Serena sat bolt upright in bed, gasping. In shock, she stared across the darkened room for a moment, then hurriedly leaned over and turned on the lamp on the nightstand. Blinking in the light, she held her hands up and stared at them, reassuring herself that they were hers, still slender and pale and tipped with neat oval nails.
They were hers. She was here and unchanged. Awake. Aware. Herself again.
She could still feel the alien sensations, still see the powerful bronzed hands against paler, softer skin, and still feel sensations her body was incapable of experiencing simply because she was female, not male—
And then she realized.
“Dear God … Richard,” she whispered.
She had been inside his mind, somehow, in his head just like before, and he had been with another woman. He had been having sex with another woman. Serena had felt what he felt, from the sensual enjoyment of soft female flesh under his touch to the ultimate draining pleasure of orgasm. She had felt what he felt.
She drew her knees up and hugged them, feeling tears burning her eyes and nausea churning in her stomach. Another woman. He had a woman somewhere, and she wasn’t new because there had been a sense of familiarity in him, a certain knowledge. He knew this woman. Her skin was familiar, her taste, her desire. His body knew hers.
Even Master wizards, it seemed, had appetites just like other men.
Serena felt a wave of emotions so powerful, she could endure them only in silent anguish. Her thoughts were tangled and fierce and raw. Not a monk, no, hardly a monk. In fact, it appeared he was quite a proficient lover, judging by the woman’s response to him.
On her nightstand the lamp’s bulb burst with a violent sound, but she neither heard it nor noticed the return of darkness to the room.
So he was just a man after all, damn him, a man who got horny like other men and went to some slut who’d spread her legs for him. And often. His trips “out of town” were more frequent these last years. Oh, horny indeed …
Unnoticed by Serena, her television set flickered to life, madly scanned through all the channels, and then died with a sound as apologetic as a muffled cough.
Damn him. What’d he do, keep a mistress? Some pretty, pampered blond—she had been blond, naturally—with empty, hot eyes who wore slinky nightgowns and crotchless panties, and moaned like a bitch in heat? Was there only one? Or had he bedded a succession of women over the years, keeping his reputation here in Seattle all nice and tidy while he satisfied his appetites elsewhere?
Serena heard a little sound and was dimly shocked to realize it came from her throat. It sounded like that of an animal in pain, some tortured creature hunkered down in the dark as it waited helplessly to find out if it would live or die. She didn’t realize that she was rocking gently. She didn’t see her alarm clock flash a series of red numbers before going dark, or notice that her stereo system was spitting out tape from a cassette.
Only when the overhead light suddenly exploded was Serena jarred from her misery. With a tremendous effort she struggled to control herself.
“Concentrate,” she whispered. “Concentrate. Find the switch.” And for the first time, perhaps spurred on by her urgent need to control what she felt, she did find it. Her wayward energies stopped swirling all around her and were instantly drawn into some part of her she’d never recognized before, where they were completely and safely contained, held there in waiting without constant effort from her.
Moving stiffly, feeling exhausted, Serena got out of bed and moved cautiously across the room to her closet, trying to avoid the shards of glass sprinkled over the rug and the polished wood floor. There were extra light bulbs on the closet shelf, and she took one to replace the one from her nightstand lamp. It was difficult to unscrew the burst bulb, but she managed; she didn’t trust herself to flick all the shattered pieces out of existence with her powers, not when she’d come so close to losing control entirely.
When the lamp was burning again, she got a broom and dustpan and cleaned up all the bits of glass. A slow survey of the room revealed what else she had destroyed, and she shivered a little at the evidence of just how dangerous unfocused power could be.
Ironically, she couldn’t repair what she had wrecked, not by using the powers that had destroyed. Because she didn’t understand the technology of television or radio or even clocks, it simply wasn’t possible for her to focus her powers to fix what was broken. It would be like the blind trying to put together by touch alone something they couldn’t even recognize enough to define.
To create or control anything, it was first necessary to understand its very elements, its basic structure, and how it functioned. How many times had Merlin told her that? Twenty times? A hundred?
Serena sat down on her bed, still feeling drained. But not numb; that mercy wasn’t granted to her. The switch she had found to contain her energies could do nothing to erase the memory of Richard with another woman.
It hurt. She couldn’t believe how much it hurt. All these years she had convinced herself that she was the only woman in his life who mattered, and now she knew that wasn’t true. He didn’t belong only to her. He didn’t belong to her at all. He really didn’t see her as a woman—or, if he did, she obviously held absolutely no attraction for him.
The pain was worse, knowing that.
Dawn had lightened the windows by the time Serena tried to go back to sleep. But she couldn’t. She lay beneath the covers, staring up at the ceiling, feeling older than she had ever felt before. There was no limbo now, no sense of being suspended between woman and child; Serena knew she could never again be a child, not even to protect herself.
The question was, How was that going to alter her relationship with Merlin? Could she pretend there was nothing different? No. Could she even bear to look at him without crying out her pain and rage? Probably not. How would he react when she made her feelings plain, with disgust or pity? That was certainly possible. Would her raw emotion drive him even farther away from her? Or was he, even now, planning to banish her from his life completely?
