Page 8 of Guardian

She took the deck of cards and handed it to him. “Shuffle them.”

She watched his hands as he did so. Long fingers, clean nails, yet these were not the hands of a man who worked in an office. Too many scars, too many injuries, too many calluses. He worked with his hands, with his entire body. She could imagine how he must look when he worked, his upper body bare, his muscles flexing, sweat making his skin glisten. She imagined her hands sliding over the tanned ridges…

Oh God, what was wrong with her? She felt like a bitch in heat.

She coughed.

“When should I stop?” Logan asked.

His question made her wonder how long she’d been staring at him, objectifying him, imagining him half-naked. “Uh, now is good.”

He placed the deck on the purple velvet.

“Cut the deck,” Winter instructed.

He followed her command and waited. Winter took the cards and laid out a Horseshoe Spread between them, glad to have something to do with her hands.

“Tell me your question, Logan.” She looked up from the cards and found him staring at her.

~ ~ ~

He should have listened to Manus, who’d suggested approaching her invisibly, taking her out without her ever knowing what was happening to her. But Logan hadn’t listened, because eliminating an innocent wasn’t a task he took lightly. It was an irreversible step, and therefore he had to be sure that he was doing the right thing. It meant he had to confirm that she truly knew about the Stealth Guardians and presented a danger.

As sentinel, the leader of this mission, he’d overridden Manus’s protest and ordered him to stay outside in the car and watch for any demon activity. Grudgingly, Manus had agreed.

Logan had waited until Winter had locked up for lunch to make sure they would be alone. He’d used his supernatural skill of passing through solid objects to enter the shop. Considering the report on her had claimed she was mentally unstable, he knew he could tell her she’d forgotten to lock the door with such conviction that she’d doubt her own recollections. It hadn’t been necessary, because she hadn’t questioned him on that point.

Instead, she’d stared at him. Just like she was staring at him now.

“Your question,” she prompted.

“I have an important decision to make. I need to know if I’m making the right one,” he said, because he had to give her something so she wouldn’t get suspicious of him.

Winter nodded and turned over the first card. He didn’t even glance at it. Instead he looked back at the various drawings that hung on the walls. One was the same depiction of the Callanish Stones Barclay had shown him on his cell phone, another the drawing of a council member’s ceremonial dagger. There were a few more drawings, all black chalk on a white background.

“You’re both giving orders and taking orders,” Winter said and briefly looked up from the card.

He nodded.

She dropped her gaze back to the cards, and turned over another one, while Logan used the time to let his eyes wander to the wall behind her, where a door with the word Private led to the remainder of the small townhouse. He was about to look away, when he noticed the markings above the door frame: runes. The same kind of runes that adorned the Stealth Guardian compounds. The report hadn’t made any mention of them. But if Winter knew what runes looked like, she already knew too much.

“This time you’re not sure the order you’ve received should be followed.”

Logan snapped his head back to Winter and noticed a frown on her face. As if she saw something she couldn’t make sense of. As a true psychic, could she see what he was thinking, what he was planning? Because now that he’d seen the runes, seen for himself that just by her careless displaying of their secrets, she could harm their species, he knew his decision was made. He had to follow the order.

“You’re struggling within you,” Winter added.

No, she couldn’t see inside him, or she would see that his struggle was over, his decision made. What she was doing was the usual mumbo-jumbo any tarot card reader dished up for their clients. A few meaningless sentences that could be interpreted any way. But the things she’d drawn, the things she was displaying on the walls of her shop, those were her visions, those were the truth.

“Fighting, struggling…” she stammered and pressed one hand to her temple.

More dramatics. He had to hand it to her, she was a great salesperson.

Her lips quivered, and her breathing accelerated. “No, not again, no…” Her face distorted in pain and she lifted both her hands to her face, pressing them against her head as if trying to stop it from exploding.

Alarmed, Logan said, “What’s wrong?”

She shot up from the table, staggering, knocking her chair over in the process. “No! Please, no!”