Kelly Armstrong - Women Of The Otherworld 2

ALSO BY KELLEY ARMSTRONG

Bitten

S t o le n

KELLEY ARMSTRONG

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R oRL, England

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 382

Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

New Delhi-no 017, India Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany,

Auckland, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,

Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First American edition

Published in 2003 by Viking Penguin,

a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

10 987654321

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's

imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To my mother, for buying me my first writing journal and expecting me to fill it.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Armstrong, Kelley.

Stolen / Kelley Armstrong.

P. cm GARDEN CITY LIBRARY

ISBN 0-670-03137-2 (alk. paper)

i. Werewolves—Fiction. I. Title. PS3551 ^678 Sj6 2003 813'.6—dc2i 2002016872

This book is printed on acid-free paper. ~

Printed in the United States of America Set in Aldus, with Eileen Caps display Designed by Carla

Bolte

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of

both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

CONTENTS

Prologue • i Demonic . 9 Tea • 16

Hocus-Pocus . 22 Houdini . 32 Legion . 41 Introductions • 50 Agenda . 57 Burned • 64 Dissection . 71

Guests • 79 Amusements . 86 Confrontation • 97 Prison . 103 Exhibition . 112 Savannah . 119 Trick •

126 Contact • 135 Party • 143 Ghosts • 149 Rejection • 156 Rebirth . 165 Winsloe • 172 Game • 180

Failure .188

Nurse • 195 Crises . 204 Exit • 211 Changes • 222 Bloodhound • 233 Sacrifice • 240 Exile • 247

Rampage • 256 Torture • 266 Alliance . 278 Break . 284 Cornered • 292 Gone • 301 Getaway . 308

Recuperation -315 Loyalties • 324 Coronation -331 Return -339 Infiltration • 348 Annihilation -359

Emancipation . 364 Demonstration • 372 Retaliation .380 Cleanup • 396

PROLOGUE

He hated the forest. Hated its eternal pockets of damp and darkness. Hated its endless tangle of trees

and bushes. Hated its smell of decay— dead vegetation, dead animals, everything dying, even the living

creatures incessantly pursuing their next meal, one failure away from the slow descent into death. Soon

his body would be one more stink fouling the air, maybe buried, maybe left for the carrion feeders, his

death postponing theirs for another day. He would die. He knew that, not with the single-minded intent of

the suicidal or the hopeless despair of the doomed, but with the simple acceptance of a man who knows

he is only hours from passing out of this world into the next. Here in this stinking, dark, damp hell of a

place, he would die.

He didn't seek death. If he could, he'd avoid it. But he couldn't. He'd tried, planning his breakout for

days, conserving his energy, forcing himself to eat, to sleep. Then he'd escaped, surprising himself really.

He'd never truly believed it would work. Of course, it hadn't actually worked, just appeared to, like a

mirage shimmering in the desert, only the oasis hadn't turned to sand and sun, but damp and dark. He'd

escaped the compound to find himself in the forest. Still hopeful, he'd run. And run. And gone nowhere.

They were coming now. Hunting him.

He could hear the hound baying, fast on his trail. There must be ways to trick it, but he had no idea how.

Born and raised in the city, he knew how to avoid detection there, how to become invisible in plain

sight, how to effect an appearance so mediocre that people could stare right at him and see no one. He

knew how to greet neighbors in his apartment building, eyes lowered, a brief nod, no words, so if anyone

asked about the occupants of 412, no one really knew who lived there: Was that the elderly couple? The

young family? The blind girl? Never rude or friendly enough to attract attention, disappearing in a sea of

people too intent on their own lives to notice his. There he was a master of invisibility. But here, in the

forest? He hadn't set foot in one since he was ten, when his parents finally despaired of ever making an

out-doorsman out of him and let him stay with his grandmother while his siblings went hiking and

camping. He was lost here. Completely lost. The hound would find him and the hunters would kill him.

"You won't help me, will you?" he said, speaking the words in his mind.

For a long moment, Qiona didn't reply. He could sense her, the spirit who guided him, in the back corner

of his mind, the farthest she ever went from him since she'd first made herself known when he was a child

too young to speak.

"Do you want me to?" she asked finally.

