Nick looked at her. “Apparently a lot less than he could have.” He slid a book from the shelf and opened it. “Gunner thinks you can tell a lot about people by their books; I agree with him. Take this book, for example: Scent and the Scenting Dog, by William Syrotuck. It has chapters on ‘The Human as a Scent Source’ and ‘Atmospheric Factors and Airborne Scent.’”

“So?”

“Not exactly a book of spells and incantations, is it? This doesn’t look like a witch’s library at all; in fact, it’s the sort of library that might belong to a behavioral scientist.”

Alena frowned and got up from the sofa. She took the book from Nick’s hand and replaced it on the shelf, then turned to him and shook the hair back from her face. “What is it you want, anyway?”

Nick blinked. Alena was standing only a foot away from him, looking directly up into his eyes. This was as close as he had ever been to her; it was the first time he had seen her face in the light and both of her eyes at the same time. She was beautiful, and Nick was more than a little surprised. In the dark shadows of the woods, she created such an eerie image that Nick had imagined the worst. He had assumed that the hair hanging down over her face was intended to cover some hideous blemish—but he saw no blemish here. He had assumed that her skin would be pale and sallow, but now he realized that it only appeared that way by contrast with her jet-black hair; up close he could see that she had a light tan and a spray of fine freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her most striking feature was her eyes—they were large and almond-shaped, and they were an astonishing shade of emerald green. One eye alone had looked haunting in the moonlight; both of them together were almost overwhelming.

“You should pull your hair back more,” Nick said. “You have a very nice face.”

She immediately dropped her head and shook her hair down a little. “I asked you what you want.”

“For starters, I want you to trust me.”

“Trust you? How did you get up here tonight?”

“I drove.”

“I’m not stupid—I saw your car, remember? How did you get through my gate?”

“I cut the lock off.”

“What? Who gave you the right to—”

“I did it for your own good. If you’d shut up and listen for a minute, I could explain.”