“You’re hungry. We’ll eat,” the barghest said, dropping the menu in my lap.

“Whatever,” was my petulant reply to his back as I angrily rubbed my disloyal belly.

We ordered and ate, all in silence. Even the goblin—trapped in his own funk of fear and guilt—seemed to notice something was up between Anyan and me, since he kept glancing between the two of us.

It wasn’t until the others arrived that we talked freely.

“Camille,” I greeted Ryu’s baobhan sith second with trepidation, as she was also Julian’s mother.

“Jane,” Camille said, smiling. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I responded. “But how are you? About Julian, and everything?”

She smiled. It was a sad smile, but it was a smile. “I’m happy for my son. And I know I’ll see him soon. In the meantime, he’s already e-mailed me. Not even our borders can stop e-mail,” she said, winking at me.

“Good,” I said, so happy to see she was doing okay with her son’s defection.

“Now, let’s take you swimming. You look like you could fall over, and I know the perfect place…”

Camille took me to one of the many enormous lakes surrounding Montreal, where I swam for a good two hours. Thoroughly charged, I felt like a million bucks when we returned to the hotel. Then, after a short strategy session, we all dispersed to our various bedrooms. We’d rented two suites, each of which had two bedrooms and a foldout couch in the lounge, so after a bit of shuffling we were all installed in a bed somewhere. Caleb ended up bunking with the goblin on the foldout sofa in the main room. After losing one prisoner, we weren’t taking any chances.

But another night passed peacefully, and between the two solid nights of rest and my swim, I felt almost like myself again. I was still pissed about Anyan’s treatment of me, but whatever. I kept telling myself that it was better to learn the barghest was an emotional fucktard now, rather than later. Not that it helped really. For every time I remembered the feel of his arms around me it was like somebody punched me in the gut.

And my guts were already roiling, needless to say, since we kept creeping ever closer to confronting Jarl. Surprisingly, I found myself only slightly panicked about the whole thing. For a large part of me felt that this was simply right; it was inevitable. We’d captured too many people who knew too much; now was the time for Jarl to get his comeuppance.

We were only about four and a half hours from the Compound when we stopped in Quebec for lunch and to assess. We hadn’t run into any opposition yet, but that couldn’t last. From the beginning we’d figured that an ambush, if it came, would happen close to the Compound. Jarl had to know what had happened, since the harpies had escaped with the Healer, and the last of his most trusted force were with him at court.

No doubt they would be watching and waiting for us to arrive.

So we loaded ourselves into our cars, planning to drive, bunched together, until we got off the main highway that led to the Compound. Once on that final, two-lane road that quickly narrowed down to a one-lane dirt road, we’d be vulnerable. So we had to be ready.

I was still riding with Anyan. I’d rather have ridden with one of the others, but I didn’t want to make a big deal of swapping with someone. So Anyan and I kept up our silence as we turned off the highway and onto the two-lane road. We had about a half hour till it became dirt, and we could expect an attack at any time.

Ridiculously, the goblin was asleep. He’d looked exhausted since before we’d left Pennsylvania, and apparently he hadn’t really slept either night we’d stopped. So now that danger was imminent, he went ahead and crashed, sprawled out on our backseat.

How he can sleep right now is beyond me, I thought, for I was wound tight as the spring on a mousetrap. Which is why I nearly jumped out of my seat when Anyan finally spoke.

“Well, this appears to be about over, Jane.”

“Yup,” I said, unsure where he was going.

“And I think we’re going to be successful. I think this is going to work… between the sleeping beauty and his father, there should be more than enough evidence against Jarl. Not even considering everyone else we captured, some of whom have to know something…” His voice trailed off, and I nodded.

“Yeah. We did a good job. Thank you for your help.”

Anyan frowned at me. “Don’t thank me, Jane. It was something I had to do as much as you did.”

I didn’t know what to say to that one, unsure how to interpret his words.

“And pretty soon you can get back to your old life. Get back to work—”

“Thank the gods,” I interrupted. “Before I get fired.”

“And to your dad,” Anyan said.

I nodded, but the barghest wasn’t done.

“And to Ryu.”

“To Ryu?” I said, startled.

“Yeah,” he said with a twitch of his nose. “To Ryu.”

“Um, yeah. Well, that’s not going to happen. Ryu and I broke up.”

Both of Anyan’s hands were on the wheel now, showing a little white-knuckle resolve.

“Broke up? But the way you chased after him the other night…”

“Well, yeah. I had to chase after him… I mean, I felt I had to. Because we’d fought and everything, but we hadn’t really ended it. For real. I mean, we did really care for one another at one point,” I said, watching as Anyan’s nose twitched again. “And so there were things that needed to be said, to make things official. And stuff.”

The barghest paused, pursing his lips as if considering his choice of words.

“So were things made official? And stuff?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, wicked official. And stuff.”

“Hmph,” he grunted as I turned back to stare in front of me.

Is that why he’s been such a pissy little cunt this whole time? I marveled. ’Cause he thought I’d made up with Ryu or something?

I watched the barghest out the corner of my eye. He was sort of pawing at the steering wheel with his right hand, indecisively, before he moved it to hover over the gear shift… then moved it to hover over my knee… Then it descended, slowly, till his palm was resting against my jeans.

“Jane, I—” he started to say, looking over at me from the driver’s side.

“Don’t say it,” I interrupted breathlessly, my eyes once again on the road in front of us. “Don’t say anything.”

“What? Why not? Jane…”

“Phaedra, twelve o’clock,” came the goblin’s voice from the backseat as his bony, green-scaled finger shot between us to point at the road.

“Exactly,” I said, patting Anyan’s hand. “Phaedra, twelve o’clock.”

Anyan removed his hand from my knee even as we both raised strong shields around our vehicle. He also braked, hard, so we had a lot of wiggle room to stop before the little, leather-clad woman standing, apparently alone, in the middle of the dirt road.

Fucking Phaedra…

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

We idled in the middle of the dirt road, while Camille and Caleb pulled up their respective vehicles alongside ours. It was a tight squeeze on the small road, trees butting up close on either side, but we made it happen.

Phaedra just stood there, impassively watching as we conferenced.

“Stand and fight?” Camille suggested, as if she were suggesting a restaurant for dinner.

“Every time we do that,” Anyan responded, “we lose our witness.”

The goblin sucked in his breath behind me.

“You three need to get to the Compound. Let us stay and keep Phaedra busy,” Daoud said from Caleb’s passenger seat.

“But how do we get past her?” I asked. I’d figured out that while Phaedra was nowhere close to being the most powerful Alfar out there, she was still packing some major mojo.

“Big shield,” grunted Anyan. “Lay on the gas.”

“And Jane can do that thing she does with her water force,” Camille called from her car.

“What thing?” I asked, confused.

“How you sort of shore up our shield cracks with your own power,” Anyan said. “None of us have ever seen that before.”

“Really?” I asked, suddenly wanting to preen.

Anyan smiled. “Yes, Jane. Really. You do stuff all the time that none of us have ever seen. We’ve all been trained; you just do things.”

“And the shield thing is hot,” Daoud called to me, with a naughty little wink.

I blushed. “Thanks, guys. But we should do this. Phaedra looks bored.”

We all looked forward to where the bald-pated little woman had begun tapping her toe in the dirt, a petulant little moue distorting her usually calm face.

Fucking Phaedra, I thought again, suddenly eager to get this over with.

“Lock and load,” I murmured as Anyan’s power burst forth, to be joined by everyone else’s. I felt a bit self-conscious then as I used my own power like a caulking device: making our shield seamless and strong. I had never realized what I did was weird; it had always felt so natural.