She sat down on the cliff edge, unafraid as her legs dangled over the edge and she put her arm around the cougar’s shoulders. She’d been a city girl until she came to Danny’s station, and then the wide-open spaces, the very wildness of the world that pressed in on them on all sides, had become more of who she was than where she’d been born.

So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that this was the next step. This was what home should feel like, a place she could come, no matter how empty she was, and she’d be filled. There were no questions here, so no need for answers. Her grief could become part of the fabric of this place, as could her laughter, if it ever came back to her again.

If it could find her anywhere, it would be here.

8

MALACHI showed his teeth as Kohana blocked him at the top of the porch. “You need to take off your shoes,” the old Indian said. “They’re covered in mud.”

“They’re always covered in mud.”

“Which is why they need to be left out here.”

Mal gave him a gimlet eye. “It would take two fingers for me to rip your throat out. Maybe just one.”

“I expect you could do that with or without shoes on.” Kohana sighed, made room as Mal ascended the porch with a near snarl. “Fine. Go on in, then. But the girl’s worked herself to death to clean things up today.”

Mal came to a stop. “She’s not here to be manual labor.”

“Well, you’re not leaving her with much to do, and she’s worked all her life. It’s what she knows. It helps her. She doesn’t go mad, thinking about how much she wants to see those young vampires. Look at how pretty and shiny those windows are. I hate doing windows.”

Mal scowled, pivoted and thumped down in one of the porch rockers. Kohana cocked his head as he began to tug the laces loose. From his employer’s expression, he could tell the night’s work had not gone well, and it didn’t take much of a leap to figure what had caused the problem. “How are they?”

“Damaged.”

“Irreparably?”

Mal grunted. “Pointless either way. If I can fix the damage done to them, they have nowhere to go, nowhere they’ll fit where they won’t end up in a situation that might actually be worse. In the vampire world, they’d be viewed as circus freaks. Or worse. Plenty would take advantage of it.”

“But not all. Could some of them stay here, permanently? We could surely use a few more with vampire speed and quickness, like yourself.”

“These aren’t animals.” Mal sighed, rubbed a hand over his face. “They have intellect, the root of all human mischief. It’s what makes us discontent with our lot in life, seeking higher meaning and purpose. If these fledglings had a mortal life span, say sixty or seventy years, fine, but they’re immortal, Kohana. Do you think they’d like to stay on this island for the next four or five hundred years or more?”

“I know I would. Nothing out there better than this. You see enough bad stuff, get your heart broken, you know why an animal is smarter than us, without that intellect. Maybe you learn to accept it, want that for yourself.”

“Don’t be talking to her like this. I mean it, Kohana.” Mal lifted his head. “Don’t give her false hope. Each of these fledglings is fucked-up twelve ways to Sunday. The chance any of them could reach a decent level of self-determination and stability is right up there with biblical miracle.”

“I’ve seen you pull off miracles.”

“You’re like talking to a stump. Only a stump has the good sense to keep its thickheaded opinions to itself. Where is she?”

“Probably asleep in your room. I sent her that way an hour ago to put on clean sheets.”

“What?” Malachi frowned. “You didn’t tell her—”

“Of course not.” Kohana looked offended. “I made an oath to you, Mal. You think I’d break it?”

“No.” Mal rose, put a hand on his shoulder. “It was a gut reaction. But you sent her down there. What if she screws something up?”

“You think while she’s changing out the sheets she might catch a thread of your devil-spawned universe and accidentally unravel the whole thing?” Kohana grunted. “Room’s peaceful, quiet. I knew it might coax her to sleep some. She needs more rest. I wasn’t going to disturb her until she came back, and then I was going to act like I hadn’t even noticed how long she’d been gone.”

“You probably have the right instinct, putting her to work.” Darkness settled back over Mal’s features. Leaving his socks and shoes behind, he moved to the threshold in his dusty cargo pants and T-shirt. “We won’t help by coddling her, Kohana. Nobody gets past something like she’s been through by being treated like glass. You have to convince them they’re flesh and blood, as they’ve always been. The earth keeps turning, no matter what happens.”

“You might follow your own advice,” Kohana noted. “You’ve been hiding out here for some time yourself, ignoring the outside world.”

