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But this far from the road, it was odd to hear someone else reply.
Balthazar rose to his feet and hurried over the hill, where he saw Charity standing beside a wagon driven by two people—a man and a woman—neither of whom was known to them. They must have come to market, but he hadn’t seen them there; two people like this would have stood out, dressed in brilliant colors, the woman’s hair loose and free like a small child’s. Like Charity’s.
Strangers were rare in this part of the world, the only part Balthazar had ever known; perhaps that was why he became suspicious so quickly. He hurried down to Charity’s side.
“You would look enchanting in green,” said the man holding the reins. He was a handsome man, and Balthazar would’ve known it even without Charity’s adoring gaze to guide him. His hair, his skin, even his eyes all seemed to be touched with gold, and he had a fine, patrician profile. His clothes seemed well made, and the new, uncracked leather of his boots shone. “Ah, and who have we here?”
“My older brother, Balthazar More.” Charity went up on tiptoe to confide, “He’s not as strict with me as my parents.”
“Then perhaps he will not mind an introduction,” said the blond-haired woman, whose locks would have looked lustrous if she had not been sitting next to the strangely dazzling man. Perhaps they were brother and sister as well. She was beautiful in her statuesque way, but there was something avid about the way she looked at Balthazar. It was the way some of the ruder men looked at women whose hair was not partly covered, or girls just leaving childhood whose skirts were not yet fully long. He hadn’t known women could look at men this way, too.
If it had been Jane looking at him so hotly, Balthazar thought he might have liked it. But she wasn’t Jane.
“Good day to you, sir,” Balthazar said, turning his attention to the man. “Forgive my sister. She is eager to make friends.”
“How wise of her,” the man said. “Call me Redgrave. I think we shall be very good friends indeed. Don’t you agree, Constantia?”
“Oh, I do,” Constantia whispered, leaning past Redgrave’s shoulder to peer at Balthazar again, the sunlight catching her hair—
“Balthazar?”
He tensed as the phantasms of the past vanished, leaving him back in his own mind, in the here and now. He still knelt in the snow, the taste of blood fading on his tongue. Skye’s face was pale with worry.
“How long?” His voice croaked as though he hadn’t spoken in months. “How long was I … out?”
But Skye said, “Maybe a minute and a half? I don’t know. Are you okay?”
“I think so.” What the hell had just happened to him?
The smell of smoke and gasoline reminded him where they were; at the sound of distant sirens, she looked past him. “I don’t want to leave Mr. Lovejoy—we have to stay—but how are we supposed to explain this?”
“Leave it to me.” Balthazar summoned all his strength of will to stand upright again. “I’ve got a lot of experience in covering this stuff up.”
The police were told that Skye had been walking home from school, and that Balthazar was headed toward downtown, when they separately saw the explosion. Mr. Lovejoy’s car had then jumped the curb; no doubt he’d been startled. Another car had sped away afterward, but they couldn’t say what it had to do with the explosion. They were bewildered, innocent bystanders, no more.
“I still can’t believe they bought that,” Skye said as they walked away from the scene, smoke still thick in the darkening sky overhead.
“Why not? It’s actually more plausible than the truth.” Balthazar glanced back at the police cars behind them. None of the officers suspected they had any greater involvement. It was frightening how good he’d become at lying over the past few centuries.
“I just—I feel awful. Mr. Lovejoy’s all banged up, because of me—”
“It’s not your fault.” He spoke so forcefully that she stared at him, but it was important that she understand this. “What happened is not because of you. It’s because Redgrave and his crew came after you. All of this is their fault. Nobody else’s. Never forget that.”
“Redgrave?” Skye frowned. “I thought you said his name was Lorenzo.”
“The one hunting you last night and this afternoon is Lorenzo. The one who drove up at the end, the guy with gold hair? That’s Redgrave. He’s much older and much more powerful. Almost anything Lorenzo does, he does because Redgrave wants him to.”
“But why?” Skye breathed out in frustration, her breath creating a little cloud in the frosty air around them as they continued toward her house.
“I’m not sure.” Though he was beginning to consider a disquieting possibility. Skye was holding her injured hand. She had reopened the cut on her hand during their escape. If that was her blood he’d tasted on the ground—if that was the reason for what he’d just experienced—
But that was impossible. Nobody’s blood had that kind of power. Surely some of what had happened in his mind had more to do with the fact that he’d just had to face Redgrave for the first time in more than thirty years. He’d been injured and dazed; he’d had a hallucination. He couldn’t be sure of more than that.
Balthazar forced himself to focus again on Skye’s situation. “I don’t know what it means yet, but whatever it is about you that Lorenzo responded to—it’s made Redgrave curious. Once he’s curious, there’s no stopping him.”
“Is this the reassuring part of the speech? Because I’m starting to get worried.”
“There is no reassuring part of the speech.” His eyes met hers, and he could see Skye’s effort at a joke was her way of trying to be brave. Good: She’d need some bravery to get through this. “This is bad. This is real. And until we figure out what to do—I’m staying with you.”
