"Here, let me help." He positioned his body behind hers, placing both flattened hands against the st.u.r.dy wood. "Let me know when to push."

"Okay." She went silent again, head turned to one side. He watched her profile, the tense, minute shifts in her expression. Her eyes were closed, the delicate muscles fluttering underneath that fine, creamy skin.

Then that subtle something happened again.

She said, "Now."

He threw all his strength and weight against the heavy oak door, all the power of his frustration, his grief and anger over the years, everything.

For a brief, heartrending moment, nothing happened. Then with a gigantic, rusty creak, the door sprang open so suddenly Sophie plunged forward to sprawl flat on dusty flagstones just inside the dim interior of the house. Caught by surprise, he fell awkwardly on top of her.

She coughed. "f.u.c.k. Ow."

The door was open.

Nikolas lifted his weight, urged her over, and when she flopped onto her back, he landed back on top of her and said into her face, "The door's open."

She coughed again and laughed, threw her arms around his neck and laughed some more. Exhilaration plunged at breakneck speed through his body. He cupped her head and laughed with her, and she looked so beautiful in that moment, with those gorgeous eyes dancing and her face lit with delight, he lost himself in the desire to kiss her again.

She kissed him back, meeting his every shift and caress fiercely, tenderly, sensually, only breaking away from his mouth to suck in another gulp of air. "You're heavier than you look."

"I landed hard on top of you too," he muttered. Finally, with an effort at some self-control, he pulled away from her reclining body. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry! We're in. I'm in! This is my house now." Lying there on the flagstones, she flung her arms wide and laughed again. The exuberance in her voice was impossible to resist. He grinned. "My land. Mine. Do you know I've never owned any property before?" Suddenly she sat up and stared at him. "Wait, the property isn't really mine, not yet. I need to send proof that I got inside to Kathryn so that she can acknowledge it and transfer ownership."

"What kind of proof does she need?" Nikolas rolled to his feet and offered a hand to Sophie, who accepted it. He hauled her upright.

"She said a photo would do, but I don't think I can take a photo from inside the house. My flashlight worked outside, but the land magic feels too strong in here." She frowned.

"Give me your phone and stand in the middle of the open doorway," he told her. "I'll take a photo of you from some distance back. It'll be irrefutable. You're in."

"Good idea." She dug out her phone and handed it to him.

She had a standard smartphone with familiar apps. Loping across the lawn, he spun and thumbed through the apps to the camera and trained it on her. She stood with one hand gripping the edge of the open door, still grinning from ear-to-ear.

He snapped several photos, then checked the phone.

"Got it!" he called out.

She bolted across the lawn toward him, hands out, beaming. "Gimme."

"Hold on a moment," he said, moving his fingers rapidly over the small keyboard.

"What are you doing to my phone?"

"You didn't save my number when you texted me earlier. I programmed my number into it." He tossed the phone to her. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of the air and checked the screen. Then as he watched, she thumbed through her contacts, chose one, and sent several photos.

When she had finished, she twisted around to stare at the open door. Then she checked her phone. "Oh man, I'm going to keep checking my phone until she responds. What is the time difference between here and New York, when it's midafternoon here?"

"It's five hours," he said as he mentally did the calculation. "It's not that early for her. She has probably started her workday, so she might not check her personal messages for a while."

"She's a physician, and she said her job is really challenging. I don't want to wait." Sophie scowled. As he watched, she pressed the call b.u.t.ton and held the phone to her ear. Distantly, he could hear it ringing.

Then the ringing stopped, and a woman said in a calm, professional voice, "Kathryn Shaw."

"Kathryn, this is Sophie Ross." Sophie looked at him, excitement fizzing in her eyes. "Check your messages. I sent you photos as proof that I got inside the house."

"You didn't!" The woman's voice changed completely. "You did? That's amazing! Congratulations! How on earth did you do it? Wait-let me see the photos.... Oh my G.o.d, I can't believe someone finally did it!"

Sophie laughed gleefully. "I had to call you."

"I'm so glad you did! Have you had a chance to look around yet? Please be careful. After so long without any maintenance or upkeep, it's got to be a death trap. The G.o.ds only know what's in there."

"No, I haven't looked around. I wanted to contact you first."

"But how did you get inside?"

Sophie glanced at Nikolas. "That's a bit of a story. The short version is, I tested out a theory, and it worked."

"Well, I have to go into surgery in twenty minutes, so I don't have time to hear the whole thing now, but I want to hear it soon!"

"Sure." Sophie turned slightly away from him as she said, "So what does this mean legally? Where do we stand right now, today?"

"According to the terms of the will, you gained ownership of the property and the annuity the moment you stepped inside that door. But as you're no doubt well aware, it's going to take a little time to process the final doc.u.ments. It'll be three to four weeks before you get the full t.i.tle work and the financials. I still can't believe you did it! Are you excited?"

