Josie gasped as Ryder pressed a switch, and muted, glittering lights filled the room, a slowly rotating faceted chandelier sending prisms of light into the dim corners.
The room was fantastic.
Ten, twenty—so many that Josie couldn’t count them all, huge, six-by-six-foot squares of silk adorned the walls. One scarf had a picture of a man in a winged black cape waving a wand over boxes painted with mysterious symbols. In his chalk white face, the red of his mouth seemed perverse, the slash of black eyebrows menacing. The reds and golds of the silks were sumptuous, an invitation to the senses. Not all the scarves were picture designs. Stars and clear glass balls filled in the backgrounds of several, and some were blends of rich colors and gold thread in abstract designs swirling on black backgrounds.
And the mirrors.
In front of one mirror near the chair where Ryder stood was a square, open-bottomed table with a mat and a deck of cards.
In the others, Josie saw herself in a dozen pieces, her wrinkled skirt, bare legs, her wide eyes.
It was a wicked room.
A room that lured a woman, whispered to her.
It was a room that made a woman’s clothes feel too tight, constricting. Made her want to slip out of them, drape herself in one of the opulent scarves, see her lover’s eyes darken with an unnameable passion in the mirror.
It was a room that made her feel reckless.
Oh, it was a wicked room, and it spoke to the wickedness inside her.
It was the heart of the house.
Captured by the opulent images on the wall, she lingered at one scarf. An enormous green-eyed panther, mouth open in a ferocious growl, crouched in the foreground of one of the panels, while above him, the sorcerer arose from the sleek panther, one hand extended, palm down toward the head of the snarling animal.
A current of air moved behind the scarves, puffing the pictured animals and figures into a three-dimensional effect and rippling the fabric until the whole room seemed alive with creatures and magic.
Entranced, Josie studied the scarves. Reaching out to touch the one with the panther, she glimpsed Ryder off to the side of the room. “May I?” she asked, turning to see him standing near a winged burgundy velvet chair with a table beside it. “Is it all right to touch them?”
“Go ahead,” he invited, and Josie’s skin shivered at the abrupt roughness in his voice, the sound hinting of luxurious pleasures that matched the phantasmagoria surrounding them.
The silk moved under her light touch with a life of its own, the fabric a call to the senses. Following the lines of the panther’s body, its powerful muscles, she traced upward to the shape of the magician’s hands, the long, supple fingers, the pale face with its high cheekbones so like Ryder’s. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “Gorgeous.”
And she wasn’t clear whether she meant the silk picture or the man.
“That’s why I collect them. I like the look, the feel of them. They’re not art objects, though. These silks were all used by magicians in their acts.”
Again, she touched that hauntingly pale, silk face with its mesmerizing gaze. Cool, like Ryder’s skin. “They must be valuable.”
“Some are. Some aren’t. The scarves are permanent, the acts weren’t. They were a fleeting entertainment, seen and gone, like magic itself.”
“Before television magic brought the whole world and its violence and reality right into our living rooms and bedrooms.” She thought of the edited pictures from the afternoon’s parade, the faces. The sounds.
“Television distances us. From reality. From pain. Everything is diminished, made trivial by that box. After a while, we’re able to turn our backs on the suffering we see there. The marvelous becomes mundane, another hohummer, flip the channel.”
“We’re overloaded with everyday miracles.” Again Josie thought of the parade, the enraged elephant shrunken to a size smaller than her little finger. None of the smells and fear of that moment.
“But back then, the thrill for the audience was in being there, seeing and being amazed at what couldn’t be. Ladies appearing and disappearing, turning into birds, tigers. A man in an iron oven cooking steaks and coming out unscathed, unburned. How could he have done it? Ah, Josie, that was the thrill of it.” His eyes gleamed with enjoyment, and she thought it was a shame that she’d never get a chance to see him perform on a stage. “They were there, you see. They could smell the meat cooking, hear the sizzle. A woman in a cage with metal bars vanishing in midair. Impossible. Real. Tricks.” He shrugged.
“But everyone knew that they were seeing tricks.”
