Marissa Day (9 page)

“What happens now?” she asked. “You have what you need and you will go?” She tried to speak the words calmly but a tremor crept unbidden into her voice.

Corwin exchanged another long glance with Darius and once again Miranda had the unaccountable feeling of much more passing between them.

“Ordinarily that is what would happen, yes,” said Corwin. Miranda tightened her jaw to keep it from trembling. “But this is not, even by our standards, an ordinary situation.

“You are powerful, Miranda,” he went on. “The most powerful Catalyst I’ve ever encountered. If you want ... it is possible for us to teach you to how to use your gift. To draw and channel magic safely.”

“To become our Catalyst,” said Darius gruffly. “He is asking you become our Catalyst for the duration of this fight.”

Miranda felt her eyes bulge in their sockets. She was being invited to join them? To stay with them, learn more about . . . about magic, about sex, about these two powerful, magnetic men who stood with her now. Her mind reeled at the thought.

“What if I say no?” she asked. “What if it’s too much and I do not want this?”

“We can take it away,” said Corwin. “I fear we cannot heal your maidenhead, but we can . . . gentle the memories of how you lost it; give you a more ordinary and acceptable encounter with a more ordinary and acceptable man to hold on to. All memories of magic and ... us, will leave you and you will be free to carry on with your life as normal.”

Normal. Miranda looked down at her own hands, which her mother called unalterably coarse. Her normal life was sitting on hard chairs in ballrooms watching her mother lay siege to every man who was available—and quite a few who weren’t—then going home to listen to Mother carp and snipe about Miranda’s inadequacies. To leaven this, there would be the perpetual round of calls and shopping and teas, with no purpose to any of it beyond filling the endless, gray London days.

She looked at Corwin, and at Darius. What they revealed to her was exciting and enticing, true, but they also spoke of danger beyond her ability to imagine. If she said yes now, she would not later be able to turn back. She might be giving up her life and her sanity to escape from nothing worse than the boredom accepted by thousands of her sister spinsters.

But if she said no, she would not see Corwin again. Or Darius. She would never know the feelings and sensations she had discovered with them during the night. She would never again take part in the wonder that she had been shown—neither the magic nor the sex. A whole world had opened before her, and she wanted to know more, to do more. She did not want to run back into that smothering place her life had always been.

If it cost her life, then so be it. A short and purposed life would be far better than the longest life in her mother’s house could ever be.

Miranda squared her shoulders and faced the two Sorcerers. “I am with you.”

Dawn was just breaking over the roofs of Mayfair as Corwin and Darius walked down the empty street. They had clothed themselves again in their evening wear, so that they appeared to be nothing more than two gentlemen strolling casually home from a late night out.

Not that there was anything casual about Darius’s long stride. Darius had not once looked at him, let alone spoken to him, since they had snuck out of Miranda’s house, and Corwin could feel his comrade’s anger in every pore.

Corwin sighed and glanced around the empty street. “So,” he said, pitching his voice low, just in case. “Are you going to tell me what the problem is?”

This actually caused Darius to break stride and swing around to stare at him. “You cannot be serious.”

Corwin shrugged. “Let’s say that I am.”

“You
lied
to her, Corwin.”

“You would prefer I had told her that she was endangered because we failed to keep a decent watch.”

Darius waved his words away impatiently. “I’m not talking about that. You
used
her. You let her believe you took her for love and need, and didn’t bother to tell her we’d come to this place to find her, and bind her if we could.” His fists clenched. “Neither did you see fit to tell her that the reason we were sent to find her was that Catalysts in London have begun to vanish.”

Corwin found himself uncomfortably taken aback. “Oh, yes, and if I’d phrased it so tactfully, she would have fled.”

“That is not the point,” snapped Darius.

“It is the point. Stop and think, Darius. She was already terrified, and halfway to believing that she is something inhuman as it was ...”

“She is. We are.”

Oh, not again.
“Stop it, Darius.”

But Darius had already turned away. “What human being does as we do?”

“Do you mean the magic, or something else, Darius?” Corwin asked impatiently, and instantly regretted it. “Darius?”

Darius shook his head. “That does not change the fact that you lied to her. She now believes that we, that you, care for her.”

“What makes you believe that I don’t?” Corwin sighed.
We really are going to hash it out all over again.

“Corwin, you were only at that ridiculous ball because we are under orders to protect the Catalysts we find and discover why they are vanishing.”

Corwin shrugged. “These are not mutually exclusive things. We have found her. We will protect her. It so happens this woman we are bound to protect is lovely, brave and passionate. How could I see her and not care for her? How could you?”

Darius made no answer and Corwin knew his words had struck home.

“Admit it, Darius. She roused you just as thoroughly as she did me.”

“It was the Catalyst I responded to,” he muttered. “Nothing more.”

Corwin sighed. Darius had never come to terms with the ... breadth of his own affections, and Corwin did not have the energy to revisit that old argument now. He was tired. It had been a long night and there was absolutely no prospect of bed until they reported to their captain.

“There’s a carriage house in the King’s Road,” Corwin said, looking up and down the street to get his bearings. “We can get a bite and hire a hack to take us to the captain.”

Darius drew in a deep breath. “Very well,” he said and they walked on in strained silence.