"You won't. Even if I want it. This is what you want. For me to join you. You won't stop that."

The hound started to sing, joy infusing its voice with melody as it closed in on its target. Someone

shouted.

Qiona sighed, the sound fluttering like a breeze through his mind. "What do you want me to do?" "Which

way is out?" he asked. More silence. More shouts. "That way," she said.

He knew which way she meant, though he couldn't see her. An ayami had presence and substance but no

form, an idea impossible to explain to anyone who wasn't a shaman and as easy for a shaman to

understand as the concept of water or sky.

Turning left, he ran. Branches whipped his face and bare chest and arms, raising welts like the marks of a

flagellant. And equally self-inflicted, he thought. Part of him wanted to stop. Give up. Accept. But he

couldn't. He wasn't ready to surrender his life yet. Simple human

pleasures still held too much allure: English muffins with butter and strawberry jam at the Talbot Cafe, the

second-story balcony, farthest table on the left, the sun on his forearms, tattered mystery novel in one

hand, coffee mug in the other, people yelling, laughing on the busy street below. Silly things, Qiona would

sniff. She was jealous, of course, as she was of anything she couldn't share, anything that kept him bound

to his body. He did want to join her, but not yet. Not just yet. So he ran.

"Stop running," Qiona said.

He ignored her.

"Slow down," she said. "Pace yourself."

He ignored her.

She withdrew, her anger a flash fire in his brain, bright and hot, then smoldering, waiting to flare again.

He'd stopped hearing the hound, but only because his blood pounded too loudly. His lungs blazed. Each

breath scorched through him, like swallowing fire. He ignored it. That was easy. He ignored most of his

body's commands, from hunger to sex to pain. His body was only a vehicle, a medium for transmitting

things like strawberry jam, laughter, and sunlight to his soul. Now after a lifetime of ignoring his body, he

asked it to save him and it didn't know how. From behind him came the bay of the hound. Was it louder

now? Closer?

"Climb a tree," Qiona said.

"It's not the dog I'm afraid of. It's the men."

"Slow down then. Turn. Confuse them. You're making a straight trail. Slow down."

He couldn't. The end of the forest was near. It had to be. His only chance was to get there before the

dog did. Ignoring the pain, he summoned every remaining vestige of strength and shot forward.

"Slow down!" Qiona shouted. "Watch—"

His left foot hit a small rise, but he adjusted, throwing his right foot out for balance. Yet his right foot

came down on empty air. As he pitched forward, he saw the streambed below, at the bottom of a small

gully eroded by decades of water flow. He flipped over the edge of it, convulsed in midair, trying to think

of how to land without injury, but again he didn't know how. As he hit the gravel below, he heard the

hound. Heard its song of triumph so loud his eardrums threatened to split. Twisting to get up, he saw

three canine heads come over the gully edge, one hound, two massive guard dogs. The hound lifted its

head and bayed. The other two paused only a second, then leaped.

"Get out!" Qiona screamed. "Get out now!"

No! He wasn't ready to leave. He resisted the urge to throw his soul free of his body, clenching himself

into a ball as if that would keep it in. He saw the undersides of the dogs as they flew off the cliff. One

landed atop him, knocking out his last bit of breath. Teeth dug into his forearm. He felt a tremendous

wrenching. Then he soared upward. Qiona was dragging him from his body, away from the pain of dying.

"Don't look back," she said.

Of course, he did. He had to know. As he looked down, he saw the dogs. The hound was still at the top

of the gully, howling and waiting for the men. The two other dogs didn't wait. They tore his body apart in

a shower of blood and flesh.

"No," he moaned. "No."

Qiona comforted him with whispers and kisses, pleaded with him to look away. She'd tried to save him

from the pain, but she couldn't. He felt it as he looked down at the dogs destroying his body, felt not the

pain of their teeth, but the agony of unbelievable loss and grief. It was over. All over.

"If I hadn't tripped," he said. "If I'd run faster . . ."

Qiona turned him then, so he could look out across the forest. The expanse of trees went on and on,

ending in a road so far away the cars looked like bugs crawling across the earth. He glanced back at his

body, a mangled mess of blood and bone. The men stepped from the forest. He ignored them. They

didn't matter anymore. Nothing did. He turned to Qiona and let her take him away.

