Winter Embers [ Book 2 ]

Chapter Twelve

          "No," Claire replied, shaking her head. Why had this man called her by her mother's name? She was about to ask when Draz's hand grabbed hold of the man's wrist.

          "Let her go," Draz said, his eyes narrowed on the stranger.

          "Or else what?" the man replied, his gaze sliding towards Draz once again filled with his earlier contempt.

          Claire felt a wave of heat, like a breeze, sweep out from the tangle of arms on the counter. By now the altercation had attracted the attention of the bartender and the other patrons. Claire could feel their eyes on them and wished she had listened to Draz and just left the cards.

          The man chuckled, the sound as grating and gravelly as his voice, as though he was producing it for the first time in years.

          "I know you," the man said, "the Great Drazenko, isn't that what you call yourself?"

          Draz smirked.

          "You like to play with fire," the man continued casually, his grip on Claire's wrist never loosening, "don't you know that if you play long enough, eventually you'll get burned?"

          Draz opened his mouth to speak but before he could get a word out, he was suddenly thrown backwards, landing about ten feet way, upsetting a table and some chairs in the process.

          "Draz!" Claire shouted, trying to pull away so she could make sure he was okay.

          The stranger's grip on her wrist tightened. "Don't worry about him, he'll live," the man said, "tell me why you think these cards belong to you."

          "Because they ... they protect me," she said at last.

          "Protect you?" the man said sounding incredulous.

          "Yes, whenever I'm in trouble, or need something, they help me," Claire explained.

          "Well you see, the thing is, these cards, they're special," the man replied, "they only have one true master and that's me, but magic is, well, magic, and it doesn't always work the way you expect. Sometimes something you expect to happen doesn't, or it doesn't happen exactly like you wanted, and sometimes there are unanticipated side effects."

          "Without getting into the details of it, these cards here are only supposed to listen to me, but something, or someone, changed the rules," he looked pointedly at her, "takes awful powerful magic to do that."

          "I'm not powerful, I didn't do anything to them," Claire protested. "They just ..."

          "How are you related to Nathalie?"

          The question caught her by surprise.

          "What?"

          "You heard me," he said, "the cards only listen to me, and I gave them an order twenty five years ago to protect a woman named Nathalie. You are not her, but yet you claim that they protect you. Magic of this kind is lazy, it rarely does things it is not asked to do. So I will ask again, what is your relation to Nathalie?"

          "S-she's my mother," Claire stammered at last. "Nathalie is... was... my mother."

          The man's hold on her wrist fell away and Claire took a step back.

          "Impossible," the man replied, his voice quiet.

          "Who are you? How do you know my mother? Why... why did you want to protect her?"