Crawling into his bed, surrounded by the smell of him, Sibyl couldn’t possibly sleep.

She listened to the shower across the hall. She imagined Trace in there, washing off all that blood and sweat. Why hadn’t it bothered her more?

Because it’s his.

The horror she’d felt when she’d thought him hurt or dead…the odd ache in her chest when he’d all but dared her to be disgusted by him…. She didn’t need experience she didn’t have, or the IQ she did, to face what this had become. She needed only a little courage.

She was falling in love with Trace Beaudry. Trace LaSalle-Beaudry…no. That confused things too much. Let him be just Trace.

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Dear Reader,

If this is your first Evelyn Vaughn title, thank you for checking me out! If, however, you’ve been looking for Underground Warrior since Knight in Blue Jeans came out, then I also thank you for your patience. I’ve been writing more slowly lately, which, unfortunately, resulted in a long wait for you. My apologies.

Trace and Sibyl’s story gave me the chance to explore human resilience, from that of a girl falsely imprisoned to that of a city striving to rebuild itself after disaster. If New Orleans can keep going, then why can’t the rest of us?

I hope all of you enjoy Underground Warrior!

Evelyn Vaughn

Underground Warrior
Evelyn Vaughn

MILLS & BOON

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EVELYN VAUGHN

believes in many magicks, particularly the magic of storytelling. She has written fiction since she could print words, first publishing in a newspaper contest at the age of twelve. Thirty(ish) years later, she’s publishing her eighteenth novel. Evelyn loves movies and videos, and is an unapologetic TV addict. Luckily, her imaginary friends and her cats seem to get along.

Evelyn loves to talk about stories and characters, especially her own. Please write her at Yvaughn@aol.com.

I owe many thanks for Underground Warrior, including Juliet Burns, Paige Wheeler, Natashya Wilson, Patience Smith, Shana Smith, Kayli Rhodes, the Texas Read’ems (who helped me come up with the idea for the Blade Keepers) and the First Thursday Romance Reader Bookclub (who kept me going). Because of them, I dedicate this book to my readers.

You complete me!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Prologue

Dallas, West End, August

“He said to come alone,” said the pretty woman.

Her partner answered, “They always say to come alone.”

Silently spying on the couple from her corner of the sun-drenched restaurant patio, Sibyl analyzed her discomfort. It wasn’t fear. Fear she understood—had understood since, as a twelve-year-old, she’d watched her world end. Red-and-blue flashing lights. A pounding on the door. Mama’s cry…

Sibyl pushed the memories safely behind a wall of reason. She’d come here for information. Exposure was the one thing her enemies—a secret society of powerful men, of killers—feared.

A pounding gavel. “The court finds Isabel Daine guilty of arson and manslaughter.” A public defender too drunk to sugarcoat it. “Some people in this town, you just can’t fight.”

Some people. Why not just say secret society? The Comitatus. And no people willing to admit who really started the fire that killed her father.

The wealthy, powerful society wouldn’t allow it. Perhaps Sibyl could catalog her newest discomfort as frustration. Arden Leigh, socialite daughter of a Dallas Comitatus leader, had broken her emailed promise. Sibyl—anonymous under the handle of Vox07—had specified that they meet alone. Instead, Arden brought a suitor. Despite his old T-shirt and faded jeans, his posture and speech patterns bespoke wealth. Power. Comitatus.

“Thank heavens I have a big, strong man to protect me,” Arden teased her beau. Sibyl’s stomach twisted as she watched. She had to get out of there.

Across a wide parking lot, a yellow-and-white light-rail train slid to a halt with a ringing of bells. While disembarking passengers distracted the pretty couple, Sibyl scribbled a simple, angry note onto a strip of paper placemat—Liars!

Risky or not, she couldn’t just ignore people lying, cheating and getting their own way at the expense of others. Not powerful secret societies descended from bloody conquerors like Charlemagne or Genghis Khan. Not beauty queens with false smiles and doting, disguised lovers. Not anyone.

Swallowing back her hurt, Sibyl stood to leave the patio. She dropped the note surreptitiously into the socialite’s purse as she passed.

Suddenly, the woman’s partner blocked the one exit. “Hiya, Vox.”

Sibyl spun and ran, vaulting the iron fencing of the patio and racing across a hot, Texas parking lot toward the train stop. She dodged surprised tourists. She threaded between cars. The 2:18 pulled away from the historic district, but she could lose herself in the crowd heading for El Centro Community College just beyond, if she…could…just….

The obstacle of a second man, angling toward her from behind the train stop’s handicap access ramp, forced her to a stumbling stop. No….

Tailored suit, despite the August heat wave. Expensive sunglasses. An air of absolute entitlement, even for nobility. More Comitatus.

If her years of uncovering every scrap of information she could find on them had taught her nothing else, it taught her how to recognize their agents.

Fight. No, move. No—fight! Sibyl pivoted—but here came the couple who’d chased her. She fell an instinctive step back and spotted a third enemy—privileged walk despite his cheap clothing and beach-blond hair—closing in from another direction. They’d surrounded her. They’d won. Again.

“It’s all right, honey!” lied the beauty queen, reaching for her. “You can trust—”

The scream of a train whistle drowned her out.

Sybil spun to face the light-rail train that loomed down on her with an urgent wail of warning. A blow hurled her into brick pavement.

Then…? Silence.

Wouldn’t a train’s impact hurt more? She curled her hand on the hot bricks beneath her…and smelled the earthy, unmistakable scent of man on top of her, sheltering her. She felt the rub of coarse skin on her bare arms, of denim on her bare legs. Despite the gruff cursing over the screech of metal brakes, she felt safe.

Literally. Someone saved her.

Someone who weighed almost as much as a train, even so.

Opening her eyes, Sibyl turned her head to the man who rolled off her. His size momentarily blocked the sun and blue sky. Swarthy, she noted. Angry…she’d been angering men for a long time now. This one, at least, had some cause.

He could have died. Which meant he, at least, didn’t want her silenced.

“What the hell were you doing?” her savior demanded, cutting through her shock. His accent held the familiar trace of Louisiana—rural Louisiana. He pulled her effortlessly upward with one huge, rough hand around hers, and she let him. “When a train’s about to hit you, you move, you don’t just stand there!”

