The Treasure Keeper

Something rustled above them. A flock of pigeons atop the roof took flight in a flurry of wings, sailing off with burbling cries.

Zoe turned and pulled the coachman closer with a coquettish tug. From beyond the turn in the path, a woman giggled and then murmured something husky and welcoming.

'I don't .' the coachman began, sounding perplexed.

She stroked the backs of her fingers to his cheek, felt the heated scruff of his beard, the pox scars beneath. 'Alain, yes? Alain Fortin?'

'Yes,' he whispered, staring down at her fixed as a statue, as if he'd never move again. 'But how .'

The cloak dropped about them in ripples of endless blue.

...and it'll be easy. you just keep your eyes open. you contact me if you ever see anything like what i've described. the horses spooking. a fine-looking englishman or one from central europe. moneyed. inclined to remain apart from you and the beasts. it's very simple, isn't it?

...and then what? Zoe felt her lips ask.

nothing, my friend. and then nothing. a nice fat reward for you, that's all. better not to ask anything beyond that, eh?

The breeze stirred, redolent now of coal and oil and unwashed animals, pushing at the weight of her hair against her shoulders. She let it flow over her, through her, let it tear little holes through the veil of the cloak, larger and larger.

The coachman blinked as if coming out of a reverie. He still grasped her hand.

'Tell me his name,' Zoe said to him.

Alain's eyes cut to hers. He gave a short shake of his head.

'His name,' she urged softly, curling her fingers around his just a little tighter. 'The name of the other driver who bribed you.'

' Wha—what are you?' the coachman gasped.

'Drakon,'came the answer, just behind her.

The cloak broke instantly into mist, voices and memories and souls twisting upward to heaven in a rising thin shriek. Gone.

She didn't flinch or jerk; she merely turned her face to address the flagstones.

'What a peculiar word. Whatever could you mean?'

'Exactly what you think,' replied the man standing behind her. 'I've a pistol primed and a very sharp blade, mademoiselle. Don't you smell the gunpowder? And since you're female, I doubt there's much you can do about any of it.'

Zoe looked back at Alain, who was squinting at the man surely visible over her shoulder. She freed his hand. 'Run.'

'No, don't,' said the newcomer easily, and before she could react there was a blur and a thunk and a knife in Alain Fortin's chest, a hilt of blond wood with blood bubbling all around it.

Without any noise, without even a whimper, the coachman dropped to his knees.

From the high, bronzed lip of the chapel bell in its belfry, he watched the scene unfold.

Zoe, fair and alone with flowers in her hair, her skirts a sweep of blue shimmer, standing with her back to the man with the gun.

The bloke she'd been dancing with, bleeding a great shiny pool that was spreading in tentacles between the grooves of the flagstones.

'No,' Rhys groaned, but of course it made no difference. No one even heard him.

'No,'he said again as Zoe took a step toward the dying man, who had lifted one shaking hand to the blade protruding from his waistcoat, his fingers and cuffs and coat smeared with red.

Zoe, Zoe—in danger, drawn up short by the curt command of the bastard behind her.

She was small as a doll from Rhys's vantage point. He was trapped, he couldn't leave, and the man with the gun was sure as hell going to shoot her, because there was no way she wouldn't fight him. She'd never go quietly. She'd come all the way to bloodyfaris to fight him—the son of a bitch had to be sanf inimicus —and the panic and horror that pounded through Rhys felt as real as anything he'd ever known in his mortal body—how the hell was he going to save her now—

And then he was on the ground with them. With the bleeding man. He was on his knees beside him—on his goddamned knees, with hard stone beneath—and Zoe was staring down at him with a white and startled face.

'That's better,' the sanf was saying. 'Less distraction. No, no. Kindly don't move, mademoiselle. Or is it madame?' He gave a little laugh. 'Do monsters even bother with our human distinctions?'

'If you know what I am,' murmured Zoe, still watching Rhys, 'then surely you know I'm powerless against you. I have no Gifts.'

Rhys leapt to his feet. He rushed past Zoe and took a swing at the man, but his fist only passed through him. For all his freedom he was still a ghost, still smoke. The sanf gave no indication he knew Rhys was there; a small, pinched smile began to twist his lips as he regarded the back of her head. Rhys tried to hit him again, and again, again. He wanted to roar in frustration, and the smug bastard only stood there posed as for a portrait with his chin up and shoulders relaxed, the pistol held lazily in his hand.

'I wasn't expecting a woman, I must admit,' said the man. 'But then again, it does hold a certain pretty logic. Where are the rest of you? How many are there?'

'There are no others. Not here.'

The man clicked his tongue. 'It's not a good idea to lie to me. I'll put a bullet through you one way or another, but I can make it less painful or more.'

Zoe cocked her head. 'Tell me, sir. Are your eyes perchance gray?

'I can't stop him,' Rhys bit out. 'I can't. I've tried. Don't antagonize him, Zee. The longer you can keep him talking, the better the odds someone else will come.'

He tugged his hands through his hair, spun back to the man on the ground. If only he could rouse him—

'I'll ask you just once more, drakon.'He spat the word. 'Where are your others?'

'No others,' she insisted; Rhys glanced up and she held him in a look of serene liquid black. Slowly she lifted an arm and removed the crown of flowers nestled in her coiffure. 'Only me. So if you're going to shoot me, I suggest you do it now .'

'Shit,'said Rhys, watching her eyes grow blacker and blacker.

'. you murderous, cowardly, contemptible little prick of a human,' she added pleasantly, as if she'd just made a comment upon the fine weather.

He was so cold. He was cold and yet he was not, because the only parts of his body he could feel were his chest and head. Those were cold. The rest of him ... the rest of him didn't seem to exist any longer.

Alain rolled his eyes toward the woman in blue, the man—driver, fresh to the job, came late tonight, what was his name?—beyond her standing in the dark. They were carrying on a conversation as if he wasn't there at all, sprawled upon the ground. He remembered them both, walking here with her, lost in the winter stars of her eyes, adrift in her wake. And then the man had come.

It seemed unimportant now. His head dropped back and he was granted a view of the sky, a few pearly clouds spun out against the vault of night, straight and wispy thin like the furrows of a field. He was feeling warmer already.

'Get up,' someone was saying in his ear. 'Get up, damn you, get up!

Alain dragged his gaze toward the voice. There was a man there beside him, a new man, brighter than all their surroundings, with wild twisting hair and eyes of wolf-shining green.

'Up!' shouted the man. 'You've got to help her! Get up,get up, get up!'

But Alain did not think he'd be getting to his feet anytime soon. He thought, with a distant sort of amazement, that in all likelihood he'd never find his feet again.

The green-eyed man pounded his fists against Alain's chest. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt. It felt, actually—

Rhys made contact with Zoe's beau, real contact, and then there was that tug of resistance, and his hands