“Then do you propose we just stand out here and stare at each other?” he queried.

She bit her lip again and he couldn’t get over how ingenuous a gesture it was. It made her look so innocent and vulnerable. She was fortunate his intentions were good. Had they been otherwise she would be dead by now. The idea made him frown.

“I could…I could take you somewhere else. Somewhere they don’t know me. I know! I can take you straight to the Doyen’s offices! That’s really where you want to go anyway, isn’t it?”

Interesting, he thought. She would rather lead him into the heart of Wraith society than lead him into that house. He wondered at that.

“Very well. If you think that’s possible then yes, I would prefer to get to the heart of the matter.”

“I…I have to get cleaned up first. Can you meet me at the end of the drive in twenty minutes?”

He frowned. “You aren’t going to try to ambush me with greater numbers are you? I’d be a fool to let you go in that house.”

“Please…I promise it will be just me.”

For some reason he believed her. He nodded and moved away down the driveway. It was a very long drive that turned through a small patch of tall corn. This wasn’t part of the fields, but a hand-planted garden meant for personal use. But the corn was still high enough to hide him from the house and the house from him.

He kept his shield in place just to be safe. He didn’t know what he would do if he found himself ambushed by a flock of Wraiths, but he’d prepared an escape plan. He could streak back to the ranch in New Mexico and then start all over again.

He ended up waiting thirty minutes before she came around the bend in the drive. It was worth the wait, he decided. She had let her hair down and held it back with a bejeweled headband. It looked almost like a tiara, he thought. Her hair fell in wavy curves along her shoulders and back, appearing to be much longer than he had thought when he’d seen it in the ponytail. He also realized her hair wasn’t a flat iron gray. It was shades of gray, from slate to ash and all the tones in between.

Her skin was a soft powdery white and he realized she had put on eye shadow in soft pink pastels, lining her eyes in a blue liner and coloring her gray lashes black with mascara. She had put on a fair pink lipstick. She looked completely human, if a bit on the pale side.

She was wearing a maxi dress, its empire waist enunciating the bounty of her bosom and the floor-length skirt making her seem taller than she actually was. The dress was pink, apparently a favored color, in a soft fabric; cotton he assumed. It hid the curve of her waist, but the elegant dress made no secret of the fact that she was everything feminine.

She had dressed up. It bemused him. Did she do this whenever she went out? Or was it because she was taking him to the highest ranking member of their society? He assumed it was the latter, but he wouldn’t be surprised if both were true. Now that she was out of her grubby jeans he could see there was a certain elegance to her. A measure of class.

She was unlike any Wraith he had come into contact with before. Then again, it had been at least a hundred years since he’d had contact with a Wraith. A lot could change in a century.

He should know. The last time he’d been alive it’d been the turn of the century, when women didn’t have the vote and still wore long skirts and corsets.

“You clean up surprisingly well,” he said honestly, if not thoughtfully. He wasn’t one to pretty things up and be concerned with the delicate feelings of others. He was honest to a fault. If he said something it was exactly what he was thinking. Anyone could be assured of his sincerity if nothing else.

“Thank you…I think,” she said. He couldn’t tell if it was because she was wearing rouge, but she seemed to blush at the compliment. It was immediately clear she wasn’t used to getting any attention. “It’s a long trip to Nevada. Where’s your car?”

“I do not travel with a vehicle,” he said. “Where in Nevada?”

“If you don’t travel by vehicle then how are we supposed to get there?” she asked with frustration.

“Why don’t you let me worry about that? Do you have an address?”

“There’s no address really. It’s in the middle of the desert.”

“A house? In the middle of a desert?”

“Well…sort of. More like a bunker. A very nice bunker.”

“Envision the place in your mind,” he said. Then more hesitantly. “I will need to touch you for this to work.”

“You can touch me. I can control the deathtouch. It won’t hurt you unless I mean for it to hurt you.”

That was a piece of information he had not been privy to before this. It was interesting to know. With some trepidation, he reached out and touched her forehead. Her skin was baby soft and smooth, warm to the touch. For some reason he had expected her to feel cold. Cold as death. But that was his fear of her ability to kill him with a mere touch of her fingers. She could kill him right then if she wanted to. But if he had read her right, she wasn’t really capable of killing him. It went against something inside her. He suspected that would change if she felt seriously threatened, but for now…

He closed his eyes and focused on her mind and the image she was projecting. He slipped them into the streak and they slid through the distance in a mere couple of heartbeats. They appeared at the edges of a fenced-in property in the next instant. The Wraith—he had not gleaned her name as yet—doubled over the minute they were out of the streak. She grabbed onto his arm and fought to retain whatever was in her stomach. The streak did that to an inexperienced rider. It made them nauseated beyond compare.

He was impressed when she took a deep breath and managed to keep from vomiting. She straightened and with a staggering step she looked around them. They were just inside a barbed-wire fence that rimmed a desolate bit of property. There was only one structure on the property…a small shed of sorts. There were sentries at the entrance to the shed and at the gate in the fence. They had avoided one, but could not avoid the others if they wished to progress. This was going to be tricky.

“What’s your name?” he thought to ask when he went to address her and came up empty.

“Geneviève. But most people call me Viève.”

“Viève. Well, Viève, I am open to any suggestions on how to proceed.”