Page 18

D estiny pushed away the food Jesse tried to hand her. “I said, I don’t want anything to eat.”

She knew her voice sounded whiny. She didn’t really care. She was empty but for the black horror that filled every corner of her heart.

They should be out there scouring the floor of that desert canyon right now. Again. Not sitting here in this stupid hotel suite ordering room service.

“Fine. Suit yourself.” He slammed the plate onto the table in front of her, sending raw carrot slices skittering off her plate and across the polished wood. “But you’d be better off with food in your stomach, because we’re keeping at this all night until you remember every word you overheard that might give us a clue about where they were going next.” Jesse towered over her, his hands on his hips, a dark scowl on his face.

“I already told you. What they said about some castle made no sense.”

No more sense than Pol had made when Jesse had called him, carrying on about the Exiled Ones having used some kind of mysterious energy to travel from place to place. “There’d be no way they could get Leah out of the country. She didn’t… doesn’t even have a passport, for God’s sake. Neither one of us ever did.”

She couldn’t think reasonably. The thoughts hurt too badly and she didn’t have the strength to fight the black horror anymore. Nothing mattered. Somehow Jesse and Robert had allowed those bloodsuckers to slip away with Leah and now it was too late.

Her vision had been wrong. Her father had said that her going with those men was the only way she’d find Leah. She’d gone and… she’d failed.

They’d slice her sister open, drain every drop of her blood, and then leave her body out there in that canyon somewhere for wild animals to gnaw on until no one would ever recognize…

Hot tears tracked down her cheeks again as she pictured all the horrible possibilities.

“Aw, Des. Come on, don’t cry anymore.”

Jesse’s stern expression crumpled. He wrapped his arms around her, lifting her to her feet, murmuring how it would all be okay as he held her close.

She allowed him to hold her. It felt wonderful to have someone share this burden. To have someone care about her feelings. Even if he didn’t really mean a word of what he said.

Granted, he hadn’t technically deserted her as she’d feared. He’d been tracking Leah. But it was only a matter of time. He’d hidden from her the truth of who he was, and that told her as much as she needed to know.

“It’ll be okay, Des. We’ll find her. But we need your help to do that.”

Yes, they did. And what was she doing? She was being a total wussy-girl. The kind of female she always made fun of at the movies.

That was absolutely not who she was. Time to stop wallowing and get her act together. It might be too late to save Leah, but if it was, she wanted to catch the people responsible for her sister’s death and make them suffer horribly.

She couldn’t do that from her suffocating, self-imposed cave of black terror and pity. Really, what did she have to fear anymore? What was the worst thing in the world that could possibly happen to her? She could lose everyone.

Already happened. That meant there was nothing else they could do to her. She had nothing left to lose and everything to gain.

Leaning back from Jesse’s embrace, she placed the heels of her hands over her eyes and rubbed, smearing them down over her face to wipe away the wet streaks.

“Okay,” she said, as much for her own benefit as for that of the men in the room. “Okay. Everything I can remember. Let’s go through it again. Every single thing I can remember. The redhead’s name is Adira. She was totally in charge. Psycho Blondie called her his queen.”

“Good. We have that.” Jesse scanned the notes he’d taken earlier as she spoke.

“He wanted to go home but Adira said they couldn’t because some traitor—Ramos, I think she called him— messed up Switzerland. And somebody’s son didn’t know about a lot of places, including this castle in Fleenas-something. Fleenasmore.”

Jesse’s head snapped up. “A traitor named Ramos? Are you sure that was the name?” Jesse scribbled furiously on the notepad. “I can’t believe we could get that lucky.” A nod toward his friend and Robbie flipped open his cell phone, moving into one of the bedrooms as he punched buttons.

“You know who this Ramos guy is?”

Jesse smiled grimly as he pulled out his own phone. “If it’s the same one, and I’m betting it is, he’s family. Anything else you can remember? Anything at all?”

She shook her head. That was all she could think of, and she’d scoured her memory for that much.

