Blade Dance (A Cold Iron Novel Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page B

what you’re here for, Ann.
    “Walking back and forth across town twice without dinner will do that to you,” she supplied, letting her eyes roam his athletic form again as he turned toward the kitchen.
    The fridge was a stainless-steel behemoth, a restaurant model scaled down for a home kitchen. Finn opened it and handed her a beer, icy cold and dark. Next he produced an artfully arranged platter of meat and cheese decorated with pieces of cut fruit and vegetables carved into the shapes of flowers.
    She raised an eyebrow when he placed the food on the counter. “Do you have Martha Stewart squirreled away in one of the cupboards?”
    “I have a housekeeper,” he admitted. “Though she’s used to managing a larger residence. Until the foundation of the brownstone is stabilized and the gas can be turned back on, there’s nothing for her to do but cook and clean for this place, and since it’s just me here,” he said, taking a bite out of a carrot carved to look like a rose, “she’s got some extra time on her hands. Possibly a little too much.”
    That explained the vegetable sculptures, but not the condition of the brownstone. “What cracked the foundation on your house?” she asked.
    “Gas explosion,” he said.
    She still didn’t buy it. “I was there that day. I don’t remember smelling gas. And I don’t remember seeing any flames.”
    He grinned at her. It was a slow, sexy expression that went all the way to his eyes. He took another swig of his beer, then said, “All right, then. What do you think it was?”
    Good question. “I think you were cooking meth, or something equally dangerous, in your basement, and it went wrong.” That was the rational explanation for what had happened.
    “If I wanted to cook meth, I wouldn’t do it in a residential neighborhood where people could get hurt.”
    “So you’re a civic-minded criminal,” she said.
    “Let’s say I take care of my own.”
    “That’s just a romantic way to describe a protection racket.”
    “Or feudalism or government . Yours didn’t treat the Irish very well when they flocked here in the nineteenth century. My kind did.”
    “Your kind are racketeers.”
    That slow grin again. “Is that what the teachers at your little school call us?”
    The Fair Folk. The Beautiful People. The Good Neighbors.
    “No,” she said. “They call you dangerous.” Somehow they were now standing very close, Ann realized.
    “That isn’t all they call us,” he said. “The Irish here have got half a dozen quaint euphemisms for me and mine. The Irish are afraid that if they say our true names, we’ll come at dusk and take their prettiest children away.”
    She was only inches away from him now. His proximity had an undeniable effect on her. She could feel the pulse beating in her neck, hear her breath coming quicker.
    He closed the distance between them and reached for her.
    “Fairy tales are for children, Mr. MacUmhaill,” she said, trying for some composure.
    “It’s Finn.” His hands had wandered. One was tracing the path of her freckles down her neck. She shouldn’t allow that.
    But she didn’t want him to stop.
    “You’re too smart to deny the evidence of your own eyes, Ann Phillips. You heard a voice before the house exploded that day. I’m sure you know that some opera singers can shatter glass with a perfect note. Now imagine such power amplified by a force that can draw on all the energy in living things. It’s called stone song, and it’s a kind of weapon. A lost art. One that should have remained so.”
    He was right. She’d heard the note, felt it vibrate through the floor, the walls, the furniture, her body, and she’d been . . . electrified by the sound. She had felt like that note had struck a sounding board in her—and that, that had terrified her. Almost as much as what followed.
    “And the way we . . . got out of the building that day?”
    “That is a gift possessed only by my kind. The power to pass through