Copper Beach

shadows. Evangeline watched him disappear. She was starting to wonder if she was caught up in some bizarre dream. Perhaps she was hallucinating. It was not beyond the realm of possibility, she thought. Her employers and her friends were convinced that her nerves had been badly strained by the attack two weeks earlier. Perhaps they were right.

    Lucas’s powerful hand closed around her arm. The shock of the physical contact made her flinch. Her talent was still flaring wildly and it was linked to her sense of touch. She could perceive Lucas’s aura now quite clearly. The fierce bands of ice-and-fire energy took her breath.

    “Relax, Miss Ames,” he said. “I will not hurt you.”

    There was nothing in his aura to indicate that he was lying. She was safe enough, she decided, at least for the moment. She pulled herself together and lowered her talent.

    “This way, Miss Ames.” He steered her around a large bush. “Watch your step. There are a number of hazards on the grounds, including those roses.”

    The power she had glimpsed in Lucas’s aura warned her that he was probably a good deal more dangerous than anything in his strange gardens.

    Sharpy Hobson had stopped screaming, but she knew that she would hear the echoes of his last horrified cries in her nightmares for a long time to come.