“I’ll look into it, son. As always, I’m grateful for your counsel.”
“Yeah, well, I wish we had better things to talk about.”
Lindsay glanced at the clock. She had fifteen minutes until her next interview. Although she knew she shouldn’t, she wanted to call Adrian. The phone call she’d just ended—the one to the bladesmith who fashioned her custom throwing knives—made her want to hear Adrian’s voice. She spent a moment spinning her phone around and around on her desk; then it rang. When she saw Adrian’s name on the caller ID, she snatched it lightning quick.
“Hey,” she answered, too fast. “I must have thought you up.”
“Lindsay.” He exhaled harshly. “I needed to hear your voice.”
Her smile faded instantly. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything. I . . . I lost a Sentinel last night.”
“Adrian.” She sagged back into her desk chair, knowing how seriously he took his commitment to his mission and his Sentinels. “I’m so sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”
“She did it to herself. I put her in a position where she felt like taking a fatal risk was her only option to being happy, and she paid with her life.”
“She had a choice,” Lindsay argued. “It’s not your fault she picked the option she did.”
He breathed softly into the phone. “Do you believe in leading by example?”
“Yes.”
“Then I have some culpability. And truthfully, I envy her strength of will. I’ve faced the choice she did. I didn’t—I don’t—have the courage to do what she did.”
The steadiness of his voice was more alarming than if he’d been noticeably upset. “She’s dead. That’s not courage; that’s nuts. You need to come home. You’ve been away too long, and you’re tired. You need a break.”
“I need you.”
Her free hand curled around the arm of her chair. She couldn’t help wanting to be the friend he needed. Just as she couldn’t stop wanting to talk to him about her new job, her weapons, her day—anything and everything. Because he got her. And she was pretty sure he felt that way about her in return. “You know where I am.”
He said good-bye and she hung up, her heart heavy with worry.
The dreams she had about him each night kept her connected to him. She felt almost as if she was seeing him every day, as if they hadn’t been apart since she’d left Vegas.
The night before she’d dreamt of them making love in a horse-drawn carriage. They’d been in costume. Something historical, like she’d seen in movie adaptations of Jane Austen stories. She’d climbed onto his lap, pulling up yards of skirts and underskirts while he unbuttoned a pair of breeches. As she’d enveloped his rigid length within her, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, disheveling her upswept hairdo and freeing strands of long dark hair. Gripping her hips, he’d thrust upward with barely restrained ferocity, driving her toward orgasm with single-minded determination. His eyes had glowed with that preternatural blue flame as he grated, “Ani ohev otach, tzel.”
I love you, shadow.
Lindsay was frightened by her understanding of a language she shouldn’t know. She was confused by both the vast differences in each dream—exotic locations and an endless spectrum of clothing from all time periods—and the repetitious similarities. Adrian was always with her. He was always in love with her, and she was always insatiable. Their time together was always marred by a pervasive sense of desperation and her greedy determination to conquer him no matter the cost. She was always a woman who loved Adrian with a dangerous disregard for the consequences, yet she was never the same woman. Her appearance, her culture, her language and background—it was all mutable.
Lindsay straightened, taking a deep breath to clear her mind. She was growing more scattered as the days passed. More restless and unable to concentrate. She needed to resume hunting. Until she made peace with her past, there would be no peace for her in the present.
The phone on her desk beeped a notice that her next interviewee had arrived. A moment later, a handsome young Asian man appeared on the other side of her clear glass office door.
She gestured him in with a smile.
He entered with a quick and confident stride. “Good morning.”
“Hi.” Lindsay stood, shooting a quick glance at his application to read his name. Kent Magnus. She liked the sound of it. As they shook hands, she felt herself responding to him immediately and surprisingly—he wasn’t human, but he wasn’t making her hair stand on end either. He was dressed in a loose pair of khaki Dickies pants and a short-sleeved black dress shirt. His smile was wide and charming, and when they shook hands, his grip was dry and strong.
Good or bad, she couldn’t tell, because she was hit with the overpowering feeling that she’d met and talked to Kent before. “Have a seat, Mr. Magus. Please.”
He waited for her to sit before he did. “The Belladonna is impressive.”
“Isn’t it?” A fact that made Lindsay’s discontent only more annoying. Her job was a fabulous, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and she wasn’t appreciating it the way she should be. “You’re applying for the night auditor position.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I have to say, you’re overqualified.”
“I’m hoping the position has room for advancement . . . ?”
Lindsay gripped her armrests. The especially strong sense of déjà vu his presence evoked made the room tilt. The previous address he’d listed on his application was Virginia, a state she’d driven through many times. It was possible she’d crossed paths with him at a gas station or diner at some point. She blinked through the black spots dancing before her eyes, then made a concerted effort to get her brain firing on all cylinders.
Kent wore his hair cut short. Like hers, it was the same length all around. He also had a great build, with broad shoulders and thick biceps, but he wasn’t as big as a lycan. She made a mental note to have Elijah classify him for her.
“There’s definitely room for advancement,” she assured him. “I noticed you’re new to the area. I confess I’m worried about whether you’ll decide to stay or not. The West Coast is very different from the East Coast.”
“Have you traveled to the East Coast often?”
“I just moved from North Carolina.” Unable to shake off her wooziness, she stood. “Would you care for some water?”
He stood when she did, displaying the etiquette she expected in men but had found sadly lacking in most of the applicants she’d seen over the last two days. “No, thank you. So you and I were practically neighbors.”
Pulling a bottle of water out of the minifridge in the bookcase behind her desk, Lindsay was relieved to feel less disoriented after standing. She took a long drink and noted his wedding band. An inhuman who was married. That threw her for a loop. “The hours are from eleven p.m. until seven a.m., and the days are Tuesday through Saturday. Will that be a problem?”
“Not at all. I’m a night owl.”
“Your wife, too?” She didn’t mean to pry, but she also didn’t want to train a night auditor only to lose him a short time later.