Books by Maggie Shayne (267 page)

“I’m sorry,” he told her as he stroked her hair and gently lifted her head from his chest. The regret he heard in his voice was genuine. He didn’t want to leave her. It made his knees weak, made his head ache to entertain the idea! Clenching his jaw, he forced the words to come. “I have to meet someone. I swear, if it wasn’t so important, I’d—“

“No, it’s all right. I… I should go, talk to Arianna before she has the entire house packed up.” She shook her head. “Besides, I need to… put my head on straight. Seeing you… it made me forget everything I’d planned, everything I wanted to say.“

A lump came into his throat. “I… will I see you again?”

Her smile was soft, edged with sadness and joy all at once. “I’ll come to you, Duncan. Tonight, I’ll come to the lighthouse. We’ll talk then. I promise you, all of this will make sense then.”

He nodded slowly, doubting anything she had to say could make any of this make sense. But he didn’t care. All that mattered was that she would come to him. She’d be with him. Tonight, and that was only hours away, and if she hadn’t made that promise, he didn’t think he’d be able to walk away from her right now. “I’ll be waiting,” he told her.

Leaning forward and up, she pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. Then, stepping away, she turned to go.

“Wait,” he said, and she stopped, glanced back at him. “I don’t even know your name.”

She blinked, as if to cover something in her eyes. “No, you don’t, do you? It’s St. James. Raven St. James.“ Then she turned again and hurried away.

Duncan stood staring after her until she was out of sight. Raven.

Raven
?

My God, what the hell was going on here?

“Duncan?”

Blinking out of his stupor, he half turned toward the voice that called his name. His father stood three feet away, on the sidewalk, hands thrust into the deep pockets of the long black coat that made him look like a mobster’s grandfather.

“Hello, Father.”

His father frowned, and the additional lines lost themselves with all the others on his face. It was a stern face, narrow and pale. Steel-gray hair, too long for a man his age, surrounded it. He looked like winter, Duncan thought. He’d always looked that way. Never seemed to change.

“I waited a good fifteen minutes at the cafe,” he said, his voice a monotone.

“I was on my way there.” He met the old man’s eyes, wondered if there would be a confrontation, accusations and defenses now. No, he wouldn’t defend himself to his father. He wouldn’t apologize. He was an adult.

His father’s gaze wavered first, and the man sighed. “No matter. I was just on my way back to the old courthouse building. Walk with me, Duncan?”

Duncan nodded, turning around and falling into step beside his father. Awkwardly trying to think of some light conversation, some casual words to break the ice. “So how have you been?”

“Same as always. And you?”

Duncan shrugged. His father spoke without making eye contact. It was a trait Duncan had never really become used to. “The business is going well,” he told his father at length.

“Yes, well, it should. There will never be a shortage of old buildings in need of restoration.”

“I hope not.”

“You bought that lighthouse.” He made a clicking sound with his tongue, gave his head a shake, but other than that didn’t break his stride or raise his head. “I found that surprising.”

“So did I.”

The old man did look up then. Sharply, quickly, scanning Duncan’s face in one sweep of his pale eyes and then facing the sidewalk again.

“I bought it on impulse,” Duncan explained. “I’m not sure why. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to stay there.”

“Mmm.” Their shoes tapped in sync over the sidewalk. Passing traffic. Dry leaves rustling against bare limbs in the breeze. Silence.

“You regret it yet?” his father asked.

Duncan sent the man a sideways glance. “No. No, I don’t.”

“So you’ll be staying around here for a while.”

He thought of the woman. Raven. Tonight.! “Yeah, I think so.”

“Then I have a proposition for you.” The old man paused and waved a hand. Duncan followed it to the square flat-topped building, made of deep gray stone blocks. Broad stone steps, with pillars top and bottom, led the way to the entry, which was by itself impressive with big, dark double doors attached with brass bells. “This is it.”

It took Duncan a minute to process the announcement. “The old courthouse? The one you bought?”