Sibyl barely reached his broad chest, even in her cowboy boots. The muscles of his shoulders bulged under his T-shirt; the muscles of his thick arms she could see for herself under sun-browned skin. Substantial, she thought. Blue collar, not white collar. A two-day beard shadowed his jaw. Primitive. And he'd risked his life for her.

A strange sensation filled her. After a decade alone, she searched for a label, then surprised herself. Trust? She trusted him. Completely.

“Oh, thank God!” Arden Leigh put on a surprisingly good show of concern. So did her beau and the blond man, with their prep school postures and thrift store clothes. The one man who’d dressed Comitatus-wealthy had vanished. Safe. “We didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I guess you just don’t have the way with women that Trace does.” The blond man laughed. Sibyl’s hero grunted casual disgust, but she didn’t hear his reply.

They were together. This man—Trace—who seemed like the anti-Comitatus, knew people she’d assumed were her enemies. And yet, as the others crowded around her, Sibyl instinctively pressed back against her savior’s solid body. Fear, she understood. It shouldn’t stop her from finding out more about these not-quite-Comitatus types…or their friend. If she could trust him.

Needing time, needing proof, Sibyl rolled her eyes upward and dropped into a feigned faint, like some damsel in distress.

Her hero caught her, swept her into his hard arms, held her close to his broad, warm chest—and growled an unheroic, “Crap.”

Sibyl had no intention of analyzing the feelings that swept past her wall of reason, this time.

Some truths were just too dangerous to consider.

Chapter 1

“Doubt separates people…it is a sword that kills.”

—Buddha

New Orleans, three months later

Trace Beaudry didn’t consider himself a big thinker.

Big? Hell, yeah.

A thinker? Not so much.

But even he couldn’t ignore the significance of finally entering his ancestors’ once grand, now ruined, home. This house could have been his inheritance if he’d been smarter, classier, better. He’d tried. He’d failed. Now the house sat empty and rotting.

And here Trace stood, the bastard end of his genetic line—hefting the sledgehammer that would take it down.

Even through the bandanna across his face, even with a fresh stick of peppermint gum in his mouth, the fancy “bungalow” stank as thick and awful as any other New Orleans flood house. It had stood empty for years before Hurricane Katrina turned even nice areas of New Orleans into Southern Lake Pontchartrain. But what really trashed the building were the months it sat untouched, afterward. The Judge—Trace couldn’t think of the man he’d first met on his fifteenth birthday as a father—had apparently fought the city’s attempts to force his hand. For once, the Judge lost.

And now his illegitimate son crossed the threshold at last.

Dirt and flyspecks darkened lead cathedral windows. Deadly black mold laced across layers of brittle wallpaper that sagged like bunting from an equally grimy ceiling. Inches of bug-infested filth carpeted both the floor and the museum-quality furniture strewn about by forgotten floodwaters. A ceiling fan’s blades wilted like an upside-down flower, pulled downward as those waters had receded, and then dried like that, as much as anything ever dried in Louisiana. A rat scurried up the curved, wrought-iron staircase.

Trace knuckled his hard hat back as he took it all in—and snorted.

“Eh?” asked Alain, who’d grown up in the same trailer park as Trace. He ran the construction crew hired for this gut job. He’d bid extra low, just to see this little piece of Trace’s fancy-schmancy history.

Trace shook his head, at a loss for the right words. Irony? Symbolism? Karma? He didn’t want to call on the botched education that his embarrassing attempt at legitimacy, at life as a LaSalle, had bought him. He’d tried living in his father’s world. He’d failed. End of story. Now he settled for, “Life’s funny, huh?”

Then the six-man team set about knocking down every bit of the house except the frame and foundation. They started by emptying it, piling up mounds of trash and recyclables at the distant, weed-shrouded curb. Then they shoveled muck off the floor into wheelbarrows to cart outside. Only later could they break down the walls, pull out the insulation and leave only the bungalow’s frame to be rebuilt. Trace liked the honest, hard work of it—no polish or sophistication required. No stupid rituals or secrecy, either. He liked sweating and lifting and pushing his fighter’s body to the limit without hurting anyone. He liked not thinking.

This was why he’d left his friends—fellow outcasts from their fathers’ world of privilege and power—back in Dallas, once they started making noises about fixing that world. They thought too much.

Trace was a man of action.

“So much for curb appeal, eh?” Alain joked from the street, hours later. The once-white wall had grayed to the waterline, with a spray-painted cross tagging the date of its inspection. Its ancient oak and magnolia trees stood dead, killed by poisons in the long-standing water as much as by drowning. But at least outside, in the humid Louisiana November, they could all breathe and switch to fresh gum.

“Yeah,” snorted Trace, strangely dissatisfied whenever he stopped for too long. “We should hire out as decorators, huh?”

Which is when Bubba called them to “come see.” So they pulled their bandannas back up like Old West bank robbers and headed back in.

Bubba had torn big swaths of moldy wallpaper off the foyer wall.

“Smart,” mocked Trace, of the extra dust. “The air wasn’t nasty enough.”

Then he saw the picture—the fresco, he labeled it in a brief echo from his attempt at higher education—that Bubba had uncovered.

That weight he’d first felt in his chest this morning, that searching for words? It tripled. The plaster painting was ruined, darkened with mold here, torn away with the paper there. But enough remained for them to make out the basics. It showed a field of battle, with banners and horses and knights in armor, some upright, some dead. They all wore swords. One, standing, wore a crown—the king. Another, dead or dying beside the king, had some kind of drinking horn lying near him. Maybe the king had poisoned him. Trace wouldn’t put that past his father’s ancestors.

God forbid rich folks paint the foot soldiers on their wall, right? Or the peasants who shined their armor and cleaned up after their horses. Or, for that matter, their women.

“Whattaya think?” asked Bubba. “Maybe you’re related to one of those old guys, huh, LaSalle?”

“I’m not a LaSalle,” Trace growled—and picked up the nearest sledgehammer. “My ma’s a Beaudry.”

“Whoa!” shouted Alain. “Safety goggles!”

Trace swung. The heavy, iron head of the hammer bit hard into the painted plaster. Its impact ran up his arms. Pieces of kings and knights fell off the wall, leaving fresh, pale scars on the mold-stained scene. Still, too much remained, so Trace swung again.

Then again. Damn, it felt good. He liked denying the heritage that had felt like a fairy tale, like a lie come too late and never as promised.