"Dead," Tucker said to Matasumi as he walked into the cell-block guard station. He scraped the mud of

the forest off his boots. "Dogs got him before we did."

"I told you I wanted him alive."

"And I told you we need more hounds. Rottweilers are for guarding,

not hunting. A hound will wait for the hunter. A rottie kills. Doesn't know how to do anything else."

Tucker removed his boots and laid them on the mat, perfectly aligned with the wall, laces tucked in. Then

he took an identical but clean pair and pulled them on. "Can't see how it matters much. Guy was

half-dead anyway. Weak. Useless."

"He was a shaman," Matasumi said. "Shamans don't need to be Olympic athletes. All their power is in

their mind."

Tucker snorted. "And it did him a whole lotta good against those dogs, let me tell you. They didn't leave

a piece of him bigger than my fist."

As Matasumi turned, someone swung open the door and clipped him in the chin.

"Whoops," Winsloe said with a grin. "Sorry, old man. Damn things need windows."

Bauer brushed past him. "Where's the shaman?"

"He didn't. . . survive," Matasumi said.

"Dogs," Tucker added.

Bauer shook her head and kept walking. A guard grabbed the interior door, holding it open as she

walked through. Winsloe and the guard trailed after her. Matasumi brought up the rear. Tucker stayed at

the guard station, presumably to discipline whoever had let the shaman escape, though the others didn't

bother to ask. Such details were beneath them. That's why they'd hired Tucker.

The next door was thick steel with an elongated handle. Bauer paused in front of a small camera. A beam

scanned her retina. One of the two lights above the door flashed green. The other stayed red until she

grasped the door handle and the sensor checked her handprint. When the second light turned green, she

opened the door and strode through. The guard followed. As Winsloe stepped forward, Matasumi

reached for his arm, but missed. Alarms shrieked. Lights flashed. The sound of a half-dozen steel-toed

boots clomped in synchronized quickstep down a distant corridor. Matasumi snatched the two-way

radio from the table.

"Please call them back," Matasumi said. "It was only Mr. Winsloe. Again."

"Yes, sir," Tucker's voice crackled through the radio. "Would you re-

mind Mr. Winsloe that each retinal and hand scan combination will authorize the passage of only one staff

member and a second party."

They both knew Winsloe didn't need to be reminded of any such thing, since he'd designed the system.

Matasumi stabbed the radio's disconnect button. Winsloe only grinned.

"Sorry, old man," Winsloe said. "Just testing the sensors."

He stepped back to the retina scanner. After the computer recognized him, the first light turned green. He

grabbed the door handle, the second light flashed green, and the door opened. Matasumi could have

followed without the scans, as the guard had, but he let the door close and followed the proper

procedure. The admittance of a second party was intended to allow the passage of captives from one

section of the compound to another, at a rate of only one captive per staff member. It was not supposed

to allow two staff to pass together. Matasumi would remind Tucker to speak to his guards about this.

They were all authorized to pass through these doors and should be doing so correctly, not taking

shortcuts.

Past the security door, the interior hall looked like a hotel corridor, each side flanked by rooms furnished

with a double bed, a small table, two chairs, and a door leading to a bathroom. Not luxury

accommodations by any means, but simple and clean, like the upper end of the spectrum for the

budget-conscious traveler, though the occupants of these rooms wouldn't be doing much traveling. These

doors only opened from the outside.

The wall between the rooms and the corridor was a specially designed glass more durable than steel

bars—and much nicer to look at. From the hallway, an observer could study the occupants like lab rats,

which was the idea. The door to each room was also glass so the watcher's view wasn't obstructed.

Even the facing wall of each bathroom was clear Plexiglas. The transparent bathroom walls were a recent

renovation, not because the observers had decided they wanted to study their subjects' elimination

practices, but because they'd found that when all four walls of the bathrooms were opaque, some of the

subjects spent entire days in there to escape the constant scrutiny.

The exterior glass wall was actually one-way glass. They'd debated that, one-way versus two-way.

