“Sure,” I said. “I thought we’d do it on the back porch. The wind is blowing from the west – away from the back of the house. We’ll stay dry.”
I got to my feet, keeping his hand in mine, pulling at it to make him get up. As he got to his feet he pulled me to him and brought his head down to kiss me. His mouth tasted of peat and smoke and wild heather. He tasted like Liam, but there was a bitter taste as well. Like ashes …
Or maybe that was just the taste of our wards burning away.
“Come on,” I said, pulling away from him. “We’d better get outside before we set something on fire.”
He followed me through the kitchen out onto the back porch. The wind was blowing away from the house so the porch was dry, but Duncan still held back as I moved to the railing. I concentrated on clearing my mind of everything but the invocation I’d memorized, first calling upon the Basque rain goddess I’d read about in Wheelock.
Mari, Goddess of the rain, I call on you,
You who reward the just and punish the false,
You who wield the rain and the wind,
Daughter of Earth, Wife of Thunder.
Thunder rumbled in the west and the wind lifted up the ends of my hair.
Let the lock that was locked
unlock.
Let the door that was closed
open.
Let the bird that was snared
fly.
As Wheelock had instructed, I pictured each image as I spoke it: a key turning in a lock, a door opening, a bird flying free. At first I felt nothing, but then a gust of wind blew the rain into my face. It felt deliciously cool on my skin. As it dripped down my neck, I felt as if it were seeping deep into my body.
As the rain seeps into the parched earth
come into me,
As the stream finds its way to the sea,
find your way into me,
As the drip cracks stone over time,
Crack the bonds that bind me.
I felt movement deep inside, like rusty chains unraveling, unoiled hinges creaking, rock cracking. The rain, carrying my spell with it, was seeping down into the core of my being … into a hollowed out cave beneath the sea. Undulating light rippled over painted limestone walls. It was the grotto I’d seen in my vision during the circle. Then, quick as the flash of light, I was in the woods, the windswept heath, the labyrinth at Chartres, and then, barefoot in the grass surrounded by fireflies. The robed woman towered above me and pulled down the moon. I gasped and the woman spun around, moonlight flashing on the silver blade in her hand. I started to turn and run – as I had before – but then I didn’t.
The labyrinth exists outside time, Brock had said. I felt its spirals coiling around me now. I held my ground and looked up into …
My mother’s face.
I gasped at the sight of her, not out of fear, but because she was so beautiful. I had almost forgotten. Black hair framed a white face and pale blue eyes that softened at the sight of me. She knelt in front of me until her face was level with mine and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Callie, what are you doing here? Did you have a bad dream?”
I suddenly remembered this moment. I must have been six or seven. We lived in a house on a college campus somewhere in New England. I’d woken in the night from a nightmare and called for my mother but no one had come. Lights danced over the wall of my bedroom like a swarm of fireflies. I’d heard my mother’s voice coming from the backyard and gone outside to find her, but found instead the frightening woman with the silver knife.
“You were warding me, weren’t you?”
Her eyes grew wide and her hand flinched away from my shoulder. I smelled the fear on her – my own mother looking at me as if I were a monster. Tears fell down my face, so many tears it was as if I stood in the rain. “Was that why you warded me? Because you were afraid of me?”
“Oh, my sweet baby, no!” she cried out, quicker to reassure me than to wonder what stranger had possessed her little girl, but then I saw the understanding dawn in her face.
“You’re Callie grown up, aren’t you?” she asked turning back to me. A tear slid down her face. “You will grow up then.”
“Yes,” I said, “but you …”
I couldn’t finish. Couldn’t tell her that she wouldn’t be there to watch me.
She shook her head and placed a finger over my mouth. “It’s okay. Don’t tell me. As long as you’re okay …” She looked at the glowing spiral. It had begun to spin. “But you aren’t, are you? You’re trapped here where I set the wards on you. Oh my darling, I’m so sorry. I only did it to protect you.”
“From what?”
“From your grandmother discovering your power. The Grove would have used you …” My mother’s eyes skittered away from me toward the perimeter of the circle.
“Used me for what?” I cried, my voice high and whiny as any six-year-old crying for her mother’s attention.
My mother turned back to me, fear in her eyes. “To close the door. They tried to do it with your father but we found a spell to stop them. We were afraid they would try to do the same with you if they knew you were a doorkeeper.”
“How?” I cried.
“It’s your blood,” she began, but then she looked back at the circle, this time my eyes followed hers. The glowing spiral was spinning faster, its coils contracting, drawing closer to us. I felt its heat on my skin. “I don’t have time to explain. The spiral is collapsing,” she told me. “You can’t stay for long in the past. I wish we had more time, but I’m grateful for this, Callie; I can’t tell you how much. Just to know that you’ll survive. That you’ll be all right. You will be all right after this, darling, won’t you?”
I thought of how many times I’d wished that I could speak to my mother one more time. Of the questions I had … I knew I should use the few moments we had left to ask about the spell I needed to keep the door open, but I had Wheelock for that, so instead I asked something else.
“Mom, there’s this guy … and I almost love him, but something’s in the way. Is there something wrong with
me?”
