Demon's Fire

Chapter One

Sex rode the air in Bhamjran as thickly as the scent of coffee or sand or spice. Not for nothing did humans call this the “city of laissez faire.” Whatever your erotic wish, however twisted or exotic, you could satisfy it here.

Or you could if you weren’t a solitary demon royal. Prince Pahndir, former captive and teaching tool at the Purple Crane, had discovered—to his great physical dismay—that for him satisfaction was elusive at any price.

He leaned back in his gaudy, gilded booth in Bhamjran’s busy market square. It was the height of the desert city’s morning rush, with shoppers seeking everything from fruit to chickens to new brass pots. It was a challenge to compete with the color and flair of the locals’ stalls, but the eye- catching wooden structure beneath which he sat—his calling card, as it were—had been carved into a lacework of creatively copulating statuettes; ironic, considering his own longstanding sexual predicament.

The acid humor he experienced at the reminder showed as no more than a deepening of the shadows around his mouth. He was resigned to living in exile among the humans, even to profiting from them. But smile as they did? Demonstrate that his control over his emotions was as poor as theirs?

He tutted silently in his head.

That, despite two years of hope denied, he still had too much pride to do.

He wouldn’t have been in this chowk at all if it weren’t for pride, hawking other people’s flesh to keep from having to sell his own. Oh, he could have let Prince Cor continue to support him. Deep as his pockets were, the Midarri prince wouldn’t have complained. But Pahndir couldn’t tolerate taking charity from a man who’d married the one woman he’d . . . connected with since his own wife’s death.

He nodded slightly to himself beneath his yellow awning’s shade. Connected was a word he could allow himself. He didn’t love Buttercup—or Xishi, as he forced himself to call her now that she was no longer a pillow girl. He wouldn’t love her, couldn’t, despite his body’s prompting to the contrary. Xishi was Cor’s mate, physically bound to him by the tyranny of her genes, just as Pahndir had been bound to Thallah. For that matter, Xishi’s love for Cor would have been enough to keep Pahndir at a distance. Her happiness was everything.

Or so Pahndir told himself.

He shifted in his low folding leather seat, the mere thought of Xishi enough to thicken his male organ. What he wouldn’t have given for another true release from her. Or from anyone, for that matter. He wasn’t even near his heat. His last bout of torture had ended a week ago. This time, he hadn’t given in to the temptation to seek a partner; that particular brand of disappointment was exhausting him. Nonetheless, the idea of ejaculating, of emptying his seed without a Yamish doctor’s aid, was an obsession he could not shake.

In a way, that obsession had led him to his current occupation as the owner of The Prince’s Flame. In his quest to find a human who could do for him what Xishi had, he’d visited every brothel this city had, most of them more than once. Sexual longing, and the lengths to which a person would go to gratify it, was a phenomenon he understood extremely well.

That being so, why shouldn’t he be the first man in Bhamjran to run a bawdy house?

Never mind this was a matriarchal city. Never mind many of the local males were expected to keep to the zenana and be cosseted. Bhamjran was an Ohramese possession now, and the Ohramese were used to men running things. More important, thanks to their prissy virgin Queen Victoria, the Ohramese weren’t as comfortable with their desires as their Bhamjrishi subjects. They didn’t want to explain their supposedly inappropriate cravings to a human madam. Explaining them to a demon like himself, a being they considered too depraved to be capable of judging them, was easier.

Add to that the fact that no human would ever best his kind in business, and it was no wonder The Prince’s Flame was quietly becoming a commercial force.

A shadow fell across Pahndir’s feet where he had stretched his pointed slippers into the sun. He shook himself from his musings and looked up.

His shills for the day, a pretty human girl named Alia and an even prettier human boy named Tomas, stood side by side before him on the dusty ground, their expressions wavering between caution and sulkiness. They worked for Pahndir because he gave them a larger cut than his rivals, and because he more readily allowed them to draw the line of what they would not do. His house was cleaner than the ancient city’s other brothels, and safer, too. He supplied his workers with finer clothing, more varied food, and all the Yamish amenities Prince Cor’s connections had enabled him to install—electric lights and running water, to name two.

Considering how much more advanced Yama were, they had to be careful what technology they allowed into human hands, but all the necessities of health and civility Pahndir’s house supplied.

