Moonshadow

Chapter One

After another night filled with nightmares, Sophie overslept. When she finally woke and looked blearily around her bedroom, she could tell by the angle of the light along the edges of the blinds that the day was no longer new.

The day had, in fact, not been new for some time. Her stomach took a nosedive as she snatched up her alarm clock. Damn it. Her technology curse had struck again. Resorting to an old-fashioned windup clock hadn’t helped in the slightest, and the clock’s hands had stopped at 4:26.

Ignoring the flare of aches in her shoulder, abdomen, and right thigh, she shoved upright and limped into the living room to check her cell phone. The screen confirmed what she already knew. She was horribly late.

Now she was faced with a choice that no coffee-drinking witch ever wanted to face. She could either fix coffee or throw her runes for a quick reading before she showered and left for her meeting.

A good night’s sleep had become a thing of the past, and she really needed that caffeine. But leaving her apartment without doing a reading had become unthinkable. Not since the shooting. She never missed throwing the runes in the morning for whatever message, good or bad, the reading might be able to tell her about the day.

She could cancel the meeting, and for a moment temptation tugged at her. Part of her wanted to drink coffee in the dark with the curtains shut while listening to the distant sounds of LA traffic, but that was how she had spent most of her time since being released from the hospital.

She needed a new game plan for how to approach life, and she wasn’t going to find one in the shadows of her apartment. The only things lurking here were memories, second-guessing past actions, and regrets.

Getting out in the fresh air and talking to someone she didn’t know might not solve any of her problems, but it would be a step outside her door. A step somewhere else. Maybe even a step in the right direction.

So. Coffee or reading.

Choosing was painful, but after leaping into the shower, dressing, and taking five precious minutes to put on makeup and capture her long, curling hair in a loose knot at the nape of her neck, she sat at the small kitchen table with a folded, embroidered tablecloth and the worn velvet bag that held her rune stones.

She paused only for a moment to glare at the stupid, time-consuming percolator sitting on her stove. She had bought the pot to replace the stupid Keurig that had stopped working a few months back.

Turning to the business at hand, she unfolded the small tablecloth. She had stitched the gold thread embroidery on the royal blue cloth herself. The project had taken her weeks. As she didn’t embroider as a regular hobby, the symbols didn’t look professional or even, but the detail was meticulous, and every stitch was imbued with the invocations she had whispered as she worked on the cloth.

She used the small tablecloth for only one thing. As she carefully spread it flat, magic unfurled, changing the air above it where it lay. Holding the bag of runes in her right hand, she placed her left palm at the center of the cloth and centered herself.

Before the shooting, she would have just left the apartment without throwing the runes. The thought caused her to hesitate. It was not the best idea to rush through a reading, and she was going to be late as it was.

But no. Sometimes things change irrevocably. You turn a corner, hear a new song, read a book, fall in or out of love, or look at a painting in a different light.

Or you get shot several times.

Then no matter how you try, you can’t unsee or unexperience something to make life what it used to be. The river always flowed downstream.

She poured the runes into her hand, concentrated on her near future, and tossed them gently onto the cloth. They were pretty, made of polished rose quartz with the runes etched into the stone and painted gold, and they showed brilliantly against the rich blue cloth.

She preferred Nordic rune stones over divination cards with painted pictures because the stones opened the right mental pathways for her. The images that came were true divination, not images created by some unknown commercial artist.

Concepts tumbled and shifted in her mind as she watched the stones roll to a stop. Raidho, for travel. Thurisaz, destruction and defense. Hagalaz, destructive, uncontrollable forces. Dagaz, the stone for breakthrough. Then she let her gaze go unfocused as she stared at the pattern they made.

That was when the visions came, when her attention to the rune patterns created windows into fate.

Silence in her small apartment. Distantly she heard the dead clock begin to tick again.

She listened to the breath she took. Let her eyelids fall in a blink.

As she opened her eyes, she caught a glimpse of a strange landscape. A new wind blew through the apartment, ruffling her hair and bringing with it a faint, acrid scent like smoke.

The scent meant violence and danger. Like other messages the wind brought to her from time to time, it wasn’t a physical scent but intuitive and all too familiar.

Adrenaline spiked, causing a ghost of fiery pain to ripple through her body, localized in three places—her left shoulder, right thigh, and just under her ribs on the right side. As she pressed her hand to her abdomen, the figure of a man appeared.

