by Nora Roberts
Her stomach did a quick jerk and clench, a sensation he seemed to cause regularly. “How do you know you found it?”
He took the coffee she held out. “It’s my job to know. You closed the circle, didn’t you?”
“Talk to Mia about that.”
“Just yes or no, it’s not a hard choice.”
“Yes.” Curiosity needled her. “Why?”
“Because there’s an energy echo. Unprecedented in my experience. Strong magic.”
“Like I said, that’s Mia’s area.”
Patiently, he blew on the hot coffee. “Is there a specific reason the two of you don’t get along, or is it more general?”
“It’s specific and general, and none of your business.”
“Okay.” He sipped. It tasted like hot mud, but he’d had worse. “Want to have dinner tonight?”
“Yes, I do, and I plan to.”
His lips twitched. “I meant with me.”
“Then no.”
“It’s going to be hard to work my way around to kissing you good night again if we don’t have dinner first.”
She leaned on the little table that held the coffeepot. “That was a one-time deal.”
“You might change your mind after we split a pizza.”
She was already changing her mind. Just looking at him whetted her appetite. “Are you as good with the rest of the routine as you are with kissing?”
“Now how am I supposed to answer that without sounding like an idiot?”
“Good point. Let’s say I’ll think about splitting a pizza at some later date. If and when that event occurs, your work, as it involves me, is off the table.”
“I can agree to that.” He held out a hand.
She considered ignoring it, but it seemed cowardly. She clasped his hand, shook, and felt great relief that there was nothing there but the casual meeting of palms.
But he didn’t let go.
“This is really terrible coffee,” he said.
“I know.” What was happening now was completely natural, she told herself. That stirring of the blood, woman for man. The anticipatory thrill, the memory of just what that mouth of his was capable of.
“Oh, hell.” She moved into him. “Do it.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” He set his coffee down. This time he took her face, a light framing with his hands, a slight skim of fingers that made her skin hum.
His mouth touched hers, sank in, and sent her brain tumbling.
“Oh, man. Man! You are really good at this.”
“Thanks.” He slid one hand to the base of her neck. “Now be quiet, okay? I’m trying to concentrate.”
She linked her arms around his waist, plastered herself against him, and enjoyed.
Through her lashes, she saw that his eyes were open, focused on her. It made her feel like the only woman in the world. Another first. She’d never needed that from a man, but being given it was a silky stroke.
The fingers at the base of her neck began to knead, lightly, softly, finding odd little points she hadn’t known existed. He changed the angle of the kiss, as if experimenting, and toppled her from pleasure to need.
She nearly crawled over him, crawled into him. Her heart rate bounded, her blood flashed.
He held her there a moment, had to hold her there, trembling, until he found his own balance again and drew her away with hands that were no longer steady.
“Okay.” She sucked in a breath. “Wow. I’ve got to give it to you. What, did you study exotic sexual techniques or something?”
“Actually . . .” He cleared his throat. He really,really needed to sit down. “In a manner of speaking, and merely as an offshoot of research.”
She stared at him. “I don’t think you’re kidding.”
“Sexual rites and customs are often an important part of. . . . Why don’t I just show you?”
“Uh-uh.” She held up a hand to ward him off. “I’m on duty, and you’ve already managed to get me stirred up enough. I’ll let you know if and when I’m ready for that pizza.”
“Give me five minutes, and you’ll be ready.” He stepped forward until her palm met his chest.
“No deal. Put your coat back on and go away.”
For a moment she didn’t think he was going to do as she asked. Then, like magic, he stepped back. “When the time comes, I like my pizza large and loaded.”
“Funny, so do I.”
“That keeps it simple.” He dragged on his coat, picked up his camera. “It was nice running into you, Deputy Todd. Thanks for the coffee.”
“We’re here to serve, Dr. Booke.”
Outside, he pulled on his ski cap. He would go back to the beach, he decided, throw himself bodily into the icy water. If he didn’t drown, he would cool off.