The carriage house was a clean, well-run affair. The man and wife who kept it were already up and bustling about when Corwin and Darius arrived. While the hack was readied, they were able to dine on bread fresh from the oven spread thickly with butter and marmalade, as well as cold ham and boiled eggs washed down with pots of good beer. The driver was pleased to see their ready money and took them into the city without complaint, weaving the carriage expertly through the morning traffic of rattling carts, vans and wagons. They got out at the mouth of a nameless, narrow street overshadowed by the gleaming dome of St. Paul’s.

Corwin paid the man off, and he and Darius entered an unmarked door halfway down the dim street. It might have been anything from a counting house to a solicitor’s to a tailor. They removed their hats and walked into the neatly appointed sitting room. A fresh fire blazed in the hearth, for the morning had turned chilly.

“Come through, gentlemen, come through.”

Darius glanced at Corwin, and Corwin smiled. They were expected, and neither was surprised.

Down a short corridor, they came to a room that was more a library than anything else. Bookshelves stuffed with fat, leather-bound tomes lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Only one in three was actually in English and more than one were written in a language that had died out a thousand years ago. In the middle of this literary wealth sprawled a broad desk, crowded with stacks of paper, inkwells and pens, as well as scrolls rolled up tightly and tied with ribbons of various colors.

Behind the desk sat their captain, a man Corwin and Darius knew only as Captain Smith.

Smith was a small man with a ring of grizzled gray hair around a bronzed and mottled scalp. He wore a long, unfashionable black coat over white breeches and stockings, and Corwin had the feeling he was older—perhaps far older—than he appeared.

The cognomen “captain” was purely a formality. Smith had no connection with the military that Corwin knew of. But then, Corwin knew next to nothing about the man himself, and that was as it was supposed to be.

“Sit down, gentlemen, sit down.” Smith waved them to the two chairs waiting in front of the desk. “You have eaten? Good,” he said when they nodded. “Now, tell me about your night.”

Smith listened silently while Corwin and Darius recounted the events of the previous evening. Naturally, they left out the details of exactly what had passed between them and Miranda Prosper. Darius’s face remained stony and his voice almost monotone when he described being lured away from the protective circle by a series of strange noises and the movement of light that could have been a lantern.

Corwin had not heard the full story and held his peace as he listened. Clearly, whoever had distracted Darius had done everything but shout his name.

At last, they finished, and Smith sat back in his wide chair.

“Your priorities were correct,” their captain said. “The most important thing was to remove Miss Prosper from the Thayers’ house to a place of relative safety.”

Darius folded his arms and looked away.

“To a place of relative safety,” repeated Smith firmly. “You were there not just to protect any Catalyst at the gathering, but to let the traitor know you were aware of their presence and activities. You have clearly accomplished both.”

“At what cost?” muttered Darius. “We almost got killed.”

Smith smiled thinly. “ ‘Almost’ can be a very large margin, especially in the realms in which we move. What interests me more is the method of the deception.” Smith fingered the chain holding his quizzing glass. “They knew where you’d be. They could have simply lain in wait and attacked physically at an ... inconvenient moment and stood a much better chance of killing all three of you.” He spoke calmly, as if their deaths were no more than an obscure intellectual exercise. “Your wards would have done nothing against a pistol shot or knife. So, why did they not avail themselves of that opportunity?”

“They didn’t want us dead?” suggested Corwin. The quip earned him a long and hard look through Smith’s quizzing glass.

“They wanted to make our deaths look like an accident, or to throw suspicion for them onto Miss Prosper,” put in Darius.

Smith nodded. “Just so. One or the other. We sent you there to smoke out the traitor, but we must consider the possibility that the traitor brought Miss Prosper to the party to lure us there.”

“Miranda had nothing to do with this,” snapped Corwin.

Smith’s shaggy brows lifted. “I did not suggest she did, Mr. Rathe. A Judas goat does not need to understand its job in order to do it.”

Corwin found he did not much care to hear Miranda characterized as a Judas goat, but held his tongue.

“An elegant plan all around,” Smith mused, tapping his glass against his weathered palm. “If it had worked, our two finest men would be drained and dead, and all our suspicions would be pointed toward the unprotected Miss Prosper. Were she to disappear shortly thereafter, we would only think that her masters had spirited her out of reach. Very elegant indeed.”

“Three birds with one stone,” whispered Corwin.

“The question then becomes why Miss Prosper?” Smith went on as if Corwin had not spoken. “A Catalyst who is also a daughter of the haut ton. Was she simply convenient, or did they have some particular reason for choosing her from a list of candidates?” His eyes narrowed. “Our traitor does not seem to do things in a random fashion.”

“Either way, she is going to need protection,” said Corwin.

Smith nodded. “And training. We must make sure she is secure in her abilities and in her loyalties before our traitor has the opportunity to advance whatever designs he, or she, may have on Miss Prosper. So, Mr. Rathe, Mr. Marlowe, your mission remains unchanged. You must secure Miss Prosper to our cause and find our traitor.”

“What if the traitor’s plan is to bring us close to her?” asked Darius.

“That sort of supposition, Mr. Marlowe, leads very quickly to paralysis.” Smith tucked his glass into his waistcoat pocket, only to pull it out again a moment later. “It is not impossible that I am sending two good men further into a trap, and failing to rescue an innocent young woman from it. It would not be the first time I’ve made a hideous mistake.” His blue eyes clouded over for a moment, and Corwin hoped to never know what could cause such sorrow to crease a man’s face. “If it is a trap, you must find the trigger before it springs or die trying.”

It was a cold-blooded statement, and yet Corwin couldn’t fault the old man. This was war, and they were all soldiers.