The Dark Highlander

She wondered if he ever wore it down. It seemed so in keeping with his character that it would be long and wild, but meticulously restrained unless he chose to free it.

She tried to make small talk, but he didn’t rise to any of the bait she cast. Fishing, trying to pick his brain, getting nothing but grunts and incoherent murmurs.

They sat together in silence for hours that afternoon, with Chloe delicately turning the pages of the Midhe Codex with tissues, and sneaking peeks at Dageus while he worked with the Book of Manannán, scribbling notes as he translated.

At five o’clock, she got up and turned the news on, wondering if there might be some small mention of her disappearance. As if, she thought wryly. One little girl gone missing in the wormy Big Apple? Both police and newscasters had better things to do.

He looked at her then, a hint of smugness playing about his lips.

She arched a questioning brow, but he said nothing. She listened absently while she read, then suddenly her attention was riveted to the screen.

“The Gaulish Ghost struck again last night, or so the police believe. Baffled might be the best way to describe New York’s finest. At an unknown time, early this morning, all the artifacts previously stolen by the Gaulish Ghost were left at the front desk of the police station. Once again, no one saw a thing, which makes one wonder just what our police . . .”

There was more, but Chloe didn’t hear it.

She glanced down at the text she was holding. Then at him.

“I bartered for that one, lass.”

“You really did it,” she breathed, shaking her head. “When you went to my apartment for my things, you took them back. I don’t believe it.”

“I told you I was merely borrowing them.”

She stared at him, utterly flummoxed. He’d done it. He’d returned them! A sudden thought occurred to her. One she didn’t much care for. “That means you’re leaving soon, doesn’t it?”

He nodded, his expression unfathomable.

“Oh.” She pretended a hasty fascination with her cuticles to conceal the disappointment that flooded her.

Hence she missed the cool, satisfied curve of his lips, a touch too feral to be called a smile.

Outside Dageus MacKeltar’s penthouse, on a sidewalk crammed with people rushing to escape the city at the end of the long work week, one man wove his way through the crowd and joined a second man. They moved discreetly aside, loitering near a newsstand. Though clad in expensive dark suits, with short hair and nondescript features, both were marked by unusual tattoos on their necks. The upper part of a winged serpent arced above crisp collar and tie.

“He’s up there. With a woman,” Giles said softly. He’d just come down from rented rooms in the building on the opposite corner, where he’d been watching through binoculars.

“The plan?” his companion, Trevor, inquired softly.

“We wait until he leaves; with luck he’ll leave her there. Our orders are to get him on the run. Force him to rely upon magic to survive. Simon wants him back overseas.”

“How?”

“We’ll make him a fugitive. Hunted. The woman makes things simpler than I’d hoped. I’ll slip in, take care of her, alert the police, anonymously of course, and make his penthouse the stage of a cold-blooded, gruesome murder. Set all the cops in the city after him. He’ll be forced to use his powers to escape. Simon believes he won’t permit himself to be imprisoned. Though if he were, that might work to our advantage as well. I’ve no doubt time in a federal prison would hasten the transformation.”

Trevor nodded. “And I?”

“You wait here. Too risky for both of us to go up. He’s not to know we exist yet. If anything goes awry, ring Simon immediately.”

Trevor nodded again, and they drifted apart, to settle back and wait. They were patient men. They’d been waiting for this moment all their lives. They were the lucky ones, those born in the hour of the Prophecy’s fruition.

To a man, they would die to see the Draghar live again.

A messenger from a travel agency arrived shortly before the small crew of people who delivered dinner from Jean Georges.

Chloe couldn’t begin to imagine what something like that cost—didn’t think Jean Georges delivered—but she suspected that when one had as much money as Dageus MacKeltar, virtually anything could be bought.

While they ate before the fire in the living room, he continued working on the book that had initially landed her in this mess.

The envelope from the travel agency lay unopened on the table between them—a glaring reminder, chafing her.