Six
It took alot of fast talk, a lot of grease for a lot of palms, and the tenacity of a bulldog. But Jonathan Q. Harding was willing to invest all of those elements when it came to a hot story.
His instincts, which he considered the best in the business, told him that Evan Remington was going to be his funnel to the story of the decade.
Not just the sizzle of scandal that was still shooting out a few sparks. All the angles on Remington himself—how he had hidden that violent face from the world, from his fancy Hollywood clients, from the upper crust of society—had been done to death as far as Harding was concerned. Even most of the details on how his pretty young wife had escaped him, risked her life to get free of his abuse and his threats, were common fodder now.
Harding didn’t bother with the common.
He’d dug around a bit, and he had enough confirmed information on where she’d run, how she’d run, where she’d worked, lived, during the first eight months after she’d ditched her Mercedes over a cliff. It was decent stuff—the former society wife, the pampered princess living in cheap, furnished rooms, working as a short-order cook or a waitress, moving from town to town. Dyeing her hair, changing her name.
He could get some ink out of it.
But it was the period of time from after she’d landed on that bump of land out in the Atlantic to when Remington had been dragged into a cell that had his nose twitching.
Things just didn’t add up there, not tidily enough for Harding to close the book. Or maybe it was just too tidy.
Remington tracks her down. Pure coincidence. Knocks her around. Enter the hero, the local sheriff and new love interest.
Got himself stabbed for his trouble, Harding thought now, but he kept on riding to the rescue. Took Remington into custody in the woods, talking him out of slitting the pretty heroine’s throat. Hauled him to jail, and got himself sewed up.
Good boy saves girl. Bad boy goes into a padded cell. Good boy marries girl. Happy days.
That story, with all its angles, had been four-walled in the media for weeks after Remington’s arrest. And had, as most did, pretty much petered out.
But there’d been whispers. The kind no one could confirm, that more had gone on in the woods that night than an in-the-nick-of-time arrest.
Whispers of witchcraft. Of magic.
Harding had been willing to dismiss that idea, maybe play on the angle for a few column inches, but just for the novelty. After all, Remington was a raving lunatic. His statement about that night, which Harding had paid good money for, could hardly be taken without a truckload of salt.
And yet . . .
Dr. MacAllister Booke, the Indiana Jones of the paranormal, had taken up temporary residence on Three Sisters Island.
Didn’t that prick up the ears?
Booke wasn’t one to waste his time, Harding knew. The man hacked his way through jungles, hiked over miles of desert, climbed mountains to do research in his unlikely chosen field. And mostly on his own nickel, of which he had plenty.
But he didn’t waste his time.
He debunked more so-called magic than he verified, but when he verified, people tended to listen. Smart people.
If the
re wasn’t something to those whispers, why would he have gone? Helen Remington, excuse me, Nell Channing Todd, wasn’t making any claims. She’d spoken to the police, of course, but there was no mention of witchcraft phenomena in her statement. None in the press release funneled through her attorneys either.
But MacAllister Booke had deemed Three Sisters worth his time. And that interested Harding. Interested him enough that he’d read up on the island, its lore, its legends himself.
And his reporter’s nose had scented a story. A big, fat, and potentially juicy story.
He’d tried, unsuccessfully, to pry interviews out of Mac before. The MacAllister-Bookes were eye-crossing rich, influential, and staunchly conservative. With a little cooperation he could have generated a series of solid features on the family and their spook-chasing son.
But nobody, particularly Booke himself, cooperated.
And that stung.
Still, it was just a matter of finding the right crowbar and knowing the correct amount of pressure to apply. Harding was confident that Remington himself would help him ease the lid off.
After that, he could take care of the rest.
Harding walked down the corridor of what he thought of as the loony bin. Remington had been judged legally insane, which had saved the taxpayers the cost of a long, detailed trial and cheated them out of the meaty morsels the media could have dispensed had there been one.
