Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)

He stepped inside and craned his neck to try to see up the chimney, but it was too dark to see past a few feet. It was possible something could have nested in the crevice. Could there be any creatures living inside the house? How would they exist, and what would they have fed on? He could always light a fire to find out.

All in all, the hall looked plenty big enough to hold eight men who were used to living in rough conditions. It was thick with dust but dry, with no sign of stains or mold, and with modern camping gear, they could actually make it pretty comfortable. Propane stoves should work. They weren’t technologically complex enough to stop working around the magic of Other lands. Basically all one did was open a valve to release the gas, light it, and set it under a grill. And the fireplace itself might be viable.

So, they could have shelter immediately and explore the rest of the house at their leisure. They could cook. They needed a clean water source and a latrine. Camping gear, firewood, and a big enough supply of food to last them through a lengthy siege, if necessary.

It was doable. The setup would be relatively primitive, but it was defensible, and eminently doable.

When he stepped out of the fireplace and looked around, Sophie was nowhere in sight. “Hey!” he called out sharply. “I thought we agreed this house wasn’t safe. No disappearing! Where are you?”

Quick, light footsteps sounded in the hall off to his left, and she stepped into view. “I didn’t go far,” she said. Her eyes had gone wide again. “Just down the hall a little way. Nikolas, there’s a shift about twenty feet down the hall.”

He strode rapidly over to her, still feeling irritated that she had gone out of sight. “You didn’t step into it, did you?”

“No! Oh, no.” She shuddered. “I don’t think anybody should go off by themselves in here. Kathryn said there was a pair of children who disappeared for weeks. When they reappeared again, they were dirty and starved and babbling about strange things.”

He rested his hands on his hips as he looked down the hall. “We need to map out the house and mark off where the shifts occur.”

“Yes!” When he turned his attention back to Sophie, her eyes had lit up. “We need different colored chalk or better yet, paint. The great hall can be the green zone. Down there can be the red zone.” She waved her hands in the air. “The colors don’t matter. I’m just being random. Then the next zone can be blue, and yellow, and orange, and so forth. When we have a floor plan, we can draw in the zones and see if we can detect any patterns.”

“And because we don’t know what happens when you cross from one zone to the next, nobody goes exploring alone,” he told her.

She cocked her head and angled her jaw out. “Who owns this house again?”

“Sophie,” he snapped. “This isn’t worth arguing over. It doesn’t matter if you own the house. Don’t risk your life over it.”

She blew out a breath. “Okay. Okay! This one time you happen to be right. It’s the law of averages. Eventually you were going to be right at some point, but really, you shouldn’t expect that to happen again now for years and years—”

There was only one way he knew of to shut her up. He grabbed her by the wrist, hauled her against his chest, and as she oofed at the impact and laughed, he snaked his other hand around the back of her neck and kissed her.

This time there was no surprise or uncertainty. He knew what to expect, and it happened. Like striking a match, sexuality flared to life and shot along all his nerve endings. Her plush, full lips were still trembling with laughter.

He ate it all down. He devoured her, greedily. His cock stiffened into a painful hard spike of desire, while she slipped her arms around his waist, molded her body to his, and kissed him back. She met him, greed for greed, ragged breath for breath. He had never felt so alive, so connected.

So perplexed by all of it. By her.

Lifting up his head, he glared down at her. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

There was something vulnerable in her face, like fine, thin crystal. For a moment she looked blinded, lost, and her lower lip trembled before she sucked it between even, white teeth. The sight bothered him greatly. He wanted to tuck her face into his neck and shelter that fragile vulnerability from the rest of the world so no one else ever saw it.

As he stared, the expression vanished and she snapped back to alertness. The mischief came back slowly, but it did come back.

She laughed up at him. “I’m still jet-lagged. It’s going to take me three or four days to get over it. But there’s still no excuse for you.”

Lightly he touched the dark smudge of shadow underneath one of her eyes. All joking aside, she did need more rest.

“Sophie,” he said seriously.

At his tone, her humor faded. “What is it?”

“I didn’t know I was looking for you, but I was,” he whispered. “You might be the key to keeping my men together and alive. You might be the key to everything.”

Her eyes darkened. “Don’t put that kind of burden on me. I’ll do what I can to help you, and it will be what it will be. Maybe it will be enough. I hope so. That’s all.”

“It’s more than enough.” His fingers were too callused to fully sense how soft her skin was, so he stroked the back of his fingers down her cheek. “How does five thousand a month sound?”

She blinked. “For what?”

“For renting the house, of course.”

“You mean, five thousand pounds? A month?” Her sleek dark brows pulled together. “I don’t know, that doesn’t sound right. That’s too much.”

“You’re a lousy negotiator,” he told her. “I would pay twice that and say thank you for the opportunity.”

That sly humor slid back into her expression. “Well, I don’t know. There’s no central heating, no warm water—no water at all that we’ve found yet—no toilets, no phone or cable. And I don’t think the bus stops out here.”

He couldn’t smile back. “This place is impregnable from most, if not all, forms of attack. With your colloidal silver and the null spell, my men can rest here in some safety and regroup. And who knows what else we might be able to achieve if we can figure out how all the puzzle pieces fit together.”

Bowing her head, she smoothed her hands over his chest and patted him very gently. “I’m really afraid your hopes are much too high.”

Her touch soothed him in a way he had never experienced before. He covered one of her hands with his, pressing it harder against his skin.

“Maybe they are,” he said. “But I’m finding I would rather live in too much hope than exist the way I’ve been living these past few decades. So can we rent the house from you?”

“You can use the house,” she said firmly. “I’m not at all sure about the rent though.”

“Lousy at negotiating,” he told her.

She made a face but didn’t bother to fire back with anything. Instead, she looked around with an eager smile. “I can’t wait to do more exploring.”