“Not ignoring. Mindful of it. Mindful enough to know this is where I belong, just as you said. I’ll take my blood when I come back up. Just set it out on the counter. Everyone else is about ten minutes behind me and I know they’ll be hungry. They had to handle the cats without me while I worked with those fledglings. Thomas helped some, but I’m not comfortable having even a third-mark near them. Not until we figure out what’s going on in their heads.”

“The girl could probably help with that.”

“She’s concocted all sorts of sentimental notions about it.” Mal snorted. “I’ll have to wade through that claptrap to get to the useful things she knows. But stop your scowling. I plan to take her to see them soon. Don’t tell her that, either. I may very well change my mind.”

Moving into the house, Mal headed toward the lower level.

Elisa started awake. She’d been staring out over that beautiful puzzle of light and earth, and then there’d been a fog rolling in, a darkness. She hadn’t felt fear, just a need to come back to herself, a sense that someone was calling for her, and she needed to answer.

She pushed herself up on one arm, orienting herself. The precipice and the cougar were still so close, it was difficult at first to realize she was in a bedroom, an unfamiliar one.

Oh, Lord in Heaven, had she really fallen asleep on his bed? What was the matter with her? She galvanized her sluggish limbs into motion and then, on top of that mortification, she realized she wasn’t alone.

Mal leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, thumbs hooked at his armpits. He was barefoot, which somehow suited him, made him look more wild and untamed. Or maybe it was just the lingering effect of her dream. In a sudden spurt of panic, she clapped her hands to her body, and confirmed she was still wearing her work dress, and not an animal skin. However, looking down, she felt a little faint when she noticed there was dirt caked under her fingernails that hadn’t been there before.

In her dream, she’d dug her hands into the soil, to smear more of it on her. Lying flat out on the ground, looking up at the sky, she’d liked the way earth felt across her abdomen, over her breasts, the tops of her thighs. The cougar had lain on her legs, a heavy, solid warmth.

Don’t be silly. You just didn’t wash your hands properly after cleaning the windows and porch.

Despite her reeling head, she managed to get off the bed and began to smooth it. “I’m so sorry, sir. I just . . . I don’t know what happened. Must be the jet lag. I didn’t mean to nod off like that. I got on the bed to make it, and I was touching the animal skins, and next thing . . . Anyhow, it won’t happen again. I’ll just go see if Kohana needs anything . . .”

She’d been gathering up the old sheets while she babbled. That was another mistake in judgment, because the sheets smelled like him. For some reason, her mind was flooded with a detailed image of him standing before her if she had been wearing only an animal skin. Not the one in her dream, but the tiger skin, gathered around her, her hand clasping it loosely just above her breasts as she knelt in the center of his bed. What if he’d crossed the room, closed his hand over hers, loosened those fingers and pushed it away, so it coiled around her like the actual beast? He’d bear her down against the pelt and put his mouth on her flesh . . .

Scurrying around the bed, she caught her toe on the heavy wood frame. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, God forgive her, a toe stubbing hurt like a son of a bitch, and on top of that it was an embarrassing reminder that she’d slipped off her shoes to get on the bed. She hopped, biting back the curse, and gathered up the tails of the sheets that were trying to unravel from her grasp. He was watching her with unfathomable fascination. Then, before she could rattle off something else, he spoke.

“I didn’t take their lives.”

She stopped, trying to push her mind past the throbbing. “Excuse me?”

He nodded toward the bed, the pelts. “I didn’t kill them.”

“No, of course not. I didn’t think you did.” She knew hunters who respected their prey, even as they had to hunt them for food. Dev was one of those, as were most of the men on the station. But cats were predators, not food, and it wouldn’t have made sense, no matter what kind of hunter Mal was.

“Their spirits help protect the island. They were poached by men, so they know the dangers, and that adds to the strength of their protection.” He pushed off the doorframe then, moved across the room toward her. She stayed frozen by that bedpost, toe aching and mind confused. He stopped at the side of the bed, catty-corner from her, and laid his hand on the skins. She realized now the one she’d been lying upon most squarely was the cougar’s. That grayish brown color with touches of white.

“Still warm,” he murmured; then he glanced at her. “The cougar is sometimes the gentlest of the large cats. They even purr. Which doesn’t mean much. She’ll still disembowel you if you do the wrong thing around her.”