Sebastian

Chapter Nine

Lynnea woke slowly, the scent of clean linen and cool air giving her a sense of well-being.

Until she opened her eyes. And remembered.

After crossing the bridge, she didn’t know how long or how far she had walked before she had caught a glimpse of steady lights that indicated some sort of settlement.

There had been lights before that, the bob and weave of lanterns held by people moving around in the dark. And there had been music, a cheerful sound coming from a distance. She’d almost followed the lights and the music, but a feeling had come over her, as if the ground under her feet were trying to hold on to her, making every step a battle of wills—as if something all around her were whispering, That’s not what you want. That’s not what you’re looking for. And then…

Come to me.

She remembered the man’s voice, and thought, He needs me. She didn’t know why she was so certain of that—no one had ever needed her—but it had been enough to make her turn away from the lights and the music and keep moving until she’d reached a low rise and had seen the steady lights shining below her.

Then it all became a blur of struggling to reach something that remained out of reach. Maybe it would have been easier to give in, to get swept along with whatever forces were trying to draw her away. And maybe she would have given in, except…

He needs me!

The world snapped back into focus when she crept out of the alley where he had found her.

She’d never seen a man who was storybook handsome, but he was. And the clothes he wore. Denim was considered workingman’s cloth because it was sturdy, but she’d never seen a pair of pants that fit a man like that. And the shirt that made his eyes so impossibly green. And a leather jacket. Mam would have called him a bad influence just because of the way he looked.

But he’d been kind. He’d been annoyed about something, angry even, when he’d first seen her. Having lived with Pa and Ewan, she recognized temper in a man’s eyes. But he’d taken her to a place where she could eat and had given up his room so she could sleep.

“Sebastian,” she whispered. Just the sound of his name warmed her, gave her heart a fluttery lift. “Sebastian.”

Then her mood sank. She hadn’t found the man who had called to her when her thoughts had been mired in despair and she’d been yearning for something better. She hadn’t found the man who needed her. Just looking at Sebastian was enough to tell her he wasn’t the kind of man who would need anything from someone like her.

Even worse, she was in the Den of Iniquity. A vile, terrible place. A place decent women shouldn’t even know about, let alone ever see.

Which didn’t make sense, because Mam and her women friends knew about the Den. Even the younger women in the village knew about the Den. It was probably the most famous dark landscape in Ephemera. But, oddly enough, it wasn’t an easy place to find. Some of Ewan’s friends had tried to get to the Den last year. They’d crossed over a bridge and found the bad section of a large town, and one of them had gotten beaten and robbed, but they never found the Den.

So what did that say about her?

I guess Mam was right. I must be a bad person.

Why else would she have ended up in the Den when all she’d wanted was to find a safe place? But she did feel safe. Wasn’t that a strange way to feel in a place like this?

Pushing aside the sheet and light blanket, Lynnea sat up and looked around the masculine room.

She went into the bathroom, took care of necessaries, then experimented with the water taps on the tub until she figured out how to fill it.

Hot water just by turning a tap. How decadent!

Maybe being a bad person wasn’t so bad after all.

She soaked in the bath for a few blissful minutes before remembering the door that connected with another bedroom. Was someone in the other room waiting for her to finish? Using the washcloth and lightly scented soap she’d found along with two clean bath towels, she scrubbed her skin and washed her hair.

After wrapping her hair in one bath towel and drying off with the other, she did her best to clean the tub for the next person’s use before she returned to the bedroom.

There was a storage chest at the foot of the bed. On top of it, neatly folded, were clean clothes. Cotton pettipants that would modestly cover her legs from waist to knee, and a cotton undershirt that—

She picked up the undershirt and tried to figure out what the extra layer of material was for. Then she blushed and dropped the undershirt.

Mam had always said only loose city women wore brassieres in order to push up their tits and entice men to act like fools. Or, worse, act like animals after a bitch in heat.

Did Sebastian think she was a loose woman? Probably. She had offered to have sex with him. Hadn’t she? She’d been so tired when he brought her to the room, she couldn’t remember if she’d said it or only thought it.

Or maybe this was the most modest underwear available in the Den. The rest of the clothes didn’t look much different from the everyday clothes worn by well-to-do farmers’ wives and daughters, even if the material wasn’t ordinary.

The long-sleeved blue top was stretchy enough to pull over her head. The sleeveless, dark blue jumper was cut around the neck and shoulders so that a half finger of the top showed above it. It fell to midcalf and buttoned up one side. The socks came up to her knees, and the shoes were sturdy enough for a long tramp through fields.

Country clothes. She wasn’t sure why she felt disappointed, since the clothes were new and of nice material, but dressed like she was going to a simple harvest dance made her feel less able to cope with whatever was beyond this room.

Returning the towels to the bathroom, she found a comb inside a small cabinet between the sink and the mirror. When she’d done what she could with her hair, she stared at her reflection and winced. The natural wave in her hair—the wave that had made Mam so angry she’d threatened more than once to cut Lynnea’s hair right down to the scalp—seemed to be celebrating its freedom by being wavier than usual. She’d lost all her pins between the bridge and the Den, and nothing short of wetting it down and pulling it back in a tight bun would get rid of the waves—and even that didn’t work most of the time.

Nothing to do about it.

Just as she walked back into the bedroom, someone knocked lightly on the outside door. Then Sebastian walked into the room, still dressed like a bad influence and looking more handsome than she remembered.

And her heart made a funny little bounce.

Now he knew what getting kicked in the gut felt like.

His little rabbit cleaned up too damn well. Wholesome and pretty, sweet and a little shy. And uncertain. Definitely uncertain. As if some part of her that should have bloomed into something glorious had been savagely pruned back over and over again—and had still refused to completely wither and die.

