“Touch.”

Even Jacob almost missed the whisper. Looking down, they saw the dryad's eyes were open. She reached out of the coat, her fingers trembling.

“Touch.”

Jacob glanced at Lyssa. She's so weak she's shaking. Whatever she's planning to do, she doesn't have the strength to do it. She could go right back in there. Or die outright. We have to help her, my lady.

Essie's mouth was crumpled in anguish. She'd scurried back to the tree and fal en to her knees inside its canopy. As she keened and rocked herself, her little dog whined at her side. The two men helplessly flanked her, looking up at the dying tree.

“Go . . . touch.” The dryad's voice was weaker, but more plaintive. It was hurting her, seeing the tree suffering.

Lyssa frowned. You're right. She doesn't have the strength to do it. Not alone. And I suppose you'll refuse to move until she's at ease. Stubborn ass.

Come.

As they ducked back under that curtain of leaves, Pete touched Essie's shoulder, drawing her attention to what they were doing, Thankful y, it reduced her wails to quiet whimpers. When they approached the trunk, the dryad reached out again.

Her arm was quivering harder, but this time Lyssa clasped her hand, not all owing her to make direct contact with the trunk. Instead, she lifted her other palm and laid it there. “Use me,” the vampire queen said.

At Mason's, Lyssa's groundswel of energy had been like the tremor of an earthquake. This was gentler, but no less powerful. The earth took a long breath and exhaled through her. As she flattened her hand on the tree's trunk, a flutter of blue and green light danced down the dryad's pale arm and floated over Lyssa's skin, glimmering down to the contact point beneath Lyssa's fingertips.

Everything stopped, every muscle locked as if time itself paused. Then Jacob smelled subterranean earth, green leaves and . . . flowers. Time lurched back into motion. The trunk was straightening again, new leaf buds replacing those that had fal en. But more than the tree was changing.

The brown scraps of leaves on the ground were being shifted aside by blades of grass poking through the earth and human debris. The garbage disappeared under a carpet of grass and a multihued tapestry of wildflowers, spiky, defiant oranges and red-browns. Plants that could survive adversity and look good while doing it.

Lyssa had a distant, unfocused expression as she tapped the well of magic and gave it free rein. He sensed her will ing her consciousness out of the way so that the dryad and other forces could direct the power she yet understood so little. However, when she at last returned to herself and saw what the power had wrought, a rare look of complete serenity crossed her lovely features. Brief as it was, he thought of a baby connected to its umbilical cord, that maternal connection providing all the unspoken answers. Then she drew away from the tree.

As she met Jacob's eyes, he leaned forward and kissed her. He held it a long moment, the dryad between them. When he broke the contact between them at last, she stil held the dryad's hand. Lyssa tucked the girl's cold fingers tenderly inside the coat.

Jacob had been the recipient of his lady's merciless side more than once, enough to never underestimate how brutal she could be. However,

despite her earlier impatience on his behalf, he also knew she had a limitless compassion for those deserving of it. Though neither of them knew the motives of Keldwyn or the Fae queen regarding this dryad, it was clear to them both she was a young female in need of their help.

Lyssa cocked her head, picking up his thoughts.

“You like my merciless side. You respond to it quite creatively.”

He couldn't deny it, but decided he'd save that response for a more appropriate time. The dryad made a noise, drawing Lyssa's attention. Her body quivered in Jacob's arms.

“It will survive now,” Lyssa assured her.

“Yes . . . It will thrive. For a while.” There was curiosity in the dryad's gaze as she considered the vampire queen, but her weariness overcame her.

Within a few seconds, she was limp and oblivious in Jacob's arms.

When they left Essie and her friends, Essie was cavorting among the flowers with her little dog, drawing the two nonplussed men into a playful circle dance with her, the woman no longer afraid of lingering here. Jacob gave them some money, hoping it would be used for food, despite the alcohol heavy on Pipe Guy's breath.

Though the damn approaching dawn was making him more unsettled by the minute, he paused at the top of the all ey for one last glimpse of the tree. A dark, dank tunnel of death and violence, leading to light and life at the end of it. A lot of metaphors there, for certain.

It will thrive. For a while. He wondered if that would apply to more than the tree, thinking of Essie and her little dog living in her fantasy world under those sinuous strands of leaves. Jacob didn't blame her.

In their absence, he'd ask Elijah to check on the tree and the homeless woman so childishly enchanted with it.

“I'l drive while you sit with her in the back seat.” He shook his head. “You should be with her, my lady. She was disoriented before. Waking up with a vampire in the backseat might be a bad thing.”

