by Nora Roberts
“Oh, yeah.”
Ripley leaned on the counter, idly scanning the café. “I better tell you I invited Mac’s appetite to dinner, and to bunk over.”
“We’re having chicken pot pie.”
Mac’s face lit up. “Homemade chicken pot pie?”
Nell laughed as she fit tops on the takeout cups. “You’re too easy.”
Ripley shifted her body away from the table area. “Who’s the guy sitting by himself?” she asked Nell. “Brown sweater, city boots.”
“I don’t know. It’s the first time he’s been in. I got the impression he was staying at the hotel. He came in about a half hour ago.”
“Did you chat him up?”
Nell cut a generous slab of pie for Mac. “I spoke with him in a friendly manner. He came in on the ferry a couple of days ago, just beat the nor’easter. People do come here, Ripley.”
“It’s just an odd time for a slicker to head over. No business groups at the hotel now. Anyway.” She took the cups Nell set on the counter. “Thanks. See you later,” she said to Mac, and might have warded off the kiss if her hands hadn’t been full.
“Be careful out there.” He yanked her cap out of her pocket and tugged it onto her head.
Harding watched thebyplay from behind the newspaper he’d brought over from the hotel. He’d recognized Ripley Todd from his files. Just as he’d recognized Nell. It didn’t explain his reaction to both.
He’d expected to feel a nice zing of anticipation as he lined up the players on the stage. Instead, in each case he’d felt nearly ill. A kind of white-hot fury had pumped through him when he’d topped the steps and seen Nell back at the café counter.
He’d been forced to turn away, to walk behind book-shelves until he had himself under control. There he’d sweated like a pig. And had imagined his hands closing around her throat.
The violence of the experience had nearly caused him to turn around and leave. But it had passed, almost as swiftly as it had come. And he’d remembered his purpose.
The story, the book. Fame and fortune.
He’d been able to approach the counter, to order lunch, with his usual calm. He wanted a day or two to observe her and the others before he attempted to interview them.
He’d already lost some time. For the first twenty-four hours on the island, whatever bug he’d picked up had plagued him. He had been able to do little more than lie in bed, sweating his way through vivid and unpleasant dreams.
But he’d felt better by that afternoon. Nearly himself again.
He was still shaky, Harding told himself. There was no doubt about that. But a little food and a little exercise would help right him.
The soup had certainly soothed his system, at least until the brunette had walked in.
Then the clamminess had come back. The headache, the unexplained rage. He had the strangest image of her, pointing a gun at him, shouting at him, and he’d wanted to leap up and pummel her face with his fists.
Then another, fast on its heels, where she loomed over him in a storm, her hair blowing and tipped with light, and a sword that gleamed like silver gripped in her hands.
He thanked God she was leaving, and that the strange mood was leaving with her.
Still, his hand trembled as he picked up his spoon again.
Ripley brought Zackhis coffee and sipped her own while he finished a phone call. As she paced she heard him reassuring someone about the storm, emergency procedures, medical aid.
Had to be a new resident, Ripley thought. Probably the Carters, who’d moved on-island in September. There was no one else new enough to the Sisters to panic over a midwinter storm.
“Justine Carter,” Zack confirmed when he hung up. “Storm’s making her buggy.”
“She’ll get used to it, or head back to the mainland before next winter. Listen, I told Mac to come to our place tonight. Power’s bound to go.”
“Good idea.”
“And I asked him to hang at the bookstore until Nell leaves, to make sure she gets home okay.”
“And an even better one. Thanks. What’s up?”
“Maybe the storm’s making me buggy. I got an itch over this guy I saw at the café. Can’t pin it down. City. New boots, manicure, upper-end-department-store clothes. Late forties. Strong build, but he looked a little sickly to me. Pale, sweaty.”
“Flu runs around this time of year.”
“Yeah, well. I thought I’d go by the hotel, see if I can wheedle some information on him.”
