by Julie Leto
“Why’s he after you?” Ben asked.
“Same reason you are.”
Ben smirked. “I doubt it. I came here to save your life.”
Mariah undid her restraints, then gave Cat a look that asked if she could switch places with her. Cat’s stare communicated that Mariah and her brass balls had gone a bit too far this time, but Ben’s ex responded with an eye roll that made it perfectly clear that her need to talk to Ben alone had absolutely nothing to do with any renewed romantic interest.
Cat shrugged. Only women could communicate so much in so few words. She undid her seat belt and they exchanged seats.
She couldn’t hear the argument that immediately ensued between Ben and Mariah, and frankly, she didn’t want to. They had their own drama to get through, and her intervention wasn’t needed. Besides, she had a more interesting seatmate at the moment.
“She hates him, you know,” she told him.
He spared her a dubious glance. “There’s often an unclear distinction between love and hate.”
Smart man. “True. Your sister, for instance. Did she hate Rogan that last night, or did she still love him?”
His eyes widened, and finally his attention was drawn away from the argument up front. “You know my sister? You know me?”
“No,” she said, laying her hand softly on his. “I know your nephew. And it’s about time you got to know him as well.”
Ninteen
“So,” Ben said, the word clipped in a way that let Mariah know he was about to ask a question she wasn’t going to like. “Who is that guy?”
That was his first question?
“No one you know,” she replied.
“Maybe I’ve heard of him,” he countered.
“Actually, I’m one-hundred-percent sure you haven’t. But he’s not the issue, mate. He saved my life twice tonight. And once a few days ago. He’s handy to have around.”
“You do generally need lifesaving a little more often than the average woman.”
She suppressed an incredible urge to stick her tongue out at him. Instead, she asked, “How did you know where to find me?”
“My father.”
“Paschal?” She hadn’t seen Ben’s father in years. In fact, they’d met only once or twice more than a decade ago, when she and Ben were partners and had sought out the older man’s expertise on the value of certain items. Then, suddenly, she made a connection that hadn’t occurred to her before.
Rafe was a Gypsy. He’d lived in a Gypsy enclave—a colony created specifically to keep the Romani out of London. Paschal Rousseau’s primary area of study was Romani culture, which she’d always thought unusual. Valoren’s significance to Gypsy history, however, explained how Ben might have discovered the site.
“So, your father told you about Valoren?”
“Yes,” he verified. “He’s sort of an expert on it. But the question remains: How did you find out about it?”
Mariah gritted her teeth, not exactly anxious to admit that she’d been keeping tabs on Ben since their breakup. At first, she’d just found it impossible to believe that he was really retiring. His claim to want to pursue his Ph.D. and look after his father seemed like a complicated brush-off at the time. After a while, she realized he’d truly left the biz. But they shared enough friends, colleagues and contacts that when he finally made a move for the Valoren marker, she’d be one of the first to know.
“I heard through the grapevine about your plan to plunder the place,” she said, attempting to keep her voice steady and nonchalant. “And since I was on the lookout for a quick take, some unknown site called Valoren seemed as good a spot as any.”
“And you found more than you bargained for,” Ben said. “Like I warned you.”
“If your bottomless ego needs to say, ‘I told you so,’ just say it already.”
He grinned. “I told you so.”
“Feel better?”
“Infinitely.”
She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but Ben had just ridden to her and Rafe’s rescue, and she wasn’t ungrateful. If he expected a thank-you, however, he’d just have to wait. She was too shaken and too annoyed to be forthcoming with gratitude.
As she and Rafe had expected, Farrow Pryce had left two men behind at the airstrip to watch her plane. She and Rafe had nearly overpowered the goons when the aircraft blew. She supposed she should consider herself lucky that she and Rafe weren’t aboard when the jerks detonated the planted explosives, but damn, she loved that plane. And in one night, she’d had to rely on not one, but two men to get her out of a jam.
“How did your father know how to find me?” she asked. “Or that I was in trouble?”
