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  Drew walked ahead, then stopped and half-turned. ‘You finished your inspection?’

  Nea frowned. While she had detected nothing, he’d obviously sensed her light reading probe. ‘I’m a reader. It comes with the territory. But I can’t sense anything.’

  He lifted his chin as he nodded. ‘Good.’

  ‘How do you do that? You know, hide what you’re thinking and feeling?’

  ‘Maybe I’m not. Maybe you’re useless.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she replied and shrugged. What a brute!

  He moved ahead of her and paused to look back. ‘Coming?’

  The path ahead was overshadowed by trees, blocking out the moonlight. Nea hesitated. ‘It’s dark. I don’t think …’ She didn’t know why it bothered her, but her anxiety had been building all evening.

  ‘We’ll be on the road soon. Plenty of light then.’

  Nea’s witch sense tingled, and she sent out her talent. There was something not right ahead. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Nowhere in particular.’

  ‘In that case, can we go the other way?’

  Suddenly he was there, his fingers gripping her elbow. ‘No, I want to go this way.’ His voice held command.

  Shaking off the magic he’d thrown at her, perhaps unwittingly, she gaped down at the offending hand. ‘Let me go. You’re hurting me.’

  A growl slipped past his gritted teeth. There was something feral and wild in his expression. Alarm pulsed through her. He didn’t let her go, and his grip tightened.

  ‘Drew!’ He didn’t seem to hear her. ‘Let. Me. Go!’ she yelled into his face.

  Still no reaction from him—just that expression and the dark pull of his eyes.

  Nea shoved him back with a burst of magic, an instinctive push. His fingers released and a yell escaped him. Drew staggered away, blinked, and shook his head. Righting himself, he gaped at her, dumbfounded. ‘What the fuck? Why did you do that?’

  ‘Sorry!’ She was appalled at what she’d done. A human would have sustained an injury. ‘You were hurting me.’

  He looked down at his hands. ‘Was I?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said as she rubbed the spot where his fingers had dug in.

  He stared at her, his head tilted to one side. ‘You’re quite strong for a little thing. I didn’t realise.’

  Nea panted, her heart thumping. She hadn’t known she had it in her. Repulsion and striking was something that she’d never used much at all. Hadn’t needed to. Still on guard, she stared at him. Tentatively, she reached out to skim his inner landscape but there was still nothing. His emotions—she doubted he had any—were sealed up tight.

  He moved towards her.

  ‘Stay back,’ she commanded in a clear and loud voice, fists clenched at her side.

  He paused and spread his hands. A fleeting smile did wonders for his features. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ He shrugged as if her aversion didn’t matter. ‘There’s a house I want to show you. No big deal. We won’t go in, not if you don’t want to.’

  Nea breathed deeply, her panic receding. She was a big girl, a smart witch. Surely she was a match for Drew, and besides, her grandfather wanted to know what he was up to. She hated letting Gregor down. Talking with Drew hadn’t shed any light on anything to do with his life, his motivations or activities. Reading him had revealed nothing. This was an opportunity to see what interested him and maybe then get some inkling about what he really thought and felt. She nodded, relaxing her fists, not realising she had been poised ready for attack. ‘Sure. I’ll come along.’

  A vagrant thought tempted her to hail Gregor—to communicate her alarm. Drew would detect that and right now, she wanted to pursue this moment with him. Now he knew she wasn’t a pushover, maybe he’d respect her more … open up. Long shot!

  Drew stepped back and let her precede him, then he joined her on the path. ‘So what have you been doing with yourself since you’ve been up here?’ she asked conversationally, as if they hadn’t been engaging in magical fisticuffs.

  ‘You already asked me that.’

  She laughed it off. ‘I did, but you didn’t say. Are you working for a spy agency or something? Is that why you won’t say? Is it a national secret?’

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ he snapped at her, his voice hard.

  Woah! She sighed low and long. ‘Geez, Drew, trying to get to know you is like trying to understand what the moon is thinking. Don’t you know it’s how folk converse? I tell you a bit about me, you tell me a bit about you …’

  ‘I don’t want to do what others do. I want to be left alone.’

