Again, he merely said, “Leave it to me, woman.”
It was then that she realized, with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, that it was only a matter of time before the police came and arrested her.
As if a grim portent, a few blocks down the street a police siren began to sound.
She shivered.
Oh yeah. Only a matter of time.
He still had it. Bloody hell, he still had it!
There was nothing wrong with him. There was something wrong with her.
Mirror beneath one arm, the other wrapped around his woman, he steered her into the brilliantly lit, polished, and gleaming lodgings.
Christ, it felt good to walk free! And to walk free with such a beautiful woman on his arm? ’Twas heaven to be alive.
Even hunted. Even knowing what lay ahead. ’Twas far more than he’d thought he’d get at such a late hour in the game.
Her city seemed much like what he’d seen of London, with insignificant differences. Both enormous, both massively populated, frenetic with cars and people rushing to and fro, but her city had taller buildings than aught he’d glimpsed from Lucan’s study.
He continued tossing out commands in Voice as they strode into the lodgings she’d selected. Doona look at us. Move out of my way. Do not notice the mirror. We are not here.
Memory spells were extremely complicated and could cause terrible, irreversible damage if done wrong. ’Twas easier to turn eyes away than attempt to make people forget.
Still, nonspecific commands such as “we are not here” weren’t truly effective. They served mostly to gloss things over a bit, make events seem dimmer. For Voice to be truly compelling, the commands needed to be concise, precise. Commands too vague or complicated could get messy. Orders strongly counter to a person’s fundamental beliefs could cause intense pain.
“Why don’t you just stand here and I’ll go get a room?” She tipped her head back and looked up at him. “And you don’t have to hold on to me,” she added peevishly. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
He smiled. He liked that. “Where?”
“ ‘Where’ what?”
“Where does one ‘get a room’?”
“Oh. Over there.” She pointed. “Wait here.”
“You will cease attempting to give me orders, wench.” He tried Voice on her again, thinking perchance something in their earlier environment had conflicted with his use of magyck.
“You will cease ordering me to cease giving you orders,” she said exasperatedly. “I’m just trying to help.”
“The day I need help seeing to the needs of a woman is the day I may as well be dead.”
She gave him a measuring look. “Actually, it’d be nice if more men felt that way. Of course, you still need to lose that whole me-Tarzan, you-Jane thing.”
He had no idea what she was havering about, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the getting of a room.
He escorted her where she’d pointed, GUEST CHECK-IN, and propped the mirror carefully against the short wooden wall.
A trim, auburn-haired, fortyish man with a bristly mustache came over, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else at this hour.
“You will give us a room. Now. And stop looking at me.”
Beside him, Jessica said hastily, “You’ll have to excuse him. He can be a bit heavy-ha—oh, for heaven’s sake!” She changed both sentence and direction of her gaze midstream, frowning up at him when the desk clerk obediently, and without protest whatsoever, averted his eyes and began processing the paperwork for a room. “People keep obeying you like you’re some kind of . . . of . . . well, god . . . or something.”
“Imagine that.” In my day, lass, I was.
“I can’t.”
“I’m excruciatingly aware of that,” he said dryly.
“Well, why do they keep doing it?”
“Mayhap, woman, they recognize a Man among men.” He couldn’t resist provoking her. “That would be Man with a capital ‘M.’ ”
She rolled her eyes, as he’d known she would.
He bit back a smile. There was no point in explaining to her about Voice. She wouldn’t understand; the wench was infuriatingly immune. Impossibly immune. His amusement faded. He narrowed his eyes, studying her for the hundredth time, trying to discern something—anything—different about her that might explain her condition.
He couldn’t discern a blethering thing. Of all the wenches the Fates might have appointed to serve as his reluctant savior, the humorless bitches had sent him the only woman he’d ever encountered that he couldn’t control.
“I’ll just need a credit card,” the man behind the counter was saying.