Behind them something roared. Then she heard a loud horn. Logan pulled her off the road, and a huge vehicle hurtled past.
A car. She had seen them before when she'd come to this world, but she had never been this close to one that was moving.
"That could kill you," she whispered.
"Yeah. If you got hit. Which is another reason we need to get off the road."
"Is it against the law to kill with one of those?"
"Of course!"
"But we're not supposed to be walking on the road, are we? So if we got killed, it would be our fault."
"You're still not supposed to kill anyone," he muttered.
They passed several narrow lanes leading to the left and right. Logan kept trudging past them. But when he came to one with what looked like white logs lying on the ground, he stopped. When she looked more closely, she could see they were made of some material that was rolled up with a transparent coating around them.
"Newspapers," Logan said, seeing her eye them. "A lot of them. Which usually means someone is out of town. Away from home," he clarified, then opened a metal box on a short pole and looked inside. "And a bunch of junk mail."
"Junk mail?"
"Advertising circulars."
"Like when a merchant has something to sell, and he wants to let the rich people know?"
"Exactly. Here they pay a government service—the post office—to deliver them."
He closed the box and turned back to her, his expression serious. "I told you about the law and the police. We could borrow the house. But if we go inside, we're breaking the law."
"Like when I took the clothing off the line?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"People just hang it out like that? In the open. Not behind a fence. They're not afraid anybody will take it?"
"Most people around here don't need to steal laundry, so there's no threat in leaving it out. Generally, it's not okay to steal. But when we're naked with no chance to get back to our own clothing, we don't have much choice."
She was still thinking through the whole situation. "And the houses are so far apart," she said. "With no guards."
"They might have a security system, an electronic device that lets the police know if someone's broken in."
"So we can't do it," she said.
Logan gave her a long look. He'd like to leave her where it was safe. He was sure she wouldn't agree. "Let's find out."
They started up the driveway, shoulder to shoulder, the rain turning their clothing soggy. Casting a sidewise glance at her, he noted how the soaked T-shirt was clinging to her skin. Of course, maybe the shirt was an advantage. If a guy was home, he'd focus on her boobs, and Logan could coldcock him.
They rounded a curve, and she caught her breath as she stared at the house. "It's a palace. Only a rich person could live here."
"It's not all that grand," he informed her, then shot her a speculative look. "How long had you been in this world before you found me in the trap?"
"I came a few times," she said defensively.
He didn't bother saying that she hadn't picked up a lot of information. But then, how would she—completely on her own?
He studied the setting. The house was on a wooded lot, and he couldn't see any nearby neighbors.
At the top of the hill, the driveway opened out into an empty parking area in front of a two-car garage.
He walked to the garage. There was one car inside, but the adjoining space was empty. As he watched, a light blinked on in an interior room. He tensed, and Rinna jumped.
Ducking low, he hurried to the window and looked inside. A lamp had come on in what looked like a den, but nobody was in the room. Which suggested that the lamp was on an automatic timer.
But he didn't abandon caution, even when they were both starting to shiver from the cold and wet. Carefully he walked around the perimeter of the house, checking for signs of occupation. Finally, he approached the back door and began looking for a good place to hide a key. It was under a fake rock.
As he inserted it in the lock, Rinna came up beside him. "Why lock the door if anybody can get in?"
"They think nobody will find the key."
She snorted, then followed him inside.
After making sure the house was empty, he took Rinna upstairs and began looking for something to wear besides gym shorts and T-shirts. A man and a woman lived in the house. No children, which was a relief because the idea of a family walking in on what they thought was a burglary made his stomach knot.
Rummaging in closets and drawers, he found suitable clothing for both himself and Rinna. The women's shoes weren't even a bad fit for her.
She looked slightly dazed as he presented her with the booty, then led her to the bathroom.
He stroked his hand up her arm, feeling her cold skin. "You need a hot shower."
"You make the rain hot?"
"No. There's a shower stall in the bathroom. You don't have hot water in your houses?"
"Not unless you heat it over a fire."
He turned on the water, adjusted the temperature, and showed Rinna the soap and shampoo—and how to turn the water off again without getting burned.
As she stood looking at the modern marvel, he pictured himself stepping under the hot spray with her, heating her up in more ways than one. But he knew she wouldn't react the way he wanted, so he left her alone.
Probably she was thinking that he'd walk in on her because she was finished in record time, then scurried into the walk-in closet in the master bedroom to towel off and change into the knit top and pants he'd selected for her. He took his own quick shower. By the time he emerged, she'd gotten her hair almost dry with the towel.