He was turned away so that she looked at dark hair, the long, strong line of his neck, and broad shoulders.

He stood so close she felt like she could reach out to touch him and, oh my gods, all that Power he carried. How could one physical body contain it all? It was as if his skin thinly veiled a lightning bolt. He wasn’t human. He couldn’t be. He had to be one of the Elder Races.

The man was so vivid he made everything else around her pale by comparison. Even though she knew better, she lifted one of her hands and reached toward him. He was only a vision. He wasn’t really here in her apartment.

Then he turned his head, and he looked straight at her.

No. That had to be an illusion. He couldn’t be looking at her, not in her vision, stimulated by a spell of her own casting.

She received the impression of a strikingly handsome face, the planes and angles so sharp they appeared as if cut from an immortal blade. His glittering dark eyes held an indomitable will and a chilling ferocity.

Power shifted as he brought his body around to face her. So smoothly he moved, with a killer’s grace that was purely inhuman. It caused the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck to rise. He held a sword clenched in one fist, and the long, wicked blade dripped with crimson blood. The gold of a heavy signet ring winked on his ring finger.

The sight slammed into her along with a realization.

He turned to face her.

He saw her and turned to face her.

Shock rocked her back in her seat. She parted her lips to say something. Whoops, or maybe Hi there. Or, I’m sorry.

The kind of thing you would say if you accidentally dialed a wrong number, or stepped on someone’s foot, or got your psychic wires crossed.

Or interrupted a deadly immortal creature in the middle of a killing…

While she stared, the male’s fine-cut nostrils flared. He flung a hand out toward her, fingers outspread, his own cruelly beautiful mouth shifting as he spat out a word. A lightning bolt of Power shot toward her. She felt it coming, a spear of pure, sizzling malice.

That wasn’t supposed to happen in a vision either. What if it hit her?

Before she had fully formed the intention, she grabbed the edge of the magic cloth and yanked. Stones flew around the kitchen, breaking the pattern.

The vision shattered so hard it left her head aching, or maybe that was an echo from the psychic attack the man had flung at her. He vanished, along with the landscape. The lightning bolt never landed, although the image remained burned into her retina.

Her heartbeat galloped like a runaway horse while adrenaline pounded through her veins. As her vision cleared, she pressed shaking fingers against equally unsteady lips and looked around the familiar landscape of her apartment, taking in each detail in an effort to ground herself.

What the royal fuck was that? She had never experienced anything like that, and she had been practicing magic for as long as she could remember. Had the vision been so vivid it simply overwhelmed her sense of her immediate physical reality?

It couldn’t have been real.

Could it?

Her head said no, but her gut said yes. He had behaved exactly as though he had seen her. She had sensed his Power, felt the attack flare toward her like a thrown spear. Her gut had no doubt that if that spear had hit, it would have injured her, perhaps severely.

What did it mean?

It took several breaths for her to regain her composure enough to leave. A dull throbbing took up residence behind her eyes. She strode into her bedroom, opened the small closet safe, pulled out her gun, and tucked it into the concealed-carry pocket of her purse. As she left the bedroom, she glanced one last time at her percolator with a deep sense of bitterness.

Man, she chose wrong.

She should have had that cup of coffee.

Change, the wind whispered. New information is coming.

No duh. Message received, loud and clear.

Sophie’s heels clicked on the hot city pavement. With one hand, she traced the outline of the Glock tucked into the concealed-carry pocket. As she paused, she studied the nearby shops and traffic.

The surrounding scene looked placid and normal, a prosperous neighborhood basking in the southern California sun. There was no immediate, impending violence, nor any danger.

But both were close somehow, like a mass of dark clouds towering on the horizon, and they felt… complex. The warning on the wind wasn’t about some random drive-by shooting or liquor-store holdup. It carried too much weight, too much history.

Settling her psychic barriers firmly into place, she continued down the sidewalk until she arrived at her destination. As she pushed through the glass door, she took in the details of the restaurant.

The place was upscale. Located a few blocks from Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, the interior was decorated with polished natural wood, gleaming metal, and large pieces of strategically placed, high-end art. It looked too good to be true, an elegant façade that hid something rotten underneath.

But she was just being cranky. The rune reading had left her unsettled and on edge. When she thought of the psychic attack that had been directed at her, her palms grew clammy and her heart started racing again. If that lightning bolt had hit, it could have killed her.

