As tasty as it was, Korvel's scent only made her want to punch him.
Someday Alex would study Kyn pheromones and figure it all out. For now, she had to find out how much trouble she was facing here. "Éliane said what I'm feeling—this sygkenis separation anxiety—would get worse. Can I control that?"
"To test the bond between master and sygkenis invites torment," Korvel said. "To deny it drives those who suffer to madness and violence."
"What?" She was appalled that Michael had never told her about this. What else didn't she know? "How soon does it happen? How will I know?"
He stood up and suddenly wouldn't look at her. "You are different. My master says, more human than we are. It may not be the same for you."
"Give me a ballpark, then." When he didn't answer, she added, "Korvel, I didn't know anything about this, and I can't fix what I don't understand. Talk to me."
"You cannot fix this. You will lose all control." He faced her. "It will either destroy your bond with Cyprien or your sanity."
The only time she had lost control was with Michael, and that had been strictly sexual. "I just don't see that happening."
"As I said, you are different." Korvel shrugged.
Alex felt like slapping him, but only because what he had said made sense. She was running on nerves, not thinking clearly—and anger had been her best friend lately. Then there was Thierry Durand, and the insanity he had suffered after believing that his Kyn wife had been tortured to death. "If I do this—become violent—will Richard give me back to Michael?"
"He may, if you do as he asks," Korvel said as he went to the door.
"And if I don't? What then?"
"If you lose your bond to Cyprien, likely nothing. But if you lose your mind…" He glanced back at her. "He will have me take your head."
What Adélie had told Nick sent her out of the inn to make some rounds of the village shops. She bought a few overpriced trinkets in order to coax more stories out of the shopkeepers and clerks, but it wasn't all that difficult to get them to talk. No one liked the chateau any more than they did its surly caretaker.
"Two Gypsy families came through town a month ago," the grocer told her. "They camp by water, and found a place near le chateau where the Basque did not see them."
Nick spotted an impact wrench kit sitting next to a refrigerated meat case and picked it up. "This for sale?"
"No. I do not sell such things." He frowned at the kit. "Someone must have left it here." He looked at Nick. "The Gypsies always stay here for the summer, but they left a day after they arrived. The woman came here for supplies before they went north. She told me that the water turned red under the moonlight, and that their dog never stopped barking until dawn."
Nick gathered some other interesting gossip about Father Claudio and the chateau. The village priest had been repeatedly called upon by the parish to visit Father Claudio and bless the ruin, but he flatly refused to go within a mile of the old man or the chateau, and repeatedly warned his congregation to stay away.
A wayward cow from a valley dairy had strayed onto the chateau's property, and never gave milk again. The butcher's wife, a robust and cheerful woman who had never been ill a day in her life, had become ill with a mysterious rash that seemed to drain away her vitality more each day until her husband took her to the hospital. The doctors claimed it was a bad case of anemia, but the villagers knew better.
"That wretched place is cursed," the flower seller confided to Nick. "I for one will sleep better when it is demolished."
The scents of the flowers made Nick's stomach roll—she hated flowers—and she gritted her teeth. "Are there any plans to do that?"
"No," the old woman admitted. "Only talk of diverting the stream away from le chateau."
"Why?"
She grimaced. "The farmers say it collects in stagnant pools there, where mosquitoes and flies breed."
Nick's last stop was the village garage, where she talked the owner into selling her the hand tools she needed. Once she told him that she would use them to work on her bike, he warmed to her and related his own story about the chateau.
"The crazy Basque come to the village with three men in a big truck, stop here to buy petrol and cigarettes," he said as he loaded the hand tools into a sturdy box. "One of them ask where he find a brickyard. I say to him, 'Hey, you need that work done for you, you hire me and my sons. We fix wall, build new one, whatever he want. We build half the houses in the village.' "
"But they didn't hire you," Nick guessed.
The garage owner spit on the ground. "He say it for le chateau. I tell him there are no enough brick in France, fix that. The crazy Basque, he start telling me shut up, you know? And him a priest! So I forget where the brickyard is. And when the truck come back, such a pity, but I have no more petrol to sell them."
"Excellent payback." Nick looked past him at the beautifully organized rack of tools hanging behind his counter and saw a telling space. "You lose an electric impact wrench kit?"
