Comitatus,” she proffered, since it was an odd name and so probably hard for him to remember. “Latin for an armed group. Some also cite it as a source for feudalism, an arrangement between the superior and inferior.” He winced at that last word. Oh, please, someone stop her. “Would you like a drink?”
“You got beer?”
She shook her head, afraid to open her mouth.
“Anything’s good. Anyway—” He followed her to the kitchen. She angled her body so he wouldn’t see into her foodless fridge. “Smith and Mitch were all about, ‘we can save them,’ and I didn’t give a crap, so I headed home for a while. Louisiana.”
So he hadn’t fled her? He just hadn’t considered her either way. Maybe he only noticed her when he was rescuing her—or needed information, like today. “Could you look at something for me, tell me what you think?” At least she had information.
She got two root beers out of the fridge and turned back, almost bumping into him. His big body seemed to radiate warmth, after the artificial chill. She wanted to lean against him, maybe snuggle closer.
Don’t snuggle closer!
“I know,” she said, lifting one of the bottles of soda upward in offering. He squinted as he took it, as if momentarily lost in their conversation. “The Comitatus is beyond redemption.” Killers. If they hadn’t killed her father, why would they have railroaded her for the crime?
“You think so, huh?”
That surprised her. “Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t think about it.” But of course he wouldn’t. It was a secret society. Every piece of information she’d collected through the years, she’d gotten covertly. And often illegally. “That’s kind of why I wanted to talk to you. I need the opinion of someone on the outside. It’s easy to know what I’ll hear from the guys.”
“Not much.” So this visit was Comitatus related! “Because the Comitatus take an oath of secrecy when they join, at fifteen.”
“Um…yeah. Hey, wanna sit down?”
This was what came of never having visitors. Sibyl felt herself blush as she nodded and headed toward the living area. She jumped, startled, when Trace touched a palm to her back, as if to guide her. To settle her. It might have worked, if he hadn’t snatched it away.
“Sorry,” he muttered, when she glanced, wide-eyed, over her shoulder.
She shook her head, unsure how to tell him she’d liked it. She hadn’t been touched since…the scalp massage, by the hairdresser. And at one point in the last few months, Arden had hugged her—that had been strange. And then when Trace rescued her from the train. Less than three times in three months.
At least the loft’s real owner only had settees, not sofas. When she sat on one end, drawing her knees up to her chest, and Trace sank onto the other end, barely a foot of stone-colored suede separated them. She watched how Trace folded himself forward, in an attempt to make his big frame comfortable on the low seat, bracing his elbows on his thighs, clasping his big hands. She wished she knew how to draw, to capture the lines of his rangy body. Her brain wasn’t working right.
Especially not when he looked at her again, raised his eyebrows and grinned. Trace had a great grin, like a joke they were in on together. She was supposed to say something, wasn’t she? But…if she spoke, then she’d end up answering his questions and he’d go away again. Of course, him leaving would happen either way, but did she have to be the one to launch the visit’s end?
“You really do look different,” he said again, and she ducked her head, no longer in on the joke. She wanted to run to the bathroom and scrub off the expensive makeup, mess up her hair, go back to Goth eyeliner and nothing else. She wanted to undo the clasp that held some of her hair behind her head, so that it would swing forward and she could hide behind it. Yes, the new look had helped her get into this apartment, far better than most of the places she’d squatted in the past. But that wouldn’t matter if he laughed at her.
Then he said, “I like it.” And his voice sounded strangled again, and when she peeked back he wasn’t looking at her. He was frowning at his big, clasped hands, like he felt uncomfortable. Maybe he wasn’t making fun of her. No—edit that. This was Trace. Of course he wouldn’t make fun of her. He was her hero.
Sibyl risked a smile, though it felt uncertain and new on her lips. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Trace slanted a glance back at her, then grinned that between-you-and-me grin again, and Sibyl’s insides twisted with unfamiliar, not-quite-comfortable feelings. But as long as Trace was here, she guessed it was safe to feel them.
Still grinning, he leaned forward to where he’d set his long, thick bundle on the glass cocktail table and unfolded the tarp, as if presenting it with a flourish. In shifting his weight forward and then back, he managed to end up closer to her when he sat back. Sibyl liked his wall of warmth. But she followed his lead to look at what he’d brought, so that this new feeling could venture out without the threat of direct attention.
She frowned. “It’s a sword.” An old, scarred, dusty sword.
“I found it behind the wall of the old LaSalle bungalow,” he agreed, raising it by the pommel like a warrior offering his strength and sword to his overlord…right before riding off to conquer peaceful villages, kill menfolk, enslave children and rape women as spoils of war. Sibyl knew his friends had gotten all excited over an ancient Greek sword, back when she’d met them. They called it the sword of Aeneas, and they acted like it was the holy grail. Like it was a sacred relic. A Comitatus relic.
Maybe it was. Swords, like guns, had only one purpose—to kill and maim people, maybe to coerce obedience with the threat of killing and maiming. Con quest. Power. And this sword was LaSalle’s?
The court finds Isabel Daine guilty of arson and manslaughter.
So much for that new, precious feeling. Now all she felt was nausea. “Put it away.”
“But this is what I wanted to ask you about—”
She used her feet to push herself up onto the arm of the settee, leaning as far back from him and his blade as possible. “Put it away!”
Trace leaned forward, rewrapped the sword, then sat back.
Well on his end of the settee.
This time, Sibyl didn’t have to wonder. He thought she was crazy. Maybe she was. But if so, that was the fault of the Comitatus, of LaSalle, and of whoever had really killed her father. The fault of the kind of men who got excited about weaponry and violence and swords.
That didn’t make her heart hurt any less.
Chapter 2
Now Trace had gone and turned her back into a scaredy-cat.
He just hoped she wouldn’t faint again.
He wished he knew how much of her problem was the sword, and how much was really him. Little Sibyl had surprised the hell of him. He’d expected to find her staying at some ratty, rent-by-the-week hotel, the kind he and his friends got since quitting their legacies and the Comitatus had left them with cash-only options and little
