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"It's all right, baby," Rio said around rich laughter. "Cooking has never been your best quality. Look at the upside, at least no one got hurt."
"Tell that to their breakfast," Gideon said wryly. He picked up the skillet of charred eggs and sausage from the stove and dumped the mess into the trash.
As he walked past the TV, he was struck by a pair of chocolate-brown doe eyes, fringed with feathery, thick lashes. The young woman was being interviewed outside one of the local universities. Short black curls haloed her face, a lovely, gentle face. Its soft features graced a perfect oval of smooth coffee-and-cream skin that looked like it would be as soft as velvet to the touch.
But the young beauty's mouth was tense, bracketed with stress lines on either side. And now that Gideon was looking closer, he realized tears were welled in those pretty dark eyes.
"Tell me more about the artifact you say appears to be missing," the news reporter pressed, shoving a microphone up toward her face.
"It's a sword," she answered, a voice to match her beautiful face, despite the tremor that made her words shake a bit. "It's a very old sword."
"Right," said the reporter. "And you say you're certain you saw this sword just yesterday in Professor Keaton's classroom?"
"What's this about?" Gideon asked, his gaze riveted to the young woman.
"Someone assaulted a professor at the college last night," Danika explained. "He's been taken to Mass General, critical but stable. The student who was with him was killed. Sounds like they suspect it may have been a robbery gone bad."
Gideon grunted in acknowledgment, wondering what the student being interviewed had to do with the situation.
"The sword was part of a collection of Colonial furnishings and art objects that were donated to the university recently," she told the reporter. "At least, I believe it was part of the collection. Anyway, it's missing now. It's the only thing missing, far as I can tell."
"Uh, huh. And can you describe for our viewers what the sword looks like?"
"It's English. Mid-seventeenth century," she replied with certainty. "It has an eagle or a falcon engraved into the handle."
Gideon froze, his blood running suddenly cold in his veins.
"There's a ruby in the pommel," the young woman went on, "held in place by carved steel talons."
Ah, Christ.
Gideon stood there, wooden, immobilized by the words that sank into his brain.
The weapon this student was describing in such unmistakable detail...he knew it all too well.
He'd held that very sword in his hand, a very long time ago. It vanished the night his twin brothers were murdered, taken, he assumed, by the Rogues who'd slaughtered them with it while Gideon had been away from the Darkhaven. Not there to protect them, as he should've been.
He never thought he'd see the sword again, never wanted to see it. Not after that night.
He never imagined it might end up here, in Boston.
For how long? Who had it belonged to?
More to the point, who would want it badly enough to kill for it?
The need to find answers to those questions lit his veins up with fire. He had to know more.
And as Gideon watched the pretty coed on the television screen, he knew exactly where to start looking.
Chapter 6
"That's the last of today's returns, Mrs. Kennefick." Savannah replaced the checkout card in the back of a popular new horror novel about a social misfit named Carrie. She eyed the book, sympathetic to the fictional high school girl from Maine who possessed some kind of frightening power. She was half-tempted to sign the novel out herself. Maybe she would have, if her day hadn't already been horrific enough.
Her supervisor, old Mrs. Kennefick, had offered to let Savannah take the night off, but the sad fact was, the last thing Savannah wanted to do was spend any more hours than necessary back home at her apartment alone. Her evening shift at the library was a welcome distraction from what happened at the university.
Rachel was dead. God, Savannah could hardly believe it. Her stomach clenched at the thought of her friend and Professor Keaton being attacked by an unknown assailant. Her eyes prickled with welling tears, but she held them back. She couldn't allow herself to cave in to her grief and shock. She'd had to excuse herself from the book return desk twice already tonight, barely making it to the ladies' room before the sobs had torn out of her throat.
If she could get through the remaining forty minutes of her shift without losing it again, it would be a miracle.