Nodding, his father mounted the steps. “Come, I want you to see inside. My apartments are above, on the second floor, but it’s the ground story you’ll be interested in, Duncan. I’ve already acquired some of the most—” He broke off there, turning his key in the lock and swinging the doors wide, and Duncan joined him. “Here, see for yourself.”

Duncan stepped inside. His father reached for a light switch, and then stood back and waited while Duncan’s gaze skimmed the crates, the boxes, the odd items stacked hither and yon, the large wooden items standing in one corner of the room. Were those… were those
stocks!

Finally his gaze fell on a sign. The Gothic letters printed in red on a black background read: ye olde witch museum.

He blinked. “What
is
all this?”

“Just what it looks like,“‘ his father said. ”A tourist trap, but a moneymaker, Duncan, I guarantee it.”

“A
Witch
Museum?”

Nodding, his father moved around, touching first one box and crate and then another. “Torture devices, antique stocks, handwritten confessions—‘“

“And you don’t think it’s slightly morbid?”

“Ah, Duncan, don’t be foolish. It’s all in fun.”

Gee, do you suppose it was
fun
to the women who saw this stuff firsthand
?

“Besides,” his father went on, “what do people come to this part of the country for, if not this? Why is Salem doing such a booming business, eh? This will succeed, Duncan, I’m sure of it.” He slapped Duncan’s shoulder—the most physical contact he’d made with his son in a dozen years. And as always, a shock of something like static electricity sparked where they made contact. Duncan stiffened, and pulled away instinctively. Oddly, it reminded him of the static he’d felt when the strange beauty touched him… and yet it had been different with her. Pleasant and exciting, rather than slightly repulsive the way it always was with the old man. Duncan had never understood it, and assumed he simply tended to conduct static more than most people.

His father’s lips thinned for a moment. Then he acted as if nothing had happened. And nothing had. Nothing new, anyway. “I hoped we could work on it together. Partners. You and I.”

Duncan lifted his head slowly to meet his father’s eyes. “You… you want me as your partner?”

His father nodded. “Yes, son, I do. It will give us a chance to… well, to make up for the past. Time to get to know each other, the way we should have done long ago.”

Duncan couldn’t believe it. A lump came into his throat, but he swallowed it down. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m an old man, Duncan. When a man gets to be my age, he starts to think… starts to wish he’d done certain things in his life a little differently… starts to understand what’s really important.”

Nodding, Duncan had to look away. “I’ve waited a long time for a chance like this.”

“Then take it, Duncan.” His father’s hand returned to his shoulder. Jolted him, then tightened there. “What do you say? Partners?”

Duncan faced his father and said nothing. How many times had his father made false starts like this? How many times had he seemed to want to get closer, only to pull away again, without explanation? And, God, even if he were sincere this time… something about the idea of putting these relics on display seemed crude. Repugnant, even.

“Duncan?”

“I… I don’t know.”
Say no,
some inner voice told him. And yet he wanted so much to be close to this cold man. Had wanted it for so long. “I… I’ll think about it.”

“That’s good enough.”

Good enough. When nothing Duncan had ever done had
ever
been good enough.

God Almighty, Duncan thought. Could this day
get
any stranger?

“Raven.”“

I turned around, holding my hair to the back of my head in a temporary bundle and craning my neck to glimpse the effect in the mirror behind me. Then I frowned. “Maybe I should just leave it down.”

“Raven—”

“What do you think, Arianna?” Letting my hair fall, finger combing it slightly, I arranged it over my shoulders. “Yes, I’ll leave it down.” With a firm nod I faced the four-poster bed and the clothing draped over every inch of the mattress and hanging from the foot. “I just wish I knew what to wear.”

“Raven, will you stop for one minute and
listen
to me?”

Smiling—I hadn’t been able to stop smiling since that morning—I faced Arianna. “This is all because of you, you know. If it hadn’t been for your spell…” I closed my eyes, tipped my head back, and mentally saw my beloved Duncan again. “He looks just the same. It’s as if… as if he never left me.”

