Pleasure

Book 3: Shadowdwellers

by Jacquelyn Frank

Genres: Paranormal Romance; General Fiction; Romance

Synopsis

Discipline. Penance. Order. A Sanctuary priest's life revolves around
such things. But when Sagan is taken captive and thrust into the Alaskan
wilderness, he encounters a woman who challenges his faith and his
self-control. Valera is a natural born witch who almost lost herself to
the lure of dark magic. By rights, Sagan should shun her, but convention
will count for nothing in the face of a passion that could change the
world of the Shadowdwellers forever . . .

As Chancellor of the
Shadowdwellers, Malaya's first duty is to her people. Her bodyguard,
Guin, knows this only too well. For tradition's sake, Malaya must marry,
and the thought of this lush, vibrant, woman in a loveless union is
impossible for him to bear. Guin loves Malaya-not as a subject loves
his queen, but as a man craves a woman. And even if he cannot keep her,
he'll show her everything she stands to lose . . .

Release date: August 11, 2009

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

The effects of the racially engineered poison coursing through his system were wide and varied, but he quickly lost track of his symptoms as one in particular overtook him.

Hallucinations.

Sagan could barely determine reality from the wild rushes of strange things that went hurrying through his feverish mind. The priest tried to fight it every step of the way by repeating even the most mundane facts to himself. Anything to keep himself grounded in the here and now instead of launching into raving waves of nightmarish unreality.

I am Sagan. I am a penance priest, one of the five elite chosen ones of the gods. I hunt those who Sin and force them to repent for what they have done. I am a Shadowdweller, a Nightwalker, and my world is a nighttime realm of blessed blackness.

I am going to die.

Sagan actually took comfort in that truth, as well as all the others, because he knew they were valid. He knew he had lost a crucial battle against enemies of Sanctuary, the Shadowdwellers’ religious house, and the royal house of the Chancellery. The wicked k’ypruti Nicoya had dipped her weapons in the poison that now burned into him, and all it had taken was the smallest scratch for him to fall in defeat. Now she would go off unchallenged into the world to do more of her sinister evil as her mother, Acadian, had her lackeys drag him away to become her newest toy.

Provided he survived that long. And having seen Acadian’s handiwork on the scarred and tortured body of a friend—again, he took comfort in that possibility. After all, he was a man of deep faith and he had to believe Drenna would welcome him softly once he passed into the Beyond.

Unfortunately, until then…

The priest cried out as the poison scorched agony across every nerve in his body. One minute the pain was bracing and clarifying, but the next his mind became a zoo of wild images and screaming visions. One minute he thought he was in Shadowscape, running through the lightless dimension trying to escape a predator that chased him down, the next it was Dreamscape and he was the predator, hunting Sinner prey.

Everything blended and rushed together in a fury until every corner of his mind lit up with activity, thought, and response. The nerves of his body and his brain went into overload, and like the massive malfunction of an entire electrical grid, everything shut down.

 

Something wasn’t quite right.

Valera knew it immediately as she stepped out into the blackness of the Alaskan morning. It was winter now, and there were so few hours of daylight that it was dark almost constantly. It was dawn in other parts of the world, but in her little secluded part of central Alaska, nighttime skies would reign for quite some time yet.

Valera was used to this. She was used to the deadly brace of the ultimate cold, too, as she stepped out of her cabin to face the mountainous woodlands. Even the constant wail of the wind and scouring of snow was perfectly in place.

So what was out of place?

She wasn’t accustomed to ignoring her intuition, but it was too cold to dwell on the problem while standing out in the snow like an idiot. She hurried to get the firewood she needed, making several trips from the pile to the inside entry where the snow would melt off it, making it ready for the cozy fireplace she kept going all season long. A couple of times she paused to look around, trying to puzzle what it was she sensed as being out of place.

It was a ridiculous notion, really. Her closest neighbor was some kind of research station at least a hundred miles away and at a much higher elevation. And frankly, it was a long way off to borrow a cup of flour, so she’d never even seen the place. She just knew it was there.

She made her last trip for wood and then hurried out to the storage shed. She made certain there was plenty of fuel in the large generator and she decided to carry in some of the stored frozen meat she kept locked safely away in the heavy-duty building. As she stepped outside again, that was when she heard the strange scrabbling sound around the corner of the shed.