The image of the man haunted her, like Death shadowing a dying woman’s footsteps—that glimpse of the hard male face, with dark, predatory eyes and a shock of black hair falling onto a strong forehead. His face had been handsome with an inhuman beauty but entirely ruthless, his mouth hard as if cut from stone, his expression chiseled with something that looked like an ancient, settled hatred.

Or hunger.

She still felt the tremendous shock of connection from when their eyes had met. It had jarred her out of herself so that she felt displaced and ungrounded. The normal irritations of navigating through LA traffic didn’t touch her. Her feet did not seem to quite make contact with the pavement. She was not sure she was entirely housed in her own body. Even her caffeine headache felt as if it belonged to someone else.

Because of the unknown male’s attack, she had broken the vision off too early. She hadn’t had the chance to harvest enough information. Since the reading turned out to be incomplete and unsatisfactory, she had no idea if it was attached to her lunch meeting, to the imminent change she sensed on the wind, or the hint of impending danger.

Everything might very well be related, but it might not. So far, all she had were fragments of messages, and she didn’t know how or even if they fit together. As a result, tension knotted the muscles between her shoulders and she studied everything with wary eyes.

For the meeting, she had slipped on a flowing, sleeveless linen pantsuit, undyed, the cuffs of the slacks ending above the ankle and showing off her slender feet in strappy-looking sandals that were, nevertheless, still sturdy enough to sprint in.

She had accessorized with chunky teal-colored jewelry layered over a few magic-sensitive silver pieces that she had spelled with protections and charms. The magic tinkled pleasantly to her inner ear, the jewelry shifting along her skin.

As she paused by the hostess stand, a beautiful woman dressed in a chic outfit walked up. The woman carried a pile of menus and looked bored.

“Do you have a reservation?” the woman asked, looking down Sophie’s figure in frank assessment.

The hostess’s expression was cool and calculating. Sophie wasn’t quite sure if she had passed muster.

Fuck you. I put on makeup. I look like a million bucks.

“I don’t know.” She glanced over the crowded tables. “I’m meeting someone.”

“What is the name?”

“Kathryn Shaw.”

The hostess checked the computer screen, and her expression changed. In a much friendlier voice, she said, “Very good. Please follow me.”

Kathryn Shaw’s name had clearly pushed Sophie over some invisible line into acceptability. Mouth tilting in a sour slant, she followed the hostess to a quiet booth located in a corner where a woman waited.

As Sophie and the hostess approached, the woman slid to her feet with cool, liquid grace. Smiling, she held out her hand. “Sophie Ross? How nice to meet you.”

“Dr. Shaw.” As they shook hands, Sophie sized up the other woman quickly and without being as obvious as the hostess had been.

Kathryn Shaw was not quite what she had expected. The other woman was lightly tanned and had a tall, fine-boned figure, golden-brown hair that streamed in an elegant straight fall to her shoulders, large intelligent eyes, and the kind of poise that came from education, money, and knowing her worth in the world. She had good, sensitive hands, a firm grip, and immaculately tended fingernails. A hint of Power, well contained and as honed as a scalpel, clung to her figure like an expensive perfume.

Kathryn’s cool, sleek sophistication was almost the antithesis of Sophie, who stood several inches shorter. Sophie’s pale skin never tanned, her body tended to curve at breasts and hips, and her thick black hair had a mind of its own.

After trying one short, disastrous haircut that made her look like a twelve-year-old with cowlicks, she had learned to keep her hair long enough so the weight straightened out some of the unruliness. That way she could at least braid or pin it out of the way.

At the moment, the knot at the nape of her neck had loosened as she had walked from the car to the restaurant, and it now fell in loose waves down her back. Her fingernails were no-nonsense and not nearly as well tended as the other woman’s. She had clipped them herself yesterday.

At first glance, it wasn’t obvious that Kathryn Shaw was Wyr, but then the muted lighting in the restaurant hit her just right, and her eyes flared with a golden reflection. Sophie guessed the other woman was not just Wyr but possibly some kind of avian. It would fit, with her narrow bone structure and build.

“Please, have a seat,” Kathryn said.

Sophie slid into the opposite side of the booth.

The hostess took their drinks order and left them with menus. Sophie ordered coffee. Coffee coffee coffee. After everything that had happened, she wanted to fall into a cup and bathe in it.

Kathryn set her menu aside without looking at it and folded her beautiful hands on the table. “Thank you for coming. I half expected you to not show up.”