The shops had closed by the time Nick returned to the inn, and only the small café at the corner seemed to be doing any business. Young and old couples sat outside, watching the sky darken as they gossiped and enjoyed their wine and crudites. Nick decided to check out the patrons at the café, and took the tools up to her room. She then walked down to the café and found an empty corner table where she could sit and observe.
The sound of hammering, Nick thought. The butcher's wife and her mysterious rash. Looking for a brickyard.
Someone had installed an old Wurlitzer jukebox at the back of the café, which played a polyglot of old French love songs and bopping tunes from the fifties. As Bill Haley and the Comets rocked around the clock, Nick noticed she had attracted some attention. An older teenager at the bar had turned around and was staring at her from behind a half-empty bottle of beer.
"His name is Bernard," the waitress told her as she brought the glass of wine Nick had ordered. "He likes foreign women."
She studied the bold smile the boy gave her. "Glad to hear it." She dug a couple of bills out of her pocket, but the young woman shook her head.
"The wine is from him," the waitress said, and giggled. "I think he likes you." She went to wait on the next table.
Bernard climbed down from the bar stool and sauntered over to Nick's table. "Hey. American, right?"
"Right." Nick watched him as he turned the chair across from hers around and sat down. "Thanks for the drink."
He acknowledged her gratitude by scooting closer and lowering his voice to a seductive murmur. "Anything for you, baby."
Get away from me and forget you ever saw me. Nick smiled through her weary irritation. "You live around here?"
"Here and in our country house," Bernard advised her. "My father is mayor of the village."
That changed things. Nick noted the lack of razor stubble and the Silent Poets T-shirt. The mayor's son might be coming on to her like Valentino, but he was probably just a kid. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-two. Older than you, chérie." He waggled his eyebrows. "Old enough, eh?"
Nick felt a thousand years old. Old and tired of boys on the make, tired of a world that most often looked through lust-blind eyes. She hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. She was planning to do something that was at worst going to get her shot and at best killed. Bernard hitting on her, she didn't need.
I have to find the Madonna. Use him.
"Old enough," she agreed. His eyes zeroed in on her fingers as she toyed with the stem of the wineglass. "You ever heard any stories about the Golden Madonna?"
"Lettice, the butcher's wife, she is wild for the Madonna. Statues in the shop, in the garden, in her windows…" He shrugged as if to say she was crazy but it couldn't be helped. "Me, not so much. Why go to church when I can be getting down with the real ladies, you know?"
Nick doubted he'd gotten down much farther than first base yet, but she nodded agreeably. "I like to take pictures of the Madonna. Do you know where Lettice lives?"
"In the flat above the butcher shop," Bernard said. He caught the lapel of her jacket between his fingers and gave it a slow, suggestive stroke. "But, hey, you're not going anywhere but here, right, baby?"
"Yeah, right." Nick caught his hand and curled her fingers around it. "You ever see Lettice out walking anywhere outside town?"
"Sure. She goes into the woods all the time." Bernard licked his lips and shifted his legs, trying to disguise the erection straining at the crotch of his shorts. "She picks les cèpes, the wild mushrooms to sell in the shop. You want to go back to your room, baby? I show you a good time."
For a moment Nick imagined it. The beer on his breath didn't mask the smell of his skin, and his penis was standing up and begging for her like a friendly puppy. He'd be rough and clumsy, or quick and clumsy, but that didn't matter. Boys like him were fast learners. Young and strong as he was, he'd last until dawn. She could show him a few tricks along the way.
His hand slid over hers where it rested on the table. "Come on," he urged. "Let's go make the magic."
His touch made the faint shimmer of desire in her belly flare. Why shouldn't she? Nick didn't have sex that often, and she missed it, missed the skin-to-skin intimacy and the welcome burst of the release. He'd love it, and he'd be safer with her than with some skanky backpacker busy screwing her way through Europe and spreading STDs. He's as old as I was when—
"Not tonight." Disgusted with herself, Nick drained her wineglass and tucked some bills under the base. "Thanks, Bernard." She stood, and then bent and picked up the wallet on the floor next to his chair, and put it in his hand. "You should go home now. Rest up, you know, for the ladies." Without looking back at him she strode out of the café.