  ‘Do you? Just a minute ago you didn’t want me to leave. That’s rather contradictory.’

  His dark gaze passed over her. ‘It’s complicated.’

  She chuckled and kicked a twig out of her way as they headed up the hill. They walked in silence for a few minutes more. Goosebumps erupted on her arms. Something very creepy existed nearby. It was like walking across a cemetery where the spirits were unsettled. ‘It can’t be that complicated. Why do you want me here with you?’

  ‘Maybe I want to rape you.’ He gestured to the bush around him. ‘It’s quiet here. No one will see, or hear you scream or anything. I can do it before anyone comes and finds you—what’s left of you, that is.’

  She stopped in her tracks, her skin chilled. He knew she could fight him off. ‘Is that your idea of a joke?’

  ‘Maybe.’ His dark eyes glittered as they met hers.

  ‘That’s not even funny.’

  He grinned at her. ‘Maybe not. Surely it’s no surprise. Didn’t Elena tell you what happened?’

  ‘Elena? Your half-sister?’

  ‘Yeah, but I didn’t know she was my sister at the time.’

  Nea’s heart rate kicked up. Dread washed over her. Maybe he wasn’t joking, and that was unnerving.

  ‘She’s not said anything to me about you.’ That piqued her interest. What has he done to Elena? Something bad for sure.

  Drew began walking again. ‘I don’t mind if you hail your grandfather and tell him exactly where you are. I know you want to.’

  ‘You can read me?’ That surprised and worried her.

  ‘I don’t have to. You’re so jittery, it makes sense. I know you only asked me out because he asked it as a favour.’

  Nea narrowed her gaze, assessing him. Maybe she was jittery, but if he was guessing it was so close to the truth it was scary. If he could read her, she needed to do more work on her shielding, because a leaky mind was not a good look. Great. This date has been a huge mistake.

  She shot Gregor a tight hail along the lines of: Total disaster. At creepy place, near Catherine Hill Bay. Come for me. Gregor replied that he was on his way.

  ‘You know, Drew. You aren’t helping yourself. You’d get on better with folk if you were more open.’

  ‘I’m doing fine. You think I want sex from the likes of you? You’re wrong. I’m kept well satisfied.’

  ‘Really? How? Masturbation?’ She knew all about that.

  The feral snarl was back. ‘Shut up, bitch. I get all the sex I want.’ He rolled his shoulders, and his fists clenched by his sides. ‘Great sex. Powerful sex. Better than you or any other witch your age could offer.’

  There was a fever brewing in his eyes. It was the first hint of emotion she’d seen from him. He’d lifted the hatches on his mind. She looked deep and gasped. Festering anger. Swirling malice. Throbbing emotional pain. Fear of rejection. Loneliness. Then a red spear of something alien lashing out.

  A knife of pain pierced her brain. Staggering back, she shook her head. She winced, wiping at her now watering eyes. ‘Goddess! That hurt.’

  ‘Don’t pry,’ he snapped and then turned away, his shoulders hunched.

  Blinking, she reached out tentatively. What she’d detected was hidden now, but she’d tasted enough to know Gregor’s fears were justified. Something powerful lurked in Drew’s mind amongst the detritus of his emotional landscape.
r />   ‘Sorry,’ Nea said. ‘It was instinctive.’ She rubbed her forehead, trying to erase the dull ache.

  Drew strode away from her and she followed, walking into a tree tunnel, where the intertwined branches overhead blocked out the moonlight.

  Alone with him in the dark, her skin broke out in a sweat and her breath hitched on an inhale, as if she’d been chilled to her soul. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to be out here with him. Fear eroded her earlier confidence. Yet, Gregor was on his way, so she calmed her nerves.

  The path they trod narrowed down to dirt. Leaves and branches grabbed at her. Frogs chirped and the wind in the trees slapped leaves together. A cobweb kissed her face and she shuddered, using her talent to repel any spiders.

  They kept walking, Nea just trailing behind with nothing but the night for a cloak.

