Kiss of Fate

by Deborah Cooke

  “What if dragonsmoke, regardless of quantity, isn’t enough?” She tilted her head to study him. “You know the verse, don’t you?”

  “Sacrifice,” Erik said. The very idea sent a chill through him, reminding him that there were no guarantees in a firestorm. He wouldn’t jeopardize Eileen’s safety, although he suspected he couldn’t ensure her safety alone.

  He swallowed his pride and admitted to his new, troubling weakness. “I can’t see my own future; you must know that.” Sophie inclined her head slightly in agreement. “Will you help me? If not for my sake, then for the Pyr and for Eileen?”

  She studied him for so long that he thought she would decline, and when she spoke, her voice was soft. “Which comes first in your affections? You, the Pyr, or Eileen?”

  It was a test, but not a very complicated one.

  “The Pyr, of course! Leading them is my responsibility. . . .” Erik hadn’t even finished his argument before Sophie shook her head. She sighed with what might have been regret and faded away as surely as if she had never been present.

  Erik looked around but knew what he would find. She was gone.

  “Wrong answer,” she whispered in old-speak.

  But how could Erik have answered any other way? He had told her the truth. Leading the Pyr to success was the most important thing to Erik. He was prepared to sacrifice himself to ensure the Pyr’s triumph. He would not sacrifice his mate, as that defeated the Pyr’s objective to breed. It would also be a betrayal of the bond between himself and Eileen, however tenuous it was as yet.

  He’d betrayed Louisa once, after all, and didn’t want to repeat that mistake.

  But Sophie had expected a different answer from him. Which one? Erik sat down on the roof to think, despite his frustration.

  He had some time to fill, after all.

  The black sedan decided everything for Eileen.

  Magnus was in that car, and Magnus wanted the wooden chest with the big teeth in it. The guys who had broken into the Fonthill-Fergusson Foundation were somehow associated with Magnus, and they’d killed Teresa without a moment’s hesitation.

  Never mind remorse. Eileen didn’t dare risk her sister and her sister’s family.

  She had to leave Lynne’s house. She chose to believe that her experience—or delusion—of this night was a sign. She had come to England seeking more details of a story known as the Dragon Lover of Madeley and now, against all expectation, she had seen dragons. She had been rescued—twice—by one particular dragon.

  Although this was weird, Eileen was better disposed than most people to believe her own eyes. After all, she collected urban myths for a living. Sometimes the stories of things that went bump in the night could be attributed to some other reasonable cause. Sometimes they couldn’t. Eileen had long ago made her peace with the possibility that there might be a whole lot more going on in the world than she and her fellow humans realized.

  For the moment, she was less concerned with the fact that she was seeing dragons than with what she should do to evade them. Giving up the wooden chest was a possibility, but Eileen didn’t think that would ensure her safety. She doubted that Magnus and his vicious pals would just let her walk away.

  There was the principle, too. Teresa had died for those teeth. Eileen was going to figure out their value—even if it killed her.

  That wasn’t as funny as she’d hoped it would be.

  The town of Ironbridge—in the old parish of Madeley—was as good a destination as any. Eileen’s return ticket to Boston was Sunday. She’d planned to spend the weekend with Lynne, but Eileen could reorganize her schedule.

  She had to reorganize her schedule.

  It was also true that she’d just returned from Ironbridge, but she was pretty sure that she’d missed something there. This was as good a time as any to return and find out.

  Eileen eyed the wooden chest and thought about its contents. She’d promised Erik that she’d talk to someone, and she would. She’d call this Rafferty Powell whom Teresa had mentioned.

  She just wouldn’t do it immediately.

  Erik would never know the difference.

  Eileen refused to feel disappointed that she was leaving him behind. The man was trouble. Never mind that he looked good enough to eat. Never mind that she literally sizzled in his presence. He invaded her dreams and clearly lived a dangerous life. She should be glad to be eliminating all prospect of crossing paths with him.