“I thought about it,” Sophie admitted. “But then curiosity got the better of me.”

A serious flaw, curiosity. It had gotten her into trouble before. She devoutly hoped the flaw wouldn’t turn fatal.

Violent images threatened to surface. This time the images were not divination but memory, and her body reacted in response, the ghost of pain pulsing in three spots again.

She thrust it aside. No vital organs had been damaged, and the pain was getting better every day. Focusing on the present, she added, “After all, you were tenacious enough.”

Kathryn grinned. “Tenacity is a bad habit of mine.”

Sophie’s grin turned wry. “I was just thinking the same thing about me and curiosity.”

The other woman laughed, her fine-boned face opening like a flower. “And so here we are.”

“Yes.” Despite keeping her barriers up, Sophie found she liked Dr. Kathryn Shaw. Out of sight, she laced her hands together in her lap and clenched her fingers tight.

Their waitress came, brought their drinks, and introduced herself. After a short discussion about the day’s specials, they ordered lunch.

Gripped by nerves and wariness, she ordered the first thing she saw when she opened the menu, a simple chicken-and-mango salad. When the waitress left again, she cradled her coffee cup and took her first sip of the fragrant, dark liquid. It was excellent, with a smooth, roasted flavor.

She cleared her throat. “Perhaps now you can tell me what brought you all the way from New York. Especially since I threw away your letter and never responded to your first two phone calls.”

She had, in fact, been convinced that Kathryn’s letter had been a scam until the other woman had left a third message at the LA precinct where Sophie did consulting work.

Angry and disturbed at the intrusion into her life, Sophie had one of her department buddies, Rodrigo, run a background check on the caller, which was when she discovered that Kathryn Shaw really was a prominent, respected New York surgeon.

Only then did she return Kathryn’s phone call. As guarded as Sophie had tried to be, Kathryn had dropped too many lures in front of her, offering at least one or two answers about her past. It proved impossible to resist. After talking for several minutes, Sophie had finally agreed to meet her in person.

Sophie had been adopted into a family of witches, and her past was a blank slate before she was five. She had no early childhood memories and no knowledge of where she had come from.

The details of her adoption had offered no clue either—after she had turned eighteen and accessed her records, she had done some cursory research on the names in her file, but the research had led nowhere. Either her parents had long since vanished, or the names given when she had been surrendered to the authorities had been false.

Kathryn hesitated, her calm, intelligent expression assessing. Then she reached into her large leather purse and drew out a few manila files. “First I need to put everything I’m about to say into context with a little history. My late father was the Earl of Weston, Francis Shaw.”

Sophie’s attention lingered on the files while her old pal curiosity reared its head again. “An earl—an English earl?”

“Yes.”

“Does that make you titled as well?” Her knowledge of English titles was almost nonexistent.

Kathryn shrugged. “It does. I’m a countess, but I’ve lived in the States for so long I never use it. I’ve become very American. The most important title to me is doctor because that’s the one I earned.” She set the manila folders on the table. “My father was a unique man and very dedicated to certain causes. Some time ago—decades, really—I came to the States to attend medical school, and I chose to settle in New York. One of the causes my father was dedicated to was the British government. We did not see eye to eye on my choice of domicile.” One corner of Kathryn’s mouth lifted briefly, a bittersweet, affectionate expression.

Fascinated and somewhat envious of the other woman’s obvious sense of loss, Sophie looked down at the table. Clearly Kathryn had loved her father deeply. What would it be like to have family you loved that deeply? And who loved you just as deeply in return?

Carefully she adjusted her coffee cup in its saucer. “He’s deceased?”

“Yes, he died in the London bombing in 1995. Twenty Parliament members were killed that day.”

Sophie only knew the bare bones about the terrorist bombing, just sound bites from media articles. This was the first time she had met anybody personally connected to such an event.

Even more mystified than ever about what any of this had to do with her, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. It happened a long time ago.” Kathryn paused. Then in a brisker tone she continued. “He was dedicated to another cause that he began in the early eighteenth century, when he rescued his first group of children. It was something he felt passionate about, so he continued with rescues throughout the years. His efforts were sporadic and situational. Whenever he heard of trafficking or of children being abused, he would investigate, and if the situation called for it, he would take action. Sometimes the rescues involved children of the Elder Races, and sometimes they involved humans.”

