"I'm not the only one," Dana continued, "who has been curious about the woman who managed to tame our old wolf. So be prepared for a lot of rudeness from the women"-her voice took on a serious warning note as she looked at Charles-"and flirting from the men."
"You've heard something?" Charles asked her.
Dana shook her head. "No. But I know men, and I know wolves. None of them are dominant enough to face you directly-but they'll see her as a weakness. When your father chose to stay home, he gave them an opportunity for challenge. You are not an Alpha-and they'll resent having to listen to you." She took up a turpentine-soaked rag and cleaned her hands. "Now I'll quit lecturing you, and you can come around here and take a look at what I've done instead."
Chapter THREE
BRAVE woman, thought Anna, to thoroughly antagonize us, then show us something that matters to her. There was nothing in Dana's face to show that their opinion was important to her-but Anna could see it in her body language.
Anna didn't know what to expect, but she drew in her breath when she got her first view of the painting. It was skillfully executed, exquisite in detail, color, and texture. A robust young woman with reddish hair and pale complexion leaned her head against a plastered wall and stared out of the painting at something or someone. There was a yellow flower, delicate and fine-textured, held in hands that were neither.
The colors were wrong, brighter-but there was something familiar in the curve of the woman's cheek and the shape of her shoulder.
"It looks like it was painted by one of the old Dutch masters," Anna said.
"Vermeer," Charles agreed. "But I've never seen this one."
The fae sighed and moved to a table. She began cleaning her brushes with quick, almost fevered movements.
"No one has, not since it perished in a fire a couple of centuries ago. And no one ever will because that painting isn't it." She looked at Anna. "Vermeer. Yes. What is the woman looking at?"
And it was then Anna saw it, the alien beneath the glamour. Alien and... recognizable. She didn't hurt me too bad, the troll had said. This woman was a predator, a top predator.
Uncomfortable under that strange gaze, Anna shook her head. "I don't know."
Dana made a sharp gesture with her hand. "You aren't looking at it."
True enough. Anna looked at the woman in the painting, who met her stare with clear blue eyes, several shades lighter than Dana's. The only answer that occurred to her was stupid, but she said it anyway. "Someone here in this room?"
Dana's shoulders drooped and she turned to Charles. "No. You see? When he finished the original, he dragged a peasant in from the streets-and even that uneducated fool could see it. Vermeer's students, the ones who were there the day the painter finished it, called it that, what the peasant told the Master: She Looks at Love. Vermeer himself titled it Woman with Yellow Flower or something prosaic, as he preferred."
Anna looked at the painting, and the more she looked at it, the more was wrong. Not bad-nothing could take away from the skill that caught the luscious texture of skin and hair and the cloth of the woman's dress-but it was like listening to one of those computer programs that played sheet music: perfect technical skill... and no soul.
"I don't know a lot about paintings," Anna said to excuse herself.
Dana shook her head and gave Anna a rueful smile, the alien predator nowhere to be seen. "No, it's all right. My people are cursed with the love of beautiful things and no ability to create them." She dried her hands. "Not all fae, of course. But many of those of us who are most deeply steeped in magic give up creative abilities of all kinds. Ah well."
"Dragons are like that," Charles said obscurely.
Did he know a dragon? Anna gave him an interested look. He smiled a little, but his attention was on the fae, who had stopped her scrubbing.
"Dragons can't create either?"
He shrugged. "So my da says. Mostly he only says things he knows to be true."
She smiled, and it was as if the sun came out. "To be like dragons is not such a bad thing. I've only seen the one-out exploring, he said, I think. We didn't have much of a conversation, but he was... like the Vermeer. A work of art."
He tilted his head. "Exactly."
Dana tilted her head the same way and looked at Charles, really looked at him. "You are the killing arm of the Marrok. Rude. Dangerous."
"True, enough," Charles said.
Anna found it interesting that the fae thought "rude" more notable than "dangerous."
"I was drawn to that in you," Dana told him. "I would have said that I knew you quite well. But I never knew you could also be kind." She put her hands on his shoulders and, with a grin at Anna, she kissed him on the cheek. Anna could feel the pulse of her magic as she sent it over Charles like a mantle or net. It slid off, but even Anna, who had not been the focus, could feel the fascination and lust she generated.
"There," she told Anna. "A sister could not have been more circumspect. Now didn't you say you brought something for me?"
She didn't lie. Or if she did, Anna couldn't tell-and the fae couldn't lie, could they? The magic could have been involuntary; maybe it happened every time, and the fae didn't even notice anymore.
Charles hadn't seemed affected, but it would have been difficult to tell. His face was doing its usual public thing. Not even the mate bond helped her, because the connection between them told her nothing. But it wasn't possible for a fae with magic like that to kiss him and he not feel anything, was it? Not affection, admiration, or lust? Voluntary or not, the fae's magic had been aimed at him while the merest shadow of it had brushed Anna-who had never in her life been attracted to another woman.