Dominic (22 page)

led to the attic to see to one final task.

Ancient floorboards creaked as she made her way across the musty attic, batting at cobwebs. Kneeling, she opened her leather trunk and

rummaged through the woolens and fleece she’d brought with her from England fifteen years ago.

It quickly became apparent that none of the girlish clothing here would fit her any longer except a satin-lined muff and a woolen scarf or two. The

early spring climate in England would be far cooler than here in Italy. She would have to purchase warmer clothing for Rose and herself immediately upon

her arrival in London.

Sighing, she closed the trunk and made to stand. But she immediately sank to her knees again when her head spun. She put a hand to her bel y,

feeling queasy.

Her heart thumped with panic. She’d felt this way before. The morning after Rose had been conceived. A Satyr child’s development in utero was

swift, and its effects on a mother were quickly felt.

No! She could
not
be with child. Not again. She hadn’t even been intimate with a man!

Pushing a wisp of her hair behind an ear, she cocked her head, listening. For a moment, she thought she’d heard her daughter cry in her crib one

floor below.

But al was silent.

Rose had been strangely fitful al day. Usual y an easy sleeper, she had woken at dawn and had seemed to grow more distressed by the hour.

It was far too early for teething, and Emma was at a loss to know what else might be troubling her. She’d considered taking her to Jane this

morning for advice, but when Rose had quieted later in the afternoon, she had not done so after al .

Exhausted, Emma slumped again, relieved that Rose seemed to have settled down, for she felt il equipped to deal with a fussy child today. The

two of them made quite a pair. She could only hope they were more themselves tomorrow, or her trip would have to be postponed yet again.

Last night’s sleepless hours stil haunted her. Her nocturnal fantasies were likely the very sort her sister and aunts would soon enjoy in the sacred

glen with their Satyr husbands, for tonight was to be a Moonful Cal ing in this world. It would be the first such night in a year’s time during which she would

not participate in the ritual. Perhaps that was why she had dreamed of it last night.

Folding her arms atop the trunk, she rested her forehead on them. She yawned once and closed her eyes, just for a minute.

A cool hand touched her cheek, startling her. She glanced up to see one of the night servants. She’d come silently, as they always did. And she’d

come with the dark. Twilight had fal en.

Emma blinked at her, trying to come ful y awake. “It grows late. I guess I dozed off.”

Unlike the rest of the family, she was rarely able to see these creatures unless they specifical y wished to reveal themselves to her. Distantly

related to the ancient inhabitants of Else World, these innocuous, servile hamadryads hid away during the daylight hours but roamed the Satyr households

at wil after the Human servants left the estate at dusk.

Emma stood careful y. Encouraged when she didn’t grow faint this time, she began briskly dusting her skirt. The creature’s touch came again at

her elbow, more urgently this time.

Her face was ethereal y beautiful with red lips and eyes the color of cedar boughs. Normal y the features of the night servants were placid. But this

one’s expression had knit itself into something resembling fear.

“What is it?” Emma said, straightening. Tucking the muff and scarf under one arm, she al owed herself to be led down the stairs. Icicles shivered

her spine when she realized where the hamadryad was directing her.
Toward the nursery.

The clothing she held fel to the floor unnoticed, and she began to run, terrified. Was something wrong with Rose? Dire fairy-tale stories of

banshees and changelings raced through her mind.

Scurrying ahead of her escort, she dashed inside the nursery. Three sylvan night servants were clustered around the flounced crib.

They stood back, making room for her as she approached. At the sight that met her eyes, Emma put a hand to her chest to slow its pounding. To

her immense relief, Rose stil lay there amid her blankets, safe.

“Why did you frighten me like that?” she asked, running a gentle hand over her daughter’s smal frame. “She appears to be fine.”

Rose’s delicate fists were clutched tight at her chest. The hamadryad who’d found Emma in the attic seized one of them and tucked her finger

within the child’s grip. Careful y she pried it open, forcing the tiny pink fingers to uncurl.