While she listened, Sophie realized she was gripping her hands so tightly her fingers had gone numb. Loosening her grip, she whispered, “Interesting.”

Kathryn picked at the edge of her rolled linen napkin. “If he couldn’t return the rescued children to their families, he would work with agencies all over the world to place them in appropriate homes. Security was a consideration for those placements. He always took care to make sure nothing could be traced back to the children’s homes of origin so they never ran the danger of being found and exploited again.”

Sophie took a deep, unsteady breath. Certainty settled into her bones.

She said, “I was one of those children, wasn’t I?”

Kathryn cleared her throat, a quiet, delicate sound. “Yes, you were one of his last rescues.”

“Does that mean I’m British?” She blinked, her perspective undergoing a massive shift. The searching she had done, both through traditional means and magical ones, had all been based in the United States. It had never occurred to her to search outside the States.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. I don’t have any information on the details of your rescue either.”

Exploited, Kathryn had said. Trafficking. Sophie had been five years old—or younger, when he had found her. God, she had been a baby. A sudden wave of revulsion chilled her skin, and her blood pounded in her ears.

Her voice a harsh, uncertain scrape in her throat, she said bluntly, “I was a virgin when I first had sex.”

She was also an asshole magnet, and every jerk she had ever dated had been a loser or worse. But that was neither here nor there at the moment.

The other woman’s expression lightened with a gentle smile. “It sounds like my father rescued you in time.”

Their waitress came with their lunches. Sophie’s salad looked exquisite, and Kathryn had ordered steak. For the next few minutes, they ate in silence, which gave Sophie a chance to recover her poise.

After she had eaten enough to placate the empty hole in her stomach, she said, “The names of my birth parents in my records. Are they fake?”

Kathryn picked up the top manila folder. “I think so. This is the file my father kept on you. I’m sorry, there isn’t much in it.”

Sophie had been eyeing the files while she ate. As Kathryn offered it to her, she snatched at it and flipped it open.

Like Kathryn had warned, there wasn’t much information. Just a few pages of notes, along with a photograph of a small, serious-looking girl with a mop of unruly black hair, pale skin, a light dusting of freckles, and a delicate pixie face.

Somewhere in the conversation, Sophie had lost most of her capacity for skepticism, and the photograph laid the last of it to rest. As she had matured into adulthood, the delicate pixie face had lost its youthful roundedness and turned more angular, but the girl was clearly, indisputably her.

She scanned the contents quickly, taking in key words.

Precocious. Highly magical. Mostly human child, approximately four years old.

Mostly human. Yeah, that about summed it up.

Parents, unknown. Domicile, unknown. Nonverbal, possibly trauma induced.

There were more notes, along with a few handwritten numbers—the number of digits and the way they had been written made them look like American phone numbers—then the name of an adoption agency in Kentucky. The adoption agency that had handled her case. She flipped over the last page, but there was nothing more.

“That’s it,” she muttered as her stomach sank. “That’s everything.”

Everything about her early childhood, jotted down on a few yellowing pages. It felt unreal, like something out of a Dickens novel or a Spanish soap opera. But it wasn’t a story. This was her life.

She hadn’t verbalized it as a question, but Kathryn responded as if she had. “I’m sorry. I wish there was more I could tell you.”

The back of Sophie’s eyes burned, but she had stopped shedding tears over ancient history a long time ago. Snapping the file shut, she forced herself to think.

“You tracked me through the adoption agency in Kentucky,” she said. “When I turned eighteen, I accessed my records and left contact information.”

“Yes.” Kathryn set her empty plate to one side.

The waitress stopped by. Kathryn ordered coffee, and when the waitress returned, she refilled Sophie’s cup as well.

“Well, this has been fascinating,” Sophie said when they were alone again. She met the other woman’s eyes. “Even if there isn’t much information, I’m grateful to have the file. The most important thing is that it shifts the geography of where I need to search if I want to try to find out anything more about my past—which is something I might decide to do. But I still don’t understand why you’ve gone to the expense and trouble to meet with me. So far, we haven’t talked about anything that couldn’t have been said over the phone or FedExed to me.”

“That’s true.” Kathryn smiled. “But everything we’ve discussed was just the prelude to what comes next. You see, I’m the executor of my father’s specific, detailed, and quixotic will.”

Sophie bit her lip as a bolt of quick, unexpected laughter shook through her body. She thought, if Kathryn says I’ve inherited something, I might lose it. Because it really would be just like an email scam.

