Christine Warren: Huntress

Reaching the top of the stairs, he turned the lights on with a flick of his will, but lit the ancient gas stove and assembled the makings for coffee by hand. There was no rhyme or reason to his use of magic for mundane tasks. He used it when he remembered, or maybe more when he didn’t remember, but he didn’t neglect to use it for any particular reason. He filled the kettle with water and the French press with coffee grounds manually because he liked the ritual of it, but if he’d been in a hurry, he might just as easily have conjured a full mug of brewed coffee with magic. Neither method broke or obeyed any rules; he’d always figured the Elders who made and administered the Laws of Magic had bigger things to worry about than whether or not people with power chose to tie their shoelaces by hand or by wand.

Aaron raised his hands high over his head and linked his fingers together, gloves disappearing as he pressed his palms toward the ceiling. While he waited for the water to boil, he stretched cramped and tired muscles until he felt his vertebrae realign themselves with a series of satisfying cracking sounds.

God, that felt good. He let his arms swing back to his sides and reached for the kettle just as the spout began to whistle. The scent that rose from the mingling of water and coffee nearly made him weep with gratitude. Just the fumes infused him with a renewed burst of energy. In a few swallows, he figured he’d be ready to head back downstairs and translate some pages. As he recalled, the last time the Prophecies had been compared to actual events for accuracy had been just after the martyrdom of Joan of Arc. It would be fascinating to see if anything since 1431 had happened the way the oracle had predicted—

Thump .

Aaron froze, mug just inches from his lips. What the hell had made that noise? He had heard a noise, hadn’t he?

Scrape .

That had definitely been a noise. And it had come from the basement.

Shit.

Probably the cat, he told himself. The ancient and portly tabby, who had lived with Uncle Alistair for as long as Aaron could remember, didn’t get around with much grace anymore. Last night while Aaron had been relaxing in the living room and watching a movie, it had attempted the jump from the coffee table to the sofa, and landed on his shoe with an indignant yowl. He hadn’t noticed it downstairs when he’d been working earlier, but it did tend to trail around wherever he was, as if it missed human company. Most likely it had tried to climb the stairs and tripped over its own belly.

Setting the coffee aside, Aaron began to ease back toward the basement door. The noise had almost certainly been the cat, but it never hurt to make sure.

He really hoped it wouldn’t hurt.

A burglar would have to be insane to break into this house, he told himself. The only thing that kept it from looking like it had been condemned back in the fifties were the lights he turned on to keep from tripping over the threadbare rugs as he walked from room to room. The lot around it was overgrown; the house’s paint was peeling, its shutters falling, its porch steps rotting. And the battered pickup truck outside that he’d used to haul away the armoire Alistair had left to his sister shouldn’t have raised any hopes. Anyone who thought there was something worth stealing in this dump would have been sadly mistaken.

It had to be the cat.

Aaron eased down the stairs, sticking close to the edges where the joists still held strong and were less likely to creak. At first, the walls at the top of the stairs blocked his view of the space below, and he could see little but the pool of golden light cast by the lamp above the desk that he’d left burning when he went upstairs. Then, as he reached the seventh step, the room opened up to his right and he could see what had made the noise.

He blinked, froze, blinked again, and felt the breath in his lungs seize up like setting cement. In front of the floor-to-ceiling bookcase that lined the back wall of the cellar stood a woman, dressed all in black, with long hair so thick and black he took it at first for some sort of hood worn as part of a disguise. More than the hair told him she was a woman. The position she was in helped, especially where her otherwise loose trousers stretched taut and cozy over a round, heart-shaped ass that should never have been allowed on a burglar. Her indented waist and the sleek curve of her side gave him another clue beneath the snug, long-sleeved knit top she wore. All in all, the picture she presented made him wonder if she wore that body as the chief tool, or weapon, in her arsenal, because if so, he imagined she had to be the most successful criminal since the invention of crime.

Oblivious to his presence, she scanned the shelves with silent efficiency and the focused air of someone looking for something particular. When she got to the lower shelves, she shifted into a crouch, which simultaneously stretched her trousers even tighter across that mouth-watering bottom and caused the curtain of her hair to shift and the strands to part, revealing to him the curve of her jaw and the sleek, pale shell of her ear. The delicate lines seemed suddenly almost as erotic as her ass, and Aaron realized that if he didn’t draw breath again soon, he’d announce his presence to her by passing out from lack of oxygen and tumbling into a blue-tinged pile of stupid on the floor at her feet.

The air he sucked in nearly choked him when she stood and turned toward his desk, giving him his first look at her face. Not to mention the front of her body, which sported sweetly rounded breasts accentuated by a gleaming pendant that dangled between them on a thin silver chain. He figured he might have been more distracted by that body if he hadn’t immediately noticed that it was decorated with pockets and straps of leather that seemed to contain a whole host of weapons even more lethal than her figure, including a gun, a compact nightstick, three small throwing daggers, and a pair of knives that appeared at least as long as his forearms.

She also had a pair of wide, thickly lashed eyes the disconcerting copper color of flame.

Even as he watched, something must have alerted her to his presence, because she stiffened almost imperceptibly a moment before the gaze from those unsettling eyes fixed on him and went as clear and hard as amber.

“Well, shit,” he thought he heard her mutter, but then it got very hard to concentrate due to the matte black and lethally sharp dagger she sent hurtling toward his chest.

Lilli cursed her luck, Samael, devil’s bargains, medieval manuscripts, and interfering homeowners all at once, and all without opening her mouth. She should have known it couldn’t possibly be as easy as it had sounded. Even with the hourglass she wore cheerfully marking the time, it had taken her barely more than a day and a half to determine who had Samael’s missing book and where it was likely being kept, almost as if the thief hadn’t even bothered to cover his tracks. Another twelve hours and she’d been able to find out enough about the guy to decide that, even with the ridiculous timeline Samael had given her, she would be able to pull off this job in her sleep. Then, if that hadn’t tipped her off, her sources had told her the thief had died almost a month ago, just days after he must have taken the book to begin with. It played like some sort of cosmic coincidence.

She didn’t believe in coincidence.

She also didn’t believe in walking into any situation blind, which was why she’d lived to the ripe old age of twenty-eight still breathing and still in possession of all her limbs. Lilli had done her research on Alistair Carruthers. The man had been born into a very old magical family, but one whose family tree had stopped sprouting much new growth. He had only one sibling, a significantly younger sister, and his father and grandfather had both been only children. As far as Lilli had been able to tell, he had no aunts, uncles, cousins, or other relatives to speak of. He didn’t even have any children, having never married and apparently having been so devoted to his work and hobbies that she hadn’t even been able to find much in the way of a dating history. He’d lived alone and apparently died alone, and judging by the appearance of the house he’d died in, Lilli had assumed no one had very much cared.