Priceless

have quite the knack for trouble, Ms. Adamson. But all that aside, you and I need to chat.” He paused in the middle of lifting his hand to his cowl. “May I call you Rylee? It seems to me we are about to become far more acquainted than what one would think relegated us to last names.”
    Panic is a bad thing in my profession—it causes loss of life faster than any other emotion—and it rapidly coursed through me. He’d spelled me in a matter of moments before. I closed my eyes and centered myself.
    A hand brushed along my cheek. “So soft,” he murmured, his voice close enough that I could feel his breath against my skin. The beast holding me did nothing, and I did the only thing I could think of. I reached out to it, connecting with its emotions.
    Confusion, fear, loneliness.
    Anger.
    Bingo. I let it feel my anger, let it feed off my emotion, pushing my fear into it until I felt the spell holding it under the cloaked man’s control crack.
    Hands that had been holding me tight clenched and my bones creaked under the pressure, but I grit my teeth and tried to remain still.
    “Rylee, look at me.” His voice triggered something visceral in me. Fear and lust, a powerful aphrodisiac that spiraled upward. The pain in my arms increased, though, and it curbed whatever spell the man was trying to cast on me. I kept my eyes closed. “No, thanks. I like my soul where it is.”
    “I’m not a thief of souls. You intrigue me; you aren’t like any of the others. Not a witch, not a vampire, not a werewolf. But you have such talent.” His lips brushed against my ear, the soft inhale of breath sending shivers through me. With everything I had, I shoved emotion into the beast, letting my panic infect it—or at least, that’s what I’d hoped for. Milly would come for me. O’Shea wouldn’t leave me here.
    “I’ve blocked the entrance; your friends will not be coming for you,” he said, as if he were reading my mind, which only heightened my fear. “Do you know I was the one who gave the child the ability to reach you? That I was the one to suggest the date and the park to steal her from? I knew you would follow her here no matter what, and with the connections to your little sister . . . well, this child would be one I knew you would search for with a drive that would surpass all your other ‘salvages’.”
    The panic I’d been feeling was now full blown and I struggled, unable to stop my body from trying to escape a fate I knew would somehow be worse than if he was just going to kill me. He’d set me up, he’d done all this to get me here. I continued to push my panic into the beast holding me.
    The air around us stilled, it grew heavy, and then the shit hit the proverbial fan.
    The beast let out a mind-numbing roar, flinging its hands off me and, in doing so, sent the cloaked man tumbling through the air. My feet slid to the ground and I sprinted toward the stairs. I could only hope he hadn’t locked down both of the entrances.
    Heavy thuds resounded behind me, a screech shook the castle foundations, and then silence for a split second.
    “RYLEE!” His voice struck a chord through to my bones. My feet stuttered, and I slowed.
    I needed help, badly. Reaching out, I tapped into the person who’d stepped between me and the cloaked man before.
    “O’Shea.” I whimpered, and locked onto his emotions. The intensity of his feelings stung me, sharper than any child’s would ever be. Fear overridden by true concern, focus, wanting to do the right thing. I held onto him like I would a life raft in rough seas and started to run again. The stairs blurred by. I passed the initiation room and found myself in the hallway where I could see the doorway.
    Heart firing like a jack rabbit on Speed, I fumbled at the handle, and it was the split second mistake he needed to catch up to me, pinning me to the door with his body.
    “You were just going to run out on me?” His voice was no longer a soft seduction, but a deadly ice that made my mouth dry.
    “You seemed busy,” I said, unable to turn off my bitch switch. He tried to flip me around to face him, but I fought even that. I was so close to escape. Suddenly, I knew how the children being snatched must have felt. He handled me as if I was a child, his movements sure and steady as I flailed, using every trick I knew in an attempt to escape, knowing all along I couldn’t fight him forever. He just had to wait me out. Screaming, I knew I was losing, his deceiving