Under His Skin (23 page)

He stroked her hair and laid his cheek on top of her head. What a dramatic change from the arrogant woman who had glared at him like a goddess surveying a penitent that first night. She was as unpredictable as the tides and he was helpless to do anything but ride it out to the end. Over and over again he rocked her, letting his questions rest unanswered. She couldn’t answer them now anyway.

Finally, the tears stopped. She sat there on the floor for a minute, her body tucked into his as he offered her what comfort he could without knowing the source of her pain. He looked down to see her eyes were open and she was just staring off into space.

When she finally pulled away, part of him screamed at him to hold on. He didn’t know why, but he had a bad feeling about what was going to happen next.

Ana stood and walked out of the room.
He rose and followed her, careful to keep his movements slow and cautious. The air in the room crackled with the energy that comes before a storm and all the hairs on his neck stood up.

She made her way to the kitchen and started going through cupboards. He breathed a little easier when she took out a teapot and a cup.

“Feeling well enough to have some tea?”

She smiled, a sad little twitching of the corner of her mouth. “Yeah, I’m
gonna
have some tea.”

Her tone plucked at his nerves and he shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “I will be.” Without looking up she added, “Tell Nu I release him from his promise.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? What promise?”

Ana didn’t answer. She filled the teapot with water and then set it on the stove. The burner clicked as the flames leapt to life and she left it to boil. He watched her grab a spoon from a drawer. She moved slowly, with a calm grace. There was a peace inside her that he hadn’t seen the entire short time he’d known her. It worried him. When she sat at the small dining table, he sat down with her.

“Ana, did you—”

“I didn’t burn the furs,” she said quietly.

Relief eased some of the tension from his muscles. “Oh. Good.”

She stared at the tabletop, her eyes welling up with a fresh wave of tears. The sight of her blue eyes glittering with sadness tugged at his heart and he reached for her hands across the table.

“Ana, I’m sorry I overreacted. I just kept thinking of those
skinwalkers
, and when I thought you burned the furs, I lost my temper. Please forgive me.”

“I want to thank you, Brec,” she whispered. She cleared her throat and raised her eyes to his. “You’ve been kinder to me than anyone has in a long time. I know I don’t deserve it.”

“You mean threatening you with a knife and tying you to your own bed? Damn, if that’s the most kindness anyone has ever shown you then the bar wasn’t set very high was it?” he joked.

She smiled softly and looked down at her tea.

He shook his head, confused and starting to panic. This wasn’t the woman who’d ripped a drawer out of a dresser because an errant comment from him had pissed her off. This wasn’t the woman who glared at him without a stitch of clothing on her body and made him feel like the vulnerable one. Something had happened, something big enough to completely change the woman he’d thought he was starting to understand.

“Ana, I don’t understand. You have the power to change your life if that’s what you want. Give the skins back, I know a clairvoyant who can use them to track their owners. Everything will be made right.”

A sob escaped her lips and she quickly cleared her throat and lowered her gaze back to the tabletop. Emotions danced over her face, tightening the skin around her eyes and tugging at the corners of her mouth. She obviously had something on her mind, something she needed to share. Brec gripped the table, trying not to push her.

Seconds ticked by and still she didn’t say anything. His nerves wound tighter and tighter. What would he do if she retreated into herself? Whatever was bothering her was obviously powerful and she seemed on the brink of a complete breakdown. He had to keep her calm, had to keep her in a healthy frame of mind. If she let go, if she gave up completely, those people would lose any hope they had of getting their skins back.

Suddenly Ana raised her eyes to his face. Brec held his breath, his heart pounding as he waited to hear what she had to say. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything the tea kettle began to whistle. She gave him a small smile and stood to retrieve the kettle.

Brec just barely stifled a shout of frustration. Frazzled and getting close to his own breaking point, he stood and went to the cupboard. Grabbing himself a small ceramic cup, he tried to remember where the tea bags were. Finally he located them in a small bowl in the next cupboard. There was only one left and he took it after only a moment’s hesitation. Surely he’d earned a lousy cup of tea?

He sat down at the table and plunked one of the tea bags into his cup. Just as he reached for the tea kettle, he realized Ana was staring at him like a deer caught in headlights.

“What?” he asked, his panic
rising
another notch.

She reached for his tea cup. “You wouldn’t like this tea.”

He frowned and put a hand over hers, pulling the cup back in front of him. “You are freaking me out. I need the tea.”

He poured hot water over his tea bag as she raised her own cup to her lips. Her gaze stayed riveted on his cup, a strange tension singing in her hands. With every passing second her strange behavior wound him a little tighter. He closed his eyes and raised the cup to his lips.

“NO!”

The cup jerked out of his hand and his eyes flew open in time to see her stretched across the table, her own tea spilled across the surface and her hand still extended from where she’d smacked his tea out of his grasp. Once he was certain he hadn’t in fact had a heart attack, he took a deep breath. For a long second he just stared at her, convinced she’d gone mad.

Her chest rose and fell with her labored breathing and her gaze remained on his teacup where it had shattered on the floor several feet away. He lowered his hands to his lap, staring at her. Not wanting to make her any crazier than she already was
,
he just waited.

Very slowly, she backed into her chair. Like a victim in a horror movie, she slowly turned her gaze to his face.

“Hemlock,” she whispered.