“Trust me, Jacob. There isn't a female alive who'd feel fear in your arms.” Unlike the heat burning his skin, the warmth her tone held was welcome. Lyssa opened the back door for him. “No time to argue.” Just as Keldwyn had implied, what little life the dryad had was drawn from her tree. At this point it was a toss-up between what the most urgent problem was, Jacob's reaction to dawn or the Fae's fading life spark.

There was no packing to do. Keldwyn had said the Fae queen would not all ow anything to go through other than the clothes they wore against their skin and weapons they could find in the Fae world. Jacob assumed that meant his knives would make it through but the nine-mil imeter wouldn't, so he shifted the dryad enough to pul the back holster out of his jeans, unloaded the gun and handed it up to Lyssa to store in the locked glovebox.

Keldwyn had also recommended garments of primarily natural fibers. Apparently, the Fae queen was so offended by polyester she might deliver them through the portal as naked as the Terminator.

Jacob's normal choice of jeans and T-shirt fortunately fit the bil . Lyssa had taken care to wear an organic cotton dress, a pretty, flowing garment that enhanced the Fae look of her vibrant green eyes and pale skin. She'd brought along a blue hooded cloak that swept around her ankles when she donned it against the evening chil . With a braided belt threaded with a carrying pouch, she reminded him of a medieval lady, one who should be standing beside a white charger draped with flowers instead of a shiny Mercedes.

“Charmer. Get in before I can roast marshmal ows over you.”

The car's windows had a protective coating that would shield him from the sun's rays if they experienced a delay. He wouldn't go up in flames, though he would feel like he was being eaten alive by fever.

While he wasn't far from that state now, his elevated temperature hadn't dul ed his wits. He noted a heavy car blanket folded in the shadows of the passenger floor boards. As Lyssa took a seat behind the wheel, he met her gaze in the rearview mirror. Ever since the transfer of her vampire powers to him, she'd regained a reflection. While he of course had lost his, he knew his queen would feel the weight of his regard. “With respect, my lady, make haste. If you reach the Fae doorway at dawn, it won't stop me from fol owing you across, even if I have to burn alive to do it.”

As a human servant, he'd experienced firsthand the innate sense of superiority vampires possessed.

It gave them complete confidence to override the free will of one in a weaker position than themselves.

He admitted to a taste of it himself now and again since he'd grown fangs. So when her eyes narrowed with that frosty look he knew well , he held his ground.

“You won't leave me behind, my lady. Fate always puts me at your back whenever you have need of me. You should stop fighting it and save your energy for better things.”

“Like flaying you alive for your eternal insolence,” she noted in her cool tone. Turning over the engine, a soft purr, she added, “I know you as well as you like to think you know me, Sir Knight. I may have thought it, but I wasn't going to do it. However, for clarification, what you cal Fate, I cal your pigheaded stubbornness.”

“Tomato, to-mah-to,” he said, unruffled.

She put the car in gear with a petulant jerk, and he braced his feet on the floorboards. Her anger with him was genuine, and he had no doubt at some later

time she'd make him pay for it, probably by strapping him to a rack and flogging him in truth.

That, too, was part of her nature. But so was her bone-deep worry about what would happen to him when they tried to cross. Since they had to swal ow the bitter pil of their conflicting desires to protect one another, they rode in silence. He did try to reassure her, though, showing her in his mind the contingency plan he'd considered.

Irish lore often suggested the Fae world was underground, the light a constant twilight or dusk.

However, if the lore was wrong and it was sunny on the Fae side, no shelter nearby, he could burrow rapidly into the earth. It wasn't a pleasant idea, for he'd have to leave her alone for the hours until sundown. Plus, vampires had no more desire to be buried alive than humans did. But he would survive and it was a doable plan.

Unless we emerge into the Fae world on top of a mountain of solid rock.

He chose not to respond to that. For one thing, he had an unfortunate distraction. The dryad remained unconscious, but it wasn't peaceful. As they passed through the city streets, acres of asphalt and glass buildings separating them from a direct connection with the earth, he could feel the wasting weakness of her body increasing.

“Hurry, my lady.”

They'd scoped out several area parks within distance of the downtown area they'd been canvassing. She accelerated, heading toward the closest one. While she zigzagged through the predawn traffic, Jacob fished out his cel and made a quick cal to Elijah. He told him about Essie and where they were leaving the Mercedes so he could retrieve it, hopeful y because both of them would have been transported into a whole different world.