Fair Game (Alpha & Omega #3)(59)
Author: Patricia Briggs

Leslie tucked the card away and rubbed her eyes with the edge of her finger so her makeup wouldn’t run. "I don’t know why I’m feeling this way. It’s stupid. I met him once, for less than ten minutes…and…I won’t forget him."

"No," agreed Beauclaire gravely. "Treasach was a marvel. Poet, fighter, joyful companion, and there are no more of his like to be found. None of us will forget him. Fae magic, though, sometimes has a mind of its own. That was given to you to resolve a debt. He intended it to be a gift and a blessing, but his death means that his will no longer binds that bit of magic. Use it or not, as you wish – but use it for a small thing, or for something that equals the grief of a good man who could not spare a child the pain of her puppy’s fate. If you remember his exact words, use it for that – by his words and by the debt this magic is tamed. Go beyond those things with your wish, and it will cause havoc of an unpleasant kind."

"Do you have healers?" Anna asked.

"Healing is among the great magics and we have very few healers left among us – and most of them are even less trustworthy than Treasach’s gift would be." He took a drink of his beer and nodded to Leslie. "My daughter will walk again, but she will not dance. It is the way of mortals. They fling themselves at life and emerge broken."

"She survived," said Anna. "She’s tough. She fought them every step of the way. She’ll make it."

Beauclaire nodded politely. "Some mortals do. Some of them make it just fine when horrible things happen to them. Some of them…" He shook his head and took another sip of his beer and then said with quiet savagery, "Sometimes broken people stay broken." He looked at her. "Why am I telling you all of this?"

Anna shrugged. "People talk to me." She didn’t know what else to say, so she followed her impulse. "I’ve been where Lizzie is, brutalized and terrified. Someone rescued me before my captors were able to kill me. Next to that…losing something she loves is tragic. But she doesn’t seem to be the kind who will think that she would be better off dead – not in the long run."

Beauclaire looked at his glass. "I’m sorry to hear that you had to be rescued."

She shrugged again. "That which does not destroy us makes us stronger, right?" It came out sounding flippant, so she added, "I knew a woman when I was in school. She was smart, a talented musician, and hardworking. She came to college and found out that those weren’t enough to make her a first violin, or even a second – and she tried to kill herself because she had to sit with the third violins. It was the first real disappointment she’d ever had in her life and she didn’t know how to deal with it. Those of us who live in the real world and survive horrible things, we emerge stronger and ready to face tomorrow. Lizzie will be okay."

Beauclaire frowned at her. He looked away and then said, "You might visit her and tell her that."

She didn’t want to. She wasn’t a counselor and she didn’t like talking about what had happened to her to strangers – though it hadn’t stopped her tonight, had it? Anna was okay because Charles found her and taught her to be strong. Lizzie would have to find her own strength, and Anna didn’t know how to tell her where to find it.

"I’ll see what I can do," she promised reluctantly. She was exhausted from being on display, and from thinking about things she’d tried to put behind her. "If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go visit the ladies’ room."

She left Leslie talking to the fae and let herself out of the banquet room. Away from the noise and the room full of mostly strangers, Anna felt better. She’d use the restroom, eat the food she’d ordered, and go home.

When she came out of the restroom, she wasn’t pleased to see that Agent Heuter was leaning against the wall next to the door. There was no one left in the restaurant proper – it must have closed at ten. So she and Heuter were alone in the hallway next to the entrance for the room where the party was still going strong.

"So you are the heroine of the day," he said.

Something in his voice didn’t track and she frowned at him. "Not really, no. If you’ll excuse me?"

But he stepped in front of her. "No. I don’t think so. Not today."

And someone who wasn’t there grabbed her from behind and sent her to sleep.

Chapter 11

Anna woke with a sickly sweet taste in her mouth that spread into her nose and up through her sinuses, deadening anything else her nose might tell her.

Nausea and a rotten headache vied with the silver collar and high-silver-content, medieval-style cuffs and chains for the honors of the most miserable distractions. Anna tried to remember what had happened that had left her chained up like someone’s extreme BDSM fantasy in a human-sized cage that hung in a large empty room. It was dark, and she was alone.

She’d been talking to Heuter, who’d been acting weird. And then…jeez. Had they really chloroformed her? Decades-long killing spree, witch’s magic, rare old scary fae bloodlines – and they used chloroform. Several times, if her vague memories of waking up in the backseat of a car were accurate.

That just seemed so…mundane.

She rose to her hands and knees – and that was as far as the chains would let her go. She let the burn of the silver and the desperate need to upchuck her dinner keep her from panic as she tried to think around the headache for a plan of attack.

Lizzie had been raped within hours of when they took her. It was almost the first thing that they had done. And that was the thought that made Anna throw up.

As delicious as the food in Isaac’s Irish pub had been, it didn’t taste very good the second time around. She managed to get most of it out of the cage, but enough lingered on her hair – for some reason having her hands cuffed and chained had impeded her ability to keep her hair out of her mouth – and had spattered on the edge of the floor that it added to her misery.

And then she wondered if she was as alone in the room as she had thought. She hadn’t been able to see or smell the fae who’d been guarding Lizzie’s prison on the island. Panic threatened and she forced it down because it wouldn’t do her any good.

Charles would be looking for her by now. But when she tried their bond, it was closed as tight as it ever had been. Didn’t he know she was missing? Isaac would tell him right away. But what if Isaac didn’t know? What if Heuter told him that Anna had decided to go back to the condo on her own? But that didn’t make sense, because Isaac would be able to tell Heuter was lying – and Heuter knew that. He’d have to stay as far out of the way as he could so he didn’t give himself away to the werewolves.

So why hadn’t Charles opened the bond between them?