“Okay. We’ll go with that for now. If you think of anything else, you let me know.”

Before he lost himself in his next phone call, he kissed the top of her head and smiled at her in a way that would have melted her heart if she’d allowed it to. But he wasn’t getting to her again. Now that she knew who he was, she understood the ground rules.

This was supposed to be a purely business relationship and she was keeping it that way. No matter how hard it might be. And that nagging little emotion eating away at her insides promised that it was going to be awfully hard.

She picked up a piece of broccoli from the plate in front of her and popped it in her mouth, surprised to find it was still warm.

“That’s it, then.” Jesse put away his phone and seated himself at the table, pulling his plate closer. “Did you get him?” he asked, as Robbie came back into the room.

“Aye.” The Scot winked as he joined them at the table. “And the pieces all fit. That Adira woman was his father’s wh-… um…” Robbie stuttered to a stop, his face turning a dull red as he glanced over at Destiny. “Live-in lady friend, we’ll call her. She sounds to be a vile one.”

“She is.” Destiny had no doubt about it. “She said she’d never let my sister go.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before their import hit home. That awful, hateful woman needed Leah for some reason. Needed her badly.

And that meant there was no way Adira was going to allow anything to happen to Leah.

Destiny’s breath caught in a hitch as the realization settled on her. Her sister was alive. This was still a rescue operation.

She tuned back in to the conversation between Jesse and Robbie just in time to catch a phrase she didn’t particularly like.

“What do you mean you’ll stash me in Denver before you go? Go where?” Stash her? That made her sound like she was hot property from some bank heist.

Jesse was wearing that imperious “I’m in charge” look of his again. “I mean exactly what I said. We’ll fly out of Sedona tomorrow around two o’clock, and when we get to Denver we’ll drop you in a safe location while Robbie and I head to Scotland.”

“Scotland?” Destiny sat back in her chair. Jesse actually believed those maniacs had been serious about leaving the country?

“Peter’s located at Fleensamore. It’s a village in the north of Scotland. It’s the best lead we have.”

“Why are we leaving so late?” Robbie interrupted around a bite of his steak.

“Mechanical problems. They’re waiting on a part to repair one of the hatches.” He rubbed the heel of his hand over one side of his forehead as if he could physically clear his mind. “I think I’ll have Peter run Destiny up to Cate’s when we get in.”

That’s what he was thinking? Well, he could just think again. “Peter isn’t running me anywhere. It’s my sister we’re after. I’m going with you.”

Jesse arched an eyebrow arrogantly. “Oh, I don’t think so. Try some logic, babe. You said yourself you didn’t have a passport. And we sure as hell don’t have six weeks to wait for you to get one, now do we?”

Of course the answer was no, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging he and his stupid logic were right. Instead she snatched a roll off her plate and stormed away from the table, leaving the two of them to their plans.

Plans that didn’t include her.

Or so they thought.

Her head was clear now. In facing the possibility of her sister’s death, she’d fought her way through the black morass of her fear and she didn’t intend to ever let it control her again.

She was in charge, at least of herself if not the situation.

Picking up her borrowed laptop, she switched it on and made herself comfortable on the bed.

In spite of Jesse’s logic, there were still things that just didn’t add up for her.

Like… if she couldn’t get to Scotland because she didn’t have a passport, how the heck were the bad guys planning to get Leah there?

And what had Pol meant about the Exiled Ones, the original vampire Fae, using some kind of energy to travel? Everything the man had told them so far had been fact. Weird fact, but fact, so she couldn’t discount this part, either.

She leaned her head back against the wall, wincing at the pressure on the lump she had there.

Answers were what she needed, but questions were all she had.

The computer in her lap beeped helpfully to let her know it was all ready to work.

Somebody, somewhere in the world must have touched on at least one of the things she needed answers for, and here she sat with the world’s best answer machine right in her lap.