Twenty minutes after they'd entered the house, they went back down to the kitchen, which he saw had been recently remodeled. The cabinets were of warm oak, and all the appliances were sleek stainless steel.
While he checked provisions in the pantry closet and the refrigerator, Rinna tiptoed across the ceramic tile floor, exclaiming over the equipment.
She tapped a toaster oven that looked like the one Haig had used, only it was plugged into the wall.
"This heats food?"
"Yes." He picked up a bag of bread from the counter, took out a slice, and put it on the rack. He pressed the on button, and the elements heated—then toasted the bread.
Opening the door, he used a fork to pick up the bread, which he offered to her. "Careful, it's hot."
She took it gingerly, then nibbled at the edge. "Do your people like bread this way?"
"I guess it's an acquired taste." He opened the refrigerator, found the butter, and cut off a pat, which he spread on the toast.
She tried it again. "It's good now." She turned back to the refrigerator. "That keeps the butter cold?"
"Uh huh."
"How do they work? And the oven?"
"Don't ask me for a technical explanation." He gestured toward the range. "This is the main cooking appliance. It's connected to natural gas lines, and the refrigerator works by electricity."
He watched her look around uncertainly. Probably she expected the homeowners to come back at any moment. He was pretty sure they wouldn't.
"While you were in the shower, I found a calendar in the upstairs office. The people who live here aren't scheduled to come home for another three days."
"Good," she murmured. Of course, breaking and entering wasn't the only thing bothering him. He and Rinna had started a conversation they needed to finish. So he pulled a can of beef and vegetable soup from the pantry and a hunk of cheddar cheese from the refrigerator. He would have preferred a rare steak, but the soup and cheese would do.
While he worked on the simple meal, he tried to think of how to talk to her about the two of them. He might only have known her for a few days, but he knew she was his lifemate. And he wanted her to understand that they belonged together. But he suspected that she didn't see herself belonging to any man.
She watched him cut some chunks of cheese, then heat the soup in a saucepan.
"I should help you, but I'm afraid I'll break something."
"You can help wash up," he said as he carefully poured the soup. "If we clean up very well and put everything away where we found it, the owners might never know we were in here."
"I hope not." She looked around the room. "How long are we staying here?"
"Part of the night. After I get some rest, we can head back to my campsite."
They sat down, and he took a sip of soup. She nibbled on a piece of cheese.
He managed to take a couple more swallows before saying with studied casualness, "You'll feel better when you tell me about Falcone."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LOGAN SAW RINNA almost choke on the piece of cheese in her mouth. Deliberately she chewed and swallowed, probably to give herself time to think of what to say.
He wondered where his last line had come from. It hadn't been what he'd planned. He'd wanted to tell her how much he cared. He wanted her to understand that they had bonded. But he'd never practiced in-depth man-woman communications. So he'd stuck to business, and the words he was thinking had popped out of his mouth. Probably from her point of view, he'd issued a challenge.
She folded her hands in her lap before asking, "Why will I feel better?"
He turned his spoon over and examined the back. "Because when you hold bad stuff inside, it eats at you. It affects your mind and your body."
She tipped her head to the side, watching him with unnerving intensity. "You know that from personal experience?"
"Yes." He wanted to look away, but he kept his gaze fixed on her. If he could show her he wasn't afraid to share his painful memories, maybe she would, too.
"From when I was a kid. My father was a hard man who expected that his sons would do what he ordered and not buck his authority. I had a lot of questions about what it meant to be a werewolf, since the only werewolves I knew of were in the Marshall family. And we hid that trait from the rest of the world. But I kept my feelings bottled up because…" He shrugged. "Dad never brought up that kind of stuff."
He shifted in his seat and went on. "You said you first changed to another form when you were a little girl. But in my heritage, we don't change to wolf form until we're sexually mature. It's a big deal not just because it means we've turned from boy to man. Unfortunately, half of us died trying to make the change."
She gasped. "Why?"
"Nobody knew. That's the way it was, through all the generations. My cousin Ross's wife, Megan, says it's hormonal. She thinks she can fix the problem for… the children. But when I was facing the change, I got more and more upset and angry because I was sure I wasn't going to make it. I thought I was going to die because three of my brothers before me had already bought the farm. It all came to a head one day when I was helping my father clean out the garage of all things. I threw down the armload of fireplace wood I was carrying and started screaming that I wasn't going to do it."
He saw that she was hanging on every word. In truth, he had always been ashamed of the way he'd taken out his fear on his parent. Dad hadn't set the rules. He'd just had to live by them the way all the Marshalls had.
