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“I’ve been given shares in the company and a very satisfactory title. Part of the package when I came over. Daniel has his own role.”
“Then, we all ought to be just peachy-keen,” she murmured. She looked at him. “Thanks for the ride. I’m sorry to have troubled you.” She fumbled with the door. He reached over her and opened the door easily.
“Thanks,” she muttered.
“I would feel better if I walked you in.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“But you don’t resent me?” he queried lightly. He stepped out of the car as she did.
“Okay, walk me in.”
“You did have quite a reaction to seeing me walk through the door tonight.”
“I wasn’t reacting to you,” she said, her heart pounding. What had she reacted to?
The pain. The pain had been unbearable, and the world had gone black.
“Then?” he pressed.
“The tarot card reader,” she said.
“What?”
“There was a woman reading tarot cards. She started screaming, rolling her eyes—and calling me a witch. She wouldn’t stop. She was pretending to be in a trance or something, and we decided to get out. I just needed air,” she said, finishing rather lamely.
“I had nothing to do with it?”
She met his gaze again, black in the shadows. She still felt…wary of him. But curiously drawn, as well. She had to admit he was being polite, and he seemed to have a sense of humor.
She shook her head. “No,” she lied, then smiled. “Honestly, I don’t resent you. I think you’ve got great credentials, and I really don’t want to run the company.”
“If that’s a welcome, thanks, I’ll take it.”
“Sure. It’s a welcome. In fact, please come in, if you’d like. Have a drink here, since you never got your chance at Hennessey’s.”
“Despite the much-appreciated-but-debatable sincerity of that offer, I’m afraid I have to refuse.”
“Ah, a date,” she murmured, lashes flicking downward. She was definitely losing her mind. She hadn’t wanted him to take her home, and had tried very hard to shake him. And now…
She was disappointed. And curious.
Jealous? She wondered who he was meeting.
“An appointment,” he said lightly. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I’ve never felt better. Honestly.”
“All right, then.”
But he stood there, watching her.
“Well?”
“I need to see you in.”
“Oh.” She slid her computer key into the lock. The gate swung open; she stepped through, closing it behind her.
He nodded, then turned away, starting back toward his car.
“Mars—uh, Mr. Marston?”
He turned back.
“It was nice to meet you. And thanks for your concern.”
“Of course.”
He walked to his car, and she watched him drive away. Though it was cold, the bars of the gate suddenly seemed to burn against her hands.
She released them quickly.
Strange, strange night.
Robert returned to Hennessey’s.
Parking the car in the street—easy enough, with most of the evening’s revelers Halloween-ed out and headed home—he left the driver’s seat and checked his watch.
Too late for his original appointment, but he’d wanted to come back here, anyway.
He’d never seen anything like the way Jillian Llewellyn had looked at him. He hadn’t expected to be welcomed into the company with pure joy and enthusiasm, but he’d never imagined anything like what he’d encountered.
She had looked at him with…hatred? Horror?
Maybe pure blind terror. Or something else. He didn’t know quite what. A combination of all those emotions.
He had felt shaken. For a moment a chill had settled over him, like something cold and horrible beyond words, and then…
Then she had started to fall, and the feeling had slipped away, and now he couldn’t even recall exactly what it had been. Maybe he’d imagined it. And yet…
At the bar, he ordered a beer. They’d dyed the beer with food coloring. Black beer. Interesting.
As he sipped, he eased back and surveyed the room. Nearly midnight. The band was playing ballads. The bar was still full, but the customers at the tables were beginning to head out. When people moved, he saw the fortune-teller.
Tarot card reader. Whatever. It was all just fun and bull.
As he looked at her, she suddenly stared up at him. Her eyes were golden. Amber, glimmering. She was an arresting woman, metallic in color. Even her skin was copper. She was both stunning and disturbing.
As she looked at him, she suddenly leaned back in her chair, gripping the table. She didn’t seem to be doing anything else, certainly nothing threatening, but the couple who had been having their cards read suddenly pushed their chairs away.
He wasn’t sure why, but he rose, walking over to her. She straightened, pointing at him.
But she didn’t see him. He knew that, her eyes had rolled back into her head.
“Betrayer,” she whispered. She began to croon and moan, weaving in her chair.
He felt the cold again. Like ice. Fear unlike anything he could remember. Yet he wasn’t afraid for himself. He just knew that…
His head hurt. Pounded. He leaned forward, putting his hands on the table. “Stop it,” he snapped. “Stop it.”
