Sebastian

wasn't her, one of the others had spent some time in the cottage."
    "Why would they enter someone else's home?"
    "I don't know." Closing the distance between them, he put his arms around her. Like holding sunlight , he thought, the feel of her cleansing him of the lust the succubus had drawn from him—and filling him with a different kind of lust. Just as hot, but sweeter.
    "Don't wander around the Den without me," he said.
    "I can't live pinned to your shirttails."
    He eased back enough to look at her. Stubborn rabbit. "Just until I find out where these newcomers came from and what they want. They're not like the other incubi and succubi, Lynnea. Look, you don't have to stay pinned to my shirttails, as you put it. You could give Philo a hand or… or spend time with Teaser." Did she have any idea what it cost him to surrender his prize to another incubus, even temporarily? "Please."
    She studied his face for so long. "All right," she finally said, but she didn't stop studying him. "Can you all do that?"
    "Do what?"
    "Change your face. It was subtle, but I was sure her face didn't look the same when she was talking to you as it did when I first opened the door." She shrugged. "Maybe it was a trick of the light."
    "And maybe it wasn't." Uneasy again, he stepped back. "There are stories—old stories—about the incubi and succubi, about how they lure men and women by appearing to be a friend or lover." Hand in hand with those stories were the ones about incubi and succubi providing such intense pleasure the sex was lethal.
    "Do you know me?" he demanded suddenly. "Can you feel me?"
    "If you're asking if I could tell the difference between you and someone wearing your face, then, yes, I know you. I would always know you, Sebastian. Even if the face was the same, that other person couldn't be you."
    He hadn't realized how much he'd needed that answer until he felt the tension drain out of him. Weary now, he rubbed his hands over his face. "I brought some food. Let's eat. Then we'll consider what comes next."
    While they shared the food in companionable silence, Sebastian chewed on one thought: Why were these newcomers so interested in him?
     

 

     
     

Chapter Fourteen

 

     
     

     
    t
    Koltak rapped on the door, then barely waited for an acknowledgment before rushing into the room.
    "You sent for me, Harland?" he asked.
    Harland turned away from the window. "The council has received news. It is terrible—and terrifying."
    A chill went through Koltak, but he just waited, saying nothing.
    "Belladonna has shown her true nature. She attacked the Landscapes' School, Koltak. She killed all of the Landscapes and Bridges who were at the school, leaving Ephemera's landscapes vulnerable to her malevolence."
    Koltak staggered to a chair and sank into it. "How is that possible?"
    "Her power has turned vicious, and she's far stronger than any of us imagined." Harland moved away from the window. "Already the dark feelings in human hearts are forming a veil over some of the landscapes."
    "But… what will killing the other Landscapers gain her? She can't control a landscape if she doesn't resonate with it."
    "What she can't control will be torn apart by the storm of human emotions," Harland replied. "Unless we stop her, Ephemera will become an insane world that will destroy everything humans have built. Music, literature, cultured society. All lost. Crushed by the desperate need to survive in a world that keeps changing so fast there will be no chance to survive in those landscapes. And what is left will belong to Belladonna and will be a dark place full of terrors." He paused. "There is evidence that she's pulled some of the darkest landscapes back into the world. You know the ones I mean."
    Koltak struggled for any coherent thought like a drowning man flailing to grab hold of anything that will keep him from going under. "Nadia. What about Nadia? Surely she's not trying to protect—"
    "We will try to reach Nadia. Right now, we cannot confirm that she and her son, Lee, are still living—or if they, too, were victims of the rogue Landscaper's viciousness." Harland looked at Koltak with an expression of harsh sympathy. "Belladonna must be destroyed."
    "But we can't find her!"
    "We must find her," Harland said. "Since we don't know what happened to her mother and brother, there's only one person left who might be able to draw Belladonna to Wizard City, where the council will be able to gather its full strength and destroy