She said, “Your father died over twenty years ago, and you’re still not done executing the terms of his will?”

“Unfortunately, no, I’m not.” Kathryn’s smile turned dry. She picked up the second manila folder and offered it to Sophie. “Almost everything was settled years ago, but there is one last task yet to be completed. There’s an old property that—really, I don’t know how else to put it—remains stubborn. The estate has been in the family for hundreds of years. The last time my father was in the house was when he was a young man, which was a very long time ago.”

The two-natured Wyr could be extremely long-lived. Some rare breeds were among the first generation of Elder Races and considered to be immortal. They could be killed, but they would never die of old age.

“You’ve never been there yourself?” Sophie asked. She opened up the file to scan the contents.

Photographs of a massive medieval house lay inside. Part stone fortress, part monstrous architectural folly, it brooded against a backdrop of ancient, tangled forest. The land fell away behind the house, and in one corner a lake or the edge of a river glimmered. She looked through each of the photos, studying the different angles. The palms of her hands tingled as she handled the pictures.

The photos themselves weren’t magic, not exactly. But something about the house was, or the land, and the camera had managed to capture a hint of it.

Kathryn told her, “Oh, I’ve been there several times, but I’ve not been inside the house. Nobody has since the last time my father went in. It… stopped letting people in.”

Sophie rested her left palm on one of the photographs and searched for that elusive hint of magic. When she connected with it, her palm tingled again. She sensed a distant breeze blowing through the trees in the scene. The house had five gables.

A subtle, almost indefinable shift rippled under her palm. She leaned forward, her attention sharpening.

No, not five gables. There were seven.

What the hell.

Belatedly, what Kathryn had said sank in, and she looked up at the other woman. She raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, the house won’t let anybody in?”

Kathryn let out a soft laugh. “I know how that sounds. I’m anthropomorphizing a building, but I don’t know how else to say it. It’s a strange place. You would have to experience it to believe it.”

Sophie glanced down again at the photograph that lay underneath her palm. “Tell me more.”

“The Weston family seat is in the West Marches, the land that borders England and Wales. The West Marches is a witchy place and intensely magical, with more crossover passageways per acre than anywhere else in the world. Many wars have been fought all over that land. Once upon a time, or so the story goes, there had been a crossover passage on this very spot.” Kathryn reached over to tap one of the photographs.

“You mean there isn’t one there now?”

As Sophie asked the question, her mind started working on the concept. What could destroy a crossover passageway? Crossover passageways had been around since the Earth was formed, when time and space had buckled. They led to Other lands, where modern technology didn’t work, time flowed differently than it did on Earth, and the sun shone with a different light.

Sophie chewed on her lip as she thought.

Sometimes explosives were used to close small passageways if they were unstable and only led to tiny pockets of land, like caves. To destroy a major crossover passageway, a natural disaster like an earthquake could be powerful enough. Land crumbling, tectonic plates shifting, that sort of thing.

Or magic.

Lots and lots of magic. An almost inconceivable amount of very destructive magic. A shiver rippled through her at the thought.

“No, there isn’t a passageway now, at least not a functioning one,” Kathryn replied. “War happened. There was a battle on that spot, and the crossover passage shattered. Some bright ancestor of mine decided it would be a good idea to build a house there in order to seal his conquest of the land, but the land still had all that broken crossover magic. It still does, in fact. Family legend says from the very beginning when the first timbers were raised, the house was always strange, and it got stranger as time went on.”

“You have an ancestor who built on a broken crossover passageway?” Sophie snorted.

“Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?” Kathryn gave her a speaking look.

Sophie grinned. “I can just imagine how odd the house must be.”

“The stories get pretty entertaining. Entire wings disappeared and reappeared, and the scenery outside the windows changed. People got lost inside, and they couldn’t find their way out again. One pair of children disappeared for weeks before they reappeared again, dirty and starved, and babbling of strange adventures.”

She leaned forward. “Do you have written records of what they saw?”

Kathryn shook her head. “There are hardly any written records other than land ownership, just legends passed down by word of mouth. After a couple of generations, the family couldn’t cope with the strangeness any longer. They built another house and moved and left this place abandoned. Every few years, someone would go to check on the property to see if it was still standing. My father said the last time he went, he could turn the key in the lock, but he couldn’t get the door to open. The last time I checked the property, I couldn’t even get the key in the lock.”

