Cynwrig slipped around the end of the next cottage, then stopped and leaned back against the wall. I raised an eyebrow and said softly, “What are we waiting for?”

“Chaos.”

Anticipation filled his voice and, a second later, I understood why.

Vincentia’s cottage quite literally blew apart.

Chapter Twelve

Lights immediately came on in the few visible buildings on the other side of the street; front doors opened, and exclamations of surprise and horror filled the air.

Cynwrig grunted in satisfaction, then said, “This way.”

He climbed over the next half wall and continued on down the line of two-by-two semidetached houses. Though the lights shone in several of the windows, everyone seemed to have gone out the front rather than the back. Luck, it seemed, had finally decided to pay a visit.

“Where are we going?” I murmured.

“There’s no one in the end cottage. We can use it as a refuge until the hubbub dies down.”

“How do you know it’s empty?”

“I communicated with the stone via the earth.” His smile flashed briefly, bright in the darkness. “I wasn’t just preparing the wall to attack Vincentia, you know.”

“A man who can do two things at once,” I murmured. “Color me shocked.”

He chuckled softly, and we continued on. Once we reached the last house, he shifted Vincentia’s weight, then pressed his right hand over the doorknob. A heartbeat later, we were inside.

It was probably colder inside the house than it was out, but then, these old places tended to lose heat very fast unless the ambient temperature was kept reasonably high during the winter months. Obviously, the heating system here hadn’t been used for a while.

We moved through the laundry into a combined kitchen-dining area, and it was then I realized he was limping and remembered he’d been shot. “How bad is the wound?”

He shrugged. “The bullet went straight through the fleshy part of my thigh, so no major damage done.”

“An assurance I’m not convinced by,” I said in an echo of his earlier statement.

He half laughed. “I’ve been shot before and do know a little about bullet wounds. Trust me, this is only minor.”

I stopped and leaned against the nearby doorframe, listening to the building’s gentle song to orient myself. The cottage’s floor plan was fairly simple—there was a living room to the right, two bedrooms and a bathroom to the left. The furniture was old but well looked after, and there were plenty of photos and holiday keepsakes scattered around to suggest this was a home rather than a holiday rental.

“Who shot you those other times? A rival for a woman or someone who objected to the way you were going about your black-market business?”

“Would you be surprised if I said both?”

“Not at all.”

He laughed again and began opening drawers, eventually finding, and claiming, a roll of duct tape. After walking down to the smaller of the two bedrooms, he laid Tia on the double bed, then wound the tape around her mouth and head. It was going to hurt to get off, and that mean inner part of me was greatly cheered by that fact.