“No, Raven. It is
not
like that at all.” Arianna stood close, gripped my shoulders, and the warm, familiar tingle passed from her body into mine as she stared hard into my eyes. “He
did
leave you. For you, everything seems the same, but it’s not, love. Not for him.”

I sighed softly. Poor Arianna, trying so hard to protect me from my own hopes and dreams. She just didn’t understand. “I know he may not remember me now, but he will. And he’ll love me again, and—”

“And how do you know it will happen that way?” she asked me.

I blinked. A finger of doubt crept into my brain, but I banished it. Ignored it. Pretended it didn’t exist just as I’d been pretending all day.

Just as I’d been pretending for three hundred years.

I’d spent all this time waiting for his return—none of it pondering how things might have changed between us.

“It has to happen that way,” I told her.

“Yes, that’s just the way I was thinking, Raven, when I set out to find my little sister more than three centuries ago. But your reaction was quite different. Do you remember?”

I did remember. And the doubt in my heart grew larger. “But—”

“You thought I’d come to kill you. You drew your blade, Raven. You’d have fought me—perhaps to the death. To you I was a stranger. Nothing more.”

My heart contracted at her words. Slowly I lowered my head. “You’re right.” Drawing a deep breath, I met her eyes. “But we’re sisters again now, Arianna. Closer, even, than that.”

“But our past together is just as gone. The life you led before is lost to you. You remember none of it. Not our father, a lowly saddle maker, nor our mother, nor our poor cottage in Stonehaven. Not the loch where we played…“ She closed her eyes. ”Our closeness now is based on this lifetime… we’ve built it together over centuries, Raven. It’s strong, and it’s real, but it’s not the same. It can
never
be the same.“

Turning slowly, eyes downcast, I felt tears well up and burn my eyes. “I… I hadn’t thought…”

“I know. That’s why I’m trying to
make
you think. Raven, Duncan may look the same, bear the same name, but he is
not
the same. To him, you’re a beautiful stranger who kissed him on the street one day.”

My head came up sharply. “
He
kissed
me
, too!”

“Of course he did. But, Raven, you could fling yourself into the arms of any red-blooded, heterosexual male and he would do the same. You’re a beautiful woman. Duncan is a man.”

“No,” I said. Biting my lip, I paced to the bed, snatching up a dress, eyeing it through my tears. “There was something there, something between us, Arianna.
”tfelt
it.“

“Yes.
You
felt it. But did
he
?”

The fabric of the dress crumpled in my fists, I slowly lifted my head, faced her, bit back a sob. “He… he doesn’t love me?”

“He doesn’t
know
you.” Arianna came closer, took the dress gently from my hands, and laid it on the bed. Then she cupped my face and wiped my tears away with her thumbs. “I only want you to be aware… to be careful, darling. He’ll fall in love with you again, I don’t doubt it for a moment. But, Raven, he’s going to need time. And so are you. Time to get to know him again. He might be very different from the man you remember. You might decide you don’t even want—”

“I will never decide
that!”
I sniffed, brushing at my wet eyes. “I love him, Arianna. I will always love him.”

“I know,” she said softly. Turning, she fingered the clothes on the bed, pausing on a sheer, soft dress of ivory silk. “This one, I think.” She gathered the dress up, draped it gently over my arm. “It won’t be easy for him, you know. He’s going to have a lot to deal with, when you tell him. He’s immortal now, Raven. A High Witch like us, with maybe no clue that he has some fledgling powers coming to life inside him. You must remember what a shock learning of your own nature was to you, how difficult it was to accept, to understand.”

“I remember.” I let the robe I wore fall from my shoulders to the floor, then pulled the dress over my head. But the bubbling excitement I’d felt all day ebbed now. I was suddenly unsure, afraid. What if Duncan… what if he never loved me again?