He liked unleashing his strength, no-holds-barred. He might be a bull, but this was no china shop. This was man-versus-wall.

And the wall freaking went down.

Goodbye, king. Goodbye, dead knight. Goodbye, trees and horses and hills and sky. Goodbye, secret society of overlords and servility that should’ve died out centuries ago.

Au revoir, LaSalle fairy tale.

Within moments, Trace had reduced the whole water-stained ruin of a wall to rubble. He was breathing hard. His whole body vibrated from the exercise. This felt better than the endorphin rush after a long run, a hard workout, an underground fight.

And then, half-hidden behind clumps of former wall in the settling plaster dust, he saw it. And everything kind of went still.

A…sword?

He crouched down to one knee, his ears ringing in the sudden silence, and reached out—but hesitated to touch the thing. Instead, almost respectfully, he moved clumps of wall off it.

Yeah. That was a sword, all right. Not flared like a pirate’s, like the one his fellow outcast Smith Donnell had gotten hold of a few months back. And not slim and light, like the ones they’d used when he took fencing as a PE credit, back at that damned college he’d hated.

This was a real sword. A warrior’s sword.

It stretched longer and wider than a yardstick, straight as a line. Its hilt formed a cross. Despite never paying attention in history, Trace had a sudden flash of a knight stabbing the sword’s blade into the earth, then kneeling to pray to the temporary cross he’d created.

Kind of like how he was kneeling, right now. Weird coincidence.

“Whoa!” exclaimed Alain, reaching for it. “What the hell?”

“Mine!” snarled Trace. “Go!” And his friends immediately backed off. Probably because Trace sounded insane. This had to be a LaSalle antique. He didn’t want anything to do with the LaSalles. He was a Beaudry.

But sometimes a guy just knew, whether it made sense or not, that something belonged to him. And that sword, lying sealed behind the wall for God knew how long? That sword was his.

His.

Which somehow made him think of the exact person who could answer some questions about it for him.

Click. Down the once tree-lined street, a private investigator sat in his car snapping picture after picture. Grunts in hard hats hauling scrap iron and rotting furniture to the curb? Click. Guys stopping to catch their breath under dead trees before going back into the bungalow? Click.

He smoked. He drank coffee. He peed into a jar. And he photographed. Thank God digital photos were so cheap. He could just save it all onto a DVD, instead of the old days that required prints. He didn’t know what the blue blood who’d hired him cared about this stinking, ugly cleanup; it was still happening all over New Orleans. But if Charles was willing to pay, he was willing to document.

Still, he doubted they’d see anything interesting. Click.

Sibyl reached the top of the apartment’s spiral staircase—a trendy loft bedroom, complete with old brick walls and exposed ductwork—and realized she didn’t know why she’d gone there. She turned in a circle, using the loft’s vantage to worriedly eye the rest of the apartment. Of course it looked perfect, from its concrete floors to its wall-of-glass windows overlooking the Trinity River levee. But nobody would ever believe it was hers.

What had she done? Hadn’t she gone to great lengths to avoid visitors?

A child genius, Sibyl—then Isabel Daine—had gotten a scholarship to the prestigious New Orleans Preparatory Academy by the age of ten. She must have known what secret societies were, even then—could probably have recited the Oxford English Dictionary’s etymology of the phrase. But she would have more easily believed in Santa Claus, which, based on the scientific and temporal improbabilities, she had not.

She’d been too busy studying, too busy “looking ahead,” as her father had always advised. He’d taken a job as a night watchman at the school. Academy students lived far above her family’s middle-class income. By the age of twelve, Sibyl was set to graduate first in her class. She had full rides to Yale, Harvard, even Oxford, hers for the choosing.

Then came the pounding at the front door—she woke to a strobe of red-and-blue lights entering her dark bedroom. A fire at the academy had killed her father.

A fire the police said she’d set.

Evidence came from nowhere—classmates and even professors suddenly labeled her as sullen, resentful, unpredictable. Her? The school paper produced a “rejected editorial” she’d never actually written.

Even her mother had begun to doubt her. “Darling, if you were so unhappy there,” she’d said through the Plexiglas that separated visitors from prisoners.

“I wasn’t,” Isabel had screamed, so the guards ended the visit.

She’d been too young for a jury trial, so the verdict rested on a certain Judge LaSalle. He convicted her of arson and manslaughter. Sibyl lost her graduation with honors. She lost Yale and Harvard and Oxford. She lost her daddy, who’d been so excited for her, and her mother, who couldn’t bear up under legal bills, scandal and doubts. She gave up her very name, her identity.

Sibyl lost everything except her genius. From the girls’ penitentiary, getting computer access to earn her GED and several undergraduate degrees, Sibyl had thrown every bit of her IQ into hacking the truth. She couldn’t tell for sure who had set the fire. But eventually, she learned who had covered it up.

Conspiracy theorists warned of the Masons. The Trilateral Commission. The Bildebergers. But far better hidden lay a secret society called the Comitatus.

Sibyl learned as much as she could from behind bars and then, after her release at the age of eighteen, she uncovered the rest. Peripheral comments in ancient manuscripts. Lost journals she’d uncovered. The testimony of other, frightened victims. Personal correspondence that people like Judge LaSalle thought inaccessible. Nothing was safe from her quest.

Now twenty-two years old, Sibyl considered herself as much an expert on the powerful, world-wide Comitatus as existed outside their control. Name a powerful family, and they’d likely belonged. Capet and Valois. Aragon and Castille. Plantagenet and Stuart. Just in case she’d foolishly thought heroes still existed, after what she’d been through.

But she needed to know more. Comitatus members were wealthy, blue-blooded and influential. But Sibyl meant to take them down—if she could survive that long. So she took precautions.

Sibyl never, ever answered her disposable, untraceable, prepaid cell phone—if she wanted to talk after hearing the message, she would call back. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. Especially one small, lonesome woman versus a worldwide secret society. The people who had her latest number, she could count on two hands—as if someone with her IQ needed to finger count.

The people she would call back, she could (figuratively) count on one hand.

Trace Beaudry was the first person she’d not only called back, but invited to visit. Her inability to decide why worried her. She knew why she trusted him; that went back to the risking-his-life-to-save-hers business. It factored in data she’d gathered in the few days she’d spent helping him and his friends, after that rescue. His friends had former Comitatus backgrounds. Their claimed rejection of the society explained both their poverty and their foolish goal to somehow salvage said society. But Trace had no such background at all. Trace was a Beaudry. Despite being a frighteningly good hacker, Sibyl could find no reference to a Comitatus member or family line under that name.

