Romancing The Crown: Drew and Samira: Her Lord Protector

‘‘My belief or lack of it doesn’t determine reality. People once believed, based on good evidence, that the world was flat.’’

‘‘That open mind of yours.’’ This time she didn’t laugh. She just looked tired. ‘‘Maybe you’re willing to change your mind if I can prove you wrong, but I’m not interested in proving anything.’’

‘‘I’m not asking you to. Listen.’’ Impatient, he claimed her hand. Her palm was very warm. ‘‘If Lorenzo is willing to give you a chance, why can’t you try? Don’t you want to see the bastards caught?’’

‘‘Oh, unfair. Of course I want them caught. But I’m not…’’ She sighed and pulled her hand back. ‘‘I’ll try to explain. I doubt you’ll accept what I say, but I’ll try. First, I use the word psychic because that’s the term you understand, but I was raised to think of myself as Gifted.’’

‘‘I see.’’

She chuckled. ‘‘No, you don’t. You’re trying not to let on that you think I’m a few bubbles shy of a full bath, and my family must be weird, too.’’

‘‘I can accept that what you say is fact to you.’’

‘‘Good enough.’’ She sipped her wine, her brows drawn slightly in thought. ‘‘I won’t begin at the beginning, because that goes back a little too far—more than twenty generations. The women in my family have always been Gifted, you see, some only slightly, some…quite strongly. Of course we aren’t the only ones. The Gifts—psychic abilities —appear in people all over the world, and I suspect that almost everyone has some trace of them. But because they have appeared so consistently and strongly in those of my blood, they have been studied. We know a great deal about how these abilities work, how to nurture and train them. And how to protect ourselves from them.’’

‘‘There is some danger in these, ah, Gifts?’’

‘‘The stronger the Gift, the greater the danger. Especially if the Gifted is unaware and untrained.’’ The delicate skin around her eyes tightened and she looked away. Once more she started playing with the softened candle wax, this time pushing the sides in toward the wick, forcing the melted wax higher on the wick. The flame retreated, diminished, until it was a small, stubborn bubble of fire, nearly drowned.

It was obvious she believed utterly in what she was saying. Drew thought of the fioreanno she hadn’t had, the father she’d never known and the way she’d smiled so brightly when she told him her mother had never been married. His throat ached with pity. There was a great deal she hadn’t said, a great deal he knew from Lorenzo that he had no business knowing. Such as how her mother died.

Yet she understood and applauded the strengths of the society that had made her an outsider. Was it surprising, then, that she would cling so fiercely to a set of beliefs, however bizarre, that gave her a heritage? That sense of belonging may have been what gave her the strength to reject bitterness.

‘‘You’re trained, though, I take it?’’ he said carefully. ‘‘And certainly not unaware. Wouldn’t that lessen the danger?’’

‘‘Yes, but…the nature of the danger varies according to the nature of the Gift, which is fourfold—what you would call telepathy, empathy, healing and prophecy. We name them Air, Water, Earth and Fire. My Gift is Fire. I see visions.’’

He didn’t want to know any more. The tally of her delusions was already troubling. But she posed a threat to people who liked to deal with their problems by killing. He had to persuade her to cooperate with Lorenzo. ‘‘And what is the nature of your danger?’’

She raised her eyes to his. Some trick of the light reflected the tiny candle flame there, twinned. ‘‘Burning, of course,’’ she said. Suddenly she breached the candle wall with one finger, spilling the liquid wax. The flame leaped high, higher. And she set her hand, flat-palmed, atop that flame.

He seized her wrist and yanked her hand away.

The wick smoked, dead and black, filling the air with the pungent scent of a just-snuffed candle. He turned her hand over.

Her palm was unmarked. There was no reddened spot, no sooty residue. Nothing.

His gaze flew to her face. Her expression was clear, remote, smiling. ‘‘A little fire like that can’t hurt me. It’s the big ones I fear.’’

It had been a trick, of course. The candle must have been extinguished before her palm touched it. ‘‘That’s why you won’t help?’’

She pulled her hand away. ‘‘I can’t help. From what I can tell, psychics who work with the police—the ones who aren’t charlatans, that is—are empaths or telepaths. I’m not. I can’t slide inside a terrorist’s mind that way.’’

She was too calm. He didn’t think she was lying, exactly, but she was holding something back. ‘‘What aren’t you telling me?’’

‘‘All sorts of things. It would take rather longer than you and I have to pass on the accumulated lore of the last thousand years.’’ She stood. ‘‘I think, for me, the party’s over. It’s time I went home.’’

He shoved his chair back and stood, too, reaching across the table to grab her wrist—as if he had to anchor her to keep her from vanishing as suddenly as the snuffed candle flame. ‘‘A thousand years?’’

