Page 136 of Blue Moon

“Can’t you go sooner?” Because if Mark Antony was out getting dog food, he wouldn’t be here with me.

“The nearest town is a forty-minute drive away.”

Great. So we really were in the middle of freaking nowhere. Even if I could get out of this house, I’d still be stuck in the wilderness. How long did it take to die of exposure?

“Forty minutes? That’s barely any time at all.”

Mark Antony sighed. “Maybe once you’ve settled in, I could go in a couple of days.”

I hoped Ryder would be here by then, but I smiled prettily. “We’d appreciate that. Can I come with you? I always like to choose my own produce.”

“I think it’s best that you write a grocery list instead.”

“Could you bring a pen and paper?” Was it possible to stab someone with a pen? Like, in an emergency? “And that blood is making me queasy.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” He waved a hand at Kacie and Michelle. “Ladies, you need to clean the floor while I’m gone.”

He made me lunch. Not the others, just me, and he insisted Rocky stay behind in the weird bedchamber. Kacie promised to give him some kibble. Michelle was still annoyed at me because of the blood thing, but I’d cleaned up the vomit, and the blood wasn’t even mine. Plus I was doing all the heavy lifting here. The least they could do was act supportive while I kept our abductor busy.

He’d let me off my leash, but the other women were still chained in what he called the “Egyptian wing.” I knew now the place was much bigger than I’d ever imagined. A mansion in the woods. The fancy barn was joined to a giant log cabin, and that was where he was busy taking dishes out of the oven while I watched from a twelve-seat table in a dining nook at the side of the great room. Did he ever have that many guests? Or was he planning to kidnap more women as entertainment?

Michelle probably wouldn’t have minded that. When Mark Antony was fiddling with the padlock around my waist, I’d asked him to release the other women too, but he’d shaken his head.

“Not at the moment.” He’d nodded toward Michelle. “That one is trouble.”

“If I’m trouble, let me go,” she said. “You can pick out a new girl.”

Yikes, that was self-centred. She thought it was fine for other people to suffer as long as she didn’t? Or was she just saying that and really she’d go for help? From what I’d seen of her, it could be either option.

But Mark Antony didn’t bite. “I believe in the power of redemption.”

And in reincarnation, clearly.

So now here I was, eating dinner with a jerk who spoke several languages, most of them totally useless in the modern world. But at least I knew he kept a bunch of keys in his pocket.

“Do you want beer or wine?” he asked.

“I don’t like beer.”

“Really? You always used to. It was an Egyptian staple.”

“Well, I don’t like it now.” And I also didn’t want to get drunk. “Can’t I just have water? Is it even safe to drink the water out here?”

“Of course. There’s a stream nearby.”

Like, open water? “What if an animal poops in there? Or dies in it?”

“We use a filtration system, dimidium.”

We. As if I was a willing participant in this clown show. And he kept calling me that dimidium thing. His better half. At least he had one part right. I was better than him. Sure, I’d made mistakes, but I’d never arranged for a woman to be kidnapped from her hotel. Who was his accomplice, anyway? It had to be the woman who brought my breakfast. She’d put something in my coffee because one minute I’d been fine, and the next, I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

No, not the coffee, the pastries. Those delicious pastries sprinkled with powdered sugar. Rocky must have been asleep too—he’d have whisper-barked like crazy otherwise and possibly even bitten her—and he’d begged so sweetly that I’d given him half a croissant. Heck. Ryder had warned me of that. Warned me that Mark Antony might slip a sedative into my meal, but he’d been talking about the takeout deliveries. I’d never imagined he would tamper with my food in the hotel.

“Hopefully nobody will get sick then,” I said. “Is there a hospital nearby?”

“Most ailments can be treated without medical intervention, which is just as well when you look at the healthcare system in this country. The Ancient Greeks were ahead of their time when it came to natural remedies. And it was Hippocrates who came up with the concept of ‘healthy mind, healthy body.’”

Fascinating. Still, I’d rather take my chances in the hospital. And if Mark Antony avoided them, then that might explain the whole deep-seated psychosis thing.

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