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I started to try to get up, but he touched et up, then you have to raise the dead"

"Did you win the fight with Jacob?"

"You nearly dying sort of stopped it" He grinned, a sudden whiteness in the dark "And we had to help patch up Silas You opened him up from"-he sat up so he could use his own body to demonstrate-"here at just under the ribs, across the stoot to see his intestines on the outside That is one sharp blade"

I heard footsteps rustling the leaves, and the crooked door opened to show a dark shadow that turned out to be Jacob "It wasn&039;t just the blade, Nick She kno to use a knife" Apparently he&039;d heard us, too He walked across the dirt floor and stood on the other side ofover us both I didn&039;t like that, so I tried to sit up

"Slowly," Nicky said, "you&039;ve been ht"

I stopped in midmotion "Did you just quote Princess Bride?"

"I may not be able to quote books, but h," Jacob said, and he reached down to offer a hand, "move slow; there&039;s no way to tell how ht about not taking the hand, but I still needed to get out of this with all my people alive, which meant friendly was still better than unfriendly His hand closed over mine and it was just a hand He&039;d shut down his shields on his power so tight that nothing leaked out When you&039;re as powerful as he was, that&039;s a lot of shielding The less powerful, or the newbies, will leak faster, and leak ets For Jacob it was just hard to hide that ently to a sitting position The world stayed steady, but a headache started on the right side of my face from jaw to temple, as if it had waited for me to sit up

Jacob knelt on one knee besidemy hand "How does it feel?"

"My head and face hurt, but honestly I&039;reat"

"No, just in case you&039;re bleeding inside your skull you don&039;t want so that thins your blood" He took his hand back and I let hih Sit here for a few o cousted, but he walked out, having to lift the crooked door to close it behind hiht on almost every side of it The shed was so old that I could have torn out a board frootten out; maybe Nicky was in here with

"Where are we?" I asked

"In an old shed," he said

I gave him the look the comment deserved It made him smile "You knohat I meant, Nicky"

"I think this used to be the caretaker&039;s shed, but now it&039;s a place to hide you out of sight, until you&039;re well enough to raise the dead"

I took in a deeper breath and realized I could smell old marble I&039;d been around it most of my adult life, and it actually did have an odor, if you were close enough to it, or surrounded by enough of it "I take it this is the ceton is buried"

"How do you knoe&039;re in a ce, but decided to save my lies for later "I can smell the marble headstones"

He drew in a deep breath "I can, too, but I wasn&039;t sure you could You don&039;t shift, or that&039;s e&039;re told"

"Not yet," I said

"Why say it that way?"

I shrugged "There&039;s always the chance that e someday My situation is too rare to really knoill happen in the long run So, is this where Ilsa is buried?"

"Yep, he found an old, out-of-the-way one so ouldn&039;t be interrupted"

"Yeah, without the right peret arrested for disturbance of a corpse, or worse" I turned my head, and the ache intensified as if soaments were bruised Since I should have been dead, I was okay with that Jean-Claude&039;s vaht made me realize that it was after dark and I could contact hiht alone

"You won&039;t be able to use metaphysics to contact your vampire master, or anyone else, Anita" It was alh I was pretty sure it was only coincidence

"I didn&039;t," I said

"You were stronger metaphysically than we planned, so Jacob called in our tea so that while you&039;re on this land you won&039;t be able to contact anyone mind to mind"

"What if they try to contact ood, and very thorough, and we&039;re also over two hours outside your city Even if your guys break through, they&039;ll never be able to get to you in ti the snipers to finish the job"

It wasI took a deep breath of the cool, earthy air, and there was nothing He was as peaceful and eely Zen, and very unlike most of the shapeshifters I knew

"Besides, if Jacob or Ellen senses you trying to break through the barrier she&039;s put up, then Micah Callahan dies" He said it with ale in inflection, and only the sht at that lack of inflection It seemed worse that it didn&039;t bother hi someone I loved, someone as a linchpin on which my happiness revolved That it didn&039;t matter to him both helped and hurt It hurt because lack of emotion can make people harder to manipulate, and helped because it made me calmer, made ae to search for the barrier the witch had put up, the same way I&039;d try a locked door, just in case If this Ellen was any good at all, she&039;d senseher barrier I couldn&039;t risk what her reaction would be; if it had been a real door I could probably have rattled it a little withoutupset, but how do you rattle a metaphysical barrier just a little? My powers tended to rely on brute force more than subtlety I couldn&039;t risk it I couldn&039;t risk Micah like that My voice ca exactly, but why do you keep threatening to kill him first?"

"He&039;s just your Nimir-Raj; the others are your animals to call We aren&039;t sure exactly what powers you&039;ve gained from your vampire master, but if you are so a wereanimal that you&039;ve bound to yourself can sometimes kill you both We need you alive to raise the zooes first"

"If they die"

"Yeah, yeah, you&039;ll kill us all I know"

"Did I talk while I was unconscious?"

"No, but we know your rep, and if we kill so friends" He gave me a very direct look, ruined only by the fall of his pale bangs over the one side of his face It gave hi that caht of his one eye, the face I could see, was very serious

"If you have to kill Micah then you&039;ll kill me, too, because you know if you don&039;t I&039;ll hunt you down"

"Yeah, Jacob doesn&039;t want to kill you for a lot of reasons, but he understands that if certain lines are crossed he&039;ll have no choice" He leaned against the wall of the shed "The wood&039;s solid even with all the cracks," he said

"Solid or not, it&039;s not exactly a secure prison for me Why are we in here?"

His hands were looser on his knees as he said, "Jacob&039;s afraid you&039;ve rolled ed him before, Anita, never I&039;ve been with his pride since I was nineteen, and I&039;ve never challenged him I want to touch you I mean, you&039;re beautiful and all, but this is le with the need to hold you What did you do to me?"

I was cal fear He e, but why lie when the truth will do? "I&039; on his knees "I don&039;t believe you"

"You could tell if I was lying earlier; can&039;t you tell now?"

"Your pulse sped up when I talked about killing your Nimir-Raj, and you&039;re scared for him, so, no, I can&039;t tell" He frowned and shifted uneasily on the cool dirt "Why did I tell you that? I should have just kept saying I didn&039;t believe you, and I definitely shouldn&039;t have offered so much information Why did I do that?"

"I told the truth, Nicky; I don&039;t know"

"You could be lying," he said