Books by Maggie Shayne (270 page)

Duncan shook himself, pressed his hands to his temples, closed his eyes, and tried to clear his head. “What the hell just happened here?”

When he looked up, he saw his father quickly wiping an expression of fear away from his face as he stared after the blonde woman who’d just left—watching so intently it was as if he were afraid she’d burst back in at any moment. But… Raven was the one who’d all but threatened him with a blade.

Nathanial covered the look quickly, and shrugged. “We were accosted by two admittedly attractive, but seriously disturbed women who think they’re some kind of Witches, and who take offense at our establishment.” He waved a hand. “That’s all.”

“No, Father, that’s
not
all. Those two ”attractive but seriously disturbed women‘ acted as if they
knew
you.“

“Yes,” Nathanial said, rubbing his chin and moving to a window to watch as the two moved away down the street. “That
was
rather strange, wasn’t it?”

“Well, is it true? Do you know them?”

Nathanial faced Duncan, put one hand on his son’s shoulder, as fatherly a gesture as he’d ever made. But he took that hand away again very quickly. Just as well. There was that static again. Duncan was always getting shocks from Nathanial on those rare occasions when the man deigned to touch him.

“I swear to you, son, I’ve never seen either of them before in my life. And you can believe that. I’d sooner cut the heart from your chest than lie to you.”

Lowering his head, Duncan released all his breath at once. “I just wish I knew what the hell their problem is,” he muttered. Then he glanced at the pot, and recalled the pain in Raven’s eyes when she’d had to set it down and leave it behind.

Forget about her, he told himself. Unbalanced, crazy women who broke into houses and accused innocent men of murder while wielding blades did
not
make the best love interests.

If he could just convince himself of that, he’d be far better off.

He couldn’t sleep. The events of the day kept replaying in his mind.

Nathanial had spent the rest of the afternoon showing Duncan around Sanctuary. The old man hadn’t even been angry when Duncan told him he couldn’t in good conscience have any part of his Witch Museum. He’d said he understood, and that he hoped the incident with the two women wouldn’t derail things between Duncan and him. He said he respected Duncan for defending the woman, that he’d been far too angry to think rationally himself, and that he regretted having been so harsh with her. He said he hadn’t been himself lately, and apologized for it.

And the part of Duncan that was still a desperate, lonely son aching for a father… wanted to believe him.

Wary, burned too often not to know how foolish the still small gleam of hope was, he nonetheless gave the old man the benefit of the doubt. One more time. One more chance.

Jesus, when would it be enough?

There had been a strained banter between them that day. At lunchtime his father insisted on buying.

It was almost as if they were… real. A real father and son for the first time. It had never been this way before. Not because he was adopted, Duncan knew that had nothing to do with it. But because his father had never seemed to care.

Now he did… or… he was pretending to.

So why, just when things were going so well, did a mysterious beauty have to come along and throw a wrench into the works? Why did Raven have to show up now and make him doubt his father even more than he had before?

Why was this tiny voice whispering in his mind that he ought to be with her tonight? He ought to be with Raven.

Duncan closed his eyes, rolled over in his bed, told himself to forget about her. Sleep eluded him like some rare butterfly flitting away from a clumsily swung net. And as for forgetting about Raven… hell, he knew better, didn’t he? Not why, not how… but he knew he couldn’t forget her. It was as if she were already a part of him, even before he’d met her. As if she’d somehow wheedled her way into his soul and waited there like a spider in the center of a web. Waited for him to stumble into Sanctuary, into her sticky clutches. And now the more he struggled, the more entangled he became.

A Witch. He sighed, rolled again, punched his pillow. A
Witch
of all things. Hell, the way he was feeling, maybe she
was.

I sat alone in a darkened room. Arianna was out. Making herself scarce, knowing I needed some time alone. Privacy to lick my wounds. She wouldn’t have gone far, though. Not with that predator so close. She’d be watching over me like a tigress guarding a cub. My big sister. Three hundred—over four, since she’d lost me the first time—and she still played the part.

It made me feel warm inside. And it was a warmth I needed, because everything else suddenly seemed cold and dark and barren.

I’d been sitting there a long time, bathed in candleglow, smothered in a cloud of incense. A round table that had a pentagram painted on its surface sat in front of me, with a few tools laid out and ready. A slip of paper with Duncan’s name on it stood in the center, to represent him, since I had no photo. Surrounding it was a ring of stones. Fluorite to bring past life memories. Bloodstone to remove the blocks in his mind that prevented those memories from coming. Around the stones were purple candles, for purple is the color of hidden knowledge. And in each candle I had engraved Duncan’s name in sacred runes, along with the spiral of rebirth and the eye, representing the conscious mind. My herbs stood ready.