  Suddenly, they were out onto a normal street, with a sidewalk and a bitumen road. A lone streetlight cast a feeble glow over an intersection. Low mist draped over the road and collected around a ruin of a house made up of a few supporting stumps, one wall just a frame of rotting wood. It had no roof, but rubble decorated the ground between the clumps of weeds.

  Next to it was another house, an old two-storey Victorian weatherboard that had once been grand, but appeared rundown, abandoned. Gables sagged, and its balcony just clung to the edifice, assisted by a tenacious ivy vine. The lower veranda was decorated in rubbish: an old couch, a bicycle wheel, a wicker pram, and a pile of rags sagging through a split in a rubbish bag.

  ‘That’s what you wanted me to see, isn’t it?’ Nea chewed her bottom lip and swept her hair out of her eyes. It was very odd and unsettling. Why here? What does Drew want with this place?

  He turned to the house and put his hands on his hips. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think you’re quite ready for it yet.’

  ‘Ready for what—a tour of a haunted house?’ She tried not to laugh. It seemed so childish and added to her confusion about him.

  Nea let her talent run free, trying to find the source of her unease with her reading skill. The ruin was a sad place, full of grief with undertones of suffering and death. Her talent swept over the old house next to it and elicited a shiver up her spine. Something very bad had happened there. It was much worse than the ruin. It leaned over the remains of the other house as if it fed off the vibrations emanating from it.

  She sent her talent lower, to the foundations, and there was nothing to sense. It was a blank space, possibly blocked. She switched back to the ruin, and her other sight sunk into the ground. There she could read the memory of the earth, the blood and the tears that had dripped down to soak the dirt. It reeked of death. Yet, there was something there, something that quivered when her talent passed over it. Her talent went back to that spot seeking, probing and prodding, like it was a blind pimple emerging on her chin.

  She poked at it. The quiver became a kindled flame, as if she’d woken something that had lain quiescent for an age. Nea didn’t like the sensation, the questing tendrils that seemed ravenous and all too eager, and instinctively pulled her talent back. The thing she disturbed grew stronger, tried to latch on, tried to follow. That wasn’t meant to happen. Her talent wasn’t meant to disturb, only to read, like a soft wind gently teasing. She dared not send her talent back for a second read. She hoped whatever it was would sink back down in the dark earth, would go back to sleep and lie quietly as if she’d never disturbed it.

  ‘Let’s keep walking,’ she said, unable to dampen her fearful response. What is this place? What is that sensation of something coming alive at the touch of my mind? It hadn’t quieted. No, it was there like a kindled flame in the dark, burning brighter with every breath she took.

  ‘Why? What’s your hurry? The night is young.’ Drew laughed, but it was an ugly sound with no joy in it. Just dead. Nea shivered at the thought, rubbing at her upper arms.

  Did he know what lay in the ruin? Was that why he’d brought her here? Was this some secret she had to uncover, some game that had to be played?

  She couldn’t help herself. It was like trying not to pick at a scab. She sent her talent back again, straight to the spot where something moved, something living so close to death it may as well be dead.

  The flame of its essence surged brighter—touched her talent tentatively, then suddenly latched on, like a leach sucking, sucking. Her eyes widened. She clawed in a breath and reeled in her talent. The presence flared and expanded.

  Her instinct was to bolt, and she didn’t realise she’d started to until Drew put his hand out and stopped her. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Chicken?’

  She wasn’t about to tell him. She shook her head, mute.

  ‘Come on. What gives?’ He faced the ruin. She couldn’t detect his use of talent so didn’t know if he sensed that thing growing more alert with each breath.

  Maybe he already knew what it was. Maybe that was why he’d brought her there.

  Nea wanted to put some distance between herself and the creepy warlock and his penchant for eerie ruins, but he closed in.

  ‘Gregor … is … is … coming …’ She was hardly able to breathe. Sweat broke out on her forehead.

  Drew chuckled, but the sound was the opposite of mirth. ‘The sight of a haunted house is enough to rattle you. Excellent.’ His laugh was the inside of a firepit where all the oxygen had been sucked out. He drew her to him, one arm around her back, and in her fright she didn’t resist. He leaned over her as he tilted her back, a parody of romance. With his eyebrows arched in mockery, he leaned his face close. ‘You’re not interested in sex with me then?’

