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He grabbed both my arms to keep me from trying to hit him again. I would have gone for another kick, except Goon #2 had waded in while I was distracted. His punch connected with my cheek, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn he’d just hit me with an anvil.

I didn’t fall down, but only because Goon #1 still had hold of my arms. My head spun, and while I was trying to remember which way was up, a punch to the gut drove all the air out of my lungs. The goon hit me again, this time in the eye, and pain stabbed all the way through my head. But it wasn’t the pain of his fist that caused it. Lugh was trying to surface, coming to my rescue like a knight in shining armor. Considering these guys could probably beat me to death if they wanted to, I supposed I should let him.

But then Goon #2 let go of my arms and allowed me to collapse to the floor in a puddle of misery.

“This is just a friendly warning,” he said in a low, gravelly voice. “Stay out of Tom Brewster’s business.”

I realized that meant the beating was over, and I no longer needed Lugh’s services. I’m sure he realized that, too, but he didn’t let up. He was going to exploit my semi-dazed state and steal the reins to my body. I concentrated on holding him off, but a poke in the gut with a toe reminded me I had more than one problem.

“You hear me?” the goon prompted.

Forming words while fighting for air, fighting nausea, fighting dizziness, and fighting Lugh wasn’t exactly easy. However, I figured if I didn’t answer, I was in for more pain, and Lugh was even more likely to win our battle. “Loud. . and. . clear,” I managed to gasp, and the goons, satisfied with a job well done, disappeared as silently as they had come.

Lugh continued his barrage against my mental barriers, the pain spiking through my head so hard it drew a whimper from my throat. If that were the only pain I had to battle, I probably would have prevailed. Knowing I would eventually have to sleep and leave myself open to him, he would have bided his time rather than submitting me to what amounted to torture. But combined with the pain of the beating, it was too much. Hard though I tried to hold on, my mind slid closer and closer to oblivion. Tears of frustration welled in my tightly shut eyes.

And then my entire body eased, the pain disappearing as if it had never existed. I took a moment to sigh in relief before I let the panic set in.

Driving my body, Lugh pushed me up into a sitting position. I felt the touch of my own hand as he made me wipe away the traces of tears. He was blocking the pain so thoroughly that in any other circumstance, I’d probably have been grateful to him. Well, maybe not.

My body was no longer my own, but if a mind could shudder, then that’s what mine did. The last time Lugh had taken control, he’d shut my conscious mind out completely, trapping me in a dark, claustrophobic, terrifying oubliette. I had panicked then like I’ve never panicked before in my life, and had I actually been there in body, I would have done myself considerable physical harm in my frantic attempts to escape. If he did that to me again. .

“I won’t,” he said, using my own mouth to speak to me. I really hate it when he does that. “Those were extenuating circumstances,” he explained as he rose to his feet. “I would not do that to you on a whim.”

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t control a single muscle in my body, but I imagined any number of colorful suggestions for what he could do with himself, and since he knew all my thoughts, I knew he could “hear” them.

He sighed. “We’ve been through this before,” he said patiently. “I have a responsibility to my people—and to yours—that has to take precedence over your desires. I’m not in any way trying to hurt you.”

He picked up my laundry basket and carried it out into the darkened hallway, where he summoned an elevator. If I couldn’t wrest back control before he made it to my apartment and my phone, he was going to make the damning call to Adam, and there would be nothing I could do to stop him.

Fool that I was, I’d forgotten about the cell phone in my purse. Lugh hadn’t. While he waited for the elevator, he fished the phone out. I struggled against his control, but he had a firm hold. It would take time to wrest control back, time I knew I didn’t have.

It showed something about the mess my life had become that I had Adam on speed-dial.

Something hard and cold solidified in my center—metaphysically speaking, I suppose, since without a body, I didn’t really have a center. This was not a battle I was willing to lose, not a battle I could afford to lose, not if I wanted any say at all in the rest of my life. I focused all my thoughts into getting one clear, cold message across to Lugh. Do this, and from now on, we will be enemies.

He gasped, and from that I knew he’d heard my message. Adam’s phone began to ring just as the elevator doors opened. Lugh stepped inside.

“You can’t mean that!” he objected.

You know I do. And, because there was no corner of my mind he couldn’t see into, he did. I’ll find a way to get back in control eventually, even if you decide to toss me in that oubliette again. Do you want to be at war with me as well as with Dougal?

He shook his head. “Why?” he asked. “Why do this over a request you don’t even know if Adam and Dominic will honor?”

Why ask questions when you already know the answers? But in case you need me to verbalize it—it’s because I have to take a stand somewhere, sometime. This is where I’m drawing the line in the sand.

“Hello?” Adam said, and Lugh didn’t immediately respond.

“Perhaps I should have put you directly in the oubliette after all,” Lugh muttered very softly.

“What?” Adam said. “Morgan? Are you all right?”

Lugh made a soft growling sound that my throat shouldn’t have been able to make. “Actually, it’s not Morgan, it’s Lugh.”

Even without a body, I felt as if I were holding my breath, nervously waiting to see which path Lugh would choose. I didn’t want to be at war with him, but that decision now rested firmly in his hands.

“Morgan was just attacked in the basement of her apartment building,” Lugh said, and I mentally breathed a sigh of relief. “She wasn’t hurt too badly, and I don’t dare heal her injuries since her attackers got away. However, she should make a police report, and you should be the one to take her statement.”

“Of course. I’ll be right over.”

“And, Adam?”

“Yes?”

“Morgan has a request from me that I’ve tasked her with making. I’ll allow her to phrase it however she wants, but don’t leave her apartment until she conveys the request. Understood?”

“Er. . yeah, I guess.”

“Very well. We shall see you soon.”

Lugh hung up just as the elevator doors opened on my floor. He stepped out into the hallway. “I hope you will consider that a fair compromise,” he muttered.

I wasn’t sure what I thought about this “compromise” yet, so I didn’t answer.

Lugh let himself into my apartment, dropped the laundry basket by the door, and drove my body to the couch. He sat down, and then suddenly my entire body ached and throbbed, and nausea roiled in my stomach.

With a groan, I lay down on the couch and clutched a throw pillow over my face, blocking out the light in hopes that it would ease the pounding in my head.

CHAPTER 16

Eventually, I hauled myself off the sofa and headed for the kitchen to make up an ice pack for my aching head. My left eye was on its way to swelling shut, and any motion of my jaw sent fingers of pain stabbing throughout the side of my face. Holding a baggie full of ice to my eye, I made my way to the bathroom and downed three ibuprofen. I didn’t think it would help a whole lot, but it couldn’t hurt.