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  Julie nodded, not looking away from Marguerite and the strangely mesmerizing floating stone.

  “I think I’d like to go back to not knowing.”

  “Ditto,” Julie agreed, even while something unfurled inside her, something she recognized but hadn’t felt for years and years—a sense of excitement and wonder, of being truly alive.

  “Rose topaz?” Marguerite’s tight laugh brought Dorie closer against Julie’s back. “That puny stone can’t absorb my power. You underestimate me, Guardian.”

  No light flashed from Marguerite’s raised hand, no thunder rolled, but Julie felt the shock of something ripple through Linda’s body. Only the fact that she and Dorie acted as buttresses kept the woman on her feet. The rose topaz dropped to the floor and rolled under the table.

  Julie and Dorie came around to Linda’s side, and they supported the sagging woman between them. Linda turned her head and gave Julie a look full of meaning. “Use your power. Now.”

  What? How? Anxiety surged through Julie. Think, think, think. She tried to concentrate, tried to visualize power gathering around her, tried to imagine Marguerite and her brother poofing into the Grand Canyon. Nothing happened.

  Another wave shuddered through Linda. She groaned. Julie met Dorie’s expectant gaze. Dorie wanted her to do something, too. A feeling of helplessness gripped her.

  Marguerite moved quickly. Her hand reached out and grabbed Julie’s arm, hurting her.

  “Don’t touch me.” She yanked her arm out of Marguerite’s grip and backed away, pulling Dorie and Linda with her.

  “The Guardian will die if you don’t come with me.”

  Julie looked desperately at Luc, who still stood silently at his sister’s side. “Are you going to let her do that?”

  He smiled slightly. “Are you?”

  She hated people who answered a question with a question.

  Linda struggled to stand straight. “You can’t kill me, Marguerite. And you can’t have the Dancer. She is under the protection of the Balance.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  Julie almost fainted with relief at the sound of Harry’s voice. He stepped into the loose circle formed by the nervous but fascinated restaurant patrons. His shoes were polished, his black slacks wrinkle-free and perfectly creased, yet his shirt hung open, exposing his chest. Several buttons appeared to be missing. He met her eyes, his expression inscrutable.

  “I thought you were in London.” Marguerite’s voice was brittle.

  “Marguerite, I tire of your games. You have managed to place a tie on me, but don’t overestimate your powers.” He flicked a casual hand. Marguerite slumped in a dead faint. Luc caught her in his arms.

  “Take your sister away,” Harry instructed.

  Luc nodded once and they both disappeared.

  The hushed crowd suddenly began talking, everyone at once. Phones were held up and pictures were snapped. Harry looked around, his brow furrowed. Before he could say anything, Bas appeared at his side. A collective gasp went up from the crowd.

  “They’re making a movie!” A man’s voice, filled with some relief. “That’s the actor from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.”

  “Oh my God.” This was a woman’s voice. “Thank you, Michigan film tax credit!”

  Harrison turned to Bas. “You turn up in surprising places.”

  Bas shrugged. “I have an interest in what is happening here.” He looked at the crowd. His expressive face stilled, silence surrounding him like a cloud. All movement in the room, outside their little group, stopped. Then, as if a switch had been flicked, people began moving again. Like good little robots, phones went in pockets and everyone went back to their tables or work as if nothing had happened.

  “The pictures?” Harrison asked.

  “What pictures?” Bas responded, as he reached over and plucked a piece of Linda’s brownie. “This is really good.”

  “Wow.” Dorie breathed the word. “Did he just do a mind swipe on those people?”

  “Looks like it.” Julie knew her own eyes were wide.

  Bas gave Julie a wink and a wave and disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. She looked around, but no one seemed to be paying attention anymore.

  Linda moved, shaking off their hands. “That bitch of a Shadow Walker has more juice in her than we imagined. The rose quartz did nothing.” She sounded more like her old self.

  Harry looked at Julie and his lips tightened. “Go home, Julie. Marguerite won’t bother you anymore today.”