Despite these advantages, his employees hadn’t lost their fear of him. Pahndir was forever Other to the humans, a member of a race they’d called “demon” since discovering them accidentally forty years ago. Now Pahndir’s alabaster skin declared his alien nature, his ink-black hair, his height, his rim-to-rim silver eyes. He didn’t even have to maintain his trademark Yamish stoniness; no matter how kind he thought himself, these young humans wouldn’t warm up to their master.

A sensation he didn’t choose to name constricted his vocal chords. His employees’ affection couldn’t have mattered less to him. In a country whose lower class was as large and poor as Bhamjran’s, there would always be those who wanted or needed to sell themselves. Feared or loved, Pahndir’s more favorable fiscal arrangements ensured that The Prince’s Flame would always get the cream of the crop.

In spite of which, Pahndir preferred not to institute a rule of terror.

“What is it?” he asked as gently as he could—though for all he knew his voice sounded as cool as ever to their human ears.

“We’re tired,” Alia announced. “We worked all last night.”

Less bold than his companion, Tomas nodded shyly in agreement. Both their shoulders were drooping.

“It’s your turn in the market,” Pahndir reminded them. “You being here, embodying what The Prince’s Flame has to offer, drums up business for everyone.”

“But we’re really tired,” Alia blurted. “No one wants to take our cards so early in the day.”

This was patently untrue. Pahndir could see she held no more than half the stack he’d given her to pass out, and Tomas held less than a third. Alia bit her lip and flushed when she saw his gaze had fallen to her hand. Pahndir almost smiled but caught himself. Humans were so easy to read sometimes that he truly couldn’t help but be amused.

“Beauty such as yours will always stir interest,” he assured them, “no matter what the hour. But perhaps you would benefit from a coffee break.” He dropped a clinking rain of silver denars into Tomas’s palm, a show of favor that had the young man flushing as deeply as his companion. Bhamjrishi males weren’t often trusted with money.

“Thank you, sir,” the boy whispered. “We’ll bring back the change.”

“A black espresso will be good enough.”

Tomas jerked his head in agreement, and the pair ran off with the exuberance of prisoners freed from hard labor.

Once he’d shrugged off the unflattering eagerness of their departure, it was not unpleasant to be left alone. Pahndir didn’t mind the blazing summer heat the way humans did. Millennia of genetic manipulation had given his kind the ability to adjust to extremes. Now, with his body slouched in the chair and his limbs relaxed, he felt very much the snake basking in the sun that so many humans would have seen.

Nor was his ease the heat’s doing alone. The square held such a crowd of humans, all jostling and striving and feeling the way humans did, that it was impossible not to imbibe a bit of their etheric force—even without touching them. The unavoidable transfer of energy went to his head like brandy spiked with caffeine. His world, frustrations notwithstanding, took on a golden glow. Maybe he should come to the chowk every morning, instead of his usual once a week. Live with the edges blurred for a while. Let himself pretend he was at peace.

Lacing his hands across his flat, hard belly, he narrowed his eyes in search of potential customers.

A low, bushy palm obscured his leftward view, but to the right, where Shiva’s Way fed into the square beneath a sandstone arch, Pahndir’s gaze encompassed all. A handsome lady of her house in a sapphire tunic, her arms agleam with gold bangles, seemed worth sending Tomas after when he returned. Sadly, at the moment, the rest of the crowd appeared too poor for his rates.

And then he saw them, a man and a woman walking shoulder to shoulder past a line of citrus stalls. They were human, Ohramese by their dress, smiling with enjoyment for the young, new day. The woman wore a crisp white shirtwaist with a long navy skirt, the man a close-cut suit in sand-colored cloth. Neither looked far into their twenties, and both were tall for their race—the man a shade over six feet and the woman a shade below.

They weren’t aristocrats; their clothes weren’t fine enough for that, but neither were they poor. Upper working class, Pahndir deduced. Flush enough to holiday in Bhamjran, but not much more. Definitely not flush enough for The Prince’s Flame, and still he couldn’t look away. Something about them caught his attention. Some intensity within them. Some repressed passion.

As Pahndir watched, the woman picked up an orange and held it to her nose, closing her eyes as she breathed in the scent. Her cheeks were sun browned, her hair a gleaming fall of chestnut caught in a simple tail. Her lush, full lips were dark as cinnamon. When she wet the upper, Pahndir’s heart jolted in his chest, his nerves quickening to a degree he couldn’t remember feeling for some time. The fans of her lashes lifted as the hand that held the orange fell. Clear across the market, Pahndir saw her eyes were honey-gold.