“I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”
She snickered and rubbed her eyes, which were starting to ache from the strain. From the moment she’d woken this morning in that clearing by the waterfall, she’d traveled at least fifteen miles through inhospitable terrain, been shot at, beaten up, strip-searched, rescued in a billow of magical smoke and then had her body magically transported back to the beginning. Twice. The sensation had not been unlike having undercooked chicken livers shoved down her throat before riding inside a spinning top for an hour. Upside down.
Admittedly, the second time Rafe had used that mode of transportation to get them to the plane, it hadn’t been quite so bad. She’d managed to keep from vomiting up the lining of her stomach. But she still never wanted to do it again.
Ever.
“You’d be surprised at what I’d believe nowadays, Ben. Remember when I used to think I’d seen everything and nothing shocked me? Well, if today proved anything, it proved how very wrong I was. Trust me when I say that nothing you tell me about your father will catch me off guard.”
“He’s psychic?”
She waved her hands dismissively. Why not? She had a lover who could flit them from place to place in the blink of an eye. Why couldn’t Ben’s father be clairvoyant?
“He saw me in a vision?” she asked.
“Something like that. He was actually looking for…”
His voice drifted off, and he nearly gave her a crick in her neck following the quick whip of his head. Without explanation, he unbuckled his restraints, flipped on the autopilot, then motioned for her to take over. She wasn’t exactly feeling up to it, but he left her no choice when he abandoned the cockpit.
“Ben, where are you…”
Cat, who’d relinquished her seat beside Rafe to Ben, shook her head warningly. Whatever. Mariah was too tired to argue. She slipped into the pilot’s seat, buckled in and acclimated herself to the instruments, checking their heading. Back to Texas. She wasn’t sure that was the best idea. If Farrow Pryce’s men had spotted any identifying numbers on this plane, they could possibly be waiting for them wherever they landed. Unless Ben hadn’t filed a flight plan, which she figured he hadn’t.
Maybe they were safe. For the moment.
She turned to ask Ben about a possible course adjustment when Cat moved into the cockpit.
Ben and Rafe were shaking hands, tentatively, but with smiles of recognition.
Mariah almost expected them to hug.
Her hand slipped off the wheel just as Cat reclaimed the copilot’s chair. “The family resemblance is amazing, isn’t it?”
Suddenly, Mariah couldn’t breathe. She might have hyperventilated or asphyxiated if Cat hadn’t patted her roughly on the back.
“He’s…” Mariah started, but the connections eluded her, even though the sudden familiarity around Rafe’s eyes caught her entirely off guard. How could she have never noticed? His eyes, except for a subtle difference in the color, were just like Ben’s.
Luckily, Cat chatted nonchalantly, as if everyone in the world just found out that their current lover was somehow related to their ex. “Ben’s uncle. Looks like you were even a few more beats behind Ben. What’s with you people?”
“I don’t understand,” Mariah admitted.
“Rafe was
in the stone you took from Valoren. He was put there by a curse made by a sorcerer named—”
“—Rogan,” Mariah supplied. “I know all about the curse and Rafe and who he was, er, is. What I don’t understand is, how do you know?”
Cat sat back in the seat and connected her seatbelt, but slowly, as if she expected another game of musical chairs any moment. “Do you know about his brothers?”
“And his sister.”
“Well, Ben and I don’t really know too much about her,” Cat said.
“We know she started this whole mess by falling in love and then running away from Rogan,” Mariah supplied.
“Counting Rafe, at least four of the Forsyth brothers who went after her were trapped by the same kind of magic that holds him now,” Cat added. “Three have been freed so far, including Paschal. He was freed over fifty years ago.”
Mariah turned to tell Rafe this amazing news, but she could tell by the gloss in his eyes that Ben was filling him in on the same information.
“Where are the others?” she asked, genuinely happy that Rafe would soon reconnect with his siblings.
