Then as if he couldn’t help himself, he cupped the back of her ass and pushed up against her so hard his hips left the bed.

But just wait.

Giving him her real Name would give him Power over her.

“May all the gods have mercy, tell me.” The agonized groan came up from his core and blasted her swollen, moistened lips.

The ghost of her mother’s voice touched her desire-crazed thoughts with cool lucidity.

Don’t ever tell your real Name to anyone, my love, she had said to Pia. Over and over her mother had repeated this lesson. She spoke it with Power of her own in her voice, so that the lesson would be fixed in Pia’s mind because she had been a bit of a flighty child at times. If you tell someone your real Name, you have forever given that person Power over you. It is your most precious, private treasure. Keep it safe as you guard your life, for your Name is the key to your soul.

The dream spell shattered. “No,” she whispered.

Was she denying him or her mother? She tried to clamp down with her legs on his torso to hold on to him, clutching at that black spiky hair with greedy fingers.

He roared. He sounded like he was in as much pain as she was. He wrapped hard arms tight around her, but she was already growing insubstantial. The raw silk of his hair melted through her grip.

She threw out her hands, reaching for him. For a moment she felt his questing fingers brush along hers. Then he was gone.

She hurtled to wakefulness and plunged upright in her bed with a soundless shout. Her heart hammered like she had just raced a marathon. Her dirty clothes were soaked in sweat, the motel bedspread tangled underneath her. The air conditioner rattled, blowing stale, deodorized air through the room. The remnant of magic lay flat in the air like soured champagne.

Her hungry body wept. With a moan, she plunged one hand between her legs and pressed. It only made her ache more.

She had never felt such a wretched, unconsummated lust. She curled into a miserable ball, starving for that dream lover and terrified of him at the same time. Something deep inside her started to whisper his name. Then panic shut it down. She couldn’t think it, couldn’t let what happened become too real because that would be beyond disastrous.

Then she jerked as she realized that she was still glowing. The low-level glamour that hid her skin’s pearl-like sheen was fed from her own life force. It was supposed to remain active at all times, even when she slept. Her mother had helped her put the spell in place. She hadn’t lost control over it in years.

She renewed the spell and dampened herself to look human again.

She was so screwed.

Grimacing, she curled into a tighter ball.

Dragos exploded out of his bed, face contorted, one hand holding his painful erection. His balls ached so badly he stumbled forward to grip at the edges of a nearby mahogany dresser. He bowed over it, shuddering.

What the hell?

The beguilement he sent was supposed to seduce his thief with her deepest fantasy, her most heartfelt desire. He had expected anything but this, a dream of riches or power, success or even fame, but sex? The ultimate opportunist, he had laughed to himself and had been quick to oblige, as he beguiled her deeper into his dream trap.

Then she stepped into his bedroom and his world stopped.

She was lovelier than he could have imagined, her body glowing with its own internal moonlight. His mind seized. What was she? His knowledge of the Elder Races was near encyclopedic, compiled as it had been over the long ages. He cast back, searching for any memory of this type of creature, and slammed into a blank wall. All that came to mind was that distant tantalizing memory of the time he had caught the hint of a scent on the breeze that had driven him wild.

He remembered now. Centuries ago he had plunged into the forest in North Umbria and chased after an elusive wild scent very like his thief’s, catching and losing it again in fitful spurts, sure that he heard the sharp rustle of foliage as some mysterious creature bounded away from him. The forest had teemed with the Power of green growing things, back when both he and the world were so much younger.

In the dream he concentrated everything he had on this woman, greedy to understand and categorize what was happening, to find its appropriate place in his vast memory. Yet he met with absolute failure. The magic that was an inherent part of her was delicate and filigreed, layered with feminine complexity and beauty. It felt wild and mysterious, cool like her moonlit glow. His whole body had tightened with shock as he watched her walk toward him with a graceful roll of slim hips, generous lips parted and her gaze radiant with sensual yearning.

Yearning for him, the Great Beast. Cuelebre. Wyrm.

