That had been the frightening part. She did not want to consider what it meant.

Jenna slowly filled her lungs with air and said a silent good-bye to everything that existed for her before this moment. Because now she intended to keep her promise to Leander, now that everything had changed, now that the key had been pushed through the keyhole, the tumblers turned in the lock, the door pushed wide open.

Now that she was Alice, down the rabbit hole.

She understood precisely what he meant when he said she’d have to learn to control the sensations she let in; she thought she’d learned how to do that years ago. But now everything was even brighter, even louder; her surroundings pummeled her harder than they ever had before.

Every breath he took now was a rasp in her ears, every sunbeam that sliced through the windows seared her eyes, every scent in the room and pouring through the open patio doors hammered her relentlessly.

Sun-warmed skin, stale wool and perfumed silk, polished wood, scented soap, freshly laundered sheets, cut grass, car exhaust, arid air. Fecund earth and heated sky and every animal for miles around, pulsing hot with blood. But underneath it all, something new and dark and very unpleasant. The rotten scent of human desperation threaded through like a stain, rising up from the people moving over the earth below to sting her nose with its savage, acrid bite.

Sorrow. Loneliness. Grief. Remorse.

More than anything he said, this moved her, very nearly to tears, though she wouldn’t let him see it. For she was human still, only half the Ikati he spoke of. Her mother’s blood ran true in her veins, just as her father’s did.

It was her mother’s pain she smelled in all those people below. And her father...

“Do you know where my father is?” she asked Leander in a fierce whisper, still looking out over the city.

He answered without hesitation. “I do.”

She bit her lip hard to force back the sob of relief that wanted to escape her mouth. She couldn’t crumble now, that wasn’t even her most important question. She watched a peregrine falcon circle lazily in the bottomless azure sky. It soared on an updraft, hunting, feathers ruffled gray and black by the wind. She felt its eyes of piercing jet flicker over her for a moment, then it banked and soared away.

She swallowed, gathered her courage, and lifted her gaze straight to his. “Is he alive?”

Leander didn’t answer in the affirmative, nor did he answer in the negative. He only gazed at her in silence and drew a weighted breath.

This she took as the answer she dreaded. Her father was dead, years dead, had been so since he vanished like ether when she was a child. She closed her eyes against the hot tears that welled up and fought to swallow around the fist that formed in her throat.

She didn’t know how much time passed before she could speak again. She just repeated one thing over and over in her mind.

You will not let him see you cry. You will not.

When she finally spoke, it was a whispered directive. “You will take me to him.”

“I will take you anywhere on earth you want to go,” he said, his eyes soft.

She nodded back at him, a numbness like frostbite beginning to sink icy runners into her heart. “There are others there—at Sommerley—others like my father. Others like you and....me. There are more of us there?”

“Many more,” he said. That look of wolf-hunger illumed his face again, the thump of his heart rang strong and clear in her ears.

She felt his desire, hot and thick as maple syrup. She smelled his skin, tasted his lips, felt the ghosted heat of his hand branding the small of her back. And she wanted him too, though it was reckless and crazy: he’d come to kidnap her. She couldn’t ever trust him.

So she decided she simply wouldn’t allow herself to feel anything for him at all. She wouldn’t ever let him in.

With an effort of will she didn’t know she had, she blocked it all out. His desire—her own as well—the crush of noises, the assault of smells and sensations. Hardest of all was smothering the sound of his heartbeat. Its echoing beat refused to fade in her ears, though she concentrated so hard she nearly stopped breathing.

“I’m going to require something from you now, before we go any further,” Jenna said softly. She let her gaze trail over his face one final time, memorizing its carved and perfect planes and angles the way she had memorized those of her father’s face, so long ago.

Another beautiful memory she’d had to erase to survive.

“Yes,” he answered, his voice rough. He sat forward in the chair, coiled so tight he seemed ready to spring. His eyes glittered bright, unearthly green. “Anything.”

She looked at him, at his eyes, at his lips, at his body so strong and muscled. His beauty was almost sublime, but now she felt nothing. In the space of a single moment, her heart had turned to something cold and barren. Lifeless.

Jenna nodded, satisfied. This deadness was good. This would help her move forward.

“I require your word now, Lord McLoughlin. Actually, no,” she corrected herself with a tiny jerk of her head that sent waves of honeyed blonde cascading over the cashmere wrap. “I require your oath.”

“Anything,” he repeated, instinctively lifting a hand out toward her.

“Promise me you won’t ever touch me again,” she said, hard and cold like the glacier inside her.

His hand frozen in the air between them, Leander stared into her eyes and found a new, resolute hardness staring back at him. He realized with an unpleasant shock that turned his mouth to dust that she was dead serious.

His hand lowered slowly to rest on the cool wood arm of the chair. He considered her in a beat of silence and everything seemed to grind to a slow, molasses stop. Dust motes coiled lazily in a shaft of sunlight from the windows, suspended in the air, suspended like his heartbeat.

He had found her. He had wanted her. He had failed to move her. Now that she’d made her intentions clear, he had only his duty to return her to Sommerley left.

He allowed his rigid body to lean against the solid, grounding back of the chair. His answer came soft and very low.

“If that is what you require, Jenna, you shall have it.”

A fraction of the tension she held in her body disappeared. She even smiled, small and tight. “Well then,” she said, a little brighter. “When do we leave?”

“....and the beluga,” Morgan said between mouthfuls of the glistening white caviar, “is exceptional. You really should try it.”

Jenna wrinkled her nose at the mound of gelatinous fish roe and looked back out the rain-streaked pane. They were descending. Vast swaths of emerald forest interspersed with fields of rolling green hills and low stone walls rose up to meet them. Thunderclouds heavy with rain boiled overhead in the dark sky, and off in the distance, a lone spike of lightning scorched the air with a fleeting, electric brilliance.

“I thought caviar was supposed to be black,” Jenna said to the window, wondering if the lightning was a bad omen. “Or red.”

“The cheap stuff is,” Morgan replied with a shrug that rustled the black taffeta stretched over her shoulders. The blouse was low cut, tight, fronted with a row of delicate pearl buttons. It showed off more than a hint of décolletage, while her miniscule skirt showed off what seemed like ten miles of tanned, bare leg. With a set of carved cheekbones, a fall of shiny, sable hair rippling over one shoulder, and a cherry-red pout, she was intimidatingly beautiful.

“The older the sturgeon, the lighter the caviar is in color, the more exquisite the taste. This is Almas, from the Caviar House & Prunier in London. It’s the best money can buy.”

She swallowed another bite spread thick on a lightly buttered toast point and sighed in pleasure. “It’s heaven, nothing less. Let me make you one.” She dug the tiny mother of pearl spoon into the crystal bowl set in front of her on the dining table. It smelled faintly of salt water and hazelnuts.