Passions of the Ghost by Sara Mackenzie Read Free Book Online

Greta Garbo. Go and find Nicco and win him back. He’s smitten, sweetheart. Just needs a bit of stroking, and he’ll spill everything. You’ll see.”
    “Are you sure you’re not underestimating Nicco? He’s not a fool.”
    “He’s a complete idiot,” Jez retorted.
    Amy laughed, then shook her head at him. “Don’t you have any scruples, Jez?”
    “Where Nicco is concerned? Not a single one,” he assured her. “I’ve heard some things about our friend that would make your hair curl more than it already is.”
    “So you’re not worried about leaving me alone with him?”
    “Nuh. You can handle him. Now…go and do your stuff, beautiful.” He turned her around and pointed her in the right direction.
    Unlike Jez, Nicco was all alone. He was dressed in a sea blue suit, standing before the huge fireplace, where a couple of enormous logs were ablaze. It was a wonder he wasn’t puce with the heat, but she’d already discovered that Nicco was a cold fish. As if to prove it, he gave a shiver as she approached.
    “I would be warmer in Siberia,” he said, his mouth turning down.
    “No, you wouldn’t.”
    He shrugged one shoulder, not bothering to argue with her. There was a sulkiness to him that some women might find attractive. Amy wanted to slap him.
    “Have you finished with the riffraff?” he sneered.
    “You mean the actor?” she said, ignoring his bad temper. “Didn’t you recognize him?”
    “Actor?” Nicco echoed suspiciously.
    “Yes. He’s doing a part in a movie set in medieval times, so he’s using this weekend to immerse himself in the period. Didn’t you realize that, Nicco? I thought everyone knew.”
    Nicco didn’t like the idea that he might have missed out on something. “Of course I knew,” he said irritably, “but I don’t have to like him, do I? Come and we will have a drink, Amee. I am lonely here, a foreigner in a foreign country. You should be entertaining me and making me feel welcome.”
    Amy smiled as she took his arm, but inside she was anything but happy. She really didn’t want to do this anymore. Why was she here with selfish, spoiled Nicco, when she could be upstairs with the mysterious and gorgeous Rey?
     
     
    Far down in the earth, deep beneath the castle, an old chamber lay hidden and secret. Only a single tunnel led to this chamber, and it was narrow and half-choked with rubble, barely passable. No one had walked here for hundreds of years. And that was how it should be, for the creature within the chamber did not want visitors.
    She was so old she remembered when the earth was a child. Enormous, her body covered with scales as hard as steel, her powerful wings tucked in, and her long tail curled around her. She breathed slow and soft. Sometimes she dreamed.
    In her dreams she flew over green fields, treetops, valleys, and mountains. This was her domain, and once again a dragon was something to fear, not a myth in a musty book, or a tale told by those who no longer believed in it.
    She stirred and gave a soft moan.
    Far above, in the castle, she sensed an old and familiar danger.
    Reynald de Mortimer.
    This was all his fault. He deserved to die.
    She had been hiding here for seven hundred years. Sleeping. She might have been sleeping still if it were not for the Sorceress’s interference. Rage made her blood begin to boil. An anger that had waited seven hundred years to reach its zenith.
    Revenge. She wanted revenge!
    That witch of the between-worlds; it was she who had brought Reynald back. They would be sorry, they would all be sorry.
    “I will fight him,” the dragon hissed. “I will fight until there is only one of us remaining in the mortal world. And I will kill his woman, then he will know what it is to be bereft of the one he loves. Then he will finally understand.”
    The time had come.
    Slowly, purposefully, the old dragon began to awake from her long sleep, ready to face her destiny.

Six
     
     
    Reynald peered grimly through the arrow slit and