“Iris,” he supplied. “Whitney really hated anyone calling her Flame.”
“Whitney hated us all, period. We didn’t do what he wanted, when he wanted. He needed robots, not children.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, Dahlia, he didn’t do much better when he recruited us. We were a failure to him as well. All military trained. Good backgrounds. Strong and disciplined, yet we didn’t fare much better than all of the little girls he gave away.”
“Poor Lily. It must have been such a blow to her finding out the truth about him. I remember her as being gentle and kind. She was smart, really smart. I remember sitting up with her at night talking about planets and the Earth’s rotation, but it may just have been a dream, after all, we couldn’t have been more than four or five. If I ever snuck out of my room and Whitney caught me, I was punished.”
“How?” Nicolas was intrigued with the conversation, but his attention remained on the man they were shadowing along the street. “How did he punish you?”
Dahlia looked up at his face. She had told him more about herself in the small space of time they’d known one another than she’d ever told anyone. She wondered if he really had cast a spell. How else could she explain the way she felt and acted around him?
He tilted his head and raised an inquiring eyebrow.
There was no point in fighting it. She was going to tell him. “I had this old ratty blanket. I used to pretend my mother made it for me and that she sent it with me when she gave me up. More than likely he bought it along with purchasing me, but still, it was a fantasy that helped me keep calm on the days I thought I’d go mad and my head would explode.”
“You kept it, didn’t you?”
Her gaze shifted from his. “Sure. It was one of the few things I had of my past. It’s not like I had grandparents and uncles and aunts. I treasured the small things.” She pushed her free hand through her hair. “I try not to think about them too much—Milly or Bernadette or my home, or my things. If I do, this terrible sorrow and rage wells up and mixes together until I know I’m dangerous.” She glanced at him. “It’s probably a good thing I met you. I’d be accidentally starting fires all over the place.”
“I saved the blanket for you.” He wanted to gather her into his arms when she talked about her past. Hold her against him where he knew he could keep her safe and shelter her from the pain of not having the most simple of necessities . . . a family. What had Whitney been thinking, sending the little girls into the world with no one to protect them? He’d given them money and thought that would be enough.
She looked up at him from under long lashes. “You’re angry.”
“I’m sorry. Are you feeling it?” She was pressing her hand to her stomach. It was the third time she’d done it, almost without thought.
“No, your energy level is very low. I’m getting to know you better. You do this thing with your eyebrows.”
“I do not. I worked at learning how to keep my face perfectly without expression.”
“It is,” she assured, “all except the eyebrow.”
His hand tightened around hers, and he drew her fingers to his hip, holding her hand there as they boarded the ferry to take them across the river to Algiers. Nicolas kept her a good distance from their quarry, keeping the early morning crowd between them for a screen and making his body language shout possession and jealousy. Few men were going to approach them when he was keeping Dahlia so close to him.
“Thanks for saving the blanket. It means a lot to me.” She felt absolutely silly admitting it. A raggedy blanket from her childhood. Her only memento of her fantasy mother. It was a pathetic thing to have to admit to him . . . to herself.
His fingers brushed her face in a gentle caress. “I managed to snag a few of your books and a sweater as well. I wish I could have gotten more for you.”
“I didn’t have all that much that mattered, Nicolas. Better that you got out alive.” She peeked under his arm. The wind was cool coming off the water in the early morning hours. Dahlia lifted her face to feel the breeze. “He’s coming this way.”
“Is he looking at us?” Nicolas sounded calm, almost bored. He shifted his body slightly to better protect her.
“No, at the water. But he’s coming right toward us.”
Nicolas concentrated on connecting with the man as he approached the railing of the ferry. He wanted to get a feel for him, to “read” him in the way of the GhostWalkers. Sometimes it was easy to read thoughts if they carried a strong enough emotion, but oftentimes, it was very difficult to find the right path for one person in a crowd. Most of the time he caught a jumble of impressions, rather than clear thoughts, when there were many people around.
Nicolas caught Dahlia’s arm and forcibly turned her around to look out over the river, shifting his body from her left side to her right. Stay calm, Dahlia. The man we’re looking for is on your right side, just a few feet from us.
What do you mean? He’d set her heart pounding again. She was getting tired of pounding hearts. She was really getting tired of being in the vicinity of so many people. Even with Nicolas touching her, she was on the receiving end of strong energy.
The man in the blue shirt must have been hired to watch the building, probably for a woman somewhere in the crowd. He’s reporting to the man in the dark shirt.
Dahlia didn’t turn her head, but continued to stare out over the water. Small whitecaps foamed on the river. A barge slid past them. Her stomach lurched and her fingers dug into Nicolas’s arm. “He’s going to kill him.” She said the words so softly it was impossible to hear, yet she knew immediately that Nicolas was aware of it as well.
Dahlia was already on overload from the earlier violence.
Another wave of it might bring on a seizure. Nicolas forced a laugh and swept her up in his arms. Two tourists having fun on their vacation. She settled her arms around his neck and buried her face against his throat as he swung her around and carried her to the other side of the ferry. “You are not going to get sick, Dahlia.” He made it a command.
There was a small silence, and he felt her lashes flutter against his skin. “I’m not? Why is that?”
In spite of the gathering force already battering at her defenses, there was the smallest note of amusement in her voice. He could feel the way her skin heated as if she were burning from the inside out. A fierce need to protect her welled up in him. It was so strong it shook him. “Hang in there, Dahlia, we’ll get you through this. And you’re not going to get sick because I told you not to.”