Oblivious to his attention, she elbowed her companion in a friendly way, a gesture that shook her breasts behind the white shirtwaist.

Pahndir cursed softly to himself. She couldn’t have known how the sun shone through that starched white cotton, how it turned every curve of her lithe, young torso to a clear shadow. She wore no corset, and he could see the slightly swollen peaks of her nipples, the high, conelike projection of her small, firm breasts. She was built like a gazelle, all racing lines and smooth, hard strength.

Generally speaking, Pahndir preferred more plumpness in a human female—most likely because his own kind was lean—but her looks were just different enough to call to him. His body tightened as he imagined her naked beneath him: her struggle against his strength, his inexorable penetration, the taste of salt on her human skin . . .

Barely aware that he was doing it, his tongue came out to wet his mouth, just as hers had moments earlier. Unlike her, in him the gesture bared a dark forked marking, a natural coloration that had once terrified her kind. Seeing it, the vendor in the next stall over turned away nervously.

Demon he was then, a demon who longed to ravish and plunder.

The woman’s companion bent to her to say something—some human tease, apparently, because she threw back her head and laughed. To Pahndir’s secret delight, the sound was no ladylike tinkle, but a true guffaw.

“Charles!” Pahndir heard her humorous outrage ring out. “You’re impossible!”

The woman shoved his arm as she said it, as if she were a boy herself and he her schoolmate.

They’re not lovers then, Pahndir thought, without stopping to worry that this flooded him with hot relief.

Her companion laughed more quietly back at her, tossed a coin to the vendor, and began peeling her orange. Pahndir could feel the pair’s high spirits as they continued to stroll in his direction around the square: two healthy young Ohramese come to shop with the natives. They’d take this story back with them when they went home—how quaint and foreign everything was, how deliciously risque. The man tossed bits of orange pith at his friend, causing her to laugh again. Her eyes were glowing, her color high. Within her narrow-waisted skirt, her strides swung like a man’s.

Tomboy, Pahndir thought, retrieving the human word.

The trait didn’t squelch his fascination. She looked alive laughing with the man, young and carefree and innocent. With an odd little ache pinching in his chest, Pahndir realized only a human could wear a look like that. Among his own kind, with their byzantine sophistication and endless scheming, innocence was stamped out young.

Just then, as the male fed an orange section into the woman’s laughing mouth, a long-tailed desert falcon wheeled overhead. The bird screamed a challenge, perhaps offended by the noise below. In unison, the humans turned to the sky.

Pahndir’s first clear sight of the man’s face was his second gut-punch of the morning.

The male was fair in every sense of the word, his hair a straight silvery blond, his eyes a dreamy sea swept blue. His features were so exquisitely cut and balanced they could have belonged to one of Pahndir’s race. Oh, the human’s coloring would have been unusual for a Yama, but not impossible. His was a beauty that transcended genes, a throat-squeezing, breath-stealing symmetry. The yearning he betrayed as he watched that hawk circling overhead only heightened his appeal.

Anyone who saw his expression, whatever their culture, would have known he hungered for freedom.

Freedom from what Pahndir could not guess. The man turned from the hawk before the woman did. As luck would have it, his gaze clicked precisely into Pahndir’s. A prickle swept Pahndir’s nape, lifting the little hairs that grew there, but he didn’t lower his eyes. The man’s look of yearning had blown away with the hot, dry wind. In its place, Pahndir read a flash of recognition, followed by a sardonic self-consciousness.

This man, stranger though he was to Pahndir, knew who he was. This man knew what he was hawking from his golden stall.

More to the point, this man was interested in his wares—against his will, perhaps, but interested.

Pahndir nodded to him, man-to-man, then gave his head the subtle tilt that was a universal signal to come near. The man went still, then glanced at his companion, guilt in the gesture if ever there were. He didn’t, however, seem alarmed to have been addressed by a demon. Pahndir felt his heart pulse hard in his throat as he waited to see what the man would do.

What he did was squeeze his companion’s arm, speak softly in her ear, and draw away. She watched him walk toward Pahndir’s stall but didn’t follow him.

The man stopped just within the shadow of Pahndir’s awning and removed his brimmed straw hat. Something about the way he held it before his heart, as if unconsciously shielding that organ, made Pahndir tread carefully.

For more reasons than the usual, this was a customer he wanted to reel in.

“I see you know who I am,” Pahndir said when the man remained silent. “So the question is, how may I serve you?”

