His grin answered hers. “I know.”

“It’s different from up here,” she said.

“Yep, sure is. Take my girl out. She’ll remind you to breathe and smile. Oh, and Lenobia, I’d ’preciate it if you’d stop callin’ me Mr. Foster.” He tipped his hat to her, added a smile and a long, slow, “If you please, ma’am.”

Lenobia only raised an eyebrow at him. She gave Bonnie a squeeze with her knees and made the same kiss noise she’d heard Travis making. The mare responded with no hesitation. They moved off smoothly. The wind had continued to pick up and with the warmth this evening Lenobia was reminded of spring. She smiled. “Maybe this long, cold winter is over, Bonnie girl. Maybe spring is coming.”

Bonnie’s ears flicked back, listening, and Lenobia patted her wide neck. She pointed the mare north and rode along the stone wall past the broken tree that had been the site of so much pain, past the stables and arena. They rode, alternatively walking and trotting, all the way to the place where east joined north, in the corner of the rectangle that encompassed the campus grounds. By the time they’d reached the corner, Lenobia felt she had Bonnie’s rhythm and her trust. She turned the mare so that she was pointed back in the direction from which they’d come.

“All right, my Bonnie big girl, let’s see what you’re made of.” Lenobia leaned forward, squeezed her knees, kicked with her heels, and made a loud kiss noise while she flipped the ends of the reins on the big mare’s butt.

Bonnie took off like she thought she was a quarter horse out of the roping shoots.

“Ha!” Lenobia shouted. “That’s it! Let’s go!”

Bonnie’s huge hooves drove into the ground. Lenobia could feel the mare’s powerful heartbeat. The warm night air whipped her hair back and the Horse Mistress leaned even farther forward, encouraging Bonnie to let loose—to give her everything.

The mare responded with a burst of speed that shouldn’t have been possible for a creature who weighed two thousand pounds.

As the wind whistled around them, lifting Lenobia’s long silver hair in time with the Percheron’s mane in that magickal dance that melded horse to rider, Lenobia thought of the ancient Persian saying: The breath of heaven is found between a horse’s ears.

“That’s right! That’s exactly right!” Lenobia yelled, and clung to the speeding mare’s back.

Joyously, freely, wonderfully, Lenobia moved as one with Bonnie. She didn’t realize she’d been laughing aloud until she pulled the mare in and circled her, finally coming to a halt, blowing and sweating, beside Travis and their bench.

“She’s magnificent!” Lenobia laughed again, and leaned forward to hug Bonnie’s damp neck.

“Yeah, I told ya it’d be better after that,” Travis called to her, catching Bonnie’s bridle and echoing Lenobia’s laughter.

“What couldn’t be? That’s so much fun!”

“Like riding a mountain?”

“Exactly like riding a beautiful, smart, wonderful mountain!” Lenobia hugged Bonnie again. “You know what? You really do deserve all those cookies,” she told the mare.

Travis just laughed.

Lenobia kicked her leg over the saddle to slide off Bonnie, but the ground was much farther away than she’d anticipated. She staggered and would have fallen had Travis not caught her elbow in his strong grip.

“Steady there … steady girl,” he murmured, sounding like he was speaking to a spooked filly. “Ground’s a long ways down. Take ’er easy or you’ll have a nasty fall.”

Still feeling the sweet adrenaline rush from her run with the mare, Lenobia laughed. “I don’t care! The ride would be worth the fall. The ride would be worth anything!”

“Some girls are,” Travis said.

Lenobia looked up at the tall cowboy. His eyes had lightened so that they weren’t just hazel anymore. They were flecked with an olive green that was distinctive and light and unmistakably familiar.

Lenobia didn’t think. Instinct drove her. She stepped into his embrace. It seemed Travis had stopped thinking, too, because he’d dropped Bonnie’s reins and pulled Lenobia into his arms. Their lips met with a kind of desperation that was part passion, part question.

She could have stopped herself, but she didn’t. She allowed it. No, more than that. Lenobia met Travis’s passion with her own, and answered his question with desire and need.

The kiss went on long enough for Lenobia to recognize the taste and feel of him, and for her to admit to herself that she’d missed him—missed him desperately.

And then she began thinking again.

She only had to pull just a little and he let her slip from the warm circle of his arms.

Lenobia could feel her head shaking back and forth and her heart racing.

“No,” she said, trying to get her breathing under control. “This can’t be. I can’t do this.”

His beautiful, olive-flecked eyes looked dazed. “Lenobia, girl. Let’s talk this out. There’s somethin’ here that we can’t ignore. It’s like we—”

“No!” Lenobia called the steely control that she’d commanded for centuries to her, cloaking her desire and need and fear in anger and coldness. “Do not presume. Humans are attracted to our kind. What you felt was what any man would feel if I deigned to kiss him.” She forced herself to laugh, this time the sound was utterly devoid of joy. “Which is why I do not make a habit of kissing human men. It will not happen again.”

Without looking at Travis or Bonnie, Lenobia strode away. Her back was to them, so they couldn’t see that she pressed her hand against her mouth to keep the sob from escaping. She opened the side door to the stables so hard that it slammed against the stone building. She didn’t pause. She went straight to her room that rested over her horses, closed and locked the door behind her.

Then, and only then, Lenobia allowed herself to weep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Neferet

Things were going very well.

The red fledglings were causing problems.

Dallas hated Rephaim with an intensity that was simply lovely.

Gaea was all in a tizzy about the lawn humans. So much so that she’d forgotten to lock the side maintenance gate and one of the street people who usually frequented Cherry Street had somehow been compelled to stagger down Utica Street and through the unlocked gate and onto campus.

“And he’d promptly almost been carved in two by Dragon, who is seeing Raven Mockers in every shade and shadow,” Neferet practically purred.

She tapped her chin contemplatively. She hated that Thanatos had invaded her House of Night. But the positive side of the High Council’s interfering ways was that forcing all of those special students into one classroom was acting like dry twigs on coals.

“Chaos!” Neferet laughed. “It is going to cause something to ignite.”

The Darkness that was her constant companion slithered closer, wrapping itself caressingly around her legs.

During the passing period the hour before, she’d overheard two of Zoey’s ridiculous friends talking. It seemed the Twins, Shaunee and Erin, were having a falling-out that was affecting the entire herd.

Neferet snorted sarcastically. “Of course it would. None of them are truly strong enough to stand on their own. They huddle together like the sheep they are, trying to stay safe from the wolf.” She would enjoy seeing how that little drama played itself out. “Perhaps I should befriend Erin in her time of need…” she mused aloud.

Neferet smiled and opened the heavy velvet drapes that usually covered the large mullioned window of her private quarters from the prying eyes of the school. She opened the window, inhaling deeply of the brisk, warm breeze. Neferet closed her eyes and opened her senses. She scented the wind for more than the familiar smells of incense from the temple and the newly cut winter grass. Neferet opened her mind to taste the aromas of emotion that roiled and lifted from the House of Night and its inhabitants.