Because he knew. He knew what she had discovered in the dark watches of the night.
Just before her own shock had wrenched her free of his mind, Serena had felt for a split second his shock as he sensed and recognized her presence intruding on that intensely private act.
He knew. He knew she had been there.
It was another part of her pain, the discomfiting guilt and shame of having been, however unintentionally, a voyeur. She had a memory now that she would never forget, but it was his, not hers. She’d stolen it from him…. And of all the things they both had to face when he came home, that one was likely to be the most difficult of all.
The only certainty Serena could find in any of it was the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again.
THREE
Tuesday was a very unsettling day for Serena. Preferring to keep busy, she went to work as usual, despite her shortage of sleep. But she couldn’t keep her thoughts off Merlin and what had happened the night before. Still, she had years of practice in maintaining a normal facade, and that enabled her to get through the day without disgracing herself by bursting into tears or snapping at everyone she encountered.
At least the “switch” she had finally discovered remained firmly off, which kept her inner turmoil from manifesting itself in another dangerous release of unfocused energies. For that she was grateful.
But a bad day was made immeasurably worse when she found Jeremy Kane waiting in the lobby of her office building.
“Hello, Kane.” Everyone who knew him, even women, called the reporter by his last name.
“Serena.” He was smiling. “If you have a few minutes, I’d like to talk to you. There’s a coffee shop just across the street. Shall we?”
His manner was less abrupt than usual, and all her instincts went on alert. She didn’t like his uncharacteristically pleasant smile, and there was a gleam in his eyes that made her want to hold on tight to her purs
e. But Serena knew she had taken a risk on Friday night, and if there was going to be fallout, she intended to deal with it herself.
The last thing she needed right now was an I-told-you-so from Merlin.
Besides that, she was curious about what the reporter had in mind, so she willingly accompanied him into the coffee shop. They were shown to a booth in a corner, fairly private in the less-than-crowded shop, and Kane talked desultorily about the weather (overcast, as usual), politics (screwed up, as usual), and the latest best-seller (his name wasn’t on the cover, so he hated it) until their coffee came.
“What’s on your mind, Kane?” Serena asked after the waitress left. Ordinarily she would have let him get around to it in his own time, but she wanted to hurry home and see if Merlin had returned.
Kane sipped his coffee for a moment, pale blue eyes fixed on her face. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, but the wear and tear of nearly twenty years of a downhill slide was stamped into his features, lending them an oddly blurred, indistinct appearance that was a bit unsettling.
“Did you take me back to my apartment Friday night, Serena? After our dance?” he asked finally in a very casual tone.
As she assumed an expression of surprise, her mind worked very swiftly, examining the question and recalling every one of her own actions. Of course she knew why he was asking: because he had most likely found the draft of the announcement in his pocket and, obviously remembering she’d been with him before he passed out, had concluded that she was somehow responsible. The most logical answer, naturally, was that she had accompanied or followed him home and had, for some reason, left the paper in his pocket for him to find.
“Why would I have done something like that?” she asked in a puzzled voice.
“Never answer a question with a question.”
“No, I didn’t take you back to your apartment. I repeat, why would I? A dance is one thing, Kane, but we certainly don’t know each other that well.”
He didn’t lose his smile. “Why did you ask me to dance, by the way? I’m hardly your type.”
Gently, Serena said, “Somebody dared me to, Kane. Sorry about that, but I’ve never been able to resist a dare.”
“And did this somebody also dare you to ask me what my address was while we danced?”
So he remembered that, too, dammit. “Your address,” she replied, “is in the phone book. I looked it up months ago when I was chairing that committee and needed a speaker. Don’t you remember?”
Judging by his tightened lips and narrowed eyes, it appeared he had forgotten that. So had she, as a matter of fact, until just now.
Going on the offensive, Serena shook her head and said, “I don’t know what you’re after, Kane, but if this is the way you react after a woman asks you to dance, it’s no wonder you don’t get invited very often.”
He ignored the latter part of her statement. “What I’m after? Answers, Serena. I’m a very curious man. I’d like to know, for instance, just who you are. You certainly weren’t born Serena Smyth—that much I’ve found out. I believe you took the name, legally, at sixteen. That was after you came to Seattle, of course, and moved in with Richard Merlin.”
She allowed one of her eyebrows to climb in mild amusement. “You make a perfectly innocent and commonplace act sound criminal, Kane. So I changed my name—big deal. If you must know, after my drunken father wrapped his car around a telephone pole when I was six and made me an orphan, I was passed from relative to relative for ten years. That was when I ran away.”
“To Merlin,” he said in a silky tone.
Serena ignored the tone. “To Richard. I decided to change my name, since I was old enough and since I wanted nothing further to do with any of my other relatives.”
“Other relatives? So you still claim he’s an uncle?”