It was manipulative magick I was about to perform. The memories were his, but if his conscious mind were ready for them, he’d have regained them himself by now. And yet I knew he might be in danger from the very man he called his father. Unless he could remember, unless he could know the truth, he’d be defenseless.

This was the Temple-room. Sacred space, because Arianna and I had made it so. This place was used only for magick, on nights when we preferred to work indoors, whether it be due to the weather or for some other reason.

The reason tonight was privacy. I didn’t want Duncan spying on me, because I would know he was there, in that lighthouse, staring out across the waves. I’d know his gaze was on me, burning over my skin. And knowing that tonight would only distract me from the work to be done.

I’d been still for a very long time, chanting, breathing, keeping my mind utterly blank until I had descended into an altered state. My body was limp, and I could barely feel it now. I was sinking into my soul, connecting to the utter essence of my spirit, because that is the where the power pulses strongest. That is where my connection to the Universe lives. Only when I felt that connection open, felt the power flow freely through me, did I move. Slowly, very slowly, I opened my eyes, focused on the candle flames, and then on the censer, where charcoal burned, heating the powdered incense I’d sprinkled atop it. Now I added other herbs.

I sprinkled rosemary and watched it turn cherry red, sizzling and popping and sending its scent to the heavens, as I whispered, “Sleep.”

A pinch of dried marigold petals went next, crackling, blazing up briefly only to settle into a gentle smolder again as I whispered, “Dream.”

Then the holly, dropping from my fingertips in tiny green bits, and burning with the rest as I whispered, “Remember.”

Settling again into a comfortable position, legs crossed, eyes falling half closed, I watched the smoke rise steadily as the herbs burned, releasing their magick. And I continued to chant those three words over and over. I only hoped it would work. For without the memory, Duncan might never believe me. And unless he did, he’d be putting his life in grave danger. I wouldn’t lose him again—especially not to the likes of Nathanial Dearborn.

Funny, he thought he smelled something. A smoky, pleasant scent that… Nah, he must have been imagining it. There was nothing now.

Scent or no scent, his eyes were finally getting heavy. Lids drooping as his body relaxed bit by bit. Better. Sleep wasn’t eluding him now, but coming closer. Timidly, but steadily, and finally curling up beside him like a favorite pet. He drifted away, relieved that he was finally able to.

And then he forgot all that, because his bed seemed to be tilting back and forth… as if his island had become a boat, rocking on the waves. His throat was dry and sore, his skin burning hot. He was sick. Damn, when did he get sick, anyway? He’d been fine just…

Wait, someone was there. Hands, cool and soft on his forehead. For just a moment he saw Raven’s face in the glow of a candle, saw her hair, tumbling freely over her shoulders. “Tis you, lass,“ he whispered in a brogue not his own. And then he realized that it couldn’t be her, because Raven was dead.

Dead. No, that wasn’t right, but even as he thought that, the images faded from his mind. He wasn’t on a boat anymore, and her hands were not on his skin, nor was she soothing away his fever. No. The hands on him now were hard, strong, callused ones. And he struggled against them.

In front of him was a gallows, and upon it he saw Raven, with her mother beside her, and his own father standing with his gnarled hand on the lever. “Do you confess?” his father demanded.

“My soul is less stained than yours, Nathanial Dearborne. You’re a murdering thief. You enjoy the harm you cause. You stole my mother’s cauldron.” Raven said those things, and Duncan sensed he was mixing her words together with more recent ones. But it didn’t matter. His father’s hand closed around the lever.

“Nay!” Duncan screamed. “I willna watch her die!” But he heard the horrible groan of the hinges, and the sudden slam of the trapdoor flinging open, slamming downward. He even heard the snap of delicate bones when the two women plummeted to their deaths.

And then he was standing there in the snow, gathering Raven’s broken body into his arms, cutting the filthy rope away from her bonny neck, kissing her hair, her face. He couldn’t believe the force of the pain that engulfed him. He felt empty inside, crippled, devastated. He’d lost her.
Lost her!

“Dinna die,” he whispered hoarsely. “You canna die, Raven, I love you.”

Her body stirred, then, and he brushed the hot tears from his eyes to look down at hers, and saw them open. “Don’t cry, my love,” she whispered. “See? I’m not dead.”

He felt his heart leap in fear. Sitting up in bed his eyes flew open wide, and he drew in fast, open-mouthed gasps in an effort to catch his breath. His skin beaded with cold sweat, and real tears burned paths on his face.