Because he trusted Ripley’s instincts, Zack pointed to the phone. “Call them and save yourself another trip out in this mess.”
“No, I’ll get more in person. He gave me the jitters, Zack,” she admitted. “The guy was just sitting there reading his paper and eating his lunch, but he gave me the jitters. I want to check it out.”
“Okay. Let me know.”
Sixteen
Procedures, taken inplanned steps after calculations and hypotheses. The tools of his work. Science, even that still considered out of the mainstream. These were all familiar to him. They were, had always been to Mac, a kind of comfort as well as a path to discovery.
For the first time since he’d started on that path, he was uneasy.
He’d never worried overmuch about taking risks, as nothing worthwhile could be gained without them. But each step he took now pushed him farther down a strange and fascinating road. One he wasn’t traveling solo.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Nell shifted her gaze up to where Mac leaned over the top of her head. “I’m sure.”
“It’s just that I don’t want you to feel obliged.” He attached the next electrode. “Don’t think you have to be polite to the crazy man. You can just tell me to forget it.”
“Mac. I don’t think you’re crazy, and I don’t feel polite. I feel interested.”
“That’s good.” He skirted around the sofa where she was stretched out, looked down at her. As he’d told her once before, she sparkled. She was also, he sensed, very open. “I’m going to be careful. I’m going to go slow. But anytime you want to stop, you just say so. And that’s it.”
“Got it, and I will.” Her dimples fluttered. “Stop worrying about me.”
“It’s not just you.” At her questioning look, he dragged a hand through his hair. “Everything I do now, even somehow what I don’t do, affects Ripley. I don’t know how I know that. It’s not really logical. But I know it.”
“You’re connected,” Nell said softly. “As I am. Neither of us will do anything to hurt her.” She touched a hand to the back of his. “But both of us will, more than likely, do things that will annoy her. I guess we’ll just have to handle it.”
“I guess we will. Okay, well . . .” He gestured vaguely with the two electrodes in his hands. “I need to put these . . . You see, we’ll need to monitor your heart rate, so. . .”
She looked at the little white adhesive, back up at his face. “Ah.”
“If you feel uncomfortable or weird about that, we’ll just skip that part.”
She studied his expression and decided the only man she trusted more than the one currently trying not to look embarrassed was her husband. “In for a penny,” she said and unbuttoned her blouse.
He was quick, efficient, and gentle.
“Just relax and be comfortable. We’ll get your resting rates.”
He turned away from her to work with the machines that he’d hauled over from the cottage. He hadn’t intended to bring them, or to do the test—not yet. But when Nell had come back to the cottage with him, she’d asked questions. Polite interest at first, he thought, then more direct, more detailed.
Before either of them realized it, they were discussing physical reactions of magic. Brain-wave patterns, lobes, pulse rates. And she was agreeing to participate in a series of tests.
“So, where’d you learn to cook?”
“My mother. That’s where my interest started. After we lost my father, she start
ed her own catering business.”
He adjusted dials, watched the graph. “Ever think about opening a restaurant?”
“I gave it a passing thought, but I don’t want the structure or the limitations. I like my catering operation, and working in Mia’s café. Though I am toying with ideas there. I think we—she,” Nell corrected, “could expand a bit. Outdoor seating in the season. Maybe a cooking club. I’m going to talk to her about it when I have it more formulated in my mind.”
“You’ve got a head for business.”
“Oh, absolutely.” And she said it with no small sense of pride. “I ran that end of my mother’s operation. I like to organize.”
“And create. You create with your cooking.”
She dimpled again, with sheer pleasure. “That’s a nice thing to say.”
“It’s a gift, like your power is a gift.” Her vital signs were steady and stable. He checked the readout on the EKG, made some quick notes on his laptop.
“I wonder when you knew you were gifted. It seems to me Mia was born knowing.”
“She was. We’ve talked about it.”
“And Ripley.”