And she’d looked. See: paranoid.

But even meeting non-Comitatus men here, alone, fell under the heading of “Things movies teach you not to do.” Unless the movie was a romance. This wasn’t a romance. Sibyl wouldn’t know what to do with a—

Drinks! She spiraled back down the stairs to the large, open kitchen to look into the formerly empty, stainless steel refrigerator. Again.

It held a six-pack of every major soda she could find and nothing else. Sibyl suspected Trace wouldn’t want any of it—he was just coming to ask a few questions about her research. Besides, he’d seemed like a beer drinker. She’d considered getting beer for him, but knew she’d get carded because of her height. Although even her real ID showed her as legal, Sibyl didn’t like using it. She didn’t like people looking too closely at her.

Trace would look at her, if not closely. Now she ran to the mirror beside the front door and stopped bouncing on the balls of her feet long enough to narrow her eyes at her reflection. Thank heavens she’d let Arden Leigh take her on that girls-day-out to the Galleria last month, which had somehow became a makeover. Sibyl had seen it as a way to coax information out of the beauty queen, who’d only recently learned about the secret society but might eventually allow Sibyl to go through her father’s papers. Also, Arden’s father had recently passed, and the socialite seemed to take comfort in playing fairy godmother.

Sibyl knew from losing fathers—not that she admitted that to Arden. But letting someone drape her in a pink silk cape and massage her scalp while shampooing and then trimming her long hair had seemed a minor sacrifice.

Today she used very little of the makeup Arden had given her, but her hair did seem shinier, smoother. That was something. The oversize shirt in a boxy plaid of autumn colors looked casual but stylish—which, to judge by the price Arden paid, it was. The brown leggings felt comfortable enough. Sibyl had had to buy nail polish remover just to clean her fingers after their mani-pedi, but she’d left her toes alone, and the pretty copper color hadn’t chipped.

She blinked at her reflection, then looked down. Toes. That’s why she’d gone upstairs. Boots!

But Trace rapped on the door—it had to be him—and she was out of time.

“Breathe,” Sibyl whispered to herself. She’d faced down gang members, in juvie, if reluctantly. “Oxygen is fuel.” Surely she could face one guy. One good guy, a hero even. Her hero.

With a groan that had nothing to do with physical effort, she pushed aside the loft’s sliding door—and there he stood. Trace hadn’t changed in the months since he’d fled Dallas, maybe fled her. At six-four, he still towered over her. His hair, a much darker brown than hers, looked like he’d never been subjected to pink capes or scalp massages. Considering her belief that wealth corrupted people, that was a plus. So were his swarthy laborer’s tan and his worn jeans and T-shirt, stretched to accommodate his breadth. He didn’t seem to have shaved for days; give him another week, and he’d have a full beard.

Yes—this was her Trace. His constancy somehow soothed her.

Only belatedly did she notice that he was carrying in one hand something the size of a handful of canes, wrapped in a stained tarp.

He seemed oddly distracted as he said, “Hey, Shortstuff. Can I come in?”

Belatedly, Sibyl backed out of his way, then closed the door behind him as he stepped into the high-ceilinged apartment. She turned to see him pivoting, to take it all in.

He whistled through his teeth. “You live here?”

Sibyl managed to say, “I’m house-sitting,” in more than a whisper. Barely. When in doubt, give information. “It used to be a warehouse. From the 1800s. You went away.”

Wait. That last part wasn’t supposed to be out loud.

“Yeah. The others were—” Trace looked at her more closely. Then he ducked and looked at her, and his already deep voice roughened. “You look different.”

New clothes. New hair. Different makeup. Odd emotions. Sibyl flushed with embarrassment that she hadn’t been subtle enough. Now he’d think it was for him. He’d feel sorry for her or, worse, laugh at her….

“The others were what?” she prompted, desperate to distract him.

He didn’t laugh. He kept staring at her, even as he said, “The others were going full-steam on that plan they had. You know. The one about redeeming an old society full of rich muckety-mucks?”

“The Comitatus,” she proffered, since it was an odd name and so probably hard for him to remember. “Latin for an armed group. Some also cite it as a source for feudalism, an arrangement between the superior and inferior.” He winced at that last word. Oh, please, someone stop her. “Would you like a drink?”

“You got beer?”

She shook her head, afraid to open her mouth.

“Anything’s good. Anyway—” He followed her to the kitchen. She angled her body so he wouldn’t see into her foodless fridge. “Smith and Mitch were all about, ‘we can save them,’ and I didn’t give a crap, so I headed home for a while. Louisiana.”

So he hadn’t fled her? He just hadn’t considered her either way. Maybe he only noticed her when he was rescuing her—or needed information, like today. “Could you look at something for me, tell me what you think?” At least she had information.

She got two root beers out of the fridge and turned back, almost bumping into him. His big body seemed to radiate warmth, after the artificial chill. She wanted to lean against him, maybe snuggle closer.

Don’t snuggle closer!

“I know,” she said, lifting one of the bottles of soda upward in offering. He squinted as he took it, as if momentarily lost in their conversation. “The Comitatus is beyond redemption.” Killers. If they hadn’t killed her father, why would they have railroaded her for the crime?

“You think so, huh?”

That surprised her. “Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t think about it.” But of course he wouldn’t. It was a secret society. Every piece of information she’d collected through the years, she’d gotten covertly. And often illegally. “That’s kind of why I wanted to talk to you. I need the opinion of someone on the outside. It’s easy to know what I’ll hear from the guys.”

“Not much.” So this visit was Comitatus related! “Because the Comitatus take an oath of secrecy when they join, at fifteen.”

“Um…yeah. Hey, wanna sit down?”

This was what came of never having visitors. Sibyl felt herself blush as she nodded and headed toward the living area. She jumped, startled, when Trace touched a palm to her back, as if to guide her. To settle her. It might have worked, if he hadn’t snatched it away.

“Sorry,” he muttered, when she glanced, wide-eyed, over her shoulder.

She shook her head, unsure how to tell him she’d liked it. She hadn’t been touched since…the scalp massage, by the hairdresser. And at one point in the last few months, Arden had hugged her—that had been strange. And then when Trace rescued her from the train. Less than three times in three months.