But that outburst had truly wiped the slate clean in an odd sort of way. And now Logan seized on the confession as a way to deepen his relationship with Rinna. So he kept talking.
"My father understood why I exploded, and he calmed me down. He said he'd felt the same, way when he was facing the change. He told me how sad and angry he was that my brothers had died. For the first time in our lives, we had a really good talk. He explained about our heritage, and he gave me some ways to get through the transformation. Just having that conversation with him—man-to-man—made me feel a lot better. Maybe it even saved my life."
"You chant when you change?"
"Yes."
"What does it mean?"
"It's in an old language. Gaelic. It's asking the gods for special favors. My cousin, Ross, figures some long-ago Druid ancestor asked to become a shapeshifter, and he got his wish. The gift, or the curse, has been passed down through the men in my family."
She nodded, then asked. "What about the girls?"
He hadn't planned to get into so much detail on the Marshall curse. But he answered the question. "For us, the werewolf trait is sex linked. So all of the girl babies died at birth. It's different now. Megan and Ross have a daughter. That's a big milestone for our family."
"So the wives of your brothers and cousins don't have psychic powers?" she asked.
"Actually, a lot of them do. I think we've gravitated toward talented women."
She pushed back her chair and got up, and for a heart-stopping moment, he thought she was going to leave the room. But she only walked to the sink and began playing with the lever that turned on the water, making it run, then stopping it again.
With her back to him, she said, "A free man might take a slave as a concubine. But he would never marry one."
"You were a slave?"
Her shoulders tensed. "Yes."
"And you think I care about that?"
"Don't you?"
"I don't give a damn about where you came from. I care about who you are now and what you've made of yourself. I come from a society where everyone is free to live up to his or her full potential—if they have the drive and the know-how. You obviously did."
"I was living in a cave!"
"Living free in a cave."
She ignored that and went on, "Falcone had no plans to marry me, but he wanted me to bear his children—children that would have powerful talents. He wants to found a dynasty that will rule Sun Acres for generations to come."
"Why is he so sure his children would be talented enough to stay in power?"
"It's not just my psychic abilities that would make the difference. He has great talents—more than most men and women."
He stared at her rigid back, grappling with his surprise. "You're saying Falcone has psychic power?"
"Yes. That's how I met him. At school." She turned back toward the table, leaning her hips against the sink cabinet. "In Sun Acres and in the other cities, they test children for psychic abilities. If you have them, they take you away to a special school, even if you are a slave."
"And when you graduate?"
"It depends. You could tell the future for a rich man. You could run the equipment in the kitchen, like what Haig did. Or you could be used for an assault on another city. It depends on your status and how gifted you are."
"Both men and women go into battle?"
"Usually only the boys."
"And not the highborn children?"
"They might be generals. And in school, they think they are better than the slaves, even when they have less talent. Or sometimes because they know they have less talent, so they do things to us when they think the teachers aren't looking. Probably the teachers know, but they don't interfere unless things get too bad, because they don't want to offend the highborn families."
He tried to imagine it. "Falcone was older than you?"
"Yes. He was a couple of years older." She swallowed. "I never knew how he was going to act. Sometimes he was the leader of the gang who teased me. And sometimes he made them let up on me."
"It sounds like a miserable childhood."
"It was better than what I would have had if they hadn't discovered my potential. At least I had enough to eat, I learned to read and do math, and I didn't have to do menial work." She laughed. "Well, I do. But not for someone else."
Leaning forward, he asked. "Is that what your mother did?"
"No. My mother was the concubine of a rich man named Jandor. He's on the council. He's got a wife and three children, but he always had concubines, too. My mother's life with him was comfortable, and when he got tired of her, he got her a job in… in a place where they cut the hair of rich women and do beauty treatments for them. She does fortune-telling there while they get their hair and nails done. Or while they are relaxing after the treatments. She's very good, so the women like her. Jandor was clever about placing her there. He also uses her as a way to get information about what other men on the council are doing. That part can be dangerous, but she does what he asks because he could yank her out of there and send her somewhere much worse."
"I'm sorry."
She shrugged. "That's the way it is in Sun Acres."
"Jandor is your father?"
"Yes. After I was born, he made my mother have an operation so she wouldn't have any more children."
"Christ!"
"It could have been worse."
"And it could have been a lot better. Here nobody owns anyone else."
"But some of your people have better status than others."
"That's always going to be true. The communists tried to change the equation. Their way didn't work, either."
"The communists?"
He laughed. "Let's not get off on them. We should talk about us."
"Us," she repeated uncertainly.
