Free Dane by Dane Page A

trees—those in the ancient groves planted by the satyr.
    Which meant they could only be found in a single location here in Rome.
    On land that evidently had been acquired by the flesh and blood male she‟d met last night—the sole person who had not been fooled by her ruse.
    How had he guessed? And why only him?
    Eva set the empty cup on the tray. “Was that from the olives I brought last night?”
    “Non,” said Odette, going to throw open the window. “It‟s from what we brought with us from ElseWorld‟s trees. You‟ll need to go again to the grove on Aventine and gather more.”
    Go back? And risk encountering him? “Why?”Eva asked in alarm.
    “What was wrong with what I gathered last night? Were they too unripe?”
    Odette‟s coarse, tightly pinned hair didn‟t sway when she shook her head. “Ripeness don‟t matter. It‟s just that the trees you pick from were the wrong ones.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Just do. You follow Fantine‟s map next time.”
    Eva spread her hands in exasperation. “I did follow it. It‟s confusing. Why don‟t you come with me to help next time if you think it‟s so easy?”
    Odette quickly drew a sign on her chest with a forefinger to ward off evil spirits. “Satyr lands give me shivers, like the dead walking past.”
    “Yet you‟d bid me go there, in spite of your superstitions.”
    “That grove won‟t hurt you—you one of them. Those old trees sense it‟s best not to do you harm. You go back there in the next week or so. Don‟t have to go today.”
    Apparently considering the matter settled, Odette began straightening up the room, intent on removing all trace of what Eva had gotten up to last night. The bottle of wine that would replenish its own contents within the month was capped, and it and the goblet returned to the cabinet.
    Eva slid lower in her bed, feeling suddenly tired. She took the brew every morning, but it only made her sleepy the morning following Moonful. She opened her eyes again when Odette came closer and reached for one of the ropes tied to the headboard.
    “Leave them. I‟ll do that,” Eva protested halfheartedly. “I don‟t like to trouble you.”She tried to get up but sank back, a trifle dizzy.
    “You rest.”
    “I should get up. I have things to do. I need to return to the grove for more olives.”She yawned. “And I promised to take the girls to tour the ruins.”
    “You take those little heathens out later. Rest now.” Odette tucked her in, as she had when Eva was a child.
    “Don‟t call them that. They‟re orphans, who lost their mothers to the Sickness. Abandoned by their fathers as I was. They need and deserve our kindness.”
    Mmm-hmm. Odette untied the ropes from the headboard and looped them around her hand without comment. They, too, would be stowed in the cabinet and Eva wouldn‟t see them again until next Moonful.
    “Really, I‟ll do all that, “Eva insisted again. Her lashes fluttered as she battled sleep.
    “No shame in this, cara. It‟s your nature,” Odette soothed.
    Eyes drifting closed, Eva shook her head on the pillow. She knew better. Fantine and Odette had loved her, but they‟d considered her a freak. Their refusal to discuss her “nature,” and the strict secrecy they insisted upon with regard to it, had taught her that there was shame in this, at least for a woman. Satyr males were revered in ElseWorld, but she—the lone satyr female—was quite simply defective.
    Yet they had always arranged for her comfort during the ritual she performed each Moonful. And Odette continued to aid and abet it in every way after Fantine‟s death, in spite of the fact that she scorned the satyr species in general. By the time Eva woke again, the cylinders on the bedside table would be cleansed and returned to the cabinet. The phallus at the foot of the bed would be polished and rotated back to its former position among fanciful vines and clusters of grapes carved from olivewood.
    “I don‟t know what I