“Of course they did, but seeing’s believing, Josie, for most of us, and we give great validity to what’s in front of our noses and forget about what the left hand’s doing. And the more people were fooled, the better they liked it. Nobody really wants to know the secrets. If you know the trick, there’s no more mystery.” He picked up the cards on the table in front of the chair, shuffled them, the cards flying through his fingers, his eyes dark and somber as he watched her trace the shape of the magician and his panther. “Most people prefer the mystery. I don’t.”
With the current of air under the silk, the haunch of the panther seemed to bunch against her fingertips, collecting as if he were about to spring out of the scarf toward her. But the magician’s hand controlled the beast, reminding Josie of Ryder’s motions toward the dogs from the woods. “Because the man who knows the gimmick is the man in control.”
“That’s about it.” He moved restlessly. “I don’t like being fooled.”
“Nor do I,” she said, reluctantly turning away from the scarf and wandering to the far side of the room where shelves filled the wall.
Stacks of Magic Magazine, their edges lined neatly. Hundreds of books, she couldn’t begin to count them. The extravagance of the room made her breathless. Josie took a deep breath. Books on magic, biographies of magicians, books on chemistry and electronics and electricity. A set of schematics for illusions.
One book lay open to a diagram of pulleys and wires, weights and counterweights that made no sense to her but which intrigued her, hinting as it did of behind-the-scenes intricacies. Josie flipped the pages, fascinated. Wrinkling her nose, she turned the book sideways, trying to see if she could tell what effect the diagram would produce. “This is incredible. I had no idea so much was involved in producing a trick.”
“Money, too.”
She glanced his way. “Expensive?”
“An illusion like making the Statue of Liberty disappear can cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Six hundred thousand dollars isn’t out of the ballpark. There are engineering people who work out the details once you come up with the premise. Their time’s expensive. An illusion show’s expensive to create. To produce. Some of us work closely with the production, some don’t. I like knowing what’s going on at every point.” He walked over to one of the shuttered windows covered by drapes and lifted it up, looking outside. “Illusions are easy to learn to do, though, not like the physical tricks. They take training and stamina. Like Houdini’s Metamorphosis, where you have to change places, handcuffed, inside a bag. Speed’s the key there.” He sighed. “The trick with Sandi was a variation of the Metamorphosis.”
Looking up from the book, Josie saw him slump toward the darkened window and rest his forehead against the pane. Even if he eventually discovered what had gone wrong with that trick, he would always blame himself for not being fast enough.
In the glass of the window, his gaze caught hers as he lifted his head. The room was silent as they stared at each other, only the sound of the wood in the highly varnished floor creaking as she shifted, only the sound of his breathing until he stepped back, facing her as he let the shutters and drapes fall.
“With all this information, it would be easy to create some of the things we saw, Ryder,” she said slowly as she returned her attention to the book she held, thumbing through it, stopping as she saw a diagram that showed a collapsible ring under fabric, the effect suggesting that the woman was still there in the open cage while in the meantime she’d dropped down a trapdoor and was preparing to appear inside a closed box on an open-legged table in the center of the stage.
“Exactly. So let’s see if we can figure out what we’re working with.” He tipped his head toward a chair not far from him. “Find a place where you’ll be comfortable, and then I want to listen to everything you have to say. Don’t skip any details. Just let me listen.”
Taking her time as she stopped at first one item and then another, the room seeming more and more like a treasure chest spilling forth its wealth, she wandered toward the chair. “I don’t think men have any idea how seductive that invitation is, Ryder. More enticing than they can imagine, believe me. Many a woman’s been led astray by that simple phrase.”
“Not you, though, Josie. You’d see through the ploy.”
“I don’t know. A man giving you his whole attention when sex isn’t involved. A man listening. It’s awfully tempting.” Her sense of mischief prompted her smile.
“Stick out your tongue, Josie,” Ryder said, startling her.
“Why?” She frowned.
“Thought I’d check to see if it’s really razor sharp.”
Giving him a reproving look, she wandered toward a series of black-and-white photographs on the wall near the couch. They were all signed photos of men whose names she didn’t recognize. “No women magicians?” she asked, turning toward him where he remained at the wing chair.
