before they could reach a large oak door banded with iron that looked as if it had been a prop in a Robin Hood movie. “Wait a second,” I urged, cutting the two off at the pass.
“Don’t you hurt him!” Leslie hissed. I mean, really hissed. You read about people hissing their sentences, but this was the first time I’d experienced it. Kind of cool in a scary, creepy sort of way.
I held up a hand while cupping my ear with the other. The hanky was heavy with blood. “Easy there, Ms. Winchester. I only want to help Mister … Nigel here, if you let me.”
“You tried to kill him!” she screeched with enough force to drive nails through my ears.
Nigel stared at me with the one eye that wasn’t puffed shut. “Mum, if ’e wanted to kill me, ’e would ’ave, wouldn’t ’e?”
“Your Liverpool is showing,” I grinned.
“Well, it’s me old home, innit?”
“Love your accent.” Before he could reply I clapped a palm on the top of his black hair (gray at the roots, I saw) and used Healing.
The result was dramatic, to say the least. Back arching, he stood on his tippy toes for just a second before slamming his heels back onto the concrete.
“Nigel? Are you all right? Did he hurt you again?” Leslie shrieked. I’d begun to wonder if this voice was the norm, if she reserved the sexy one for special occasions. If so, I didn’t envy Nigel.
Nigel waved her off. “It’s okay, mum. Whatever he did, I feel ruddy marvelous. It’s a miracle!” he marveled, hopping from foot to foot. I noticed that his speech had reverted to the oh-so-proper Jeeves mode.
Leslie stared at me with wide, wide eyes. “What did you do?”
Mike came up from behind. “Why don’t we discuss everything over some tea?”
Nigel nodded. “Yes, that is brilliant.”
Muttering a Healing that stemmed the flow from my damaged ear, I nodded in agreement.
Chapter Twelve
Jude
“Why did you scream when you saw me?”
The butler, happy to be healed and saying that I’d cured his bad knee as well, had led us through the Robin Hood door and into the house/castle.
Leslie might have fancied herself a fourteenth-century lady, but her place belonged squarely in the twenty- first. Black and white checked marble floors, Persian rugs, warm wood and glittering crystal. And the kitchen, oh my! The kitchen would have Bobby Flay drooling like a bloodhound. A stainless-steel fridge the size of Buick, a pantry that could double as a bedroom and a separate freezer unit large enough to hold a cow or three.
“I’ve been having … dreams. Bad dreams and you, or someone who looks like you, was in them.” Leslie took a sip of her tea. She rested her elbows on the polished surface of a mahogany table large enough to seat twelve comfortably. “They started about a year ago, but stopped about five months ago.”
Mike, who sat next to Nigel, nodded. “They started after you bought that job lot of artifacts from Edgar Truesdale, is-”
“One moment,” Nigel interrupted, comfortably out of his Jeeves persona. “I was my employer’s purchasing agent.”
Leslie nodded. “I don’t travel much and Nigel is the only person I trust, so he was sent to procure the antiquities. He emailed the photographs to me of the different lots and I chose which one to buy.”
I rubbed my temples in an attempt to forestall a headache. “Lovely, but what were the dreams you had of me? Was I the villain of your subconscious?”
She couldn’t meet my eyes. “Every time I dreamed of you, I felt overwhelming danger,” she said timidly.
Strange things, unseemly and unnatural things, had been happening to me all my life, so that bit of news barely registered on my Strange Crap-O-Meter. However, Mike and I did exchange a look or two. “The Grail?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Had to be.”
“What? Do you mean the Holy Grail?” Nigel’s body tensed.
“Yes, like the Holy Grail,” I replied with a sigh.
Leslie’s head wobbled around like a bobble-head doll’s. “Seriously?”
Mike placed his hand on hers. “Yes, Ms. Winchester.”
She turned from him to me, finally able to look me in the eye. “Who are you? Why did I dream of you?” I noticed the fine crow’s feet fanning from the corners of her eyes.
“Tell them, Jude,” Mike said with a sigh. “They have what we’re looking for, so they deserve to know.”
“Mike …” I warned. “They’ll sic the men in white with the butterfly nets and wraparound jackets after us.”
“No, Jude. I’m going to have to insist on this one.” His face settled into familiar stubborn lines. “It’s the decent thing to do. The
I groaned, “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“What?”
“Well, Nigel,” I began. “Let me start by saying that I
Mike filled in the blank spots with what he’d already read, allowing us to keep the story to less than two hours. Through it all, Nigel and Leslie’s mouths opened and closed several times in surprise.
“Oh my word, I heard of the Sicarii beggars before, but we always reckoned they were a small for-hire group only,” Nigel remarked, his tea cold and forgotten. “Either that or they were affiliated with those South American drug blokes.”
“How high was your clearance?”
“Been with the SAS for near thirty years, so I heard many things.”
“Gad, I nearly got my ass handed to me by an old man? I’ll never live it down.”
Leslie beamed, running a slim hand down Nigel’s arm. He didn’t seem to mind at all. “Not so old to me.” She said. An answering grin blossomed on his homely face, which handsomed him up considerably.
Mike cleared his throat. “We think the silver brooch, which is really the Grail, somehow gave you those dreams, maybe as a warning, or to prepare you for Jude’s arrival. Interpreting dreams is not an exact science, you know.”
“Leslie, you said it was me or someone who looked like me.” I took a sip of cold tea. “Think, was it me? Look at me now and think back to your dream … Are you sure it was me?”
“I think so … It’s been so long.” She worried her bottom lip in such a way that I wanted to add mine to the mix, but I’d probably have to fight Nigel for the privilege.
“Leslie, why did the dreams stop?” Mike asked.
When she didn’t answer, Nigel spoke up. “Because she doesn’t have the bloody artifact anymore,” he whispered sadly. She nodded.
I laid my forehead on the table. “Aww … Jiminy Christmas … I’d hoped this would be easy.”
“Easy? Easy?” blurted Mike. “You think what we’ve been through is easy? Elementals, serial killers and Nigel the British Mike Tyson? Not to mention that fresh notch in your ear.”
My felt like a lump of lead. “Yeah, Mike … considering that my Family is involved, this has been a cakewalk.”
“Which means?”
“It’s only going to get harder.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
“You guys sound like Danny Glover and Mel Gibson in
