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It had to be Mal She sensed his restless energy coupled with the intense focus in the drawings It gave her yet another intriguing view of the master of the house No matter his harsh worldview or practicality, down here he illing to entertain a es, of a wondrously playful and different kind of world She thought the surroundings encouraged it, war was still possible

Now she was about to enter the inti quarters of the unpredictable s, even vampires, left clues to themselves in the places they slept, coupled and felt most secure Mal didn’t seeh Maybe Kohana was right--a coffin in the back would be just as appropriate, and she’d find nothing in here of note but a bed and a line of muddy boots

He was hard to pin down, that was for certain, but she had to ad, he was one of the alitarian of his kind she’d ever met In some ways, he reminded her more of Dev than Danny Except when those eyes sharpened on her Then she felt that sa Danny possessed, in spades, the quality that could fluster Elisa in such unexpected ways He was right; she wasn’t used to feeling it fro as it could be from Danny, when it caht eet a handle on herself, and perhaps a greater familiarity ho he ould help with that

Or noring it, she pushed open the bedroom door

The left corner of the room was a far messier version of his upstairs office Papers, files and sketches scattered everywhere As she wandered in, sheets in her arlanced into open boxes that contained reference material and reports that looked like they ca with animal behavior, habitat studies and anatomy The table in the corner was laden with s, all different types of cats She realized they had distinctive s, added withwhich cat hich, she assuh she wondered at the reception he et down here No pictures, just black-and-white photos of what looked like landscape features of the preserve They were tacked up on wooden strips e in a full circle, she faced the right side of the room And she discovered the most extraordinary bed she’d ever seen

Carved of some type of black wood, the posts twisted in a natural treelike way up into a canopy of interlaced branches She expected looking up into it would be like looking up in a forest during winter, when there were no leaves But hanging fro closer, she saw they were crystals, rough-cut geths and woven in and out of the branches, along with feathers, and braided lengths of what appeared to be animal hair Golden, brown, black, white

Thrown over the bed was sonized the tiger’s pelt froold s Underneath and offset fro to a lion It was tan with a dark, broad arrow of color for a pattern upon it Another coat looked black until she drew closer and saas a bitter chocolate broith a pattern of faint spots through it A black leopard, maybe

As she touched the foot rail, she realized she’d placed her hand over a string of ani was mixed with feathers as well, so crystal sides Perhaps the teeth had coh the size of these fangs gave her pause, as she realized these species were roa loose on the island But he protected cats So ould Mal have their skins?

Putting down the linens, she crossed froe bed and closed her hand on the tiger skin Pulling it back, she discovered it was heavier than she expected However, the s the pattern made her dizzy, so she closed her eyes, inhaled the animal odor Not unpleasant, but with her eyes closed, it was as if she were inhaling the creature as it crossed her path, realalive She could alertips, the chuff of its breath as it passed into the caic to become invisible to the hu No, not huht craft It had a soothing power that had her swaying along with it But she didn’t know any songs like this It startled her enough to shake her out of the spell

"Stop daydrea," she chided herself, since Mrs Pritchett wasn’t here to do it Folding back the skins, since she was reluctant to take them completely off the bed, she retrieved the clean linens

Tucking the botto around the bed to do the other side As she worked it to the bottom corners underneath the heavy array of pelts, the fur tickled her forearms, the creases of her elbows She pulled the sheets taut, since one should be able to bounce a coin on a properly made bed, but it was a wide bed, and thewas thick and gave invitingly under hands She didn’t feel a hint of springs Curious

She wrestled the top sheet into place, but wasn’t entirely satisfied with the look of it The sheet had a faint stripe pattern, after all, and it needed to be straight She didn’t want Malachi to coht Of course, fro would notice and complain before Mal did She tripped over the toes of several pairs of boots that had been carelessly deposited under the bed and grimaced If she was Kohana, she’d chase him out of the house like Mrs Pritchett until he learned to leave thosein

The idea of chasing the forave her a smile Warmed by that, she put a knee on the bed and crawled her way to the hten and smooth

She had to catch her breath, so she sat down on her hip, studying the skins as she pulled theer, lion, leopard Giving in to her curiosity and desire, she bent her head, rubbed her cheek over the lion skin She wondered if Mal’s house cats came down here to sleep with hiiven to being petted or coddled the way it appeared Mal’s ith their sprawling indolence That fat lot definitely weren’t h with an island full of predators, she expected they didn’t have ain It was ridiculous, how often she see about this rooht into the arms of a nap It was like the heartbeat of an old wo to her lips again Elisa , curling around the ani them in to her Drowsily, she wondered what that old wo, and why it felt so natural to join her It was a great comfort to be part of that rhythm, part of that heartbeat here, deep in the earth She never had to leave She could stay here, everything else stopping so that it didn’t matter if she stayed here for eternity Ti as she was in the center of this place, thislike her usual practical thinking But then, nothing was usual any maid in a rich man’s house, orked hard and let him have his way to keep the jobThat was usual A maid orked for a vampire and played babysitter to six va, right? The world was a daft place, far more unexpected than it first seemed

She was in a forest, the earth cool beneath her feet The thin air told her she was higher up, in the reener than those in her part of Australia Hearing a chirp, she looked up to see a large cat studying her frorayish brown creature with enor white whiskers and touches of white on her chin and face

Cougar Or ht? The female cat jumped down and stalked over to her, but Elisa felt no need to run The creature rubbed her face on her skirts, est of the purring cats

That was Tho his book, the filtered sunlight flashing off his glasses and obscuring his eyes

Elisa’s hand fell naturally on the cougar’s coat It didn’t seee through the respectful touch Then the cat was , just knowing she needed to follow Thoone A walk became a lope and then a run She wasn’t in her skirts now She was astounded to find herself wearing nothing but an animal’s skin Its head, or rather the top of its skull and a portion of its face, the ears and glittering eyes, formed a headdress for her The rest cloaked her body and was pinned at her throat with a piece of carved bone to hold it in place Her nakedness beneath didn’t bother her, because she was coated in soil, cool and da her sar’s world

She ran so sure and fast, right behind the cougar’s ground-eating lope They went up and up, until abruptly they e in her throat The ar was outlined by it as she propped her feet on a knoll and settled down on her belly, letting out a long yowl

"Oh hted noise as that yoas answered Frorowls and highdown over the precipice, she saw the whole island stretching out below her, er and wider than it had appeared on the plane A faint bluish light ran through the island like veins She could feel the pulse of it like heat on her skin, and there was a pressure to it, a sense that it are of her, shaping itself to her for her into it, so no nize heror could call her back to it if she got lost