Free Sebastian by Hazel Hunter Page A

that you are trying to help any favors when you work yourself to the point of unconsciousness.”  
    She nodded seriously, and for the next hour or so, with Sebastian's gentle encouragement, she practiced. She had never had someone watch out for her while she was working on her skill. She had never had anyone to help her, to make suggestions or to spot her. Instead of feeling as stressed and afraid as she had when she was working with Vacek, she felt the way she had when she was doing well in school all those years ago. She was being challenged, and she was getting better.
    She had worked through anger and a few other emotions when that beautiful gold color that had suffused the older woman's aura drifted into her mind. At this point, she had no doubt at all that it was love, and she wistfully thought about how rare it might be. She was just starting to concentrate on that feeling when Sebastian's phone went off. He looked startled and then chagrined.
    “Are you going to be okay if I step away to take this? This might be something that you are better off without.”  
    She nodded, and he walked away a short distance. She didn't like the reminder of his life, of the fact that this was strictly a limited engagement, but she put it out of her mind. Tomorrow could take care of itself.
    Nicolette focused on that golden glow. Separated from the patina of regret and sorrow, it would gleam like the sun itself. She remembered how it had felt to watch that lovely woman in her dress dance with the man who would share the rest of his life with her. Her eyes drifted open, and to her happy surprise, there were several glints of gold throughout the crowd.
    The woman doing the face painting had that golden glow, as did the young Hispanic teenager in the skater clothes. The two older women, hand in hand and carrying shopping bags over their shoulders, gleamed brightly, and then she looked to her left.
    Sebastian was still on the phone, and swirling around his head, mixed with a bold sapphire she had come to associate with courage, was a pure and beautiful gold.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

    “DO YOU HAVE nothing better to do than to ask for status reports?” Sebastian asked irritably.
    “Sorry, Sebastian.” Stephan sounded a little regretful, but it was far from enough to suit Sebastian. “But when Templars are involved, I feel like keeping you in the loop. Not, you know, that you really seem to want to do the same.”
    Sebastian was pointedly silent, and Stephan sighed.
    “Something about the way that you were talking the last time we got on the phone together made me do some checking. Yes, all of the reports that we have for that entire area tell me that it's clean as a whistle, but it sounded like you thought different, and so I did some checking.”
    “And?”
    “And technically, it's still clean.”  
    “Technically?”
    “There's no organized Templar activity down that way, but the coven over in Salem, well, they lost a warlock this time last year.”
    “Lost? What's that supposed to mean?”  
    “Disappeared, vanished. Fine and happy one day, took off the next. People get stressed, get mad, they take off all the time, but they don't think that's what happened.”
    “Could a Templar knight have picked him off?”
    “I would say that's definitely a possibility. When we deal with Templars, we usually have to worry about things like raids. Those bastards are worse than locusts. It’s when they attack in numbers that we have to get our crops under cover, or our witches and warlocks inside, whichever metaphor you care to use.”
    “Stephan.”
    “Look, I don't have anything concrete, not really. But Templars that travel solo are nasty enough because once again, they look just like everyone else. And if you have a single Templar knight out there that is killing witches all on his lonesome? Well, that could be really bad.”
      Sebastian gritted his teeth. He remembered the man he had ushered out of Nicolette's tent the first day