She doesn’t belong here. His heart twisted painfully at the thought. When he’d slipped into the room after she’d fallen asleep and taken her old clothes to Mr. Finch to get replacements, he should have chosen garments from the usual racks instead of asking the little man for a “country costume.” Maybe dressing her like one of the succubi would have dimmed the wholesomeness, would have made it easier to seduce her and feast on the mindless pleasure he could make her feel.

But he’d selected clothes more suited to the kind of landscape he suspected she’d come from, and now…

She scared him. He looked at her and knew that, for all these years, he hadn’t played the lover for those lonely women in the other landscapes out of any sense of pity or kindness or even enjoyment. Yes, he’d needed to feast on the feelings brought out from sexual pleasure, and the money and gifts he’d received for his services allowed him to live quite well by the Den’s standards, but now he wondered if he’d been drawn to that particular kind of woman because he’d been looking for her. Just her.

And now she was here, where she didn’t belong, and he…

A few hours. Just a few hours with her—and, maybe, the pleasure of being her lover. Just once.

Her fingers brushed the skirt of the jumper. “Thank you,” she said softly.

“I’m glad the clothes please you.” He crossed the room and lifted a hand to brush his fingertips over her hair. “How did you do that?”

“Oh.” She raised her hand to touch the other side of her head. “It just does that. I don’t have any hairpins.”

“That’s good. It’s lovely the way it is.”

She looked at him as if he’d just threatened her instead of giving her a compliment.

What had her life been like that a compliment made her afraid?

“You’ve been asleep for a few hours. You must be ready for another meal.” He trailed his fingers down her arm until he reached her hand. Linking his fingers with hers, he led her from the room.

The trembling started as soon as they reached the street and she took a good look around. The main street didn’t look quite as seedy as it had a few hours ago, but this was the Den, and a place that never saw the sun developed a different kind of character from the bad places in other landscapes where the night and its predators ruled for only a piece of each day.

Dressed in those clothes, which made her stand out rather than blend in, his little rabbit practically screamed “prey,” and even with Teaser sending out advance warning, the other incubi couldn’t resist drifting into the street to study her. But none of them would approach. Not when he’d so clearly claimed her for himself.

As he led Lynnea to a courtyard table at Philo’s, he automatically scanned the other customers, noting the faces that belonged to visitors. When he was younger, he used to take note of the strangers to see which ones would be the most likely to enjoy his kind of fun, and he still did. But over the past few years he took notice because the Den was his home, and there were some kinds of trouble he didn’t want here. And, somehow, when someone made him edgy, that person never found a way back to the Den.

“Welcome, welcome,” Philo said, bustling up to the table with a full tray. His glance at Lynnea still held wariness, but he relaxed a little after a quick appraisal of her new clothes. He set two cups on the table, along with a small pitcher of cream and a bowl of sugar. “Food, yes?”

He was gone before there was time to say anything.

“He didn’t ask what we wanted,” Lynnea said, looking timid and uneasy as she studied the courtyard.

“Half the time he doesn’t,” Sebastian replied. He tipped his head to indicate the cup in front of her. “Philo makes it strong, so you might want to add some cream and sugar.”

She picked up her cup and took a sip. Her eyes widened. “Oh, gracious. What is this?”

Sebastian grinned. “Koffee.”

After taking another sip, she added a sugar cube and a little cream, then sipped again. “Oh, my.” She sounded like a woman who had been stroked in just the right way.

Watching her, Sebastian raised his cup to hide a smile. Even the erotic statues in the courtyard couldn’t compete for his rabbit’s attention when there was koffee.

By the time they’d finished the first cups, Philo returned and set two plates on the table. Slices of steak, buttered toast, and an omelet filled with potatoes, onions, peppers, and sausage. He refilled their cups and went to check on his other customers.

Sebastian picked at his food, just to have something to do. He needed to find some way to set his plan in motion, but Lynnea dug into her meal with such enthusiasm, he didn’t want to spoil her appetite by talking about anything that might upset her. So he ate while he watched the incubi and succubi trolling for prey, watched the visitors wandering down the main street looking for a brothel or a gambling house or a tavern where they could drink themselves blind. The Den was a place where the vices frowned upon in the daylight landscapes were openly celebrated. If a man wanted to lose a month’s pay drinking, gambling, and whoring, the residents of the Den were more than willing to help him. If a bored, rich wife wanted to buy an incubus’s time and particular talents, that was her choice—and if there were repercussions in her own landscape, that was her problem.

Of course, the residents always found it entertaining when a bored, rich wife and her equally bored, rich husband ran into each other in a brothel corridor. And those confrontations confirmed what the Den’s residents had known all along: In its own way, the Den was more honest than the daylight landscapes, because the few rules that existed applied to everyone, regardless of gender or species.

When Lynnea finally leaned back and let out a sigh of contentment, Sebastian pushed aside his plate and took her hand. The touch made her tremble, and the little rabbit stared at the wolf who was trying not to drool over the coming feast.

“Tell me what you want, Lynnea,” he said. “If you could have anything you wanted for a few hours, what would it be?”

She licked her lips. His pulse spiked, but he didn’t allow himself to pull her into his lap and kiss her until they were both too mindless to know or care where they were. He just held her hand and waited.

“I’d like…” She closed her eyes. “I’d like to be strong and brave. I’d like to stop being afraid all the time. I don’t remember what it feels like not to be afraid.”

“Done,” Sebastian said softly.

She opened her eyes and looked at him, her expression baffled.

“Did I mention I’m a wizard as well as an incubus?”

The words had barely left his mouth when he felt something snap open inside him, as if a part of him had been waiting to be acknowledged. The truth of it slid through him, filled him.

Guardians and Guides! He was a wizard.

Couldn’t be. Wasn’t possible.

Why not?

Because…Wouldn’t he have known? Wouldn’t Koltak have known?

