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And then some. So he bought, sold, and developed real estate during the day, and with all his free time he worked to perfect his art.
    It said much for his skills in both areas of his life that he had attained the level of Master wizard, the highest level possible, years before. In fact, long before Serena had come to study with him. At the same time, he had achieved a high degree of respect and esteem within the powerless community of Seattle.
    None of whose citizens had any idea that an ancient art was practiced in their midst.
    Serena gazed at the closed door for a few moments more, then went up the stairs to her bedroom. She undressed and changed for bed, took her makeup off and her hair down. She turned on the television to catch the late news, but paid little attention to the program as she moved restlessly around.
    How much longer could she go on? The simple answer was—as long as necessary. Like Merlin, she grudged no time or effort in her quest to become a Master wizard; that had been her ambition from earliest childhood. But unlike him, she was constantly distracted and disturbed by … other matters.
    Other matters
. How laughably inadequate that phrase was, she reflected somewhat bitterly.
    His powers set him apart from most men, and Serena thought her knowledge of his difference made him often seem somewhat remote, even with her. At least she hoped that was it.
    He was the most powerful wizard to walk the face of modern-day earth, and that had to be a kind of burden even as it was an accomplishment matched by very few in all of history. Serena had long wanted to ask him if it
was
a burden, but she had always hesitated. She had, over the years, learned not to pry, not to ask personal questions. It was useless in any case; what Merlin chose not to answer, he simply ignored.
    And so, wholly occupied with perfecting his art and passing the knowledge on to her, his Apprentice, he rarely, if ever, saw her as a woman. At best she was a young student with a great deal to learn, at worst a bothersome child.
    Serena had learned to live with that, or thought she had. Nights like this one made her doubt it. There was a strong part of her, intensifying year by year, that demanded she make Merlin see her as the woman she was, and that part often let itself be known. But each time it happened, she sensed something in him she didn’t understand, something she couldn’t put a name to and was frightened by.
    She had felt it in him tonight, so briefly, when she had reminded him she was no longer a child. And, as usual, she had reacted immediately and out of sheer instinct to right things between them once again. She’d felt driven to retreat, to reclaim childhood or at least a childish mood, to make him forget that he had glimpsed a woman.
    The moment always passed, and with it that indefinable tension she felt in him. But more and more, Serena was left frustrated and bewildered, angry at him for some failing she couldn’t understand or even describe clearly to herself.
    What
was
it? Was it something in Richard, as she sensed—or something in herself?
    In the nine years of her apprenticeship, she had come to know him probably as well as anyone could. Publicly he had been her uncle and guardian; privately he’d been much more. He had been her parent, brother, teacher, companion, her harshest critic, and her best friend.
    She had, at sixteen, fallen wildly in love with him. Anatural enough thing to happen. That he seemed unaware of her feelings had puzzled her, but she had eventually come to understand that his ignorance stemmed from the same reason he had so instantly accepted a ragged, hungry, rain-soaked sixteen-year-old orphan as his pupil.
    Her mind was completely shielded from him.
    In time Serena was sincerely grateful for that innate protection. Merlin often knew what she was thinking for the simple reason that she tended to blurt out her thoughts, but he couldn’t read her mind. And aside from the benefits of hiding