The Legacy of Buchanan's Crossing (27 page)

He didn’t notice his windshield until he was sitting behind the wheel of his truck. The message was even less subtle than Dean’s, if more difficult to interpret.

The damn bird couldn’t call him clueless any more. Right?

Chapter Eighteen

C
ayden flipped up the magnifying lens on her soldering goggles and set the iron down. The acrid smell of the flux suited her mood. Her favorite pet project, the hybrid iPod pocket watch, was failing miserably to soothe and engage her as it usually did. Why should it? Nothing else was as it had been.

In the face of all the brooding she’d had time for on the train to visit Gran after leaving the Crossing, she’d gone the rounds of worrying and not worrying where she’d zapped Clint off to, moved on to blaming herself for buying his act, and landed where she was now: past anger, if not pain, in a no-man’s land of aching acceptance. Gran’s frail body lying in the crisp white bed, absent her heart and soul, had reminded Cayden her surrender dare not include the Crossing.

Sudden heat pulsing against the outside of her thigh pulled her from her reverie. It emanated from the long pocket of her full skirt, where the amulet Clint’s mother had given her still rested. She felt it and jerked her hand away, whether out of the association or due to the magic, she couldn’t say. What had Moira told her when she’d insisted Cayden accept it? A dream of evil sinking its claws into Clint, another of a stolen baby. While the root of the evil was clear now, the one involving the baby remained a troubling mystery.

The pulsing continued until she pulled the amulet out her pocket. The intricate silver Celtic knot was hot to the touch, yet didn’t burn her skin. Even unfamiliar with its nature or purpose, Cayden knew an alarm when she felt one.

Nevermore arrived just as the small Victorian grandfather clock next to her work table played the opening bars of Corpus Delicti’s “Dust and Fire.” Midnight, the witching hour.

His voice was grave when he spoke the single word, “Trouble.”

Her hand closed tight around the amulet. “What kind of trouble?”

He shifted from foot to foot and croaked, “Keeper trouble.”

A wave of relief rolled over her, then one of grief. She opened her sweating palm. “Yes, I know.”

“
Not
know.” Nevermore hit the first word an octave higher than the second.

Uh-oh. “What don’t I know?”

“Keeper trouble.” He was staring at her, blinking his dark brown eyes.

“Yes, you said that.” Cayden fought the urge to bang her head on the table. She did remove the goggles, just in case. They were special even prior to her modifications. “You are not going to tell me I have to help him.”

“Keeper clueless bastard.”

“I know that, too.” She was more than inclined to let the expletive slide.

“Soon-Warder
not
know.”

She couldn’t help it. She banged her head on the table. Only a few times, and not very hard. Nevermore squawked in alarm. Perversely, the knocks made her feel better and helped her think. His warning pertained to the Keeper, and calling her “soon-Warder” also had implications.

“This trouble involves both Clint and the Crossing, doesn’t it?”

The amulet throbbed. Nevermore bobbed his entire head and neck up and down.

“And you can’t tell me more because…”

He shifted from foot to foot again, obviously conflicted, raindrops glinting off his sleek feathers in candlelight enhanced by her awakened power. She stared at him, waiting.

Finally, in a mournful voice, he whispered hoarsely, “Crossing need Warder. Keeper need soon-Warder.” He shifted again. “Nevermore love Cayden.”

His loyalty, always a comfort, touched her deeply tonight. He clearly felt obligated to warn her about unfinished business, even if he didn’t want her to be a part of it. “Oh, Nevermore, I love you, too. Don’t worry about me. I’m stronger than I used to be. I can deal with Clint MacAllen if it means warding the Crossing. He can’t possibly hurt me any worse than he already has.”

At her Thursday afternoon class three days later, Bill came in looking so anxious Cayden hoped she hadn’t misunderstood Nevermore, that Clint’s “trouble” wasn’t being zapped to somewhere he hadn’t returned from.

Before she could come up with a way to phrase a reasonable question, Bill said, “Can I, talk to you for a minute?”

“It’s about Clint, isn’t it?” After he nodded, she moved off to the corner with him. She worked to keep the worry out of her voice when she asked, “Is he all right?”