At least the loft’s real owner only had settees, not sofas. When she sat on one end, drawing her knees up to her chest, and Trace sank onto the other end, barely a foot of stone-colored suede separated them. She watched how Trace folded himself forward, in an attempt to make his big frame comfortable on the low seat, bracing his elbows on his thighs, clasping his big hands. She wished she knew how to draw, to capture the lines of his rangy body. Her brain wasn’t working right.

Especially not when he looked at her again, raised his eyebrows and grinned. Trace had a great grin, like a joke they were in on together. She was supposed to say something, wasn’t she? But…if she spoke, then she’d end up answering his questions and he’d go away again. Of course, him leaving would happen either way, but did she have to be the one to launch the visit’s end?

“You really do look different,” he said again, and she ducked her head, no longer in on the joke. She wanted to run to the bathroom and scrub off the expensive makeup, mess up her hair, go back to Goth eyeliner and nothing else. She wanted to undo the clasp that held some of her hair behind her head, so that it would swing forward and she could hide behind it. Yes, the new look had helped her get into this apartment, far better than most of the places she’d squatted in the past. But that wouldn’t matter if he laughed at her.

Then he said, “I like it.” And his voice sounded strangled again, and when she peeked back he wasn’t looking at her. He was frowning at his big, clasped hands, like he felt uncomfortable. Maybe he wasn’t making fun of her. No—edit that. This was Trace. Of course he wouldn’t make fun of her. He was her hero.

Sibyl risked a smile, though it felt uncertain and new on her lips. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Trace slanted a glance back at her, then grinned that between-you-and-me grin again, and Sibyl’s insides twisted with unfamiliar, not-quite-comfortable feelings. But as long as Trace was here, she guessed it was safe to feel them.

Still grinning, he leaned forward to where he’d set his long, thick bundle on the glass cocktail table and unfolded the tarp, as if presenting it with a flourish. In shifting his weight forward and then back, he managed to end up closer to her when he sat back. Sibyl liked his wall of warmth. But she followed his lead to look at what he’d brought, so that this new feeling could venture out without the threat of direct attention.

She frowned. “It’s a sword.” An old, scarred, dusty sword.

“I found it behind the wall of the old LaSalle bungalow,” he agreed, raising it by the pommel like a warrior offering his strength and sword to his overlord…right before riding off to conquer peaceful villages, kill menfolk, enslave children and rape women as spoils of war. Sibyl knew his friends had gotten all excited over an ancient Greek sword, back when she’d met them. They called it the sword of Aeneas, and they acted like it was the holy grail. Like it was a sacred relic. A Comitatus relic.

Maybe it was. Swords, like guns, had only one purpose—to kill and maim people, maybe to coerce obedience with the threat of killing and maiming. Con quest. Power. And this sword was LaSalle’s?

The court finds Isabel Daine guilty of arson and manslaughter.

So much for that new, precious feeling. Now all she felt was nausea. “Put it away.”

“But this is what I wanted to ask you about—”

She used her feet to push herself up onto the arm of the settee, leaning as far back from him and his blade as possible. “Put it away!”

Trace leaned forward, rewrapped the sword, then sat back.

Well on his end of the settee.

This time, Sibyl didn’t have to wonder. He thought she was crazy. Maybe she was. But if so, that was the fault of the Comitatus, of LaSalle, and of whoever had really killed her father. The fault of the kind of men who got excited about weaponry and violence and swords.

That didn’t make her heart hurt any less.

Chapter 2

Now Trace had gone and turned her back into a scaredy-cat.

He just hoped she wouldn’t faint again.

He wished he knew how much of her problem was the sword, and how much was really him. Little Sibyl had surprised the hell of him. He’d expected to find her staying at some ratty, rent-by-the-week hotel, the kind he and his friends got since quitting their legacies and the Comitatus had left them with cash-only options and little cash. Instead, he found their conspiracy theorist in a glamorous, urban loft. And as for Sibyl herself…?

Trace had thought she was cute before, with her big Bambi eyes and the lithe, ballerina body she hid under oversize clothes. He’d liked how she didn’t just talk over his head, but the heads of his overly educated friends, which was fun to watch—and which he figured proved her claim that she wasn’t a teenager. Nobody got that much education that young. He’d admired her healthy distrust of people, which seemed like its own kind of smart. But at the time, she’d put out such a thick wall of don’t-touch-me that he’d more or less kept his distance. He tried to never forget that someone as big as he was could scare people just by saying hello.

Today she’d looked…welcoming. Not just her shiny, clean hair, pulled back to let people see her solemn face, or her nice clothes, though those helped. Her.

He could have sworn she was glad to see him, and it had felt great. Trace couldn’t remember the last time someone had been honestly glad to see him, except maybe his ma. He couldn’t help but want to get closer to her, want to know more.

’Course, Sibyl aimed the exact opposite look at the sword, times ten. Even after he’d wrapped it. What, did she think it would leap out and bite her? Still, she at least sank down to sit on the arm of the loveseat, instead of just using it to brace herself farther away from him. The position made her look taller.

“So, what’s with the crazy?” he asked—and she winced. Great job. That would be why he had more weekend flings than regular girlfriends, wouldn’t it? Still…was he supposed to ignore this? “It’s just a sword.”

“It’s a Comitatus sword.” She all but spat the name of his ancestors’ secret society.

Cool! Information, just like he’d hoped. “You can tell by looking?”

“No! It’s…” She took a deep breath, as if settling herself. To his relief, she sank back onto the seat cushion, wrapping her arms protectively around her knees. The don’t-touch-me-vibes were back with a vengeance. “Repro ductions are mostly a twentieth century art form. If the wall was old, this is authentic. No later than eleventh century. Maybe as early as eighth. Dark Ages.”

“And you saw all that while you were begging me to put it away.”

She scowled at the word begging, which was cute, until she said, “Yes.”

Okay, then. Even before she rolled her eyes—which she did—Trace saw she thought he was stupid. Compared to her, he probably was, but he didn’t like the reminder. Just to be obstinate, he leaned a little closer to her, as if just to listen. He hadn’t forgotten his size. He was just…using it.

She smelled good. Like girl. Like a wealthy girl, damn it.

