Kane might have sneered at that, but he didn't. He merely stared at Merlin, unmoved. "So you're gonna save me, huh?"

"I'm not that presumptuous-or that philanthropic. No, your future is yours to shape. I just thought that it might make a difference to a man like you to find out that the world has quite a few mysteries left. I may not allow you to display mine, but I'm sure there are others you would find interesting. If you care to look for them, that is."

Kane didn't know what to make of Merlin, but he knew he had a lot of thinking to do. "Maybe I'll do that," he said, easing toward the door, inwardly furious that he was afraid to turn his back on the wizard. Wizard? God!

"I can be a very good friend to have," Merlin offered, still smiling easily.

"And a bad enemy?"

"Exactly."

Kane found himself in the doorway of the study, and paused there. "So tell me, have you fixed it so I'll lose a piece of my mind if I try to take this story public?"

"No," Merlin replied. "Not yet anyway."

"Don't tell me you trust me?"

"Hardly. I'm just giving you a little rope, Kane. Use it to climb-or knot it into a noose. It's up to you."

The reporter took a step back out into the foyer, but paused again, this time with a jerk, when Merlin spoke softly.

"By the way… the voice-activated tape recorder in your pocket? You'll find the tape blank. Funny thing about wizards; we tend to adversely affect electrical and magnetic fields if we're not careful. I'm afraid I wasn't careful."

Kane looked both furious and nervous, and this time he backed completely out of sight. A moment later, the front door opened and loudly dosed.

Serena came out from behind her chair and went to Merlin. "For a nice guy, you can sound a little scary," she told him solemnly.

He put his hands on her waist and drew her closer so that she was standing between his knees. "You don't seem frightened," he observed, smiling.

"No, but Kane was shaking in his shoes, at least for the moment." She leaned even closer and linked her fingers together behind his neck. "Do you think he'll keep quiet?"

"I think… life will probably be quite interesting for a while."

Serena eyed him in amusement. "I think you're looking forward to a fight with Kane. Practically every word you uttered to him was like waving a red flag at a bull- and don't tell me you didn't know that."

Merlin shrugged. "I imagine I can handle Kane no matter what he decides to do. And if we didn't change our present after all, we'll be gone and the Council can deal with him."

Her smile faded a little. "I keep forgetting about that."

He bent his head and kissed her, the light touch rapidly becoming more intense, and when Merlin finally drew back a little his black eyes were burning and heavy-lidded. Huskily, he said, "I want to find out if we were successful so we can go forward from here, Serena. Our future is together, remember that."

She nodded. "Then I guess you should go and call your father."

Merlin let her ease back away from him, but took his hands off her only reluctantly. He wondered if he would ever grow accustomed to the magic of touching her, and knew he wouldn't; it was the only magic in his life that was utterly, wonderfully, beyond his control.

There were some things no man was meant to master.

"Not just yet," he said. "I realized something just before Kane came into the room."

"What?"

He went around the desk and pushed his chair back, looking down at the big book lying open on the blotter. "This. These, really-all the books, Serena. If we changed history, we should find evidence of it in the books."

Serena leaned her hands on the front of the desk and followed his gaze. "Isn't that one the book your father gave you? The one with the procedure to take my powers?"

"Yes."

Uneasily, she said, "Then why is it still here? I mean, if he only gave it to you because of the procedure-?"

"There could have been another reason he gave it to me in this version of the present, Serena. There must have been." He turned to a specific section of the book, scanning the text rapidly, then looked across the desk at her and smiled. "Things are looking up. The procedure isn't here."

"Maybe it just moved to a different part of the book," she offered, still apprehensive.

"I don't think so." Merlin turned several pages quickly. "There was a brief section detailing what Tremayne-at least, I hope it was Tremayne-saw from his ship…"

Serena rested a hip on the desk and chewed on her bottom lip, trying not to worry. She was as patient as she could be, her gaze flicking from the open book to Merlin's bent head, then finally said, "I'm going to go nuts if you don't tell me-"

He looked at her, his expression grave. "There's more here than there was before we went back in time. I'll read it out loud."

Serena braced herself.

" 'It happened not long after nightfall,' " he read quietly. " 'Because we had dropped our sails less than a day out for the crew to make minor repairs, Atlantia was still within sight, though barely. We heard the sound first, a rumble such as I have never known. Then the sky over Atlantia was rent by dazzling streams of energy, and the sound grew louder, more terrible. We stood on the deck as if frozen, unable to remove our horrified gazes from the awful sight of the very earth being wrenched apart. It did not take long. The mountains shuddered and heaved, some of them literally exploding, and the sea began to churn and boil. Then there was a last, dreadful convulsion, and the land where I had spent the past months sank without a trace into the sea.' "

Serena drew a deep, slow breath when Merlin paused. "So that didn't change," she murmured.

"No, but the report did. Before we went back to Atlantis, this report was very terse and not a little bitter. And this last part wasn't here. Listen: 'I am convinced that what happened here could have been avoided. The lesson to be learned is twofold. First, no being of power should be allowed to control his or her surroundings to the detriment of others, and should be restrained by reasonable laws from unbridled ambition. And, second, men and women of power must be encouraged to coexist peacefully, to understand rather than fear or mistrust one another, for neither of us can be whole without the other.' "

"That sounds… encouraging," Serena offered.

"Definitely." Merlin's eyes were very bright. He looked through the other books on his desk and then handed her one. "Check this one, Serena-you should be able to read it. Before we left, there were a number of passages that might have dealt with when and how the law against female wizards was created, only they were illegible-deliberately so, I thought. But now there may be nothing they wanted to hide."

She obediently bent over the book, reading more slowly than he would have done but with fair ease. She was aware that he opened another book, but didn't look up until she had found something.

"There's a passage here concerning male and female wizards," she told him. "The gist of it is what we found out ourselves-that the powers of a male and female wizard can combine, making the pair stronger than either alone, but only when there is the kind of deep trust found between mates."

"With that potential dangled enticingly out in front of them," Merlin noted, "I doubt there was much talk of getting rid of the women."

"Umm. Let me keep reading, there might be more."

But it was Merlin who found something less than five minutes later. "Serena."

She looked up. "You found something?"

He was smiling. "Yes. This volume contains a number of family trees. I thought you might like to know that Tremayne and Roxanne had six children-four girls and two boys."

Serena felt herself grinning. "Really? They made it?"