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And then suddenly, the child was gone. He had realized the Corgloresti had somehow managed to transition it to the human plane. It was certainly dangerous. That meant the child was somewhere on the human plane as a newborn baby without a Corgloresti guardian to attend it. But the Corgloresti obviously knew the alternative was even more unacceptable. Killing that Corgloresti had been hideously easy for Grolkinei, and sadly unsatisfying.

Learning that Saraqael’s progeny were returning to the Estilorian plane after eighteen years had once again ignited a spark of excitement among the Mercesti. The plan to overtake the other elders, and thus, control of the Estilorian plane, had continued even with the children having been sent to the human plane. Grolkinei and his followers had been slowly and steadily adding to their ranks, fueling the blind rage, jealousy and hatred needed to encourage other Estilorians to cross the line that would convert them to Mercesti: kill or intend to kill a fellow Estilorian for a reason other than defense. Ever since Volarius’ death, this was the only way the Mercesti could increase their numbers.

So be it.

“Still no news on the daughters of Saraqael?” he asked at last.

Cesaro frowned. “Nothing. We have not learned where the daughter we know is alive—the one who commands holy light—is being kept. There has been no news of any kind about the daughter Ryce believes he killed by slicing an artery in her neck. And the only news we have heard regarding the warrior daughter who fought Angius is that she was stabbed by the cursed blade. The other Estilorians mourned the loss, knowing none can survive such an injury.”

Grolkinei sipped his drink and then said, “I mourn the loss, too. I still believe it would have been a pleasure to convert her. I would have given her a position of command in my army. She fought well enough with her sword after only days on this plane to give Angius several wounds that will never heal. And she would surely have been the key to get me onto the human plane.” He paused. “Still, it does my heart good to know she was bound to Gabriel. He is certainly mourning far more than the rest of us.”

“Indeed. So we will do this the way we planned before the half-humans crossed planes,” Cesaro said, lifting his own glass. “We will finish amassing and training our army, convert a class commander or two who are ready to see a new regime, and we will take out the old one.”

Grolkinei toasted that. “And the elders will either join with me to reunite the planes or we will kill them and rule this one instead.”

A terrible thunderstorm the following day kept the other elders from making the trip to Ini-herit’s house as initially planned. It also kept everyone homebound.

Olivia hadn’t slept well. Not only had the monstrous thunder and lightning rattling the windows made her jolt awake every few minutes, but she hadn’t been able to get the memory of James touching her out of her mind.

He claimed that he understood what touching her meant. But how could he, really? Yes, he had paid rapt attention to everything she had shared with him about humans and their emotions over the past couple of months. But he had nearly a century of being an Estilorian making up the bulk of his awareness. Modeling behavior after something you were told or off of someone else’s actions didn’t make it genuine. She knew that.

She also knew that he was an avid and eager learner, at least as much as she was herself. His learning curve simply staggered her. He could already read most of her expressions and gestures when she knew he’d had absolutely no understanding of any of them two months before. It was spectacularly impressive considering he didn’t have a mental connection to any of them like the elders did.

So, could he genuinely be interested in her as more than just her guardian? She considered the fact that yes, he was modeling his behavior after Gabriel’s, which might make it seem less sincere, but then, Gabriel was the only male, non-Estilorian-like model he had, and James didn’t have to try and change his behavior at all. Didn’t the fact that he was trying to change so that he could please her mean he was interested in her a significant way?

She was what she could only term as
befuddled
. Even before his “touching lesson,” she had been obsessing about the adorable cleft in his chin and the way that his hair sometimes fell into his eyes, giving him a devilish appearance. His slightly-more-frequent smile made her heart stutter every time she saw it. She believed that it was even more powerful because it appeared so infrequently, not to mention the fact that he only smiled for her. He was the first thing she thought of when she woke, and now thoughts of him were keeping her up at night.

Yep, she was ridiculously hooked.

