She smiled. “Yes,” she said, handing back his card along with a receipt. “I’ll have the mirror delivered to your sister’s house this afternoon, if that’s suitable. Heaven help the poor woman.”
The wisecrack put Max at ease again, but he felt giddy, as if he’d just downed a six-pack of Corona in a few gulps. He grinned like a fool and leaned against the counter, his big linebacker’s hands leaving smudges on the gleaming glass.
“Was there something else?” Kristina Holbrook asked.
Max cleared his throat again and realized he was sweating. “No,” he said hoarsely and turned to leave the shop.
“Thank you,” Ms. Holbrook called after him, soft laughter playing like a chorus of distant harps in her voice. “Come back soon.”
Come back soon. The words were innocent, ordinary—merchants said them to departing customers every hour of every day. Especially the ones who were dense enough to pay good money for a mirror so ugly that even Sleeping Beauty’s stepmother wouldn’t have believed a word it said.
Max went to the door and pulled it open, feeling the late-October chill rush up from the busy sidewalk to turn his perspiration to ice. The little brass bell overhead tinkled merrily to indicate that the big, bad jock was leaving at last, but Max just stood there.
Kristina was at his side before he’d finished telling himself he was an idiot.
“Are you all right?” she asked. She really cared, really wanted to know, he could see that. And he was so touched by that one small sign of tenderness that the backs of his eyes began to burn.
“Yes,” he replied, closing the door. “No. I don’t really know.”
Kristina touched his arm, and he fancied that he could feel her warm fingertips even through the fabric and lining of his jacket and shirt. “Maybe you’d better sit down for a few minutes. Or I could call someone—your wife, perhaps?”
The word wife wounded Max like an arrow fired from a crossbow at close range. It had been two years, and he’d worked through his grief. When, he wondered, would he stop stepping into emotional booby traps?
“Sandy is dead,” he said, as though he were telling Kristina that it was about to rain.
“I’m sorry,” she replied.
“So am I,” he answered, and then he opened the door again, stepped over the threshold, and strode off down the sidewalk.
He hadn’t gone a block when he found himself turning around and retracing his steps to the door of Kristina’s shop. He hesitated for a moment, then stepped inside.
“I’m back,” he announced.
“Good,” Kristina said, with a smile that tugged at Max’s insides. “I rather expected you.”
He looked around, out of his element and yet wishing to be nowhere but exactly where he was. “Do you have a husband?” he asked bluntly, for it was not his nature to beat around the proverbial bush. “Or a boyfriend?”
“Neither,” Kristina responded, gesturing toward an elegant old wing-back chair upholstered in dark crimson velvet. “Sit down. I’ll make tea—or would you prefer coffee?”
Max had that bull-in-a-china-shop feeling again; he was a big man, broad in the shoulders and muscular, and he was afraid he’d smash the spindly legs of the chair. “I’ll stand, if you don’t mind,” he said.
Way to go, Max, he mocked himself silently. You’ve got all the style of a high school freshman trying to make time with a cheerleader.
“If you’re worried about breaking the chair,” Kristina said from the doorway that led into the rear of the store, “don’t be. They don’t make ’em like that anymore, as the saying goes. That thing would support a Sumo wrestler.”
Max figured he’d only imagined that she’d read his mind, and sank gingerly into the seat of an antique that probably cost more than he made in a month. He was pleasantly surprised when it withstood his weight without so much as a creak.
“I’ll take coffee,” he said belatedly in answer to her question. “Please.”
She smiled and left him alone with the paintings and chairs and breakfronts and figurines.
He felt clumsy, off balance, as if there should have been prom tickets in his pocket and a corsage wilting in his hands. It was crazy; even Sandy hadn’t affected him like this, and he’d loved her as much as any man had ever loved a woman. Even now, two long years after her death, he would have surrendered his own life gladly if that would bring her back.
Kristina returned, carrying a tray with two steaming cups on it, and sat down on a footstool with a fancy needlepoint cover. She handed Max his coffee and sipped from a mug of her own, surveying him with those remarkable silvery eyes of hers.
