In seconds, she was asleep... .
During the long day as he watched over her, her image grew stronger, which satisfied him more than anything in recent memory.
He experienced needs unknown before, inexplicable urges... . He wanted to lie behind her. Wanted to tuck her small body into him. Again and again, he ran his hands over the outline of her hair, imagining what the glossy curls would feel like.
He had the overwhelming urge to buy this place, fix it, and keep her safe within it - but only if he could prevent her from having to dance as she had last night. His hands clenched as he thought of her, cursed to feel that pain over and over.
Conrad had the knowledge necessary to do some spells - mostly crude protection or camouflaging spells - but could rarely access it on demand. Whenever he wanted a certain memory, it proved infuriatingly elusive. If he was able to utilize at will all the knowledge he'd acquired, could he figure out how to protect her?
What if the answer was there, already within him, waiting to be retrieved? Nikolai had said Conrad could learn to do it.
He'd also said that there was only one thing that could compete with bloodlust - sex. And that there was only one thing that could compete with the overwhelming need to kill.
Now Conrad knew. The need to protect.
By dint of will, effort, and a rake he'd found in a ramshackle toolshed, Conrad had retrieved several of the newspapers on the drive that she'd been unable to reach. He intended to make a gift of them to his female.
Having no experience whatsoever with women and limited resources, this was the best he could come up with.
He'd just finished stacking up the papers in the room and settled in to wait for Néomi to wake when his brothers traced into the room.
Nikolai exhaled wearily to find him moving about freely. "How did you get loose?"
"Dislocated my shoulder."
Almost at the exact same time, all three raised their brows at the collection of papers. "You dislocated your shoulder to get to the newspapers on the road? You could have asked one of us if you wanted to read - "
"No. That's not it." Why not tell them? They already thought him mad. What if one of them has encountered a ghost? What if they believed him? "I got them for a female who lives here." He was sane enough to recognize how this sounded. "She likes to read them."
"The house is abandoned, Conrad." Nikolai pinched the bridge of his nose. "You know this."
He ran his palms over his pants. "I'm the only one who can see her. She's lying on this bed right now."
To a man, they got that anxious expression as though they were wondering whether madness was catching.
"If there is truly a ghost there, get her to move something," Murdoch said. "Can she make a door slam? Or rattle something in the attic?"
"Yes, she can move things with her mind."
Sebastian waved him on. "Then by all means... "
Conrad glanced from them to her, and back again. "She's... asleep." And he couldn't shake her to get her to wake.
"Of course she is," Sebastian muttered. He'd always been the most skeptical of the brothers. Conrad figured that even after three centuries, that hadn't changed.
"Damn it, I'm telling the truth."
"Yet you can't rouse her?"
Conrad considered explaining why she was so exhausted, but thought that would only make things worse.
Murdoch asked, "Why would we believe you're seeing a ghost rather than another hallucination? You're supposed to be bombarded with delusions."
"I was. Constantly. I'm not anymore. She's real." Right at her ear, he said, "Néomi, wake up!" No response. "Wake up!" he said louder, aware that he appeared to be yelling at the sheet.
Murdoch had a look on his face as if he couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry over Conrad's actions. Finally, he said, "Kristoff has given word that there will be a battle tonight. So we likely won't be returning for two days."
Nikolai added, "We'll leave you free run of the property. The refrigerator is filled with weeks' worth of bagged blood, and I'll get my wife to stop - "
"I'll manage on my own," Conrad said quickly.
"Very well."
Surprised by the concession, Conrad said, "Free me completely."
Nikolai's gaze went from the newspapers to Conrad's eyes, and he exhaled. "We can't. You've come too far to relapse. Soon I'm going to ask you to make a decision. A critical one - but you have to be stable."
Conrad gave a bitter laugh. "Since when do you ask me to make a decision instead of making it for me?"
Nikolai's expression was grave. "Since I lost my brother for three centuries."
16
"Are you a betting man, Conrad?" Néomi was surprised her voice wasn't quavering.
He'd shaved, fully revealing the striking structure of his lean face. And she'd been given no warning. She'd breezed into the room, then stopped, speechless at the sight of him reclining on the bed.
Devastating male. And she wondered why she couldn't stay mad at him.
He frowned at her reaction. He obviously had no idea of his heart-pounding effect on women. "Depends."
Yesterday, once she'd awakened from her lengthy reverie, she'd found a stack of newspapers lying on the floor. He'd gruffly said, "I was able to get some of the ones that had piled up out of your reach." She thought that for a man like Conrad, this had been on a level with picking flowers for her.
Though the gesture had softened her, she'd still been hesitant when he'd wanted to stay close by. "Why should I choose to be around you?" she'd asked. "You're just going to hurt my feelings or start haranguing me for the key again." The key that she'd stolen from Murdoch and hidden away.