A bear.

Damn it, they never quit trying to get at her supplies. Oh, the food was safe from them, but Valera couldn’t be as confident about her own safety with that kind of wild potential just around the corner from her. She should go back into the shed and wait the creature out, but there was no heat there and she was already beyond her tolerance for the time she should be spending out in the deep freeze of winter.

So, as quietly as she could she dropped the food she held, not wishing to make herself any more of a target than she already was, and she slowly moved toward the house.

“Going somewhere?”

Valera screamed. It was such a girlie thing to do, but honestly, she lived on a remote mountainside with elk and bears for neighbors. She wasn’t used to being talked to. She turned sharply to face the voice and found two men had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

She knew instantly that she was in big, big trouble. One woman, two men, and no cops or neighbors. It was easy math, and she just knew she was going to end up on the shitty side of the equation. Or at least that seemed to be their intention. She felt secure in that assumption as they closed in on her quickly. They were huge. Parkas and snow gear aside, they were both well over six feet tall and clearly built like brick houses.

“Well, well. Look at this. Davide, I do believe we’ve found ourselves a neighbor.”

“I noticed that,” Davide responded, reaching out to attempt a tug at her muffler where it covered her face. Valera jerked back away from his reach. “Not very friendly, is she?”

“Well, that’s because it’s cold out, idiot. Let’s get her inside where we can warm her up.”

Valera would have to be a moron not to have caught the sinister entendre to that remark. Her heart shuddered harshly in the suddenly tight confines of her chest and her belly squirmed with anxiety. She didn’t say anything when Davide grabbed hold of her, then shoved her toward her cabin; she just paid careful and quiet attention.

“Morrigan, get the priest.”

Priest? Okay, so what did that mean? Was she going to be a part of some twisted shotgun-wedding scenario? Out here in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness? The entire situation was becoming very surreal to Valera, even as her blood raced through her in acknowledgment of the danger closing in around her.

Davide approached the cabin entrance and after a cautious movement that brought his back up against the outside wall, he thrust her in front of the door, the digging of his cruel fingers penetrating her parka and bruising her arm.

“Now you listen to me very carefully. Open the door, go inside the first room, and turn off all the lights. Let’s make it nice and romantic, all right?” He smiled at her, the white of his teeth flashing in the darkness of the night. “And if you try anything tricky, I promise you’ll regret it. As of now, all we want is a place to rest for the day, some food, and a bit of comfort. Then we’ll be on our way and you can go back to your little life. But you try testing me, and this dynamic will change really fast. Do you understand?”

Valera nodded, an unavoidable tremor scurrying through her as her imaginative mind filled in all of the blanks he had left behind. She knew he had purposely not defined “comfort” in detail and she knew his promises were lies. These were powerful and dangerous men. They reeked of the trouble they brought with them.

She tried to think. Tried to figure out why they wanted the lights off. Searching for an explanation kept her mind occupied and crowded out the fear that wanted to encroach on her. She needed to stay clear. Focused.

Valera realized it was likely a tactic to preserve their anonymity. Both men were very dark-skinned and all but blended into the blackness of the night, their features indistinguishable…although she made a concentrated effort not to look at either of them too long lest they think she was trying to memorize their identities so she could report them later. As long as they kept trying to hide their faces, it meant they expected to leave her alive when they went.

Val walked into her cabin slowly and hit the first switch in the wood room. She wasn’t afraid of navigating her home in the darkness. She had done it many times when the generator had failed or run out of fuel. Sometimes circuits burned out or she simply needed to conserve fuel for whatever reason.

She stepped up out of the front area and opened the door to the house within. The double doors were designed to let her haul in wood freely without worrying about flushing out all the heat in the whole house. That purpose was being defeated, of course, as her guest kept the door wide open and inched up behind her carefully, staying in the darkness and shadows.

The living room opened up before her and it was already mostly dark. Simple little lamps on two corner tables and the fireplace were all that lit the room.

“Throw water on that fire while you’re at it,” came the gruff command behind her.

It was almost funny how that order ruffled her feathers. Obviously she kept the cantankerous response to herself, but it was almost a personal insult to her and her home to demand the ever-burning fire be quenched. She took a breath and tried to remember the need to focus on the important issues. She shut off the lamps and fetched a pitcher of water from the kitchen. It would get much colder in the house without the fire, forcing the generator to work harder and burn fuel faster. Again, it was a worry for later. She’d just filled the tank and it would last hours.