He did not recognize himself then, or the volcano that erupted inside him. The beast pounced and took her with violent, voracious force.

And she had loved it.

Blind lust took him over then, scorching him in a way he had never experienced before. He fell prey to it and to her, body and old wicked soul. The beguiler became the beguiled. The sensual undulation of that graceful female form underneath his felt like some kind of epiphany. Eating at her plump, eager mouth made him ravenous. All he could think about was plunging his c**k inside her in an ecstasy of ravishment.

He had managed to hang on to the reason for the spell he had cast, as he recognized in one corner of his mind that however intense and pleasurable this dreamscape felt, it was designed to feed a hunger, not assuage it. It worked to use his prey’s weaknesses and desires against it so that he could pull it into his control. Neither of them would gain fulfillment from the dream, only increased appetite.

But when he tightened the spell and pressed her for the ultimate surrender, she denied him.

His thief said no to him.

He snarled and tore the mahogany dresser apart. He picked up the bed and hurled it across the room, then whirled and drove his fists into the wall. He must have hit a girder because something inside the wall groaned and buckled.

The door to his bedroom slammed open. He whipped around, almost faster than sight, teeth bared. Rune and Aryal entered like twin cyclones, half-dressed bodies aimed like weapons. His First was armed with a sword while Aryal carried a semiautomatic. Rune went left and the six-foot harpy dove right before they both realized he was not under attack. They slowed to a stop.

To give his sentinels credit, they didn’t run when faced with the nude figure of their enraged lord. In fact, Dragos had to admit it was brave of them to enter his bedroom in the first place. That thought was the thread that helped him to gain enough control so that he didn’t tear their heads from their shoulders.

“Bad dream?” Rune said, keen gaze steady as he straightened from a fighting crouch and let the tip of his sword fall to the floor.

“I’ve got her human name,” he said. They all knew who he meant. “Pia Giovanni. Find out what you can about her, quickly, and get me the witch. I need a tracking spell.”

The harpy Aryal’s sleek brows lifted as she glanced from his ruined room to the predawn sky. For a moment her life trembled by the merest thread. If she had spoken a single word just then, she would have died in flames.

“DAMN YOU, MOVE!”

The floor of the penthouse shuddered at his roar. They raced out the door. So they were smart as well as brave.

The lingering traces of the beguilement clawed at him. He yanked clothes on and stalked outside to pace the balcony. The penthouse was a prison. Even the vast, spread-out, noisy panorama of the city felt like a cage. He wanted to lunge into the air. He felt the impulse to slaughter something but he was trapped and flightless until the witch arrived.

The dragon stood at the edge of the ledge, fists clenched, and with narrowed eyes he watched the small quick-moving humans in the street eighty floors below.

A short time later, Rune said telepathically, My lord, the witch is here.

My office, he said. He moved along the penthouse balcony until he stood one floor above his office. Then he leaped to the ledge below.

Rune and the witch had already entered the room. The gryphon was unaffected by his sudden appearance but the witch stared as he straightened to his full height. A human Hispanic woman with a tall imperious beauty, she was quick to lower her gaze when he opened the French door and strode inside.

Cuelebre Enterprises had for some years contracted with the best witch in the city. Dragos had never bothered to learn her name but he recognized her. She was afraid of him, which he ignored. All humans were afraid of him. They should be.

He growled, “I need a tracking spell put on a woman.”

The witch inclined her head. She said, “Certainly, my lord. Of course, no doubt you already know that the more information I can be given on a target, the better I can craft a tracking spell for it.”

“Her name is Pia Giovanni,” Dragos said. He handed her the stack of photos from the 7-Eleven security footage. “This is what she looks like.”

The witch went still, her eyes on the top photo. Her expression was a perfect blank, but something, some minuscule change in her posture or breathing, roused the predator in him. A smooth, fluid shift of his body brought him closer to her. He could sense her body heat and the pulse at her neck and wrists, which beat more rapid at his proximity. He scanned her with truthsense as he asked, “Do you know this woman?”

