Reluctantly Shea began to gather up reams of paper and carry them to the fireplace. Her notebooks she hesitated over. She had collected a tremendous amount of folklore, beautiful stories really, along with scientific data. She hated to lose them. Taking a huge breath, she tossed them into the hearth as well and threw a match in after them.
She had to fight back tears. They seemed to burn her eyes and clog her throat until it was nearly impossible to breathe. And she knew it wasn’t just losing the papers; it was Jacques’ absence from her mind. She felt utterly alone, desolate. She found it harder and harder to concentrate without his presence. When had she become so needy? She hated the feeling of emptiness, barrenness. Where was he? Maybe something had happened to him. Maybe he was dead and had left her completely alone.
“Shea!” Raven said sharply. “Snap out of it. You aren’t alone. Nothing is wrong with Jacques. It’s amazing his silence is affecting you so severely when you’ve only been out of contact a short time.”
Shea rubbed her arms, suddenly cold. Her stomach was rebelling, and it was still hard to catch her breath. “I guess it’s because Jacques never leaves me. He can’t take being alone.”
Raven’s eyes widened. “Never?”
Shea shook her head. “I thought it would drive me crazy at first. Most of the time I didn’t recognize it, but he would know things I was thinking, and I would realize he’d been in my mind the entire time. He was alone so long, he needed constant contact with me to keep him sane.”
“This must be terrible for him,” Raven said. “To break contact with you, he must be in the middle of something big. Mikhail is blocking me out, too, and so is Gregori. But don’t you worry, we’ll be fine together. And we would still know if something were to happen to them.”
Shea powered up the generator so she could turn on her computer. She felt very uneasy, restless, even alarmed. “Raven, you don’t feel something is wrong, do you?” She typed in her password and waited for her files to appear on the screen.
“No, but I’m used to touching Mikhail occasionally for reassurance and letting him go. We’ve been together long enough to develop a kind of routine. I touch him, and whether or not he allows me into his mind, I know he’s there. You could try that.”
Shea concentrated for a moment on giving the commands to destroy her data. With a sigh she paced back to Raven. “It’s not that kind of uneasiness. It’s something else. At first I thought it was because I wasn’t touching Jacques’ mind, but I don’t think so anymore. I have the feeling something evil is watching us.”
Raven sent her mind seeking, scanning the surrounding woods carefully. There were deer a mile away. The three Carpathian men were even farther afield. “Rabbits, fox, wolves several miles out, but nothing scary that I can detect,” she assured her softly.
Shea picked up the shotgun and cracked it open to make certain it was loaded. “I feel almost sick, Raven. Something’s out there.”
“It’s the separation from Jacques. The first time it happened with Mikhail and me, I almost didn’t make it through the night. Honestly, Shea, separation is very difficult at the best of times, let alone in the morning hours when we’re growing weaker and we know the men are in danger. We may have been human, but we are their lifemates. Naturally we miss their mind touch.”
Shea wanted to believe her, but, just as she had felt an evil presence in the forest, she felt they were in danger now. She looked at Raven. This woman was important to all of them. Shea had promised Gregori she would keep Raven safe, and she was not about to be unprepared. “Maybe,” she agreed softly. Nevertheless, she walked to the door, opened it, and stepped onto the porch to survey the woods.
Nothing. The rain drove down harder, and in the distance Shea could hear the rumble of thunder. Lightning flashed in the sky. She found herself shivering, and her finger absently sought the trigger on the gun. Annoyed with herself, she went back inside, set the shotgun beneath the window, and worked at controlling herself. Her behavior was unacceptable to her. She could not believe she needed Jacques so much that she would be physically ill and have such an impression of danger because she was without his mind touch. Shea did not want to think it was an illusion, a trick of her mind, yet it seemed the lesser of two evils.