Darkness Bred Read Online Free PDF Page A

sheepish. “But you think what Sean does is something you get to decide. Sorry. We’ll work it out.”
    “Dammit all, great. You know I won’t stop them.”
    One of the front doors opened and Elin walked in with Sean behind her. Sean carried a floral silk bag over his shoulder.
    Leigh leaned against Niles’s shoulder and said, “Hi, you two,” as if getting together at such an hour were routine. “Come and join us. Are you hungry?” She could feel knife-edged tension in the air.
    Neither of the newcomers said a word or gave a hint of a smile. Without a glance at each other, they sat with Niles and Leigh.
    Leigh didn’t know what to say and evidently Niles didn’t either. She stole a look and recoiled a little from the grim set of his face. He had already said he expected nothing but trouble from “this impossible infatuation” but he knew as well as she did that there was no simple solution.
    “I thought I heard you come in.” Sally’s hoarse voice broke the silence. Her smile forced, she bustled toward them with her uneven, swinging gait that suggested arthritic hips. “I’ve got something in the oven. It’s almost ready.” A flour-dusted apron didn’t come close to covering her green and yellow muumuu.
     As always, her white blond hair was tightly curled all the way to dark roots, and liberally applied makeup made it impossible to guess her age—or the age she might appear to be without the makeup. With the fae, their years were unimportant.
    She arrived at the table, all her attention on Elin. Sally had hidden Elin since she escaped from Queen Tarhazian more than a year earlier, hidden her in shapeshifted form as the small, silvery cat, Skillywidden. They both insisted Tarhazian didn’t know Elin could shapeshift and that it was a gift she’d been born with. No doubt Niles would eventually use that as an argument against Elin being human.
    Elin’s eyes were that same vivid violet shade now as they were when she shifted into a cat. Her mass of shining black hair, scattered with glistening raindrops, swept back from a heart-shaped face and fell to her waist. Her frame was small but she was feminine and perfect, except for bruises that still marred one side of her lovely face and one arm where Tarhazian had beaten her the night she caught her visiting the fae kingdom. Elin had gone to see a friend but one of the Queen’s many spies had reported the visit before Elin could shift back into her cat form.
    Sally had rescued her by diverting Tarhazian and now Elin’s banishment from the fae kingdom really was permanent and Sally was blamed for encouraging Elin’s disobedience, making her own separation from her own kind just as irreversible—not that banishment meant they were safe from sly punishment if they were careless and let their guards down. Leigh believed, as did Elin, that Tarhazian was a long way from severing the strings to her “child,” and there would be many more subtle, and not-so-subtle, attempts to control her again.
    “You’re healing?” Sally said to Elin.
    “That woman had best stay far away from me,” Sean said, his face rigid. “How could she hurt someone so gentle?”
    “I am healed,” Elin said in a small voice. “And I’m not helpless, Sean. I can protect myself.” She looked at her hands, folded in her lap.
    Leigh felt a special bond with the girl since she had spent a great deal of time with Leigh and Jazzy when they first came to Whidbey.
    At this moment Jazzy was nosing at the bag Sean had put on the floor and she figured Elin’s Pokey must be inside.
    “Okay,” Leigh said to Sean and Elin, “that’s all I can take of this. What’s the matter with you two? Are you mad at each other?”
    “Mad?” Sean said. “As in angry? Only a woman would come up with something as ridiculous as that.”
    Leigh said, “In other words there’s something serious going on.”
    “I’ll get those pies,” Sally said and retraced her awkward steps with Jazzy rushing