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retort she could make. She moved past his chai r to kneel opposite him, the cat between them. She noted in the man’s presence she always felt a peculiar knotting in her stomach, as if an irksome cord united her with him by their navels. "Leave me with your cat for a few moments,” she said.
    He laughed s hortly. "Nay, mistress. I would as soon leave my soul with the devil.” He paused and stared emptily at her. "And mayhap I have.”
    She lost patience. Time and space were flowing swiftly. "Do not be a buffoon. There is a chance I can heal your cat —if 'tis not too late.”
    He focused his gaze on her, reminding her sharply of the yarak , the Turkish word for the fiery-eyed stance a falcon assumed when scanning or staring at potential prey. Perhaps it was his brows, sharply peaked at the outer corners, that reminded her of a falcon. "How? Mutter some demonical incantation? Use your powers of sorcery?”
    She shivered, more from foreboding than from his contempt. Intuitively she knew that to proceed would be courting a dimension over which she had no po wer. Nevertheless she was powerless to resist the force at work between her and this Englishman.
    The last pulsations of color —gray— emanated from the animal. The cat's eyes were open, but glazed. No breath, no movement issued from its inert body. Its spirit was already straining away. "Stay then. It matters little to me.''
    For the moment, she ignored the deep slashes that ribboned the cat ’s back. Iolande's poultices would heal those. Instead, her fingers found the cat’s stomach, searched behind, gently pressing with precise touches until she located the sensations stored there. Then she began massaging the cat’s body, hoping to bring a balance to it. She picked up various vibrations, confusing to her and debilitating.
    She once tried to describe to Iolande wh at she was doing, that it was like knitting or crocheting, her fingers stitching a web of the life energy, that this creative strength she used slumbered inside her. Inside everyone.
    "Do not speak of these things, not even to me,” Iolande had warned. "The walls have ears, and others do not understand.”
    Dominique concentrated on summoning a yellow glow behind her lids, the powerful sensory color she first perceived while playing as a child in a sunflower field. She had told neither Iol ande nor Baldwyn of this experience, but she was rather certain they suspected.
    Nauseated, she opened her eyes to look at the Englishman. "Please, your hostility . . . 'tis interfering, blocking me.” A nerve in his unshaven cheek twitched, and she said, "Please, all I ask is that you allow me a few moments alone.”
    His eyes probed her face. At last, he said, "Aye, for a few moments.”
    After the door closed behind him, she returned her full attention to the animal. Her eyes closed again, and she sought that crystal bridge to her source, her soul. Once more she orchestrated her physical energies with her emotional, her spiritual with her mental, and felt as if she were spinning. Perspiration drenched the hair at her temples. How much time flowed by she knew not.
    Then the cat ’s scratchy tongue stroked her palm. She heard its faint mewl. She opened her eyes and sat back on her heels as the animal stirred feebly in an attempt to resettle its blood-matted body in a more comfortable position.
    "Whelp of a she-wolf!” Paxton stared at her as if she were vaporizing before his eyes. She had not heard him re-enter the chamber. His jaws clenched and unclenched. He passed his hands over his face, as though to wash it.
    "Your cat will survive. At least, it will survive this round with the forces of nature. Now, it has only eight lives left.”
    Her attempt at a neutralizing smile was met with a frown that made his rather plain face formidable. He crossed the room and dropped to his knees, opposite her, so that his cat lay between them. It twitched its ears at its master's presence.
    His stare went from his pet to her.