She didn’t seem the least bit intimidated. “Cruciform crossguard,” she catalogued, as if that meant something…so damn it, maybe he was stupid. Compared to her. That’s why he’d come to her, wasn’t it? “Double-edged, with only a slight taper, so an earlier than later period. Moderately rounded tip, so more a slashing than a stabbing weapon. Maybe a Viking sword. More likely Gallic.” She eyed his expression, then clarified, “French.”

“And you know that ’cause…?”

“The five-lobed pommel—that round cap on the end of the grip? Viking invention. Balances the weight. So does the fuller.”

He narrowed his eyes. Now she was making up words.

“The fuller is the groove down the center. Roman swords don’t have it. So post-Roman Empire. And it’s a one-handed sword, to be used with a shield, so pre-High Middle Ages. Also…Vikings. Assimilated by then.”

“Vikings aren’t French.” Trace knew damned well the LaSalle family came from French roots. Hell, most of Louisiana came from French roots. He liked the idea of some French knight wielding the sword in heroic deeds better than he liked descending from Vikings. Weren’t Vikings more about murdering and pillaging?

“They’re tied to Norman French. Also, true Vikings preferred battle-axes.”

Trace chuckled at the image of murdering, pillaging Vikings getting chewed out by big, domineering women.

Sibyl ducked her head and said, “The weapons. Axes. For battle.”

“I knew that.” And this time, he did. He just liked the other picture better…and he thought he detected a tiny, return smile. Reciting facts seemed to have relaxed Sibyl some, anyway. He felt mean for having leaned closer, but he didn’t want to lean away. She didn’t seem worried, so he hooked an elbow over the back cushion and stayed where he was. Where he could better smell her. “So it’s really old. What else makes it a—a secret society sword?”

“Comitatus,” she offered, as if he kept forgetting the word. No wonder she thought he was dumb. But he’d taken a damned oath. That had been the deal. Take his father’s name, get his father’s money and respectability—join his father’s world, including the Comitatus. At the time, he hadn’t realized that no amount of money and respectability was worth it. So he’d gone ahead and taken their stupid vow of secrecy.

The least he could do was try not to run around using the society’s name.

“Yeah. Them.”

“LaSalle.” She said his birth-father’s surname like something ugly. Since he’d gone by that name for almost ten years, her disgust felt insulting, no matter how he’d come to dislike the Judge. “Why were you in a LaSalle bungalow? Did any Comitatus agents see you take this?”

“I was helping a crew do a gut job on it. You know—taking down the moldy walls, pulling out the ruined insulation before a rebuild.” All the God’s honest truth. “And no, I didn’t see any Comitatus types hanging around. It’s pretty dirty work.”

She relaxed, and even smiled right at him, like he was someone special just because he did day labor.

“The LaSalle family’s big in the New Orleans Comitatus,” she explained, and he pretended he didn’t know that. “They’re a hereditary society. That’s how I knew your friends were involved. Donnell. Talbott. Leigh. All hereditary names.”

And his illegitimacy had kept him under her radar. “If they’re so secret, how would you know…?”

“I’m very smart.” Then, to his amazement, she smiled a real, happy smile at him, like she’d said it to tease him instead of to shame him. “And devious.”

The smile lit her pretty face and made her beautiful. It punched him in the gut, how beautiful this maybe wealthy and definitely too-smart-for-him girl was.

So did the sudden, echoing thought of Mine.

So did the way he had to act on it. Carefully, damn it.

Suddenly, not scaring her became important again.

Sibyl wasn’t sure what changed. One minute Trace was grinning that between-you-and-me grin at her, which she loved. The next—everything shifted, almost imperceptibly and yet seismically at the same time. What happened?

He still smiled, but instead of looking at her, he was…looking at her. Searching for something that she wished she knew how to give him. But what did that even mean? Desperate to understand, she tried to catalog the change. His breathing had subtly changed. His pupils dilated, just a little. The air between them felt…hotter. Or maybe it was just her breathing and her vision and her thermoregulation that suddenly fluctuated. Either way, she barely noticed herself dropping her hands to her side instead of clasping her knees between them like a shield.

“So, Smartypants,” he said—and the silly name sounded as endearing as Shortstuff had, coming from him. “Are you dating anyone?”

Her? The idea felt ludicrous. She didn’t have time to date—secret societies to uncover, anonymity to protect, vengeance to wreak. Having spent her formative years in a girls’ penitentiary, among hardened teens who’d practiced unhealthy relationships before their incarcerations, Sibyl wasn’t sure she’d know how to just date. Why did he want to know? So, what’s with the crazy?

Was he feeling out just how big a freak she was?

Except…his breath sounded as shallow as hers. They seemed to be sharing this new, shifted reality, just like they’d shared the smile. So, was he actually interested? Had Arden Leigh, mother hen meddler, asked him to find out? Or…?

Unable to analyze the situation further against the deafening rush of her heartbeat in her ears—which she knew was actually just her pulse in her jugular vein or maybe her carotid artery, which were both closer to her ears, and why couldn’t she shut her mind off? Unable to manage anything else, Sibyl simply shook her head. Not dating anyone. Not her.

“So…sorry, but I’m kind of distracted, here.” Him, too? She’d felt alone for so long, but she wasn’t alone in this. Trace leaned closer, his arm over the seatback making him a human wall that would pin her into the leather corner. She didn’t mind. She felt her knees falling open, of their own will, to make room for him. “Can I kiss you?”

You mean, may you kiss me—thank God she couldn’t talk, just now. She nodded a jerky, uncertain nod. Yes. Please.

He moved farther over her, all heat and solidity. She waited and held her breath. She remembered that having a man in her apartment fell under the “Things movies teach you not to do” category, because someone like him could overpower her, and even if she fought back, he’d hurt her, and nobody would hear her screams because these were really high-end apartments with great soundproofing…. But he wouldn’t overpower her. She realized why he seemed so tense, as he leaned incrementally closer. Why he’d asked first, when she generally thought of him as a man of action instead of words. He was being extra careful of her.

Her hero. Her knight in faded T-shirt. Sweet, silly knight.

So Sibyl strained upward to close the last inch between them and kissed him first.

As soon as she did, she realized her mistake. She pressed her lips to his, which felt surprisingly soft despite the whiskers surrounding them—and then she had no earthly idea what to do next. So she simply smooched him, the kind of kiss someone would press to their mother’s cheek, then ducked her forehead against his hard, convenient shoulder. She felt more embarrassed than aroused. Not that she hadn’t liked it. But, wasn’t kissing one’s hero supposed to be more…more….

