abrupt switch from sweet words to steely warrior, but she knew how important this was—they’d finally explained fully about the warlocks on the way over—so she turned her mind to cataloging everything and everyone she saw, so she could hopefully be of some help.
But in the end, the necromancer, or at least the necromancer’s flunky, came to them.
The man was rather short, with ordinary brown hair and an ordinary face. He looked like an accountant or a middle manager for an insurance company. He wore a plain suit, not a tuxedo, and he stood, unsmiling, waiting for them to notice that he’d followed them into a relatively small, second-floor library.
When Bane whirled to face him, the man said nothing, just pulled back his sleeve to show the triangle tattoo on his left wrist. Bane immediately put himself between Ryan and the stranger.
“You know who we are,” the little man said in a calm, pleasant voice. “I’ve been sent to tell you that we are claiming this territory. Leave or die.”
Bane’s eyes flashed red, and he bared his fully descended fangs. “And if I kill you and toss your body into the Savannah River?”
The man shrugged. “It would make no difference to anyone but myself, as you probably know.”
“Take this message back to your masters. This is my territory, and I’ll defend it to the death. If they know anything about me at all, they know what that means.”
The man inclined his head and turned to leave the room, but when he reached the doorway, he glanced back and fixed his mild gaze on Ryan. “Remember, perhaps, that those you care for are not as invulnerable as you might wish. And now, Sylvie and Constantin know it.”
And then he was gone.
Bane raced after him but stopped when he reached the door, scanned the hallway beyond in both directions, and then shook his head.
“He vanished. Warlock games,” he said grimly, striding back across the room to Ryan. “We’re leaving. Now.”
Then he gazed into the distance with the expression that Ryan had learned meant he was communicating telepathically with the others. After a moment, his attention returned to her.
“Right. We’re traveling through the Between. This time, no screaming or fighting me, please. Is that enough notice?”
“Wait—does it—”
But he didn’t wait. Shadows came from nowhere to coalesce around them, and Bane swept her up into his arms and stepped forward into a hurricane. All Ryan could do was hold on.
Chapter Forty-Two
When they arrived back at the house, stepping out of the Between and into the ballroom, Bane’s first inclination was to carry Ryan off to his rooms, strip off every inch of her finery, and console himself with the pleasure of her body.
Ryan, however, had other plans.
“Have I mentioned how much I hate traveling like that?” Ryan sat down on a bench and pulled off her shoes with an expression of blissful relief and then glared at him. “How can you stand it? I feel like my molecules are being scrambled.”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t affect me that way. Perhaps because you’re human? Meara has had no problem traveling with me, either.”
She sighed and then glanced at the door to the safe room. “Bane, we should check on Hunter.”
He felt a nasty tug of guilt. With everything happening, he’d almost forgotten about his friend and the Turn. And tonight should be the night Hunter came out of it. When he opened the door to the safe room, however, the firefighter still slept in the deep coma of the Turn.
“Maybe since he only truly entered this state later, he’ll be in it longer?” He looked at Ryan, as if being a human doctor meant she’d have any idea about this.
“I do have some thoughts about the anemia that his blood test showed me, but I need to compare his sample with yours to draw any valid conclusions,” she told him, putting on what he thought of as her doctor face. She’d start talking about carotid arteries or corpora cavernosa any minute.
Ridiculously, he found that he liked serious Dr. St. Cloud very much. And that made him want to take her to bed.
Everything made him want to take her to bed. Maybe it was the angel blood? But no—he’d felt like this when her magic had been bound.
“Why don’t we go to my rooms and try that naked dancing we talked about earlier?” he murmured after safely sealing the door to the safe room again. But when he tried to kiss her, she slipped away, shaking