Bauer had allowed Matasumi to make

the final decision, and he'd sent his research assistants scurrying after every psychology treatise on the

effects of continual observation. After weighing the evidence, he'd decided one-way glass would be less

intrusive. By hiding the observers from sight, they were less likely to agitate the subjects. He'd been

wrong. At least with two-way glass the subjects knew when they were being watched. With one-way,

they knew they were being watched—none were naive enough to mistake the full-wall mirror for

decoration—but they didn't know when, so they were on perpetual alert, which had a regrettably

damning effect on their mental and physical health.

The group passed the four occupied cells. One subject had his chair turned toward the rear wall and sat

motionless, ignoring the magazines, the books, the television, the radio, everything that had been provided

for his diversion. He sat with his back to the one-way glass and did nothing. That one had been at the

compound nearly a month. Another occupant had arrived only this morning. She also sat in her chair, but

facing the one-way glass, glaring at it. Defiant... for now. It wouldn't last.

Tess, the one research assistant Matasumi had brought to the project, stood by the defiant occupant's

cell, making notations on her clipboard. She looked up and nodded as they passed.

"Anything?" Bauer asked.

Tess glanced at Matasumi, shunting her reply to him. "Not yet."

"Because she can't or won't?" Bauer asked.

Another glance at Matasumi. "It appears ... I would say . . ."

"Well?"

Tess inhaled. "Her attitude suggests that if she could do more, she would."

"Can't, then," Winsloe said. "We need a Coven witch. Why we bothered with this one—"

Bauer interrupted. "We bothered because she's supposed to be extremely powerful."

"According to Katzen," Winsloe said. "If you believe him. I don't. Sorcerer or not, the guy's full of shit.

He's supposed to be helping us catch these freaks. Instead, all he does is tell us where to look, then sits

back while our guys take all the risks. For what? This?" He jabbed a fin-

ger at the captive. "Our second useless witch. If we keep listening to Katzen, we're going to miss out on

some real finds."

"Such as vampires and werewolves?" Bauer's lips curved in a small smile. "You're still miffed because

Katzen says they don't exist."

"Vampires and werewolves," Matasumi muttered. "We are in the middle of unlocking unimaginable

mental power, true magic. We have potential access to sorcerers, necromancers, shamans, witches,

every conceivable vessel of magic . . . and he wants creatures that suck blood and howl at the moon. We

are conducting serious scientific research here, not chasing bogeymen."

Winsloe stepped in front of Matasumi, towering six inches over him. "No, old man, you're conducting

serious scientific research here. Sondra is looking for her holy grail. And me, I'm in it for fun. But I'm also

bankrolling this little project, so if I say I want to hunt a werewolf, you'd better find me one to hunt."

"If you want to hunt a werewolf, then I'd suggest you put one in those video games of yours, because we

can't provide what doesn't exist."

"Oh, we'll find something for Ty to hunt," Bauer said. "If we can't find one of his monsters, we'll have

Katzen summon something suitably demonic."

"A demon?" Winsloe said. "Now that'd be cool."

"I'm sure it would," Bauer murmured and pushed open the door into the shaman's former cell.

DEMONIC

"Please tell me you don't believe in that stuff," said a voice beside my shoulder.

I looked at my seat-mate. Mid-forties, business suit, laptop, pale strip around his ring finger where he'd

removed his wedding band. Nice touch. Very inconspicuous.

"You shouldn't read crap like that," he said, flashing a mouthful of coffee stains. "It'll rot your brain."

I nodded, smiled politely, and hoped he'd go away, at least as far away as he could on an airplane flying

at an altitude of several thousand feet. Then I went back to reading the pages I'd printed from the

believe.com Web site.

"Does that really say werewolves?" my seat-mate said. "Like fangs and fur? Michael Landon? I Was a

Teenage Werewolf?"

"Michael. . . ?"

"Uh, an old movie. Before my time. Video, you know."

Another polite nod. Another not-so-polite attempt to return to my work.

"Is that for real?" my seat-mate asked. "Someone's selling information on werewolves ? Werewolves ?

What kind of people would buy crap like that?"

"I would."

He stopped, finger poised above my papers, struggling to convince

himself that someone could believe in werewolves and not be a complete nutcase, at least not if that

someone was young, female, and stuck in the adjoining seat for another hour. I decided to help.

