Beyond the Highland Myst(707)

“You can put it here,” Jessica was saying, gesturing to the table by the windows.

A slender, thirtyish woman with shoulder-length brown hair wheeled a tray into the room, pushing it down the narrow aisle between beds and furniture.

Red meat. She’d not ordered fish or fowl, bless the wench! It had been over a century since he’d eaten, and he wanted meat with blood. The last time Lucan had freed him, he’d managed to wolf down a meal of bread, cheese, and ale. To his deprived palate it had been a feast of divinely varied flavors and textures, but it hadn’t been rich, juicy, tender meat. That was a memory that had been tormenting him for more than 427 years.

Though inside the glass his existence was suspended and he suffered no bodily needs—no hunger, no thirst, no need to sleep or piss or bathe—that didn’t mean he suffered no mental ones.

He hungered. Holy hell, did he hunger! He’d whiled away entire weeks at a time, conjuring the memories of the tastes and scents of his favorite foods.

Closing his eyes, he savored the aromas currently wafting past his mirror as the woman began unloading the cart.

He had no idea what tipped him off.

He decided later that mayhap the woman’s intentions were so intense and finely focused that he’d inadvertently deep-listened, catching them even through the glass. Such had happened on occasion with Lucan, usually when his emotions had been strong because he’d been in a fury over one thing or another.

Whatever it was, Cian acted on it instantly, without hesitation.

His hand went to his thigh sheath.

Snapping his eyes open, he whipped his selvar free, hissed the chant to part the veil of silver.

And flung the eight-inch, razor-sharp blade, end over end, through the glass.





* * *





11



Jessi backed away from the room service lady, shaking her head from side to side, mouth open on a scream.

One moment she’d been making small talk with the hotel employee, the next something hot and wet and unexpected had sprayed her, splashing her face and hair, her sweater, even splattering her jeans. She’d squeezed her eyes protectively shut against it.

When she’d opened them, it had been to find the woman, standing, eyes wide and glazed, lips moving soundlessly.

With Cian MacKeltar’s jewel-encrusted knife protruding from her throat.

Belatedly comprehending what had sprayed her, she’d almost thrown up. But when she’d opened her mouth, a scream came out instead.

“Jessica, you must stop screaming!” came the sharp command from inside the mirror.

She knew that, and she was going to any second now. Really.

The woman staggered back into the TV armoire, knocked her head against it with a solid thud, collapsed, and slid down. Her body jerked convulsively, and she went abruptly still, half-sitting, half-lying, hotel uniform twisted about her hips.

As Jessi stared in shock, blood suddenly bubbled between the woman’s lips, and her eyes went eerily empty.

Oh, God, she was dead; the woman was dead!

Cian pounded on the inside of the mirror with his fists. “Stop screaming, Jessica! Bloody hell, listen to me, if you draw people to us, they’ll think you killed her. No one will believe your story of a man in a mirror and I will not show myself. I’ll let you go to prison, Jessica!”

Jessi jerked, his harsh words a bracing slap in her face. She stopped screaming so abruptly it turned into a screeching hiccuping noise, then silence.

He was right.

If her screams drew neighboring guests to her room, she would be found covered with blood, in possession of a stolen artifact, with a dead woman on her floor—said woman having been killed by yet another artifact Jessi wouldn’t be able to explain having in her possession.

She’d be arrested in a heartbeat.

And not just for theft, as she’d worried about earlier when leaving campus, but for murder.

And she couldn’t see a thing he might have to gain by showing himself and taking the blame.

In fact, considering that all he wanted to do was to hide for another twenty days so he could have his millennium-old vengeance, he’d probably be happy to end up in the Chicago Police Department’s stolen-goods/evidence lockup. He could hide really well there, under police protection. No, he certainly had no incentive to save her ass.

Shit, shit, shit.

She clamped her lips shut, unwilling to risk so much as another peep.

“Shut the door and bolt it, Jessica.”

She scrambled over the bed so fast that she fell off the other side. She’d left the entry door cracked, with the security bolt flipped between door and frame when she’d let the woman in. Leaping up from the floor, she hurried to the door, eased it open only as far as necessary to flip the metal latch back in, ducking well back from the line of vision of anyone who might be beyond it, closed it, and secured the lock. She could hear voices murmuring down the hall and footfalls approaching.