Or was that the reason Koltak had brought the son he hated back to Wizard City over and over again? What would Koltak have done with a son born of a succubus if that child had shown any sign of having the wizards’ kind of magic?

He didn’t want to think about it. He’d said it only to give Lynnea a reason to shake off the chains of her past. Instead it had opened a new, and frightening, future for himself.

Power without training. Was there anything more dangerous in a world that altered itself to match the resonance of people’s hearts? All he knew about the power wizards claimed came from stories, rumors, things he’d heard they’d done to people. He had to talk to someone, but who could he trust? Lee? Glorianna? Maybe. Or would their intense dislike of wizards make them turn away from him if they found out? Aunt Nadia?

His heart rate settled back to something close to normal. He could talk to Nadia. If anyone could help him understand this, she could.

“Sebastian?”

He put aside his own revelation and focused on the one he’d planned for her.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m a wizard as well as an incubus.” He stood up, shifted until he was beside her chair, then placed one hand on her head. “By a wizard’s power and will, I decree that you, Lynnea, are a tigress. You are strong and brave and powerful. You are a woman of beauty and courage. And whatever you want from this night is yours.”

She looked up at him, frightened, confused…and hopeful. “Did you put a spell on me?”

“Something like that.” Daylight! He hoped he hadn’t done anything more than say a few words convincingly enough for her to believe him.

His hand slid down that lovely, wavy brown hair. Then he coaxed her to her feet. Her body brushed against his, and he wanted her with a desperation that bordered on madness. But these hours were hers, and whatever happened between them had to be her choice.

“You need some clothes,” he said, his voice rough.

“But I have clothes,” she protested, brushing a hand over the jumper.

“Different clothes.” Taking her hand, he led her down the street to Mr. Finch’s shop.

They were within a step of the door when she stopped and asked in a timid voice, “What’s a tigress?”

“A big, beautiful, powerful cat that lives in a distant landscape.”

“A cat.” She stared at the colored pole-lights. “She wouldn’t let anyone hurt her kittens?”

“No, she wouldn’t. And she’s strong enough and powerful enough to protect them against any fool who tried.”

He could almost feel something shift inside her, feel some change in the air around her. When she looked at him, the little rabbit was still there, but so was a hint of tigress.

He could handle the rabbit. He wasn’t so sure about dealing with the tigress he was trying to create. And he wished he knew why the mention of kittens produced that response in her.

Mr. Finch greeted them with his usual hums and chirps intermingled with actual words. Every time Sebastian dealt with the small, nervous man, he wondered what was inside Mr. Finch that had brought him to the Den.

“The lady needs strut clothes,” Sebastian said.

“Strut clothes?” Lynnea squeaked.

“Strut clothes,” he replied firmly. “A tigress wouldn’t wear anything else to prowl the Den.”

“Tigress,” Mr. Finch whispered. His nervous hand flutters stilled, and his eyes, usually so vague behind his gold-rimmed glasses, sharpened with professional interest.

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Finch said, his hands fluttering again as he hurried to the door of his work area. “I have just the thing. I call it a catsuit. Designed it last month, just finished hemming this first one. Prim and naughty. Yes, yes.”

Returning from the work area, he handed Lynnea a one-piece garment that was prim because it covered a woman’s body from her ankles to the top of her breasts, and was definitely naughty because it came just short of fitting like a second skin. The material was dark blue shot with gold, silver, emerald, and ruby threads.

A succubus wearing something like that would become drunk on the emotions she could wring from the men around her.

Seeing Lynnea prowling the Den wearing that thing would kill him. He just knew it.

“What…” Lynnea cleared her throat. “What do you wear under it?” She held the material as if it might come alive at any moment and bite her.

“Skin,” Mr. Finch chirped happily. He didn’t look at Sebastian, but his mouth curved up in a tiny smile. “The incubi like skin.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—”

Sebastian put his mouth against her ear and whispered, “Tigress.”

A succubus came out from behind a rack of clothes, her eyes hot with envy as she looked at the catsuit.

Daylight! Sebastian thought as she approached them. Why did that succubitch have to be here right now?

“Sebastian,” the succubus purred. “Trying to clean up another stray to make it pass as something desirable?”

“I don’t clean up strays,” he snapped.

“Ooohhh? I heard you’re Teaser’s friend, and everyone knows he doesn’t have what it takes to be a real incubus. He would have been chewed up and spit out long ago if it wasn’t for you.” Her eyes slid over Lynnea. “Even if you can squeeze those broodmare hips into that delectable outfit, you’ve still got that face on top of it.”

“Perhaps I can help with the face,” a cold voice said from the doorway.

It had been over a year since he’d seen her, and he’d never heard her voice sound like that, but he knew who stood in the doorway.

So did the succubus, whose face was now twisted into an ugly mask of fear.

Sebastian closed his eyes for a moment to steady himself before he turned to face the door—and Glorianna Belladonna.

Eyes of green ice stared back at him. With her long black hair framing her face, she still looked beautiful, but it was a cold, untouchable beauty—and he wondered if her heart had become just as cold.

This Belladonna was capable of bringing a horror into the Den that killed so viciously.

No. No! He wouldn’t think it, wouldn’t believe it. If she was capable of doing something like that, it would wound something inside him that would never heal.

She walked into the shop and stared at the succubus, who cringed.

“Go,” she said.

The succubus bolted out of the shop.

“We need to talk,” Sebastian said quietly.

“Later.” She studied Lynnea, then smiled. “Sebastian has forgotten his manners. I’m his cousin Glorianna.”

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Lynnea replied. “I’m Lynnea.”

“Glorianna—” Sebastian began.

“Why don’t you go out and get some air?” Glorianna suggested.

He recognized a command when he heard one, and, cousin or not, only a fool would disobey Glorianna Belladonna. Despite that, he would have argued with her to give him a minute to explain, but the look in her eyes silenced the protest before he could make one. So he went outside and leaned a shoulder against the building as if nothing of importance were happening inside the shop.

