The Lost Enchantress Page 2
And I flat-out refused to fail.
Intention, I reminded myself over and over, think intention.
Reality bends to desire.
That’s really what it was all about; four simple words that encompass the timeless mystery at the core of an enchantress’s power. Grand told me to think of it as a portal that would open within when the alignment of heart and head and hour was right. I had only one teensy problem with that scenario; I needed the alignment to be right on a very tight schedule. Assuming there was a rose to be found, I had to pluck it, get upstairs to the turret room where Grand and Chloe were waiting, cast the spell—with all the flawless intention, chanting and focusing required—and still have the house aired out and every last trace of incriminating evidence cleared away before my parents got home.
I paused at the top of the frost-kissed gravel path leading to the rose garden and drew a deep breath, fighting to clear my mind and overlook the snow squishing up between my toes. It was all up to me now. If something was going to happen, it would be because I willed it to, because I wanted it and wanted it badly enough to bring it about.
“Reality bends to desire. Reality bends to desire.”
I spoke the words aloud, slowly and emphatically and with my teeth chattering. I closed my eyes, and as Grand had taught me I imagined my thoughts gathering like a funnel cloud, which I then directed toward the path ahead. When I opened my eyes the snow was still there, but the sensation of stinging cold was gone. I took a step and the ground beneath my feet felt solid and warm. I felt warm.
Reality bends to desire.
It was true! That amazing realization propelled me forward, past the frozen frog pond and sleeping patches of foxglove and wild mint. I carried a white candle, anointed with coriander oil and encircled with the infinity knot I’d woven that afternoon, to light my way.
I remember that the knot was perfect. It was all perfect, and just like the day I’d discovered the spell, I knew even before I reached the garden’s innermost circle that the rose would be there. Waiting. Glowing as softly as the pale moon that had suddenly appeared and hovered between clouds directly overhead.
Hanging at my waist was a silver-handled athame, a family heirloom I used to cut the stem with a single stroke, as effortlessly as if I’d done it a thousand times before, and it was in that instant that I felt it for the first time, flowing around me and through me. Power. Pure. Dazzling. Mine. I could hear it, smell it, taste it.
Time flowed as well, carrying me up the stairs to the candlelit turret room, where with the same ease and grace I cast the sacred circle and did what I had been waiting so long to do, what I’d dreamed of doing, what I’d been born to do.
Fire, Water, Earth and Wind.
End to beginning, beginning to end.
In this place and in this hour,
I call upon your grace and power.
With winter rose and candle fire,
I seek true sight and heart’s desire
As petals fall, this spell’s begun,
As I say, let it be done.
And that’s where my memory stops. Fade to black. I know I cast the spell and saw a vision in the flames. I know my parents arrived home earlier than expected, and that Grand and Chloe and I had to scramble to cover our traces and make it into our beds before they walked in. I know all that because I’ve been told; I just don’t remember any of it. Whatever memories there might have been are gone, burned to nothingness by what happened afterwards.
A matter of self-preservation? Or guilt? Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. I only know that if my life was a book, that long-ago night put an end to the chapter titled “Innocence.”
One
JANUARY
He parked in the shadows between streetlights and got out. He was wearing the usual: black leather gloves, black cashmere overcoat and a black look. The look, guarded and not quite a scowl, had been described as everything from dispassionate to demonic. On another man the effect might not have been quite so regally off-putting, but Gabriel Hazard wasn’t like any other man.
Physically he was just the tall side of average, his rangy build more bone than flesh, belying a fierce, sinewy strength that, combined with uncanny quickness and an aptitude for ruthlessness, made him a match for men twice his weight and girth. It was an advantage he was seldom called upon to substantiate. Most people were quick to pick up on his stay-the-hell-away-from-me attitude and smart enough to do exactly that. Men let him pass with relief; women were often a bit more reluctant, wondering what it was about him that made their pulse quicken and what it would take to unleash what their hormones told them was caged beneath those iceberg cheekbones, eyes as gray and bleak as winter skies, and chiseled lips that seemed to have forgotten how to smile.
He’d been told he was handsome, too handsome in fact, and though it had been years since he’d looked in a mirror, he assumed it was as true as ever. And he couldn’t have cared less. As far as Hazard was concerned, his face was simply one more weapon in his arsenal, to be used whenever and however it suited his purpose.
The door of the Mercedes S600 closed behind him with the solid thud befitting a car engineered to withstand attack by hand grenades and small arms missiles and things that go bump in the night. It was falling prey to those night things that most concerned him, not because he didn’t want to die, but because he didn’t want to live on anyone else’s terms.
Somewhere in the darkness a dog barked. Hazard instinctively tipped his face to the starless sky, letting the cold night air wash over him as he took the time to carefully absorb his surroundings. He didn’t like surprises. The dog was at least a block away and likely tethered since the barking hadn’t drawn any closer. The scent of burning wood was nearer. He closed his eyes and sniffed. Hickory, and much nearer.
