Nïx had finally lost it. Dempires? Lucia missing her target? Regin fighting side by side with a "dog"? Emma gritted her teeth. "Tell Annika I'm on the phone."
"Hold on, let me just finish up here."
Emma heard typing sounds and asked slowly, "Why are you on the computer?"
"I'm blocking all e-mails from your accounts and any that have the extension 'uk,' like from Scotland. Because I'm clever like that."
"Nïx, why are you doing this to me?" she cried. "Why are you stranding me here?"
"You can't possibly want Annika to come get you now."
"Yes! Yes, I can."
"So, the leader of our coven is to come after you, when we're under siege, Myst and Daniela are missing, and Lucia is in pain and alarmed by her when-animals-attack admirer? If you can tell me you fear for your life, then maybe, but otherwise you'll just have to take a number."
"You need me there! Nïx, you won't believe this, but I've got madskills going on. I can fight. I beat up a Lykae female!"
"That's wonderful, sweetling, but I can't talk much longer or this GPS thingy Annika has attached to the phone might actually track your call."
"Nïx, she needs to know where - "
"You are? Emma, I've known precisely where you are. I'm not insane for nothing."
"Wait!" She gripped the phone with both hands. "Do you...do you ever dream others' memories?"
"What do you mean?"
"Have you ever dreamed things that have happened to someone else in the past - events that you couldn't have any knowledge of?"
"From the past? Of course not, sweetling. Now, that's just crazy."
Lachlain returned to his study, pinching his forehead and favoring his good leg. His injury was killing him, and after the buildup with Emma and its bitterly disappointing ending, weariness washed over him.
Bowe had already returned to the scotch. "And how'd that go?"
"Poorly. Now she believes I'm a liar. Probably because I lied to her." He sank into his chair, massaging his leg. "I should have told her the news after."
When Bowe raised his eyebrows, he explained, "I had to convince her earlier that she was no' my mate. Scoffed at the idea to convince her. She was sure to mimic that."
"You look like hell."
"I feel it." Explaining the fire to Bowe earlier had been excruciating. Though Lachlain had said little, merely having to revisit the memories pained him. And that had been before he'd seen his mate get struck in the face and strangled by a fellow Lykae.
"Do you want to hear more bad news?"
"Why the hell no'?"
"My discussion with Cass went poorly as well. She dinna take the news as well as we might have hoped. The idea of no' having you is bad enough, but to be beaten out by a vampire appears to be intolerable for her."
"I could care less about that - "
"She brings up issues that the elders will. She pointed out that vampire females are usually infertile..."
"We canna have bairns. And I for one am glad of it. Anything else?" He was glad she couldn't have children. Shocking for a man who'd craved a family almost as much as his mate, but there it was.
After twelve hundred years of searching for her, he wasn't about to share her.
Bowe raised his eyebrows. "Aye. Do you see that red button on the phone there? Means someone's on the line. I just passed Harmann, and Cass would have a cell phone. Looks like your queen's phoning home."
Lachlain shrugged. "She canna give them directions to this place. She was unconscious until we got to the gate."
"They keep her on the phone long enough and she will no' have to. Lachlain, they can track where this phone call is coming from. Satellites above us and such."
Lachlain exhaled and mentally added "satellite" to his list of things he didn't bloody understand and would look up later. He'd thought satellites were for television, not for tele-phones.
Bowe continued, "Depends on how high-tech they are, but they might need as little as three minutes - " The light went off. "Good, then, she hung up - " The light resumed. "She's calling again. You truly might want to stop her." The light went on once more, then off, repeating several more times while Lachlain and Bowe watched in silence.
"Does no' matter," Lachlain finally said. "I will no' forbid her to speak with her family."
"They'll descend on this castle like the plague."
"If they can find it, and get past our protections, then I'll think of something to pacify them. Are they no' obsessed with shiny things? A bauble or two should suffice."
Bowe raised his eyebrows. "Let me know how that works out for you."
Lachlain scowled, then limped to the window, gazing out. He saw her a moment later, gliding out across the greens.
"Ah, I see you've spotted her."
"How do you know?" he asked without turning.
"You tensed and leaned forward. Doona worry. Soon you will be out there with her on nights like these."
As if she felt his gaze, she turned to the window. She was eerily beautiful with the fog swirling about her, her face as pale and captivating as the moon above her. But her normally expressive eyes now revealed nothing to him.
He wanted her so badly, but knew the harder he tightened his grasp, the more she would slip from it like quicksilver. The only thing about her that responded to him was her body - tonight her need had been strong - and he could use that.
She turned from him and stole into the night. She was born to haunt this place. To haunt him. He continued to stare long after she disappeared.