The man’s face was quiet but not as quiet as a Yama’s would have been. Thoughts moved behind it, temptations he might have struggled with for years. And here Pahndir was, doing his best to nudge him over the brink.

“I was wondering . . .” The man swallowed, nervous despite the dignity he was trying to project. “I was wondering if you offer the services of other races.”

Pahndir felt his brows draw together above his nose. Sometimes humans from one country referred to humans from another as a different race, but Pahndir sensed this was not the man’s meaning. Then comprehension dawned, and along with it another quickening of his pulse. He had to pull in a breath to speak smoothly.

“You mean, do I pander the unfortunates of my own race to my customers?”

The man gave a jerking nod, a vein now beating harder in his strong brown neck. That neck led into the open collar of his cambric shirt, the edges of which had been stained past scrubbing by the dusty golden sands of the Vharzovhin. Perhaps he was one of Herrington’s crew, out on the dig. That was one demon every Yama had heard of, a famous diplomat who lived with the humans in their capital. Lord Herrington had fathered a half-demon bastard on an opera singer, and then had the cheek to acknowledge her publicly. Archaeology was Herrington’s hobby. His luck at it, or maybe it was brilliance, had made him something of a hero to both races.

Intrigued by the possibility that this young man worked for him—though not as much as by their conversation—Pahndir filed the thought away. He could see the object of his interest fighting not to breathe shallowly.

Suddenly enjoying this very much, Pahndir smoothed his eminently un-stained pale blue tunic down his thighs. “As it happens, I have two beautiful demons who work for me. One male. One female. You could take your pick.”

His potential customer dropped his eyes but, evidently, not because he’d been offered both genders.

“They’re rohn?” the human asked in a soft, harsh voice.

“They are,” Pahndir confirmed, refraining from pointing out that members of the upper class, his class, would hardly condescend to sell their bodies as a career; as a lark, perhaps—daimyo were decadent enough for anything—but not to earn their daily bread.

“Do they—” The young man swallowed as the words broke in his throat. “Do they have to be hired for sex?”

Pahndir had been leaning forward, caught up in the drama of their exchange, but this query sent him lounging back in the folding chair. He steepled graceful fingers before his chin. “You mean you’d like them to take your energy.”

The man said nothing, but the unhappiness in his eyes confirmed the guess well enough. Somehow, somewhere, this beautiful Ohramese boy had developed a fixation with being fed on by demons. To witness such shame over what was, to Pahndir, an understandable enough desire nearly shamed him as well . . . nearly, but not quite.

After all, if humans viewed what Pahndir was selling as a step on the road to hell, that was their concern. He didn’t have to consider himself the devil whispering in their ear.

“It could be done as carefully as you wish,” he said, “with whatever safeguards you desire to prevent undue fatigue. For that matter—” Pahndir hesitated half a moment, an impulse he didn’t understand spurring him. “If you preferred it, I would take your energy myself.”

The young man held him in his considering sea-blue gaze, not accepting, but also not repelled. Ohramese though he was, this man knew something of what two males could do together. Pahndir’s body heated deep and low, like opium smoke curling in his groin. In his desire to find a human to help him spill his seed, he had not considered a male might do, but this one certainly made him think maybe. Pahndir had been with his own sex before, now and then. Royal Yama were naturally adventurous. Given the stringent limits within which their biology operated, they’d have been fools not to experiment. Pahndir knew that to drink this human’s etheric force would be a pleasure in itself, a dangerous pleasure, but he was not averse to that.
What matter if he would absorb the human’s emotions along with his energy? Pahndir was a prince. Unlike the rohn in his employ, whose self-control was proportional to their class, Pahndir would get over it.

“At least take my card,” Pahndir said, offering him one. “You can decide at your leisure.”

The young man looked at the small cream-colored square, then back over his shoulder at the woman he’d come to the market with.

Pahndir had almost forgotten her during their exchange, but the reminder had his flesh humming anew, electricity flowing like a zephyr across his skin. Her energy seemed able to reach him across the chowk, like heat waves shimmering over sunbaked dunes. The effect was extraordinary. Sensual. Teasing. And that to a man whose erotic interest, by nature and circumstance, needed little encouragement to rise.

Had he ever seen anyone, human or Yama, shine this vibrantly? She stood in a sari stall, lifting a length of scarlet silk into the sun to examine it. The garment fluttered against her breasts like water, painting her in the color of sex itself. He wasn’t the only one who thought so. Again, Pahndir saw that yearning in her companion’s face, this time for a prize he seemed to think as far beyond his deserving as an emperor’s crown.

