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Sienna had a surreal moment of finding herself insulted in the strangest way. Trash was one thing—if Florence thought she had any kind of claim, rational or not, at least that much Sienna understood—but how was mortality an insult? Then she registered the way Fenn immediately jerked back, releasing her hand in the interest of shoving Florence off him even as the other woman let out a scream of agony.
Florence stumbled back, mindless of anyone around them, arms folding around herself and spitting up blood. Her chest heaved and tears leaked from her blue eyes.
“Dammit, Florence,” Fenn said with a growl. “I’ve told you—”
“Wh-why,” she gasped, her voice choked. “Why canshet-touch you?” She coughed again and spat blood and mucus onto the snow-dotted concrete.
Confusion flooded Sienna as she watched Florence shove her own hand beneath her short top and wrap the other around her throat. A strange breeze swirled around the blonde, ruffling her loose hair, and Florence squeezed her eyes shut for a long second.
“Get out of here, Florence,” Fenn said. “There’s nothing I can do for you here, and if you pull that stunt again I might not stop you.”
An older woman with mostly silver hair stepped closer to them, looking between Fenn and Florence hesitantly. Her gaze lingered on the blood that stained the ground. “Ma’am, do you need any help?”
The dark cloud of energy Sienna had previously associated with Fenn swirled up into view and when he spoke, his voice was more snarl than human. “Leave us.”
Sienna’s eyes widened as the woman immediately straightened, shook her head faintly, and turned away. Not even an argument. Another person, a man, abruptly turned away as well. Was it possible he had some kind of persuasion power in addition to the teleportation thing? And how did any of that explain what had happened to Florence when she’d touched him? Another possibility dawned on Sienna without warning. Maybeshewas the oddity in the equation.
“Tell me how you touched me.”
Was it possible he had three overlapping powersets? Or one larger thing that somehow explained the weird triple combination?
And she’d always thought her family was weird.
Fenn took her hand in his again and lowered his voice as the swirling black closed around them. “We’re leaving.”
Florence opened her eyes and leveled a dark glare at Sienna moments before the black energy sucked all color and shape from Sienna’s vision once more. It left a brief negative type image of Florence imprinted in Sienna’s mind. An image that forced a hard breath from her lungs the second the world returned to her, again settling them in her living room.
Sienna jerked away from Fenn, nearly dropping her coffee with the sharp movement, and spun to face him. “What the hell was that? What theactualhell just happened?”
Fenn bit out a sigh, the sound undeniably agitated. “That was Florence Dossit. She developed an unfathomable obsession with me some time ago and takes great joy in popping into my life without notice or permission.”
“Fantastic,” Sienna said. Her tone was probably snippier than it needed to be. She was rattled and she felt like she’d been dragged into something she shouldn’t have been. She popped the stopper from her coffee and gulped at least half the drink down, further frustrated to learn it had cooled more than she liked. She turned toward her kitchen, found a light switch in the process, and began peeling her heavy coat and scarf from her body once her hands were free. “So that woman hates me because I was flirting with the guy she’s stalking. And she’s clearly a raving psycho. All awesome, but not really what I meant.”
“You want to know why she nearly died.”
Sienna twisted to face him again. “Duh.” She dragged in a breath and attempted to calm herself. “This is connected to why you were weirded out about me touching you last night, right? Which I also presume is why you were looking for me?”
Fenn nodded.
The flicker of disappointment in her chest sobered her much better than her forgotten breathing techniques. Sienna folded her arms across her chest. “I’m gonna need an explanation,” she said. “But to answer the question you asked me last night, or the version I think you meant, I don’t know. I just grabbed you. I didn’t do anything special.”
His lips dipped into a frown and he stepped closer at a slow pace, as if to give her the opportunity to tell him to back off. She felt rather conflicted about that. When he was within arm’s reach, he said, “The answer to everything you’re asking is all the same, but it might be hard to process.”
She huffed out an awkward laugh. “Guess I haven’t done the best at demonstrating my amazing capacity for handling difficult things, huh?” She lifted a hand to rub at the back of her neck and only as she did so did she realize that the muscle had tensed. Responding to her unusual spike of panic.Oh no.“Crap.” Why hadn’t she recognized the sensation sooner? Spots already dotted the edges of her vision, blurring the handsome figure of a man standing before her.
It looked like he was frowning again. “Sienna?”
The white built quickly and she reached out, the unsteadiness rushing over her. She felt so stupid. Her fingers twisted sloppily into some portion of Fenn’s shirt as her consciousness slipped entirely out of the moment.
Her line of sight narrowed sharply, obscuring everything but snow and two forward-marching figures. Both muscular and male, one slightly ahead of the other. There were only two of them, but they were an imposing sight. Yet they didn’t fill her with trepidation as they drew nearer. Nor did their broad-shouldered figures fill her with yearning.
Suddenly a light was shining overhead from her perspective, out of sight, but intruding enough to catch her attention. As if it were a homing beacon for the two figures that continued to draw closer, cutting their way through the snow. Sienna was barely able to look away enough to take in what little else she could see. She barely noticed the speckled pattern of blood dotting the snow practically at her feet before something snapped her free.
Her consciousness slammed back into the present and Sienna shot upright, breathing hard.
She was home, not out in the snow. She wasn’t nearly cold enough to be in the snow. And she was laid out on her sofa as if she’d had all the warning in the world.
“Looks like you have your own story to tell.”