Signing on to the internet took only a moment. When the search box came up, she typed in

Energy sources, Sedona, AZ

She’d barely made her way through the first page of responses when a knock sounded at her door.

“You okay, Des?”

Her stomach knotted as she pictured him standing there on the other side of the door. He’d be wearing that concerned expression, the one that could melt into his breath-stealing grin in the space of a heartbeat.

“I’m fine.”

“You need anything?”

“No.” She didn’t. Not a thing. Especially not him, no matter what her traitorous heart might be screaming. “Just sleep. And privacy.”

“Okay, then.” He paused, and for an instant she wondered if he’d left. “You know where my room is if you need me. I’ll leave the door open.”

Yeah. She just bet he would. But he was going to be in for a big surprise if he expected her to come crawling to him tonight. No way. He needed to learn that simply because he was rich, it didn’t mean he could just wiggle his finger and she’d come running. No matter how attractive the man that finger was attached to. No matter what she might feel every time he looked at her. No matter how much she might want…

She forced herself to focus her attention back on the little screen in her lap as she heard his steps fading away on the carpet.

By the time she looked up again, her back had cramped and her head was splitting. The little scrapes and cuts along her arms, which Jesse had so carefully cleaned and bandaged earlier this evening, were all stinging like crazy.

It was very late and she needed to be sharp tomorrow for whatever happened. She climbed out of bed and headed for the bathroom.

As she slipped into the T-shirt she’d brought along to sleep in, she tried to ignore the scent of aftershave that clung to the fibers of the soft cotton. For a moment she considered taking it off, but that would be too much like giving in.

Destiny Noble wouldn’t give in. Not anymore.

She wouldn’t think about the last time she’d worn this thing. Last night when she’d gone to Jesse’s bed…

No. That was all in the past. Never happened. Certainly wouldn’t happen again. She’d make sure of that. She’d resisted him earlier tonight when he’d come knocking on her door, hadn’t she? Damn straight she had.

Jesse Coryell was too dangerous. It would be too easy to wake up and find herself in love with a man like that. Too easy to let herself believe he might be the one. And then where would she be?

She didn’t plan to turn into Rainbow. Ending up alone and miserable was not the way she wanted her life to go. No sir. Not her. She might be alone, but at least she wouldn’t have to live with the thought of having been deserted by the love of her life, her Soulmate.

She stretched her back and reached for the ibuprofen bottle. Two should knock the edge off the pain enough to allow her to get some sleep.

How long had she sat there anyway, hunched over the computer, hunting through page after page of information? Long enough to have bumped into every wacko in the world, it felt like. Energy vortices, spirals, magnetic grids—she’d found them all. Each one more wacked than the one before.

When she finished brushing her teeth, she padded back to her bed, and turned off all the lights in the room save for the small one on her nightstand. She had started to close down the computer when another idea floated into her mind.

Of course, it was ridiculous, but who was she to discount ridiculous? Come to think of it, she hardly had any room to be proclaiming people wacko because of their beliefs. Especially considering all she’d learned to be fact in the last two days.

Especially considering she was supposedly the daughter of a Faerie.

Again she fingered the keys on the laptop before typing once more into the search box:

Energy vortex, Faeries

An hour and a half later she closed the screen on the laptop, gently setting the little black machine on the floor beside her bed.

Switching off the light, she snuggled into her pillows, pulling the covers up around her chin, seriously doubting she’d get any sleep at all.

She’d be too busy trying to figure out how all the things she’d discovered could possibly fit together. What it all meant.

Especially the bit about something called ley lines. She might have dismissed the lines themselves and those sites that mentioned them as nothing more than the standard made-up fantasy stories she’d run into if not for one small commentary she’d found.

It was on the one site that appeared to be more of a personal diary than anything else. It certainly hadn’t had the professional, polished look of the sites out there aimed at selling something or even entertaining.

The writer had journaled about the experiences he’d had with encountering those ley lines and the supposed energies surrounding them. But that wasn’t what caught her eye. It was the other name he used for the lines.

Faerie Paths.