Sophie looked over her shoulder at Nikolas. "You have no idea."

"For several years now I've kept a letter on file ready to send to the solicitor in case someone managed to fulfill the terms in the will. All it needs is today's date, your legal name, and my signature." Kathryn's voice grew m.u.f.fled and distant as she told someone else, "I'll be right there." Then her voice came back stronger. "I'm afraid I have to cut this short. In a few hours, when I'm back at my desk, I'll update and sign that letter, then send the scanned copy to both you and Paul. You won't be able to resell any of the property-if you want to-until you get the paperwork, but you'll be able to draw on the annuity within a day or two. Will that do for now?"

"Will that do?" Sophie laughed. "That's amazing! I can't thank you enough!"

"Thank the ghost of my father. He's the one who set this up."

"I know you have to go, but I have one last question, quickly. I'm having a hard time internalizing this. I actually own the property right now?"

"You own it. Right now you own five acres of land in England, which includes the manor house and the cottage. You can't sell any of the land until you get the paperwork, and-sorry, I should have said this before, but I'm distracted-you need to retain ownership of the manor house to keep the annuity. The entailment is attached to the owner of the house. I know it's a weird legality. If you need to go over that in detail, Paul can explain it better than I can. All right?"

"Yes. Thank you!"

"I'm so excited for you! Again, congratulations! Let's talk again soon!"

As Sophie ended the call, she swiveled to stare at Nikolas. "I take it you heard all of that?"

Nodding, he strode over to cup her chin in his fingers. "You can't sell any of the property until you get the papers, but you own it. If you were to sell the manor house, you'd be selling the annuity too, which makes it a very valuable piece of real estate, whether the building is useable or not."

"I don't want to sell it." She looked back at the house. "Don't ask me to explain, but I love every crumbling, creepy, unlivable inch of it."

She said that so fervently he had to grin. His attention traveled back to that open, inviting door. He said, "Why don't we see what's inside those walls?"

"I can't wait." She turned to lope back to the house, and he caught up with her and kept pace easily.

When she stepped across the threshold, he was half a step behind her. A deep silence filled the large s.p.a.ce they entered. Sophie walked into the middle of the area and turned around, looking around her with wide eyes.

She said in a hushed voice, "It feels funny to be walking somewhere no one has been for centuries."

"Yes, it does." The interior looked very solid, with a flagstone floor and walls made of stone. There was a raised dais at the far end of the open s.p.a.ce. He tilted his head to study the high rafters overhead, looking for any potential weaknesses, signs of rot, or water stains that might indicate a possible collapse.

When he looked at her again, she was regarding him curiously. "Even for someone of your age?"

His mouth tilted. He told her wryly, "Several hundred years is a long time for any creature."

A touch of pink washed across her cheekbones. She nodded, then looked around. "This is a very large s.p.a.ce, and I don't know where to go from here."

"This is the great hall," he said. "It would have been used for formal occasions, to receive important visitors, and for the whole household to eat together. It looks fairly barren right now with all the stone, but there would have been tapestries hanging all along the walls to give them color and help hold in the warmth."

"They must have taken the tapestries when they left," Sophie said, staring around her.

"There might be some tapestries still hanging elsewhere," he told her. "With a manor house of this size, there will be private rooms, a family sitting area or drawing room, which was sometimes called a solar, and bedrooms, a kitchen, pantry, a b.u.t.tery, smoke room, a larder, servants' quarters, possibly an inner courtyard, and the Shaw family clearly had wealth and education, so I suspect there'll be a library, a chapel, and even an armory."

She blew out a breath. "All that."

"Yes. All that. This didn't shelter just a family household. It housed an entire small community."

The hall itself looked to be in surprisingly good shape. The roof didn't appear ready to collapse. Above, a balcony ran the length of the hall, where people could gather to watch events below. He could see a hint of shadowed hallways between stone arches. If the house was like other manor houses of the time, they would lead to the private family rooms.

There was a ma.s.sive stone fireplace at one end of the great hall, big enough for a man of Nikolas's height to stand upright inside. It had been swept clean when the family had left, but a shadow from the fires stained the stone.

He stepped inside and craned his neck to try to see up the chimney, but it was too dark to see past a few feet. It was possible something could have nested in the crevice. Could there be any creatures living inside the house? How would they exist, and what would they have fed on? He could always light a fire to find out.

All in all, the hall looked plenty big enough to hold eight men who were used to living in rough conditions. It was thick with dust but dry, with no sign of stains or mold, and with modern camping gear, they could actually make it pretty comfortable. Propane stoves should work. They weren't technologically complex enough to stop working around the magic of Other lands. Basically all one did was open a valve to release the gas, light it, and set it under a grill. And the fireplace itself might be viable.

