Can you make yourself visible?

. . . will try . . .

His awareness returned to the chamber. A moment later, she appeared on her knees, the unsteady flame of a lamp. She cradled her head in her hands.

He crouched beside her. Acting on instinct, he brought up his arm to wrap around her shoulders, then cursed when all he met was shimmering air.

“The spell took its toll on you.” He made his voice sound calm and straightforward.

She made a murmur of assent. “Never . . . tried it before . . . with another.”

“Practice shall make us stronger.”

Lifting her head, her limitless dark eyes met his. “Perhaps . . . even so, it might not . . . be enough.”

He frowned. “It will.”

“John is so strong. He can hold back . . . the Hellraisers. No simple magic. And I’m . . .” She held up her hand as if to block the candle’s illumination. The light shined through her. She provided no barrier. “All I will ever be.”

Bram surged to his feet. “The hell kind of nonsense are you spouting? You’re a priestess, and a damned powerful one.”

“So powerful I can barely take form.” Her mouth twisted. “A spell that once cost me nothing reduces me to a trembling shade. I will never have flesh—which means I can never break the curse that keeps the Hellraisers from coming to our aid. I achieved this much, but shall go no further. The war is already lost.” She lay her head down once more.

“I wish you did have a body.” He growled. “Because if you did, I’d give you a hell of a shaking. Rattle some sense into you. For you’re acting like a sullen, self-pitying child.” The irony was not lost on him—she had made a similar accusation against him not so long ago.

She lifted her head, eyes ablaze. “Recant your words.”

“Or what? You’ll moan me to death?”

Expression thunderous, she bolted to her feet. “I will find a way—”

“Exactly.” He stalked to her. “You will find a way.”

She glared at him a moment longer before her scowl eased. “Is that how you rallied your troops? By insulting them?”

“Whatever means succeeded. I tried them all. Some wanted kind words. Others fared better with sternness—especially the strong, stubborn ones.”

She exhaled. Had she been flesh, he would have felt her breath warm against his face, and he wanted that with a sudden, fierce severity. To breathe her in. To taste her.

“I hate this,” she growled. “Not knowing what to do, or how to do it. I hate that all I see before me is uncertainty.”

“No war’s outcome is ever certain.”

“But there are means by which success is more readily secured. We have none of them.”

Damn, how he wanted to touch her. To place the tips of his fingers beneath the proud line of her chin, feeling her pulse, and tilt her face up to his. To test the texture of her skin, and learn if she was as soft yet resilient as he imagined.

“You recruited me to this war,” he said. “Not because you believed it to be easily won, but because you knew it had to be fought.”

He captured her gaze with his own. “We may win, we may lose. But swinging a sword is better than digging a grave.”

After a moment, she smiled. Or bared her teeth. He could not quite tell the difference. Yet he’d rather she snarl her defiance than extinguish her own flame.

Deep in the hours of night, when Bram might have once caroused and earned himself the name of Hellraiser, he now planned war. A war of stratagems and subterfuge, but war nonetheless. To consider an all-out frontal assault was as foolish as it was perilous. Much as Bram wanted to charge through the front door of John’s home, sword in hand, he would be dead before he made it halfway to the study.

Poisons and planned assassinations would fare no better. Of a certain, John had safeguards in place. Their only recourse, then—ferret out precisely what Bram’s erstwhile friend intended, and prevent those schemes from happening.

Thus, the war council of two: Bram and Livia.

She circled the bedchamber, counter to him standing immobile in the middle of the room. “From every angle, I cannot see a way in.”

“Simple enough,” he said. “I grab one of John’s cohorts and wring the plan out of him. Or use my gift of persuasion, though,” he added, cracking his knuckles, “it won’t be as satisfying as a fine old interrogation.”

“Then that cohort goes running back to John. And thus our subterfuge is ended.”

He scowled. “Hell and damnation. How’s a man to make war against the Devil if he can’t break some jaws?”

“The shattering of bones must wait, much as it must pain you.” She tilted her head, deep in contemplation. “These aren’t the right strategies. We need more guile.”

Frustration formed a red wall in his mind and spread tension through his body. “I only know the battlefield.”

“Not so,” she corrected. “You also know the bedchamber.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgement. She had seen his most prurient memories, and they were abundant.

She continued, “If you wanted to seduce a woman without letting her know she was being seduced, how might you do that?”

Here was a subject he knew well. “The direct approach must be discarded. She has to think that mere chance has put me in her path. A chain of circumstance rather than deliberate intent.”

“Forces outside of your control,” she said.

“Yet now that she and I have been brought together, I find it most agreeable.” He gazed at her. “Pleasurable, even.”

“Pleasurable?” She raised a brow. “From her presence alone?”

“Is that so difficult for her to believe?”

She pursed her lips. “Given what she knows of your history, it is.”

“Therein lies the wonder and truth of it.” He stepped nearer. “I hadn’t gone looking for such a bond, yet it found me. I need her guidance in this unfamiliar territory.”

Livia did not back away, but tilted her chin up to meet his gaze without blinking. “She might be as inexperienced as you, and have no guidance to offer.”

“Then,” he said, lowering his eyelids, “we’ll feel our way together.”

After a long moment, she said softly, “Yes, I can see the efficacy of your strategy.”

He was tense all over, tense in the way a predator readied itself before leaping onto its prey. In this instance, though, there were two predators, and the struggle would be all the more delicious as they each fought for dominance. How they’d claw and tear at one another. He never wanted anything more.

From beneath this onslaught of need, a revelation emerged. The best strategies for tracking bore striking similarities to a seduction.

“We’ve been busy checking the weapon,” he said, “but not the target. That is where we should look.”

She blinked, returning to herself, and it flattered him no small amount that she’d been just as ensnared as he. “John’s enemies. They are the men who occupy his thoughts.”

“He’ll want to know what they intend, make his next move based on that.”

“Those men in the park. Surely he knows about them.”

She wasn’t in his bed, yet he liked having her here, in this chamber. The two of them together, talking. Plotting. He had never planned strategy with women. He had thought up tactics to get them on their backs, but not this . . . this exchange of ideas and cunning that made his heart beat a little faster, his breath come a little quicker.

“They’re the ones we need to attend to,” he said. “For whatever Maxwell and the others mean to do, John will find out, and seek to prevent it.”

“Go to Maxwell. Ask him what he and the others plan.”

Bram laughed, rueful. “I may not know much about politics, but I know that nothing within it is straightforward. If I ask Maxwell directly, or use my persuasive ability on him, he might suspect me of double dealing. And then you and I shall have opposition from every angle.”