She smiled. “No, he’s actually some kind of third cousin. But calling him an uncle simplifies matters. Are you planning a story for the tabloids, Kane? One of those juicy headlines like, ‘Uncle and Niece in Incestuous Relationship’? Why don’t you just write that I’m going to have Elvis’s baby? Or an alien’s, maybe.”
He flushed an ugly red. “I think the society page would be interested in the story,” he said tightly. “Wouldn’t all your tight-assed friends just love to know the real relationship between you and Merlin?”
Serena couldn’t help it; she giggled. “Sorry, Kane, but you seem to have lost track of what really matters to people these days. Do you think you’re the first to suspect Richard and I are lovers? Don’t be ridiculous; those rumors pop up about once every year or so, as regular as clockwork, until something else comes along to stir up interest.” Because she made very sure to distract anyone who suspected the relationship was in any way unusual.
“Can you deny it?” he snapped.
She looked him straight in the eye and replied with a calmness that was far more convincing than histrionics would have been. “Of course I deny it. Richard has been a lot of things to me, but never my lover.”
“Maybe not,” Kane insisted, “but there’s something screwy in your relationship. What name were you born with, Serena? The court documents are sealed, oddly enough.”
“Oddly? You know, for an investigative reporter, you seem to have a blind spot regarding facts. I was a minor; of course the court documents are sealed. The name I was born with is no longer mine, and is certainly none of your business. As for my screwy relationships—with Richard or anybody else—they also are none of your business.”
“I’ll find out what I want to know,” he warned her softly. “Sooner or later I’ll find a way through all the walls I keep hitting in Merlin’s background. And it’s just a matter of time until I figure out all your secrets. There’s a story here somewhere, Serena. I can smell it.”
Serena slid out of the booth and smiled pleasantly at him. She had kept her cool easily until he mentioned a search into Merlin’s background, and then she had felt a surge of anger mixed with worry. That was all she needed, to have unintentionally put this story-hungry reporter onto Merlin’s trail.
“The only story here concerns a desperate search for lost glory, Kane,” she said. “And it’s a bit pathetic, you know. If you can’t find something a hell of a lot more important than us, then it’s no wonder you’ve fallen so far. Thanks for the coffee, and don’t get up.”
She walked away without a backward glance, which was a pity. If she had looked back, she might have seen the look of obstinacy on his face. And it might have warned her.
Serena got home to find that Merlin had not yet returned. She changed out of her business suit and into slacks and a sweater, went into the kitchen long enough to say hello to Rachel and fix herself a glass of iced tea, then wandered back to the entrance hall. Merlin’s study opened into this foyer, and Serena headed toward it, intending to look for another of the books on her reading list.
Two feet from the door she suddenly stopped as though she’d run into a wall.
The study was always locked except when he was in it, but Merlin had never barred the room to his Apprentice. The lock was easy for her to undo, since it was intended only to keep out Rachel and any visitor to the house who might find the contents of the room a bit odd. But the door was blocked now by something a great deal stronger than the impotent man-made lock. And no Apprentice wizard could breach that barrier.
After several moments Serena retreated to the stairs and sat down on the third tread, staring toward that solid oak portal and feeling more than a little shaken. How long had he been doing this? Certainly not always; several times she had entered his study while he was away, looking for a book or scroll or something else she needed. When had she last gone into the room when he was absent?
Months ago, she remembered. She had undone the lock easily and automatically, and there had been nothing else to keep her out of the room.
She set her half-finished glass of tea beside her and hugged her upraised knees as she continued gazing at the forbidden door. Why? Why had
he shut her out? Was this just another sign of his withdrawal from her, or was there something else going on, something he hadn’t told her about? Something he didn’t trust her to know?
No matter what the answers were, the questions had sown even more seeds of anxiety and fear in Serena. Coupled with the pain and fury of what she had discovered in the night, this new sign of trouble between her and Merlin made her emotional state so turbulent, she couldn’t even think straight. She could only sit there on the stairs and wait, the confused emotions simmering, until he came home.
When he finally opened the front door almost an hour later, she didn’t move or greet him. She just watched as he set an overnight bag on the floor, shrugged out of his raincoat, and hung it on the coat tree by the door.
His lean face still, the handsome features composed, he turned and looked steadily at her. After a moment he said calmly, “You found the switch.”
It didn’t surprise her that he knew. He had sensed her power from the first time he’d set eyes on her, so of course he could sense that she was now able to completely contain that power.
Serena rose slowly and stepped down to the bottom of the stairs. “That’s not all I found,” she said, and she could hear the strained note in her own voice contrasting sharply with his utter self-possession.
Rachel came into the foyer before he could respond. Whether she saw or sensed a problem, all she placidly said was, “You’re home. Dinner in half an hour.”
“Thank you, Rachel,” Merlin said, still looking at Serena.
As the housekeeper retreated to her domain, Serena felt a stab of real panic. It was now, she realized. The confrontation she had shied away from loomed between them. There was no way to stop it now, not for her or for him. And no matter how it ended, their relationship would never again be the same.