It was a yearning he was clearly used to tamping down. When the Ohramese’s attention returned to Pahndir, his expression was like carved granite. The faintest flush on his cheekbones was all that exposed his imperfect human control.

Infinity help me, Pahndir thought, struggling to keep his reaction to this sight concealed. What he wouldn’t give to bed both of them!

“I don’t need a card to find The Prince’s Flame,” the young man said.

The comment begged a rejoinder, preferably a flirtatious one. Seeing the young man’s self-derision, Pahndir restrained himself.

“I hope you do find it,” was all he said, obliged to content himself with but a shade of hope as the Ohramese turned and walked off.

#

From the first, Beth had been aware of the demon’s gaze. The attention intrigued her but also made her self-conscious. People simply didn’t stare at her when she was with Charles.

Charles was—well, not quite a cousin, though he liked to treat her as if he were. Charles was the former ward of Beth’s older brother’s wife, a woman who had rescued Charles and his younger brother from starving on the street. Beth didn’t think of herself as vain, but Charles was the only person she knew who made her feel homely. He had the face of a fallen angel, his bitter humor as beautiful as other’s cheer.

Despite which, the demon had stared at her.

Her cheeks felt hot as she pretended the scarlet sari she’d picked up was engaging her whole interest. What were Charles and the Yama talking about? Not her, surely. That was too great a stretch. Charles had called the demon “an acquaintance,” had claimed he “ought to say hello,” but when he’d said it, his eyes had evaded hers. Obviously, this association was one of his secrets, the deep, dark who-knew-whats he thought she was too decent a girl to hear about. The attitude drove her mad. Beth might not have grown up like he did, might never have gone hungry or done unmentionable things to survive, but she was far from being as nice a girl as Charles insisted on believing.

If she had been, she wouldn’t have pestered her parents for literally years to let her travel here with Lord Herrington.

Beth’s parents—bless their well-meaning souls—wanted her to settle down and marry like her older sisters, wanted her to pop out children and stay home. Beth understood why they felt that way. They’d worked hard for most of their lives. The fact that they’d raised daughters who didn’t have to meant a lot to them, and Beth being the baby made it twice as hard to let go. But Beth had never desired an ordinary life. With all her being, she craved an extraordinary one. She thanked all the stars in heaven that her family had finally given up their hopes for her.

“Excuse me,” Beth whispered to the patiently waiting sari vendor. “What is the business of that man in the golden booth?”

Fortunately, like most Bhamjrishi, this vendor spoke her conquerors’ tongue. “That is Mr. Pahndir,” she said in the lilting local accent. “He runs The Prince’s Flame.”

“The Prince’s Flame?”

The woman’s earthy amusement might have been invented by her countrywomen. Certainly, they’d perfected it. “The Prince’s Flame is a pleasure house. It is expensive but very clean. I’ve heard he runs it honestly.”

Beth’s mouth abruptly felt glued shut. A pleasure house. And Charles had called the demon an acquaintance. Beth was embarrassed to find she could be shocked. But it was none of her business what Charles did along those lines. No matter what her silly private daydreams—which a female would have to be dead and blind not to entertain—she and Charles were not romantically involved. She was twenty-four, for heaven’s sake, old enough to know what went on in a pleasure house, old enough to be married, had she been inclined. People her age had sex, and those people included Charles.

The vendor must have sensed her inner battle, because she smiled and spoke again. “You do know that pleasure houses in Bhamjran serve women as well as men?”

“Of course I do,” Beth said too quickly, having forgotten that entirely.

The vendor laughed softly. “Perhaps The Prince’s Flame would be worth the price for you.”

Beth blushed as hotly as if her cheeks had been steamed, but she had to ask. “You don’t suppose that demon . . .”

The vendor joined her in regarding the man Charles was talking to. “I haven’t heard whether Mr. Pahndir takes customers. We don’t get many Yama in Bhamjran, but it cannot be denied they are a handsome lot. And they’re stronger than humans. More self-controlled. I’ve heard their males can go all night.”

