Why had he slowed down? Was he looking for the dog?

Could he be Wyr? He couldn’t smell them, could he?

Sophie’s hands shook, and her heart plunged into a crazy race. She wasn’t ready to face combat again, not so soon and so unexpectedly.

Maybe he was not as he appeared. She whispered the null spell again, and for a brief moment the figure shimmered and changed.

She clocked details fast. The butt of a gun protruded from a holster aligned to the male’s long thigh. It could have been either a sawed-off shotgun, or maybe it was a semiautomatic. She didn’t know all the details of England’s license-to-carry laws, but this guy looked about as legal as a saber-toothed tiger.

And he had a sword strapped to his wide, powerful-looking back. The hilt lay positioned at one wide shoulder so he could reach behind his head and unsheathe it with a single hand.

A sword. The male she had seen in her vision had been carrying a bloodied sword. Was this the same guy? She couldn’t tell—he had virtually no identifying features visible—but the very thought made her break into a light sweat.

After a brief glimpse, his cloaking spell returned. Both gun and sword disappeared from sight.

What was he?

She couldn’t connect him to the man in her vision from the feel of his Power alone. Too much time had passed since she had made that first contact. She also didn’t find any similarity between his Power and the cruel enchantment that had laced the silvery rope, but she was on overload. All her internal systems flashed an emergency red, the primitive reaction blasting out of her hindbrain.

The motorcycle rider didn’t stop. Several yards on, his speed picked up again, and the dangerous, quiet purr turned into a mechanical roar once again. Within moments, he shot out of her sight.

She gave him a few minutes, to be sure he didn’t change his mind and turn around. Only then did she let go of the shadows she had pulled around her and stepped out of the brush.

An invisible fuselage of the rider’s presence hung in the air. Obeying an impulse, she gently set the dog on the ground and walked through that lingering trail of Power. For a fleeting moment, an intense, alien masculinity surrounded her, and she opened her senses wide to try to pull any information she could from it. Then it dissipated on a mild evening breeze.

Frustrated, she rubbed her tired face. As she looked over the ends of her fingers, the dog ambled up and vomited at her feet.

Together, they regarded the foamy puddle on the asphalt. When the dog looked up, she murmured, “I gave you too much water, too fast, didn’t I? Sorry, kiddo.”

She knelt, and he climbed back into her arms.

Within the space of a few moments, the dog was sound asleep. Stifling a groan, she hoisted her tired, aching body upright.

As she walked, she hugged him and whispered, “I’m going to make sure everything’s okay.”

And she only made promises she intended on keeping.

Although it did appear that her what the fuck list was growing at an exponential rate.

Chapter Four

Early in the evening, Nikolas’s mobile rang. When he checked the screen and saw Gawain’s name, he frowned. Phone calls were traceable by magical means, so they rarely talked, and when they did, they kept conversations brief.

Texts were safer. If Gawain was calling, it had to be important.

He answered. “What is it?”

Gawain said, “I caught the puck’s scent, along with a hint of the Queen’s magic.”

Like a blade being pulled for battle, Nikolas’s attention sharpened. Once a favorite of Oberon’s, the puck Robin had been missing for a very long time. No one knew if he had been caught Earth-side when the last of the crossover passageways had been blocked, or if he was still in Lyonesse—but if he was in Lyonesse, he had chosen to disappear, because no one had seen or heard from him in quite a long time. Nikolas had wondered if Robin’s talent for mischief might have turned out to be an ill thing for the knights of the Dark Court.

If Robin was Earth-side, and his allegiance had truly shifted to Isabeau, there was no telling what evil the sprite might indulge in.

He might have even been responsible for the unnatural fog that had rolled over the village park where Nikolas had been attacked. His magic was related to nature, and it fit. Nikolas didn’t want it to, but it did fit.

He said, “Tell me exactly where you caught his scent.”

“It was a few miles north of Westmarch on Old Friars Lane.” Gawain paused, and Nikolas heard the sound of a passing lorry in the background. “I’ve been combing through the town’s streets, but so far I haven’t picked up a hint of either the puck or the Queen—or the scent of any Hounds, for that matter.”

Old Friars Lane was what the road had been called centuries ago. As the years unfolded, often the ancient pathways had been renamed and modernized, but the Daoine Sidhe still kept to the old names, and Nicholas knew exactly where Gawain meant.

Old Friars Lane and the town of Westmarch bordered the site where the Dark Court had suffered one of the most bitter defeats in their history, in a battle that had lasted for five days and nights and had long since faded from the memories of most people.

The end had come when, with a surge of Power that had cracked the world, Morgan had shattered the crossover passageway that led to Lyonesse. Cut off from their homeland at that crucial access point, denied reinforcements and outnumbered, the Dark Court forces had fled.

That had been one of the first crossover passageways to Lyonesse that Morgan had either broken or blocked. Once many passageways had covered the border between England and Wales, and the people of the Dark Court had journeyed freely back and forth from their homeland.