Just long enough for them to rape and kill me, she thought wryly.

Once the fire was doused, Davide hustled her through the rest of the house until there wasn’t a light on anywhere. He even jerked her digital clock’s plug out of the wall, blacking out the glowing red numbers. Davide then sent her back into her living room with a good shove, landing her on the nearest couch in the darkness. Val’s eyes were adjusting quickly since she didn’t keep the house overly bright to begin with, and she saw the man called Morrigan enter with a huge burden thrown over one shoulder. Obviously it wasn’t precious cargo because he dropped the burlap-wrapped thing to the floor with a shrug of his shoulder. It hit hard and solid on the wooden floor.

She knew instantly that the burlap contained a body.

Nausea rushed over her when the fall didn’t cause the body to utter a single sound in indication that it had felt pain or was alive in any way. Was this the priest they were talking about? What had they done to him? Why? Why were they even here?

This was supposed to be that spot. The one where you went in order to get lost from all the rest of the human race. For nine years it had been that spot. Not a soul did she see here. Only those who had labored to build the house knew where it was. People had a vague idea of it, they saw her and wondered about her when she came into town for her supplies, but none of them knew for sure. She wanted it that way. She had even carved out a little wooden sign as a private joke and had hung it on her door.

It said Shangri-La.

But now there were intruders in her secret haven who would destroy the balance and peace of the place. She could feel it in every screaming nerve ending and every trembling blood cell. Morrigan and Davide began to strip off their outer clothes, and she could already feel their eyes on her. They exchanged looks and grins, trying to intimidate her with the evil intent she could feel emanating from them.

Valera stood up slowly, her hands clenched into fists as anger rushed through her to mix with her fear. She felt the spark of it warming through her belly as she stared hard at the cause of it, no longer caring what they thought of her attentions.

“You’re getting my floor wet,” she said softly.

Both men stopped as if she’d pressed a pause button on her remote control. They looked at her as if she had lost her mind, and then Davide barked out a huge laugh of incredulity.

“Sit the fuck down and shut up or I’ll show you a wet floor,” Morrigan snarled at her viciously. “I’ll cut your fucking throat and let you watch yourself bleed all over it.”

“Just so long as we’re clear on where we stand,” Valera countered just as quietly as before.

Slowly she crossed her arms over her chest, her fists shaking from the way she clenched her fingers tightly. She drew in a slow breath and focused herself perfectly as strength bloomed up through the center of her body. Suddenly she thrust out her arms and her hands, sending that gathered strength into her palms as they furled open with a snap of rigid muscle.

“Asparte inomus ancante mious!”

The words were spoken fast and fiercely and blue fire exploded down her arms and into her hands, where it gathered into balls of crackling munitions. Both men screamed at a horrible pitch before she even threw the first ball, which puzzled her somewhere in the back of her mind. She threw her weapons and with her uncanny aim she hit them both perfectly.

The spell was simple but powerful. Each brilliant ball of cobalt blue energy struck its mark and a bright, stunning field enveloped both men. It would send enough electrical shock through them to knock them out cold, and the stasis field would hold them in that state for as long as she let the spell run.

Or that was the idea.

To her shock and horror, though, the men were no sooner enveloped then they burst into flame in a harsh, fierce conflagration. Blinded by the display, Valera shielded her burning eyes until it went suddenly dark again. With a gasp she rushed forward to where two piles of ash lay in the middle of her floor, the blue stasis fields keeping the charred lumps perfectly contained.

“Oh no! No!” she cried, falling to her knees before them as she let the spell dissipate. Tears sprang into her eyes and raced down her cheeks. She hadn’t meant to kill them! She didn’t understand! It was just a simple incapacitation spell. It should never have done them so much harm! All she had wanted to do was to protect herself. She had a right to protect herself! But she had somehow screwed it up.

Of course you did! You always do! This is why you are a danger to yourself and the rest of the damn world!

Sobbing in hitches of dismay, fighting her nausea as she realized she had just killed two people, Valera curled over her own knees and covered her face.

