The Soul Jar

by Jennifer Colgan

  A romance three thousand years in the making.

  When Bree Sennett breaks into Ming Xao Chen’s Curiosity Shop to recover the fabled Soul Jar of Ammonptah, the last thing she expects to find among the tacky souvenirs is a ghost. But there he is, Mason “Chance” MacKenzie, back from the dead and stirring a confusing mix of joy at seeing him alive…and betrayal for leaving her.

  Two years ago, Chance faked his own death to save both their lives. It’s taken him that long to convince himself she’s better off without him, that she’ll never forgive him much less love him. Yet as their mutual search for the Soul Jar brings them face to face, he realizes the only one he was fooling was himself.

  Now the woman who stole his heart is about to steal the Soul Jar, but a life he promised to protect hangs in the balance. There’s only one way to satisfy both their clients. Make a deal. And hope he can trust her to help him complete his mission before he loses her forever.

  This book has been previously published.

  Warning: This title contains too much caffeine, just the right amount of fireworks and a heaping scoop of steal-your-heart Australian hunk.

  eBooks are not transferable.

  They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  The Soul Jar

  Copyright © 2009 by Jennifer Colgan

  ISBN: 978-1-60504-700-3

  Edited by Linda Ingmanson

  Cover by Kanaxa

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Original Copyright: 2006

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: December 2009

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  The Soul Jar

  Jennifer Colgan

  Dedication

  For everyone who has lost love and found it again. Hope is timeless.

  Chapter One

  Bree Sennett clamped her lips shut on a startled gasp as a long shadow fell across her hiding place. She pushed her body deeper into the narrow niche where she crouched and listened to the measured footsteps coming across the dark, crowded storeroom.

  Ming Xao Chen’s curiosity shop was supposed to be closed tonight. Bree had made certain the old man found his usual spot at the bar down the street. She’d seen him there, drinking rice wine with his two sons while the Chinese New Year parade snapped, crackled and popped its way through the narrow streets of Chinatown. Certain that the shop’s eagle-eyed proprietor and his burly offspring were occupied for the night, Bree had let herself inside through the storeroom window.

  Who else could be here? No one else had after-hours access to the shop, not even the Chen women. Lit only by the occasional flare of fireworks and the feeble glow of a single string of paper lanterns entwined around a clothesline several stories above, the alley out back had been heavily shadowed and completely empty when Bree arrived. No one could have seen her enter.

  That meant the slow, deliberate footsteps that creaked across the shop’s dusty back room belonged to an intruder, a thief.

  Bree slowly exhaled through clenched teeth. I don’t have time for this. She had a schedule to keep and a client to appease. She had to retrieve the artifact tonight or face losing more than just a percentage of her meager commission. The plane ticket wedged into the back pocket of her tight black jeans was non-refundable. Perhaps as a testament to her client’s confidence in her abilities, her travel arrangements had been made for her on a promise—one guaranteed by her life.

  Bree waited another ten seconds before climbing out of the niche behind a towering curio cabinet. She listened and gauged her rival’s whereabouts in the mazelike storeroom.

  One aisle over to the left, a shadowy form stretched to snatch an object off a high shelf. Bree took mental inventory. That’s where Chen kept the dragon bones and the pearl handled daggers that he claimed could produce non-healing wounds with their short, blunt blades.

  Nothing there worth taking. Chen had those objects mass-produced to appeal to the souvenir hunters and seekers of the macabre.

  Bree took one measured step, then another. If the intruder wanted only dime store novelties, she might be able to grab the real treasure and be gone before he—or she—noticed.

  “I’ll give you sixty seconds to climb back out that window and get lost before I call the police.”

  Bree went still at the incongruous threat. That voice! Deep and sharp with a hint of Australian accent, it pierced her confidence to the bone. She caught her breath and berated herself for indulging in foolish fantasies when she was supposed to be focused on her job. Much as it might sound like him, she didn’t believe in ghosts.

  She held her position, calling the intruder’s bluff.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  God, that voice sent shivers through her body and froze the breath in her lungs. It can’t be. It just can’t be. Fatigue and stress had to be causing her to hallucinate. Her conscience told her to run, to ignore the tumult of long-forgotten feelings and get away before the memories derailed her mission.

  Her heart had other plans, though. How could she slink away in the night, leaving her treasure behind, and never know to whom the haunting voice belonged? She turned the corner, her heart thumping against her ribs as if it meant to escape and flee the scene.

  The intruder hesitated only a moment before stepping out of the shadows next to a shelf lined with Yeti hands and petrified dinosaur brains. Bree let her gaze ride up from his black boots to the familiar cattle-horn belt buckle at his waist, past the white T-shirt and scuffed black leather jacket to the shaggy mane of sun-streaked hair.

  She might not have believed it, might have dismissed his appearance as coincidence, until she looked into his unsettling smoke-gray eyes. Her heart seemed to plummet to a spot just below her navel where it lay fluttering like a wounded bird. The air in her lungs hardened, and her blood congealed. Had she lost her mind, or was she staring at a dead man?