“Damn!” He flung back the covers, put his feet on the floor—not far away, since his bed was but a mattress—and then leaned over, elbows braced on his bent knees. “Damnation, lass, what’re you doin’ to me?“ Then he clapped a hand over his mouth, for he’d shouted the words in some other man’s voice. The accent… Scottish and archaic and…

“What’s the matter with me?” he whispered in his own voice.

Her. That was what. It was all her. Raven St. James. What he could do about that, he didn’t know. Was she really some kind of Witch? Could she possibly have powers he never would have believed in? Making him utterly obsessed with her? Making him think of her ahead of his own father, for God’s sake? Subconsciously, at least.

Right, right. And making him dream crazy dreams and wake up speaking with an accent. It wasn’t even possible.

But some small part of his mind didn’t believe that.

All right, all right, enough. There was a library in town. First thing tomorrow he’d go there and read up on this nonsense. He’d find out once and for all if there
was
such a thing as magic, or Witchcraft, or whatever she called it. And then he’d confront her, armed with at least a small amount of knowledge, and he’d tell her to stay the hell out of his life. And out of his father’s life.

And most of all, out of his
mind
.

“I need to see him. Alone. Without worrying about that bastard Nathanial bursting in on us at any moment.” I paced, as I’d done most of the night, wringing my hands and wondering if anything I could say or do would ever make a difference, when I could see so clearly the feeling in Duncan’s eyes for that bastard. He cared for Nathanial. Dearborne had
made
him care. Learning the truth was going to break Duncan’s heart. And for that I hated Nathanial even more.

But Duncan had to know. He had to.

“I have to make him believe me,” I told Arianna.

“He doesn’t
want
to believe you.”

She sat at the table in our small breakfast room. The octagon-shaped area was completely surrounded by windows, and the sun streamed in like a warm yellow waterfall, drenching us both. Arianna bit into her bagel and sipped orange juice. I was too ill with tension to eat a bite.

Chewing, she mumbled, “As for you seeing him alone, that won’t be hard to arrange. I doubt it will help anything, though.” She swallowed, sipped, set the glass down. “I don’t remember Duncan being so dense last time.”

“He didn’t love the man last time, Arianna.” My stomach churned at the words, and in my mind I heard those I hadn’t spoken.
Back then, it was me he loved.

I closed my eyes, ignoring the self-pitying voice in my head, talking above it to drown it out. “In those days everyone believed in Witches and magick, though they barely knew the meaning of the words. Today no one does.”

“Today no one believes in
anything,”
Arianna said. “It’s pathetic.” I sighed my agreement, while she tilted her head in thought. “But there’s nothing we can do about that. What I
can
do, though, is keep Nathanial out of your hair long enough for you to see Duncan alone. He probably isn’t going to listen, but I suppose you have to try.”

“Of course I have to try.”

She nodded. Rising, she moved closer to the glass windows that surrounded us, shielding her eyes and facing the sea. “Duncan is still at the lighthouse. And I don’t see any other boats there. Go on, pay him a visit before he decides to go into town to babysit the so-called father.”

I blinked, stopped my pacing, and studied her stance, the tilt of her head, the shape of her brow. Everything. In three centuries you begin to know a person too well to miss anything. Even the slightest change in Arianna’s breathing would have told me a tale.

“You won’t confront him,” I said, looking hard at her. “You won’t even let him know you’re there.”

“Not unless it looks as if he’s heading out to interrupt you. And then, I swear, I’ll make it casual. Public, even.”

“You won’t challenge him?” I asked, suspicious.

“He wouldn’t take me up on it even if I did, Raven. The man has an agenda, and I’m not on it. Not yet, anyway.”

I believed her, and nodded at last. “All right. Now is as good a time as any, I suppose.” I glanced down at my clothes. Unremarkable. Jeans, a snug black T-shirt with a flannel shirt pulled over it in deference to the autumnal chill in the air.

“Don’t even think about changing. He might leave while you primp. He already left the island once this morning. Thank goodness he came back in short order. You might not be so lucky next time.”

I sighed, shaking my head.

“Go, will you?”

I knew she was right. I was only putting it off… out of fear, really. His reactions… well, so far they’d fallen short of what I’d hoped for. I didn’t expect they were going to improve now that I’d accused his father of murder and not only claimed to be a Witch, but informed Duncan he was one, too. He probably thought I was a lunatic. And goodness only knew what kinds of lies his father had told him after I’d left that horrible place yesterday.

Arianna looked at me, making her eyes big and impatient.