“The eldest, Damon, is with my friend Alexa Chandler. They’re in Poland, but we’ll contact them after we retrieve Ben’s father in Texas. Damon and Paschal have been tireless in their search for items that might contain their brothers’ spirits. So have we, honestly.”
“And that’s how you found us?”
“Ben’s father has a talent called psychometry,” Cat explained.
“The ability to read information about a person from holding an object that means something to them.”
“Yeah,” Cat said, removing a watch from her wrist and handing it to Mariah.
She took it, surprised. She hadn’t even realized it was gone.
“You can do it, too?”
Cat wavered. “Sort of. Paschal has actual visions. He saw you in a jungle. Because of your problems with Velez, Ben was able to track down your general location. I’m more like a psychic GPS system. I was able to get a bead on you, so to speak, from holding your watch.”
Mariah sighed and relaxed into the rather comfy pilot’s chair. “Am I the only one around here who’s just normal?”
Cat laughed. “Depends on your definition of ‘normal,’ doesn’t it? A year ago, I was a sought-after debunker of psychic phenomena. It really destroys your whole outlook on life when the one thing you’re trying to disprove turns out to be very, very real.”
Mariah had no trouble imagining Cat’s conflict. She’d spent more than half her life stealing antiquities in defiance of curses, legends and other spooky promises of untold misery. She couldn’t help but feel a little humbled when real magic was now turning her life upside down.
“A week ago, I would have thought I was entirely insane for believing any of this,” Mariah admitted. “Now, guess I’m just as crazy as you are.”
Cat spared a quick but telling glance over her shoulder. “Looks like we have quite a lot in common, then.”
Mariah groaned. “Oh, we’re not going to have this conversation tonight, are we?”
Cat patted her reassuringly on the arm. “That conversation is for you and Ben to have. But I am glad you’re alive and that you found Rafe. For brothers who spent the majority of their lives in the eighteenth century apart, they certainly are willing to move heaven and earth to reunite. I guess I don’t blame them. I’m an only child, so it’s hard for me to relate.”
“Well, I have brothers, and seeing them once every five or six years is just fine with me.”
“All families are different. Still, I’d like to see the Forsyths reunited soon,” Cat confessed, with a weariness in her voice that Mariah couldn’t help but wonder about. “Four down, Two to go.”
“Four down? I thought you said only Rafe and Damon were free.”
“Rafe’s not really free, is he? We still have to work on that. But Aiden, the second-oldest, was released six months ago. He was in a sword.”
“The Dresden Sword?” Mariah asked.
“How do you know that name?”
“Pryce called it that. He had it with him in the jungle. He used it, or attempted to. Tried to make a pyramid come down on top of me in his attempt to get the stone where I found Rafe.”
Cat nodded as if she suddenly understood. “That’s what Paschal was talking about. We weren’t sure what he was saying. The connection was bad, and he was more concerned with us getting to Mexico than he was with filling in all the details. So Pryce is attempting to use the magic. That’s not good. That’s so not good.”
Cat’s naturally dark skin paled, and Mariah took that as a very bad sign. Catalina Reyes didn’t seem like the type to worry over nothing. Now, not only did Mariah have a ruthless collector after her in Hector Velez, but she had some psycho with paranormal powers at his disposal gunning for her, as well.
She busied herself with checking the instruments on the plane simply for something to do. She’d left the aircraft on autopilot, but again, the closer they got to Texas, the more she thought they might be going in the wrong direction.
Cat, however, was sitting still in her seat, her teeth clenched and her jaw tight.
“If it makes you feel better,” Mariah offered, “I don’t think Pryce knows exactly how the magic works. If he did, chances are Rafe and I never would have gotten out of there.”
“He’ll find out sooner or later,” Cat surmised, frowning deeply.
“Not if we stop him,” she replied. “You said Damon was in Poland, but what about Aiden?”
The tension in Cat’s shoulders eased. “You know Lauren Cole, the actress?”
“The Athena chick? Not personally.”
