Romancing The Crown: Drew and Samira: Her Lord Protector. Carla Cassidy

at the sidewalk tables into the shelter. The little café was crowded, loud with cheery voices. Roberts was there. He looked relieved when he saw Drew. Drew was relieved, too, though for a different reason. Apparently his bodyguard had lost him in the crowd. He hadn’t seen Drew race off like a frightened rabbit.

      They didn’t go in. There was a tiny bistro three doors down, away from the noise and curious faces. Music and mist floated in the open door, but the narrow room was dark and quiet, with lights over the bar and candles on the tables. A few customers were talking, their hands flying in occasional counterpoint or emphasis.

      Drew went to the bar for their drinks, leaving Rose staring moodily at the fat, red candle on the table. Roberts found a spot at the end of the bar.

      Drew wondered if the story of his flight from the dancing was making the rounds back at the café. So far, he’d bungled the evening badly. He wanted to get this next part right, but wasn’t sure how to proceed.

      Rose was still studying the candle as if it held all sorts of secrets and solutions when he returned. She didn’t look up when he set her wine in front of her, sat down and spoke. ‘‘I mentioned my cousin Lorenzo earlier.’’

      ‘‘You said something about having a message from him.’’

      ‘‘He’d like you to work with him.’’

      Her head jerked up. ‘‘What?’’

      ‘‘Police departments work with psychics sometimes. He needs leads. He’s willing to try this.’’

      ‘‘I’m not.’’

      She sounded very definite. Drew studied her. Her lids were lowered, the lush eyelashes screening whatever was happening in those expressive eyes. She started digging little fissures in the softened rim of the candle with a fingernail, letting the melted wax escape in lavalike runnels. As the pool of wax went down, exposing the wick, the flame grew larger. ‘‘Why not?’’ he asked.

      ‘‘You don’t know what you’re asking.’’ Now her eyes lifted, meeting his. Her eyebrows were drawn in an uncompromising frown.

      ‘‘Explain it to me.’’

      ‘‘Just like that?’’ She gave a half laugh. ‘‘Drew, you don’t even believe in psychic phenomena.’’

      ‘‘My belief or lack of it doesn’t determine reality. People once believed, based on good evidence, that the world was flat.’’

      ‘‘That open mind of yours.’’ This time she didn’t laugh. She just looked tired. ‘‘Maybe you’re willing to change your mind if I can prove you wrong, but I’m not interested in proving anything.’’

      ‘‘I’m not asking you to. Listen.’’ Impatient, he claimed her hand. Her palm was very warm. ‘‘If Lorenzo is willing to give you a chance, why can’t you try? Don’t you want to see the bastards caught?’’

      ‘‘Oh, unfair. Of course I want them caught. But I’m not…’’ She sighed and pulled her hand back. ‘‘I’ll try to explain. I doubt you’ll accept what I say, but I’ll try. First, I use the word psychic because that’s the term you understand, but I was raised to think of myself as Gifted.’’

      ‘‘I see.’’

      She chuckled. ‘‘No, you don’t. You’re trying not to let on that you think I’m a few bubbles shy of a full bath, and my family must be weird, too.’’

      ‘‘I can accept that what you say is fact to you.’’

      ‘‘Good enough.’’ She sipped her wine, her brows drawn slightly in thought. ‘‘I won’t begin at the beginning, because that goes back a little too far—more than twenty generations. The women in my family have always been Gifted, you see, some only slightly, some…quite strongly. Of course we aren’t the only ones. The Gifts—psychic abilities —appear in people all over the world, and I suspect that almost everyone has some trace of them. But because they have appeared so consistently and strongly in those of my blood, they have been studied. We know a great deal about how these abilities work, how to nurture and train them. And how to protect ourselves from them.’’

      ‘‘There is some danger in these, ah, Gifts?’’

      ‘‘The stronger the Gift, the greater the danger. Especially if the Gifted is unaware and untrained.’’ The delicate skin around her eyes tightened and she looked away. Once more she started playing with the softened candle wax, this time pushing the sides in toward the wick, forcing the melted wax higher on the wick. The flame retreated, diminished, until it was a small, stubborn bubble of fire, nearly drowned.

      It was obvious she believed utterly in what she was saying. Drew thought of the fioreanno she hadn’t had, the father she’d never known and the way she’d smiled so brightly when she told him her mother had never been married. His throat ached with pity. There was a great deal she hadn’t said, a great deal he knew from Lorenzo that he had no business knowing. Such as how her mother died.

      Yet she understood and applauded the strengths of the society that had made her an outsider. Was it surprising, then, that she would cling so fiercely to a set of beliefs, however bizarre, that gave her a heritage? That sense of belonging may have been what gave her the strength to reject bitterness.

      ‘‘You’re trained, though, I take it?’’ he said carefully. ‘‘And certainly not unaware. Wouldn’t that lessen the danger?’’

      ‘‘Yes, but…the nature of the danger varies according to the nature of the Gift, which is fourfold—what you would call telepathy, empathy, healing and prophecy. We name them Air, Water, Earth and Fire. My Gift is Fire. I see visions.’’

      He didn’t want to know any more. The tally of her delusions was already troubling. But she posed a threat to people who liked to deal with their problems by killing. He had to persuade her to cooperate with Lorenzo. ‘‘And what is the nature of your danger?’’

      She raised her eyes to his. Some trick of the light reflected the tiny candle flame there, twinned. ‘‘Burning, of course,’’ she said. Suddenly she breached the candle wall with one finger, spilling the liquid wax. The flame leaped high, higher. And she set her hand, flat-palmed, atop that flame.

      He seized her wrist and yanked her hand away.

      The wick smoked, dead and black, filling the air with the pungent scent of a just-snuffed candle. He turned her hand over.

      Her palm was unmarked. There was no reddened spot, no sooty residue. Nothing.

      His gaze flew to her face. Her expression was clear, remote, smiling. ‘‘A little fire like that can’t hurt me. It’s the big ones I fear.’’

      It had been a trick, of course. The candle must have been extinguished before her palm touched it. ‘‘That’s why you won’t help?’’

      She pulled her hand away. ‘‘I can’t help. From what I can tell, psychics who work with the police—the ones who aren’t charlatans, that is—are empaths or telepaths. I’m not. I can’t slide inside a terrorist’s mind that way.’’

      She was too calm. He didn’t think she was lying, exactly, but she was holding something back. ‘‘What aren’t you telling me?’’

      ‘‘All sorts of things. It would take rather longer than you and I have to pass on the accumulated lore of the last thousand years.’’ She stood. ‘‘I think, for me, the party’s over. It’s time I went home.’’

      He shoved his chair back and stood, too, reaching across the table to grab her wrist—as if he had to anchor her to keep her from vanishing as suddenly as the snuffed candle flame. ‘‘A thousand years?’’

      When she lifted her eyebrows that way, she reminded him of his grandmother, who was capable of depressing pretension at twenty paces with just such an expression. ‘‘Roughly that. Twenty-seven