“Be gentle when you tell him. Go slowly, love. Slowly.” She guided me to the mirror, lifted a brush to my hair, and smoothed it with long, soothing strokes. “And don’t expect too much all at once.”

I nodded, staring at Arianna’s reflection beside mine in the mirror. We stood in sharp contrast to each other, she so fair with her sunshine hair, cropped short around her face. With her pixie like features and huge brown eyes. Me, so dark, long ebony curls, jet-black eyes and lashes and brows.

“It must have hurt you, all those years ago,” I said. “To find me and realize I had no memory of you.”

She nodded. “I don’t know what I was expecting. An emotional reunion, I suppose. If I’d given it any thought I’d have realized that wasn’t going to happen.”

I turned toward her. “But it
did.
You
are
my sister, Arianna. You’re the sister of my soul. And while my mind may not remember our past together… my heart has never forgotten. The feelings live on there.”

She dipped her head, shielding her eyes from me. “Truly?”

“Oh, yes. Truly.”

Lifting her head, smiling and misty-eyed, she hugged me tight. “I do love you, little sister.”

“And I you,” I told her.

Finally she stepped away, looking me up and down. “Well, put your shoes on and go, then. This man of yours has kept you waiting quite long enough, don’t you think?“

I nodded emphatically. “More than long enough,” I told her.

Duncan paced. He wore jeans. Jeans should be okay, right? They were the all-purpose, fit-for-any-occasion uniform of the twentieth century, after all. He hoped jeans were all right.

He hoped she’d come. She said she would, but any woman crazy enough to kiss a man she didn’t even know in broad daylight on a busy street might not be too good at keeping her word. Or even remembering she’d given it.

No. She’d come. And who was he kidding, anyway? There was more going on here—with him, with her, with
them
—than just an impulsive kiss on a busy street.

It
had
been a busy street. Too busy.

And that was part of it, the way she held up her hand and that truck skidded to the side like it had been pushed there. That was… that was…

That was nothing. The driver must have locked up his brakes and jerked the wheel. That was all. It was nothing.

But she knew his name. She knew his name, and then there was
her
name. Raven. And he’d been collecting ravens all his life, been fascinated by them. Had books on them, paintings of them, and miniatures everywhere. Wooden ravens, stone ravens, cheap plastic dime-store models, and some made of glass. The large one, carved of pure black onyx, that was his favorite. Three hundred bucks he’d paid for that bird, even while asking himself why the hell any sane man would plunk down that kind of cash for a hunk of rock. He looked at it now, perched on a pedestal table all its own like a queen holding court. His fingers stroked its cool hard feathers.

But that was beside the point. Her
name
was
Raven.
And
that
was… weird. Not to mention that since he’d come here there had been real ravens stalking him. Okay, not stalking him, but he’d sure as hell seen more of the big black birds perched around this lighthouse than he’d ever seen in one place in his whole life.

Oh, but there was more. There was
her.
The obsession he’d had with her since that first time he’d laid eyes on her, over there on the cliffs, doing whatever it was she did on full-moon nights.

And she knew his name.

He felt nervous and jittery, and not like himself at all. He kept fighting smiles and warm, fuzzy emotions and even a tear or two, and he didn’t know why. He felt as if he’d stepped out of reality and into the Twilight Zone.

The soft hum of a motor jerked him back to himself, and he braced his hands on the sill to stare out the window. Then he tensed. The small johnboat came closer, and he peered, squinted. She sat in the stern, one hand on the outboard motor’s rudder. She wore white, or off-white. Something soft and flowing. It rippled with the breeze as the boat came closer. And then she steered toward shore and cut the motor. Tipped it up, so its prop rose from the water, dripping beads of the sea back into itself. The boat moved forward of its own momentum for another second or two, stopping only when its nose scraped along the shore. And then she was stepping out.

So graceful, he thought. She didn’t even get her feet wet.