The fact was, the weapon used against the island sheriff had Remington’s fingerprints on it. The sheriff, and two witnesses, including the island’s deputy, had given statements that Remington had held that knife to his wife’s throat and had threatened her life.
Even more damning, Remington hadn’t simply confessed, he’d screamed about murdering her, babbled about till death do us part, and carried on about the need to burn the adulterous witch.
Of course, he’d screamed about a lot of other things, too. About glowing eyes, blue lightning, snakes crawling under his skin.
Between the physical evidence, the witness statements, and his own rantings, Remington had copped himself a room in the barred and guarded section of the nuthouse.
Harding’s visitor’s badge flapped on the lapel of his tailored suit jacket. His tie, the exact shade of charcoal as the suit, was perfectly knotted.
His hair was dark, shot with silver and meticulously cut to suit his square, ruddy face. His features were blocky, and his eyes, a dark brown, tended to vanish when he smiled. His mouth was thin, and when annoyed he appeared to be lipless.
If his face, and his speaking voice, had been marginally more appealing, he might have wormed his way into television news.
He’d once wanted that, the way some boys want that first touch of female breast. Lustfully, gleefully. But the camera was not his friend. It accented his features and made his short, stocky build resemble a tree stump.
His voice, as some smart-mouthed tech had once told him, sounded like a wounded goose when miked.
The cruel loss of that childhood dream had helped turn Harding into the kind of print reporter he was today. Ruthless and iceberg-cold.
He listened to the echo of locks being released, heavy doors opening. He would remember to describe them when he wrote of this visit, of the eerie clang of metal on metal, the impassive faces of the guards and medical staff, the oddly sweet smell of madness.
He waited outside yet another room. There was a final check here, an attendant beside the door with a bank of monitors on his desk.
The inmates in this section, Harding had been told, were under twenty-four-hour surveillance. When he stepped in with Remington, he himself would be watched as well. That was, he admitted, a comfort.
The last door was opened. Harding was reminded he had thirty minutes.
He intended to make the most of it.
Evan Remington didn’tlook like the man Harding was used to seeing in the glossy pages of magazines, or in sparkling color on the television screen. He sat in a chair, dressed in a violently orange coverall, his posture ruler-straight. There were restraints on his wrists.
His hair, once a golden crown, was dull yellow and cut short. His handsome face was puffy now, from the institutional food, from medication, from lack of salon treatments. The mouth was slack, the eyes dead as a doll’s.
They had him sedated, Harding imagined. Take your average sociopath, toss in a few psychoses and violent tendencies, and drugs were everyone’s best friend.
But he hadn’t counted on trying to wend his way through the chemical maze to Remington’s brain.
There was a guard at the door to Remington’s back who was already looking bored. Harding sat on his side of the counter, looked between the bars. “Mr. Remington, I’m Harding, Jonathan Q. Harding. I believe you were expecting me today?”
There was no response. Harding cursed inwardly. Couldn’t they have waited to give him his zoning pills until after the interview?
“I spoke with your sister yesterday, Mr. Remington.” Nothing. “Barbara, your sister?”
A thin line of drool slid out the corner of Remington’s mouth. Fastidiously, Harding looked away from it.
“I was hoping to talk to you about your ex-wife, about what happened on Three Sisters the night you were arrested. I work forFirst Magazine. ”
Or he did for the moment. His editors were becoming entirely too delicate, and penny-pinching, for his taste.
“I want to do a story on you, Mr. Remington. To tell your side. Your sister is eager for you to talk to me.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but he had convinced her that an interview might lead to a sympathetic story, which might in turn give weight to her legal action to have her brother moved to a private facility.
“I might be able to help you, Mr. Remington. Evan,” he corrected. “Iwant to help you.”
He got nothing but that dead and silent stare. And the sheer emptiness of it scuttled along his skin.
“I’m planning to talk to everyone involved, to get a fully rounded story. I’m going to talk to your ex-wife. I’m going to arrange to interview Helen.”
At the sound of the name, the dark, dull eyes flickered.