At least she was breathing. Oxygen is fuel. She’d only pretended to faint, that first time they met, after he’d rescued her. She would hate to do it for real.

To her surprise, Trace’s fingers wove into her hair, solid and gentle against her scalp, feeling a hundred times better than the shampoo massage at the Galleria. She leaned into the cradle of his palm and risked peeking back up at him.

He wasn’t laughing. Or disgusted.

Yes, he was grinning wider now, almost feral—but still with the intimacy of a shared joke. “Uhm…thanks,” he said, his voice more a rasp than a whisper.

Her lips tried to form the words, You’re welcome. She couldn’t seem to put any voice to them. He smelled so good—like real soap and honest work and…and him. The smell that she’d first sampled when he saved her life.

“My turn?” He grinned.

She nodded, desperate not to speak.

So he leaned closer to her. She found herself drawing back from him without meaning to, making him chase her until her shoulders hit the arm of the settee—he wasn’t using his hand to direct her head, just supporting it. His smile faded as he did follow her down, until he was hovering over her. He held most of his weight off her with one powerful arm, but she felt his jeans slide against her leggings and realized her mistake—she really was trapped—and couldn’t seem to mind.

Please, she found herself silently begging. Please let it be wonderful.

Then he pressed his lips to hers—didn’t just touch them, but pressed, and oh, it was. Wonderful. Could he kiss her? Yes, he could.

So very, very well.

Trace’s lips didn’t feel as soft this time; they felt firm and certain as they framed her lower lip, drawing it into his mouth just the tiniest bit, just enough for him to lick it. That made her shiver. She parted her lips, to give him easier access to that lower one, which suddenly needed a lot more attention. He nipped at it, without actually using his teeth, and sucked on it, and then took advantage of her parted lips to slide that same, intriguing tongue into her mouth….

Thank goodness he was holding her head, because all of Sibyl’s skeletal and muscular strength seemed to melt right out of her fingertips and toes. She wasn’t thinking anymore, and the silence—silent but for their little gusts of breath, and the sigh of the settee cushions under their shifting weight, and a strangled little mew like a kitten’s from somewhere—the silence felt deliciously restful. All she wanted was to open to him—and his solidity and his heat—so she did. She opened her mouth wider against his, flirting her tongue against his, shivering her delight at the sensation. She slid her arms across his broad chest and around his ribs, drawing him closer against her breasts and tummy. Without any instructions, her legs slid around his waist, wide and surprisingly eager, her bare feet hooking behind his knees.

Trace chuckled into her mouth and shifted again, turning with her in his arms so that he lay on his side now and she lay cushioned between him and the seatback. No longer busy holding his weight off her, his free hand slid over her hip, his fingers flirting across her bottom before sliding up under her oversize shirt. She arched happily against the rough heat of his palm on the bare skin of her back.

Trace broke the seal of their lips to draw his damp mouth up her jaw, his hot breath against her ear as he rasped out, “You good?”

She nodded frantically, bunching handfuls of his T-shirt behind his back, trying to claw her fingers into him. She was very, very good.

“Good.” Now he nibbled down her throat, toward her shoulder. She tightened her legs around him, her feet against his hard, wide thighs now. Behind her, his calloused thumb massaged up under her arm, then down across the pillow of her breast and she pressed hard against him. He was pressing pretty hard against her, too. Luckily, she didn’t need thought to know what was going on with that. All she needed was animal instinct.

Who would have guessed she’d have so much instinct?

“Hold on,” he muttered against her collarbone. She almost whimpered as he slid his hand out of her hair—she’d felt so safe, so precious, with him cradling her like that. But he grasped her hips to hold her as he rolled again, so that he lay on his back and she was straddling him, looking down at his combined hunger and satisfaction. That was okay.

She rolled her hips, savoring the hard press of the denim-constricted bulge that she straddled, and that seemed to make them both very happy. So did his un buttoning her shirt, surprisingly deft with such big hands, and trailing his fingertips around the outer curve of both breasts.

It felt—wonderful. Primal. Essential. But she flushed and ducked her head, feeling suddenly inadequate. When Trace raised his eyebrows in silent question, she murmured, “I’m not very…”

“C’mere.” Now sliding his hands behind her back, he drew her down closer to him and covered one of her breasts with his hot, wet mouth. She heard that strange, kitten-mew again. When he began to apply his tongue, and a little suction, the noise sounded something like a sob. Her noise. Her sob.

A glorious forever later, he switched to her other poor, neglected breast, covering the first with a callused hand—which more than covered it, him being so big and her being so small—so it wouldn’t get too cold. “A mouthful is plenty,” he noted, before filling his mouth again.

Sibyl’s hands kneaded against the soft cotton covering his chest, feeling the springy sensation of hair beneath the material. She ground herself harder against his crotch. She wanted…she wanted…. Of course she knew what she wanted. Just because she hadn’t had sex before didn’t make her ignorant. This was the twenty-first century, and she hadn’t come of age surrounded by nuns. But she didn’t want to have to think, was afraid thinking would get in the way of all this surging sensation, and without thinking she couldn’t get to how…or when….

So she just writhed on him and savored it all.

Eventually he was warming the second breast with his thumb, and brushing the curtain of hair back from her face, which freed his mouth for her to kiss him some more. He thrust upward against her, and she liked that, too. No wonder the girls in juvie made such a fuss and stayed with losers for this. But Trace was no loser. At one point, between kisses, he gasped, “Do you want…?” She nodded. Yes, yes, yes. She wanted.

But he didn’t do anything other than worship her breasts and watch her face, looking somehow pained, so she kissed him again.

He laughed in the middle of the kiss, though he clearly wasn’t laughing at her. “So…?”

So? A cold wash of panic diluted some of the passion flooding through her. He wanted her to make the next move. But she didn’t know the next move. Should she undo his jeans? That would mean scooting back off his searing heat and hardness, which she didn’t want to do. Trying to take off his shirt would mean moving, too, and letting him stop touching her. She liked it better when he was making the decisions about this.

Trace waited.

“You do it,” she pleaded, and his brows drew together in confusion.

Increasingly frustrated, she defaulted to the cruder, clearer words most of the girls in lockdown used. “Do me.”