Sophie looked down at the photograph she still touched, drawn there by the frisson she felt underneath her palm. Gabled and oddly shadowed, the house looked like something out of Dark Shadows, a cult show that ran on classic TV networks and had both delighted and terrified her as a child. “Did anybody try to break a window?”

“My father said he tried, but the window wouldn’t break.” Kathryn smiled. “The place is like a Rubik’s cube. The pieces are all there—I think—but none of the colors line up. We took to calling it the family albatross. It’s been hanging around our necks all this time.”

Sophie raised her eyebrow again. “Did you hire experts to try to get in?”

“Of course, but no one managed it. I don’t think anyone has walked through those halls since before the sixteenth century and only then intermittently, as the house had been abandoned some time before. The gods only know what might have been left inside. There aren’t any written records of that either.”

“How mysterious,” Sophie murmured.

Kathryn turned brisk. “Now we come to the crux of the matter. The terms of my father’s will state that I am to seek out the children he rescued, one by one, and extend an offer. Each person may have ninety days to find a way to get inside the house. If anyone does figure out a way in, they may take ownership of the house, any contents that may still be in it, and the grounds, which includes five acres, a small lake, and a small, four-room house that used to be the gatekeeper’s cottage. They also receive a trust that is entailed to the property. Both the property and the entailment can be passed on to their beneficiaries.”

Sophie blinked. And blinked again.

Grounds. House. Two houses.

Kathryn really was offering her an inheritance.

The incredulous laughter threatened to come back. She repeated, “A trust. You mean actual money?”

“Yes,” Kathryn said. “The trust is tied up in investments, so the annual income is self-perpetuating. It isn’t an outrageous fortune, but it’s enough to pay the property taxes, cover the cost of grounds upkeep, and there’s perhaps twenty-five thousand pounds a year over that. Depending on fluctuations in the exchange rate, that’s roughly around thirty-seven thousand dollars a year. Let’s face it, after so long, the interior of the manor house must be unlivable, but I’ve actually stayed in the gatekeeper’s cottage, and while the furnishings are dated, it’s cozy enough. If you buy a Pocket Wi-Fi, you can even get Internet service inside the cottage itself, although there’s too much land magic in the countryside to get reliable connectivity everywhere.”

“Thirty-seven thousand dollars,” Sophie repeated flatly. “A year. Just for breaking into a house.”

Kathryn laughed. “Keep in mind, nobody has managed to do it so far. And yes, we will pay to get rid of the family albatross.”

“A trust that can generate thirty-seven thousand dollars a year is a hell of a generous payment.” Sophie traced the edge of the photograph with a forefinger.

“It’s only a portion of the family estate, and England is an expensive place to live,” Kathryn warned. “That kind of annual income wouldn’t go nearly as far as it would in, say, the American Midwest. Although the cost of living is much cheaper outside of London. If somebody were interested and wanted to make a go of it, I think they could live well enough if their needs were modest and they were frugal. There would be no rent or mortgage to worry about. That would already be taken care of, which would make the money stretch a lot further. But in order to receive the inheritance, you—or someone—would have to prove that they had actually gotten inside the house.”

“What kind of proof would you require?”

“Photos would be sufficient, if a camera would work inside the house, but the broken crossover magic might prevent that. If a camera would work, given the position of the buildings, you should be able to get a clear photo of the gatekeeper’s cottage as you look out the front windows. Or if you could get someone to take a photo of you standing inside the house, that would also work. Failing that, a signed affidavit from reliable witnesses would be acceptable.”

Sophie touched the edge of the roofline to feel the tingle of magic again. “Ninety days is a long time,” she said slowly. “For a lot of people, taking a two-week vacation overseas is stretching their resources, let alone taking that much time away from their jobs.”

Kathryn nodded. “I’m afraid I can’t help with the issue of taking time off work, but as far as the rest of the trip goes, the estate would provide a temporary living stipend along with travel expenses.” One corner of her mouth tilted up. “Honestly, I think most people have taken the challenge just to get a three-month paid vacation. They either had no interest or any ability in trying to get into the main house itself.”

Instead of looking angry at the possibility of exploitation, the other woman still looked amused. Since the same thought had occurred to Sophie, she asked carefully, “That doesn’t bother you?”

Kathryn shrugged. “The money comes out of the trust that was set up specifically for this property. Since it’s entailed, I couldn’t access those funds for myself even if I wanted to. If somebody could just break into the house, I can stop hunting down people my father rescued and making the same offer over and over again, but other than that, it doesn’t particularly bother me one way or another.”

