She felt a rush of relief. “Thank heaven. I don’t think I could have kept my promise much longer. You were wrong, Seth.”
“So Jane told me.” He tilted his head. “But not entirely. I’ll release you from your promise, but I’ll ask another one. That you don’t volunteer the fact that you’re a freak like me. Use the talent if it becomes necessary, but I don’t want you to become a target. A talent is always weakened if an enemy knows you have it.”
She grinned at him. “No other rules?”
“In the end, you’ll make your own rules.” He grimaced. “And mistakes. And I’d be a hypocrite if I gave you rules when I don’t obey them myself.”
“I think you do have rules.” She gazed at him, trying to put it into words. “They’re just … different.” She paused. “And I’ve never wanted to use the blood talent on anyone but Santara. Then I really wanted to do it.”
“It will probably come again. Maybe you’ll have a perspective on it by that time.” He smiled recklessly. “Or maybe not. If you make mistakes, come to me and I’ll try to get you out of them.”
She shook her head. “That would mean getting you into trouble to save myself. I couldn’t do that.”
“You see, you’re already far ahead of me on that scale. I must have been right to keep you to that promise all these years.”
“You weren’t right to keep me away from you.” She lifted his hand to her cheek. “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me. Do you know how angry I got whenever our parents called you a freak? They had no right to hurt you like that. I wanted to hit them. If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have.”
“You came close enough. I was far beyond being hurt by them by the time you were trying to come to my defense.” He smiled. “But I remembered it later and it gave me a certain warmth.”
“Good.”
“And it also drove home the fact that you were extremely emotional and could be hurt.” He took his hand from her grasp. “And that I had to make certain no one would ever call you that until you were old enough to have developed a tough skin.”
She grinned. “So it comes back to your always being right?”
He grinned back at her. “Of course. What else?” He reached over and turned out the lamp. “You’re only nineteen. You have many lessons to learn and many rivers to cross. I’ll start teaching you how to control the blood talent tomorrow. It won’t take that long. Your body is instinctively teaching you on its own. We’ll let the Persuasive talent go for the time being. It takes a lot more time and study, and you may not have the knack for it.” He chuckled. “Though Jane believes it might do you a world of good.”
She giggled. “Attitude adjustment.”
“I believe that might help you.” He got to his feet and moved back to his chair across the room. “Now go back to sleep and let me finish that arterial healing. We’ve got a busy schedule ahead.”
“I don’t want to go to sleep. I want to talk to you.”
“Do it anyway. I don’t want to have to help it along.” His voice was suddenly coaxing. “Consider it a first lesson assignment.”
“Okay.” She was quiet for a while. “But I’m never going to let you send me away again. Not ever. Not unless you just don’t want me. Then I’d go. Could that ever happen, Seth?”
He was silent. “Not in this lifetime, Lisa.”
Relief. Joy. Hope.
“Then I’ll go to sleep.” She closed her eyes. “First lesson?” She concentrated and felt the blood in her body slow and her mind blur. “Easy, Seth.…”
*
“You fool.” Teresa Romano could barely control her voice. She wanted to reach through the phone and strangle the stupid son of a bitch. “You said you had the perfect setup, Santara. That there was no way anyone could find you on San Leandro. Well, someone did, didn’t they? You’re sure it was Caleb?”
“I’m sure. I showed his photo on my phone to the people on Zakyos Island and they identified him. He was with a woman who registered at the inn as Jane MacGuire. She was here, too. I caught a glimpse of her on the boat. You never mentioned her.”
“I don’t know her. But I will soon.” She added icily, “And you will, too. You’ll know everything about Caleb and MacGuire and anyone else who is protecting Lisa.”
“You want me to go after her again? I told you that I shot her. I’m not sure she’s still alive.”
“And you may have eliminated her use to me.” Her rage was rising by the moment. “But perhaps not. I’ll have to see. Caleb wanted Lisa badly enough to come after her this time. If you’re not too much of an ass, you might be able to gather him up if you can get hold of her again.” She was trying to think. “I didn’t want to handle it that way, but I may have to make a change. We have to use every bit of everything we’ve got to make this come out right.”
“It would be simpler for me just to go after Caleb now.”
“‘Simpler’?” Her voice was shaking. “He made a fool of you, and he didn’t even do half of what he’s capable of doing.”
“He didn’t make a fool of me,” Santara said harshly. “I don’t know how he found us. The girl didn’t contact anyone, and she sure didn’t call him. But it doesn’t matter now how he found her. I’m going to find her and find him and serve them up to you. Okay, Caleb is good, or he wouldn’t have been able to do what he did to my men. But I’ve known men in the field who are probably just as good. I’m just as good. He just caught me by surprise.”
“He made a fool of you.”
“Don’t say that. I won’t take that from anyone.”
Teresa knew she’d better back away for the moment. Santara was obviously angry and humiliated, and that might serve her well. Also, he was a bird in the hand and she didn’t have time to go looking for another man with his qualifications. “Then prove to me that you’re the man I hired. Give me what I want and there will be a bonus for you. Maybe you won’t underestimate Caleb from now on. Just realize that he’s lethal and we need to keep him under control until we get him in a position where I can force him to finish Haroun. Find his Achilles’ heel, dammit.”
“No doubt about it,” Santara said roughly. “How much time do I have?”
“Haroun is still not critical, but it could change at any minute. Keep that in mind.” She hung up.
Teresa sat there trying to compose herself. It was going to be difficult to go back to Gino and face him with Santara’s failure. She was gradually easing all power away from Gino, but she was not there yet. And he was always ready to blame her when things went wrong. He never took into account that almost every positive thing in their lives was there because she had stepped forward and made it happen. He had always dragged his feet in the mud, and she had made their life a glowing success.
And in this disaster she would do the same thing. She stood up and lifted her chin and strode from the room to tell Gino that son of a bitch Seth Caleb had managed to spoil her plans.
But only for the moment.
*
“I’m relieved,” Eve said. “Lisa is going to be all right?”
“So Caleb said, and you know no one argues with Caleb,” Jane replied.
“Except you.”
“I didn’t want to argue about that. I was too scared. I haven’t heard from him since yesterday, but I think he would have told me if she’d gotten worse. I’m just grateful we were able to get her away from Santara without getting her killed.”
“I’m grateful, too.” Eve chuckled. “But I think that Joe will be a little disappointed that you managed to wrap it up in just these last couple days. He was all set to fly over to help you find her.”
“Was he?” Jane found herself smiling. “That’s like him. But I’m glad that it wasn’t necessary. You need a backup team with Michael.”
“True. But we had it all worked out. In fact, it was Michael-approved.” She changed the subject. “How are the lights working out?”
“Still installing. MacDuff is wildly enthusiastic. I was down in the mist this morning helping out.”