“Oh baby, no! There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s these.” She held her hand to my chest. “It’s the wards I put on you to keep you safe. How can you be safe if you love?” She touched my face, brushed my tears away, stroked my hair. “But there are some things better than safe. If you’re ready we can cut the wards away. Your power – and your ability to love – will be released as the wards unwind … only they might take some time. They were never meant to be on you so long. They’ve become intertwined with your fears and doubts. It might hurt as they unravel.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “It couldn’t be worse than how I have been feeling.”
A look of pain crossed her face and I was sorry I’d told her that, but then she steeled her face and laid the knife to the coils. Sparks flew from them and they lashed out at her. “I can’t do it,” she said. “It has to be you.”
She handed me the knife. It felt cold and heavy in my hand. She showed me where I needed to cut. I lifted the knife to the coil … but then hesitated. I looked her in the eye. If I didn’t cut the coil, I’d be trapped in this moment with my mother. I could stay here with her forever, with the one person, along with my father, I was sure I loved, who understood me … as she understood me now. She opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it. I was old enough to make my own decision. That look decided me. She had been willing to risk her own safety for me. I touched the knife to the coils …
Something inside snapped and I was back on the porch. Duncan was pulling my hand back, pulling me away from the rain. The coils were unwrapping around me, hissing in the rain, turning into white mist. I felt them uncoiling inside me. My mother had been right. It hurt, like someone was pulling a length of barbed wire through my flesh. Duncan tried to pull me out of the rain, but I was doubled over in pain. I pulled myself together enough to keep hold of his hand, and with my free hand I fe
lt in my pocket for the bag of herbs I’d stashed there. I took a pinch out and held it up to the wind. Through teeth gritted with pain, I recited the last bit of the spell I’d memorized.
Carry these leaves on your wind,
Let all whom you touch put away their disguises,
You who reward the just and punish the false,
Wash away all illusions with your rain.
Duncan tried to lunge at my hand, but he was too late. I let go of the herbs and the night was suddenly full of the scent of clary sage and bluebells. The wind blew the rain straight onto the porch. Duncan tried to step back but I had slipped my hand around his wrist and held on tight, aided by the power of the goddess I had called on. She was in me now. My wards were rising off my skin and dissolving in the mist as I turned around.
Claws slashed across my face, blinding me. I screamed and raised my hands to my eyes and fell to my knees. I heard Duncan’s footsteps running down the porch steps, then his screams of pain as he fled into the rain, and then nothing but my own ragged sobs of pain mingling with the falling rain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
HE’D MISSED MY eye, but the pain from the slashes was unbearable. My mother had said that the wards would hurt as they unraveled, but they didn’t hurt as much as Duncan’s betrayal. He’d been in pain, I told myself. He knew that if I saw his face there would be no chance of his being freed from the enchantment, but what kind of monster was he?
The thought made the slashes across my face throb and the barbed coils tighten around my heart. I had to get inside and tend to my wounds … find a healing spell … or call Diana. I tried to get to my feet, but slipped on the wet floorboards and fell painfully to my knees, my limbs flailing, weak and helpless. Instead of gaining power from cutting the wards, I’d crippled myself. What if they had become so intertwined with who I was I couldn’t live without them? What if my chains had become the strongest part of me?
Clinging to the porch rail, I struggled to my feet, took a tentative step toward the door and fell flat on my face.
I turned my damaged cheek away from the floorboards. The rain was blowing onto the porch now, soaking my face. All I could think of was how Duncan had struck me and left me. My tears mingled with the rain, stinging the cuts on my face … and then I felt a hand on my back and one on my face.
Strong warm hands moved down my back, my legs, my arms, their touch gentle but firm, feeling, I thought, for broken bones.
I’m broken inside, I wanted to shout, but I couldn’t. Razor wire gripped my throat. Besides, I liked how these hands felt. They were turning me over now, cradling my face, stroking wet hair away from the gashes. A face came blurrily into focus. Not Duncan.
“Bill?” I managed in a hoarse croak.
He looked up, startled, his brown eyes flaring like hot coals.
“Who did this?” he growled. His anger transformed him from unassuming handyman to something quite different. For a moment I was frightened, but then he cupped his hand around my face and the fear slipped away – but not his anger. “Was it that blond man?”
“’scomplicated,” I managed.
“No, it’s not,” Bill muttered, sliding his hands under me and then scooping me up into his arms. “It’s really very simple. No one should hurt you. No one. Not ever.” He kept up this monologue – more than he’d said in the two days I’d known him – as he carried me inside and upstairs to my bedroom. I rested my head on his chest and felt his words as a reassuring rumble that made the barbed wire coils inside me loosen their grip. When he laid me down on my bed the monologue had turned into a list of rather colorful things he was going to do to Duncan Laird. I must have lost consciousness briefly because, when I next came to, Bill was gently swabbing my face with a wash towel and singing. It was the song I’d heard him singing once before. It had sounded familiar then, but the words weren’t in English.
“That’s pretty,” I whispered. “What is it?”
“Just an old song my mother used to sing to me … hey, you’re shivering. Are you cold?” he asked, drawing a blanket up over me. “I should have taken off your wet clothes …”
“Too much of a gentleman, eh?” I quipped through chattering teeth.