Glorianna watched Sebastian leave the shop. When she’d crossed over near his cottage, she’d felt a dissonance she knew was coming from Sebastian. It was as if the dark currents inside him had become glutted to the point of making some essential shift in his heart. Then, as she hurried to the Den to find him and figure out what was wrong, she realized there had been another shift—as if a festering wound were being drained, bringing the Dark and Light inside Sebastian back into balance.

She didn’t know what had caused the first change in Sebastian, but the second change had been produced by the woman standing in front of her.

Which made no sense, she thought as she turned to look at Lynnea, who smiled timidly and stared at her with blue eyes shadowed by fear. This woman didn’t belong in the Den, shouldn’t have been able to cross over into this landscape. But she was here, and there was no dissonance because of her presence.

Glorianna’s breath hitched when she realized what she was looking at.

Catalyst.

An ordinary person, but because Lynnea was in a landscape she shouldn’t have been able to reach, her presence would be like a pebble dropped into a pond, and the ripples would touch people in large ways or small. Would bring change. Would bring opportunities and choices.

For the catalyst as well as the people around her.

Which could explain why Sebastian was acting like a collie with one lamb to guard. And wasn’t that interesting?

It was also interesting that when she’d gone to check on a city in one of her landscapes recently, she’d followed an impulse and stopped at a shop that supplied cosmetics for ladies. The colors she’d picked for cheeks and eyes didn’t suit her at all, but she’d been carrying them in the bottom of her pack since she bought them.

The colors suited Lynnea perfectly.

Glorianna glanced at the catsuit in Lynnea’s hands, then glanced at the shop’s door—and smiled.

“Come on,” she said, resting a hand on Lynnea’s shoulder to lead the catalyst to the curtained dressing area. “Let’s get you ready for a prowl in the Den.”

Sebastian stared at the door of Mr. Finch’s shop.

The heart had no secrets from Glorianna Belladonna. She’d know within a minute that Lynnea didn’t belong in the Den. But would she look beyond that? She didn’t know about his plan to give his little rabbit a chance to be strong and powerful. She didn’t know he needed a few hours with a woman who made him feel so much it scared him.

What was happening in the shop?

Teaser loped across the street to join him.

“Well, it’s all set,” Teaser said. “Although I’d keep this prowl to the main street if I were you. I spread the word, but that’s no guarantee that all the incubi and succubi will go along with it.”

“They will if they want to remain in the Den,” Sebastian growled. If he’d been using the wizard magic inside him unknowingly all these years to keep human visitors he didn’t like from returning to the Den, could that magic also prevent a demon from returning? He’d test that out on the succubitch after he took Lynnea to the Landscapers’ School. Assuming, of course, that Lynnea was still in the shop.

Teaser gave him a wary look that swiftly gave way to the usual cocky, bouncy energy. There was a light in the incubus’s eyes Sebastian hadn’t seen in a long time. A tame prowl wasn’t the kind of heat and action the incubi looked for, but it was something different, and the novelty of it was reason enough for Teaser’s enthusiasm.

“So,” Teaser said, looking around and grinning, “where’s the country mouse?”

“In the shop. With Glorianna.”

The grin vanished. “Belladonna’s here?”

Before Sebastian could answer, the shop door opened, and Glorianna walked out. Alone.

He pushed away from the building, wanting to shove her aside and run into the shop to see if there was anyone inside besides Mr. Finch. Instead he stood there, his muscles clenched from the effort to remain still. “We need to talk.”

Glorianna gave him a long look, followed by a mischievous smile—and looked like the cousin he loved instead of a dangerous rogue Landscaper. “Later. You’re going to have your hands full for a while, Sebastian.”

Then she looked at Teaser, who bobbed his head as a salute and said, “I’m helping Sebastian.”

“Yes,” she said after a long pause. “Yes, you are.” She sounded intrigued, as if something had exceeded her expectations.

Then she walked away.

“Well,” Teaser said, blowing out a breath and wiping sweat off his forehead. “Well.”

He didn’t run away, but he headed up the street in the opposite direction at a swift walk that would put some distance between himself and Belladonna.

Which left Sebastian standing alone outside Mr. Finch’s shop. Was there any point in waiting? There had been a message in Glorianna’s smile, but he couldn’t decipher it…and wasn’t interested in trying.

He turned away from the door, feeling unhappy and discouraged. He’d shaken up the Den to create an illusion for a few hours. And for what? To feel like a child again, encouraged by the other children to think he’d been invited to play, only to discover raising his hope of being accepted was the game?

“Sebastian?”

Being part human wasn’t human enough. And trying to be human had never gotten him a single damn thing. Why couldn’t he give it up, let it go?

“Sebastian? I’m ready. I think.”

He turned around and rocked back on his heels. “Lynnea?”

Flustered, she raised one hand to her face. “I don’t look that different, do I?”

Daylight, Glorianna! What did you do to my little rabbit? It was Lynnea…and it wasn’t Lynnea. The succubi and human whores—even the city women who visited the Den—wore more paint on their faces, but there was something devastating about seeing wholesome and pretty changed to seductive. And that catsuit…

Mr. Finch was a wicked, wicked man for designing a piece of clothing that hugged a woman’s body like that.

“Sebastian?” Timid. Uncertain. That first taste of feminine power withering under the weight of his silence.

He closed the distance between them and settled his hands on her waist—and congratulated himself for not running his hands up and down her to find out what she was—and wasn’t—wearing under that catsuit.

“You look wonderful,” he said, leaning a little closer. “Powerful.” No perfume, just the light scent of the soap he’d left for her in his room. A scent suitable for a country girl, not this seductress looking at him with innocent bedroom eyes.

