LITMIR.BIZ

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her arms. “You haven’t been yourself since yesterday morning. Not since Starling lost his wits in the round pen. Something’s got you shook-up.”

      Everyone at the rescue ranch knew when someone rattled up that long rutted driveway, and no one had; she could hardly say a visitor had rattled her. Meghan went for a half-truth. “Got a call from an old friend of my mother’s.”

      Not hardly. The man who’d let her mother face the Atrum Core alone.

      Jenny winced in sympathy. “Stirred things up, I’ll bet.” But as she gave the mare a pat and pushed away from the stall panel, she added, “It’s more, though. There’s something…else.” She shrugged. “Won’t pry. As long as you’re dealing.”

      “I’m dealing.” Meghan rubbed a cheek against her upper arm to dislodge flyaway winter horse hair; her hands were already covered in it. “Listen, you and Chris gonna be here this afternoon to take in the drop-off? I want to get a good start with this one—I think we’ve got potential for a therapy horse in the turnaround.”

      “Nice change of subject,” Jenny said, and then she let it go. “Chris has something at home.” Their teenaged young man currently playing jack-of-all-trades had nothing if not a turbulent home life. “Anica will be here.” Anica did the on-site nursing work and had been with Meghan the longest. Rescue work…it tended to burn people out. Meghan was grateful to have Jenny and Anica and Chris, not to mention their fund-raising wizards and the rotating volunteers who handled the necessary physical work involved with the rescue operation. Jenny and Anica both lived on the ranch, and plenty of others had overnighter kits set aside for the unexpected need.

      Jenny had also been here long enough to know when to walk away from unanswered questions. She left Meghan to her grooming and her thoughts with nothing more than a parting invitation to talk if she wanted. Meghan returned to the currycomb with a vengeance, and the mare leaned happily into her hand. Stirred things up. That much was the truth. Stirred up her grief and her resentment and her anger, and brought out in the open the things she’d always tried to forget about her life.

      That her mother wasn’t like other mothers. That she had shifted her form. That along with her wicked sense of humor and gentle smile, she also occasionally wore fur.

      That a man had changed to a black jaguar before her eyes, bringing that world rushing back to collide with her own. A fine young man who takes the jaguar…

      Could he even be the same man who should have met her mother that night? Was he old enough? Certainty became less so as logic crept in. But then, she wasn’t a big believer in coincidence.

      She thought about their confrontation, about the moments he’d backed her against the corral. How she’d felt every inch of her body—the skin tightening down her back, the unexpected tremor in her legs, the very air on her face. Her skills were modest, would always be modest—and yet still she’d felt the power in him. She’d known then that he was a predator, but…also a protector, as her mother had been.

      Too bad she didn’t trust him.

      Dolan found the land’s abandoned old homestead in late afternoon, layered in so many wards that he wasn’t the least surprised it had taken him two days, or that he’d been through this very area three times before noticing the old buildings. At least a century old, crumbling adobe and exposed wood framing, ocotillo cactus skeletons still lingering atop the porch to create scattered shade…Prickly pear clung to the corners of the buildings, struggling in this altitude. A lean-to shed for animals surrounded by the drunken remains of a corral, the tiny home, a chicken house, an outhouse and a shed that was now merely a trace of a foundation in the dirt.

      He stood in the center of the yard for a long moment, on human feet with human senses attuned to the wards that had once been installed over this place. Layers and mazes and switchbacks, all set by a mind he admired anew. A natural trickster, one who could not only worry over the ends of a puzzle until it unraveled, but who could create her own. Her daughter might indeed have unraveled it all faster than he, but only if it wouldn’t have taken too long to convince her to try. Now he searched the patterns of the wards, having long ago realized that there was no single bright spot, no obviously protected area—and he finally saw what he was looking for.

      Surely it won’t be this easy. Not a bright spot, woven into the threads of protections and the occasional glow of obscuring aura, but a blank spot. A don’t-look-at-me spot. He opened his eyes and superimposed his inner ward vision over his outer, and found himself facing the old house. Right through the open, damaged wall to what remained of the old fireplace.

      In the chimney of the old fireplace.

      Not quite as tricky as he’d expected—not the location, not the process of navigating those ward lines. At least, not until he realized what she’d done by using the old homestead, for anyone who did happen to notice the lingering wards would think nothing of them. Many older dwellings still carried protections, especially in an area where they might be needed fast. Violent monsoon storms, cold desert nights at even colder altitudes…as wrecked as it was, this place was still shelter. Still worth protecting.

      Dolan slipped through the warding on the house, leaving it as intact as he could—out of respect, and out of the need to keep things quiet. The Core was hovering too closely as it was. He thought briefly about waiting, of bringing Meghan Lawrence back here to take part in what had surely been her mother’s greatest victory and greatest sacrifice…

      Then again, maybe not such a good idea. He’d stop for a quick visit on the way out, letting her know her mother’s legacy. She deserved that, and he…

      Maybe he just needed to prove he could walk away again.

      He flattened his ears in annoyance. Oh, maybe they were currently human ears and maybe they didn’t truly flatten, but he felt it all the same, and knew it reflected on his face—annoyance at his own inability to let go of the woman who’d wanted nothing to do with him or his quest or his blood. Sentinel blood, like her own…but running too thick to dismiss.

      Dolan glanced at the sky, at the sun about to go down, and shrugged off his distractions, a literal twitch of shoulder. He’d come here for a reason, and one reason only—and if Meghan Lawrence thanked him for anything, it would be that he achieved his goal fast enough to prevent the official team from descending on the area. So he quit hesitating in the doorway and crossed the threshold, hyperaware of the fresh breezes stirred by his entrance. Not physical breezes, but metaphysical disturbances just waiting for him to take a wrong step, to prove he didn’t belong.

      He didn’t really want to find out what a trickster would do in retribution to a trespasser.

      So he offered his respect and his caution, and he slowly progressed to the interior of the crumbling house, the single main room with its sleeping and cooking alcoves and the hand-formed fireplace still in nearperfect condition. He crouched beside it, hesitating long enough to check for traps and black widow spiders alike, finding neither. Just that blank space that had drawn him here, alluring…close enough to success to send tension zinging down his spine.

      As dusk fell around him, he reached into the chimney and felt around until his fingers came to rest on crackling paper.

      Yes. With care, he eased the manuscript free. It felt right in his hand—the expected size, the expected heft—if at the same time without the presence he’d expected. The weightiness.

      He withdrew it from the chimney and set it on the hearth, a paper-wrapped package thoroughly secured with duct tape. More duct tape showing than paper, dammit. The stuff would be hell to cut through, even after all this time. He reached into his treated back pocket for his folding Buck knife—and that’s when he realized.

      Not dusk, this darkness. Not yet.

      Atrum Core. Here. Now. In spite of his personal wards. Coming for the one thing he could never let them have.

      The haze once restricted to the horizon now abruptly descended around him, saturating the air with an oily stench. He threw himself down on the manuscript, pulling the threads

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