“Not many women get into magic as the main performer. One or two. Mostly we’re a boys’ club, Josie.” His mouth twitched, and she thought this time it was with amusement as he continued imperturbably, “Much as that pains me to admit to you.”
“Hmm.” She pointed to the forest green sofa. “Anyway, is this going to be like going to the psychiatrist? Do I have to lie down on that?” Its supple leather was piled with pillows, and a burgundy-and-green blanket draped one of its thickly padded arms. A thought nagged her. “Is that where you sleep?”
“Most of the time.”
She wondered whether his bedroom resembled the kitchen or the room they were in, but she knew better than to ask. With its wealth of color and textures, this room swamped her senses, encouraging that side of her she’d discovered in Ryder’s arms and leaving her vulnerable when she needed to be strong. If his bedroom was anything like this room—
She didn’t think it would be smart of her to curl up cozily on that couch. Not tonight. Not after everything that had already happened. She sat down in the chair he’d offered and put her feet up on a low table covered with cardboard boxes, miniature screwdrivers and angled metal picks. “All right. What’s the plan, Ryder?”
He draped his length across the sofa, taking several of the pillows in his arms as he faced her across their jeweled tones. “Well, first I want you to tell me everything that happened when you came to my door. Okay? Don’t leave out any detail, no matter how unimportant.”
“Everything?” Organizing her thoughts, she couldn’t decide where to start.
“Pretend I don’t know the first thing, Josie. Neither of us is sure right now what’s significant, what isn’t, right?”
Nodding, she leaned forward, bringing her knees up and doubling them, resting her chin on top while she considered the sequence of events that had brought them to this moment, to the illusory comfort and contentment of the two of them sitting among the exotica of his magic collection and props. “I wanted you to do something about those dogs,” she began.
“Because you thought they were mine since they’d headed toward my house, right?” he said.
“They were too aggressive to be on the loose.”
“Was this the first time you’d seen them?”
“They’d been roaming around my house for several days, but they hadn’t been a problem before. This time they were different.”
Half sitting up, he stuffed a pillow under his head and lay back, resting his head on his folded hands. “How so, Josie?”
“Different. Scary. Like…oh, I don’t know. Like a pack with one idea in mind. Creepy. At first I was even afraid they were rabid.”
“Go on, Josie. So you took off toward my house? Through the forest?”
“Are you kidding?” She gave him a swift, disbelieving glance. “Of course not. I didn’t know where those devil beasts would spring up next.”
“All right. What happened next?” he encouraged.
Throughout the rest of her story, he never moved. His gaze remained locked on hers throughout her recitation. Feeling silly, she even told him about the grackles, about what had happened afterward with the snake. Feeling even stupider, she told him, too, about the disappearance of the snake’s body.
When she finished, he regarded her thoughtfully before saying, “I don’t know anything about the snake, but I left the capsule on your doorstep.”
“You could have given me the capsule yourself,” she said, rolling her shoulders and loosening the tension that had crept into them with her story. Putting everything into words was a relief. She hadn’t shared her worries and troubles with an adult since Bart had left. No wonder she’d begun feeling so disoriented, her thinking process slightly paranoid.
What was the old saying? A worry shared is a worry halved? She thought it was true. Sharing made the difference. She felt as if she’d walked out from under a burden she hadn’t known she was carrying. “Why didn’t you knock?”
“I came by early in the morning, right before dawn, Josie. Your newspaper hadn’t even arrived. I thought you might be sleeping.”
“I was.” But Josie didn’t tell him about the dream, about his part in her predawn nightmare and the ringing phone that had finally dragged her out of the sleep-drugged state. “You could have knocked, though.” She wished now he had. The whole horrible business with the snake might never have happened. “I wouldn’t have minded.”
“Next time, I will,” he said, and the rough note in his voice warned her away. “Are you up for an experiment, Josie? I want to try out something on you. You tell me if what you see in a minute resembles in any way what you saw in my hall, okay?”
