For an instant sympathy encouraged hesitation in her mind, but she forced herself to visualize the rebuilding of Wolf Hall as a headquarters for the United Kingdom shifters. More than one hundred million euros of public money had been thrown into the project thus far, with much more to come. Now that the family of Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry VIII, were rumored to have been shifters, the press were tantalized, and even Hollywood had come to call. Anyone who questioned the extravagant expenditure was drowned out in the usual British religion of celeb worship.

Shape-shifters with ties to royalty: the new rock stars.

Fiona clamped down on her mental wanderings when indignation made her focus waver for a split second. The taller guard lifted his nose into the wind and leaned forward, staring into the shadows around her tree. His sense of smell wouldn’t be nearly as keen in this form as when he was a wolf, but still better than that of any human.

Deeper. She sent her mental command arrowing ever more deeply into her own brain, until she felt the almost audible click that signaled total control of her Gift. Air and light bent to her will in the space surrounding her. The scent of her body dispersed into the vestigial odors of the millions of tourists who crossed this courtyard. Her image vanished, hidden by the shadows caressing her. Even the sound of her heartbeat and breath floated away, broken up and scattered with the obedient winds. To any of the guards’ five senses, she simply did not exist, so long as she didn’t get close enough to touch.

Damn the luck, though. Her Gift had no control over the sixth. Intuition. Hunches. The peripheral senses of shifters who trusted their own instincts—they’d come near to unveiling her more than once in the past. Her lips quirked at the idea of how unhappy Hopkins would be if her outrageous streak of good fortune chose now to desert her.