Or he’d killed and eaten a firefighter and stolen the guy’s uniform. Again, this was Bordertown.
The man was seriously beautiful. Even in the dim light from the decorative lanterns lining the square, she could see that he was an amazing specimen of sheer male virility. He had long, muscular legs and broad shoulders that tapered down to a narrow waist. He was no poster-perfect model, though. His dark hair was too long, his face was too stern ever to be called pretty, and she could have sworn his eyes had gleamed briefly with a spark of hot orange-gold, but in spite of all of that—or maybe because of all of that—she’d felt a bolt of interest that had registered as pure sensation the minute she’d completed her transformation and seen him sitting there.
But he’d seen her as a swan, and that was a problem. She stepped out from behind the bush and stared him down, evaluating which step to take next. None of her options were good. He sat with the perfect stillness of a hawk or a falcon, and like those creatures, he gave off the impression of leashed power that could explode into action in a fraction of a second.
It amused her that she sometimes thought in terms of other avian species, after the early years when she’d rejected everything about the curse. Defiance and stubbornness had sometimes been the only supports underpinning her hold on sanity. Curses did not travel lightly on their victims.
“Maybe we could talk,” he ventured.
She realized he’d been careful not to stand, and he wasn’t making any gesture or movement that might startle her, and the knowledge calmed her a little more. On the other hand, psychopaths were usually good at luring women in with a false sense of security.
A breeze coming from behind him teased her senses, and she sniffed the air. “Why do you stink like fire?”
He smiled, probably laughing at Brynn and her abrupt question, especially since the firefighter outfit was right there next to him on the bench. Normal people tended to mock her for her lack of social skills, anyway. She was better with animals. They didn’t mind her shyness, her long silences, or her general inability to tell the little white lies that oiled the wheels of polite society.
Right. She didn’t need another source of pain in her life, even if it happened to come from the hottest guy she’d seen in years. She wheeled around to head out.
“Stay,” he said, and the word came out like a command, which freed her from indecision.
Commands were easy to ignore.
She took a step toward home, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw him lift a hand as if reaching out to her.
“Please.” His voice was hoarse when he said the word, as if it were one he rarely used, and something about it made her stop when nothing else would have.
She’d been alone for so long, and part of her yearned so desperately to make a connection that it loosened her determination and left her wavering—indecisive and unsure—simply because he’d used the word please.
He sighed, and the mere exhalation of air carried more meaning than it should have. It told her that he, too, might be lonely, or at least sad. For some reason, she wanted to know what had caused it. She took a breath of her own and turned, clutching her backpack tightly in her hand as if it contained a weapon with which to defend herself from crazed killers or from an incredibly hot man who carried his sorrow in his deep, dark-chocolate eyes and slumped shoulders.
“I just want to talk,” he said, and she could almost taste the richness of his voice.
As a woman who spent every third night singing, she was exquisitely, almost painfully attuned to nuances of tone and pitch. His voice was beautifully low and deep, a calming baritone that stood out from the symphony of cracked altos and drunken sopranos she was forced to endure every third night.
“Look at the swan!”
“Do you think it’s lost?”
“Maybe it thinks the statue is its mate!”
If they knew her real story, maybe they’d quit laughing at her. But if people quit laughing, they might begin to pity her, and Brynn knew that would be worse.
“I understand if you want to go. A beautiful woman, alone in the middle of the night with a strange man,” he continued, but now he’d sunk his head into his hands, and she could tell he didn’t hold out much hope that she’d stay.
She should go. She should. Two things stopped her, though: his voice when he’d said please, and the BTFD insignia on the pile of smoke-drenched fabric next to him on the bench. She decided to conclude that he was a firefighter. If he’d killed the original owner of the uniform, there would have been less smoke and more blood.
She thought about that. Gruesome, but her logic seemed pretty sound, so she dropped down to sit on the end of his bench. “What was on fire?”
He glanced up, clearly surprised that she’d decided to stay. A glimmer of a smile crossed his face, and it transformed his face from ruggedly handsome to startlingly dark beauty. She realized that if he ever flashed a real smile at her, her legs might collapse out from under her. Before she could even suspect him of flirtation, sadness dropped back over his features like a dark cloak, and she realized that seduction was the last thing on his mind.
“An apartment building over by Ancient City Antiques,” he said.
Brynn’s heart jumped into her throat. Too much of Bordertown was built out of wood, and too much of it had been around since the 1800s. Fire in an apartment building would be devastating.
“Did—did everyone get out?”
“This time. But what about next time? We can’t seem to catch him.” He clenched his jaw so hard, she was surprised his teeth didn’t shatter, and she was sure that she saw a gleam of orange fire briefly light up his eyes.
What he’d said, though, shocked her into stunned disbelief. “Somebody did that on purpose? To an apartment building?”