When the smal hand opened ful y, Emma could see that something shimmered within its keeping. Frowning, she took the hand in hers and turned

its palm more ful y to the candlelight. It was silver!

She rubbed her thumb over its glistening surface. “What’s this? Her hand seems to have been painted!”

The night servants al appeared concerned and guileless. They adored Rose and wouldn’t have done this. But who would have?

Rushing to the basin, she dipped one corner of a linen cloth into the cool water. Dampening it, she then took it to the crib and rubbed at Rose’s

palm. If anything, the shine of silver increased, as if it had been polished.

Emma tried again, rubbing harder. But the luster remained.

Then she took note of something odd. Her daughter wasn’t objecting to this treatment.

“Rose?”

No reaction.

Emma took the girl’s chubby cheeks between both hands, shouting now. “Rosetta!”

Rose’s lashes fluttered tiredly. When they reluctantly opened, Emma gasped. Her daughter’s irises, normal y a muted gray color, had turned the

identical color of her palm.

Silver.

Like Dominic’s.

These changes—this il ness in her child—had something to do with him. With their time together the night Rose was born. Or perhaps her erotic

dreams of him last night had brought this on. She neither knew nor cared what the cause might be. She only wanted her daughter made wel again.

Scooping Rose and her blanket in her arms, she made for the door.

“Signora?” one of the servants queried softly.

“I’m going for help,” Emma threw over her shoulder. “To my sister and her husband. If any of my family come here for any reason while I’m gone, tel

them what has happened and where to find me.”

Without waiting for a reply, she dashed downstairs and threw open the carriage-house door. Flying through the courtyard, she took the moonlit

path that led to Nicholas’s and Jane’s
castello
.

Though the ful moon would probably have had them convening in the glen as soon as dusk fel , they sometimes conducted the Cal ing ritual in their

home instead. Because it was closer, she tried there first.

Ten minutes later, she burst into their home, her lungs heaving. Running past the surprised majordomo, she flew through the expansive marble-

floored entry hal and cal ed to them from the bottom of the stairs.

“Jane! Nicholas!” Her shouts reverberated through the
castello
. Darting from
salotto
to study to library, she found no one. Hearing her, several

more night servants gathered in the front hal .

“Are they here?” she demanded.

As one, the hamadryads solemnly shook their heads.

“Where, then? The glen?” They calmly nodded in tandem, but Emma was already heading for the back entrance. “If they return, tel them my

daughter is il . Tel them to find me in the glen!”

She exited by the kitchen door and slipped across the mosaic tile courtyard in the rear garden, locating the footpath she hoped would take her to

Jane and Nicholas. Ahead the forest seemed closed to her, a dark, forbidding wal of fir, cedar, and oak.

Picking her way through it, she went at a more leisurely pace than she wished to for fear that she might drop her daughter. The unsympathetic

moon refused to permeate the forest’s umbrel a, so her path grew ever darker and more uncertain.

Long arms of foliage fought her every step of the way, snatching at her hair and skirt. It had rained earlier, and she found herself slipping and nearly

losing her footing several times. Eventual y she halted in the middle of the trail, thoroughly exhausted and confused.

The glen. Where was it? She’d been there only once with Jane, years ago as a girl. Peculiar forces protected it, just as they protected the gate.

Were they purposely leading her astray?

“Jane! Jane! Nicholas!” She stood there in eerie semidarkness, cal ing desperately but receiving no response in return. The moon would hold the

three Satyr lords in thral , and they in turn would bind their women to them until sunrise. The Cal ing ritual had likely rendered them al deaf to her pleas.

A cedar bough shifted fleetingly so that a moonbeam caught Rose’s face. Her complexion had taken on a pasty hue. Her movements were

uncoordinated and abrupt. Convulsions. Emma’s heart lurched and began trying to pound its way out of her chest.

When she looked up again, the way ahead had become impenetrable. But a new avenue through the woods seemed to have somehow opened to

her left. It was as if the forest were intentional y trying to usher her in that direction.