  Fortunately she’d survived too many tight spots to be rendered mute and immobile for long, but the single second of complete, numbing agony at seeing him again cost her.

  Swallowing the bitter taste of his betrayal, she smiled at the man who had shattered her soul two years ago. At least he had the decency to look equally shocked when he recognized her.

  “Mason MacKenzie,” she said, proud that her voice remained steady and smooth. “I thought I killed you.”

  Recognition hit Chance MacKenzie like a cold blade in the gut. Bree. Good Lord, she hadn’t changed at all. Even with her raven hair pulled back in a thick ponytail and her luscious figure hidden by a black sweatshirt, she took his breath away.

  Of all the places he might have encountered her—all the places he’d studiously avoided since their last disastrous adventure—he’d never have imagined finding her here in New York’s Chinatown, slinking around in the back room of Chen’s famous curiosity shop.

  This was no place for priceless treasures of any kind.

  “You used to call me Chance,” he said as soon as he found his voice. The shock made his heart skip a beat. He could not have been more nonplussed if he’d encountered one of the Yetis that supposedly belonged to the gnarled, shriveled hands lying on the shelf behind her head.


  “Only your friends call you Chance, and I’m not one of your friends.” Her reply stung, like a sharp pinprick in the callus that had grown over his heart since he’d seen her last, since he’d held her in his arms and planned a future with her at his side. Pushing aside the ache that had begun in the middle of his chest, he smiled wide, partly to throw her off guard and partly because the pain reminded him that he hadn’t actually died two years ago.

  “Aw, can’t we get past that, luv? I forgive you for killing me. Since I’m not really dead, I can’t hold a grudge.”

  The corners of her lustrous blue eyes sparkled. After what he’d put her through, he’d never have expected to see tears in those eyes, only the cold hatred of a woman badly scorned.

  He looked away as she swiped at her eyes. Her voice wavered when she asked, “So how is it you’re not really dead?”

  “Blanks in the gun.” He struck with surgical precision. No time now for apologies or complex explanations.

  “I saw blood.” The last word came out as a choked whisper. What he wouldn’t have given to hold her in his arms and comfort her, to feel her supple body yield to his again.

  If wishes were horses, he thought and struck again. “Exploding blood packets under my shirt. A ripcord tethered to the side of the balcony. A broken mannequin, wearing my clothes, tossed on the cobblestones below.” With each word, he cut her. Each confession wedged open the wounds he’d made so long ago, and he saw in her eyes that she bled anew.

  Her lower lip trembled, just enough to draw his attention and hold it. God, he remembered her mouth, the taste of her, hot and sweet.

  “If you’d like more details, why don’t we get out of here, and I’ll buy you a drink? Shimmy back out the window, and I’ll meet you once I’ve concluded my business with Mr. Chen.”

  “Chen’s not here.”

  “Yes, but he’ll be back very soon to check his precious cash drawer before he goes to bed, and part of my business is to be long gone before that happens.” He made a move to sidle past her, careful to avoid the slightest physical contact. If he touched her now…

  She twisted sideways as he passed and plastered herself against the rickety shelves. Why did it hurt that she didn’t want to touch him either?

  Her eyes followed him, darts of sharpened steel in the dimness. “What are you after, MacKenzie?”

  “Priceless Yeti hands…and a dollop of petrified dino poo. I know I saw some around here somewhere. Fetches thousands on the black market.” Let her laugh, he thought. Let her laugh the way she used to at my stupid jokes.

  “Cut the crap. No more lies.” She followed him a step, but stopped short of grabbing his sleeve.

  He turned sharply, met those steel-blade eyes and braced himself against the flood of regret that threatened to drown him. “Lies saved your life, sweetheart. Without them, one or both of us really would be dead now.”

  She said nothing, but a muscle in her jaw twitched. He longed to touch it and soothe away the anger that drew her up so tight. “Get out of here, Bree. Whatever you’re after, it’s not worth it.”

  “But it’s worth it for you?” Her voice rose with the challenge. “We’re here for the same thing, aren’t we?”

  “I doubt it.” No, he didn’t.

  “Fine. Then take what you want and leave me be.” She turned away, flung herself into the deep shadows at the back of the shop. He’d have let her go, believing it was better for both of them to leave the past buried in the empty grave in New South Wales that bore his name. He would have, if he hadn’t seen what he’d come here for, gleaming over her shoulder in the meager light that filtered through the dirty window.

  On a high, narrow shelf at the very back of the shop, it sat on a thin velvet cushion, looking like royalty among the peasants. The junk that surrounded it seemed to fade from view. The perfectly white oval was no larger than a woman’s palm, and it seemed to glow with an inner light. Chance wondered if the strange luminescence came from the two souls rumored to be trapped inside it or from his long unrequited desire to actually see the fabled object in person.