“Not anymore,” he said, unbuttoning my damp shirt. “I promise not to look …” His voice froze, his eyes widening as he stared at my chest.
“Hey! That’s looking!”
“I’m an idiot,” he said, stripping off my shirt and then my jeans. “There’s poison spreading through your body.”
I looked down and saw jagged red lines – like claw marks – spreading across my skin. The red made them look like burn marks, but they felt like ice daggers ripping open my chest.
“So … cold …” I bit out between shudders.
Bill gave me a frantic look and then started to chafe my skin with his hands. He started with my legs, working his hands up my calves, then my thighs. He did my arms next. Wherever he touched my skin warmed and the red marks faded. It felt so good I forgot to be embarrassed that he was rubbing his hands all over my naked body, but when he came to my chest he looked up at me and I saw that he hadn’t forgotten.
“I have to keep your circulation going to get rid of the poison … especially around your heart.”
“It’s okay,” I said, taking his hand and placing it over my left breast. The blood rose to his face and his eyes widened and seemed to burn into mine, and then he bent his head and carefully, methodically stroked my breasts and my throat. The red marks faded under his hands and warmth poured into my body. When he reached my stomach the warmth pooled in my navel and cascaded down my legs like a waterfall. I’d felt like this before but at the moment I couldn’t remember when. Nothing seemed to exist but Bill’s hands touching me … caressing me …
Then his touch changed. His hands moved slower, lingered, and trembled. He was trembling I saw when I looked at him, shaking as if he’d absorbed the poison into him. His eyes caught mine and I felt something click. The wards that had been loosened inside me began to melt. When he met my eyes, he took his hands off of me.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to …” he began. He was always apologizing to me, I realized. And yet he had been unfailingly kind and gentle to me since we’d met – only two days ago, a little voice reminded me. But I shushed that voice. Looking into Bill’s eyes, I felt I’d known him forever. His hands on me felt more right than anything had felt since … well since forever. I wanted them on me again. Right now.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I murmured as I pulled his head down to mine and found his lips. He moaned as he kissed me, a deep sound that I felt reverberating in his chest as I slid my hands beneath his shirt, something between a growl and a purr. There was tension in his body, as if he were holding himself very tight, afraid he might hurt me. I pressed against him and forced his mouth open with my tongue, wanting to break through.
There are some things better than safe, my mother had said.
He gasped and pulled back, looking into my eyes, a question in his, and then, as if that question had been answered, he slid one arm under my hips and pulled me down, sliding between my legs. I felt him hard, straining against his jeans, pressed against my belly. I struggled with buttons while he stripped off that damned flannel shirt. Beneath it his chest was smooth, his skin golden. I ran my hand over those smooth rippling muscles and heard him gasp as my hand brush against his erection.
“Kay-lex!” My name came out as a growl – when had he learned to say it right? I thought – and then he was inside me and I didn’t think at all.
I woke up the next morning reaching for Bill and found myself alone. A terrible emptiness swept over me, then longing, followed by embarrassment – I had slept with a man I barely knew! – and the fear that it had all been a dream. But then I heard noises from downstairs, a clanking of pans that suggested Bill hadn’t fled. Relief flooded through me as I reached for a robe and started downstairs … but then I stopped in my bedroom doorway. From here
I saw the open door to Liam’s study … Liam’s empty study. That’s where my last impetuous affair had gotten me, pining for a man who wasn’t even entirely human.
I felt the sharp coils of the wards clutch at my heart. So they weren’t entirely gone yet. They had unraveled when I cut them in the vision with my mother and eased their grip last night with Bill, but they were still there. Although every nerve in my body yearned to run downstairs and throw myself into Bill’s arms, I made myself go back into the bedroom and change into jeans and a t-shirt and comb my hair. In the mirror, I saw the scratches over my eye. They’d healed remarkably well – no doubt due to Bill’s swift ministrations – but they were still clearly visible. If Duncan were the incubus, what did that say about my romantic judgment?
I walked downstairs, schooling myself to take it slow, give it time, not rush in … all the admonitions my friend Annie would give me if she were here, but when I walked into the kitchen and saw Bill bending over the oven, his firm behind filling out faded blue jeans, I went weak in the knees. And when he retrieved a pan of fragrant corn bread from the oven and turned, a speckle of flour dusting his hair and loose flannel shirt, other parts of my body went soft. I heard Annie’s voice in my head conceding, “Okay, with an ass like that and cooking skills, maybe you shouldn’t be taking it so slow.”
“Hey,” I said. “I was afraid you were gone when I woke up.”
He frowned. “I wouldn’t do that. I just thought you might like breakfast. I hope you don’t mind …”
“No!” I cried, a bit too vociferously. I stepped toward him, wondering how we’d managed to get off on the wrong foot. He stepped toward me … but he still had a hot pan in his hands. He turned to put it on the counter … and the front doorbell rang.
The thought that it might be Duncan come to explain what had happened last night instantly flashed through my head. I looked guiltily at Bill.
“Maybe you should get that,” he said.
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