  “I can’t go home.” She’d go absolutely crazy if she didn’t keep busy. “I have to work and Tash is meeting me at the office at six.”

  He took a deep breath. “Will I ever hear you say ‘Yes, Harrison?’”

  “Try asking ‘Would you like everything to be the way it was forty-eight hours ago?’”

  He took a step closer to her and she forgot all about Dorie and Linda and the hundred other people in the restaurant. Her eyes rested on his chest. He smelled like wind and rain, earth and sun. Like a force of nature.

  “Would you like everything to be the way it was forty-eight hours ago?” He spoke softly, so only she heard.

  “Yes.” The word almost stuck in her throat.

  His hand wrapped gently around the back of her neck and he urged her closer. Her cheek rubbed against the skin of his chest. The soft, springy hairs sent spikes of pure pleasure through her body. He leaned down, holding her against him, his cheek against the top of her head.

  “I asked you not to lie to me, Julie Dancer.”

  What could she say? He was right. She was a liar and a total idiot. Not knowing that he existed, that the world was full of magic, seemed too great a loss to bear.

  “The next time you take off my shirt, make sure we’re alone.”

  Julie jerked back and looked at him, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how that happened. I thought I was dreaming.”

  “The Council thought they were dreaming, too.” His thumb played along her cheekbone. He didn’t seem aware of the action. “You shouldn’t be able to manipulate energy at such a distance.”

  “Maybe I did it through you because we’re in sync.” She could barely breathe. Her entire focus was on the movement of his thumb. She wanted to grab it with her mouth and suck.

  “First we’re in harmony and now we’re a Nineties boy band?” Amusement and heat warred in his expression for a brief moment before he reverted back to cool, business-like Harrison. “I have to go. The Council is still in session. I’ll be back tonight.”

  “Marguerite?”

  “Her power is drained. Her brother has likely taken her somewhere to rest. She’ll sleep through this night.” His eyes searched her face. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t let her harm you.”

  Julie didn’t like having to depend on him or on anyone for her own protection. Should she get a gun? She’d never considered that before. She’d ask Linda if she needed silver bullets or anything special. Maybe she couldn’t kill someone, but she could aim for an arm or leg if she had to. Her stomach twisted.

  Harry backed away and took Linda aside, saying something to her. Dorie hooked an arm through hers, watching the two Penumbrae talk.

  “He looks different, not like our crazy neighbor who climbs trees anymore. He looks,” she paused, considering, “dangerous.”

  “People are afraid of him.” Even her mother, who feared nothing.

  “He’s got the hots for you, kiddo.”

  “He’s got big commitment issues.” He had wanted one thing from her—sex. And now that was off the table, big time. “He feels responsible for me, that’s all.”

  “Nope. That look was not mere responsibility.”

  Julie took a good look at Harry. With his legs slightly apart, one hand in his pocket, his posture straight and confident, he appeared regal, even in his button-less shirt. He looked golden and true, like the fictional knights of old who came charging to the rescue on white horses.

  Whoa. Stop the runaway imagin
ation. Next she’d believe in happily ever after. She needed to get her hands on one or two of Tasha’s literature books and read them for a reality check. Or better yet, she should just take a trip down memory lane and review the Married Years.

  Dorie might have good instincts, but she didn’t know Harry. He was a master game player. And while she had no idea what the rules were, she knew she was definitely just a piece on his board.

  Harry lifted his head and looked directly at her, almost as if he could read her thoughts. Oh, damn. She’d forgotten about that! And then he was gone. No one in the restaurant seemed to notice. Cutlery clanked and conversations continued as if nothing unusual had happened.

  Scary stuff, this magic.

  Chapter Seven

  Harrison stood in the reception area outside the solid twin oak doors that guarded the Council meeting. His secretary, Heidi, cast furtive looks at him as she pretended to watch her computer screen. Etiquette demanded that he enter the Council room through the door. Popping into a meeting with no warning would be considered rude. Materializing into the reception area, on the other hand, was perfectly acceptable, even expected.