"For sure," I said, affecting my best breathless blond accent. "Werewolves are in. Vampires are so five

minutes ago. Gothic, ugh. Me and my friends, we tried it once, but when I dyed my hair black, it went

green."

"That's, uh—"

"Green! Can you believe it? And the clothes they wanted us to wear? Totally gross. So then, like, Chase,

he said, what about werewolves? He heard about this group in Miami, so we talked to them and they

said vampires were out. Werewolves were the new thing. Chase and I, we went to see them, and they

had these costumes, fur and teeth and stuff, and we put them on and popped these pills and presto, we

were werewolves."

"Uh, really?" he said, eyes darting about for an escape route. "Well,

I'm sure—"

"We could run and jump around and howl, and we went out hunting, and one of the guys caught this

rabbit, and, like, I know it sounds gross, but we were so hungry and the smell of the blood—"

"Could you excuse me," the man interrupted. "I need to use the washroom."

"Sure. You look a little green. Probably airsickness. My friend Tabby has that real bad. I hope you're

feeling better, 'cause I was going to ask if you wanted to come with me tonight. There's this werewolf

group in Pittsburgh. They're having a Grand Howl tonight. I'm meeting Chase there. He's kinda my

boyfriend, but he switch-hits, you know, and he's really cute. I think you'd like him."

The man mumbled something and sprinted into the aisle faster than one would think possible for a guy

who looked like he hadn't exceeded strolling speed since high school.

"Wait 'til I tell you about the Grand Howl," I called after him. "They're so cool."

Ten minutes later, he still hadn't returned. Damn shame. That airsickness can be a real son of a bitch.

I returned to my reading, believe.com was a Web site that sold infor-

mation on the paranormal, a supernatural eBay. Scary that such things existed. Even scarier was that they

could turn a profit, believe.com had an entire category devoted to auctioning off pieces of spaceship

wrecks that, at last count, had 320 items for sale. Werewolves didn't even warrant their own

classification. They were lumped into "Zombies, Werewolves, and Other Miscellaneous Demonic

Phenomena." Miscellaneous demonic phenomena? The demonic part kind of stung. I was not demonic.

Well, maybe driving some hapless guy from his airplane seat wasn't exactly nice, but it certainly wasn't

demonic. A miscellaneous demonic phenomenon would have shoved him out the escape hatch. I'd barely

even been tempted to do that.

Yes, I was a werewolf, had been since I was twenty, nearly twelve years ago. Unlike me, most

werewolves are born werewolves, though they can't change forms until they reach adulthood. The gene is

passed from father to son—daughters need not apply. The only way for a woman to become a werewolf

is to be bitten by a werewolf and survive. That's rare, not the biting part, but the surviving part. I'd lived

mainly because I was taken in by the Pack—which is exactly what it sounds like: a social structure based

on the wolf pack, with an Alpha, protected territory, and clearly defined rules, rule one being that we

didn't kill humans unless absolutely necessary. If we got the munchies, we pulled into the nearest

fast-food drive-thru like everybody else. Non-Pack werewolves, whom we called mutts, ate humans

because they couldn't bother fighting the urge to hunt and kill, and humans were the most plentiful target.

Pack wolves hunted deer and rabbits. Yes, I'd killed and eaten Bambi and Thumper. Sometimes I

wondered if people wouldn't consider that even more shocking, in a world where a dog thrown from a

car garners more media attention than murdered children. But I digress.

As part of the Pack, I lived with the Alpha—Jeremy Danvers—and Clayton Danvers, his adopted

son/body guard/second in command, who was also my partner/lover/bane of my existence. . . . But that

gets complicated. Back to the point. Like everyone else in the Pack, I had responsibilities. One of my

jobs was to monitor the Internet for signs that some mutt was calling attention to himself. One place I

looked was believe.com, though I rarely found anything deserving more than a

dismissive read-over. Last February I'd followed up something in Georgia, not so much because the

listing sounded major alarms, but because New York State had been in the middle of a weeklong

snowstorm and any place south of the Carolinas sounded like heaven.

The posting I was reading now was different. It had the alarms clanging so hard that after I'd read it

Tuesday, I'd left a message for the seller immediately, and set up a meeting with her in Pittsburgh for

Friday, waiting three days only because I didn't want to seem too eager. The posting read: "Werewolves.

