Page 10 of Collected By the Crow

“You’ve seen nothing yet.” He set aside her things and gracefully sidled up to a window. She followed.

“This is only my most spacious experimental ground.” He spoke so softly that she had to lean close to make out the words. He smelled like the outdoors on a nice day. Like a walk by the river lined with birch trees. Woodsy.

“My interests are not limited.” He pointed to a tall tower, where a huge telescope jutted from a turret toward the twinkling night sky. “If it is unknown, I wish to uncover it. If it is questioned, I wish to answer it.”

Cassandra’s thoughts whirled into a tizzy. How could he possibly have so much time on his hands? Qadaire glanced at her askance, and for the first time, she saw one side of his mouth ticked up in the faintest grin.

“There’s no greater collection than that of the mind.” Something flickered in his gray features, fading so smoothly that she’d probably imagined it.

Zero coughed a phlegmy cough, snapping her attention to the present. “Well, we have some things in common.”

“Would you like to rest first or begin?”

Cass snorted and strode to the worktable. She patted Zero’s head, then hoisted her case onto the table to spread out her tools.

Chapter Six

Qadaire

The delicious-smelling human woman proved even more competent than he’d gathered from afar. He’d expected to slow down his process in order for a human with merely two hands to keep up, but she was attentive, all her questions valid, thoughtful, and concise. She easily followed his recipe and had no trouble recreating it. He never had to explain anything more than once. Her intelligence made her blood smell that much tastier.

As for her fear, it strengthened when he stood too close. That she was able to push through it to work alongside him was a testament to her inner strength. He tried to stay an arm’s length away, but it was like there was a magnet in her core that pulled him closer, sending him into orbit around her sensuous body. His desire for her teetered on the line between claim and kill. It was frustrating, but a small price to pay for good company. He’d not been so close to another walking, talking, critically thinking being in too long. He prickled to admit his crow family had been right.

“The potion is complete. Now we wait.” Qadaire cleared the station, set things aside in their designated spots, then disinfected the workspace. “Would you like to see the star tower?”

“Yes! Definitely yes.”

He took the lead. Zero climbed from the chair to follow. Qadaire tutted and scooped him into his lower arms, then held the door open for Cassandra.

As they navigated the hallway, he pointed out things on the walls and side tables that he thought she might find interesting. Expensive treasures, gifts of gratitude from those whose careers he’d bolstered. Artifacts from archeology digs, back when he was still able to glamor large numbers of people. Trinkets that he’d found while hunting. It pleased him every time she asked a question or hummed in awe.

He paused at a small moon-shaped room lined with books and stole a quilt from a plush armchair, wrapping it around the dog. A few doors and another left turn later, they reached the staircase of the star tower. Once ascended, he set the pup down and arranged him in the blanket.

“Here we are.” Qadaire checked the view through the telescope, made adjustments, and stepped away. When Cassandra switched places with him, she let out a low whistle.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” As the words slipped his tongue, his awareness drifted to the human’s pulsing wrist, where the blood in her veins sang to him like an ethereal chorus.

“It’s gorgeous. I’ve never seen the galaxy so clearly.”

“While the model I created has been improved upon many times since, the first refracting telescope was one of my inventions.”

“Shut up. It was not.” She dropped one hand to her side and jutted her hip, creating an alluring slope from waist to thigh. “Wasn’t that in, like, 1600?”

“Yes, although I invented it significantly earlier. It was a tough field to find someone who’d believe it possible. Until Galilei. No one talked about the gaseous orbs that twinkled above them except to tell stories.”

“I bet.” She didn’t sound convinced. “I remember learning about space in school. Everything seemed so outlandish. Like if it were true, then my life was insignificant. With my peanut butter fingers and speech impediment, sitting in Mrs. Tanny’s classroom.”

“Hmm.” He glanced at her hold on the telescope and hoped her hands weren’t sticky right now. “Yes, it can make one feel small. Billions of galaxies, and everything lined up for ours to host life.”

“I’ve always thought binary stars were romantic,” she said, light and airy. “Two stars, orbiting and eclipsing each other, like they’re each other’s whole universe.”

“Until the white dwarf drains the smaller star of its life force.” Hardly romantic at all.

“Or like they couldn’t bear the space between them. To always be rotating around the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen, never able to touch them.”

“Instead, they forcibly assimilate and erupt in a cataclysmic explosion, leaving behind a rip in space-time?”

Cassandra snorted. Hands in pockets, she backed away from the telescope and gave him a droll look that had no reason to make his fangs ache the way they did.

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