Too many conflicting sensory messages. Too much feeling. The only thing he knew for certain was that if he ended up sleeping alone tonight, he was going to curl up and die.

“Kiss me,” he whispered.

“Here?” she squeaked, her eyes darting to the people moving up and down the street.

“A tigress wouldn’t be afraid to kiss her lover in public.”

She stared at him. “Lover?”

“Tonight I’m the lover of Lynnea the tigress.”

“Oh, gracious.”

He wasn’t sure if that translated into something good or bad. Then she lightly pressed her lips against his, and he didn’t care how it translated.

Sweet. Warm. He hadn’t been this excited about a closemouthed kiss since…All right. He’d never been this excited about a closemouthed kiss. And when her hands curved around the back of his neck and her fingers tangled in his hair, he didn’t see any reason for either of them to move until they fell over from exhaustion or starvation.

Then she eased back, looked at him, and frowned. “I don’t think that’s the way a tigress kisses, but I—”

He didn’t give her a chance. He brought his mouth down on hers and showed her how a tigress would kiss a lover, how an incubus would kiss a lover when she really was a lover and not just prey.

A bull demon’s bellow from somewhere nearby finally broke through lust’s haze. Sebastian stepped back and took her hand. “Let’s prowl.” While I can still walk.

There were musicians on the street corners, jugglers in the street, tables outside the taverns for visitors who wanted to watch the entertainment.

They strolled down one side of the main street, watching everything and everyone. The feel of the Den was festive, with a sharp edge that could turn mean in a heartbeat but was staying on the fun side of that line.

This was how the Den had felt when he’d found it fifteen years ago. This was the feeling it had lost in the past few years, turning harder, crueler. Leaving him feeling dissatisfied with the one place he felt comfortable living.

He looked around and felt breathless. Staggered.

Oh, daylight. What he was thinking couldn’t possibly be true.

He didn’t realize Lynnea had drifted up the street a little ways until he heard a bull demon’s bellow a moment before it lumbered out of a tavern and stopped short of knocking down his little rabbit.

Sebastian held his breath. Lynnea and the bull demon stared at each other.

Finally Lynnea said politely, “How do you do?”

The bull demon pondered the question. “Do good,” it rumbled. It shifted its bulk from one foot to the other.

They stared at each other for a few moments more before the bull demon shook its shaggy, horned head and lumbered away, having sufficiently strained its conversational skills.

“Did you see?” Lynnea said when Sebastian hurried up to her and hooked an arm around her waist. Her face glowed with excitement. She turned in his hold and placed her hands on his chest. “I talked to…” She paused. Frowned. “What was it I just talked to?”

“A bull demon.” He felt the warmth of her hands through his shirt.

“Bull demon?” Another pause. “How much like a bull?”

Guardians and Guides! If they didn’t start moving, he was going to do something stupid. Like rip open his shirt and beg her to touch him.

“Nobody but their females knows for sure,” he said, taking her hand so he could still have physical contact without being too close.

They slowly made their way back to Philo’s place. Holding a plate of nibblies in one hand, Teaser waved them over to a table, then pointed at the bottle of wine waiting for them.

As soon as Sebastian introduced Lynnea to Teaser, Teaser set the plate on the table, looked at Sebastian, and said, “The music’s hot tonight. You don’t mind if I borrow your lady for a dance, do you?”

Sebastian hesitated a moment. “I don’t mind if the lady doesn’t.”

Teaser gave Lynnea that cocky, boyish grin that had disabled so many women’s brains. “Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll show you how to dance in the Den.”

“Oh, I don’t—” Lynnea caught herself, then looked at Sebastian, who just smiled at her and mouthed, Tigress.

Teaser grabbed her hand and led her into the middle of the street. When he began a slow, exaggerated bump and grind, she blushed, shook her head, and took a step back. But he said something that made her sputter and then laugh, and before long she was moving with the music, copying Teaser’s movements.

Did she have any idea how blatantly sexual those movements were? Did she have any awareness of how much male attention was focused on her? No. She was being brave. She was having fun. She was blooming into a sensual woman right before his eyes.

And watching her made him suffer in a way he never had before.

He poured a glass of wine, settled in a chair, and studied the main street. Teaser was right. The music was hot, the energy was hot—and the Den looked like it had all those years ago when a fifteen-year-old boy had been drawn to it, dazzled by the lights and the energy…and the feeling that the place welcomed him with open arms.

“You never told me,” Sebastian said when Philo came up to the table.

“Told you what?” Philo asked.

“For years I’ve called the Den a carnal carnival, but I didn’t realize until tonight that’s exactly what it is. A carnival of vices…but tempered somehow.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Sebastian took a sip of wine. “Yes, you do. Fifteen years ago I was more innocent than I realized, or would ever admit, and this is that adolescent boy’s dream of a dark landscape. Heat and fun and sex. There’s a meaner edge. Sure there is.” He looked up at Philo. “But it’s still a carnival.”

“So what if it is?” Philo said, his face and voice solemn. “This is a dark landscape, but it’s not a bad place. I’ve lived in bad places, Sebastian. So has Mr. Finch. So have the rest of the humans who settled here. Finding this place…” He sighed. “So, no, I never told that boy he wasn’t in a badass landscape like he thought he was. The Den’s like you, Sebastian. Hot, dark, a little mean around the edges, but good at the core.”

The Den’s like you. Sebastian waited until Philo left to check on the other customers before draining his wineglass—and remembered the first time Glorianna had come to visit him in the Den, six months after he’d arrived.

“Quite a place, isn’t it?” Sebastian said, his arm linked through hers as they walked down the main street.

“Yes, it is,” Glorianna replied. “You’re happy here?”

“I belong here.”

He hadn’t realized how tense she was until he felt her relax. Hadn’t realized at the time that, while he’d been finding his place, she had lost hers. Hadn’t even realized during that first visit that she was the Landscaper who had altered Ephemera to make the Den. And later…

“Why did you do it, Glorianna? Why did you create a place like the Den?”