He glanced around and saw smoke curling from the chimney of the house behind him. The lights in the house were on, the curtains open, and from where he stood he could see children scurrying about as a plump woman cleared dishes from the table. An equally plump man, his necktie loosened, newspaper clamped beneath one arm, appeared at the front window and peered into the darkness, frowning.
Hazard stood still, trusting his dark hair and clothing to render him one with the shadows. He had every right to be there, but he liked complications even less than he liked surprises. Having the police summoned to investigate a suspicious stranger lurking about would be a tedious complication of the sort he preferred to avoid. It would require talking to others and explaining himself, two things he generally abhorred doing. He waited patiently as the man surveyed the street in both directions and apparently satisfied that all was well with his little piece of the world, returned to his comfy chair by the fireplace, giving his wife’s round bottom a little love pat in passing.
The simple gesture set off a strong and unexpected twinge of yearning, and Hazard quickly turned away, cursing under his breath. God, he had no stomach for domestic bliss. And if he had ever yearned for a plump wife and comfy chair of his own, he’d long since gotten over it. Irritated with his little dip into sentimentality, he shifted his full attention back to the matter at hand, the reason he was out there freezing his ass off, his purpose in coming to Providence in the first place.
The quiet street, located on the city’s genteel east side, was lined with stately elm trees and painstakingly restored older homes. Older, that is, by American standards. Age was relative, after all. And the past had a way of losing its allure when you’d accumulated enough of it. He should know.
Not that he permitted his own past to burden him overmuch. Most of the time it existed only as shadows and ghosts, hazy memories of memories locked deep inside him, as deep as he could bury them. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow anything he’d once thought or felt or was interfere with what he was now.
A hunter.
First, last and only.
It wasn’t always so. Once he’d been something more. Something better. But that was ages ago. Once he’d been a lo
yal son, a passionate lover, a good man. Once he’d fought for a cause greater than himself and been glad for the privilege.
Now all he cared about was the hunt. It was, quite literally, his life. It dominated his every waking thought, and at night it filled what passed for dreams. And, if the hairs that had lifted at the back of his neck the instant he got out of the car were to be trusted, it might soon be over.
If his sources—and his gut—were correct, the hunt would end there, at 128 Sycamore Street, in the gracious Victorian-style home with its ample front porch and beguiling turret and who knew what dark secrets locked inside.
Even now a subtle but unmistakable current of excitement told him that this was it, that this house held the key to success. He wasn’t sure how—yet—but he had faith it would provide the missing piece of a centuries-old puzzle. He’d followed enough false leads and blind alleys to have learned not to get his hopes up so early in the game, but for reasons he couldn’t fathom, tonight, for the first time in a long time, he couldn’t stop himself from hoping. He couldn’t suppress the thrill of knowing the prize was in sight and all that remained to do was make it his own.
He’d intentionally arrived early for his appointment with Ms. Darden of East Side Realty. He’d wanted to be alone when he saw the house for the first time. He knew his limitations and that he would need time and silence if he was to pick up on any sense of connection with the old house. And he had picked up on it, quicker than he’d hoped. It was faint, but it was there.
Reaching to his inside coat pocket, he pulled out the Realtor’s report that had been delivered to him that afternoon at the hotel and moved closer to the circle of light from the street lamp to read it once again. According to the report, the house had been built in 1902 on an oversized parcel of land and had been largely rebuilt following a fire twenty years ago. Hazard paused to mull that over for a moment, just as he had the first time he read it, wondering how any damage done by the fire might effect his search and once again concluding there was no way to know. He frowned. He didn’t like questions he couldn’t answer or problems he couldn’t solve.
He continued reading. The three-story Victorian had six bedrooms, three baths, and a turret room ideal for use as an artist’s studio or romantic hideaway. Hazard had no interest in either. What did interest him was what was described as the room’s “stunning panoramic view of the city.”
A panoramic view meant the turret also had 360-degree access to the flow of light and energy, and that fit perfectly with other useful facts he’d discovered about the house, facts not mentioned in the Realtor’s report. With good reason; the form had no little check boxes for “magical protection wards” or “lingering traces of mystical activity.”
The rest of the report was prattle. Central air-conditioning, three-zone heat, backup generator in basement. New roof, galvanized gutters and downspouts. He glanced up to assess the roofline. As if, thought Hazard, he could see a damn thing in the darkness or that anything he did see would influence his decision to buy the house. That decision had been made before he ever set foot in Providence, and any flicker of remaining doubt had now been extinguished. The meeting with the Realtor and tour of the inside was merely a formality.
He considered it a stroke of luck—or fate—that his arrival had coincided with the current owner’s transfer to his firm’s West Coast office and his decision to sell the house. It simplified matters considerably; it meant he could acquire the property using his weapon of choice, cash. Cash was quick and tidy and he had plenty of it. The timing only added to his certainty that he’d been drawn to Providence and to this house in particular because this is where his search was fated to end.
What else could it be?