Stacking the pillows in the corners of the sofa, he unfolded himself from the couch and went to an area where the room was divided by large folding doors. Pushing back the doors, he touched a panel of switches on the wall. As the lights in the room became a glow, Josie saw that the area functioned as a kind of workshop for Ryder. Long tables with orderly piles of machinery bits and mannequin parts lined one wall. Silvery mirrored sheets of glass rectangles leaned against another wall. Stars and comets flashed in silver and blue across the monitor of an elaborate computer area.
Like curtains drawn to the side of a stage, the folded doors framed the opening of the workshop, and though the lights grew dimmer, softening the edges of objects, Josie was able to see Ryder clearly.
Until he took one more step backward, away from her, and vanished before her eyes. There.
And not there.
The room was utterly quiet. Expecting to see him any second, Josie waited, letting the chill of the room seep into her.
Her stomach fluttered. Nerves. And the sense that she was alone when she shouldn’t be. Ryder was there. She knew it. He’d told her he wanted to try an experiment. There was no problem.
Josie leaned forward, peering toward the end of the room. There was no unearthly mist, no laser light show. Nothing, in fact, to explain how Ryder had been there one moment in plain view and gone the next.
She rubbed her arms, the chill penetrating her light cotton T-shirt and blouse. “Ryder?”
She was alone in a house where no one knew she’d gone.
And Josie decided after all that she did have an imagination, because she felt fingers brush her face, felt the chill touch of a hand on her neck.
The quick skim of fingertips was familiar, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Expecting to see him, she twisted in her chair to look behind her. “Ryder! You’re not being funny. I don’t like this,” she scolded.
But no one was there.
And then, as she squirmed in her chair to face front again, to face the direction in which she’d last seen him, she saw a pale shape drift toward her, becoming more distinct as she sat paralyzed in the seat.
But it wasn’t Ryder.
It wasn’t Mellie, either.
The diminutive form she’d seen, only a wisp of cloudy shadow glimpsed from the porch, was nothing like the figure becoming clearer with each second. As the figure moved toward her, Josie saw the transparent form of a woman, a woman whose hand stretched out, beckoning her as the apparition spoke.
The woman’s voice was like a song, the soprano notes trembling in the air as the figure faded into the dim blue light.
Faded, changed slowly.
Became Ryder.
The lights blazed again, and Josie blinked, still caught in the spell the illusion had cast over her.
“Well, Josie, was that what you saw?” Stepping forward and leaving the doors open, Ryder grinned, his delight in her reaction plain in the careful smile he gave her.
“That was excellent,” Josie said, leaning back in her chair. “You’re really good. I knew you were up to something. I knew I would see something, and I was watching closely. The light was bright enough for me to see what you were doing, but then…you were gone. I’m impressed.”
“Good.” He strolled toward her, elegantly casual, the pleasure in his trick translating into a male aggression that showed in the tilt of his head, the glint in his eyes. “It’s a variation of Houdini’s Arbor Illusion. The old version used sliding mirrors and struts to conceal the disappearance of the magician before he becomes the female figure, reappearing in a different place.” His smile widened, and Josie was touched by his enthusiasm. “Anyway, I’m updating the concept, using holography and videos. It’ll be more complicated when—” He veered away from her toward the couch and collapsed among the pillows, his head thrown back onto the green leather. “If I were going to present it.” He lifted his feet onto the table in front of him as he tipped his chin toward her and asked, “So?”
Shaking her head, Josie raised her eyebrows. “Your effect was different. Your figure was bigger, clearer somehow. I’ll admit you had me going, but even so, I never thought for a second that I was seeing or hearing Mellie.” Josie rubbed the cotton over her knees as she concluded slowly, “You know what it was? The figure I saw was definitely a child, with a child’s way of moving. Kids move differently, Ryder. I don’t know how to explain it, but they do. Little kids do that tippy-toe walk—” Josie couldn’t continue, not with the memories flooding her. She cleared her throat. “Not the same. I’m sorry.”
“Okay. Not a problem. I was working on some of the pieces of the equipment the other day when you knocked. I hoped maybe—Well, that’s that, I reckon.”
“The cold fingers along the cheek and neck were a terrific effect. How’d you cause that? Can you create the same sensation for a large audience? If so, wow.”