  But now, instead of immediately reaching for the bright brass doorknobs that led to the meeting he’d so precipitously left, he strolled over to the large bank of windows that gave him a view of the London business district. He watched the muted rush of traffic below, insulated from the noise and smells of the city by thick windows and ten stories.

  He tried to absorb the silence, to slow his still-pounding heart. Absently, he rubbed a hand over his bare chest, and then grimaced when he realized he was rubbing a hand over his bare chest. With a negligent flick of his wrist, three new buttons appeared and his shirt closed.

  Earlier, at the meeting, Marguerite had been the usual, irritating background buzz in his head. But Julie’s fear had jolted him, even here in London. Emotion had rushed through him, paralyzing him, until adrenalin pushed him into action. He’d left the Council without a word. Protecting Julie had been all that mattered.

  Why? He couldn’t use her to rid himself of Marguerite’s tie. He was, however, responsible for the danger she was in now from Marguerite. She’d become a duty.

  A duty that made him crazy.

  She tugged at his senses making him think of nothing but sex. She ignored his dictates and she spoke to him in a way no one, except Bas, ever dared. She amused him and frustrated him. This was the woman who, based on her energy frequency, was perfectly suited to him? Impossible to comprehend.

  “Skipping out on the Council meeting after your late lunch?”

  Harrison looked over his shoulder at Bas, standing behind him in human form. He shot a quick glance at his secretary. Heidi loved Bas. As expected, she’d given up all pretense of work and was gazing in adoration at the man.

  “Can’t you put on a cloaking spell when you come to the office? Heidi’s drooling on the computer keyboard again.”

  Bas smiled at Heidi. Her ample chest heaved with a sigh. “I can’t stay long. What happened with Marguerite before I arrived at the restaurant?”

  Harrison studied the man he’d known most of his life. “You showed up at precisely the right moment. Thank you.” There was much about Bas that he didn’t understand. He definitely wasn’t human, Penumbrae, Walker or Dancer. All Harrison knew for sure was that Bas had been alive for a very long time, and had written a book of prophecy—Mots de Sagesse—that was regarded as sacred by members of the Triad.

  Bas probably could have been regarded as sacred, too. But he didn’t allow it. Bas considered himself a Lutheran.

  Harrison had been eight the first time he’d seen Bas. He’d been sitting in the nearly empty library at the boarding school, staring at Hammurabi’s Code, while he listened to the distant laughter of the other children playing football. He’d already been chosen as the next Balance, and had been given special tutors to begin his instruction in the laws of ancient societies. On that day, Bas had appeared in front of him and slammed shut his book. Ignoring Harrison’s gawking tutors, Bas had whisked him outside into the sunshine. The tutors had never said anything about it.

  After that, Bas began appearing on a regular basis. They’d have long discussions about everything—the Triad, humans, beings of power, God, how everything fit together into a whole.

  But even better than the conversations were the games. They played chess, backgammon and Diplomacy. On rare occasions, Bas would pop them into the woods behind the school, and they’d walk, Bas pointing out the antics of the wild life. Once, a squirrel had dropped several nuts right on Bas’s head. Harrison had laughed so hard his stomach hurt. Bas had filled the dark hole of loneliness he’d almost smothered in.

  “Harrison.” Bas’s voice interrupted his memories. “Tell me what happened at the restaurant.” Bas leaned against the glass window, one ankle crossed over the other.

  “Julie used her power and Marguerite zeroed in on her like a guided missile.”

  “Didn’t you warn Julie about that?”

  “Of course I warned her. And I left Linda with her as protection. Julie claims using her power was an accident. She thought she was dreaming.”

  “Did Linda have to hurt Marguerite?”

  “Not quite. Marguerite almost disabled Linda.”

  Bas narrowed his gaze. “Marguerite doesn’t have that kind of power.”

  “I had to drain her to control her.”

  “You drained Marguerite?” Surprise lifted his eyebrows.

  “That’s what I said.” Harrison stifled the urge to shift his weight from foot to foot. Bas could make him feel like a little boy again.

  “No wonder you don’t want to go back into the Council meeting.”

  “I am the Balance.” The Council didn’t intimidate him.