Two
MARCH
The night started out like any other. At least on the surface and the surface is where Eve lived. It was her comfort zone, so much so she sometimes forgot about all the things that were hidden, some just below the surface, others in plain sight . . . if you knew where to look. Sometimes she forgot there was more to the world than most people were able to see. Or willing to believe.
Eve was definitely a believer. Given her family history, she’d be a fool not to believe, and she was no fool. She’d always known there was another world interwoven with this one, a world of magic. She wanted no part of that world, not even that which was her birthright—especially not her birthright. But unlike most people, normal people, she wasn’t blind to it. So if fate had seen fit to send some kind of sign to warn her that her life—the orderly, successful, blessedly normal life she’d worked so hard to build for herself—was about to be split into a before-and-after scenario, she would have noticed.
She was inclined to think that fate simply hadn’t bothered. She was, after all, an experienced journalist, a good one, trained to observe small details and pick up on the random snags that occur in the fabric of everyday life. There had been no noteworthy snags in her life recently: no shooting stars, no flickering lights or birds flitting through the house, not even a decent chill up her spine.
Only a night that started out like any other.
The streets of downtown Providence were busy, the way they usually were on weekends. The traffic was heavy and impatient and snarled here and there the way it always was when so many people were trying to get places at the same time. The blustery weather was typical for late March, and in spite of a fine mist in the air a few hearty souls, mostly couples, mostly young, strolled along the River Walk.
The river hadn’t always run through the heart of the city. For decades it ran below, hidden beneath a web of concrete and asphalt. Then came a mayor with a vision of what the city could be, and soon streets were being ripped up, buildings torn down and the jewel of Providence was restored to its rightful setting. The mayor even got to see the transformation completed before all that pesky business with the racketeering charges and the trial and the being shipped off to federal prison. It was a scandal worthy of the capital of a state once known as “Rogue’s Island.”
Journalists from all over descended on Providence. At the time, Eve was still a rookie at WWRI-TV, earning her stripes by standing out in the cold to report on snow storms and spending her evenings in stuffy, overheated rooms to cover school board meetings. She was desperate for a chance to show what she could really do and knew the trial was a golden opportunity to be seen. Determined not to let it pass her by without a fight, she hounded the news director until he agreed to let her hang out at the courthouse when she wasn’t working on her real assignments. As she watched seasoned reporters elbowing and tripping over each other on the courthouse steps everyday, she realized that if she was going to get any airtime at all, she had to come up with her own angle on the story, a good one.
It occurred to her that when the mighty fall, the aftershocks ripple through their circle of friends and family the same as they do anyone else’s. No one knew better than she did how rumors and half-truths and outright lies take their toll, and how maddening it is not to be able to fight back and defend someone you love. Fame and money could work a lot of wonders, but they couldn’t stop a heart from breaking. That was her angle, she decided; she would tell the story from the inside looking out.
At first the mayor’s teenage daughter and his elderly mother refused her overtures, wary of anyone with a press pass. But as the long trial ground on and the competition for headlines grew heated, the coverage got nastier and more personal and eventually her simple, honest reporting of the facts won them over. When they were ready to tell their side of the story, Eve was the one they called. The finished piece painted a picture of the mayor as a complex man, not merely a disgraced public figure. It ran over five nights and won a New England Excellence in Journalism Award. More important to her than any award, the piece had helped her find her voice and establish her own style of reporting the news. And she never had to stand shivering in the snow with a microphone in her hand again.
One of the benefits of being a first string
reporter was enjoying weekends off, so instead of having to rush home or change clothes in her office, she’d had plenty of time to get ready for this evening. Though not a primper by nature, today she had primped. She wanted to look her best tonight. . . no, she wanted to look better than her best.
Not that her best was bad. She’d seen herself on camera enough to be objective and determine that the bits and pieces of her were all perfectly fine and they came together in a pleasing, perfectly ordinary way, and she was at peace with that. Tonight, however, she wouldn’t be on camera; tonight she would be on stage, as one of the celebrity presenters at the Historical Society’s annual auction, a lavish and elegant affair. There would be spotlights and a live audience, and—shallow though it might be—she wanted to dazzle. Nothing crazy, since she wasn’t really the dazzling type. “Sparkle” might be a better word; she wanted to sparkle. She rarely got the chance to dress up, and she was going to make the most of it.
No basic black tonight. Her work wardrobe was a rainbow of black that she jazzed up with jewelry and simple silk T-shirts in the jewel tones that flattered her fair complexion on camera and off. She’d put together a sensible collection of classic, well-made pieces that coordinated so well she could dress without thinking about it, which is just the way she liked it. Usually. Today she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what she was going to wear, specifically about the dress that hung at the very back of her closet. A deep shade of teal, the soft fabric had a slight sheen that subtly reflected the light. The straps were narrow, the back low, and the calf-length skirt floated and fluttered when she walked. It was an amazing dress because it made her feel sexy and like Cinderella at the same time, and she’d worn it exactly never.