He tasted the brew and was startled to find that just the right amount of sugar had been added, along with a little milk. “How did you know how I take my coffee?” he asked.
She took her time answering, still watching him with that expression of gentle speculation. “I’m a good guesser,” she finally replied, and he had an odd and completely unfounded suspicion that she knew all his secrets. Right down to the fact that he wore his wedding band on a chain around his neck, tucked under his shirt.
“You’re very kind.” Max drank more coffee and was almost his old self again.
Kristina’s wide eyes twinkled. “It’s the least I could do, now that you’ve taken that dreadful mirror off my hands. Your sister can return it if she really hates it.”
Max beamed. “She will,” he said. “Hate it, I mean. But she won’t bring it back because that’s against the rules. The only legitimate way to unload a vengeance gift is to find somebody who really wants it and give it to them.”
“A tall order, in this case,” Kristina observed.
“I got rid of the moose head,” Max boasted with a shrug and spontaneous grin.
Kristina leaned forward slightly, and Max basked shamelessly in her warmth and her innate femininity, breathing in the faintly spicy scent of her hair and skin. “Who would want something like that?” she demanded, eyes narrowed, hair glistening like onyx in the muted light of the shop.
Max couldn’t remember for the life of him.
63
Kristina was working out on the stair climber in her family room the next morning when Daisy Chandler arrived, wearing blue jeans, worn-out running shoes, a pink-and-white-striped shirt, and an oversize letterman’s jacket with the name Walt stitched onto one sleeve. Her beautiful copper-gold hair was pulled into a ponytail, which cascaded through the hole in the back of her blue baseball cap in a wild profusion of curls.
“You’re demented,” she told Kristina, who was still diligently climbing, and sweating in the bargain. “You couldn’t get fat if you tried. Why exercise?”
Kristina was asking herself that same question just about then, but she kept going. “You know why. I want to be normal.”
Daisy flung her arms out in a gesture of exclamation. Looking at her in those crazy clothes, it seemed ironic that she was the center of a certain very sophisticated vampire’s life. “What’s normal?” she railed with good-natured irritation. “I haven’t met anybody yet who really qualifies.” Kristina was in no mood to discuss her penchant for doing everything she could in the ordinary human way. She’d been thinking about Max Kilcarragh ever since their encounter at the shop the day before, and the temptation to use her singular powers to explore every nook and comer of his life and psyche had been nearly overwhelming.
“I have,” she replied in a somewhat bleak tone. Mr. Kilcarragh was wonderfully normal, sound and stable and genuine, yet strong, too, and utterly masculine.
Drying her hairline with the white towel draped around her neck, Kristina continued the workout and changed the subject. Daisy was her best friend, but she wasn’t ready to talk to anyone about Max because there was too much—and nothing at all—to say. “I trust Mrs. Prine let you in,” she said. “Or did you pick the locks?”
Daisy, who had been a police detective, now ran a thriving private investigation service. She beamed, shrugged out of the second-hand
athletic jacket, and tossed it onto the couch. Her cap sailed after it. “I’m still working on basic breaking and entering. In this case, your housekeeper is the culprit.” She crossed to the refrigerator in the small kitchenette and helped herself to a bottle of sparkling water. She frowned. “I must have rung the doorbell ten times. Does Prine always go around with earphones stuck to her head?”
“Yes.” The timer on Kristina’s stair climber started to beep, and she shut it off and stepped gratefully down from the machine. Mrs. Prine’s name didn’t suit her; she was not a plump and proper matron, as one might expect. She appeared to be in her late forties, had a body like Jane Fonda’s, wore well-scuffed cowboy boots and big belt buckles with an assortment of old jeans and tank tops, and had a tattoo on her upper right arm that read Garth Forever. She bleached her hair and probably hadn’t said more than half a dozen sentences to Kristina in the five years she’d worked for her.
