words softly, but now turned her gaze to a surprised and touched Niall. “Robert Burns,” he said.
She nodded. Forcing her mind to blankness, she let herself drift, imagining the mountains turning to silent guardians in the descending darkness, watching over them.
“Do ye have a picture of him?” Niall asked after quite a few miles had passed. “Your brother.”
They were beyond the city lights, so now only the headlights provided any illumination of his features. From the steep grade and winding path of the road, they were close to the turnoff toward their cabin. “Ye draw so well,” he added, “I thought if ye didn’t have a photograph, ye would have sketched him.”
“Anything you own can be taken by your Master, Niall,” she said wearily, hoping she wouldn’t have to keep saying it over and over. It made her feel oddly bleak. “That’s the InhServ oath. He’s in my heart, but my Master owns that as well.”
“No, muirnín.” Niall looked toward her, his brown eyes boring into hers with a sudden intensity that held her still. “That’s the one thing they dinnae own outright. That one, they have to earn.”
14
IT left her with a mix of emotions when they pulled back into the cabin site. Evan was on a fairly precarious perch, along the northern rocky slope above the cabin. Niall muttered something about how nice it would have been if he waited until he had the ropes to start scaling cliffs. “Impatient bugger.”
To Alanna, it looked like the vampire was evaluating the sky, which still held various dark streaks, residue from the long-past sunset. Since he didn’t acknowledge their arrival, Niall nodded to Alanna, indicating they would unload the car and leave him be.
However, after she put things away, she couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding. When Niall was occupied, she slipped out to figure a way up that slope. Before she could set her foot to a likely path, though, Evan’s voice came into her head, clipped and short.
I have no need of you right now, Alanna.
Yes, Master. I apologize. Chagrined, she turned back.
Of course, if he’d be consistently one thing or another, maybe she could keep up with how she was supposed to act. She immediately chastised herself for making her Master responsible for her proper behavior, but confusion was an acceptable reaction. He’d given her what couldn’t be called anything but what it was—affection, attention, approval—none of which he was required to do. She’d been acclimated to doing without those things from her Master. But getting even a taste of it was like a drug.
She remembered her resentment toward Adam, the brusque answer she’d given him. Two months later he was dead. She was mature enough to know that one moment didn’t destroy their love for each other, but she regretted it was the last face-to-face conversation they had. And not just because she loved him. It was as if that simmering regret held a wealth of other messages for her, important things she couldn’t decipher.
She sat down on the path. Evan wanted her out of his field of vision, and here, sitting among the silent trees, she accomplished that. She should cook something for Niall’s dinner, for Evan’s later sampling. She also hadn’t completed her two hours of “me time” yet. Maybe she’d draw a picture of Adam. She’d tear it up of course, because it was one of the InhServ’s top rules, not to have any possessions. But why would anyone other than her want a picture of a servant’s face? A servant who was gone.
Putting her head down on her knees, she freed her hair, letting the wind blow it over her shoulders and forward so it hid her face. Her shields against the terrifying reality she was facing were thin, but since she’d been taking the blockers, she’d been managing them better. However, today’s error had cracked them back open, such that the fear kept coming back at her like a boomerang, refusing to let her be, especially with no current occupation for her thoughts.
The waiting was the worst part, wasn’t it? Everyone feared the unknown, but she feared certainty. She would be with Stephen for all eternity.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered to her knees. “I don’t want to be, but I’m so afraid.”
If she sat here a moment longer it would overtake her, paralyze her. So she jumped up, hurried down to the cabin. When she reached it, she came up short, because Evan was there. How long had she been sitting on