“She doesn’t talk about it as much, but I think it was almost the same. A knowing, always.”
And a burden? he wondered. Always? “For you?”
“A discovery, and a learning process. I had dreams when I was a child, of this place, of people I’d yet to meet. But I never thought of them as—I don’t know—memories or foretelling. Then, after Evan . . .” Her hands tensed, deliberately relaxed again. “I forgot them, or blocked them. When I left, my only clear thought was to run, to get away. But the dreams started coming back.”
“Did they frighten you?”
“No, not at all. They were a comfort at first, then a kind of need. One day I saw a painting—the lighthouse, the cliffs, Mia’s home—and I needed to be there. It was a . . . a destination. Do you know what it’s like to find out where it is you finally need to be?”
He thought of the house near the cove. “Yes. I do exactly.”
“Then you know it’s not just a relief, but a thrill. I drove onto the ferry that day in June, and when I caught my first glimpse of the Sisters, I thought—there.Finally. I could belong there.”
“You recognized it.”
“Part of me did. Another part just yearned. Then I met Mia, and everything began.”
He continued to monitor her, one part of his brain ruthlessly calculating changes, peaks, dips. “Would you say she tutored you?”
“Yes, though she would say she just reminded me.” Nell turned her head so she could look at Mac. How cool he looks, she realized. Cool and controlled. And yet his voice was warm, friendly. “The first time she helped me try magic, I stirred the air.”
“How did it feel?”
“Amazing, exciting. And, somehow, familiar.”
“Could you do it now?”
“Now?”
“If you’re comfortable with it. Nothing major. I don’t want you to spin your furniture around. A little ripple for my readings.”
“You’re such an interesting man, Mac.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just a little ripple for your readings,” she said with a chuckle. “No wonder Ripley’s crazy about you.”
“What?”
“Here, then. A little ripple in the air, just a stir from here to there. A quiet breeze, this man to please.”
Even before it began, the readings popped. Like a gathering, Mac thought, noting the rise of heart rate, the fluctuation in brain-wave patterns.
Then they jumped again as the air, well, rippled.
“Fabulous! Look at this pattern! I knew it. It’s not just an increase in brain activity. It’s like an expansion, almost fully right brain. Creativity, imagination. Really neat.”
Nell chuckled again, and stilled the air. Not so cool now, Dr. Booke. “Is it what you were looking for?”
“It goes a long way toward confirming some of my theories. Could you do something else? Something more complicated. Not that what you just did was small potatoes,” he added quickly. “Something that requires more effort.”
“More of a punch?”
“There you go.”
“Let me think.” Her lips bowed up as she considered. Because she wanted him to be surprised, she did the chant in her head, a call to the senses that was both sweet and stunning.
This time the gathering came faster, and bigger. The needle on the EKG graph whipped in wide, rapid sweeps. Suddenly, the room was alive with music—harps, pipes, flutes. It was drenched in a rainbow of colors and tender with the scent of spring.
He could barely keep up with the changes. Desperate to be certain that he had it all on record, he checked his camera, his monitors, nearly danced around the EKG.
“You like it?” Nell asked playfully.
“It’s fucking great! Sorry, beg your pardon. Can you just keep it going another minute?” he asked as he checked his energy sensor. “It’s really pretty, by the way.”
“I’m eager for spring.”
“Me, too, after the last two days. Respiration’s up, but not that much. Pulse strong, steady. Physical exertion appears to be minimal. Hmm, heart rate’s actually back at rest. Did the use of power calm her, or the result?”
“The result,” Nell answered.
He blinked and focused on her again. “What?”
“You were talking to yourself, but I think I know the answer.” She laughed lightly when she saw Diego prance into the room to bat playfully at her rainbows. “It’s a soothing spell. It relaxes me.”
“Yeah?” Interested, he sat down on the floor beside her while harp strings wept. “Would you say your physical reactions reflect the nature of the spell or charm?”