She shrugged. “Even demons need a home.”

It had stung that she considered him a demon, but even then, he’d had to admit she was right. The incubi and succubi were the dominant demons in the Den itself, and for the first time they had a place where they could openly be what they were. No more trying to blend in with the humans, no more danger of being hurt or even killed when the nature of their sexuality was discovered. Many who had drifted into the Den during those first months discovered the carnival atmosphere and the lack of danger weren’t to their taste. And those who had tried to change the tone of the Den and bring in the kind of danger that would have turned it into a different kind of place…

The heart had no secrets from Glorianna Belladonna. Those who wanted a dangerous place ended up in a dangerous place. But not the Den. Those who survived the dark desires of their hearts never came back to the Den.

He’d been seventeen before he’d discovered that the rogue Landscaper called Belladonna was his cousin Glorianna. Might not have discovered it even then if Lee hadn’t come stumbling into the Den a few weeks after beginning his formal training at the Bridges’ School.

Fifteen years old and running away from a pain he couldn’t bear, Lee had come to the Den. Sebastian had turned away from the woman he’d almost lured into bed, in order to keep his younger cousin from getting into too much trouble. He’d helped Lee get beyond drunk, since the boy seemed set on doing something self-destructive, and he’d held his cousin’s head later when Lee puked up the liquor and half his stomach.

And he’d listened to the troubled, tearful, painful discovery Lee had made that day—a discovery his mother and sister had withheld from him. Lee had known Glorianna had left the Landscapers’ School abruptly and was being trained by their mother. But until he’d taken a walk around the school to find the location of his sister’s garden, he hadn’t known the Instructors and wizards had tried to seal Glorianna into her garden, hadn’t known she’d been declared a rogue Landscaper, a danger to Ephemera, someone the wizards would try to destroy on sight.

Someone now called Belladonna.

All of that Sebastian had learned from a boy trying to come to grips with a truth that had altered his reality. But never why. None of them—not Nadia or Glorianna or Lee—ever told him what Glorianna had done to be declared rogue. Now, after so many years, it no longer mattered. She was dangerous…and feared—and she was still the girl who had understood his troubled heart better than he did.

A smattering of applause brought Sebastian’s attention back to the present. Lynnea was shaking her head and laughing as she stepped away from Teaser. He was grinning, looking carefree and easy—until Lynnea lifted her hair off her neck to cool the heated skin.

Teaser’s grin faded. His body went from carefree to tense in a heartbeat. And the look in his blue eyes…

Sebastian understood the look. Knew his own eyes revealed the same hunger. He wanted to press his mouth against the back of her neck and taste her skin. He wanted to skim his hands up the front of her, cupping her breasts, rubbing the nipples until they stiffened beneath his touch. He wanted to pull her against him, letting her feel what the sight of her body did to his.

Teaser stared at him, viciously hungry for this particular feast and just as viciously frustrated.

Because the feast had no idea what she was doing to either of them. Her eyes were closed, her fingers were threaded through her hair to keep it up, and her hips were still moving slightly to the music. But not for their benefit. Not to lure or entice or even attract attention. If anyone had told him innocence could make him insane with lust, he would have laughed.

He wasn’t laughing now.

Oddly enough, Teaser regained his balance first. Taking a step toward Lynnea, he made a gesture to indicate the table where Sebastian waited, but as she turned in that direction, he glanced down the street. Instead of leading her to the table, he curled a hand around her arm and led her away from the courtyard.

Sebastian stiffened. That son of a succubus! If Teaser thought to have some fun playing a game of rival-rival, he’d find himself looking for another landscape to live in. There wasn’t time for games. Lynnea wouldn’t be here more than a few hours. And he needed those hours more than he wanted to admit.

As he shifted to set the wineglass on the table, he felt someone approach. The explicit warning to leave him alone never made it past the thought as Glorianna slipped into the chair next to his, her back to the street.

There was so much to tell her, but he blurted out the thing most important to his heart at that moment. “She doesn’t belong here.”

Glorianna reached for the wine bottle and poured a glass for herself. “No one comes to the Den by mistake.”

“She did.”

She sipped the wine and studied him. “Are you sure?”

“She was supposed to go to the Landscapers’ School, but something happened and she ended up here.”

“Then something here must have resonated with something inside her.”

Me. But he wasn’t going to say that. Not to Glorianna Belladonna. “I’m going to take her to the Landscapers’ School after she’s had some sleep.”

Glorianna hesitated. “If that’s what you need to do.”

“It’s the right thing to do.” His voice sounded harsh, but he heard the plea beneath the harshness. Tell me I’m wrong, Glorianna. Tell me I can keep her here with me without taking away the life she should have had.

But Glorianna said nothing, just stared at the wine in her glass. Finally she said quietly, “There may be trouble at the school. Serious trouble, if the Landscapers ignored the warning signs. But it should be safe enough for you and Lynnea to go to the school, since neither of you will be there for long.”

He shifted, folding his arms to lean on the table, bringing him closer to her. “What’s happened?”

“The Eater of the World is free in the landscapes again.”

“The Eater of the World is a myth,” Sebastian protested. “An evil that children whisper about to scare one another—or adults use to scare children into behaving.”

“It’s real, Sebastian,” Glorianna replied. “It was confined for so long, most people don’t remember It as anything but a story. But now It has escaped. The landscapes that were sealed up with It aren’t sealed anymore, and It has the power to connect those places with other landscapes to create access points from which It can emerge to hunt. It will feed on the fear It creates, strengthening Its power over a place until the dark facets of the heart are the only things that shine in that landscape. Until the Light is so dimmed people won’t be able to find it in themselves. Hope, happiness, love. Those feelings will fade until they’re little more than a memory barely remembered.”

