The Wizard of Seattle by Kay Hooper Page B

And since he’d already broken the law, anything else had to be an insignificant matter of degree. At least that was what he told himself. But what seemed simple on the surface turned out to be far more complicated underneath.
    He had found himself withdrawing from her time and time again, feeling a strange and senseless apprehension whenever something reminded him she was no longer a child, that she was a woman only nominally under his control. The feelings grew stronger and stronger, the tightness in his chest, the wariness, the inexplicable urge to be on guard, as if against a threat.
    Serena … a threat. Why?
Why?
    Her innate power was truly incredible; that was beyond question. She frequently startled him with the strength of some ability he was in the process of teaching her—as well as an occasional seemingly natural or unconscious skill that was unknown to him even after a lifetime’s study of his art—but he had no logical reason to feel apprehensive or threatened by Serena nevertheless.
    It had occurred to him only recently that what he felt was far too powerful to have originated in the simple breaking of a law, that surely there was little power in dry words of warning written in ancient books and scrolls—certainly not enough to cause this turmoil inside him.
    No, this was something else, something embedded in him, inherent to him, to who and what he was, that he could only sense. It was as if all his deepest instincts recognized a prohibition so vitally important, it was more like a taboo, a primitive command demanding instant, wordless obedience. Part of him wanted to obey, struggled to obey, but part of him didn’t want to and fought against it. Since he was a logical man, and since that command stirred an increasingly stormy conflict he didn’t understand in himself, Merlin had begun searching for the reasons behind the law.
    So far he hadn’t found them.
    Sitting down in his desk chair, Merlin leaned backand gazed across the room at nothing. How could he explain to Serena what he didn’t understand himself? About what he felt and what he recoiled away from feeling…. And how could he even begin to tell her that the closed, secret society of wizards she aspired to join wanted nothing to do with her?
    “Have you seen today’s paper?”
    Serena peered at the clock on her nightstand—a replacement for the one she’d zapped—and made a muffled sound of indignation when she realized it wasn’t yet seven o’clock. In the morning.
    “Jane, do you know what time it is?” she asked into the phone, yawning.
    “Of course I know what time it is. You weren’t awake? Serena, you’re always up by six on a weekday.”
    Unwilling to explain that she hadn’t slept well in the two nights since the confrontation with Merlin on Tuesday, Serena merely said, “I was up late last night. What’s this about the paper?”
    In a parient tone Jane said, “Thursday is when Kane’s column runs, remember?”
    Serena thought about it. “Yeah, I remember. So what? Did he call me the whore of Babylon?” She wasn’t very interested; since most of her concentration and emotional energy had been taken up with the urgent need to act as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened between her and Merlin whenever he was present, she had completely forgotten that Kane might have decided to make trouble for her.
    “Let me put it this way. If at all possible, you’d better hide the relevant section of the paper before Richard sees it.”
    Pushing herself up in bed, Serena frowned. “Did Kane attack Richard?” she demanded fiercely.
    “Weil, he certainly didn’t nominate him for citizen of the month, but Richard is not going to like the publicity, and I doubt he’ll be terribly pleased at the stuff printed about you—even if none of it’s new. Really, Serena, just get to the paper and read it, okay? And call me later.”
    Serena hung up the phone on her way out of bed. She was in such a hurry that she used her