Suddenly intense, he leaned forward. “Tell me about the cold fingers, Josie,” he said so softly that she almost didn’t hear him.
“Cold. The way your hands are most of the time.” Josie shifted.
The calculating expression in Ryder’s eyes made her anxious. She didn’t think she would like what he was going to say.
“Josie, nothing in the effect I’m working on involves touching the audience. Nothing I did came anywhere close to you. Maybe a current of air?” He stood up and walked to the window nearest her, running his hand along the frame, his fingers seeking, searching.
“It’s a drafty room.” Josie turned to look at the subtle lift of the silks along the opposite wall. She shivered. “Your whole house is cold. Drafty.”
“Yes.” One hand still on the window, Ryder pivoted toward her. “I told you the house hasn’t always been cold like this, Josie. The cold is a new…effect. But a cold hand? I don’t know.” He walked over to the windows near the bookcases. “Must have been an air current.” Picking up a box of fireplace matches, he struck one and followed the outline of the windows with the long wooden match. The flame burned steadily.
“Ryder, I didn’t feel a breeze,” Josie said with certainty. “Fingers. Each one separate. I thought it was your hand. I recognized it, you see. The shape, the touch. I was so sure it was you,” she said in a faint voice.
“No.” He blew out the match. “Not me.”
“Then what?” Hesitantly, Josie looked around at the room, but it didn’t frighten her. Its rich grandeur remained inviting, wickedly tempting. She stood up. “What touched my face?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.” His grin was devilish. “A real mystery, sweetheart, isn’t it?”
“Do you have any enemies, Ryder?” Josie said as she wrapped her arms around herself. She walked back toward the workroom. “Can you think of anyone who might try to work a…a con on you, Ryder? Who might want to achieve some peculiar kind of revenge by making you think you were losing your mind? I mean, since several of the episodes have happened here.” She waved her hand in a circle.
“That was my first thought. Before the rest of the episodes.” He pointed toward the computer. “I ran through the possibilities. Checked what people were doing. Anyway, Josie, if a magician wanted to get revenge, the most effective revenge would be to steal one of my illusions and tart it up, make it better and more exciting, have everybody raving about what he was accomplishing. Make people forget that the concept and execution had originally been mine. Now that would really make me nuts.” One eyebrow rose in self-derision. “Anybody who knows me at all knows that. No, I don’t think it’s likely that someone’s out to get me with a convoluted scheme. Something else is causing these phenomena.”
The energy pulsing from him pushed against Josie, and needing to put space between them, she wandered back toward the computer. The combination of the room’s opulence, the late hour following a long, distressing day, and all the spinning, humming power coming from Ryder was wearing her down, weakening her in some essential way.
Even knowing it wouldn’t be a smart move, she still wanted to curl up on his leather couch and pull the blanket over her. She wanted to drift off to sleep watching the rippling silk panel of the magician and the panther.
With Ryder’s deep voice murmuring in her ear all night long, in her dreams beside her.
The thought stole through her. It was as if she’d heard an actual voice, as if Ryder had taken up residence in her brain, beguiling her with her the echo of her own need.
A pamphlet on the computer table stopped her. Picking up the booklet, she flipped through its pages. “Software to track down all kinds of information about people, Ryder?” She should have been angry, but after everything they’d been through, his earlier trespass no longer seemed important to her. Events had pulled the plug on her anger. She discarded the leaflet with a twist of her wrist. “That’s how you found out my mother’s name.”
“Yes.” The prism lights of the chandelier fell across Ryder’s face as he walked through the sitting room area. “And I’d do the same thing again, Josie. You know I would.”
“I know.” She pushed the pamphlet away from her with the tip of her finger. “It’s the way you are. Curious.” She knew her smile was rueful. “You think you’ll never go back on the stage, Ryder, but you’ll always be a magician. You have that kind of complicated, puzzle-solving brain.”
“I reckon.” He followed her to the computer and booted it up. With several key punches he brought up a screen filled with information about her. “We’re all bits and bytes in some computer, Josie. This information is available to anyone who really wants it. I did.”