Sebastian refilled his glass, then downed half the wine. “Do you think that…thing…has been hunting in the Den?”

“I know It came here. It tried to anchor one of Its landscapes to the alley where the woman was killed. I altered the Den after I saw what It had done.”

He told her how the alley had shifted when he, Teaser, and the bull demon had gone in to investigate the body. Then he told her about the other death in the waterhorses’ landscape.

“I can understand why this Eater would come hunting in the Den,” he said as he poured the rest of the wine into their glasses. “The Den is a dark landscape with plenty of humans and humanlike demons in a small area. But why kill a waterhorse? They’re demons that prey on humans when they get the chance. Wouldn’t this thing want to…embrace them?”

Glorianna shook her head. “Like the bull demons and the Merry Makers and some of the others, the waterhorses are a dark aspect of Ephemera—a natural one. The Eater didn’t shape them. It can’t control them, so It will hunt them, too.” She hesitated. “Sebastian, don’t stay away from the Den too long. Do what you have to do, but don’t stay away too long.”

“Why?” There was something she didn’t want to tell him, but this wasn’t the time for more secrets, not if she was right about this Eater of the World being loose in Ephemera’s landscapes.

He didn’t like the look in her eyes. Pride and regret—and both those feelings aimed at him.

“Because you’re the Den’s anchor,” she finally said. “The others who live here provide…texture…but the Den, at its core, is what you want it to be, what you expect it to be. Because the Den is a reflection of you.”

“Are you saying I let that thing come into the Den to hunt?”

“No. You couldn’t have stopped It from coming into the Den. But It can’t change the Den if you don’t allow the Den to change.”

Sebastian laughed harshly. “My will against something so evil and deadly It can change our whole world into a nightmare? Do you really think I can do that?”

“You did it. You did it,” she repeated when he just stared at her in disbelief. “You said it yourself, Sebastian. The alley started to shift and become a different landscape, and you didn’t allow it to happen. You held on to what the alley was supposed to be, and you got away. You can’t stop It from coming into the Den. There are plenty of bridges that connect the Den to other landscapes not in my keeping, and until those are broken, It can find a way in, and It can create small access points. But It can’t control the heart of the Den as long as you hold on to this place.”

Philo. Mr. Finch. Teaser. All the other residents in the Den. He felt the weight of their lives on his shoulders. He had never bargained for that kind of responsibility.

Then he looked at Glorianna and realized the burden she carried was a thousand times heavier.

He laid his hand over hers. “What are you going to do?”

She sighed. “All I can do right now is hold on to the landscapes in my care and protect them as best I can. Lee can help with that—once I find him.”

He heard the worry in her voice. He didn’t try to offer false comfort. After what she’d told him, that would be no kindness. So he just kept his hand on hers, offering the connection of family, telling her silently that she wasn’t alone.

Glorianna walked up the Den’s main street, resisting the urge to rush back to Philo’s place and tell Sebastian not to take Lynnea to the Landscapers’ School. She didn’t think he’d run into any real trouble while he was there, not with all the Instructors who lived at the school and the other Landscapers who were always returning to tend their gardens. Maybe they had already contained the Eater of the World. And if they couldn’t contain It by themselves, they’d summon the wizards to help them. After all, wizards were good at containing problems.

No, she didn’t think Sebastian would run into trouble, even though she’d made sure he knew of another way out of the school. It was the thrumming of two heart wishes in the currents of power that flowed through the Den that made her want to push him into the decision she wanted him to make.

You can guide, but you cannot take control. You cannot take away the choices a person must make in order to fulfill his life’s journey.

Opportunities and choices. People were offered opportunities to fulfill heart wishes all the time and either didn’t recognize them or couldn’t find the courage to reach for the very thing they wanted.

She couldn’t interfere with Sebastian’s journey, wherever it might lead him. She’d given him an opportunity, an excuse, to back away from the decision to take Lynnea to the school, and he’d chosen to ignore it.

Knowing she was doing the right thing by letting him make the decision didn’t stifle the urge to give her darling cousin a swift kick in his newly polished honor.

By the time he said good-bye to Glorianna and went up the street to find Lynnea, Teaser and two younger incubi were finishing up some kind of impromptu skit full of double meanings. Bawdy, yes, but too exaggerated and good-natured to be lewd.

And there was Lynnea, standing at the edge of the crowd, laughing and applauding, shining like starlight.

No, not like starlight. She was too warm to be starlight. Sunlight, then. The kind of warmth that never touched the Den—until she had walked here, laughed here.

He applauded with the rest of the crowd, not because he’d seen the performance but as a way of acknowledging Teaser’s help in creating these few hours when his little rabbit could feel like a tigress.

Lynnea turned, as if she recognized the sound of his hands, and smiled at him. “Aren’t they wonderful?”

“Yes, they are,” he replied, returning the smile.

“Did you have a nice visit with your cousin?”

“It was fine.” He slipped a hand into the pocket of his leather jacket and touched the folded linen napkin. Glorianna had insisted on drawing him a crude map of the school. It had seemed silly, since there was only one road into the Landscapers’ part of the school grounds, and that led straight to the buildings that housed the classrooms and living quarters. Then he realized the road and buildings were only reference points for the thing she wanted him to be able to reach if he needed to. Her garden.

Mentioning her garden had made her uneasy, but she still made him go over the directions until she was satisfied he could find it. A safe place, if he needed one. And a way to escape, hidden in the fountain in the center of the garden…if he needed it.

He’d worry about that once he and Lynnea reached the school. Right now he didn’t want to think of anything but her, didn’t want to feel anything that wasn’t connected to the time they had together. Not enough time. Not nearly enough. But he wouldn’t ask for more.