"I want you for my wife," he said. He hadn't intended to say that so soon—but it had come tumbling from his lips.
She stared at him wide-eyed. "You don't even know me."
"I know what's important about you."
"I'm a slave," she said again.
"No. You had the courage to free yourself."
She turned over her arm and pointed to the wavy lines below her elbow. "That's Jandor's mark."
"Not anymore. We can have it removed."
"It's still… in my head."
"You'll find out that in this world, it doesn't matter where you came from or what you were. We have a saying here: This is the first day of the rest of your life."
Before he could say more, a ringing sound made her jump in her seat.
"Falcone!"
"No. The telephone."
She looked wildly around, trying to identify the source.
He got up and hurried to the end of the counter, pointing to a phone with a built-in answering machine. "Don't answer it. It's probably someone calling the people who live here."
"I don't know how to answer it."
A woman's voice came on the answering machine. "Bart? Helen? Are you there?" The caller sighed. "I guess not. This is Terry. Give me a jingle when you get in. We have a problem with the duplicate bridge date." The line clicked off.
"What was that?"
"Someone named Terry calling them to talk about bridge."
"To cross a river?"
"No. There are bridges to cross rivers. But she's talking about a card game called bridge. Do you play cards?"
"Rich people do."
"When Terry didn't find Bart and Helen home, she left a message."
"Okay."
He picked up the portable receiver and brought it to her, dialing back to the previous call on the caller ID. "This is the woman who called. Terry Maxwell."
She stared at the readout and nodded, then said, "Why is it buzzing?"
"That's the dial tone. It means you could make a call to someone else. You also pick this up to get a call. You put this part to your ear and speak here." He dialed the weather and held it to her ear.
She listened.
"He says it's going to stop raining. How does he know?"
"We have weather satellites. But don't worry about that right now."
She sighed. "It's complicated."
"You're smart. You'll get the hang of it. And you don't have to do it all at once." He put the receiver back, then stood beside her so he could stroke her shoulder. "Right now we need to keep you safe from Falcone. My family will help us."
"Why?"
"Because you're my…" He stopped short.
"What?"
"Lifemate. That's what we call the woman who bonds with one of the men in our family."
"Aren't you forgetting something?" she asked, her voice taking on an edge he didn't like.
He pressed his hands against her sides. "I guess I must have, if you're getting ready to tell me about it."
"I think you've noticed that when you… when you get close to me, I pull back. How can you have a life-mate who can't make love with you?"
"I think we can work on that together."
"Falcone…"
He could feel his expression turning fierce. "I'm nothing like him. So don't bring him into the room. This is between you and me. Let's talk about what it feels like when I touch you and kiss you."
He watched her face soften.
"Does it feel good?" he asked.
"Yes. But then I get scared."
"You won't, if I prove to you that I'm not going to grab you or hurt you or do anything you don't like. If you're willing to try."
He held his breath until she answered with a little nod.
"Come back to the table and eat."
She sat down opposite him and picked up her mug, taking a quick sip.
"Tell me about Carfoli," he said because he wanted to switch to a subject that would be less threatening to her. "You said he's in the history books."
She thought for a moment. "In your world… did you have the White City?"
He sucked in a sharp breath. "The White City—1893. You mean at the Chicago World's Fair?"
"You know it?"
"Of course. I should have recognized the date when you told me before. I'm a landscape architect. Frederick Law Olmstead planned the city. It was all classical Greek and Roman architecture. And it was full of exhibits from around the world. They had everything from elephants and gondolas to Greek statues and a dancer called Little Egypt. But I never heard of anyone called Carfoli."
She took a sip of soup, then said, "Maybe he didn't show up in your… timeline. He had an exhibit where he said he could give people psychic powers. And… he did. People left his building with abilities they never had before."
"How? Why?"
"He had some kind of machine that did it. Nobody knows how it worked. Some historians think it enhanced natural talents that were already present. The important thing is that it was very popular, so a lot of people did it. They went home being able to do things like move objects with their minds. Or see the future. Or view a remote scene. It caused all sorts of disruptions in society. Those without the powers ganged up on those who had them. But the people with the powers fought them off. It was a very bad time. Cities were destroyed. A lot of people were killed. The people who were left gathered together in gated communities for protection. And some of them used the opportunity to take over the leadership. Some of them might be good leaders. But others were ruthless."
He nodded, trying to imagine the chaos. "And if you got psychic abilities from his machine, you could pass them on to your children?" he asked.
"Yes."
"And how did people end up as slaves?"
"Sometimes they were captured in wars with other city-states. Or they might have been the people in the city with no status."