So it was with grainy eyes and the start of a headache that she dragged herself out of bed before dawn and made her way to the kitchen. She pulled her robe on over her pajamas and shuffled through the quiet darkness as the rain lashed at them outside.

When she entered the kitchen, she was rather unsurprised to find James there in his navy blue pajama pants and a matching sleep tank, putting some tea in a cup to steep. It didn’t seem to matter when she woke up, he was nearly always there before her. And he always prepared tea for her. No one had modeled that for him, she suddenly realized. He had started doing that all on his own, as soon as he realized she liked the brewed beverage.

“Good morning,” he said, glancing up and spotting her.

“Good morning,” she responded. “Or wet, stormy morning, however you choose to look at it.”

He turned and glanced out the window. “I know. This storm is one of the worst we have seen in a while.” Then he looked back at her. “I have been worried about Aurora. Did she find shelter?”

And just how was she supposed to protect her heart from a question like that? She just gave up. She simply couldn’t hold out against such obvious affection and concern for her dearest friend.

Smiling, she responded, “She’s fine. She found a nice, dry cave before the storm hit.”

“Good,” he said simply.

Stepping closer to him, she reached out and rubbed his arm. The hard, corded muscle there never ceased to surprise her in light of his overall gentle demeanor. “Thank you for my tea,” she said softly when he caught her gaze.

There was a humming pause when she thought he might lean down or reach out to her, but a noise from the hallway drew both their attention. Skye walked into the room wearing a gossamer blue, spaghetti-strap nightgown. She was rubbing her eyes and yawning as she walked. When she uncovered her eyes and spotted them, she let out a small shriek.

Even as Caleb appeared silently in the room wearing a pair of pajama pants and no shirt, his dark hair unbound and wild around his head, Skye declared, “Why didn’t either of you generate some light? Good gracious, I think half my hair turned gray!”

She whirled with her usual energy to step away from them so she could have a hand at creating one of the balls of light that usually floated around the house, and crashed right into Caleb. If he hadn’t reached out to grab her, she would have hit the floor.

“Jiminy Cricket—it’s like hitting a brick wall,” she complained, bringing a hand to her nose. “Ow, that hurt!”

Caleb looked down at her and frowned. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“It
is
?” she asked, her voice much higher than usual. When she brought her hand away from her face and saw the blood, she swayed. Caleb eased her into a chair as James grabbed a towel.

“Skye, it’s okay,” Olivia said, sitting in the chair beside her sister’s. “It’s just a little nosebleed.”

“Just?” she retorted. “
Just?
”

“Come on, we’ll mop it up. You’re made of tougher stuff than this.”

“I think he broke it,” Skye said miserably.

“I did no such thing,” Caleb responded in a deeply affronted tone. “I came in here to protect you because you cried out.”

“I was startled, for all holy sake.”

“What’s all the ruckus about?” Gabriel asked from the kitchen doorway.

They all turned to look at him. “Skye thinks Caleb broke her nose,” James summed up.

Everyone started talking at once. Skye was trying to support James’ version of events while Caleb defended himself and Olivia made an effort to explain what had actually happened. Gabriel waved his hands at all of them as though fending them off.

“Guys, it is
way
too early for this,” he interrupted wearily, shaking his head. “I’ll go and get Amber up so she can heal you, Skye. But I’m telling y’all now that you’d better connect with a Lekwuesti so she can have her orange juice, or there’ll be the wrath of Amber to pay.”

So when Amber was led into the kitchen by Gabriel with bleary eyes and out-of-control bed-head, James had already connected with his paired Lekwuesti and conjured a glass of juice. Olivia handed the glass to Gabriel when he turned to them. He pushed the glass into Amber’s hand and she automatically brought it to her lips and drank most of it before she did anything else. It probably saved a lot of time and additional drama, Olivia thought.

Without a word, Amber set her glass down and reached out to touch Skye’s nose. Even as her gold healing light faded, Ini-herit filled the doorway and looked around the room.

“Why is it you did not set up a light?” he asked.

