The problem was that the alternative—hiding in the seclusion that I’d been in for more than ten years—was unbearable.

There had to be another way. I just hoped it wouldn’t be the end of me.

Chapter Three

If your thoughts were as clear as your eyes, and the whole of your heart were true.

I picked the man out the second his foot hit the grass. We were well into the third song of the set, and Andrew’s program running on the laptop that sat on his keyboard had switched the big lights from us to the people dancing on the grass in front of us, in kind of a low-budget approximation of the lights in a club. With the brightest of the lights out of my eyes, and from my elevated position on the portable stage, I saw a man emerge from behind the ten-foot-high hedge that segregated this section of the garden, and stroll over to the back of the crowd of approximately fifty people.

If your pulse beat time to love as fast as you think and plan.

This man was tall, taller than several of the people at the back, with a silhouette that wasn’t bulky, but wasn’t thin. He had dark hair with a white stripe on one side, and the way he moved reminded me of one of the big cats that lived at a zoo in which I’d taken shelter for a few weeks. Most of the cats were nervous as hell around me, but one, a black panther named Leon, didn’t seem to mind my presence. This man reminded me in some intangible way of Leon ... or at least, of the way Leon prowled through his Amazonian exhibit.

If you felt as much as you thought, and dreamed what you seem to dream.

Given our distance, I couldn’t see his eyes, but I felt his presence as if he was Leon ... strong, silent, and filled with a secret power that his prey saw only at the last moment of life.

These days, half-sweet and half-bitter, would taste like Olympian wine.

At first the man was watching the crowd, but suddenly he turned to look at me. Here’s the thing about a siren’s song. ... Even when we aren’t trying to control someone with it, there’s something more to the song, some hint of emotion that comes through. It’s literally in our nature to imbue songs with our thoughts and emotions, and it takes years of hard work to be able to sing without letting anything through.

If you thought in the light of the sun, or let our hearts run free, if you gave your kisses gladly, if you could just let me be ...

Evidently my distraction allowed a little extra zing slip through into my voice, because I felt the man’s attention, as if his gaze was a tangible thing.

The song, a bouncy ditty that Andrew had written by ripping off some long-dead poet, and which had about half the dragons present dancing, came to an end, and I lost sight of the man in the dazzle of the lights hitting us full on. I signaled to Andrew that I needed a break, and he gave Cassius the nod to swing into his ballad. I slipped behind the tower of speakers to get a sip of water, and gather my strength for what was to come.

I knelt there for a moment, contemplating running away, indulging in a brief daydream where I could escape, but the vibration of the stage beneath my knees seemed timed to a rhythm that spelled doom, doom, doom with every beat of the bass drum.

There was no escape, and I knew it. With a sigh of self-pity, I took one last sip of water and rose to my feet, waiting until Cassius had finished before moving forward to take my place at the microphone.

All three of my bandmates were watching me closely. Nervously, I wiped my palms on the flirty red dress that I wore at the gigs, and stepped forward.

Andrew gave me a few seconds, but when it was obvious I was just standing there all shades of awkwardness, he leaned forward into his mic and said, “We have a special song for you, one that you have to hear to believe. Ladies and gentlemen, Vicky ... er ... Montrose.”

Mentally offering up an apology, I lowered my head, my eyes on the floor beneath my feet as I started to draw in the power that I needed to push. It flowed up through the ground to my shoes, up through my legs, and higher up to my torso, rising slowly up my throat, the tingle of it making me feel like I was standing in the middle of a lightning storm. I lifted my head, my mouth opening as I did so, and allowed the song to pour out of me. The words were meaningless, and in fact were never the same. They consisted of random bits of lyrics and poetry that stuck in my head, but what was important was the intention I put behind them. I pushed hard, compelling the people present to move their bodies to the beat of the music. Almost immediately they all started bobbing up and down in time.

Andrew waited a few seconds, then switched off most of the lights, leaving on only a few surrounding the stage in order to see. The sun had gone down a short while before, and shadows had long since claimed the grass, staining it black. The mass of bodies moved in time to the song, the music slowly dying away until there was just my voice.

Andrew moved away from his keyboard, gesturing toward the house. I nodded, and kept my push going, feeling it better to overdo it, since I had no idea how much energy it took to get dragons to comply.

Rina and Cassius followed Andrew toward the house, the last pocketing a pepper spray device that he would use to disable anyone outside my range.

I sang on, glancing at my watch, knowing I had to pace myself, but afraid to lighten up on the push. At the three-minute mark, I noticed something odd.

I was being stalked.

While the rest of the dragons danced, their bodies moving not in sync, but still together, one figure slid through them, slowly moving forward.

It was the man with the white stripe of hair. The panther man. And his eyes were on mine as he maneuvered his way through the dancing crowd, his gaze fixed on me.

Helpless to move while I was pouring energy into the song, I watched with growing horror as he started up the four steps to the stage.

He stopped in front of me, his face now perfectly visible in the sidelights. He had a long, straight nose, light brownish–dark blond hair that was swept back from the brow, and a square chin with a slight dimple that was barely hidden by light brown stubble. He had gray eyes that seemed to hold mine with an ease that made me even more uncomfortable, but there was something about those eyes ... something that was ... more. It was hard to put into words, but was as if time itself was etched into his eyes, leaving them with an expression that made me think of the stars slowly moving through the sky.

Holy hell, he’s a handsome devil, was the first thought that went through my mind. The next was who was he, and what on earth was I going to do? I couldn’t stop pushing the dragons lest the lure of my voice wasn’t enough to keep them unaware of what the band was doing in the house, but it was clear this man wasn’t in the slightest bit affected by me.