They emerged into the same clearing they had left, just to the other side of Ysabelle’s house. Elijah hadn’t even noticed the path curve. Perhaps she had enchanted it. “They would be wrong,” he told her, although he knew that it wouldn’t make a difference. “I have no more wish to quarrel with the werewolves than I do with the witches, but if it comes to that, we three will not need numbers, allies, or even the small parcel of land I hoped for in order to meet them on equal terms.”

“If that were true,” Ysabelle retorted, releasing his arm and moving gracefully to her front step, “you would not have come here tonight.”

In spite of his disappointment, Elijah found himself smiling. He rather liked the reclusive witch, and he suspected that she was not nearly as unwilling to negotiate with him as she wanted to seem. “I’ll return,” he said impulsively. “I will find a way to show you that you helping us serves your interests, and I’ll be back.”

With her hand resting lightly on the doorknob, Ysabelle turned and smiled so broadly that he knew he had guessed correctly. “You know where to find me,” she replied, “but I doubt I will see you here again anytime soon.”

You will, he vowed, but did not speak the words aloud. They both knew the challenge that he had thrown down, and they both knew that she had accepted it.

CHAPTER SIX

“IT ALL HAPPENED SO FAST.”

Rebekah had been repeating this mantra for days, and yet Captain Eric Moquet never seemed fully satisfied. That kind of restless curiosity might be appealing in a lover, but it was downright annoying in an investigator. She enjoyed the attention lavished on her by the captain, but he was becoming difficult, and Rebekah wasn’t sure how much more patience she had for these soldiers she had so confidently offered to win over to the Mikaelsons’ cause.

“But we must know, and only you can provide the truth.” Eric held Rebekah’s arm as he led her across the treacherous campgrounds. The soldiers had done their best to tame the terrain by the river, filling in marshy holes and cutting back undergrowth, but the wild bayou was barely contained by the orderly sprawl.

She sighed in frustration. Eric had decided that it was terribly important to help her, find the bad men, and punish them. He still wanted to root out her imaginary attacker and bring him to justice, and he was increasingly baffled by Rebekah’s reluctance to cooperate. Eric believed that the rule of law would win out over chaos, and she could not convince him otherwise. It was actually an endearing, if idiotic, belief.

Still, the more Eric questioned her about the supposed attack in the forest, the more Rebekah worried that she might have made a terrible mistake in staging the murder. He did not want to let the crime go unpunished, which she supposed was natural enough. But the problem went far deeper than that.

Until she had met Eric Moquet, Rebekah had allowed herself to forget that humans could be intelligent, insightful, or intuitive. She had expected a single-minded and military pursuit of the wrongdoers, which would run into the dead end she had created. Instead, Eric’s mind had shown flexibility that was, frankly, alarming. He attacked the problem with creativity and inventiveness, so that sooner or later he was bound to notice that she was lying.

As if to make her predicament worse, Eric had also proved himself to be extremely chivalrous over the last few days, not to mention even more handsome than she had realized at first. His hazel eyes were warm and sincere, while his dark hair with its scattering of silver strands made him look dignified and thoughtful. Combined with his deep rumble of a voice that was worth listening to at least as much as his carefully measured words, she found herself fascinated every time they spoke. He walked a gentleman’s fine line flawlessly, managing to provide attentive, charming company without intruding on her privacy. In spite of the worries that never left the back of her mind, they had spent many hours together in perfect companionship. The captain had even shared a wonderful amount of news and gossip with her from his home city of Paris, reminding her fondly of the time she had spent there and the people she had come to know.

But he had rarely spoken about himself, not even to hint at whether a wife and family were waiting for him back in France. Nor would he confide in her much about his obvious interest in the occult, which frustrated her greatly. That ridiculous fixation was almost certainly harmless—she had once caught him reading what looked to be a book of fairy tales with rapt interest—and she saw no sign that he knew anything specific or dangerous to her. But it would have been better if he knew nothing at all, and Rebekah was determined to steer his attention in a more productive direction.

Unfortunately, at the moment, his preferred direction seemed to be tracking down her imaginary bandits. He wanted her to look at the assorted criminals he’d caught in the last few days to see if any of them were her attackers, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

In a burst of inspiration, it occurred to Rebekah that one of her problems might be the solution to the other. If she connected the mystery of her attacker with Eric’s interest in the supernatural, then he would solve one investigation while explaining the other. After all, what was one human’s life—a troublemaker anyway—compared to the safety of her and her brothers? If Eric didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, then Rebekah could convince him that any one of the suspects was the “supernatural” terror.

“Captain, I know you believe that we were set upon by...by some unnatural fiend,” she reminded him. “Could you not eliminate any suspect that’s a mortal man?”

“You saw these creatures in action and still believed them to be mortal men,” he pointed out, his eyes searching hers. “Perhaps we have caught one such fiend without even knowing it.”

“Well, then,” she agreed thoughtfully, “let me get a look at them.”

It took them only a minute more to reach the newly constructed prison. The building was more solid than the surrounding tents, but still rough and unfinished, cobbled together from whatever the soldiers had scrounged from the forest. It looked no better on the inside. The dozen or so men who had been unlucky enough to get caught were crammed into one small cell. Rebekah could only imagine how uncomfortable it must be to sleep. The straw beneath them was dank, and barely any air came from the one high, barred window.

Eric’s second-in-command, the black-stubbled, unimaginative Felix, stood guard by the door. He watched her intently as she passed, and Rebekah felt an inexplicable chill as his eyes raked across her face.

“You are perfectly safe,” Eric murmured in her ear, mistaking her disgust for fear. “Do you know any of them?”

“Perhaps.” She had to force the words out past her teeth, and she wished she could take them back as soon as she did. “These are your suspects?”

“They are, Madame,” Eric confirmed, his sun-weathered face looking satisfied.

Rebekah frowned as she scanned the group. There were more men than she had thought there would be...surely they were not all new arrivals. “Which of these were caught after I came here?”

To her surprise and mild alarm, Eric hesitated. In what light filtered in through the small window, his expression was unreadable. “I am a fair man.” Pride rang in his low voice, but there was an apology in the words as well. “Madame, if you know one of these criminals, then I am sure you will be able to distinguish him without us separating the new from the old.”

In other words, he would not narrow down her choices, testing her as much as the men in the jail cell. That made things considerably more difficult. If she pointed to the wrong thug, Eric would know it, and worse, he might even direct his inquiry toward her.