“Why didn’t he just shove my head under the bathwater while I was out of it?”

“There are still limits. To maintain the illusion, he can’t touch your corporeal body. And as it is your mind that forms the texture of the illusion, neither can he force you to harm yourself. Lie, yes. Deceive and frighten, even persuade, but he can’t make you do anything against your will.”

“That’s how she broke back through.” It was the answer that Jordan had needed confirmed. “First, by choosing to see it as a trick, she changed the texture, as you said, of the world. Instead of paradise, nightmare.”

“Her knowledge and fear, and Kane’s anger, yes,” Pitte agreed. “The fruit you dropped,” he said to Dana. “Your mind saw it then as rotten in the center. This was not your paradise but your prison.”

“And when she dived into the sea rather than let him take what she was, rather than accept the fantasy or the nightmare, she broke through both,” Jordan concluded. “So her weapon against him is staying true to herself, whatever he throws at her.”

“Simply put,” Pitte agreed.

“Too simply.” Rowena shook her head. “He’s wily and seductive. You must never underestimate him.”

“He’s already underestimated her. Hasn’t he, Stretch?”

“I can handle myself.” His easy confidence went a long way toward quieting her nerves. “What’s to stop him from hitting on Zoe, screwing with her while we’re focused on him screwing with me?”

“She is not yet an issue for him. But precautions can be taken,” Rowena mused, tapping a finger on the rim of her glass. “She can be protected, to an extent, until her time begins.”

“If it begins,” Pitte corrected.

“He’s pessimistic by nature,” Rowena smiled. “I have more faith.” She walked back to the sofa, sat on the arm with the fluid grace some women are born with. Reaching down, she took Dana’s face in her hands.

“You know the truth when you hear it. You may turn your ear from it, close your mind to it. As my man is pessimistic, you are stubborn by nature.”

“Got that in one,” Jordan muttered.

“But when you choose to hear it, the truth rings clear for you. This is your gift. He can’t deceive you unless you allow it. When you accept what you already know you’ll have the rest.”

“You wouldn’t like to be a little more specific?”

A smile touched the corners of Rowena’s mouth. “You have enough to think of for now.”

LATER, when they were alone, Rowena curled on the sofa beside Pitte, rested her head on his shoulder and watched the fire. In the flames she studied Dana, her hands competent on the steering wheel as she drove through the night toward the quiet valley below the Peak.

She admired competence, in gods and mortals.

“She worries him,” she said quietly.

Pitte watched the fire, and the images in it as well. “Whom does she worry? The soul-stealer or the story-spinner?”

Absently, for comfort, Rowena rubbed her cheek against Pitte’s shoulder. “Both, certainly. And both have hurt her, though only one with intent. But a lover’s blade slices deeper than any enemy’s. She worries Kane,” she said, “but the man is worried for her.”

“They have heat.” Pitte turned his head to brush his lips over Rowena’s hair. “He should take her to bed and let the heat seal old wounds.”

“So like a male, to think bedding is always the answer.”

“It’s a good one.” Pitte gave her a little shove, and when she fell, it was onto the big bed they shared.

She cocked an eyebrow at him. Her silver dress had melted away so that she wore only her own skin. Such things, she knew, were one of his more playful, and interesting, habits.

“Heat isn’t enough.” She spread her arms, and dozens of candles flared into flame. “It’s warmth, my love, my only love, that heals the wounded heart.”

With her arms still open wide, she sat up and welcomed him to her.

DANA had hardly gotten back in the door—and kept Jordan out—had barely settled down with Othello again and cleared her mind enough to focus on the task at hand, when there was another knock.

Figuring Jordan had come back with some new ploy to wheedle his way in, she ignored it.

She was, by Jesus, going to spend two hours working on this book angle, and then she was going to think about the drive to the Peak, what had been said there. What hadn’t been said on the drive home.

If she had to think about Jordan, she sure as hell wasn’t going to do it when he was around.

He’d sniff it out of her head like a bloodhound.

There was another knock, more insistent this time. She merely bared her teeth and kept scanning the play.

But the barking got her attention.

Realizing that she would get nowhere until the door was answered, she got up and opened it. “What the hell are you doing here? Both of you.” She scowled at Flynn, then leaned down to rub Moe’s floppy ears and make kissing noises. “Did Malory kick you out? Poor baby.” Her sympathetic tone turned icy as she straightened and peered at her brother. “You’re not sleeping here.”

“Don’t plan to.”

“Then what’s in the bag?”

“Stuff.” He squeezed inside, around his dog and his sister. “I hear you had a rough one last night.”

“It was an experience, and I’m not in the mood to rehash it. It’s after ten. I’m working, then I’m sleeping.”

With, she thought, every light in the apartment burning, just as she had the night before.

“Fine. Here’s his stuff.”

“Whose stuff?”

“Moe’s. I’ll haul over the big-ass bag of dog food tomorrow, but there’s enough in there for his breakfast.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” She looked in the bag he’d shoved into her arms and saw a mangled tennis ball, a tattered rope, a box of dog biscuits on top of about five pounds of dry dog food.

“What the hell is this?”

“His stuff,” Flynn repeated cheerfully, and grunted when Moe leaped up to plant his paws on his shoulders. “Moe’s your new temporary roommate. Well, gotta go. See you tomorrow.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” She tossed the bag on a chair, beat him to the door by a step, and threw herself against it. “You’re not walking out that door without this dog.”