So, they could have shelter immediately and explore the rest of the house at their leisure. They could cook. They needed a clean water source and a latrine. Camping gear, firewood, and a big enough supply of food to last them through a lengthy siege, if necessary.

It was doable. The setup would be relatively primitive, but it was defensible, and eminently doable.

When he stepped out of the fireplace and looked around, Sophie was nowhere in sight. "Hey!" he called out sharply. "I thought we agreed this house wasn't safe. No disappearing! Where are you?"

Quick, light footsteps sounded in the hall off to his left, and she stepped into view. "I didn't go far," she said. Her eyes had gone wide again. "Just down the hall a little way. Nikolas, there's a shift about twenty feet down the hall."

He strode rapidly over to her, still feeling irritated that she had gone out of sight. "You didn't step into it, did you?"

"No! Oh, no." She shuddered. "I don't think anybody should go off by themselves in here. Kathryn said there was a pair of children who disappeared for weeks. When they reappeared again, they were dirty and starved and babbling about strange things."

He rested his hands on his hips as he looked down the hall. "We need to map out the house and mark off where the shifts occur."

"Yes!" When he turned his attention back to Sophie, her eyes had lit up. "We need different colored chalk or better yet, paint. The great hall can be the green zone. Down there can be the red zone." She waved her hands in the air. "The colors don't matter. I'm just being random. Then the next zone can be blue, and yellow, and orange, and so forth. When we have a floor plan, we can draw in the zones and see if we can detect any patterns."

"And because we don't know what happens when you cross from one zone to the next, n.o.body goes exploring alone," he told her.

She c.o.c.ked her head and angled her jaw out. "Who owns this house again?"

"Sophie," he snapped. "This isn't worth arguing over. It doesn't matter if you own the house. Don't risk your life over it."

She blew out a breath. "Okay. Okay! This one time you happen to be right. It's the law of averages. Eventually you were going to be right at some point, but really, you shouldn't expect that to happen again now for years and years-"

There was only one way he knew of to shut her up. He grabbed her by the wrist, hauled her against his chest, and as she oofed at the impact and laughed, he snaked his other hand around the back of her neck and kissed her.

This time there was no surprise or uncertainty. He knew what to expect, and it happened. Like striking a match, s.e.xuality flared to life and shot along all his nerve endings. Her plush, full lips were still trembling with laughter.

He ate it all down. He devoured her, greedily. His c.o.c.k stiffened into a painful hard spike of desire, while she slipped her arms around his waist, molded her body to his, and kissed him back. She met him, greed for greed, ragged breath for breath. He had never felt so alive, so connected.

So perplexed by all of it. By her.

Lifting up his head, he glared down at her. "What the h.e.l.l is the matter with you?"

There was something vulnerable in her face, like fine, thin crystal. For a moment she looked blinded, lost, and her lower lip trembled before she sucked it between even, white teeth. The sight bothered him greatly. He wanted to tuck her face into his neck and shelter that fragile vulnerability from the rest of the world so no one else ever saw it.

As he stared, the expression vanished and she snapped back to alertness. The mischief came back slowly, but it did come back.

She laughed up at him. "I'm still jet-lagged. It's going to take me three or four days to get over it. But there's still no excuse for you."

Lightly he touched the dark smudge of shadow underneath one of her eyes. All joking aside, she did need more rest.

"Sophie," he said seriously.

At his tone, her humor faded. "What is it?"

"I didn't know I was looking for you, but I was," he whispered. "You might be the key to keeping my men together and alive. You might be the key to everything."

Her eyes darkened. "Don't put that kind of burden on me. I'll do what I can to help you, and it will be what it will be. Maybe it will be enough. I hope so. That's all."

"It's more than enough." His fingers were too callused to fully sense how soft her skin was, so he stroked the back of his fingers down her cheek. "How does five thousand a month sound?"

She blinked. "For what?"

"For renting the house, of course."

"You mean, five thousand pounds? A month?" Her sleek dark brows pulled together. "I don't know, that doesn't sound right. That's too much."

"You're a lousy negotiator," he told her. "I would pay twice that and say thank you for the opportunity."

That sly humor slid back into her expression. "Well, I don't know. There's no central heating, no warm water-no water at all that we've found yet-no toilets, no phone or cable. And I don't think the bus stops out here."

He couldn't smile back. "This place is impregnable from most, if not all, forms of attack. With your colloidal silver and the null spell, my men can rest here in some safety and regroup. And who knows what else we might be able to achieve if we can figure out how all the puzzle pieces fit together."

Bowing her head, she smoothed her hands over his chest and patted him very gently. "I'm really afraid your hopes are much too high."

Her touch soothed him in a way he had never experienced before. He covered one of her hands with his, pressing it harder against his skin.