The ancient gate lay that way. And beyond it, another world.

And Dominic.

Hope blossomed. Was she being guided toward him because he’d know how to mend this child he’d helped birth?

Pivoting, she let the forest lead her where it would. It was a desperate move, for she’d been sternly and repeatedly warned away from the gate

ever since she’d first come to the estate.

Within minutes she reached the grotto that housed the sacred entrance to Else World. She slipped between a framework formed by a triad of

ancient trees—oak, ash, and hawthorn. Their thick, craggy trunks bowed toward one another to form a live, arched entryway, and their branches fingered

skyward, tangling to obscure the moon’s unblinking eye.

Stepping along gnarled roots that intertwined to form a set of braided stairs, she found her way inside the cavern beyond. There, al smel ed of

flowers, herbs, grapemust, and enchantment. Made momentarily light-headed by it, she sank onto a low limestone altar set in the moss that covered the

floor.

As her eyes grew accustomed to the absence of moonlight, she noticed the strange markings that glittered on the wal s on every side of her. The

path continued some distance ahead, ending in a void from which a strong aura of powerful magic emanated.

So this was the gate.

The strange humming sound that issued from it had intensified since she’d arrived, making the arms that held Rose tremble. Though Else World

creatures couldn’t breach it from their side without an invitation, the Satyr could easily traverse the gate from this direction if they so chose. However, she

was entirely Human and had long been cautioned by her family that the act of passing through it would likely harm her. Dominic had intimated that his

seed had somehow changed her—made her infinitesimal y less than Human—but the gate nevertheless sounded most definitely unwelcoming. Was he

wrong?

On her lap, her daughter was quiet save for the frail breath rattling in her smal , defenseless chest. “Rosie! Darling,” she whispered.

No sweet smile came in response. No happy wave of arms and legs. Nothing.

Rose was Carlo’s daughter, too, and therefore had Satyr blood in her veins. Would it be enough to keep her alive, or would the crossing-over kil

them both? Hardly knowing what she did, Emma stood and moved toward the gate. There seemed little alternative but to risk it.

The humming drone rose to a deafening level in reaction to her approach. At the brink of the portal, she halted, suddenly realizing she couldn’t

expect Dominic to be waiting for them immediately upon their arrival in his world. If passage through the gate rendered her incapacitated or dead, who,

then, would speak for Rose? Whoever found them would require instructions regarding what was to be done with her.

Turning back to the cavern, she scrabbled along its wal , searching for a writing instrument. A piece of rock broke off. It was chalky, like charcoal.

Setting her daughter on the altar, she smoothed the front of her smal blanket flat. Forcing her hand to stop shaking so her words would be legible,

she scrawled the briefest of instructions upon the soft wool:
To Dominic Janus Satyr

The last few letters barely fit and were smal er than the others. “Oh, Gods! Why does his name have to be so damnably long!” she wailed, hoping it

would be easily read in spite of this.

When she swaddled her again, Rose didn’t react. She had curled into a tight bal , stil as death.

A dozen feet away, the gate buzzed in rejection like a furious hive of bees that had been disturbed. What would await them on the other side, she

knew not. But there was no time for second-guessing this decision. Somehow she knew that Dominic would protect Rose with his life. If he found her. If he

knew how to save her.

She had to try. Even if it meant she herself must die in the crossover.

With a kiss upon Rose’s pale face, she took twelve steps. The thirteenth saw her through the gate.

23

Else World

P
inpricks of agony stung every inch of Emma’s flesh during the instant it took her to cross the gate. It felt as if there realy were insects swarming in its

magic, al of which had decided to punish her at once, simply for being Human.

On the other side of the gate, she stumbled and fel to her knees. Her stomach clenched, and her throat closed. Hugging Rose protectively, she

slumped onto her side. The gravel y floor scraped her elbow, and the smel of loam was thick in her lungs. Cold earth pil owed her cheek.