  It was the bucket of cold water she needed. His words, so emotionlessly uttered, were as inviting as jumping into the jaws of a shark. Hell no! She pulled herself together using indignation to sweep away the last of her fear. She closed her mind to what she had sensed and resisted the urge to belt Drew across the mouth. ‘Are you serious?’ she said to lighten the mood and to quell her anxiety.

  He sneered and righted her. His dark eyes reflected the light from the streetlamp, yet his expression was set into muted lines. Nea shook her head as he tugged his sweater over the waist of his jeans, breaking eye contact.

  ‘You know, I’ve had better offers.’

  ‘I’m willing to lower my standards,’ he said, trying to smirk and failing, his expression closer to a sneer.

  ‘I’m not,’ she replied. That desperate!

  ‘How do you know until you try? Sex is mechanical. You make too much of it.’

  With her hands on her hips, she seared him with a look. ‘Sex is not just mechanical to me. You’d have to do more than blank yourself; you’d have to talk to me to make me want to share myself with you, make a connection mentally, emotionally. I need to be able to read you, to understand you and trust you to get intimate. That’s not happening for me. Think about it, and if you’re willing to be open, we can try again sometime.’ Over my dead body.

  Drew sneered. ‘You’re such a hypocrite. You’re just as closed as me.’

  Nea backed away. Gregor was close now; she could sense him drawing near. She’d be rescued soon. ‘That’s just plain weird. I’m not closed. I’ve been open the whole evening. Surely you can read me.’ She tugged on her hair. ‘Maybe you can’t understand what you read.’

  His face was impassive but there was a hard glint in his eyes.

  Then it twigged. ‘Is that it? You have no empathy?’

  The slap came out of nowhere. She reeled and her hand went to her cheek, the flesh a stinging throb. ‘What the hell?’

  The blandness of him had ripened into raw anger. She saw it in the flush of his cheeks and the slant of his mouth.

  ‘Shut the fuck up. Don’t you dare judge me.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I didn’t. I’m just trying to understand—’ Reaction was setting in—her hands trembled. He’d hit her. Drew Penderton had hit her. Just like that. She was so shocked and scared, she didn’t even think of hexing him. For the first time in her life someone had assaul
ted her.

  Gregor’s car skidded to a stop. Neither of them turned towards it, their gazes locked on each other. Nea’s heart thumped. Something about Drew scared her to her core. ‘Run, little mouse, little freckled moonface. I’ve got a real woman, a woman with power. Don’t need to do anything to impress her.’

  Nea backed up to the car, nodding. Her cheek smarted and her eyes watered, but she wasn’t about to let him see that he’d hurt her. She’d obtained the information Gregor wanted. The woman with power had to be Pris. Gregor wasn’t going to like it, but Nea thought it was too late to do anything about it. The strangeness that was Drew Penderton had morphed into something else. If he’d been twisted before, he was a damned pretzel now. He was dangerous.

  The passenger door swung open, and backing away, she bumped her rear against it.

  ‘Nea?’ Gregor called out.

  She didn’t trust Drew so kept facing him in case he hexed her. If she shielded, Gregor would intervene. It could get messy.

  Gregor was there to protect her so she calmed down. She was safe now. She suspected that Drew had let out more than he’d intended and that her insight about his lack of empathy had touched a raw nerve.

  Breaking eye contact with Drew, Nea took her chance and jumped into the car. ‘It’s okay. Just drive.’ She tugged the door shut.

  Gregor did a double-take. ‘What happened?’

  Nea’s hand went to her smarting cheek. She didn’t realise the injury would be obvious.

  ‘Did he hit you? I’ll squash him.’

  Nea touched Gregor’s hand. ‘No, just drive. Please.’

  ‘Nea?’ His eyes were large and angry. His power bristled beneath the surface.

  ‘Just take me home. There’s no point. Just go.’

  Looking out the window she saw Drew standing under the streetlight, his face cast in eerie shadow, looking more like a ghoul than a man. Nea hugged herself and closed her eyes, blocking out the sight of him.