Cameo and the Highwayman (Trilogy of Shadows Book 2) by Dawn McCullough-White Page B

happen?”
    “He would send me back after her bones,” she sighed in resignation.
    “Indeed.”
    “That is a little different than being killed.”
    “If you could not finish the task at hand, he would eventually kill you, or you would simply stay here with me. Might as well cut to the chase, in my opinion.”
    She stood up and brushed the snow from her cape. “There is something I don’t understand. Why doesn’t Haffef come here himself?”
    “He can’t.”
    “Well, why not?”
    Edel turned to leave and she followed him. “He can’t cross moving water.”
    “Why not?”
    “No idea. I just know that he can’t. Once I discovered this truth, I came home.”
    “You can though?”
    He glanced back to see if she was keeping up with his pace, “So it seems.”
    “No wait, you’re wrong. When my friends and I escaped to Kings Basin across the canal, he followed us there. He crossed moving water to get to me.”
    “No, he didn’t.”
    “Yes, Kings Basin is just across the Avon.”
    “He didn’t cross it; he walked around the canal.”
    She considered that idea for a moment, “He couldn’t have. The canal extends from the Azez deep into the south of Sieunes. It’s over 300 miles long.”
    Edel stopped and waited for her to catch up. “Do you know fast he can move? He walked around it, and then came back to find you on the other side.”
    “He really can’t come here then?” She actually felt a strange sense of wellbeing wash over her. Edel seemed so certain of what he was saying.
    “You are completely safe here.”
    She stared at him, in his perfectly tailored dark suit, standing up to his knees in snow. His eyes were silver, and she could see her own image in them. She looked dumbfounded. He bought her here to keep her safe from Haffef? All this time she had simply assumed she was the extra baggage that came along with Ivy’s remains. That the bones were the prize that he needed to keep hidden from Haffef, and she had simply gotten in the way. Now he was claiming that he had taken her to spare her from being Haffef’s thrall, from leading the life he had… and to save her life.
    “So,” she said at last, thinking back to a lengthy discussion they’d had only days ago, “you do want my company.”
    Edel remained standing very still for a few moments, staring into her eyes. “I cannot deny that I want to frustrate the Master.”
    “You do remember the conversation we were having then?”
    “Of course.” It had been one of the only conversations that he had been part of in decades. “And of course I wish for your company. How many are there like us wandering the streets? Not many, I assure you.”
    She couldn’t remember any.
    “And no one else a child of the same Master.”
    Cameo wasn’t certain she liked his tone, “Oh, I didn’t realize that.”
    “You and I are uniquely each other’s.”
    “I… I’m getting cold. We should get back to the fire.”
    Edel watched her breath fill the cold air about her face and slip away into the night. She still possessed so many human qualities; he wondered if it was right to keep her with him, away from her companions. He knew that she had been through a lot already in fifty-some short years. “Yes, of course. It is late, and you must be frozen.”

Chapter Seven
     
    “Y OU HAVE TO GO BACK with me,” Opal said, inhaling smoke from a clay pipe.
    Kyrian watched the smoke encircle Opal and drift up toward the billowing cloud of pipe smoke overhead as he toyed with the pipes in the canister that was left on their table at the dining room of the Lakestar. “If you think it will help, I’ll go.”
    Opal grinned at him, “Of course it will, lad. Edel said that it was your aura on the amulet that was so difficult for him to look at. Well, if that was just your amulet, just think how difficult it will be for him to be around you, yourself!”
    “Er… yeah.” The lad smiled good naturedly at the backhanded compliment.
    “You’ll distract the