Beth had a reasonable understanding of what they could “go all night” at, though this was not a phrase she’d heard before. Her legs felt weak of a sudden, her upper thighs prickly and warm. The demon sprawled in his chair as arrogant as a prince, his long legs stretched, his hair a cloak of raven silk spilling down his arms. Beautiful blue highlights gleamed in it. He was handsome, in a strange, foreign way—exotically attractive, like the curving silver daggers desert tribes employed. That she couldn’t read his expression sent a pleasant shiver coursing down her spine. Lord Herrington, the only demon she knew personally, had lived among humans for so many years he’d gone a bit native. This one was the genuine, undiluted article. This one
wasn’t even sweating in the desert heat.

I’d like to make him sweat, Beth thought out of the blue.

The impulse startled her. However not-nice she thought she was, she knew she couldn’t begin to fathom the forbidden thrills entailed in being alone with this Yama.

The vendor drew her attention by touching her wrist. “Your young man returns.”

He’s not my young man, Beth began to say, but considering the conversation they’d just had, it seemed easier not to explain.

Charles’s face was serious as he wended back between the market’s slowly moving crowd. Beth was sorry to see the change in him. She enjoyed his playful side, something only she and his younger brother Max seemed able to bring out in him.

Mind you, Charles wasn’t like a demon; he had deep feelings. He adored his adoptive family, respected Beth’s older brother Adrian probably more than Adrian’s blood relatives, and treated his job as a chef like a religious calling. Easy, however, was not a path he knew how to walk. On that score, an icy, emotionless demon had a considerable advantage over him.

“Ready to leave?” he asked as soon as he reached her.

Beth put the scarlet sari back on its table. “If you wish.”

Charles’s expression flickered. “Forgive me. You’d like to do more shopping.”“I don’t need to.” Concerned, she laid her hand on the rumpled linen of his coat sleeve. She wished she dared ask what the demon had said to him. “Charles, are you all right? You look rather grim.”

“I’m fine.” He shook his head as if to fling out unwelcome thoughts. “Everything is fine. We can stay or go, as you please.”

“I think I’d rather go.” She turned to the helpful vendor. “Thank you for your time. I hope I may return another day.”

As the vendor nodded, Charles offered Beth his elbow. The gesture was politeness rather than care. Preferring the latter, Beth curled her fingers over his, grateful for the heat that drove more gently born females than she to go without gloves.

At the touch, he looked at her, a sweep of stubble glinting on his lean, sharp jaw. The prickles were one shade darker than his sun-bleached hair. “I’m fine, Beth. Truly. I have work at camp.”

Beth made herself smile at him, unconvinced but understanding he was doing his best not to subject her to his darkened mood. “I do as well,” she said as lightly as she could. “I expect there’s a thousand notebook sheets to scan by now.”

“At the least,” he agreed, the fondness in his eyes catching at her breath.

It is enough, she told herself. Charles might not be the easiest soul to be friends with, but as much as he cared for anyone, he cared for her.

Contrary to her intent, the thought saddened her. She had chased her ordinary beaus away—their numbers greater even than her family knew—because the kind of life they represented didn’t interest her. Her relationship with Charles was probably the closest she would ever have with a male, and she knew better than to think he’d want to marry her. Why, in ten long years, they hadn’t shared a peck on the cheek!

There must be more than this, she thought, her unfamiliar surroundings giving the old desires new clarity. These can’t be all the choices a woman has. Married or a spinster. Fallen or alone.

I wish I were different, she thought. I wish I were as bold as a Bhamjrishi.

Charles led her beneath the market’s arching sandstone gate, his hold on her protective and secure. She had a sudden urge to throw off his hand, to run like a wild thing into the ancient city and disappear.

I wish, she thought, her third of the day, that I were as strong and icy as that demon.

If she had been, she’d be bold enough for anything.

#

Pahndir waited until they’d left to rise from his chair. He made no pretense where he was headed, though the sari vendor watched every step with a knowing smile.

He considered slipping her a coin to get answers, then decided she might take insult.

“I’d like to know where those two were from,” he said.

“Ohram,” said the woman, her head turned down to hide her amusement.

Pahndir fought an urge to grind his teeth. “I meant, where are they staying here? Do you know if they’re part of the dig?”“They didn’t tell me,” the woman said—honestly enough, he judged. Her expression turned humorous again. “Couldn’t you go after them and ask?”

He could, but such directness wasn’t the Yamish way.

“Thank you,” he said instead. “I appreciate your time.”

Coming April 1, 2008
from Berkley Sensation

COPYRIGHT 2008 BY EMMA HOLLY. IT IS ILLEGAL TO REPRODUCE
OR DISTRIBUTE THIS WORK IN ANY MANNER OR MEDIUM
WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.