Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)

As he let her go, he smiled and touched the tip of her chin with his knuckles. As she looked up at his rugged, handsome features, she thought, oh Gawain, you’re such a good man. You’re not an asshole in the slightest. Of course I couldn’t fall for you.

While Gawain helped her to load the last of the cleaning supplies into the wheelbarrow, the first fat splash of raindrops began to fall. She warned, “Your null spell is going to wash off in this rain.”

He paused, considering. “Maybe it doesn’t matter, as long as Nikolas works inside the house,” he said. He narrowed his eyes at the manor house. “I can’t sense anything with the null spell on my hand. Can you sense his presence?”

She tried and couldn’t. “I can’t sense anything but the land magic.”

“That’s good news, lass. Maybe it means the house will cover our presence like we’d hoped.”

They jogged over to the manor house as the first few raindrops turned into a steady rain; then quickly it became a downpour.

They tossed everything through the front doors. As she peered inside, she saw that Nikolas had lit a small fire to one side of the massive fireplace, and he stood beside it, head angled as he peered up at the chimney.

“Is it running clear?” Gawain called out.

“There’s some kind of obstruction,” Nikolas shouted back. “I’m going to have to climb up to clear it.”

As they watched, he reached up to grab hold of something high inside, and he levered himself up until he had completely disappeared.

“Go on inside now,” Gawain told Sophie as he took the handles of the wheelbarrow. “No need for you to get any wetter.”

She had to raise her voice to make herself heard over the rain. “What are you doing?”

“Gathering as much wood as I can,” he replied. “I found a couple of deadfall trees earlier in the north copse. They’re already down. They just need to be harvested.”

“Are you crazy?” she said as lightning flashed overhead. “This is turning into a serious storm.”

“It’s not my first storm, lass,” he said, giving her a wink. “Nor will it be my last. We need as much fuel as we can get. Wood will dry out, and so will I.”

“Well, when you put it like that.” She stepped back out into the deluge. “Let’s go.”

Within moments they were soaked to the skin. It had been another long day, and it wasn’t long before exhaustion set it, narrowing her thinking down to the immediate.

Put one foot in front of the other. Stack the wood Gawain chopped. Push the wheelbarrow another yard. Strain built up in her back, shoulder, and arm muscles, and soon the sites of the old gunshot wounds radiated a hot fire. Consumed by misery, she gritted her teeth, ducked her head, and endured it.

Gawain soon stopped trying to chop the wood into neat logs. Instead, he hacked at the deadfall just enough to break it into transportable pieces.

While they worked, lights appeared, shining through the woods. Breathing hard, she paused to stare, and Gawain did too. It was a large vehicle, traveling down the road that led to the front gates.

“Is that good news or bad news?” Her voice had gone hoarse.

He dug in his pocket to check the screen of his phone. “The men met up in Telford and got their hands on a lorry. They’re here.” In the faint light of the cell phone screen, he looked at her sharply. “We’ll need everybody to get the truck unloaded, but your trick with the colloidal silver won’t work in this downpour.”

“No,” she said, swiping at the water running off her nose. “But my trick with the nail polish will.”

It would also use up the last of her supply. She had enough silver to make more shavings, but she would need more bottles of nail polish, damn it. She had never imagined she would use the bottle up so fast, and she hated to let go of it.

Put one step in front of the other. Fix one problem at a time.

Gawain said, “They took a risk, banding together. We’re even more traceable in a group. They never would have done it if they hadn’t been on the move.”

As the lorry turned onto the drive and passed between the gateposts, Gawain ran toward it while she raced back to the manor house. Dashing inside, she paused to look at the piles of furniture and supplies they had stacked everywhere. The small fire Nikolas had started was a pitiful light source, and it was hard to make things out in the semidarkness.

“Nik, they’re here!” she called out. “Where’s my stuff?”

At first she thought he didn’t hear her, but then in a shower of debris and soot, he landed light as a cat in the huge hearth and scrubbed his face with the bottom of his shirt. “I don’t know. Where did you last set it?”

“I thought I put it over here. We need the nail polish if we’re going to use the null spell in this storm.” She jumped onto the settee and rummaged blindly in the shadows behind it. Her questing fingers brushed a hard, pebbled surface she recognized as her suitcase. “Got it!”

While Nikolas stacked more logs on his small test fire, she hauled the suitcase over the back of the settee and wheeled it over to the hearth, where she knelt to open it to rummage through her things. A chill had set in the house with the storm, and fine tremors ran through her muscles. Soon her teeth were chattering. Her body was a mass of aches and pains.

Then Nikolas walked up. He squatted to wrap a blanket around her. For a moment his arms remained around her torso, then they loosened. “You look like a drowned cat,” he said, his eyes both shadowed and lit by the nearby flames. “Stay by the fire and warm up. Gawain and I can spell the men.”

She felt spent, and she wasn’t going to argue with him. She located the bottle of nail polish and gave him a pointed look. “Have either you or Gawain ever used nail polish before?”

His eyes narrowed. “I think it’s safe for me to speak for him when I say no.”

Giving him an exhausted grin, she slapped the bottle in his hand. “Don’t apply it to wet skin. It takes a few minutes to dry, then you’re good to go. Nobody should go back out in the rain until their rune is dry to the touch. Gawain and I think the land magic is going to mask the group’s presence when you’re all in the house. I couldn’t sense you in here.”

“We’ll double-check when we’re all together, but that’s good to know.” He started to rise.

“Nik.” She took hold of his wrist, and he paused. Her smile died. “Don’t waste what’s in that bottle. That’s all I’ve got.”

He frowned. “Understood.”

Lightning flashed overhead, showing through the thick, archaic glass in the windows and briefly lighting the interior. Nikolas strode across the hall and disappeared outside. Left to herself, she pulled the blanket more tightly around herself and dragged one of the sitting room chairs over as close as she could to the growing fire. From that vantage point, she curled in a ball and watched as several men converged on the doorstep.