“All right.” I sighed. “I’m going.”

My big sister smiled, touched a hand to her blade, and then got to her feet.

We parted at the door, Arianna heading into the small garage where we kept our car—an old Volkswagen Bug we’d both grown too fond of to replace—while I walked toward the cliffs. We rarely used the Bug while we were in residence out here. Walking to and from the village was so much more pleasant, and less damaging to the earth and the air. But I supposed in this case Arianna felt she might need the advantage of speed on her side. She could beat Nathanial back here and signal me if anything went wrong.

I hoped nothing would.

The path began at the top of the cliffs, wandered at angles down them, zigging this way and that way and finding the shallowest route. As I started my descent I heard the VW’s deep, froggy-voiced motor come to life, growl a few times, then fade as it moved away toward town.

The path was old. It had been here longer than I, and, Aunt Eleanor had confided, longer than she, as well. I often wondered whose feet had first trodden here, and if they’d been feet at all, or perhaps paws of hooves.

Sand-covered stone lay beneath my feet, slippery and gritty all at once. A chill breeze blew salty moisture onto my face, dampening the flannel shirt I wore with its misty droplets. I could smell the sea, taste the salt when I licked my lips, and feel it leaving wet sloppy kisses on my hair.

At the bottom my johnboat sat on the narrow strip of sand, dry and safe. I pushed it into the water and hopped aboard, then, crouching in the stern, tugged the rip cord and started the motor. All that remained then was to steer the little craft as the propeller whirled and pushed me forward. I sat down, felt the dampness of the sea creeping through the denim of my jeans, wished I’d brought something dry to sit on.

And then the shore was fading behind me and Duncan’s island grew larger, closer. I bit my lower lip as I stared ahead, wind blowing my hair back and chilling my face until my nose went numb and my cheeks burned with cold.

He heard my approach. I knew it a moment later when he stepped out onto the front step and stood there, hands deep in his pockets as he watched me all the way in. His face, so beautiful, just as it always had been to me. Those deep brown eyes, and dark, thick brows. His full lips and strong jawline.

But that beloved face was expressionless this morning. It told me nothing of how he felt at seeing my approach. And I wondered if perhaps he might not
know
how he was feeling about that.

When I killed the motor and stepped out, he came down to the beach. Bending beside me, gripping the squared-off nose of my vessel, he tugged it up, out of the water. Then he stood facing me, and I straightened and turned to face him in return.

“I decided last night to tell you to leave me alone,” he said. No greeting. No welcome. Just that.

“Did you?”

He nodded, his eyes roaming my face like a touch. “I can’t do it, though. I’ve been rehearsing the words from the moment I saw you start down that path, to the boat, and the whole time you were crossing. But it didn’t help.”

“I’m glad of that.”

He sighed, lowered his head, no longer looking at me. “Raven, I got some books on this… this Witchcraft thing. This morning. Now I haven’t had time to read a lot, but—” He broke off, perhaps because I was smiling at him, slightly, but smiling all the same. “What?”

“Why?” I asked him. “Why did you go to get the books, Duncan?”

He took his time about answering, licking his lips, looking skyward as if for help. “Because I thought you were crazy, and I didn’t want to think that, so I thought if I understood what you were talking about, I might see that… that it made some kind of sense.”

I nodded. “And not because you were curious about your own… abilities,” I said softly.

“I don’t
have
any abilities.”

“Oh.”

He looked down at his feet, quiet for a long moment, while I stood, waiting, knowing.

“Sometimes… I know who’s calling when the phone rings.” He shrugged, looking up again. “Sometimes I reach for it before it rings without even realizing it. And then it does.” He shook his head as if to negate everything he said. “But that’s nothing.”

“Of course.”

“I mean, everyone does that. It’s like when you hum a song and then flick on the radio and it’s playing. Or when you wish the guy ahead of you on the highway would change lanes just before he does…”

“Or when you mentally tell the red light to turn green and it happens,” I added with a nod.

“Exactly.”

“Exactly,” I repeated.

“That stuff happens to everyone.”

I didn’t speak. He looked at me, as if awaiting my confirmation, my agreement. I met his eyes and shook my head. “No, Duncan. It doesn’t.”

He looked away, hands plunging into his pockets. “Yeah, it does,” he said. “It has to.”

I was trying to go carefully, gently. He didn’t seem ready for any of this, and I was pushing it on him. But I didn’t have a choice. “It’s my fault you’re having trouble accepting all of this, Duncan. I didn’t explain things as well as I could have.”