  “You are judge, not police. Your ability to drain power can only be used in times of war, when Council has pre-approved the action.”

  Harrison looked out the window. A pigeon perched on a ledge, two stories below. What must it be like to be a bird, to follow only your instincts? No wonder Bas spent so much time as an owl. “I know Triad law better than you, Bas.”

  “Have you ever broken the law before?”

  “The Balance can’t break the law. The Balance is the law.”

  Bas’s solemn face lit with a sudden grin, causing Heidi to drop something heavy on the desk. Probably her chest. He clapped Harrison on the shoulder. “I’d say it’s about time you took advantage of that little perk of the position.”

  “Superseding the written law is not to be done lightly. Rules provide order and structure to our society.”

  “I’m all for rules. How could you have the fun of breaking them if they didn’t exist?”

  Harrison shook his head, wondering how a man could be so old and not grow up. “You’re supposed to teach me, not tempt me.”

  “Sometimes they’re the same thing.”

  “Bascule, the Obscure,” Harrison said, naming one of the many appellations assigned to the man in front of him.

  “Don’t be a concrete thinker. Look beyond the surface, Harrison. A good judge is interested in justice, not strict adherence to rules.”

  “Rules ensure justice.”

  Bascule shrugged. “Rules are just a tool. They can be used for good or evil.”

  Harrison nodded. “So you’ve said. Many times. I have to go back into the meeting. Will you be here when I’m finished?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I’m thinking of taking Heidi out to dinner.” Bas looked over at the dreamy-eyed woman.

  “If you do, I’ll expect you here in the morning, ready to work, because Heidi will be useless. For approximately a week.”

  Bas laughed. A thick, leather-bound book appeared in his hands. “I dug up an old copy of the Mots de Sagesse,” he said, his voice suddenly serious. “You asked for it in the hotel. Read it.”

  Harrison took the book. “Is there a prophecy germane to the situation I find myself in?”

  “Read
the book,” Bas responded.

  “No offense, Bas, but this is dryer than dirt in the desert.”

  “Nothing worth knowing comes without great effort.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “Read it.” The easygoing voice contained a thread of command.

  Harrison looked at the book, then at Bas. He nodded slowly, an uneasy feeling settling at the base of his spine.

  “And remember,” Bas said, as he took a step toward Heidi. “Destiny doesn’t play by the rules.”

  “Julie.” A deep voice barked her name from her office doorway. Why hadn’t she shut her door and locked it? Because Linda wouldn’t let her. She’d given the woman a magazine and made her sit in the hallway so she could get some work done, but she’d had to agree to leave the door open. Of course, ‘work’ was a term she was using loosely after her lunch experience. Her brain couldn’t handle anything more stimulating than deleting the cascade of messages that kept clogging her email program.

  Julie looked over from her screen to see Dr. Phoebe Waters, primary investigator on the Bad Luck study—officially known as Mediating Factors in Negative Life Events—standing in her doorway. Joe stood slightly behind her.

  “Hello, Phoebe. Joe.” Julie straightened her shoulders and swiveled her chair to face the duo.

  “We have a problem.” Dr. Waters walked briskly into the room. The woman was often referred to as the grandmother of social psychology. Julie figured people who called her that had never seen her. She didn’t look like any grandmother Julie had ever met.

  At seventy years old, Phoebe Waters stood close to five feet, ten inches tall. Her face almost glowed in pale contrast to the dead black hair that hung in a braid down her back. She had piercing green eyes and skin so tight it wouldn’t dare sag into a wrinkle. Her lips, soft and full, contrasted with the angles of her cheekbones and drew the eye. Julie watched them pull into a frown.

  “What’s up, Phoebe?”

  “We’ve got the results back on the first field interviews.”

  Julie sat forward. The new study fascinated her. Their research team hoped to identify the factors that caused some individuals to always get dumped on by life. The hypothesis was that people with a proportionally higher amount of negative life events were poor decision makers. Eventually, Julie planned to develop a decision making training module that would halt or slow the bad luck cycle for these individuals.