  Except she wasn’t quite.

  Eileen checked her train schedule and found that the first train she could take departed at six ten the next morning. It seemed like an eternity away—four whole hours!—but it would have to do.

  She removed the teeth from their distinctive wooden chest and laid them across the top of the desk. The spare room also was Lynne’s sewing room, where she made her gorgeous art quilts. Eileen quietly rummaged in the closet and appropriated some squares of fabric. She wrapped each tooth separately, then nestled them successively into her overnight bag. She closed the empty chest and put it by the door, her overnight bag beside it.

  Then she packed for herself, putting her few toiletries and a change of clothing into her battered leather satchel. Her notebook was there, of course, as well as her identification. Eileen wasn’t much for purses—a purse was just one more thing to carry—so her satchel did double duty.

  She peeked out the window but the street was still empty. That didn’t reassure her one bit.

  Eileen found some stationery in the desk and addressed an envelope to Lynne at this very address. She thought for a moment of what to say, then knew.

  Lynne—

  If I don’t see you before my flight home, please take this to an antiquities dealer named Rafferty Powell. He should know what to do.

  Love, Eileen

  Eileen already had a roll of stamps. She put far too much postage on the envelope and left it unsealed. Then she addressed and stamped a bunch of postcards that she had yet to mail, hiding the envelope in their midst.

  Three and a half hours to go. Eileen drummed her fingers and checked her watch several times in rapid succession. Going to a train station in the middle of the night was a worse idea than sitting here waiting.

  All the same, she didn’t want to awaken the household.

  Eileen forced herself to think about her work instead. The Dragon Lover of Madeley was the story that had brought her to England in the first place. It was currently her favorite story, a kind of urban myth from before the days of big cities. People still had nightmares and fears of bogeymen, and it reassured her on this particular evening to be reminded that she wasn’t the only one with dragons on the brain.

  This story, though, had seized her imagination more than any other story she’d collected. It had haunted her. It might have been trying to tell her something—even if she wasn’t having a lot of luck figuring out what it was.

  In her rare whimsical moments, Eileen believed that the story held a clue to her niggling lost memory.

  Either way, someone else’s story might be the perfect distraction. She rummaged in her satchel and pulled out her notebook. She reviewed her notes again, seeking the clue she had missed, even though she already knew every word on every page. She needed a better plan in Ironbridge. Just hours ago, she’d been irritated with her own failure to add to the details she knew.

  Funny how it no longer seemed like such a wasted trip.

  His name was Erik Sorensson.

  Eileen wondered whether she could Google him.

  She booted up her laptop immediately, glad to have something else to do. The only Erik Sorensson she could find was a pyrotechnics designer in Chicago. He had a Web site and had won a number of awards for timing fireworks to music. There was even a video of one such display, but Eileen’s laptop didn’t have enough memory to download it quickly.

  Wrong Erik Sorensson.

  Eileen supposed that dragons weren’t usually in the white pages. They probably didn’t have driver’s licenses, credi
t cards, or e-mail accounts. They probably didn’t officially exist.

  Maybe it would be better to consider Erik a figment of her imagination.

  Disgruntled and impatient, Eileen lay on the bed in her clothes and stared at the ceiling, trying not to jump at every little sound.

  Eileen must have slept, because she dreamed.

  She dreamed of a child, a beautiful baby boy wrapped in a lace christening gown so fine and intricate that could have been from another age. She’d had this dream before, and as previously it made her smile. It lightened her heart and created a warm glow deep inside of her.

  This was the sum of the dream: She held a new baby.

  But it was so much more than that.

  Eileen cradled the baby boy reverently, his chubby fingers locked around her index finger as he dozed in her arms. He blew small bubbles as he slept, and she watched them rise on the pink curve of his tiny lips. The fair hair on his head was as soft as down and as golden as sunlight.

  He was beautiful.

  He was perfect.

