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He nodded. “We spent a lot of our youth in Santa Fe.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Then why the southern influence in the front half of the house?”
“Because that’s the way it’s always been, and Lys doesn’t want to go against tradition. It’s only used for functions.”
He ushered her through another doorway. Heat prickled a familiar warning across her skin and she stopped. He glanced down at her, one eyebrow raised in query.
“Your friends include a vampire and a shifter?”
He nodded. “There’s also a shapechanger and a human.”
There was? Then why couldn’t she sense them? Why was this talent of hers, if indeed it was an emerging talent, picking up some nonhumans and not others?
A man appeared in the doorway, his smile of greeting dying a little when his gaze met hers. “Samantha Ryan,” he said. “What a surprise.”
“I’m sure it is,” she said dryly. Obviously Gabriel hadn’t warned his friend that she was coming.
The two men briefly embraced. He was about Gabriel’s height, maybe a little taller. His eyes were a vivid green and his hair was black, but, like Gabriel’s, it had a tendency to flop untidily across his eyes. Maybe they went to the same barber. Their build was also similar, though the loose hang of the stranger’s clothes suggested he’d recently lost a lot of weight. They were alike enough to be brothers—or at least come from the same genetic line—though the stranger’s face was sharper than Gabriel’s, his nose longer and more regal. A man born to be king, she thought with a shiver, and wondered just who he did rule.
“Karl sends his regards,” Gabriel said softly. He took two small plastic bottles from his pocket and handed them to his friend. One looked like it contained water, the other a pale green fluid. She guessed it was medicine of some kind.
The bottles disappeared into the other man’s jacket pocket. Gabriel turned toward her. “Sam, this is my friend, Stephan.”
She shook his offered hand. Despite the almost skeletal appearance of his fingers, his grip was firm. “Sorry to land on you like this. Gabriel should have warned you I was coming.”
Stephan’s expression was wry, as if the unexpected was an everyday event when it came to Gabriel. “Yes, he should have, but you’re welcome all the same. Come in, and meet the rest of the family.”
He ushered her inside. Three people turned to look at her. “This is my wife, Lyssa,” Stephan said. “Then we have Mary, and Martyn’s over there near the fire.”
She nodded politely at the three of them. Close up, Lyssa looked even younger than she had on the com-screen, and she had the figure to match her face and voice—except for a slightly rounded stomach. Pregnant, she thought, and wondered how different birth was for shifters.
Martyn was thin and pallid and looked like the typical vampire. Only he wasn’t the bloodsucker she sensed. That was Mary—an older woman, probably in her mid-fifties, with steel-gray hair, a face that looked well lived in, and kind blue eyes.
“Dinner’s ready,” Stephan continued, “so let’s head into the dining room.”
Gabriel placed a hand on her back, his fingers seeming to burn deep into her spine as he guided her into the next room. As he pulled out a chair for her, she murmured her thanks, and was glad he’d decided to sit beside her. There was a sense of anger in the air that she didn’t like. Oddly enough, the main source was the two women.
Mary sat opposite her and Lyssa to her left—an arrangement that left her with an uneasy feeling of being penned. Something about the two of them felt wrong. Though she couldn’t explain it, the sensation gnawed at her, churning her stomach.
Martyn sat next to Mary, his gray eyes unfriendly as he studied her. Gabriel had obviously misjudged his friends. They were never going to loosen up in the presence of a stranger. Not enough, anyway, for her to be able to glean any real insights about them. Of the four of them, the only one not showing any sort of animosity toward her was Stephan.
“You should have told us you were bringing a celebrity, Gabriel. I would’ve dug out my autograph book.”
Though Lyssa’s tone was even, there was something in her manner that was far from friendly. It was almost as if she knew Sam and hated her.
“I didn’t bring her here to be cross-examined,” Gabriel said, annoyance in his so
ft tones. “No office talk, remember?”
“Oh, come on, don’t be such a pooper.” Lyssa’s sultry tones were lightly teasing, but her blue eyes were sharp, almost icy. “You surely can’t expect to bring along such a controversial guest without us asking a question or two.”
His gaze met hers, and in the hazel depths she saw concern. But she wasn’t entirely sure that the concern was for her. Maybe he thought she’d shoot the lot of them if they said too much. She smiled grimly and nodded at his unspoken query. Questions couldn’t hurt, and they might just give her an insight or two into the people at this table. Although it was already obvious that the only one he was really close to was Stephan.
“Go for it, folks,” she murmured.
Mary shook out her napkin, then asked, “Did you really shoot your partner?”
The older woman’s voice was steeped in concern, and little lines of tension ran around her blue eyes. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought Jack’s fate was somehow important to Mary. But if that were the case and Mary had been involved with Jack somehow, surely Jack would have mentioned it sometime during the last five years. Then again, he’d never mentioned the apartment. Maybe she hadn’t known Jack as well as she’d thought.
