Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)

Except it wasn’t daylight. The moon’s magic spilled all around them, and in the privacy of the relative darkness, he was able to stare his full at the female who stood in front of him.

She was magnificent. In the truth revealed by the moonshadow, her eyes gleamed brilliant like diamonds, and an unseen wind played in her dark hair. The angles of her face blended harmoniously into a strong, feminine whole. The effect was softened by the generous curves of her mouth. Silver runes shone on her hands and arms, gleaming with magic spells overlaid upon spells.

She was an enchantress, dangerous and Powerful, and for the first time since they had met in the flesh, he fully acknowledged she was her own force to be reckoned with.

When he named her as part Djinn, she stared at him. “No one has ever been able to tell me what I was before. I had to find it out for myself.”

“Did you?” He found that he was intrigued, while his attention lingered on the shining spells on her arms. They made her look both elegant and barbaric at once. “How did you discover your nature, if no one was able to tell you? Didn’t your family know?”

“When I was five, I was adopted into a family of witches. It wasn’t a good experience, and I left home when I was eighteen. But I had plenty of training while I lived with them, and I already knew there was something odd about me when I left. Something not quite human.”

“Did that bother your adopted family?”

She snorted. “When I was younger, I liked to blame how they treated me on that unknown part of me, but the truth was, they were just predatory jerks. They trained their children in witchcraft to work in the family business. I was very magical and not quite theirs, so I was expected to work harder than everyone else to justify my place. They made their affection conditional on how well I did, and I never quite measured up. I was never quite good enough, so I always had to keep working harder and harder. They made a good profit off me for a while until I was old enough to understand what they were doing and choose a better life for myself.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That is a subtle kind of cruelty, especially to a child who doesn’t have the defenses and filters that an adult has.”

“Yes.” She turned away from the house and picked her way carefully along the flagstone path back to the Mini, and he strode along beside her. “Anyway, I left home as soon as I could, and I traveled from demesne to demesne and talked to the most knowledgeable people I could find in each place. When I reached the Demonkind demesne in Houston, I found my answer with the Djinn. I stayed with them for a while and learned what I could, then I made my way west and spent a few years with my teacher in Nevada before getting the consultant job in LA. So there you have it—twenty-nine years encapsulated in a few sentences.”

“For you to carry Djinn magic, the Djinn in your past must have fallen into flesh and mated with your human ancestor.”

“That’s my understanding.”

From what little Nikolas knew, the rare Djinn who fell into flesh were typically not fertile or able to bear children. He murmured, “You are a very rare occurrence, Sophie Ross.”

“I’ve been called less flattering things. ‘Anomaly,’ ‘abnormality.’ Personally, I like ‘statistical outlier’ the best.” Several yards from the car, she swung around to confront him. “I don’t like being followed. What are you doing here?”

He smiled to himself. She had drawn him out of the shadow of the house, into the open clearing where she could see more clearly. If he wasn’t careful, he might end up liking this almost-human female.

“Earlier you said that now we’ve met, we’re done. I don’t believe you,” he told her. Then he switched to telepathy. And Robin is going to get you killed. If he escaped from the one who was holding him prisoner, she’s going to come after him.

Isabeau, you mean? she said. The Fae Queen of the Light Court is going to come here, to me?

He clenched his teeth and gave her a dark look.

She laughed, and the wind picked up the sound, carrying it across the open space. The wind loved her, Nikolas noted. He barely felt the breeze in passing, but it played with her hair constantly.

She told him, Did you think I wouldn’t notice when you said “Queen” earlier, or I wouldn’t put two and two together? I read a few things before I came, so I’m not quite as ignorant as you might think. Your enemy is the Light Court. I’m guessing that makes you a member of the Dark Court, and probably one of high standing, but I’m not going to make any assumptions—from what I’ve heard and read about her, I’m guessing Isabeau has a talent for making enemies.

He did not like how much he enjoyed the sound of her laughter. He did not like the casual way she stated her assumptions, even if she was right.

“And the more I see of you, the more I’m convinced you’re going to die badly of your own stupidity,” he growled aloud.

That caused her to laugh harder. “Well, that could certainly be true.”

Some angry impulse propelled him forward into her personal space. She turned her face up to him, and her eyes sparkled like precious jewels while the moonlight on her skin was unutterably lovely.

She looked too calm for his peace of mind, too unruffled, and far too beautiful, and his wayward thoughts had turned too poetic.

He snapped in a low tone, “You do not take this nearly seriously enough. You might be talented at your own magic. I believe you. I see that message written clearly in the runes you bear on your skin. But if you try to stand against her, she will obliterate you. She has more Power at her command than you can possibly imagine, and she has killed many of us—strong, mature warriors who were just as talented and as experienced as you are. She caused this to happen.”

With a sweeping, violent gesture, he indicated the landscape around them.

She looked around, her expression finally sobering. “She’s the one who broke the crossover passageway?”

“Not her personally.” The bloody memories caused him to clench his fists while a muscle leaped in his jaw. “That was Morgan, the Captain of her Hounds.”

“Morgan le Fae,” she whispered.

“You’ve heard of him,” Nikolas said, turning to watch her expression closely.

“I think almost everyone with some kind of tie to the magical has heard of the most famous bard and sorcerer of the Middle Ages. I can’t imagine how a human has managed to live so long, let alone have the Power that could cause this kind of destruction.” A shudder seemed to pass through her body, and she rubbed her arms. She glanced at him. “Were you here when it happened?”

“Yes,” he replied shortly. “It was one of the most terrible things I’ve ever seen, and I have seen many terrible things and lived a very long time. Much longer than your twenty-nine years.”