The witch’s dark gaze lifted to his. She said, “I have seen her in the Magic District. I didn’t know her name.”

Her face remained that perfect blank, revealing nothing. It was not, he thought, the blithe calm of innocence but one of educated discipline. Still, she did speak the truth. The predator in him eased back. He nodded at the photos. “Is her name and a photo enough for you?”

The witch said, “I could cast a spell with these things. But it would be more durable, and it would last longer, if you had something of hers that I could use as an anchor. A good tracking spell is more complicated than a finding. It must shift and move as the object changes direction.”

Unsurprised, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a Ziploc bag that held a battered receipt. “It just so happens I do have something we can use.”

FOUR

Shaken by such a rude awakening, Pia rolled off the bed and lurched into the bathroom to take a shower. She hadn’t carried any toiletries in her backpack beyond hand lotion and Chap-Stick so she had to make do with the motel’s paper-wrapped sliver of plain soap. It took forever to work some through her long hair and lather a washcloth, but at least the water was hot and plentiful. The skin at the side of her neck felt tender as she scrubbed herself.

She paused and rubbed at the tender area. What was that?

After a quick final rinse, she wrapped her tangled hair in a towel, grabbed another towel to dry off and then wiped the fogged sink mirror to peer at her neck.

Bite. It was a bite mark. She fingered the area at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. The skin wasn’t broken but there was an impression of teeth, and a suck-bruise was already forming.

She whispered, “The bastard gave me a hickey?” In a dream?

Goose bumps rose on her skin. She rubbed her arms and avoided looking at her white face with the dark-circled eyes.

Somehow that horrible dream had been real. His magic had found her. He knew what she looked like. She told him her name.

Get out now.

Good thing she had three other names, with picture IDs that said so, because she had to hit delete on the one she’d lived with her whole life. Pia Alessandra Giovanni had to go. She felt another pang, another loss. Her mother had given her that name from long-held fondness for the time she had spent in medieval Florence. How much more did Pia have to lose? Apparently everything.

It was too much for her tired mind. She yanked a brush through her hair, miserable at how it had snarled without conditioner, and then she dressed in her dirty clothes.

When she started the Honda, the dashboard clock said 6:30 A.M. She had slept just under two hours.

She went through another drive-through and bought juice, more coffee and apple slices, although she could only choke down a few bites. She drove south as the sky grew pastel and brightened into full day. The temperature warmed the farther she went until she rolled down the windows and opened the Honda’s moon roof.

If she’d been making the trip for any other reason, she would have enjoyed herself. The sky was cloudless. The scenery in South Carolina was different from what she was used to. The foliage was a couple weeks farther along in bloom than in New York, and the land felt strange to her senses. She began to pass properties vivid with greenery and profuse with camellias, roses, azaleas, and magnolia trees blanketed in pink blossoms. Silvery Spanish moss draped along the branches of old oak trees like fashion stoles adorning beautiful women. Charleston and the surrounding area had a grace and beauty that was quite different from the brisk urban setting she had just left.

She had given an ironic chuckle when Quentin had handed her directions to a beach house in a place called Folly Beach. Folly. Ha. It was about twenty minutes south of Charleston. Most of the houses, he told her, were vacation rentals. He had owned his for over thirty years and kept it furnished and stocked with linens and kitchenware.

When she got close to her destination, she stopped at a superstore to buy clothing essentials and toiletries, aspirin, a prepaid cell phone and food supplies. When she reached the checkout lane by the liquor aisle, she caved and bought a bottle of scotch as well. A girl’s got to have priorities. If she didn’t deserve a drink after the nightmare week she had just suffered, she didn’t know who did.

She threw her purchases in the Honda’s trunk. Soon after, she drove at a slow pace down a small coastal road on Folly Beach. She stared at the glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean she could see between cottages. The smell of the ocean gusted into the car.

The sunlight was different here, clearer and thinner, and she got the sense of a nearby place drenched in magic. There was a dimensional passageway somewhere near to Other lands. She wasn’t surprised, given that the seat of the Elven Court was located either in or near Charleston.