Through the Veil by Shiloh Walker

explanation wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
    Slowly, she turned her head. A shock of recognition jolted through her when she saw the hard, chiseled lines of the man whose face had haunted her subconscious and appeared in so much of her work.
    Did going insane hurt? Because that was the best explanation she could come up with. She was seeing a guy that only existed in her work and in her dreams. If insanity hurt, that could certainly explain the pain in her head.
    Everything about him was exactly as he appeared when she reproduced that hawklike visage on her work pad. The arched, sweeping brows, the black silk of the hair that framed his face, the hard sensual lips, relaxed ever so slightly in sleep. Even the small scar that bisected his chin.
    Her eyes moved back to his mouth, and she briefly wondered what he tasted like. And then memories from yesterday slammed into her. The voices in her head. The mirror. The field, so empty and desolate, and him. The feel of his hair in her hands, on her body, the hard, unyielding press of his mouth against hers, and his taste.
    Like a digital image, it was crystal clear in her mind, every last memory. Insanity wouldn’t be this vivid, would it . . . she wondered.
    The thick black fan of his lashes lifted. Even before she found herself staring into the molten silver, she knew his eyes would be that color. “This is really happening,” she said, keeping her voice level, trying very hard not to sound like she had the screaming meemies.
    Which of course, she did, but she refused to let anybody else know that. Nobody else needed to know that she couldn’t make up her mind between screaming or breaking out into nervous laughter. Although the creatures she had seen yesterday didn’t exactly inspire laughter. The screams, definitely. Laughter, not in this lifetime.
    Both laughter and screaming would only make her head worse—and if it got much worse, Lee suspected her head would split in two.
    “Aye,” he replied, his voice just as level and so soft it only hurt her ears a little. “It is really happening. How does your head feel?”
    “Terrible.”
    He sat up, tossing his hair out of his face and propping his elbow on his knee, resting his chin in the cradle of his palm as he studied her. “You could have hurt yourself,” he finally said.
    Touching her fingers to her temple, she muttered, “I think I did.”
    He laughed. He reached out and stroked a finger down her temple. “That is just a headache. A bad one, I imagine, but it is a headache. I’ve seen people send themselves into comas because they pushed themselves too far with their magick.”
    The noise that left her was little more than a squeak. Clearing her throat, she said, “Muh-magick?”
    Kalen made a tiny noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “Well, it was not puffy white clouds drifting from your hands yesterday. Yes, pet. Magick.”
    Lee shook her head. “Magick isn’t real.” She licked her lips as she said it, and wondered why those words felt so . . . wrong.
    “I think you know it is.”
    Thinking made the pain in her head worse, she decided as she squinted at him. “You are confusing the hell out of me.”
    He leaned forward and she found her eyes lingering on the bulge of muscle in his arm. Another memory surfaced. His hands on her body. His mouth on hers. She had kissed him, had wrapped herself around his body like she wanted to crawl inside him. And he’d kissed her back with the same hunger. Blood rushed to her cheeks and she dragged her eyes away from his muscles, forcing herself to focus on his eyes. But the dancing light there had her groaning. He knew, exactly, what thoughts were running through her mind.
    Gingerly, she rolled onto her belly and buried her head in her arms. Even that was enough to make that bright, throbbing pain double in intensity. She moaned her way through it and as the wave of pain peaked and then ebbed away, she muttered, “Why is this happening to me?”
    His