Page 7 of Edge of Darkness (Night Prowler 4)
g himself.
“Good morning, Ember,” he said, watching a russet falcon far off in the distance soar over a stand of Aleppo pines. His new home was situated deep in the Parc de Colleserola, a vast, forested, natural preserve in the mountain range that rose above the city of Barcelona. On any given day he saw wild boar, genets, stone martens, rabbits, and an extensive array of birds.
All the creatures of the forest skittered away from him in terror, of course, even the huge and vicious wild boars, but the place reminded him of his real home. Of the wild, ancient woods at Sommerley that he knew as intimately as his own face in the mirror, and missed with an ache in his chest that felt carnivorous.
“I have your book,” Ember said in her straightforward American way, and Christian smiled. The accent he found so charming lent every vowel a blunt vigor, nothing at all like his own Downton Abbey languor he thought made him sound like an overbred plonker in comparison.
But it wasn’t her accent that had his thoughts returning to her again and again last night after he’d left the store.
She wasn’t the prettiest girl Christian had ever seen—in fact she seemed determined to be plain. Her modest way of dressing, her unstyled hair, and her lack of makeup or jewelry all screamed I’m invisible! But there was something different about her, something indefinable, which caught and held his attention. Something about the eyes, perhaps—wide and brown and piercingly intelligent—or maybe it was the way her dark eyebrows, operating independently, seemed able to indicate disbelief, amusement, or, as they did frequently as she looked at him, deep disdain, all with a single swift arch.
Even her eyebrows were intelligent. Christian had the vague, discomforting feeling this girl with the clever eyebrows might be the kind of girl who knew people’s secrets.
She might even know his secrets. What a goddamn disaster that would be.
“Good. I’ll be in today to collect it.” On impulse, he asked, “Where are you from, originally?”
“Originally? My mother’s womb,” she replied a little tartly, and his smile grew deeper. He found her inexplicable dislike of him intriguing. It had radiated from her in waves yesterday at the store, little zings of irritation that felt like nettles against his skin. He didn’t normally have that particular effect on women, and it surprised him. It made him want to change her mind.
“How interesting. We have that in common.”
Through the phone came a very unladylike snort. “Really? You’re from my mother’s womb, too? We must’ve had different fathers because you sure don’t look like you’re from his side of the family.”
He tipped his head back and laughed. Crossing through the study, his valet Corbin paused mid-stride, blinked at him in surprise, then continued on his way.
Christian was known for many things, but laughing was not one of them. Especially over the past few years.
“I meant what part of the States.”
She paused before answering. Christian sensed her irritation through the line, and wondered again why she didn’t like him. And why she didn’t like answering personal questions.
“New Mexico. Taos.”
He waited for more, but when no further details were forthcoming, said, “Beautiful country there, I understand. Big art scene.”
On the other end of the phone, her silence was deafening.
He cleared his throat. “There’s a famous music school there, too, if I’m not mis—”
“I’ve got two copies of Casino Royale for you to look at,” she said, her voice terse and unhappy. “We’re open until six.”
Then the phone went dead in his hand. Christian, staring down at it, wondered if there was something more to her dislike of him. Something to do with her avoidance of personal questions.
Because he loved solving mysteries as much as he loved a challenge, he became determined to find out.
With a muttered oath that made the elderly gentleman in the bowler hat browsing through a folio of antique maps turn around to give her a disapproving stare, Ember slammed the phone back in its cradle on the wall.
“Lo siento, señor,” she said apologetically. “Mi suegra.”
My mother-in-law. The international word for misery, it had its intended effect. The gentleman smiled wryly and nodded, turning back to the sheets of yellowed parchment.
Ember passed her left hand over her face, noting it was trembling.
Damn.
She flexed the hand open and pulled it back the way the physical therapist had shown her all those years ago, painfully stretching the shortened tendons in her wrist and garnering a loud crack as they slid over the metal pins that secured her bones together. There were twenty-one pins in her left hand and wrist, and three metal plates in the bones of her arm, all permanent. The nerve damage and scars were permanent, too, as was the anger that had settled between the ruined byways of her healing flesh, cleaving itself to her body like dark matter, an unseen and undetectable anomaly that only made itself known at moments like this.
Moments when memory would come flooding back. Choking her, filling her with an old, familiar enemy: despair.