“You have been doing this for over twenty years,” Sophie murmured reflectively. She was almost unaware of how her fingers stroked the photograph. Almost. “You must be very tired of it.”

“Actually, it’s become something of a hobby.” Kathryn sipped coffee and set her cup carefully back on its saucer. “My career is stressful and demanding. If I’m not careful, it can suck the life out of me. This takes me outside of that, and it even gives me a reason to travel. Finding people whom my father rescued when they were children has become rewarding and even comforting in a way. It has been heartwarming to see how far his influence spread. He saved a lot of lives, and I’m really proud of that. Of him.”

Sophie rearranged the photos in front of her, watching her hands. “I’m sure not everybody would have welcomed it. Until I had a friend at the LAPD trace the phone number you left in your message and run a background check on you, I was certain you were running some kind of scam.”

“True.” Kathryn nodded. “And sometimes it’s hard to discover that not everybody has thrived after being rescued. One died in a car accident, and someone else joined the army and was killed in battle. But more often than not, people are like yourself.”

I never said I was thriving, Sophie thought. Her body throbbed again, the three points of fire in her thigh, shoulder, and abdomen.

But then wasn’t that exactly the kind of impression her good linen suit and chunky jewelry was supposed to convey?

Kathryn studied her curiously. “The notes in your file said my father couldn’t discover what your inhuman side was, so he chose to place you with magical humans. Your adoptive family in the witches’ demesne—were they a good match for you?”

Sophie’s hand fisted where it rested on the photograph.

Oh, they were a great match. Mom baked homemade cherry pies and sprinkled them with sugar laced with magic wishes. Dad came home from work every day at 4:30 P.M. They let me pick out the family dog, Snuggles, and every year, it took me until midafternoon to open all my presents under the Christmas tree.

She couldn’t voice such sarcasm in the face of Kathryn’s kindness. Instead, she said somewhat huskily, “Yeah. They were great.”

So great she left the moment she could when she was eighteen. After a brief attempt to find out who her birth parents were, she had struck out on her own, and she’d been blowing like a tumbleweed ever since.

Kathryn smiled. “I’m glad to hear it. And now you’re a consultant for the LAPD.”

“That’s right,” Sophie replied. “I was until about a month ago.”

One month ago, when good people I knew and cared about died. When I almost died.

But she didn’t say that either. None of that was any of Kathryn’s business.

“That says something about the quality of your work. They don’t hire just anybody.” Kathryn asked, “What are you doing now?”

Trying to recover, to figure out what to do next with her life. Slowly panicking as the medical bills roll in and the money runs out. Consulting jobs didn’t come with paid sick leave.

To give herself time to reply, Sophie reached for her coffee and let the dark, roasted flavor roll over her tongue.

She said, “As it happens, I’m between contracts. I took a leave of absence from my consulting job. The LAPD wants me back, but I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to return.”

Kathryn leaned forward. “So you’re actually in a good position to consider taking this offer. Are you interested?”

Sophie glanced down at the pictures of the house again, and she wanted to go so badly she could taste the desire.

The house fascinated her. But more than that, she could have ninety more days to fully recuperate while she decided what to do next. She could put her things in storage so she wouldn’t have to pay rent while she was gone, which would stretch her current resources further.

If she wanted, she could even renew the search to see if she could discover anything more about her family and her past, although she wasn’t under any illusion about that. The Earl of Weston would have had significant contacts and resources to use in his searches, and she probably wouldn’t find anything more about her birth family than he had.

Old habit made her school her features in order to hide how much the offer meant to her.

“I don’t know,” she lied. “I need a few days to think it over.”

Even as she said it, she knew she was going to take the offer. Hell, she might even escape from whatever dark menace haunted her rune readings lately, along with the owner of that predatory, handsome face.

Or if she went, she could be running right toward it. Toward him.

Ah, well. You can’t fix stupid. And you can’t heal crazy.

Knowing that she might be running toward trouble wouldn’t stop her from going or confronting whatever fate awaited her. But it would at least make her somewhat more cautious than usual.

Hopefully.

From Kathryn’s pleased expression, Sophie could tell her prevarication hadn’t fooled the other woman in the slightest.

Kathryn told her smoothly, “Of course you should think it over. Take all the time you need.”