“Don’t tell him I told you, but no, he’s not all right. He’s drinking too much, yelling too much, not sleeping enough.”

“Oh.”
He’s as miserable as I am
. A spark of hope danced in the ashes of her heart.

“That’s not why I wanted to talk to you, though. Or maybe it kind of is. It’s how I let him suck me into this, anyway. See, I’ve known Clint a long time, and well, you’re the best thing that ever happened to him. Now he’s gone and blown it with you. What kind of a friend would I be if I didn’t try to help him fix it?”

She’d never noticed Bill had puppy-dog eyes. She searched for a gentle way to let him down. “Clint’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
Especially considering the other company he keeps
. “But I really don’t see any way to repair my relationship with him.”

Bill let out a long sigh and shoved his hands in his pockets, shifting from foot to foot much as Nevermore had. “Since he can’t get hold of you, he, uh, asked me to ask you to meet with him. Said it’s real important. Something about a crossing. He seemed pretty sure you’d be interested.”

It was a shamelessly blatant manipulation, Clint’s forte. She ought to thank him for reminding her to guard her heart; she’d thanked Nevermore for warning her. She didn’t really have a choice, though. Not if meeting Clint could save the Crossing.

“Suppose I am interested. Then what?”

“So you’ll do it? You’ll talk to him?” Bill’s smile was as hopeful as his eyes. “Soon? He said the sooner the better. I think so, too. Before he gets any more messed up.”

She nodded while she considered her options. The moment the plan occurred to her, she felt the rightness of it. If Clint was going to use the Crossing, so would she. Besides being the safest place to meet him, it provided another possibility. He could be the missing ingredient in the Rite of Commitment. She’d tried everything else. It may not have been that way for Gran as Warder, but maybe that’s how it was supposed to be for Cayden. This simply wasn’t a possibility, or opportunity, she could afford to ignore.

“Okay, I’ll do it. Tell Clint I’ll meet him tomorrow night at eleven o’clock at the Crossing. He knows which one.” The moon would be nearly new. She’d have time to get a feel for how he fit into the Rite of Commitment, as well as get it set up well before the witching hour. “Oh, and Bill? Tell him this is his last chance to make things right.”

“Great!” Bill’s grin was wide as he bounced on the balls of his work boots. “I can’t wait to tell him. He’s gonna be so jazzed. He may not admit it, even to himself, but he needs you.”

Isn’t that what Nevermore had said, that Clint needed her? No, he’d said the
Keeper
needed the
soon-Warder
. This was about the Crossing, nothing more. She was as bad as Bill. Apparently, despite knowledge and experience, acceptance remained a work in progress. What would it take for her to fully exorcize her dangerous romantic dreams?

“Naturally, she wants to meet us at the Crossing. It’s the source of her power. You are aware she’s a witch, aren’t you, Mr. MacAllen?”

Milton Cumberland was sitting in the larger of the leather chairs in Dean’s office, his tone as uncompromising as everything else about him. When he said the words, they sounded matter of fact, not crazy as they had in Clint’s head.

“How long have you known?” Clint said.

Dean turned from the window behind his desk. “The more important question is, how long have
you
known? You must have had an inkling Monday evening when I found you at the side of the road. Yet you withheld that information. Last week, you attempted to talk me into permitting the old woman’s family to keep the land, which you said you did without the girl asking you to. Or have I misspoken?”

Why had Clint thought Dean would let it go? “We’ve gone over this already. And you can’t honestly expect me to have told you about an experience I couldn’t believe myself. You’d have thought I was nuts.”

“We were quite aware Aileen Buchanan is of black witch blood. However, it wasn’t until Monday after the meeting when I witnessed her deflecting the rain from the Crossing, that I realized how much of that blood her fat little granddaughter inherited.”

Clint shouldn’t have flinched at Dean’s reference to Cayden’s figure. It was true. She did have a lot of body for her height. A lot of luscious curves. Or was that the spell talking?

Milton had been staring at him with cold, hard eyes. “You can hardly hold Mr. MacAllen responsible. The girl obviously used witchcraft on him.”

The penetrating gaze retuned to Clint. “She did, didn’t she?”

