But Jessenia did not move to leave. Instead she looked around the smithy. “Are you here all day?” she asked. “Do you ever wish to go someplace else, someplace far and strange?”
Robert heard the change in her voice, and he was beginning to recognize the difference between her voice for dreams and her voice for communicating. The blacksmith’s eyes glazed over almost instantly, and he sank to his knees as Jessenia continued talking, lowering her voice to a soft pitch.
“To walk along the shores of Italy, with the blue sky and blue sea ...”
Robert was hit by a stab of jealousy so strong he almost walked in and grabbed her by the throat. What was she doing? Sporting with another man right in front of him?
“You see a ledge jutting from the rocks. You walk over and lie down beneath it, breathing the warm air. You fall asleep.”
The blacksmith lay down in the straw on the floor.
Jessenia looked up. “Robert,” she said softly. “Come now.”
Confused, he walked in, still angry at her, but uncertain what she was doing. She knelt down on the floor.
“Like this,” she said, picking up the blacksmith’s wrist. Carefully, she sank her teeth into his veins. Something on the edge of Robert’s awareness told him he should be shocked, but he wasn’t.
Jessenia pulled her teeth out. “Come and feed. I’ll keep him asleep.”
He walked over and knelt on the other side of the sleeping man. Then he took the blacksmith’s wrist and bit down, drinking blood as he’d once swallowed ale from a wooden mug.
“Be careful,” Jessenia said. “Listen for his heart. You can’t take too much.”
The blood tasted sweet and salty at the same time. He could feel the life and strength growing in him. Images of the man’s life passed through his mind, of work and family and spending holidays in the north. The hollow ache vanished. He gulped in more mouthfuls.
“No!” Jessenia pushed him away. “You never kill to feed. You can kill to protect us. You can even kill for money, but not to feed. Else you’ll endanger all of us. Do you understand?”
He did not understand.
She placed one hand on the blacksmith’s head and closed her eyes. Then she opened her eyes again, took a small knife from her boot, and turned the bite marks on the man’s wrist into a straighter line.
“I’ve altered his memory,” she said. “He won’t remember me at all. When he wakes, he will remember cutting himself on that sword lying halfway off the table. Then he will remember fainting.”
The sense of this was beginning to dawn on Robert, but he still didn’t grasp what she meant by “altered his memories.” How?
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll be doing this on your own soon. We should go.” She smiled. “Tonight we set out. Where shall we go first?”
Feeling strong and filled with anticipation, he followed her.
Robert decided upon France, so he and Jessenia made their way to the coast and found passage on a ship to cross the Channel.
The ship sailed about an hour before dawn.
“Tonight, we’ll go up and watch the water racing past the bow,” she said.
Huddled in their cramped quarters belowdecks, Robert thrilled at even the prospect of this crossing. Jessenia made every moment enticing.
The air was still dark outside, and he felt wide awake. Somehow, she’d seemed different to him tonight. She kept studying his face almost as if she was hungry.
She came to him, sitting beside him on his bunk. “I can feel your gift,” she said. “It’s getting stronger.”
So much she said was still a mystery.
“I love your gift,” she whispered. “As you love mine.”
For the first time since that night by the campfire, she reached up and kissed him. He pushed her back to lie on the bunk, and he pressed his mouth down hard over hers, running his hands down her slender waist as she moved her hands up to grip the nape of his neck.
In spite of his desire, his body did not respond in its usual way, and he ran his hand over the tops of her breasts. His need for her, his urgency grew, but his body still betrayed him.
Then . . . he felt Jessenia inside his mind, her thoughts reaching for his, entwining with his, and her sense of adventure, her joy in journeys, was suddenly part of him, drawing upon him, and as he thought of them together in strange places, a feeling of