Valuable information for sale. True believers only. Two homeless killed in Phoenix 1993-94. Initially

believed to be dog kills. Throats ripped. Bodies partially eaten. One oversized canine print found near

second body. All other prints wiped away (very tidy dogs?). Zoologist identified print as extremely large

wolf. Police investigated local zoos and concluded zoologist mistaken. Third victim was prostitute. Told

roommate she had an all-night invitation. Found dead three days later. Pattern matched earlier kills.

Roommate led police to hotel used by victim. Found evidence of cleaned-up blood in room. Police

reluctant to switch focus to human killer. Decided third victim was copycat (copydog?) killing. Case

remains open. All details public record. Check Arizona Republic to verify. Vendor has more. Media

welcome."

Fascinating story. And completely true. Jeremy was responsible for checking newspaper accounts of

maulings and other potential werewolf activity. In the Arizona Republic he'd found the article describing

the second kill. The first hadn't made it into the papers—one dead homeless person wasn't news. I'd

gone to investigate, arriving too late to help the third victim, but in time to ensure there wasn't a fourth.

The guilty mutt was buried under six feet of desert sand. The Pack didn't look kindly on man-killers.

We hadn't been worried about the police investigation. In my experience, homicide detectives are a

bright bunch, smart enough to know there's no such thing as werewolves. If they found mauling with

canine evidence, they saw a dog kill. If they found mauling with human evidence, they saw a psychopath

kill. If they found mauling with both human and canine evidence, they saw a psychopath with a dog or a

murder site disturbed by a dog. They never, ever, saw a partially eaten body,

footprints, and dog fur and said, "My God, we've got a werewolf!" Even wackos who believed in

werewolves didn't see such murders as werewolf kills. They were too busy looking for crazed,

half-human beasts who bay at the full moon, snatch babies from cradles, and leave prints that

mysteriously change from paws to feet. So when I read something like this, I had to worry about what

other information the vendor was selling.

The "media welcome" part worried me too. Almost all believe.com listings ended with "media need not

inquire." Though vendors pretended the warning was meant to discourage tabloid journalists who'd

mangle their stories, they were really worried that a legit reporter would show up and humiliate them.

When I went to investigate such claims, I used the guise of being a member of a paranormal society. This

time, since the vendor had no problem with media, I was pretending to be a journalist, which wasn't

much of a stretch, since that was my profession, though my typical beat was freelancing articles on

Canadian politics, which never included any mention of demonic phenomena, though it might explain the

rise of the neo-conservatives.

Once in Pittsburgh, I caught a cab, registered at my hotel, dropped off my stuff, and headed to the

meeting. I was supposed to meet the vendor— Ms. Winterbourne—outside a place called Tea for Two.

It was exactly what it sounded like, a cutesy shop selling afternoon tea and light lunches. The exterior was

whitewashed brick with pale pink and powder blue trim. Rows of antique teapots lined the windowsills.

Inside were tiny bistro tables with white linen cloths and wrought-iron chairs. Then, after all this work to

make the place as nauseatingly sweet as possible, someone had stuck a piece of hand-markered

cardboard in the front window informing passersby that the shop also sold coffee, espresso, latte, and

"other coffee-based beverages."

Ms. Winterbourne had promised to meet me in front of the shop at three-thirty. I arrived at

three-thirty-five, peeked inside, and didn't find anyone waiting, so I went out again. Loitering in front of a

tearoom wasn't like hanging around a coffee shop. After a few minutes, people inside began staring. A

server came out and asked if she could "help

me." I assured her I was waiting for someone, in case she mistook me for a vagrant soliciting leftover

scones.

At four o'clock, a young woman approached. When I turned, she smiled. She wasn't very tall, more than

a half-foot shorter than my five-ten. Probably in her early twenties. Long curly brown hair, regular

features, and green eyes—the type of young woman most often described as "cute," that catchall

description meaning she wasn't a beauty but there was nothing to drive her into the realm of ugliness. She

wore sunglasses, a brimmed hat, and a sundress that flattered the kind of figure men love and women

hate, the full curves so maligned in a world of Jenny Craig and Slim-Fast.

Kelly Armstrong - Women Of The Otherworld 2 - Stolen

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