Kaldar stepped toward her. "The Hand's magic causes an allergic reaction. If you hold still - "
"I don't want to hold still!" she barked. "Don't touch me!"
Kaldar stepped back with his hands raised. "It will go away, Audrey. Everybody gets it the first time. You have to wait it out."
"How did you know the Hand would be coming?"
"I didn't know," Kaldar said. "I suspected."
Oh, please. "I don't believe you. You lie all the time."
"No, I don't."
"You kind of do," George murmured.
She pointed at the boy. "See!"
Kaldar growled under his breath. "Now you listen to me. The Hand is following the same trail of crumbs I did. We can't find your father, which leaves you or your brother as a target. The only way to make sure that the Hand didn't get to you would have been to kill your brother. I could've done it, but I didn't. I just gave him some drugs."
"You gave an addict in rehab drugs, and you want credit for it?"
"Of course it sounds bad when you put it that way."
"It sounds bad whichever way you put it. I know Alex. Drugs fried his brain, and he thinks the whole world owes him. He would've tried to bargain with the Hand." She stopped. "My brother is dead, isn't he?"
"Yes," Kaldar said.
Two people had been murdered because she had been too weak to say no to her dad. Alex had it coming. But Gnome was just a neighbor. He could be mean sometimes, and he was an ornery old bastard, but he had always helped her. Now his head, with glazed-over eyes, was sitting in a wicker trunk in the corner of the cabin. She shouldn't have taken that job. She should've convinced Gnome to run with them when the Hand showed up. Should've, could've, would've . . .
The kids were looking at her, as quiet as two birds.
"Audrey?" Kaldar asked.
Alex was dead. She had prepared herself for that possibility years ago, but now it finally hit home. She would never see him again. Deep down in the hidden recesses of her being lived a tiny hope that Alex would get better, that one day he would walk across her threshold, clean and sober, grin that handsome grin, and say, "I'm sorry, sis. I was an ass. Let me make it up to you."
The Hand's magic had burrowed so deep into her, it finally reached that hope, and Audrey felt it die. Something vital shattered at her very core. Her own magic, so familiar and easy, rebelled and bucked inside her like a runaway horse, fighting back in self-defense. The pain almost took her off her feet.
Audrey cried out. Her magic burst out of her body in a sweeping wave. Every bag and box in the cabin flew open. Jack jumped a foot in the air. George gasped.
"Leave!" Kaldar barked, and the three boys scurried out to the front.
"I killed Gnome, and I killed Alex." Her voice came out dull and creaky. "And more people will die because I was selfish, hurt, and stupid. I was always so smart. How the hell could I be so stupid?"
"Happens to the best of us," Kaldar said. "How the hell did I get stuck with the Marshal of the Southern Provinces' teenage brothers-in-law and a woman who thinks I'm ugly?"
"You have to send them back," she said. "They will be killed, Kaldar."
"It's too late now," he said. "It was already too late by the time I found them because the Hand has their scent. To go home, they'd have had to fly over Louisiana territory, and Gaston doesn't have a lot of experience with piloting wyverns and doesn't know how to avoid detection. The Louisianans would track them down at the border, and without me, they would kill them or worse."
"What could be worse?"
A grimace twisted his lips. "Like I said, their brother-in-law has unprecedented access to matters of Adrianglian security. The Hand would torture the boys to gain influence over him."
This was just getting better and better. "Then put them on a plane in the Broken and have them cross into Adrianglia through the Edge at the eastern coast."
Kaldar sighed. "Being in the Broken didn't protect your brother. Besides, even if I bought tickets and made them go through security, they'd escape the moment our backs were turned. They're here because they want to be here, and they are clever enough and well trained enough to be trouble. Trust me, I've spent two days thinking it over, trying to find some way to get out of this blasted screwup. The kids have to remain with me. That's the safest option."
Audrey couldn't handle being responsible for the deaths of two kids. In her head, it wasn't even George and Jack specifically; it was all the Jacks and all the Georges who lived in the Edge. All the lives her stupid caper had put at risk.
Some things even a Callahan couldn't live with. "Then there is only one solution."
Kaldar crossed his muscular arms. "Please. I'm all ears."
"I have to get the diffuser bracelets back."
She had to set it right. She would fix this, whatever it took.
"Why the sudden change of heart?"
Audrey shrugged. "Who else is going to do it?"
"Me."
She gave him a drop-dead stare. "Please. You got yourself Tasered and tied to a chair because you were too busy watching me eat little mints."
Kaldar grabbed her. One moment he was there, and the next he clamped her to him in a firm grip. Suddenly, his face was too close. His eyes were pale brown, like old whiskey, and he looked at her the way a man looked at a woman when wanting her had pushed every other thought out of his brain. A little electric thrill danced through her. She was pretty sure that if a volcano suddenly erupted in the cabin, neither of them would've paid it any mind.
"Mmm, Audrey," he said, his voice low and intimate. The sound of her name caressed her like velvet against her skin. Tiny hairs rose on the back of her neck.
"You should let go of me now."
"You know what the difference between you and me is?"
"I can think of several." Oh yes, yes she could, and what fun differences they were. And at a different time and in a different place, she might even consider exploring them, but not now.
Kaldar leaned over her. His whisper touched her ear. "The difference is, I don't need a Taser."
He turned, his mouth so close to hers, the distance between them suffused with heat. He looked at her, drinking her in, his gaze sliding over her eyes, her cheek, her mouth...
She felt his breath on her mouth, the first light, teasing touch of his lips on hers, then the stronger, insistent pressure of his mouth, and, finally, the heated touch of his tongue. She let her lips part, and he slipped his tongue into her mouth. They met, and his taste washed over her - he tasted of toothpaste and apricot and some sort of crazy spice, and he was delicious. He chased her, teasing, seducing, and she pretended not to like it, then teased him back again and again, enticing, promising things she didn't intend to deliver.