“Exactly.”
“So, for example, the other night, in the clearing, it was more powerful, maybe edgier, because of what you were doing, and the fact that the three of you were together.”
“It’s always stronger with the three of us. I feel like I could move mountains. Afterward, I stay energized for hours.”
He remembered just how Ripley had channeled her energy and cleared his throat. “Okay. How are you able to sustain this spell while I’m distracting you with conversation?”
She looked completely blank for a moment. “I never thought about it. That was clever of you. I didn’t know you were distracting me. Let me think . . . It’s just there?” she suggested. “No, that’s not completely accurate. It’s more like the way you’re able to do two different things at one time.”
“Like patting your head and rubbing your stomach.”
“No,” she responded. “More like . . . cooking a roast and setting the table. You can keep your mind on the one so you don’t burn it and still manage the other easily enough.”
“What’s nine times six?”
“Fifty-four. Oh, I see, left-brain function. I’m good with numbers.”
“Recite the alphabet backward.”
Concentrating, she began. Twice she fumbled, backtracked, hesitated, but the music and color never faltered.
“Are you ticklish?”
Suspicion flickered over her face. “Why?”
“I want to try a physical distraction.” He squeezed a hand on her knee, made her yelp and jolt, just as Ripley and Zack came through the door.
“What the hell is going on?”
Hearing Ripley’s voice made Mac wince and curse himself for not paying attention to the time. Then, realizing he still had his hand on Nell’s knee—and her husband was armed—he quickly removed it.
“Um.”
“From the looks of it,” Zack said with a wink at Nell, “this guy’s making time with my wife.” As Lucy had come into the house with him, he leaned down casually to rub her head as she sniffed the air and batted her tail. “I guess I have to take him outside and kick his ass.”
“Get in line,” Ripley said and reminded Mac that she was armed as well.
�
�I, ah. . . Nell agreed to participate in a couple of tests,” he began.
“That’s not quite true,” Nell corrected, and succeeded in making all the blood drain out of Mac’s face. His sudden stricken look made her whoop with laughter. “Ivolunteered to participate.”
“Would you mind turning off the entertainment portion of your little program?” Ripley said coolly.
“All right.” Nell closed the spell, and there was a moment of complete silence.
“So . . .” Zack began to strip off his coat. “What’s for dinner?”
“You can help me with that.” Nell spoke brightly. “As soon as I’m unhooked from these things.”
“Oh, sorry. Let me . . .” Mac started to reach for the electrodes monitoring her heart rate, then pulled his hands back as if he’d burned them. “Nobody’s going to shoot me in the back, are they?” he asked Nell.
“I can promise Zack won’t. He was just teasing you.”
“He’s not who I’m worried about.” As delicately as possible, he unhooked her, and kept his gaze discreetly averted as she buttoned her blouse again.
“That was fun,” Nell said as she got up. “And informative. Zack, why don’t you give me a hand in the kitchen? Now!”
“All right, all right. I hate missing the fun,” he complained as she dragged him off.
“Okay, Booke, why don’t you try explaining to me why I shouldn’t start swinging?”
“Because violence is never a sensible solution?”
Her answer to that was a low, dangerous growl. He stopped shutting down his equipment and turned to her. “Okay, I figure you’re ticked off on a couple of levels, so I’ll pick one to start. There was no funny business going on between me and Nell. It was completely professional.”
“Son, if I thought otherwise you’d be braying like a jackass.”
“Right.” He took his glasses off, to see her more clearly, and because if she decided to try to deck him, he didn’t want them broken. “You’re angry because I brought equipment here and ran tests on Nell.”
“Bingo. I invited you here, to my home. It’s not a goddamn lab.”
“It’s also Nell’s home,” he pointed out. “I wouldn’t have brought anything if she hadn’t agreed.”
“You wheedled her.”
“I can wheedle when I have to,” he said equably. “I didn’t have to. The fact