When she lifted her eyebrows that way, she reminded him of his grandmother, who was capable of depressing pretension at twenty paces with just such an expression. ‘‘Roughly that. Twenty-seven generations, to be precise, traced through the female line. I could recite my begats for you.’’

‘‘Twenty-seven generations’ worth?’’

‘‘I had to memorize them as a child. Look, Drew, this evening hasn’t gone as either of us intended. I think it’s best I saw myself home.’’

‘‘That isn’t happening.’’ He moved around the table, transferring his grip from her wrist to her hand. ‘‘Does your aunt believe all this, too?’’

‘‘Of course. She taught me a good deal of the lore.’’ Rose didn’t protest his hold on her hand as they left the bistro. She ignored it.

The mist had deepened, thick enough now to dampen his face when he stepped outside. Overhead, the sky was lost in the drizzling darkness; on the street, lights from shops, cafés, the piazza and lampposts were draped in gauzy drifts. It was still early, barely ten o’clock, and the weather didn’t seem to have discouraged anyone. The sidewalk held plenty of others with their own goals for the night.

Drew wondered at himself. Why did he keep seizing her hand? It would have been reassuring to put the urge down to desire, but it wasn’t a woman’s hand he usually wanted to hold. ‘‘Does your aunt have one of these Gifts?’’

‘‘Yes, though hers isn’t strong. She’s Earth-Gifted—a healer, among other things.’’

‘‘What other things?’’

‘‘Oh, children and puppies adore her, plants grow for her and she loves to cook. She can take a headache away, ease a fever or speed the healing of cuts, breaks, burns, scrapes or scratches. She also acts as my…but that wouldn’t be of interest to a confirmed skeptic like you.’’

The way she cut off whatever she’d been about to say left Drew a bread-crumb trail he intended to follow. When they reached the street corner, though, where an awning kept the mist out, he stopped. ‘‘The car’s about four blocks away. Why don’t you wait here while I get it?’’ She’d be safe. He’d glimpsed Roberts in the crowd, hanging back in an effort to be unobtrusive. He’d tell the man to stay with her.

‘‘But there’s no need for that!’’ Rose tipped her face up into the dampness, letting it dew her cheeks. ‘‘This feels good.’’

‘‘Your affinity for fire doesn’t make you dislike getting wet, then.’’

‘‘It doesn’t work that way. I enjoy the ocean.’’ She started walking again, so he kept pace with her.

The street beside them was busy with buses, bicycles, cars and taxicabs, but traffic in Montebello was leisurely compared to the frenzied battle of Italian streets. For the most part the people, too, ambled along with a lack of haste typical of this city, an easy flow of workers in wrinkled cotton, young men in neatly pressed shirts with their arms around women in bright dresses, teens of both sexes in jeans and Reeboks, old men in stiff shoes and black pants, and old women with shawls and full skirts. Here and there he saw a uniform—police or army. Most of the faces held the sun-kissed duskiness of the Mediterranean peoples, though a few were tourist-pale or African-dark. He didn’t see a single umbrella.

‘‘So you like the water?’’ he asked after a moment.

‘‘My family’s lore says that a Fire-Gifted who fears or dislikes water is out of balance. It’s rather like the Chinese system of feng shui, in which the elements have a constructive and a destructive or balancing cycle. Fire without water to cool it becomes purely destructive.’’

‘‘I’ve heard of feng shui,’’ he said neutrally. He wasn’t interested in it, any more than he was in fortune-telling or numerology. But people told him things. ‘‘The astrological signs are divided along similar lines, too, aren’t they? And, ah, what’s it called—the witchcraft religion. It refers to earth, air, fire and water, too, doesn’t it?’’

‘‘Wicca, you mean? There are similarities in most of the mystical or magical systems, probably for the same reason religions all over the world value the same qualities—like love, kindness, courage, loyalty, honesty. Some things are universal. As for astrology… Drew, you don’t believe that nonsense, do you?’’

He delivered his line with appropriate shock. ‘‘You mean you don’t?’’

‘‘I don’t mean to criticize anyone who does believe in it, but it seems silly. Though I suppose a half-awake seer might be able to use horoscopes to tap into her abilities,’’ she conceded. ‘‘It can’t be worse than using a crystal ball.’’

‘‘You don’t believe in astrology or use a crystal ball. My illusions are shattered.’’

‘‘You’re teasing me,’’ she said resignedly.

‘‘So why don’t you use a crystal ball?’’

‘‘Real crystal can be useful, but those glass globes people call crystal balls aren’t of much use, except as a neutral focus. Glass is a psychic insulator. Drew, do you really want to hear all this? I feel as if I’m delivering a lecture in Psychic Studies 101.’’