But his mixture of confusion and—disappointment? That stopped her. So did the way his hands stilled against her temple, against her breast.

“What?” he challenged, and now he sounded…angry? And she didn’t know why. Not that men seemed to need a reason to be angry with her, but…she’d liked him being different.

Okay, he really wanted her to do it? She reluctantly scooted back on his thighs, so that she could better reach his jeans. She struggled with the metal button at the top of the closing, and Trace drew a deep, shaking breath, his eyes falling shut.

She used that moment to take a deep breath herself, and studied the zipper. Zippers were about as easy as it came, except his was really straining against the erection beneath it, and she didn’t want to hurt him, and maybe she should slide her hand into his pants, between him and the zipper, to protect him, except she wasn’t sure there was room, and…

She looked back up at him, and he was waiting with the oddest expression on his face.

“I don’t…” But she couldn’t admit she didn’t know how. She just couldn’t. Knowing things was her only real talent, the only reason he’d come here. “You do it.”

Trace groaned and rocked forward. He caught her under her arms with both hands, lifted her easily. The next thing she knew, he’d leaned her against the suede arm at the opposite end of the settee and was looming in over her, and she felt a little scared of what would happen but she felt a lot more relieved than frightened because she knew, knew he wouldn’t hurt her, and she wanted it to be him—

And then, instead of kissing her the way they’d been kissing since this started, he gave her an odd, closed-mouth smooch on her cheek. Then he drew back.

He waited, scowling. And breathing hard. His eyes were still dilated. He clearly still wanted this. So why…?

Confused, Sibyl reached for him—but he spread a hand against her naked chest, just under her throat, and held her at arm’s length. Trace Beaudry had pretty long, thick arms. When she tried to reach for him again, he didn’t give an inch.

“How many guys have you been with?” he demanded.

She shook her head.

“C’mon, Smartypants. How many have you done?”

“None!” There. She’d said it.

But Trace let loose a few crude terms of his own, in a completely different context, and slumped back against his end of the seat. When Sibyl tried to follow, he said, “No!”

So she stayed where she was. She buttoned her shirt and felt humiliated.

“What, you thought I didn’t need to know? Or maybe I’d get stupid?” He was still scowling when she peeked back up from her buttons. “It’s not like I have money anymore.”

She still couldn’t think, so she didn’t say anything. She felt like crying from the rejection and the confusion and the dissatisfied ache. He was looking at her like the freak she was now. She wanted to explain that she hadn’t known it would upset him. She wanted to tell him that to get sex before she turned eighteen, she would have had to go with girls or guards—like clarifying that would recommend her. She wanted to cite studies about approximate age at first intercourse, and how being among about 10 percent of Americans who’d waited, while a minority, didn’t exactly make her as unusual as Bigfoot sightings or unicorns, either.

And damn it, once she started thinking in statistics, the moment—and that blessed, blissful silence—was pretty much gone.

Most of all, she wanted to be back in his arms, no matter what he was doing to her while there. She’d felt…she’d felt….

But feelings weren’t Sibyl’s forte.

Trace scrubbed a splayed hand down his face, then looked at her over it. “Don’t give me those big Bambi eyes. I’m the one you just…who’s still….”

But whatever he’d meant to say, he deleted. He didn’t look quite as angry.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. “Faline,” whispered Sibyl finally.

“What?” She didn’t think he meant to snap the way he did.

She took a deep, shaking breath. “Bambi was a boy-deer. Faline was the girl-deer.”

She hadn’t meant it as a joke, but his bark of laughter still eased her distress. He wasn’t too angry to laugh, anyway. “Fine. Don’t give me those big, Faline eyes.” He searched her face. “So this really wasn’t some kind of plot to get my father’s money?”

She shook her head against visions of rags-to-riches lottery winners. “Your father has money?”

“Ex-father. It’s a long…crap. Look, I’m sorry if I overreacted.” Now he reached across the space between them to catch some of her hair between his fingers, to tuck it behind her ear. She let him, savored his touch.

“You mean you really wanted me for your first time? Just…me?”

As opposed to…? Warily, Sibyl nodded. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“’Cause I’m just some illegitimate good ol’ boy who grew up in a trailer park on the wrong side of the tracks.” He said it like that was supposed to scare her off. “I don’t even have a job right now.”

And I’m an ex-con. And I’m so broken, I never even looked at a man until you. And the guy who owns this apartment doesn’t know I’m house-sitting, which kind of makes us trespassers. Did Trace really think he wasn’t good enough for her? Sibyl shrugged, even attempted a smile and a joke. “At least you aren’t Comitatus.”

His expression…stilled. A momentary pause in his breathing. A flicker of guilt in his eyes. Nothing more. “Yeah,” he said, but he sounded uncomfortable saying it—and then she knew. Because, whether she wanted to be or not, she was very, very smart.

Smart enough to rearrange seemingly unconnected tidbits of data into a new, unmistakable pattern.

When she’d met Trace, he was with three Comitatus descendents.

His father—ex-father?—was apparently wealthy.

If illegitimate, he might not bear his birth father’s name.

“You are Comitatus,” she accused in a whisper. This time she wanted him to laugh at her. She wanted him to deny it, maybe more than she’d ever wanted anything except for the nightmare of her father’s death, of her wrongful imprisonment, to never have happened. But he didn’t deny it. He opened, then closed his mouth. He swallowed, tried again, but only managed, “How…?”

By then, new and worse patterns had revealed themselves.

He’d brought her a sword from the LaSalle house. How had he happened to end up gutting the LaSalle house?

He had a cleft chin. By genomic imprinting, that could only be inherited from one’s father. She’d seen a chin like that before. And the pale eyes in his dark face, the same color as….

The court finds Isabel Daine guilty…

Sibyl stood. “Excuse me.”

“Wait.”

But she kept walking toward the bathroom, unwilling to show weakness, unable to show anything. She concentrated on taking one step after another, the ache in her throat tightening, tightening. “Are you okay?”

Sibyl made herself look over her shoulder toward where Trace now stood, looking concerned. She made herself smile to show teeth. “I’m fine,” she lied. As a child, she’d never lied. Jail—and the Comitatus—had turned her into this.

Then she locked the bathroom door behind her. She turned on the overhead fan. She turned on the water.

Then she fell to her knees and vomited, violently but almost silently, into the toilet.

She’d almost slept with the bastard son of Judge René LaSalle.

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