Daisy watched Kristina towel her leotard-clad body and shook her head once in apparent disbelief. “Aren’t you going to ask if there’s a point to my visit?” the gumshoe inquired, plunking down on the overstuffed sofa with her bottle of water.
Kristina shrugged. “You’re my closest friend. Friends drop in on each other.” She sighed and hung the towel over the hand rest on the stair climber. “But since it seems important to you, I’ll ask. What are you doing here, Daisy?”
“Tonight is Halloween,” Daisy said, “and I’ve decided I want to have a party for some of the kids in our neighborhood.”
Daisy’s neighborhood was one of Seattle’s poshest; she and Valerian shared a marvelous, spooky old mansion with seven gables and at least that many secret rooms. The property was surrounded by a high brick wall, and there were gardens and fountains everywhere. Instead of being intimidated by the place, however, children came from blocks around to peer through the high wrought-iron gates, waiting for Daisy or Valerian to appear. They fed the white wolf, Barabbas, tidbits from their brightly colored lunch boxes and tucked letters written in crayon into the ornate mailbox out front.
What delicious irony, Kristina thought. The vampire and his ladylove throwing a Halloween party for a horde of miniature mortals. “It’s a terrific idea,” she said in all sincerity. “I suppose Valerian plans to set a coffin in the center of the parlor and lie in state?”
Daisy made a rueful face. “I suggested it, and he nearly bit my head off, if you’ll forgive the expression. Once I’d really thought the thing through, I had to admit that a coffin with a real vampire in it would probably be a touch too scary.”
“A touch,” Kristina agreed with a slight twitch of the lips. “I have to shower and hie myself to the shop. Could we fast forward to the part of this that has something to do with me?”
Daisy reached for her baseball cap and jacket. “I’d like you to be there, that’s all,” she said happily.
“And do what?”
Daisy bit her lower lip. “Stir a cauldron. And it would help if you wore something long and black—”
“No doubt I could borrow an outfit from Morticia Ad-dams,” Kristina teased. “But where would I get a big pot of foul and bubbling brew?”
“I thought you could conjure one up,” Daisy said, pulling on her jacket.
“You know how I feel about doing things like that.”
“Come on, Kristina—you don’t have to be stuffy just because you’re old.”
“Thanks.”
“Will you do it?”
“I must be crazy,” Kristina said with a nod of acquiescence. Daisy was a hard person to refuse.
“Great!” Daisy cried, adding the cap to her jaunty ensemble. Then she gave her friend a quick hug. “Come at four-thirty if you can. It’ll be dark by then.”
Kristina promised to be on time, suitably garbed and in possession of a large cast iron pot emitting green steam. When Daisy had gone, she asked herself why she didn’t spend Halloween in seclusion, as did most of the vampires, warlocks, and other supernatural creatures she knew.
As she stepped under a shower of hot water minutes later, Kristina answered her own question. She participated in mortal holidays for the same reason she exercised, traveled by car, cooked her own meals, and bought her clothes in stores. When she did those things, she could pretend to be fully human.
The old Tarrington estate was a great place for a Halloween party, Max thought as he led his small daughters, in their masks and costumes, through the open gates and up the long brick driveway to the front door. Eliette, seven years old and dressed as Princess Jasmine, chattered happily about any number of things, while Sabrina, better known as Bree, age four and garbed as a clown, was unusually quiet.
“Everything okay, Shortstop?” Max asked, crouching to tweak Bree’s red foam nose when they’d reached the front steps.
Bree glanced nervously in one direction and then the other. “They have a big dog,” she confided. “I think it’s a wolf.”
“That’s only Barabbas,” said Eliette, who feared neither man nor beast. Her reckless acceptance of everyone and everything worried Max; for obvious reasons, he wished she were not quite so brave.
“Listen,” Max said, holding Bree’s gaze with his own. “If you’re scared, I’ll take you home. You can help Aunt Elaine pass out treats while your sister the party animal and I bob for apples and swig cider.”
The tiny clown shifted from one floppy orange foot to the other and cast a yearning glance toward the elegant brick porch, which was lined with the flickering smiles of at least a dozen jack-o’-lanterns. “What about Bob’s apples?”