It wasn’t until she heard a soft sound, like a low grunt of pain, that she whipped herself up out of her position of abject misery. Swiping at her messy face with the sleeves of the parka she still had on, she hobbled over to the burlap-wrapped body as fast as her knees would carry her. It was tied with heavy rope and also what had to be steel chains.

“Penchant! Penchant, come here!” she yelled.

Penchant came dashing into the room from the back of the house, his collar jingling as the silver pentacle charm that hung from it hit the bell that was also attached. The beautiful tiger-striped cat leaped onto Valera’s back and instantly found a path to wind over her shoulders and under her hair.

“Come here,” she commanded him, tapping a long nail on the metal of the chain. “You know what to do. We have to help him.”

Penchant stopped, sitting on her shoulder a moment as he decided if he really cared to help. He might be a good familiar, but he was just as often a typical cat.

“Do it and I’ll give you a snack,” she coaxed him.

Tuna?

“No. Not tuna. But I do have some of those crunchy treats you like.”

Tuna would be better, he drawled in her mind.

“And I can easily get a hacksaw from the shed, you little brat,” she countered sharply.

Fine, fine, he sighed, sounding very put-upon. Penchant leapt onto the heavy bundle and she saw his tail quiver irritably. He’s ice cold! One lick and my tongue will stick to these chains!

“Penchant,” she warned.

Penchant gave her a halfhearted hiss and bent his nose to the chain. With a single lick, soft pink energy radiated along the entire length of steel, and with a twang like the plucking of a rubber band, it vanished into thin air. Penchant did the same to the rope.

“Oh, good kitty!” Valera cried, clapping her hands together. Penchant raised his head proudly and leapt into her arms for his due praise and quick ear scratches that made him purr. “Okay, I’ll give you your snack in a minute.” Valera set him down and hurried to peel off the burlap. Penchant was right. The coarse fabric and the man within were freezing cold. She had taken off her gloves to manipulate the light switches, so she felt it seep into her finger joints painfully until it made her shiver.

She gasped in horror when the stiff body of a man dressed entirely in a strange violet uniform rolled free of the sacking. There was a thumping sound as an empty leather sheath from a sword of some kind, which was attached to a belt at his hips, hit the floor. Because of the noise, it was the first thing she noticed.

After that she sat a moment in stunned surprise to see an enchanted prince lying on her floor. Well, okay, so that was her imagination running away again, but it was the first thing that popped into her brain. After all, he was definitely tall, definitely dark, and…

“Mercy,” she murmured as she stared at his fine features. Her prince fantasy had to be because of his lashes. He had the long thick lashes of a little boy, the softness of them resting peacefully against his cheeks. Even in the dark she could tell his skin was the color of chocolate crème. One of her favorite sinful desserts. He had thick black brows that gave dramatic accent to proud, elegant facial features and a broad expanse of forehead that led her gaze into long midnight hair, which spilled over her oak flooring in silky swirls that looked as if they would be so very soft.

His hands were bound. So were his feet. These facts jolted her out of her fantasy of the moment, and with a whispered curse, Valera reached for his throat. As she searched for a pulse she noticed his sleeve was torn and he was injured. It wasn’t too deep a cut, looking as if it were healing well…provided he was still alive. She couldn’t feel a pulse, but she could swear she had heard him make a sound. She laid a hand on his chest to see if he was breathing.

He’s poisoned.

Val jerked around to look at Penchant.

“How do you know that?”

I can smell it on him. Bad stuff, too. But someone gave him an antidote already. Still, the damage was done. You’ll need to heal him.

“No. No way,” she snapped at the cat. “I just killed two men trying to detain them. With my luck I’ll turn him into a gerbil.”

There was nothing wrong with your magic. Rather the men themselves were wrong. Smelled wrong. Looked wrong. Felt wrong.

Rather than explain himself, Penchant trotted off to the bedroom with a musical jingle of his collar. However, since Penchant could see things she couldn’t most of the time, she gnawed at her lip and debated taking his word for it. Maybe he was right. Maybe she hadn’t screwed up. Perhaps if she healed this other man she could figure out what had been so wrong about those men…other than the obvious.

Taking a deep breath, Valera laid her hands on the poisoned man’s chest. She leaned her weight forward onto him and immediately she could feel the extraordinary tension and power in the musculature beneath her fingers.

