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and how did he receive them? Did others mark his robust physique?
    Sudden prickles of fear rushed her. Could Darkwyn Dragonelli be one of Sanguedolce’s henchmen? Had she and Zachary been found, despite all their best efforts?
    She hadn’t thought it through, given her near drowning, but Ogden could have severed the rope, if Darkwyn’s appearance, as a fellow mobster, had been a signal to proceed. This was crazy. She’d never doubted Ogden until this moment. Who to trust? She never knew.
    Hot buttered blood, she was getting paranoid these days, suspecting everyone. She supposed that meant it was time for her to act.
    Vivica had done an extensive background check on Ogden Canby, Bronte reminded herself, before she hired him. He didn’t have a blemish to his name. She knew because Vivica’s queries ran FBI/CIA deep. On the other hand, Bronte didn’t think the Canadian mob or the RCMP, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, leaked much to the U.S. feds.
    Bronte clasped her hands behind her, so no one could see them tremble.
    Life for her and Zachary, since their narrow escape from Montreal, had been a lot like tumbling into the bowels of a mine shaft and rolling aimlessly downhill in a rickety railcar on incomplete tracks. Yes, Journey to the Center of the Earth gave her the familiar creeps. Oh, there was a bit of light now and then—from live wires that arced when least expected, electric current that could fry them to cinders at a wrong move.
    Sure, she had street smarts, and she’d used them, bending the letter of the law, if not breaking it outright. Anything to keep Zachary safe, until they got to Salem. Here they’d found old Zachary Tucker’s building, as young Zachary Tucker said they would, and set up housekeeping, more or less. Sure, they lived vampire-style, hiding in plain sight, daring to advertise while living in fear, a suitcase always packed, but living , however they could, beat the alternative.
    Her suspicions ran rampant; trust being a luxury she couldn’t afford. Even the two kittens connected to this odd, bare-footed mangod made her wonder.
    As the child of a psychic and empathetic father, who died young of cancer, she had little control over the nebulous and erratic psychic gifts she’d inherited from him, and she did not do risk well.
    Frankly, if she were any kind of empath, why would she not sense the danger in him? Why sense a kindred spirit, a possible error of huge proportions.
    Idiot her, running from the mob, yet jolted out of composure by a weird, huge, drop-dead gorgeous intruder from whom she pulled her gaze only because his kittens circled her.
    Was theirs a dance to determine the alpha between them? Or a challenge, kitten to kitten, to turn one of them into a prime bit of mouse pudding? Silly thoughts to ease the soul. These were kittens of the cuddliest kind, no more.
    Bronte shook off her unease. “Do you know that your cats are purebreds?” she asked to turn her thoughts. “They’re show cats, Mr. Dragonelli.”
    “You mean they perform, like in an amphitheater?”
    An image of them dancing with top hats and canes brought a rusty giggle to her throat. The shock in Zachary’s eyes made Bronte compose herself. “Your white with lilac points and pink paw pads here is a Birman, and the scorched-looking ruddy with black paw pads and almond-shaped eyes is Abyssinian. Though both kittens’ eyes are the same intense blue.”
    The kittens appeared to subtly stare each other down, some cat ceremony taking place behind their kitty masks, an encounter that looked rather out of this world .
    “They’re not mine,” Darkwyn said. “I don’t know where they came from.”
    Bronte turned to Vivica. “Did they come with the cloak?”
    “No. They’re strays, doomed to begging food on the streets.”
    “No,” Bronte said. “We can’t leave them to the elements. They’re not outdoor cats, which you know, Vivica dearest, my supposed friend, playing on my sympathy.”
    The red/black