Free Blood Cursed (Rogue Angel) by Alex Archer

I’d like.”
    Annja stood, leaving that one hanging out there. She’d had her share of dates and always managed to fit them into her schedule when the man was worth it. If Luke asked, she would definitely clear space for him.
    Grabbing another tarp that they’d used to cover the pit, she unfurled it carefully, not wanting to wake their sleeping guard.
    “How did you chase them away?” Luke suddenly asked, not looking at her as he carefully laid the tarp over the remaining skeleton.
    “I would never chase away a proposition if I liked the man,” she said.
    He laughed. “Not the men who proposition you, but the men with guns who were here earlier.”
    He wanted an answer to something she couldn’t explain. “I wield a mean evil eye.”
    “Doubt it.” Luke straightened and wiped away the sweat from his neck, wincing as he fingered the abrasion, which had colored to a deep red since being pistol-whipped this morning. “I’ve watched your television show. You can handle a weapon well, though I assume that is production and editing. Never saw you with a sword, though.”
    So he’d seen her with the sword. Probably everyone else in the dig area had seen it, too. But she’d needed to call it to hand and it had served its purpose of showing the swordsman she was not to be trifled with.
    The swordsman. She was curious how he’d come to own the katana and how he’d trained with it. From the few moves she had seen, he could be a skilled swordsman.
    With a sigh, Luke leaped up out of the pit and took the bagged skull from her. “Fine. None of my business. Let’s hope the Gypsies have gone. The sleeping guard we can deal with.”
    She could imagine Luke might hold his own on an adventure. That glint in his eye broadcast lust for something more. A something more she experienced often.
    “I don’t think so,” the Gypsy said as he joined their walk to the car. Before Luke could set the skull inside the Jeep the man touched his sword tip to the string-tied blue tarp in Luke’s hands. “That must be burned.”
    “We’ve discussed this,” Annja said, putting herself between the two men. “The skull has to be dated and studied, but we can’t do that here. Mr. Spencer is going to send it on to the archaeology department at London University where he works. I promised we’d keep you in the loop. You’ll know where the skull is at all times.”
    “There was no such discussion.” The man gave her a narrow look that bored through to her gut. What was it she had heard about Gypsies being able to read a person’s soul? She filed that one along with Luke’s fortune teller. “You said what you wanted to happen. I did not agree to that.”
    “I thought you didn’t want the thing around? That it was a curse unearthed from the ground? What better than to take it out of the country, far from here, and remove all possibility of that skeleton returning from death to haunt your people? It surely can’t rise without a head.”
    “Legend aside,” the Gypsy said, “that is the head of one of our deceased. Some believe it is dangerous, but it will not be once it has been reburied. It stays.”
    “How do you know it’s one of your own?” Luke asked. “This skull is likely centuries old. There is no apparent graveyard in the area.”
    “What of the other skeletons in the wall over there?” the Gypsy countered. “This site was obviously used for burial, marked or not.”
    “Sure, it could be a burial ground,” Annja agreed, trying to keep him calm. “Yet how can you know the bones are Romani?”
    “We bury our dead close to our homes to appease the deceased.”
    “Wouldn’t you mark the graves?” Annja asked, but Luke didn’t wait for an answer.
    “You weren’t even alive when this body was interred,” he said. “And besides, your people have no real home in Europe. They bury their dead along the trails they travel from town to town. You claiming this skull as one of your own is like me staking claim to the