“Holy cow, this guy’s built like a Mack truck.” What kind of pacifist bore the body of a warrior? What kind of priest dressed this way? And why had such evil men wanted him as their victim? “You have a lot of questions to answer when you wake up,” she murmured.

She took a breath and softly began to speak her healing spell.

Sagan opened his eyes to total darkness and a heavy weight of pressure against his chest. He took a breath, as if he hadn’t drawn oxygen for ages. It was something like coming out of Fade, when he crossed realms from Realscape to Shadowscape or to Dreamscape. So many worlds, each with aspects he had mastered in his long lifetime, yet in that instant he felt out of place and out of sync with the place and time he was in.

It was because there was no pain. No weakness. No death. And in his mind, he knew there should be all of that. Except he couldn’t remember why.

Sagan heard a soft sigh and realized he wasn’t alone. Instantly he was overwhelmed with the instinct that he should fight for his life. A woman…a woman was trying to harm him and others he cared about.

He sat up with a jolt of movement and instantly collided with another body. Their skulls cracked together on impact, his significant size and weight plowing the other person off balance and sending them tumbling awkwardly over his legs. Sagan reached out on sheer instinct to steady and right his hapless victim, and was surprised to find himself latching on to pillowy soft fabric and an equally soft body beneath it. Shaking his head to clear it of the jogging his brain had just taken, he focused on the person he held.

A human woman!

If the priest hadn’t already been significantly weakened, he might have had the strength sucked out of himself in the wake of his shock. Instantly his impressions of threat and danger dissolved. While human hunters, those rare misguided souls who made a pastime of hunting the Nightwalker species just for the hell of it, had their momentary dangers attached to them, he was certain it had not been a hunter in pursuit of him. That didn’t mean she wasn’t a threat, however, and he kept tight hold of her as he tried to clear his mind, keeping her where he could see her and manipulate her as needed.

He looked quickly around the room, noting immediately that everything was black and dark, making the environment safe for him. It was as if she had been expecting one of his kind. He could see the lamps and lights scattered about that proved she didn’t make a regular habit of living in the dark. It couldn’t be coincidence. How had he gotten there? How was it that a human woman knew what he was? How did she know that he was a Shadowdweller, that the slightest touch of light could severely burn him and, eventually, render him to a pile of dust and ash?

The theft of his strength and health had been such an insidious and, then, wildly wrathful event that the rapidly growing restoration of it was bracing and invigorating. With every passing second he felt his body’s natural power returning.

But he was still lying bound hand and foot in a strange environment peppered with potential light sources and in essence controlled by this woman whose race was infamous for its desire to poke and prod and toy with unusual creatures it didn’t understand.

“What is this place? Who are you?”

Sagan barely recognized his own voice as the words ground out of him in a rough rasp. He held her by an arm, his bound hands grasping her tightly and keeping her held down across his legs. Pretty much in his lap, actually, now that he was sitting up.

“My name is Valera. This is my home. I’m not trying to hurt you, I’m only trying to help.”

He would see about that. He was still too disoriented to use his third power, the power of a telepath, allowing himself to read her mind, but he would clear soon enough at this rate and he would know what her thoughts and intentions truly were. For the moment, however, he had to figure out the hard way if he believed her.

Honestly, he rarely used his power of telepathy, the ability disturbing to him much of the time. It also tempted him too easily to distrust what he was told and not to have faith that those he spoke with were being truthful. As a priest, a man of the gods who guided his people in so many ways, he couldn’t afford to be so faithless. As a penance priest, a harbinger of punishment and doom to those who Sinned deeply, it was an invaluable tool as he hunted them down through the ’scapes they tried to hide in. Either way, he was used to using all of his strengths and all of his senses to determine the way of things.

And despite his deeply ingrained mistrust of her species, he believed she didn’t mean him any immediate harm.

“How did I come to be here? Why have you bound me?”

“I didn’t bind you,” Valera retorted. “You came that way. If you let me get up, I can cut you free.”

Sagan realized he didn’t have much choice in the matter. As strong as he was becoming once more, he wasn’t strong enough to rip free of his bindings. He reluctantly let go of her and watched warily as she climbed off him and gained her feet. She walked over him, heading for a kitchen area made of mellow and beautifully crafted woods and clearly well stocked for someone who enjoyed spending time with her stove. The copper pans and cast iron skillets that hung from a rack above a centered island spoke volumes of the lengths she had gone to in order to equip herself with the very best in supplies.

