nikolas gave her a thoughtful, assessing look. “I’ll go into town to pick things up. Why don’t you rest? You’ve had an eventful couple of days.”
“I sure have.” When they stepped into the cottage, she rummaged around in the kitchen. Suddenly her stomach felt so hollow she would settle for anything to eat. Disappointed, she said, “I thought I saw two pieces of fruit earlier.”
“You did,” he replied, glancing around as well. “An apple and an orange.”
She threw up her hands. “Well, they’re gone now.” The monkey was nowhere to be seen, so she raised her voice. “You could have left me the orange!”
“I’ll head into town to pick up the groceries,” he told her. “Shouldn’t be longer than an hour.”
She paused to stare at him. That sounded odd too, almost domestic. His offer to get groceries was like having a dragon offer to make her tea, incongruous and unsettling. “How did we become so… so… team-like?”
His dark eyes snapped with something that looked suspiciously like laughter. “You’re such a pain in the neck, I haven’t a clue.”
Her mouth dropped open in outrage. “I’m the pain in the neck? Who shoots first and asks questions later? I bet you’re the lousiest date on the planet. Who would want to go out with that kind of nonsense?”
“What?” His expression went blank.
“You…” Her voice trailed away as realization dawned.
He hadn’t been on a date, not for decades at least, and maybe not ever, since dating was a fairly recent concept in historical terms. He had been embroiled in this conflict for so long he was barely house-trained any longer and stripped of most niceties.
The fact that he had offered to get groceries actually was kind of a big deal. The fact that he had relaxed enough to joke with her, smile, and even laugh on occasion, was nothing short of miraculous. If anybody was ripe for a protracted case of PTSD, it had to be Nikolas.
Her face softened. Reaching out, she hooked her fingers through his and gave them a quick squeeze. “Never mind. Thanks for getting the food.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, frowning. “Lock the door when I leave.”
Biting back a sigh, she told him, “I might choose to lock the door when you leave because it’s a good idea, not because you ordered me to.”
His eyes narrowed. “One of these days you’re going to say, ‘Sure, Nik. That’s a good idea, I think I’m going to do that.’”
Nik. She liked that.
“Don’t hold your breath.” She laughed.
“Give me your car key,” he said.
That wiped the smile off her face. “Why?”
“Nobody would look twice at my car in the city, but here in the countryside it’s pretty noticeable. I need to store it or get rid of it, but for now, I’d like to use your car.”
He had a point. She dug out the car keys and handed them to him. Silent as a shadow, he slipped out the door, and a moment later, the Mini purred down the drive.
Left alone, she slowly walked through the shadowed cottage and threw herself in a sprawl on the couch. My cottage, she thought. This is all mine now. My couch, my chair, my—my—
The monkey appeared. It had the same little stick arms and legs, but its belly was rounded. It climbed into her lap.
With a gentle hand, she petted his back. Realization dawned.
“This is my circus,” she said. “You are my monkey. At least for now, huh? You know, the Porsche isn’t the only thing that sticks out like a sore thumb in the English countryside. Hint, hint.”
He regarded her with his sad eyes and wizened, old-man face. When she stopped stroking him, he picked up her hand and put it on his head. Smiling, she started to pet him again.
“One of these days, I’m hoping you’re going to feel comfortable enough to shapeshift into your natural form,” she told him as she settled back into a reclining position. “And maybe, someday not too far off, you’ll feel safe enough to start talking again. What do you think of that?”
As she stretched out in
to a horizontal position, he curled up against her side and put his head on her shoulder, and it may or may not have been in answer to her question. She wrapped an arm around him.
Despite her best efforts to rest yet stay awake, she crashed headlong into sleep until the crunch of tires on gravel roused her. Knuckling her eyes, she sat up. Damn it! She had an eight-hour time difference to overcome from Los Angeles, but at this rate, she was never going to get her days and nights sorted out.
The light had changed, and the shadows in the cottage had lengthened. The monkey loped toward the kitchen and the door. When Nikolas carried in bags of food, she forced herself upright to join him.
He carried in a large amount of what looked like everything they could possibly need, from dish soap to laundry detergent, fruits, vegetables, cans of beans, packages of meat and fish, bread, eggs, cheeses, butter, yogurt and milk, some prepared meals, and even a few bottles of wine, a six-pack of lager, and a bottle of brandy.
Hungrily she tore open a package filled with two Scotch eggs and bit into one, which was when she discovered that a Scotch egg was sausage wrapped around a hard-boiled egg. Oh yum. She said around her mouthful, “Thank you.”
One corner of Nikolas’s mouth lifted. “You’re welcome. I contacted my men. Gawain is going to arrive first, tomorrow morning. Then they’ll all show up, one by one, staggered over the next few days. That way they won’t draw attention to themselves, and when each one shows up, you can paint the null spell on them.” He paused. “We might not even need the null spell when we’re in the house. The land magic could mask our energies.”
“It might. It certainly seems to drown out everything else. You might only need to use the null spell when more than one of you leaves the house.” Finishing the egg, she rummaged through the groceries. “Oh man, you didn’t buy coffee? Who doesn’t buy coffee?”
“I bought more tea,” he pointed out as he slipped packages into the fridge.
“Tea isn’t the same. At all.” She rubbed her face. “Ugh. This is why you ask somebody what they want when you’re buying groceries. Didn’t anybody train you right?”