Stranger:. Zoe Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ her hand on the doorknob. And opened the door.

      Instead of being met by a gun, three stunned faces greeted her entrance into the cabin.

      She shut the door behind her again. “You asked how I might know of magic, Mr. Graves? There it is.”

      “Could be a trick,” Lesperance noted.

      “No,” said Graves. “Nothing can open that lock except the key that I made.” He gazed at her with a mixture of admiration and surprise. “Nothing, but magic.”

      “It’s called the Key of Janus,” Gemma explained. She felt a strange little glow of satisfaction to amaze not just Astrid and Lesperance, but a clearly brilliant mind such as Catullus Graves. “Something that’s been in my mother’s Italian family for generations. Dates back to ancient Rome. With it, we can open any door. Doesn’t matter how strong the lock, how heavy the door. The Key opens them all.” Though lately, even that had changed. But there was no need to mention that now.

      “How did your family keep from becoming thieves?” Graves asked.

      She grinned. “Many didn’t.” Then sobered. “But even more remained honest, despite the temptations to do otherwise. So you see “—she opened her hands wide—” I know that magic exists, since it’s been in my family for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.”

      Astrid muttered something that might have been, “Blimey.”

      Graves thoughtfully rubbed his mouth. After staring at her for a few moments, he strode toward the porthole and, bracing his hands on either side of the small window, gazed out at the moon upon the water.

      “You can’t scare me with tales of magic, Mr. Graves,” Gemma said to his broad back. “Because I know all about it.”

      “Not everything,” he corrected, turning back to face her. “The magic that’s in your family, that is just one small, and relatively innocuous, part of the limitless magic that exists in the world. It can be found everywhere, from the most populous cities, to the farthest reaches of the wilderness.”

      “Including the Northwest Territory?” Gemma asked. According to Gemma’s investigations at the trading post, Astrid Bramfield had been living alone in the Canadian mountains, until Catullus Graves and another man—now dead—had come to find her. Graves had returned from the wilderness with Astrid and Lesperance before setting off for England, with Gemma in pursuit.

      “Exactly.” His hands clasped behind his back. He had, at that moment, a professorial air, much more comfortable discussing such subjects than being in touching distance of her.

      “Is that what those other Englishmen at the trading post were looking for? Magic?”

      “You remember them?” he asked, taken aback.

      Gemma’s mouth curved, wry. “Hard to forget. A bigger bunch of pompous asses I never met—and, believe me, I’ve known quite a few.” Especially in the newsroom of the Tribune. “They came in the same day that Mr. Lesperance arrived, looking for guides, and managed to insult everyone in the trading post.”

      Lesperance stood even straighter. “You,” he said, staring at her. “I saw you there that day, too. Out of the corner of my eye. You were lurking behind some buildings. I went to follow—and then the Heirs grabbed me.”

      She did do rather a lot of lurking in her work, but couldn’t feel too embarrassed about it. Being polite and proper never made anyone into a good journalist. “Heirs,” she repeated. “You mentioned them before. Those Englishmen at the trading post were called Heirs?”

      “The Heirs of Albion,” Graves said, grim. “As we said, they want everything for England’s empire, and that includes the world’s magic.”

      Gemma blanched. “That’s … awful.” A sudden thought struck her. “Does that include my magic?”

      His somber expression showed that he had already considered this possibility. “Very likely. Either it will be stripped from you or—” He broke off, frowning deeply.

      “Or?” Gemma prompted.

      “Or your magic, and you, will be enslaved. At any given moment, you could be summoned and forced to open any lock, any door. A vault holding a nation’s wealth. A chamber guarding royalty, leaving the monarch vulnerable to an assassin’s bullet.”

      A whooshing in her ears, the sound of her blood rocketing through the vast network of her body. Saint Francis de Sales, that would make her an accomplice to murder! Her stomach churned in disgust and revulsion.

      “The Heirs wouldn’t do that,” she averred, then undermined her own certainty by adding, more faintly, “would they?”

      “They have and they will.” Graves’s tone left no room for uncertainty. He stepped closer, his eyes containing experiences beyond Gemma’s substantial imagination. “Which is exactly why you cannot be involved in anything to do with them. Even if the magic they wield is itself benign, their use of it is incredibly dangerous. Especially to someone like you.”

      Now that he stood in front of her, Gemma had to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. If the intent was to intimidate her, in that regard, the gesture didn’t work. What his nearness did do, however, was make her aware of his warmth and scent—a mixture of bergamot, tobacco, and the intangible essence of him, his flesh and self.

      “I don’t mind a little danger.” Her voice sounded husky to her ears.

      His velvet-dark eyes moved over her face, lingering on the freckles dotting the bridge of her nose, before traveling down to idle on her mouth, and then lower. The dress Gemma wore was modest as a schoolmarm, with a high, buttoned collar and not a single bit of flesh exposed, save for her hands. But even in the most demure dress ever sewn, there was no concealing Gemma’s figure. Not only had she inherited her mother’s magic, but her hips and breasts as well. While Gemma had a mind for journalism, fate and family had given her the body of a burlesque dancer. Between her figure and her flaming, bright hair, Gemma’s pursuit of professional legitimacy was an uphill battle.

      Sometimes she resented her curvaceous figure and saw it as nothing more than an impediment to being taken seriously. And other times …

      To see frank male admiration in Catullus Graves’s face as he looked at her … she couldn’t deny a certain … gratification.

      When his gaze met hers again, his voice came out somewhat raspy. “It isn’t a little danger. It’s a lot of danger. And I refuse to imperil you at all by having you anywhere near the Heirs—or us.”

      A difference, she sensed, between his protectiveness and the condescension she endured back home. The male reporters at the Trib smirked and told her the life of a journalist was too perilous for a woman—her delicate constitution, her fragile sensibilities. Never mind that she could hold her liquor better than any of them, including Pritchard. Gemma could also swing a mean left hook and shoot a rifle. But, no, as befitting a woman’s disposition and health she was supposed to be writing harmless little articles about putting up summer beans or the best ways to get grape stains out of a baby’s pinafore.

      Catullus Graves’s concern for her safety had nothing to do with whether or not he considered her capable, and everything to do with the fact that these Heirs of Albion were СКАЧАТЬ