  He was her own child. In her dream, Eileen knew it. She nestled him close and marveled at him. In her dream, she was exhausted but chose not to sleep.

  She didn’t want to close her eyes, in case her baby boy vanished while she slept. Her heart was bursting with love, her body sore from the delivery, her breasts aching with the burden of milk.

  He slept and she watched, and the time slipped away.

  The dream was precisely as it had been the thousand or so times she’d had it.

  But this time, when Eileen awakened, her cheeks were wet with tears. The sweet love that had enveloped her clung to her heart, tempting her with what was not.

  What would never be.

  Eileen had no child and she was realistic enough to doubt that she ever would. She was thirty-seven. She was divorced. She had never been pregnant. She had a talent for picking men who quickly slid past their best-before date. She was a serial monogamist who had never had a relationship last more than two years.

  Lately they’d been getting shorter. Maybe she just saw the signs earlier. Maybe she was just fed up with games. Maybe her expectations were too high.

  Either way, she wasn’t likely to be having any babies. Relationships aside, Eileen had been the pillar of emotional support while her sister endured three years of fertility treatments. While she loved her nieces to pieces—as she often told them—Eileen knew she would never go that route herself.

  She and Lynne had a lot of things in common and, given that she was the elder sister, Eileen would have bet on a reluctant uterus being another one.

  She had made her peace with her reality a long time ago. Her life was good. She was happy.

  Even if this recurring dream hadn’t gotten the memo.

  It was 5:15 and still dark. Eileen brushed away her tears with impatient fingertips and headed to the bathroom.

  Eileen was making a pot of coffee when Lynne appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  “What are you doing up so early?” As if to emphasize her point that sane people were still asleep, Lynne yawned and stretched with elegance Eileen couldn’t emulate. Even sleepy and rumpled, Eileen’s younger sister was gorgeous.

  To be fair, Lynne couldn’t help it. The red hair that ran in their family had found its best expression in Lynne’s luxuriously wavy auburn tresses. Her deep blue eyes were almond shaped and tipped up exotically at the outer corners. Somehow she’d been given the gift of dark, thick lashes—unlike Eileen’s reddish ones. Lynne was so tall and slender that even after she’d borne two children, it was easy to believe that she’d been a successful model.

  That glamorous career had been before Roger and the girls, but Eileen knew Lynne’s relocation to London for her work had led to her ultimate happiness. Theirs was an enviably good marriage, and being their guest always made Eileen both happy for her sister and aware of her own solitude.

  I’m happy, Eileen reminded herself, trying to dispel the lingering shards of her dream. She told herself that she just needed a coffee and some sleep. “I have a train to catch,” she said with a smile.

  That jolted Lynne awake. “But I was looking forward to our having some time together.”

  Eileen immediately felt guilty, but she knew she had to leave to ensure Lynne’s safety. “I’ll try to be back early Sunday, I promise. I just have to make one more quick trip.”

  Lynne looked skeptical. “Right. You’ll come racing back in here with just enough time to get to Heathrow for your flight.”

  Eileen fidgeted, just a bit, at this slice of probability. She wouldn’t come back at all unless she knew for sure that Magnus wasn’t following her. “Well, I am here on a research sabbatical and I had an idea.”

  Lynne snorted. “What’s his name?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Don’t pretend,” Lynne scolded. “Your idea has a name.”

  Eileen blushed, even though there was no man. She was thinking of Erik and the way he made her tingle. “No, that’s not it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Lynne gave Eileen an assessing look, then opened the fridge to get cream.

  Eileen knew her sister well enough to sense that Lynne was biting her tongue. “Go on. Say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “Whatever you’re pretending you’re not going to say.”

  Lynne leaned against the fridge. “Don’t take this the wrong way—”

  “Oh, there’s a bad opening.”

  “I know, but you asked.”

  “Spill it.”

  “Have you ever thought about this ability of yours to date only men who can’t or won’t make a long-term commitment?”