She jerked forward; her eyes rolled into place. “You shouldn’t have come,” she told him, visibly shaken.
“I shouldn’t have come to the bar?” he asked.
“To Llewellyn,” she answered.
He eased down into the chair, staring at her. “Who put you up to this?” he demanded. After all, this was Hennessey’s. A favorite hangout of Daniel’s, Theo’s, and probably Griff’s, as well.
The name Llewellyn was Welsh. But Robert knew from his long conversations with Douglas that the family had been in Ireland for hundreds of years before he had picked up and made his way to the States.
“Madame Zena,” he said firmly, looking around the pub again for some sight of any one of the Llewellyns, “who put you up to this?”
“No one,” she told him.
“Well, then, listen to me,” he said, leaning forward. “I didn’t come to Llewellyn to hurt anyone. As a matter of fact, I intend to protect certain people, even though they may not trust me. Protect them, and their interests. So you can call off the mind games. I—”
“You know nothing,” she said softly. “You are dangerous. More dangerous than you can ever imagine. You’re so powerful and arrogant.” She leaned toward him, suddenly angry, but very still and quiet as she spoke. “You know nothing. And you do not care to learn.”
“Excuse me, Madame Zena,” he interrupted, puzzled and angry, and not knowing why he felt he needed to defend himself to a fortune-teller. “Look, I’m a decent human being, responsible, concerned, intelligent—”
She didn’t seem to hear him. “You may be all that, but it’s not enough. Fear is a good thing, young man. Fear can create a quest for knowledge, because no man is so strong he can defy God, Heaven and Hell, and all the Fates. Get out of here. And don’t come to me again unless your mind is open.”
She stood and, with a flourish, spun away from him, then rushed from the bar.
Startled, he sat back in the chair.
“Wow, that was…scary!”
He turned around and saw that the girl who had been in his chair just moments earlier had spoken. A pretty young brunette, she was clinging to her lanky escort, eyes wide, cheeks pale.
“Well,” he said with a shrug, “it’s Halloween, after all.”
One of the bartenders—a freckled redhead wearing bobbing bug antennae—came walking over, wiping a glass as he looked out the door. “She didn’t even get her money,” he said, then shrugged fatalistically. “Oh well, I imagine she’ll be back.”
He returned to his position behind the bar.
“Look at the card that’s turned over now,” the brunette said. She grabbed her boyfriend’s lapel. “That wasn’t my card.” She stared at Robert, scared again, shaking her head. “It’s your card. It has to be your card.”
“So? I don’t believe in prophecy. Fate is what we make it,” he said firmly.
“It’s…it’s still your card,” she whispered, then turned, heading out.
“Women,” the man said. “You know the old saying. Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em, either.”
He hurried after the brunette.
Robert looked at the card on the table. He didn’t know much about tarot cards, and he certainly didn’t believe in their ability to foretell the future.
But even he recognized the Grim Reaper.
The dream came suddenly.
She smelled smoke. And then there was the rustling sound of dry kindling as it caught fire. The acrid smell of something burning…
Flesh.
Pain, a searing pain…
She awoke with a violent start and jumped out of bed, screaming, “Fire! Henry, get Grandfather!”
With her eyes open, she saw that there was no fire. She stood dead still. No smoke, no fire, no scent of burning flesh.
Her door suddenly burst open.
There was Henry, Grandfather’s assistant.
Henry was seventy, a spring chicken compared to Douglas Llewellyn. He stood in her doorway in his proper pajamas and robe, snow-white hair beneath a bed cap, as if he were a character right out of a Dickens novel.
“Jillian?” he cried, looking frantically around.
Embarrassment filled her. She’d been dreaming.
“Oh, Henry, I’m so sorry. I had a nightmare, I…I guess.”
He exhaled a vastly relieved sigh. “Oh, my dear girl,” he said.
She walked to the doorway, setting a hand on his shoulder. “Henry, are you all right? My God, I can’t believe I was screaming like that. I wouldn’t have worried you for the world. How ridiculous. I guess it happened because it’s Halloween.”
He smiled. “Why, Miss Jillian, you’ve never been afraid of Halloween, or the dark, or things that go bump in the night.”
She lifted a hand. “I’m at a loss myself. But I’m sorry.” She set her palm on his chest. His heart rate was slowing.
“I’m fine, Miss Jillian. Just fine. The old ticker is pumping just as it should. Shall I fix you a drink? A hot toddy?”
“No, no more alcohol,” she said.
He arched a brow.