“I don’t like feeling…exposed, I guess, is the best word. Good grief, Ryder,” Josie said, chagrined as she peered at the amber screen, “you even have the name of the first boy I dated here.”
“That wasn’t in the program,” he muttered, his face flushing. He pushed a delete file command and the screen went blank except for the cursor’s friendly nudge. “I was—”
“Curious,” Josie said again. She didn’t know whether to laugh or stomp on his foot. “I ought to sue you for invasion of privacy.”
“Probably,” he said. “I’d testify on your behalf.” He gave her an unapologetic half smile.
She turned her back on the lure of his knowing smile and walked toward the stack of mirrors. The silvering had been etched away from the edges of several of them.
“Props for the Arbor Illusion.” He cupped his hands on her shoulders, moved her in front of one of the mirrors mounted across the corner of the alcove. “Stay there,” he ordered.
Behind the mirror he placed one mannequin of a woman in a spangled ball gown. “My assistant,” he drawled.
Reflected in the mirror, part of the room seemed empty, but as Ryder touched a switch that drew the mirror away diagonally, the woman seemed to appear suddenly in the room because of the etched-away side of the mirror. “Stage lighting would cover the movement of the mirror.”
Josie could see how a figure could seem to float into view.
Before returning the mirror to its original position, Ryder stood another mannequin, this one in a tuxedo, in the corner opposite the mirror. “Me,” he said. “Actually, my double. The mirror makes it look as though I’m over there—” he pointed to the mannequin “—but really—” and he stepped behind the mirror, moving the female mannequin out of the way as he slid the mirror to its original position “—I’m here.”
The ball-gowned mannequin disappeared, becoming Ryder when the mirror was pulled partially back.
“Clumsy, performed this way, with all the mechanics showing,” he said as he came up behind her.
In one of the other mirrors, his reflected eyes watched her. Not touching her this time, he lowered his head and bent his knees as his mirrored mouth moved along the reflected image of her cheeks, her neck, his breath cool against her.
In the mirror, the woman’s green eyes grew large, misty, her mouth parting as Ryder’s sleek dark head slipped along the curve of her shoulder.
No mannequin. A real woman—herself. Unrecognizable in the dazed, yearning woman in the mirror.
“And this is the old version, not a high-tech, sexy one with lasers and gimcrackery,” he whispered, his breath growing warmer. “I love the way you look in my house, Josie, in my magic mirrors.” His eyes met hers, hungry, his loneliness a mirror of her own. “See how beautiful you are, Josie Birdsong?” And still he didn’t touch her.
Josie couldn’t move. She remembered too well what had happened earlier in the kitchen when she’d touched him, but she couldn’t escape the two of them in the mirror, his dark head moving over hers. She didn’t want to escape.
A strand of his hair slipped against her throat, the brush as intimate as a kiss.
“A basic version of what I showed you earlier. An old trick.”
For a second, Josie thought he meant the incident in the kitchen, but then he stepped back, his mirrored image vanished, and once more she was alone.
The reflection of herself, soft and expectant, waiting, and alone, sent a shaft of sadness and hunger through her. She turned away from that self.
She’d learned to live with her loneliness.
Without Mellie, the world was empty.
Josie understood reality. Although she might believe sometimes that no one else had ever grieved the way she did, that no one else could comprehend her loss, she knew she wasn’t alone in her desolation.
The parents of five other children were with her on that barren plain.
So, too, were the parents of Eric Ames.
And the circle of time would move on, taking them and their grief with it.
Every day people learned how to cope with loneliness and emptiness. She would, too. That was part of life. Going on. One foot in front of the other. One day at a time.
Ryder snagged the end of her skirt, stopping her. “Josie, what made you think the dogs were rabid?” He was frowning.
Shrugging, she said, “Their eyes, I think. Why?”
“When I opened the door, you were angry, yes, but there was something in your face, a look of terror underneath all that anger. I’d forgotten about it until a minute ago. What was strange about their eyes?”
“The color looked strange. Not right. And the dogs seemed to know what I was thinking before I did. They appeared so…calculating.” She managed a tiny laugh. “If they’d been rabid, I guess they would have looked crazy, not with that animal intelligence that scared the liver out of me.”