He shook his head. “Maybe not, but it’s all right now. I think I understand. There’s nothing supernatural going on here. And as for Witchcraft, according to the books, it’s pretty much just a belief system based on—”‘

“No.”

He looked at me, brows knit in frustration.

“For some, that’s all it is—those things you’ve found in the books. A religion, a belief system one can study and learn and adopt. But those things are not what it is to us, Duncan. We’re different. We were born different. Witches, yes, but not like all those others practicing the Craft. Most of them don’t even know we exist, for it’s a secret we guard of necessity. We’re born with something extra, senses beyond the five. Weak, unpracticed, raw, but real.”

I was losing him. I could see the skepticism in his eyes even now, but like a fool I rushed on, because it had to be said. “We… we’re
immortal,
Duncan.”

“Immortal.” He closed his eyes and bent his head. “Dammit, dammit,
dammit,”
he whispered. His voice was harsh, raspy, emotional. Then he looked up again, his hands gripping my shoulders gently as he probed my eyes, and his were worried, filled with some kind of concerned sympathy that was all wrong. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I told myself it did, that I should stay the hell away from you, but I can’t do that, Raven, no matter how…” He stopped himself, closed his eyes briefly, then went on. “Listen to me. I have a wonderful therapist in Boston. He helped me beat my fear of heights, and the water thing, helped me deal with all the baggage my father has dumped on me over the years and—hell, he even helped me get rid of the dreams…“ He stopped there, his voice trailing off as he frowned hard.

“Dreams?“‘ I swallowed the hurt I’d felt at his insinuation that I was mentally unstable, and focused instead on Duncan. On
his
pain,
his
confusion.

“Damn, I’d forgot all about the dreams.”

I sighed at the way his face paled, just slightly, and closed my hand around his, turning him, beginning to walk beside him along the shore. “Tell me about the dreams.”

He shook his head quickly, jerkily. “It was a long time ago. I was only a little boy. They… they don’t mean anything.”

I squeezed his hand. “Please,” I said softly. “I’d like to know about them.”

He lowered his head, and his head clutched mine tighter, reflexively, I thought. I could feel the tremor of pain move through him. He was quiet for so long I didn’t think he was going to tell me. And then he began to speak in a soft, halting voice.

“I used to dream of a woman.” He shivered. “Holding me, crying…” His voice grew even softer. “She kept whispering my name and… saying she didn’t want to let me go.”

He looked at my face. I hoped my tears didn’t show. “The doc said it was a memory of my birth mother, embedded in my subconscious.”

I caught my lower lip in my teeth to remind myself to think before speaking. To go gently. Lifting my gaze, I looked out across the water, toward the shore a short distance from my home. To the place high on the cliffs, beside the Coast Road, where I’d lost him three hundred years ago. I felt that crushing pain again, that crippling grief. My heart contracted at the memory of his beloved broken body lying lifeless on those rocks, and suddenly, going gently seemed like the least important thing in the world.

“Do you see those jagged rocks thrusting up out of the water, just offshore?“ I asked, pointing. I didn’t wait for a response. ”That’s where I found your body, Duncan. That’s where I found you, and I thought it would kill me. I went to you, slogged through the waves out to where you were, and gathered you close, and held you against me and cried. I cried your name, and told you I couldn’t let you go, and that I refused to go on alone, without you.“

The old tears welled up in my eyes again. I didn’t look at Duncan, but out there at those rocks, reliving the nightmare as I spoke. I half expected him to interrupt, but he didn’t. So I went on.

“Arianna had cast and conjured even as your body plummeted from the cliffs, Duncan. She willed that when you lived again you’d look the same, and that your name would be the same so that I’d be able to find you and know you, and love you again.”

I faced him, so that the sight of him alive, and whole, and here beside me could chase my most heartbreaking memory from my mind. Hands trembling, I reached up to stroke his face. “And that’s exactly what happened.”

I could see his skepticism. But I could also see the man I loved, alive and well behind his eyes, yearning to escape— to love me again.

“If I’m immortal, then how did I die?” he asked slowly.

“You weren’t immortal then, Duncan. I was, though. They pitched me from those cliffs for Witchery. You tried to save me. You’re immortal now because in that other lifetime, you died trying to save the life of a Witch. That’s how the gift is earned.”

Shaking his head, sighing heavily, confused and frustrated and torn between his instinctive knowledge that I spoke the truth and his absolute certainty that all I said was impossible. He turned away. I drew my dagger. “Look at this,” I told him.

Slowly he turned. I did something then I was taught never, ever to do. I handed my blade over to another being. I gave Duncan my only means of defense. And he frowned as he turned it over and examined it.