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“No, I keep the diary. Cat and I have barely scratched the surface.”
“And how do you plan on remaining alive long enough to finish the translation?”
Aidan had already figured that one out. “By leaving,” he replied. “Kilronan House is all yours.”
“So I’m left to fend off your unwanted and undead visitor?” Jack offered a grim twist of his lips. “I’ll try to contain my enthusiasm.”
The scratchy starch of clean sheets. The comforting weight of a blanket. The quick chirrup of birds beyond her window. The faint scent of bay rum. These were Cat’s initial impressions upon waking.
She opened her eyes to a world streaming in sunshine. Squinted against the blinding vividness as she scanned the room. Tried to piece together recent events.
As everywhere else within Kilronan House, this bedchamber suffered from a lack of funds. Nothing jarring, simply a sense of chronic neglect—plasterwork left unrepaired, a spiderweb crack running jagged down one pane of window glass, drapes frayed and left to fade in the sun.
All right, so she knew where she was. A mark in her favor. She also knew why. To assist Aidan in translating the diary. So far, so good. Things were returning to her mushy, befuddled mind.
Cautiously, she sat up, expecting . . . what?
The bone-grinding pain of broken limbs? Her body ached like one big pulled muscle, but nothing more.
A stomach somewhere in her throat? No, actually she was ravenously hungry.
A brain sloshed and foggy with vague recollections of a fight and an enormous man with murder in his eyes, his mage energy crushing her like an egg?
One out of three.
Her blood went cold as the events of last night felled her like a hammer’s blow. But she lived. The intruder hadn’t succeeded in turning her into a puddle of nothing on the floor.
How had she survived? Had Aidan struck a bargain? Had he handed the diary over? Was her time trapped within the limbo of Kilronan House at an end? Would Aidan return her to the streets where he’d found her? And why did that thought make her want to curl even tighter into her bed and never emerge?
To combat the unwanted sensation, she forced herself up. Swung her legs out of bed. Tested her strength with a wobbly rise to her feet. Immediately, the room took on the whirling aspect usually accompanying a bad plate of oysters. Nausea, cold sweats, pins and needles. She sank back onto the mattress with a shut-eyed moan of pure ick.
So much for hungry.
Flopping back onto the pillows, she stared up into the bed hangings. Wished the answers to her questions would suddenly appear there as if by, well, magic.
While she searched for solutions in the damask, a shadow fell across her. Aidan’s lean, noble features and bronze brown glare bursting her illusion of control. She remained a mere puppet in a larger game. A game she began to wonder if Aidan even understood.
“You’re awake.”
She tipped her head in his direction. Offered a cynical curl of her lips. “Yes, but beyond that, I make no claims.”
Amusement brightened his eyes for a moment before his face settled into grim lines. “Can you travel?”
She shot him a you’ve-got-to-be-joking look. “I can barely stand.”
He sized her up with a long, deliberative stare that had her squirming. “Be ready to leave Kilronan House in three hours.”
Anger flared through weakened muscles. Quickened a mind spinning in futile circles. All her pent-up frustrations finding a target in the arrogant condescension of this overbearing earl. “The hell I will.”
He blinked and for a moment she thought she saw again that glint of amusement. But so quickly did it pass that she couldn’t be certain, leaving only hard-jawed annoyance and disbelief that someone like her might actually thwart the plans of someone like him. “Excuse me?”
Being flat on her back was a disadvantage. She struggled up, meeting him eye to eye and scowl for scowl. “I said I’m not going.” Before he could offer a retort, she plowed on, her blood stirred now she’d begun. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked and been almost killed in the process. Who’s to say I won’t end up dead if I stay with you? And despite how it appears, I like living, thank you very much. I’d like to continue doing it for a bit longer.”
“Which is why we’re leaving,” he explained in a tone of voice normally reserved for small, stubborn children. “Lazarus won’t give up until he’s gained the diary. And now that the Amhas-draoi know it exists, they’ll be just as persistent if not just as treacherous about laying their hands on it. I can’t fight both.”
He hadn’t done such a grand job of fighting one, but she didn’t say it.
“Kilronan House isn’t safe. We need to get away from here. Out of Dublin.”
