Enchanted Warrior by Sharon Ashwood

needed tangible proof that she was safe and well. He wasn’t leaving her unguarded, even if that meant sleeping outside her door.
    He met her eyes, holding her deep brown gaze. “Mordred never counts a battle over until he is the victor. Victory to him always means death.”

Chapter 8
    T he next afternoon, Tamsin hissed in frustration as a stack of files slithered to the floor of her office. An avalanche of yellowing paper and fading mimeographs fell with a crash. Pages fluttered across the tiles, destroying what little order she’d managed to create. Belatedly, Tamsin grabbed the last of the stack before it toppled off the desk, then wiped her hands on her jeans with a grimace.
    She’d found another mildewy box from the 1970s. After handling the papers for an hour, she was dreaming of a hot shower laced with disinfectant. Getting down on her hands and knees, she began scooping the pages into a messy stack. It would have been nice to have a spell that could bring order to the mess, but she’d never heard of such a thing, and after the night before, she had no stomach for more magic.
    To be perfectly honest, she didn’t feel well after last night’s adventure. She’d known the spell was risky—all visioning spells were. She should have had her coven around her, but she’d only had Gawain for support. Gawain, who hated magic and witches. It was just good luck that he knew how to help her when she’d needed it.
    And then there was what had come after. Heat, and then pleasure, and then—what? It was as if Gawain had taken off protective armor long enough to drive her wild, and then donned it again the moment things got interesting. He didn’t trust her—that much was clear—but his unexpected respect for her feelings said something had changed between them. Gawain had put her needs before his own and Tamsin wasn’t sure whether to be glad or wary. Such restraint made her admire him far more than she cared to admit.
    Crawling on hands and knees, Tamsin slid the last piece of paper from under the desk and added it to her stack. She sat back on her heels, exhausted by doubt. To be fair, Gawain had stayed with her until she fell asleep. After that, she was certain he didn’t stray far. He was watching over her like a scowling guardian angel, afraid because Mordred now knew Tamsin existed. Just like Stacy had warned, using magic had put Tamsin on the bad guys’ radar and that had nearly killed her. If Gawain hadn’t coaxed her back to her body, she would have died.
    Based on that, Tamsin knew two things. One, if Mordred had Merlin’s books, as her spell suggested, they were in trouble. In the wrong hands—which Mordred’s undoubtedly were—that much knowledge would be an unbeatable weapon. Two, if finding the tombs would stop Mordred in his tracks, she was all over the problem like a terrier determined to find its bone.
    Tamsin dumped the stack of paper back onto the desk and resumed her seat in front of the computer screen. She’d been making notes in a spreadsheet, cross-referencing the paper records with a list of artifacts from the original sale of the church. Much of the church’s contents—including the famous tombs—had been warehoused, but there the trail went cold and the warehouse had burned down since. She’d been hoping these files—boxed up for forty years, from what she could tell—would give her a hint as to the fate of its contents.
    She picked up the top piece of paper. It peeled away from its neighbor with a tacky sound that spoke of damp and ancient photocopier ink. It was an inventory of reliquaries, complete with an assortment of saints’ bones. Tamsin wondered what a DNA test would reveal. Most of those old relics turned out to be the bones of pigs or other animals.
    The next page was a memo for the purchase of acid-free packing materials, and the next was someone’s job application.