Someone’s at home after all, Harding thought and edged slightly forward. “Is there anything you’d like me to tell Helen for you? Any message I can take to Helen?”
“Helen.”
The voice was raspy, hardly more than a whisper. Harding told himself that was why a cold finger tickled down his spine at the sound of it. “That’s right. Helen. I’m going to see Helen very soon.”
“I killed her.” The slack mouth bowed up into a stunning and brilliant smile. “In the woods, in the dark. I kill her every night, because she keeps coming back. She keeps laughing at me, so I kill her.”
“What happened that night in the woods. With Helen?”
“She ran from me. She’s mad, you know. Why else would she run, would she think she could get away? I had to kill her. Her eyes burned.”
“Blue lightning? Did they burn like blue lightning?”
“It wasn’t Helen.” Remington’s eyes darted, black birds on the wing. “Helen was quiet, and obedient. She knew who was in charge. She knew.” As he spoke his fingers began to scrabble on the arms of the chair.
“Who was it?”
“A witch. Came out of hell, all of them. So much light, so much light. They blinded me, they cursed me. Snakes, under my skin. Snakes. Circle of light. Circle of blood. Can you see it?”
For a moment he could. Clear as glass, and terrifying. Harding had to force back a shudder. “Who are ‘all of them’?”
“They’re all Helen.” He began to laugh, a high, keening sound that shivered along Harding’s skin until the fine hairs on his arm stood up. “All Helen. Burn the witch. I kill her every night. Every night, but she comes back.”
He was screaming now, so that Harding, who’d seen his share of horrors, pushed away, leaped up even as the guard surged forward.
A lunatic, Harding told himself as attend
ants hustled him out of the room. Mad as a hatter.
But. . .but. . .
The smell of the story was too strong to resist.
Some people mighthave been nervous at the prospect of spending an evening in the home of a witch. Being nervous, they might have stocked up on wolfsbane or carried a pocket full of salt.
Mac went armed with his tape recorder and notebook and a bottle of good Cabernet. He’d waited patiently through his first week on the island, hoping for this initial invitation.
He was about to dine with Mia Devlin.
It hadn’t been easy to resist driving up to her house on his own, hiking through her woods, poking around in the shadows of the lighthouse. But that would have been, by his standards, rude.
Patience and courtesy had paid off, and she’d casually asked him if he would like to come up for dinner. He’d accepted, just as casually.
Now, as he drove up the coast road, he was filled with anticipation. There was so much he wanted to ask her, particularly since Ripley shut down each time he tried to question her. He had yet to approach Nell.
Two warnings by two witches made a definite point. He would wait there, until Nell came to him or the path was cleared.
There was plenty of time. And he still had that ace in the hole.
He liked the look of her place, the old stone high on the cliff, standing against time and the sea. The art of the gables, the romance of the widow’s walk, the mystery of the turrets. The white beam from the lighthouse cut through the dark like a wide blade, swept over sea, the stone house, the dark stand of trees.
It was a lonely spot, he thought as he parked. Almost arrogantly alone and undeniably beautiful. It suited her perfectly.
The snow had been neatly cleared from her drive, from her walk. He couldn’t imagine any woman who looked like Mia Devlin hoisting a snow shovel. He wondered if that was a sexist opinion.
He decided it wasn’t. It had nothing to do with her being a woman, and everything to do with beauty. He simply couldn’t imagine her doing anything that wasn’t elegant.
The minute she opened the door, he was certain that he was right.
She wore a dress of deep forest green, the sort that covered a woman from neck to toe and still managed to tell a man that everything under it was perfect. Was fascinating.
Stones glittered at her ears, on her fingers. On a braided silver chain a single carved disk glinted almost at her waist. Her feet were seductively bare.
She smiled, held out a hand. “I’m glad you could come, and bearing gifts.” She accepted the bottle of wine. It was her favorite, she noted. “How did you know?”
“Huh? Oh, the wine. It’s my job to dig up pertinent data.”