It was just one word. One word forced between dry lips with a voice still hoarse from crying. Yet that once word may as well have been a shout. Nausea floated in his stomach as the smell of the tea spilled on the table reached his nostrils. A rank odor not unlike parsnips confirmed Ana’s whispered confession. The tea bags sitting in the cupboard, the tea bag she’d put in her cup and he’d put in his, were made from poisonous hemlock. He stared at her, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Hemlock?” he repeated. He leaned forward, trying to look into her face. “You were going to . . .” It was almost too horrible to say. “Kill
yourself
?” he finished quietly.

She covered her face with her hands. He waited, but she didn’t move, didn’t try to speak. She sat there, quiet, defeated, and seemingly ashamed.

Very slowly, he slid to his knees and moved forward so that he knelt in front of her. The thought that this woman who had raged against him at every turn would find anything so overwhelming that death was the only solution she could see, frightened him. Strong people shouldn’t be this fragile.
She
shouldn’t be this fragile.

“Ana, why?”

She kept her hands over her face and shook her head.

“Ana, tell me what is so bad that you would . . . take your own life?” He could barely force the words out. Somewhere between the first time she’d glared at him with that blazing fury and when they’d stood there fighting about a
toos
, he’d started to care about this woman. He didn’t know if it was her obvious interest in the healing arts, or if it was the way she so clearly thought healers were better than warriors, or even if it was just your run-of-the-mill physical attraction, but somehow somewhere Ana had stopped being his prisoner and started being . . . something else.

His heart felt like lead in his chest, a sorrow deeper than he’d felt in a long time weighing on his spirit. He didn’t know exactly when he’d started to care, but he was quickly realizing that he did. He cared a great deal.

Finally, she lowered her hands. The sadness in her eyes brought him up higher on his knees so he could cup her face in his hands, brushing away a tear with his thumb.

“Tell me,” he whispered.

She didn’t say anything, just stood from the table. He followed her as she made her way through the kitchen to the living room. His eyes briefly danced over the now familiar art. He’d searched this room thoroughly and found nothing. Where was she going?

Ana continued through the room and opened the door that he knew led to the basement. He frowned. There’d been nothing down there but a dirt floor and the water heater. Curiosity aroused, he followed her down. She paused in the middle of the basement and knelt on the dirt floor. He watched, fascinated, as she began to dig. After just a few inches, he saw the door.

It was a small square, maybe two feet across. When she’d finally brushed enough dirt off of it, Ana grabbed hold of an iron ring and lifted the trapdoor. The wood creaked, an eerie sound in the dark basement, lit only by a small window at the top of one wall. Without looking up at his face, Ana lowered herself onto a ladder and descended into the hole.

Brec held his breath as he followed her. A vague sense of unease tickled his spine. He had a vague thought that he didn’t know what was down there, but quickly shook off the idea that she may have a weapon. If she wanted him dead, she’d have let him drink the hemlock.

A metallic clicking sound drew his attention to an electric lantern in her hands. The soft glow lit her face, making her white-blonde hair look golden and her icy blue eyes the warm blue of a spring sky. The sight almost took his breath away and he had just a moment to wonder what she was like when she was happy. She looked at him for a moment and there was another emotion in her gaze along with the sadness—fear.

Before he could ask her what she was afraid of, she turned and walked farther into the secret room. When the lantern’s glow touched the far wall, Brec’s breath caught in his throat.

The skins.
Two seal-skins, three wolf pelts, and a giant fur that had to be a brown bear’s hide lay scattered on the floor. Silver and black, white and grey, and a deep forest shade of brown. They lay like ghosts in the dim light, pointing their accusing fingers at the woman holding a lantern in her trembling hand.

The soft emotions he’d felt for Ana just moments ago wavered in the presence of the damning evidence. The sight of the skins put images in his mind of the victims. Where were they now? How long had they been without their skins? Were they alive? He swallowed hard. Were they sane?

Memories of what it had felt like to lose his skin attacked his mind like a swarm of angry insects. Devastation, pain, and a misery so thick it choked the air from his lungs had claimed him body and soul. He hadn’t even gone twenty-four hours without his skin, and yet the thought of never getting it back had nearly been enough to drive him mad.

He turned to Ana, not knowing what expression he wore on his face. As much as he didn’t want to push her into a complete breakdown, he was horrified. He’d known all along that she’d stolen skins, but somehow seeing the evidence made it all more real. If not for the intensity of her pain, clear as day in the red puffiness around her eyes and the sparkle of her tears in the lantern’s light, he may have forgotten his healer’s ways and given her the punishment such a crime deserved.

The smell of hemlock drifted by his nose, thrown up by his mind as a sensory memory.
Ana was going to kill herself if he left. He knew it with a certainty he didn’t quite understand. He stared at the skins, trying to shake off the feeling that he was looking at dead bodies. Had their owners survived their loss?

I have to get those skins back to their owners.
He glanced back at Ana.
If I leave, she’ll hurt herself.
Indecision threatened to tear him in two. Finally, he rubbed a hand over his face and turned to Ana.

“This isn’t a reason to kill yourself,” he said, keeping his voice as calm as he could. “We’ll give them to the clairvoyant and we’ll find the owners. You can’t go back in time, but you can do what you can to make amends.” He stared hard into her eyes. “Ana, we can make this right.”