the chance to rewrite their endings, don't you think? Take it from me, Samuel, a little time can heal some awfully big wounds."
"Did she look healed to you?" he said, and his eyes were the color of winter ice.
"We're all alive," said Zee dryly. "And she didn't disappear on us - which she still has the magic to do. I'd say you have a chance."
Chapter 13
SAMUEL STARTED TO SAY SOMETHING TO ZEE WHEN the woman he held opened her eyes, which were green again. She gave us all a bewildered look, as if she could not imagine how she'd gotten where she was.
I knew exactly how she felt.
As soon as he saw that she was awake, Samuel set her down with careful haste. "I'm sorry, Ari. You were falling . . . I wouldn't have touched - "
I had never in my life seen anything like it. Samuel, the son of a Welsh bard, who shared his father's gift for words, stammering like an infatuated teenager.
She grabbed Samuel's sweatshirt and looked up at him in utter astonishment. "Samuel?"
He stepped away from her, but stopped short of pulling the shirt from her grasp. "I can't give you space unless you let me go," he told her.
"Samuel?" she said, and, though it hadn't caught my notice before, I realized that her voice had changed sometime in the middle of her panic attack, and sounded way too young for the late-middle-age face she wore. It was also lightly accented, some combination of British and Welsh or a related language. "I thought . . . I looked but I never could find you. You just disappeared and left me nothing. Not a shirt or a name."
He pulled away again, and this time she let him go. Free, he retreated to the damaged door that separated my office from the garage. "I'm a werewolf."
Ariana nodded and took two steps forward. "I did notice that when you killed the hounds who had come for me." There was a hint of humor in her voice. Good, I thought. Any woman I'd allow to have Samuel would have to have a sense of humor. "The fangs gave it away - or maybe the tail. You saved me again - and then you left, and all I knew was your first name."
"I scared you," he said starkly.
She gave him a half smile, but clenched her hands. "Well, yes. But it seems I scared you worse because you ran away for . . . a very, very long time, Samuel."
He looked away from her gaze - the most dominant werewolf in the Tri-Cities, and he couldn't meet her gaze. Didn't he see that even if he scared her, she still wanted him?
She tried to take another step toward him and stopped. I could smell her terror, sharp and sour. She backed away from him with a little sigh.
"It is very good to see you again, Samuel," she said. "Because of you I am whole and here all these centuries after my father would have destroyed me. Instead, his body long ago fed his beasts and the trees of his forests."
Samuel bowed his head and, to the floor, he said, "I'm glad you are well - and apologize for causing your panic attack today. I should have stayed out . . ."
"Yes. Panic attacks. They can be pretty . . ." She looked at Zee, who was back in his chair looking as relaxed as if he'd spent the last ten minutes watching a very boring soap opera. "Did I hurt anyone, Siebold?"
"No," he said, folding his arms. "Just true-named our wolf, and told Mercedes and Jesse the story of the Silver Borne."
She looked at me, then at Jesse, maybe to see how frightened we were. Whatever she saw reassured her because she gave a shy smile.
"Oh, that's good. Good." Her shoulders relaxed, and she turned her attention back to Samuel. "I don't have them often anymore. Not at all with mortal canines. It's just the fae dogs, the magic ones - black dogs and hounds - that set me off. Only when I am overcome with - " She bit her lip.
"Fear?" Samuel suggested, and she didn't answer. She also had left off werewolves, I noticed.
"I am glad to see that your magic has returned," he said. "You thought it was gone."
She took a deep breath. "Yes. And for a while I was glad of it." She looked at me. "And that has bearing on the present situation. You are