She left the workroom and returned to the main area of Ryder’s sanctuary.
There, following the lines of the bookshelves, she walked around the room. At the opposite end from Ryder, an old pine corner table filled the area where the shelves ended and the next wall began. An unimportant-looking dun-colored pot rested on the table.
In all the riot of color and richness, the plain pot was out of place, its earthy brown faded and monochrome. The homely ordinariness of the pot caught her eyes and drew her closer to examine it.
Of a shape to fit into her hands, the pot was rounded even on the base. The figure of a bird about four inches long formed the top of the ball shape of the pot. The whole object was no bigger than four or five inches from top to bottom, side to side. Because of its shape and closed top, Josie couldn’t imagine what it would have been used for or what its purpose would have been, other than decorative. Leaning toward it, she saw that the tail of the bird was open like a spout, its feathers and wings indicated with primitive streaks and shallow indentations that looked as if they’d been poked into the clay with the end of a pencil or stick.
Although she didn’t touch it or the table, the pot seemed to rock slightly in its holder.
Trying to determine the purpose of the object, Josie took a step closer. With a suddenness that made her cry out, the rug in front of the table skidded out from under her foot. Pitching toward the table and the bird pot, she flung out her arms with a helpless cry of alarm.
The table listed, tipped, and the pot rattled against the wooden surface.
She knew she hadn’t bumped into the table.
She was falling, the pot was rolling toward her, faster and faster in a blur as the floor rose up in front of her face.
And then Ryder was there, cradling the pot with one hand, his other arm around her. Her knee was millimeters from the floor.
“You okay?”
“Is the pot all right?” Their words collided over the beak of the ocher-colored bird with its bead of an eye.
Josie cupped her hand around the smooth surface of the bowl. The clay was warm, and her fingers lingered on its smooth shape, tracing the wings of the bird.
“I can’t believe I was so clumsy,” she whispered, alarmed that she’d come so close to breaking an obviously treasured object. “I’m so sorry.” She pushed away from Ryder. And found she couldn’t.
His fingers dug into her waist. His eyes narrowed, shone with the glittering light from the chandelier that seemed to whirl above her with dizzying speed. Even as she stared at him, the skin across his cheekbones tightened, flushed with heat.
“Ryder! Let me go,” she whispered, troubled, yet clinging to him. “We don’t want this.”
Around her, over her, in her, she heard the beating of wings, their fluttering growing powerful and strong, and she was terrified. The experience in the kitchen was pastel in comparison with the dark pounding now inside her body, the hunger to lie down on the floor and ease her need, ease the hunger she saw in Ryder’s eyes. “Let me go!” she said, knowing if he didn’t release her in that instant, she’d never let him go, and, oh, she didn’t know for one beat of her heart if she wanted him to listen to her or ignore her. And that was the most frightening truth of all. “Ryder!” she said, despairingly. “Please!”
With her words, he slowly straightened. Looking down at the pot he still held, he returned it to its support on the table. “Jesus,” he whispered. His hands were shaking. “What the hell was I thinking of? After all I said? Damn.”
“Your eyes, Ryder. They frightened me. I frightened myself, because I didn’t care whether you let me go. Ryder, I’m so frightened,” she cried, putting her hands over her burning cheeks.
He stepped back from her and rubbed his eyes. “God, Josie, I thought the images were the result of some kind of shared telepathy, that’s all. But this is something else. I can’t believe what happens to me when I touch you, Josie.” Backward, backward, he moved, appalled. “I swore I wouldn’t harm you. And I don’t understand what’s happening to me, but every oath, every good intention flies out the window. Desire, lust, I recognize. This is something else. Stronger. Like a part of me I would keep under lock and key. Josie,” he said urgently, “I’m afraid of what I’m going to do to you. Get away from me, sweetheart, for your own safety. Now!”
His hands were behind his back as he retreated from her.
In the mirrors around them, Josie saw her own eyes, as wide and horrified as Ryder’s.
All around them in the silk panels, the figures moved, stirred, a restless, living band.
And in the mirror in front of the table with the cards on it, she saw the glow of tiger eyes, hot and fierce and yellow.