  “Unlucky in love, I guess,” Eileen said lightly. “You’re the one who used to joke about having to kiss too many frogs.”

  Lynne didn’t smile. “No. I think you do it on purpose.”

  Eileen blinked. “What?”

  “You’re the most intuitive person I’ve ever known, Eileen. You follow hunches and find connections that no one else ever imagined existed.” Lynne crossed the room, flinging out her hands for emphasis. “You’re a brilliant scholar because of it, but you can’t find a decent date to save your life. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe I’m unlucky.”

  “Maybe it’s the men you pick.” Lynne met her gaze and spoke softly. “Maybe you pick the crummy ones on purpose.”

  Eileen grabbed the coffeepot, letting her sister see her annoyance. “That would be really stupid. Really, really stupid.”

  “And you’re not stupid.” Lynne looked wide-awake. “So, the rational conclusion is that you’re avoiding intimacy on purpose.”

  “I get lots of intimacy, thanks.”

  “I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about love.”

  Eileen poured two mugs of coffee, unsettled by her sister’s comments. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “I think we need to.”

  “You’re forgetting Joe. Once burned, twice shy and all that.” She pushed a mug of coffee across the counter to Lynne. “I wouldn’t be the first one to be more cautious after a divorce.”

  “Except that I think your marriage was an expression of the same thing.” Lynne stirred sugar into her coffee. “No one but you ever imagined that Joe was the marrying kind.” She grimaced. “Mom said at the wedding that you weren’t changing your name because you knew it, too.”

  Eileen sat down on a stool, surprised. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Eileen, I don’t think you were fooled. I think you knew that he would screw around. I think you knew it was only a matter of time. I think you thought you should get married, but you didn’t want to get hurt, so you deliberately chose a man who wasn’t worth trusting.” Lynne arched a brow as she sipped her coffee. “Or maybe even loving.”

  Eileen drank her coffee, not really tasting it. “You make me sound so calculating.”

  “No. I think it’s smart, in a way. Defensive. You didn’t invest emotiona
lly, so you didn’t get hurt—but all along you were doing the so-called right thing. You just waited for the shoe to drop and when it did, you were gone.” Lynne fixed Eileen with a look. “No tears.”

  “I cried!”

  “Not much.”

  Eileen was insulted. She felt attacked first thing in the morning, even though she knew Lynne was trying to help.

  Lynne put down her cup. “Look, Eileen, I just want you to be happy. . . .”

  “Maybe I don’t want what you have. I love my work. Marriage and babies aren’t the answer for everyone, Lynne.”

  “No, they’re not, but I don’t think you want to be alone.”

  “I think you’re wrong. What about Nigel? Don’t I get a few months to mend my broken heart?”

  Lynne snorted. “What about Nigel? Are you really telling me that my brilliant big sister had no clue that he was married?”

  Eileen averted her gaze. She had had a suspicion that he was lying.

  And she hadn’t truly been surprised. Not right to her bones. In fact, she’d thought after leaving his apartment—and being greeted there by his wife—that she’d decided to surprise Nigel on purpose, following her instinct to “out” him and his lies.

  Lynne caught her hand. “You have to see that if you never take a chance, you never have a chance.” She squeezed Eileen’s fingers. “I want to see you happy, big sis, that’s all.”

  Eileen forced a smile. “With a man and two-point-two babies, a house and a mortgage and a golden retriever?”

  Lynne shook her head. “I don’t care about the trappings. You’re just way too interesting to be alone.” She smiled.

  Eileen forced a smile, recognizing that her sister was trying to make peace. “You’re pretty profound this early in the morning.”

  “If it’s the only chance I have to talk to you, I’ll take it. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”

  Eileen poured the rest of her coffee down the drain and checked her watch. “Well, you can stop thinking about it. You’re wrong.”

  “Really?” Lynne’s eyes were cat-bright, a sure sign that she was convinced otherwise. “Don’t you think collecting urban myths is a lot like living vicariously?”