Since Jabari was right behind Ini-herit and they were all awake, they all sat at the kitchen table and ate a breakfast of fresh sliced fruit, wedges of cheese and crusty biscuits with honey. One of the most fascinating things Olivia had encountered on this plane was the hospitality methods of the Lekwuesti. The lavender-winged Estilorians dedicated to fostering comfort and culture among the other classes could use their power to send all kinds of food and beverage anywhere on the Estilorian plane. They had to have a formal pairing with the particular Estilorian requiring the refreshments, however, so the three sisters were currently unable to request anything since they didn’t have such a connection. It was also something that could only be done once per day to avoid exhausting the Lekwuesti. This was how the Estilorians got around their lack of electricity and refrigeration.

Caleb and Amber had both tamed their unruly hair and now wore ponytails, tank tops and loose pants. Skye had changed into a tank and shorts since her nightgown had gotten bloodstains on it. Olivia was still in her robe. As they were finishing up their meal, Jabari informed them that the big meeting with the other elders had been delayed due to the weather.

“Gosh, it’s going to be a long, boring day without tube, flicks or tunes,” Skye sighed.

Olivia noticed James’ confused expression, but before she could say anything, Caleb translated for him. “Television, movies or music,” he said.

Everyone looked with some surprise at the usually silent and serious Gloresti. He just shrugged, his expression neutral. Olivia figured he did much more listening to Skye’s babbling than anyone would have imagined. He had likely learned quite a lot about humans in the past couple of months that way.

Amber glanced consideringly at Skye, then shared a look with Gabriel. He smiled at her once she had communicated whatever telepathic thought she was sending him. Clearing a spot beside his plate, Gabriel held out his hand and sent out a thought. There was a flash of lavender light. Olivia leaned forward and recognized what he had requested of the Lekwuesti.

“So cool,” she breathed.

“What do you say, gals?” he asked with his charming grin, looking around the table and holding up the deck of cards. “Care to show these Estilorians how to spend a rainy day?”

Chapter Seven

They played for hours. To get everyone comfortable with the concept of playing card games, they started with games that many human children played: Go Fish, Crazy Eights and Old Maid. Then they switched to games like Rummy 500, Ninety-Eight and Chase the Ace. It seemed the more strategy and thought that was required, the more involved the Estilorians became. Even the reserved Ini-herit showed a decided interest. Although he knew about cards from his time on the human plane, he had never actually learned any of the games.

“I can’t believe none of you have ever played cards before,” Skye said shortly after they got underway.

Jabari smiled at her. “Well, these cards were not around when we created the Estilorian plane. Back a couple of millennia ago, most humans spent their time simply warring and surviving, and the only games involved physical contests. We found ourselves doing what we could to try and prevent the warring, so our time was not really spent in any leisure, either. We trained and educated our young and worked to establish a political system for ourselves as well as the humans.”

“Well, what do you all do in your free time now?” Skye wondered, evidently not having considered any of that before. Seeing as her time had been pretty well occupied since entering this plane, Olivia wasn’t very surprised at that.

“We read, write, create artwork and music,” Jabari explained. “We build homes such as this one and work to improve the lives of our fellow Estilorians. And we still train and educate our young and deal with political issues, all of which is more involved than one might think.”

“And we dance,” Caleb added when he saw Skye’s uncertain expression. Her answering smile was like a beam of sunlight.

They fell into a comfortable rhythm of card playing. At one point, though, Gabriel slapped his cards down on the table and turned to glare at Amber. “Seriously?” he said, obviously thoroughly exasperated.

“I’m sorry,” she responded with a laugh in her voice. “I can’t block my thoughts from you as well as you can from me yet.”

They all looked curiously at Gabriel. He waved a hand in irritation and said, “She keeps repeating songs over and over in her head to keep from thinking too much about the cards in her hand.”

Skye gasped and clucked her tongue at Amber before turning and exchanging a glance with Olivia. Olivia raised her eyebrows and asked, “Which song?”

Glowering, Gabriel said, “Right now it’s Nickelback…‘This Afternoon.’”