Leaving Teaser, he and Lynnea strolled hand in hand, enjoying the music, the action, the energy. Everything looked different now. They were his people, his responsibility, demons and humans alike. His will and heart were the anchor that would keep the Den safe from encroaching evil. He was needed in a way he’d never been needed before.

And something inside him began resonating in a slightly different way as a response to that knowledge.

As they came up to a side street, two demon cycles zipped around the corner. One, noticing Sebastian, came to an abrupt halt. The other, its attention fixed on Lynnea, rushed forward, waving its arms and roaring, “Blaarrgh!”

Lynnea stared at the demon, with its claws and razored teeth—and she giggled.

The demon stared back at her, its ears lifting at the sound. “Blaarrgh!” it said again.

She giggled again, then wrapped a hand around one of its claw-tipped fingers, and said, “How do you do, Mr. Demon?”

There was a difference between being a tigress and a fool. The demons who had claimed the motored cycles as the spoils of battle could eviscerate a man with one swipe of those claws—and usually started feeding before the first scream died away.

But there it was, grinning at her, while its companion looked on as if it had been denied a particular treat. Which was not a healthy way for either of them to think about his rabbit.

“We have to go now,” Sebastian said. “We have a bit of a walk ahead of us.”

The grin was replaced by a scowl. “Where you go?” the demon said in a voice that sounded like gravel rolling in a metal barrel.

They talked? Sure, everyone knew the demon cycles understood human words, but no one had ever heard any of them talk.

“We’re going to my cottage,” Sebastian replied reluctantly. They probably already knew how to find the cottage, since they traveled all over the Den, but that didn’t mean he wanted to point it out to them.

“We take you. You ride.”

In those moments when he tried to figure out how to refuse without getting hurt, the demons focused their attention on Lynnea.

“Wanna ride?” they asked.

The look on Lynnea’s face was answer enough. His little rabbit-tigress wanted to ride. He just wished the excitement he could read on her face had something—anything!—to do with his anatomy rather than a demon cycle.

“Okay, let’s ride,” he said, trying to keep the growl out of his voice that might be misinterpreted as an invitation to a pissing contest. It wasn’t a contest he could win, and a gelded incubus wouldn’t be much use to anyone, least of all himself.

He straddled one cycle, then had to bite his tongue to keep it from falling out when Lynnea straddled the other one—which made him desperate to find out if she was wearing anything but skin under that catsuit.

Mr. Finch was, without doubt, a wicked, wicked man.

It was less than a mile between his cottage and the streets that made up the Den proper, but the demon cycles couldn’t seem to find the lane that was the straight route. They zipped around the countryside, weaving between trees, zooming up a hill and down the other side, making strange sounds that might have been gleeful laughter while Lynnea whooped and squealed and giggled.

Finally, when he insisted that she was too tired to play anymore—and she dutifully agreed with him—the demon cycles found the lane and took them to the cottage.

“Good-bye,” Lynnea said, waving at the demons as Sebastian hustled her inside the cottage. “Thank you for the lovely ride.”

He closed the door before the demon cycles decided to join them, then tensed when he realized there was a lamp glowing on the table in front of the couch. He never left a lamp burning when he’d be gone for hours. Too much risk of fire.

“Stay here,” he whispered, moving cautiously into the room. Then he noticed the package wrapped in brown paper next to the lamp and the slip of paper tucked under the string—and breathed a sigh of relief when he recognized the writing.

Glorianna.

A careful, one-fingered poke at the package gave him the next answer. “I think my cousin brought the rest of your clothes here.”

“Was that the wrong thing to do?” Lynnea asked, sounding baffled by his behavior.

“No. It was a kindness.” Returning to where she waited, he reached past her and did something he’d never done in the ten years he’d lived there. He locked the door.

“Come in,” he said, moving around to light more lamps.

She wandered around the room, looking at everything. Then she stopped and studied two framed sketches on the wall. “Who did these?”

“I did,” he replied gruffly, not sure if he was embarrassed to admit it or afraid of her opinion. He’d shown his sketches to Nadia a few years ago, after she’d bullied him into telling her how he spent his time when he wasn’t prowling the Den. She’d kept three of them—one for herself, one for Glorianna, and one for Lee—and had these two framed for him.

He’d never told her how much that had meant to him.

“They’re lovely,” Lynnea said.

And he would never tell this woman how much her words meant to him.

“I like your home, Sebastian.”

He moved toward her without thinking, too desperate to feel to be able to think. His fingers tangled in her hair and his mouth feasted on hers, wanting anything, everything.

And he could have everything. He knew it by the way her arms wrapped around him, the way she responded to his kisses. He could slake this terrible hunger and give her pleasure she’d remember for a lifetime. All she would forfeit was her virginity.

But he could lose his heart, if he hadn’t lost it already.

She doesn’t belong here.

The thought intruded, rankled, savaged desire. He wanted one night with her, but he couldn’t have it. Not for her sake, but for his own.

He gentled the kiss, lingering because it would be the last. Then he eased back, out of her arms.

“After we get some sleep, I’ll take you to the Landscapers’ School.”

“But…” She stared at him, unfulfilled desire shifting into the pain of rejection. “But I’m a bad person. Mam said so.”

He shook his head. “You’re one of the finest people I’ve ever known. If she couldn’t see you for who you are, the flaw was in her, not in you. You don’t belong in a place where the sun never shines. You don’t belong in the Den.”

When he took a step forward, intending to ease the sting of rejection, she hunched her shoulders and turned away.

No comfort. No sweet ending to a sweet encounter.

Maybe that was just as well…for both of them.

“Bedroom is through that door. You can have the bed.”

She didn’t ask where he would sleep. She just crossed the room, picked up her parcel of clothing, went into the bedroom, and closed the door.

He stared at the bedroom door for a long time before he pulled off his shoes and stretched out on the couch.

He had done the right thing.

So why did the right thing make him feel so bad?