Free Spell of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning Page B

said:
When did having a life become an event you had to schedule?
She’d stuffed it way in the back of her cupboard and not looked at it again, the sad truth of it shaving too close to the bone.
    No, she certainly wasn’t ready to die. She wanted at least another sixty or seventy years. She hadn’t even gotten to the good parts of her life yet. Problem was, she didn’t suffer any illusions about her ability to, as he’d so succinctly put it, “see death coming.” She was a college student, an archaeology major, at that. People were not her forte. Not living ones, anyway. She was no slouch with the dead ones, like the Iceman or the Bog People, but that wouldn’t get her very far with an assassin. Sad fact was, Death could probably stalk up to her wearing a hooded black robe and toting a scythe, and she’d get all distracted wondering about the age, origin, and composition of the scythe.
    Ergo, like it or not—and dear God, she didn’t—she needed him. Whatever he was. The professor was dead. The deliverymen were dead. She’d been next. Three out of four down. She felt like one of those ditzy heroines in a murder mystery, or one of those fluffy romance novels, the loose end that needed tidying up, the one the psychopath kept coming after. The helpless, girly girl. And she’d never considered herself helpless in her entire life. Girly, maybe, but not helpless.
    Now, standing outside the door to Professor Keene’s office yet again, she stiffened her spine, mentally preparing to fling herself upon an impossible being’s mercy.
    Either he would protect her as he claimed, or he really was some cosmically evil villain, justly imprisoned and lying through his teeth, who planned to kill her—the way things had been going for her lately—gruesomely and with much blood, right there on the spot.
    If that was the case, she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t, her demise a mere bit of squabbling over place and time, so she should probably just buck up and get it over with.
    She glanced at her watch—12:42 A.M.
    Good-bye life as she knew it, hello chaos. Hopefully not just good-bye life.
    She pushed open the door and stepped into the office. “Okay,” she told the silvery surface with a sigh, “I think we can make a deal.”
    He was there before she’d even fully formed the word “think.” She finished the rest of the sentence a bit breathlessly.
    A slow, exultant smile curved his lips.
    “Deal, my ballocks. Get me the bloody hell out of here, woman.”

6
    “Don’t give me excuses,” Lucan snarled into the phone. “Roman is dead. I need Eve in Chicago
now
.”
    He rose and stood before the tall windows of his study, staring out at the London dawn as the first faint streaks of sun burned off the fog. The sky beyond was still dim enough that he could also see his own reflection superimposed on the tinted glass. Alone, he did not bother with a spell to conceal his appearance.
    His entire skull was a miasma of crimson-and-black runes, his tongue flickered black inside his tattooed mouth when he spoke, and his eyes were feral crimson.
    It was Thursday morning. He had twenty days.
    He turned his gaze to the darker spot on the silk wallpaper where the Dark Glass had hung for so long. Cian’s captivity had been a constant source of amusement to him—the legendary Keltar, the most powerful of all Druids ever known, ensorcelled by one Lucan Myrrdin Trevayne.
    His hands fisted, his jaw clenched. That empty spot
would
be filled again, and soon. Returning his attention to the conversation, he snapped, “The St. James woman knows she’s in danger now. There’s no telling what she’ll do. I need her taken care of immediately. But first, I need that damned mirror back. Roman said it was in the professor’s office. Have her ship it to my private residence the moment she arrives. Then get rid of the girl and anyone else who’s seen it.”
    Damn Roman.
The police were asking too many questions, and he