Max suppressed a grin. “That’s bobbing for apples, honey—”
“It’s a game, stupid,” Eliette grumbled, impatient to get in on the action. The house emitted an intriguing combination of moans, shrieks, and maniacal laughter—none of which seemed to frighten Eliette in the least.
“Bad choice of words,” Max told his older daughter. “Your sister isn’t stupid.”
“Sorry,” Eliette said with limited conviction.
“I guess I want go in,” Bree announced. “But if we see that dog—”
Eliette had forged ahead and was already stomping up the steps. “I already told you Barabbas wouldn’t hurt you,” she reiterated.
Bree slipped her tiny hand into Max’s and looked up at him with Sandy’s solemn brown eyes. “You’ll save me if the wolf comes, won’t you, Daddy? You won’t let him gobble me up?”
Max swallowed, and though he tried to sound casual, his voice came out hoarse. “Count on it, Babe,” he said. “You’re safe with me.”
He was thinking, while Eliette rang the doorbell with verve, that Barabbas was a damned strange name to give a mutt.
One of the twelve-foot double doors swung open with a theatrical creak, and just like that she was there—Kristina Holbrook, the woman he’d been thinking about almost nonstop since yesterday.
Even with green paint on her hands and face she was elegant, and her gray eyes sparked with surprise, then humor, as she recognized Max.
“Come iiiiiin,” she said in a very witchy voice. Eliette went past her like a shot, eager to join her friends, but Bree stood still at Max’s side, staring up at Kristina in awe.
“You can do magic,” the child said without a trace of fear.
“Yes,” Kristina replied simply. Max had a brief, odd flash that she wasn’t kidding. “Won’t you come in?”
Bree released her sweaty hold on Max’s thumb and padded past Kristina into the shadowy hall.
The lovely witch smiled and gestured for Max to step inside as well. “Hello, again. Did your sister hate the mirror as much as you hoped?”
Max grinned, getting over the shock of seeing her again so easily, and so soon. He wondered, as he had for the past twenty-four hours, what she’d say if he asked her out for dinner. “More,” he replied. “Gweneth has sworn vengeance.”
Kristina laughed. “I’d watch it if I were you,” she told him. “It’s Halloween, after all. She might find
a way to cast a spell over you.”
Max took a chance. “Somebody already did that,” he told her quietly. “You’re looking at an enchanted man.”
She might have blushed—he couldn’t tell, because of the dim light and her green makeup—but she did lower her eyes for a moment. “Do you like it?” she asked in a voice so soft he barely heard it. “Being under a spell, that is?”
“Yes,” Max answered. “Which isn’t to say I’m not scared.”
Before Kristina could say anything in reply, the doorbell rang again, and she went back to being a witch and greeting guests. Max stood and watched her for a few seconds, then found an assemblage of adults in a nearby room, where a mob of noisy, delighted kids was watching a magician perform.
After helping himself to an hors d’oeuvre and a cup of mulled wine, Max chatted amiably with a few neighbors and then went to the doorway of the parlor to watch the magician. All the while his mind was full of Kristina—her scent, her voice, her supple, shapely body.
Their host and hostess hadn’t spared any expense, he thought, watching the conjurer. This was no hobbyist or clever college kid moonlighting; the guy was a definite pro. His tuxedo was custom made and probably cost about as much as a midsize car. Over it he wore a black silk cape, lined in glistening red, and his skin had a pearlescent quality Max had never seen before. His hair was brown and somewhat shaggy, lending him an oddly old-fashioned look, as if he actually belonged to another time and was just visiting the present.
While Max watched, the wizard gestured toward a tall vase of carved jade, which was probably priceless, with a graceful, white-gloved hand. A sparkling light surrounded the piece, which stood alone in the middle of the floor, glowing more and more brightly until it dazzled the eyes. The children—Max had long since located Eliette and Bree—were spellbound and utterly silent. A feat in itself, he thought with amusement.
The Black Rose Chronicles Page 95