She liked to cook.

The innocuous little detail had a strangely soothing effect on his edgy nerves. And as he quickly glanced around her home he found it all to be equally comforting and comfortable, with its warmly polished floors and handcrafted furniture. There were also the homey touches of handmade afghans on the couches and a basket full of softly worn quilts that held a sleeping cat the color of onyx from tip to tail, and he realized that this was very much a home and not some hideaway designed for the capture and captivity of a Nightwalker.

“Are you here alone?” he asked. He watched as the question caused her step to hesitate and she looked back at him warily. It seemed, he realized, that she was just as cautious of him as he was of her.

“Just me, you, and the cats,” she replied with a bald sort of honesty. “But that’s all I need.”

There was an implied warning to that statement, and Sagan filed it into the back of his mind for later analysis. He watched her approach the kitchen counter and lean over it to—

Valera hit the light switch out of habit, not even thinking there could be any reason any longer to keep everything dark, but her guest’s reaction to the soft flood of light over the sink was explosive and instantaneous. He shouted out, cursing rather harshly for a supposed priest, and tried to roll away.

“Off! Turn it off!”

She did so instantly, but not before she clearly could see the harsh sear of blister burns on his exposed skin of his hands and tendrils of smoke quickly rising up from the affected area. He had turned and guarded his head and face reflexively, and she knew immediately that he would have burned there as well. All because of a 40 watt soft white bulb an entire room length away from him.

Valera grabbed a knife from the butcher block and ran back to him, kneeling quickly beside him as he rasped hard for breath. She could feel and taste the harsh tang of fear on him, and it instantly felt wrong. She didn’t know why, but she sensed clearly that this was a man who feared very few things.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, her mind racing as she tried to soothe him and absorb what she had just seen all at once. No wonder the others had burned to ash! If they were like this one, burned at even the slightest touch of light, then the brilliance of the stasis fields would have seared them through in an instant. If he hadn’t been wrapped up safely protected, she would have accidentally killed this man as well, even as he had lain there wounded and helpless. “I didn’t know,” she told him as she quickly stripped off her parka, mufflers, and the sweat jacket beneath it. She couldn’t move well enough within them and she was sweating her butt off besides. Once she was free of the bulky clothes, she leaned over him to peer at his hands.

“It’s okay. They’ll heal,” he choked out awkwardly, trying to draw away from her concerned touch.

Sagan was awash with pain and confusion. She hadn’t known he was Shadow. That much was all too clear. Painfully clear. If she had meant to hurt him on purpose, she certainly wasn’t acting like it. There was obvious distress in her pretty turquoise eyes and…

What an extraordinary color, he thought in instant distraction, the sudden fascination drawing him away from the pain in his hands so sharply that he allowed himself to follow the tangent. The women of his people were almost universally brown eyed and black haired. Seeing eyes of such a startling blue-green was a truly unique experience for him. Not only that, but now that she had shed the parka and its heavy hood, he could see all of her for the first time.

As she ignored his immediate rebuff and gently drew his seared hands toward her, she leaned over him until a waterfall of coppery red hair skimmed only an inch from his nose, bathing him in the warm scent of lilies and sunflowers and a dozen herbs of smaller note. Her hair was full of static, and the strands flew at his face, clinging to his unshaven cheeks like delicate burnished parasites that almost seemed to stroke and pet him. Sagan was still bound, but he didn’t think he would have brushed the colorful bits away even if he could.

“Oh God,” she exhaled in pure distress as she saw his hands up close. She turned her head to meet his eyes, bringing the brilliant Caribbean blue within inches of his face and allowing him to see the stunning striations of her irises that so artfully expressed her guilt…and her innocence. He was convinced, more than ever now, that she meant him no harm. “I have a first aid kit.”

She went to move, but he snared her wrist and kept her close, making her turn those remarkable eyes back on to him. Sagan found himself practically bespelled as she looked at him in question and concern. There was an absolutely fascinating type of power and lure in her gaze, and he wondered if she even realized it.

“It will heal,” he reiterated to her. “Trust me. Even now the pain is fading.”

Valera studied him a long moment before deciding to believe him. Her caution was understandable, but Sagan was very aware that she wasn’t as freaked out about how h. . .