She bent at the bow and gave the boat a tug to pull it more securely onto dry land. Then, turning, she faced the lighthouse. He should have gone out to help her. Some gentleman he was, standing here gawking at her while she manhandled the boat on her own. Not that it had seemed to give her any problem. She must be stronger than she looked.

His throat was dry. His stomach, queasy. She started forward, and he turned, went to the door, opened it, and stood there wondering what was happening to his stable, boring life. His solitary, predictable, lonely life.

And then she was standing there, facing him, looking uncertain, a little afraid, utterly beautiful, and he knew that old life was gone forever. Nothing would ever be the same again. Why he knew it, or how, didn’t matter. It was real, gut deep, and true. Telling himself it made no sense didn’t negate that certainty in the least.

“Hello again,” she said.

Was that a slight waver he detected in her voice?

“I’m… glad you came.” Or was he? Yeah. He was. “Come in.” He stepped aside to let her pass, holding the door for her. She moved past him. The front door led directly to the main room, which he’d made into a living room for himself. A curved sofa fit perfectly to one concave wall. Above it the windows looked out on the sea, on the cliffs and her home beyond them. No curtains. He hadn’t wanted anything blocking his view.

But she wasn’t looking at the view, or even at the paint cans and tarps, or the stepladder in the corner. She was looking at the birds. Staring at them, one by one, blinking, and then turning to him with a question in her eyes.

“Yes,” he said, wondering just how much of himself he wanted to reveal to her. Wondering if he even had a choice about that. “They’re ravens. I’ve been collecting them since I was a kid.”

Her lower lip trembled. She caught it in her teeth.

“Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”

Meeting his eyes, holding them with some kind of magnetic force he couldn’t resist and didn’t want to, she shook her head, first to one side, then the other. “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

He shivered. “What, then?”

Licking her lips, she lowered her head, freeing him at last to look away. But he found he didn’t want to. “I don’t want to frighten you, Duncan,” she said very slowly, and it seemed she chose each word with great care. “But there
are
things you need to know. Things I have to tell you.”

He nodded. “Like… how you knew my name, for example.”

“Yes.”

“It all sounds very mystical.”

“Some might call it that.”

“I think you should know I’m pretty much a skeptic where anything… you know ..
.flaky
is concerned.”

A tiny frown knit her brow as she tilted her head. A look so startlingly familiar it hit him like a blow to the solar plexus and took his breath away.

“Flaky?”

“Paranormal.” He waggled his fingers in front of him. “Supernatural.”

“Oh. Well, that’s all right. It’s all quite…
natural,
Duncan. It’s just that most people don’t know… or understand it.”

“But you do?”

She nodded.

They were still standing in the middle of the room, facing each other. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he stuck them in his pockets. “Why don’t you sit down. You want some coffee or a beer or—”

“No, thank you.” She sat. On the sofa. And now he had to go and sit beside her. There was a tension between them, something that made his skin tingle and his nerves jump. Something that made him want to touch her, pull her closer.

If he sat down next to her, it would be hard not to.

“Well,
I
want a beer,” he said. And he fled into the kitchenette. Not much of a kitchenette so far, actually. Just a mini-fridge, a card table with a hot plate on top, two folding chairs, and a couple of boxes full of supplies. And tools. There were tools everywhere. He took a beer out of the fridge, popped the top, and went back in to join her.

She’d turned sideways on the couch, one leg folded beneath her, arm resting on the back as she stared out the window. She didn’t turn to face him when he came in. “What made you buy this place?” she asked.

“The view.” He blurted it before he thought better of it.

Turning, she smiled gently, a tremulous little smile that he suspected contained a wealth of emotions, though he couldn’t guess what they might be. “You’re fond of the sea, then?”

“Actually, I’ve always pretty much detested it.” Safe subject. His personal neuroses never failed to cool things down with women, whether he intended them to or not. He usually kept them to himself. This time, though, he needed things to cool down a little. Maybe if she thought he was nuts… hell, they’d be pretty much even then, wouldn’t they?