  His mouth went dry. He could tell by Bree’s stillness that she’d seen it too. She’d found her objective, just as he’d suspected.

  Now the question hung in the dusty, stale air of the shop. Which one of them would fulfill their mission and leave with the Soul Jar, and which would be left betrayed again?

  Chapter Two

  The fine hairs on the nape of Bree’s neck rose, and her skin tingled when she saw the jar. Her chest felt tight and the corners of her eyes burned with more unshed tears, but these at least didn’t embarrass her. To find the mythical Soul Jar—to stand within reach of something that, if all the legends were true, held the life essences of two lovers, punished for an eternity for the sin of wanting each other—was a cause well worth shedding a tear or two over. Meeting Chance MacKenzie again, finding out the man she’d once loved more than life itself had returned from the grave, should have paled in comparison.

  Or maybe it was the prospect of having to split her profits with him that made her misty-eyed. As if she’d make a profit on this mission to begin with.

  She blinked to clear her suddenly blurry vision and turned on him. “Well? Did you find what you came for?”

  The path of his smoky gaze told her he had.

  “If you want it, you’re going to have to shoot me.” Boldly, she turned her back on him again and reached for the jar, but her throat burned with the cavalier threat. She remembered that fateful morning and the tearing pain in the center of her chest when she’d realized her lover had a gun pointed at her heart.

  Don’t make me shoot you, luv, he’d said with that charming smile she’d come to adore. Get out of bed nice and slow. Get dressed and get lost. Our little dalliance is over now.

  She shoved the vile memory to the back of her mind and reached for the jar. It slid into her hand as though it belonged there. Cool and smooth as an egg, it fit perfectly in her palm. Overcome with the urge to cradle it against her and protect it, Bree glowered at Chance over her shoulder.

  He held her daring gaze as she liberated a folded knapsack from under her voluminous sweatshirt and slipped the jar inside.

  “What’s the matter, MacKenzie? Don’t have it in you to kill me?” Again, she wanted to add. Her heart had withered and died two years ago. She’d been functioning on autopilot ever since. She’d thought too often afterward that perhaps she should have called his bluff back then and forced him to shoot her. At least then her pain would have ended swiftly.

  “I’m not armed,” he replied, tracking her movements as she edged toward the narrow aisle between the shelves.

  “I don’t believe you.” He hadn’t gotten his nickname by being unprepared.

  He shrugged. “Try me. If you want to carry the jar out of here, I won’t stop you. But I promise you, luv, you won’t be the one who ends up with it.”

  She laughed. As if his promises meant a damn to her. She turned and sprang for the window, not caring how closely he followed. She’d deal with him in the alley if she had to and then put enough distance between them to ease this brand new ache in her heart.

  Without a glance behind her, she climbed on the old desk under the open window and placed the knapsack on the narrow sill. She gasped when she felt a firm hand on her backside.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Just givin’ you a boost, luv.”

  She slapped at his hand. “I don’t need a boost.” Removing her rear from his palm, she slithered up and out the window. She landed silently in the flotsam-filled alleyway just as a barrage of firecrackers ripped through the air like machine gun fire. Startled for an instant, Bree dropped into a crouch, using her body to protect the jar from the unseen threat. Her heart hammered when the noise faded and the music and shouts of the parade crowd rushed in to fill the momentary silence.

  Chance dropped to the ground next to her, and she watched him survey the area. Like old
times, she had to concede admiration for his instincts. No detail of a situation escaped him.

  She straightened when he did, her eyes on the dizzy, drunken crowd surging by the alley. If she could get away from him, losing herself in the revelry would be child’s play.

  “Nice running into you,” she said as she slung the knapsack over her shoulder. She refused to spare him a parting glance.

  “Wait, Bree—”

  She bristled at the sound of her name. How could he presume to use it after what he’d put her through? A stronger woman would have walked away without another word. She hated herself for turning to face him.

  He held out a small, white card. Chance MacKenzie, Entrepreneur. There was a local phone number under his name.

  “Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Take it. For when you need to call me.”

  “I won’t need to.”

  He pushed the card into her hand. “Just in case. If you need me for anything, it’s my cell phone and I always have it on.” He patted the breast of his jacket.

  What nerve, assuming she’d want to talk to him again. In her mind, she pictured herself dropping the card on the rough asphalt and crushing the crisp white rectangle with her heel as she strolled out of his life forever.

  Instead, she ripped the card out of his grasp.

  “That’s it, luv. I’m a patient man. I’ll be there when you need me.”

  As if.

  Fireworks lit the smoky scrap of sky above the alley, casting his rugged features in flickering shades of red and blue. He smiled again, and when she looked up from a brief glance at the card, he was gone.

  Damn you, MacKenzie. It’ll be a cold day in hell when I dial this number.

  “Where’s the artifact?”

  The croaking voice came from behind Chance as he crossed the hotel suite that had been his home for the past month. He froze, more annoyed than startled.