It was a hard thing to accept, even if it did let him off the hook. He shrugged as casually as he could manage. “Would I know if she had?”

Dean said to Milton, “He does have a point.”

“Yes, unfortunately, he does. It means we’ll have to cleanse him.” Milton’s mouth wasn’t smiling, yet when he looked at Clint again, something in his arctic eyes was.

Clint shifted in the more compact, still comfortable, chair to disguise the shiver that ran up his spine and gave the old man the practiced tone he used on bankers when they discussed the risk of loaning money to a small construction company. “I take it you’re not talking about soap and water.”

“I’m afraid not.” The words should have added to Clint’s discomfort, but Milton’s voice was smooth and easy. Even when he said, “This cleansing will require blood.”

“My blood?”

Dean nodded.

Milton said, “Our blood, as well. A negligible amount. I assure you, you won’t miss it.”

“You two seem awfully knowledgeable on the subject. Are you also witches?”

The other two men exchanged glances. Again, it was Milton who spoke, “Certainly not. Only women can be witches.”

“Right. And you know this, how?”

Milton coughed. “I met the witch Aileen Buchanan forty-one years ago.” Dean’s head jerked so slightly, Clint nearly missed it. “I learned a great deal from her. Including the reason for her attachment to that piece of land. I made it my business to learn everything I could.”

“Does this mean we’re not going to meet Cayden there? I don’t think I can get her to meet anywhere else.”

“Oh, we’re definitely meeting her at Buchanan’s Crossing.”

“Won’t that be dangerous? It being the source of her power and all?”

“Once you combine your blood with ours, in addition to removing any spells, it will create a bond that protects us.” Milton wheezed.

Protection sounded good. Cayden was going to be plenty pissed when he showed up with the Cumberlands in tow. She’d never have agreed to meet him if she’d known they were going to be there. They still hadn’t told him how it was going to go down tonight, either.

“So how does this work?”

“It’s really quite simple. Dean will begin with himself.”

Dean pulled a black leather case out his drawer and removed a syringe with a vial covered in markings attached to it. He pricked himself with the edge of the scalpel, also from the case, and used the syringe to draw his blood into the vial. He replaced the needle on the syringe with a fresh one, sterilized the scalpel, and did the same with Milton’s blood, combining the two in the vial. He again cleaned the scalpel and replaced the syringe before turning to Clint.

“Sorry, I almost forgot. We need a statement declaring you’re giving us this blood of your own free will.”

A ghost of an itch whispered across Clint’s ring finger. “What for? Is this some kind of spell, too?”

Dean raised his eyebrows and smiled in that annoyingly patronizing way. “Nothing so arcane as that. It’s the rather mundane requirement of our attorneys. We can’t risk you coming after us later, saying you were coerced into donating blood.” He set his cell phone on his desk.

“Fine.” He raised a palm and lowered his voice in mock solemnity. “I, Clint Lewis Bruce MacAllen, do solemnly swear I am offering a sample of my blood of my own free will. So help me.” If the tone of the playback was sarcastic, the phone had a decent mic.

“You need to name both of us, as well.”

He heaved a sigh. “I, Clint Lewis Bruce MacAllen, do solemnly swear I am offering this sample of my blood to Dean and Milton Cumberland of my own free will. So help me.”

The itch instantly vanished, as did his perpetual headache. Evidence they had been part of Cayden’s curse. Then one of several nagging thoughts broke through Clint’s conscious. “A suspicious man would think you had this planned all along.”

Seeing Dean’s needle arm tense didn’t exactly reassure him. “What makes you say that?”

He gave Dean a wry look. “Are you going to tell me you’re a diabetic?”

Milton smiled. “No need for concern. We were simply prepared in the event you had been contaminated. You can hardly blame us for being cautious under the circumstances.”

Clint relaxed. They were prudent, that was all. Whatever his other questions regarding their plan had been, they no longer seemed pertinent. Why had he ever thought Milton was uncompromising?

The large callus on his fingertip slowed, but didn’t stop, Dean’s scalpel. Clint watched his blood mingle with the others’ with a curious sort of detachment, as if this wasn’t some teeming strange shit.

Dean placed the vial in the black case and returned it to his desk drawer.