“Looks like you’ll get a chance to meet her. She originally found the Dresden Sword. She freed Aiden and now he’s in Bolivia, working with her on her next flick.”
Mariah raised her eyebrows. “He’s an actor?”
“He says he’s eye candy,” Cat said with a laugh. “The Forsyth men certainly don’t come standard-issue. Anyway, once he knows about Rafe, he’ll head back as soon as he can.”
Mariah tried to imagine an eighteenth-century man thrust into the Hollywood world, but the image had her shaking her head. She was having trouble picturing Rafe at ease in the modern world. Or maybe it was just her modern world she struggled to see him in. What would he do with himself? She supposed he could continue studying to be a shaman, but why, if he had no clan to guide anymore?
“So that’s three—Rafe, Damon and Aiden,” Mariah recapped. “You said four.”
“Paschal,” Cat reminded her.
“Wow… when you said ‘uncle,’ I thought you meant ‘great-great uncle’ or something. How can Paschal be brothers with Rafe? His name is Rousseau.”
“Paschal was born Paxton Forsyth. He was released sixty-plus years ago, near the end of World War II. He took his wife’s surname and changed his first name to fit in with the French Resistance, which they were both a part of.”
“But I met him in the daylight,” Mariah reasoned. “And if he’s aged—”
“He’s human now,” Cat clarified. “Rafe isn’t. He’s in the phantom state. We don’t know how long they can survive that way. Paschal attained human form really quickly. Damon and Aiden each existed as phantoms for less than two weeks.”
Mariah’s chest clenched. “There’s an expiration date?”
Cat shrugged. “We don’t know. No one’s ever had to find out.”
Shivering, Mariah checked the environmental controls, but found the temperature inside the cockpit had little to do with her shakes. She thought she’d understood everything about the curse, but she was wrong. Rafe had asked her to help him break free of the stone, but while she’d agreed, she hadn’t had the time to figure out how to do it.
She was starting to realize how incredibly selfish she’d been. She wasn’t surprised. She never failed to disappoint. Even herself.
“How does Rafe become human again?”
“Well
, he can’t do it without you. You’re the woman who awakened him to the phantom state. You’re the one who can free him.”
“How?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Cat said nonchalantly. “You just have to fail in love.”
Twenty
Ben returned to the cockpit a few minutes later, but Mariah seemed utterly disinterested in any more talking. She relinquished the pilot seat to him, ran her hand along Cat’s arm in what seemed like a gesture of thanks, and then drifted back to Rafe. Though his uncle sat forward as if eager to share all he’d learned with Mariah, she touched his lips softly, snuggled beside him, closed her eyes and dropped off to sleep. Or at least, she pretended.
Rafe didn’t seem to mind, He ran his hand lovingly across her cheek, then turned to the window and stared out into the purple sky.
Ben readjusted the pilot’s seat, put on his headphones and speaker and motioned for Cat to do the same. He wanted a more private conversation this time.
“So, did you tell her?” he asked.
“As you predicted, she totally clammed up. I’ve never seen a woman get so freaked out about something that’s so obviously already happened,” Cat said, glancing over her shoulder at the cuddled pair. “You sure you’ve told me everything about your breakup with her?”
Ben groaned. “While I’d love to take the credit for being so important that I changed the way she’s viewed relationships for the past ten years, even I’m not that arrogant. She’s always been commitment-phobic. It’s the way she’s wired.”
Cat shook her head. “Avoidance like hers comes from hurt, Ben. Maybe not hurt you caused, but someone did. Probably her parents, from what you’ve told me. Daddy who didn’t know what to do with her. Mommy who abandoned her. It’s classic.”
Ben wondered if Cat was thinking as much about Mariah as she was about herself. Shortly after her birth, Cat’s parents had turned her over to her maternal grandparents. Like Mariah, Cat had turned the lack of parental attention into fierce independence, but unlike Mariah, Cat never lost the capacity to love.