The Treasure Keeper

'Gracious. Where did you learn that?'

So, at least her ghost was back. She stooped to pick up the caterpillar, placed it in the pot of tarragon, then slapped the cabbage back upon the board. A square of sunlight slanting down from the window picked out in bleached yellow the grain of the wood, the bones and tendons of her hands.

'No doubt listening to you.'

'Have you been?' he asked, walking up to her. 'Listening, I mean?'

With the glow of light below him he was nearly as thick as life; she could see the slate shadow of beard in the hollows of his cheeks, the band of deeper jade around the pupils of his eyes.

'I can't really help it.' She bent her head and whacked at the cabbage again. 'As you seldom shut up.'

'Hmmm. I hardly think I warranted that. Is your mood so sour because they've stuck you in the

kitchen?'

'No one has stuck me anywhere.' Another whack. 'I choose to be here.'

From beneath her lashes she watched as Rhys made a show of glancing around them, his hands tucked behind his back, linen ruffles to his fingers and leather boots that made no sound upon the floor. 'Yes. Yes, I can see why. It's a fair paradise down here in this basement. Not dank or dismalat all.'

She shoved the chopped cabbage into a bowl, took out the carrots she'd already washed clean, and began to slice off their tops.

'I am female.' A feathery-green frond flew across the counter. 'I like to cook.' 'I can tell.'

She put down the knife and turned to him. 'You're stronger than before.' He nodded. 'When I'm with you.'

'You're not just a reflection now, Rhys. You have depth.' She wiped her hands on her apron and, experimentally, pressed a finger to his shoulder: cold, cold resistance. Her eyes went to his; he was watching her steadily. 'I can feel you.'

'Yes,' he said.

She took a step back. She felt better with distance between them, safer somehow. 'This can't be.'

'Why not?'

'You're a ghost.' She tipped back her head and gave a little laugh to the timbers of the ceiling, almost despairing. 'For all I know, you're an exceedingly vivid figment of my imagination.'

'No. You know I'm real.'

'Do I? No one else can see you or hear you, much less touch you. I look at you and I feel—'

'What, Zee?' He floated closer, his lips barely moving. 'What do you feel?'

Pain, she realized. She felt pain when she saw him. Loss. She mourned the death of a man she'd not even known. He'd been beyond her, always beyond her, for both of their lives. He'd been that secret enchanting memory from her girlhood and the patrician future she herself had decided to abandon. But now, with him here, with him always here, she was learning facets of Rhys Langford she'd never before guessed: that beneath his wicked humor was sensitivity. Bravery. Beyond his cocky smile was stalwart dependability. Even as a shade, even at his most galling, he'd tried to do nothing but protect her.

And she mourned him, she did. She mourned his death.

'James is a fool.' His mouth thinned as he studied her, the angles of his face shining clear and dark. 'He should have stayed with you last night. I would have.'

She laughed again, shaking her head to disguise the moist heat in her eyes, and went back to the carrots. 'Oh. Splendid. You saw that?'

He was silent. The polished blade of the knife caught the light in a brilliant, painful gleam. She had to wipe her lids with wet fingers before she could glance back at him.

She would swear there was color in his cheeks, a stain of red over the dark. He looked abashed. Abashed, when she had thrown her heart and her body at a man who'd rather sleep alone night after night than with her.

She stabbed the point of the knife down into the block, folding her arms across her chest. 'Let me be plain. I can't go through the rest of my days like this. With you like this, always lurking.'

'Zoe.'

'No. It's not fair. Not to me, not to Hayden. Not even to you. I don't accept it.' Rhys watched her as if she spoke some odd foreign language, a small baffled crease between his brows, as if at any moment she would begin to make sense again. 'It's not fair,' she reiterated, more forceful, to defeat that look.

'I believe I've heard this tune before. But guess what, Zee? Life isn't—

'But you're not alive,' she hissed.

'Love is stronger than death.'

She opened her mouth, closed it, and tightened her lips. The aroma of chopped vegetables was suddenly astringent in her nose.

'What did you say?'

His tone was defiant, although his eyes slid from hers. 'Love is stronger than death.' 'This isn't love! You can't love me!'

'You can't make me not.' He shrugged, drifting back to the hearth, and the embers of coal that shone like rubies through his legs. 'Anyway, it's too late.'

She gaped at him. She could not think of a single thing to say.

'You know how we are, Zee. All that dragon business about constancy and fidelity, our bonded hearts. One mate for life.' He smiled gently, sadly. 'For death too, I must suppose.'

'No, but—'

'You're unconventional and you're loyal. You don't think or act like anyone else in the tribe, and you don't give a damn about it, either. All the other drakon believe there's ice in your veins but they've got it all wrong. It's fire in you, Zee. You burn so bright inside, you outshine the sun. No one else knows that but me.' His smile lost its melancholy. 'And you don't like to cook.'

'You think you know me? Honestly? A few days and nights tossed together and now we're bonded?'

'Is it James?' he asked, taking a seat atop the table, kicking his feet into the air. 'Because you don't love him.'

If it would have made a difference to throw something at him, she would have. 'Do not presume to think you understand my heart.'

'Well,' he said with another shrug, 'you don't. If you did, you would have trusted him enough to tell him about your Gifts.'

She was cold because the kitchen was cold, that was all. The sullen fire in the hearth did little to dispel the chill of September and walls of earth behind stone, and the square of sunlight bore hardly any heat.

'And don't think I didn't notice how you neglected to mention the wallet of the sanf inimicus, either. Were you afraid to let him know how you'd gotten blood on your hands?'

She'd presented a deliberately tame version of the night of the dance hall. She'd made it sound like the two men had destroyed each other, because, yes, it had been easier than the entire truth. And there was a part of her, an appalling, cowardly part, that worried about what Hayden would say if he knew everything she was. What he would think.

That she was mad. That she wasn't Gifted; she was cursed.

Zoe found her voice. 'I'm going to tell him. And all this is simply your reaction to my Gifts. You never loved me before, not in all those years. Now that you know who I—what I can do, you've convinced yourself it's more than what it is. It's simple instinct.'

'Perchance you're right. But the result is the same, isn't it? We were meant to be together in life. That's our law, because that is our instinct, the natural order of our kind. Strongest mates to strongest.'

She took the steps necessary to stand before him. She held out a hand to him and he accepted it, lightly, his fingers cradling hers; the needles of his winter touch crept along her nerves. 'This is

not life, Rhys.'

'No.' He studied their locked hands, the pulse in her wrist, his smoky haze. 'But it is still love. Just as I loved you when we were young—'

'Stop it,' she whispered.

'My heart beats for you.' He released her fingers—the pins and needles of his contact fading at once—and