Tonight and Always

by Linda Lael Miller

  She was getting really tired, because it had been a long day. Thanksgiving always was, she thought. When a person got to be seven, they started to see a pattern in things like that.

  "Go to sleep," she said to Bree. "We've got to get up early."

  Bree yawned loudly. "I'm going to buy Kristina something really beautiful. Then, even if she marries that king, she'll remember us."

  Eliette's throat felt tight. She gulped and let her eyes drift half closed. After a few moments she thought she saw a blond angel through her thick lashes, standing at the foot of the bed and smiling. She was just as Bree had described her, but in a blink she was gone.

  Eliette told herself she was dreaming and soon enough, she truly was.

  In the morning Max and Kristina ate a room-service breakfast in bed, made love, then got dressed and went outside into a fresh fall of snow. They made snow angels and flung balls of the stuff at each other and laughed like kids. They didn't go inside until they were breathless and so cold that their feet and hands were numb.

  They made love again and then slept, warm and sated.

  That evening, after having dinner in the lodge restaurant, they joined half a dozen other guests for a sleigh ride over perfect, moon-washed snow. It was a magical experience, and Kristina thought she would remember the singular music of the horses' harness bells for the rest of her life.

  It was an idyllic weekend, but it went by very fast, as such interludes always do. On Sunday night they sat together on the rug in front of the fireplace in their cabin, the room still resonating faintly with the power of their love-making, like a concert hall after a great symphony has been played.

  Max took Kristina's hand, and she knew the moment had arrived, that the enchantment was over, the spell broken.

  He said her name, running his thumb lightly over her knuckles. Then he whispered, "Marry me."

  She looked away in a useless attempt to hide the tears that burned in her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to marry Max Kilcarragh, but she dare not accept his proposal. She had already pledged her life, perhaps her very soul, to another.

  Max caught her chin in his hand and made her look at him, though gently. With the pad of his thumb, he smoothed away the tears, then touched her lower lip, leaving behind the taste of salt. "Was that a 'no'?"

  "I can't," Kristina whispered. It was agony to say the words, to turn down her greatest desire, her shining dream.

  He let his forehead rest against hers for a moment, and his broad shoulders moved in a great sigh that broke Kristina's already fractured heart.

  "Because?" Max prompted.

  "Because I'm going to be Dathan's mate."

  He stared at her. "The warlock?"

  Kristina only nodded. There was no point in explaining.

  Max pushed to his feet, abandoning her, ripping himself away. "You came here and slept with me, knowing that? That you were going straight from my bed to his?"

  Kristina could not speak. She merely nodded again.

  Max began gathering their things, his motions wild, furious, full of hurt, and Kristina offered no protest, no words of consolation. There was nothing to be said.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 18

  « ^ »

  Kristina and Max had left their cozy cabin at the mountain lodge far behind before either of them spoke. The atmosphere in the Blazer was thick with tension, and a fresh snowfall enclosed them in white gloom.

  "Why didn't you just leave me alone in the first place?" Max ground out. He didn't look at her; understandably, he was keeping his eyes on the slippery, treacherous road.

  Kristina bit her lower lip for a moment before answering. She wanted to cry—no, to sob and wail—but somehow she held onto her composure. "You make it sound as though I sought you out and deliberately led you on. I was in love with you, Max—and I always will be."

  The sound he made was low and contemptuous. "And all along you intended to mate with that—thing."

  A shiver moved down Kristina's spine, and it had nothing to do with the cold that had somehow settled in the marrow of her bones, despite the Blazer's more than adequate heating system. It was dangerous to speak of creatures like Dathan in such a desultory way, especially for Max. The warlock was already jealous of him.

  "It wasn't like that at all," she said evenly. There was no way to assuage Max's pain, or her own, but she owed him some kind of explanation. Even though anything she might say would probably only serve to deepen his sense of betrayal.

  The snow was blinding now, and traffic slowed to a crawl, then a full stop before Max replied. "What was it like, then?"

  A state trooper approached the driver's side, and Max rolled down the window. Kristina held her tongue.

  "Sorry, folks," the policeman told them, shivering but genial. "The pass is closed. You'll have to turn back and find a place to wait out the storm." Through the weather-fogged windshield, Kristina saw other cars making U-turns and heading in the opposite direction. Soon enough, Max and Kristina were going that way, too.

  "Great," Max murmured. "Couldn't you just zap us back to Seattle or something?"

  Kristina folded her arms and blinked back tears. "You know I can't," she said, shrinking into the seat.

  Max reached for his cell phone and punched a single button. A moment later he was talking. "Hi, Mom—it's Max. Listen, the pass is closed, so we aren't going to make it back tonight. Will you explain to the girls? And be sure they understand that everything is okay?" There was a brief pause, then Max smiled, and the expression bruised Kristina's heart somehow because it wasn't, might never be, directed at her. "Thanks, Mom. See you."

  The cordiality was gone from Max's voice and manner when he glanced at Kristina, after replacing the cell phone in its little plastic bracket on the dashboard. "I guess we're stuck with each other, for tonight at least."

  Kristina pretended to be looking out the passenger window and quickly dashed at her tears with the back of one hand. "We'll be lucky if we don't have to spend the night in the Blazer, with so many people turning back," she said, hoping he wouldn't hear the slight sniffle she hadn't been able to disguise.

  They were lucky, as it turned out. Their room at the mountain lodge had not yet been rented, though the whole place was full.

  Kristina sensed the fine hand of Valerian, or perhaps her mother, at work, but mental efforts to summon either of them met with resounding failure. With their help she and Max could have been, as he'd put it, "zapped" back to Seattle.

  Max carried the bags back in and rebuilt the fire. The bed had not been made up, since they'd left the lodge well past check-out time.

  "I meant it when I said I loved you," Kristina said, huddling inside her coat and staying very near the door, as if to bolt. It was a silly urge, she soon realized—after all, where could she go? Besides, this wasn't Michael she was dealing with, it was Max, her beloved, sensible, mentally healthy Max. No matter how angry he might be, or how hurt, she had nothing to fear from him.

  He turned from the hearth and rose, shedding his ski jacket and tossing it aside. "Call it off, Kristina," he said, his dark gaze holding hers. "If you mean what you say, then tell the warlock there won't be a wedding."

  Kristina flushed. "I can't," she said, wishing with everything inside her, everything she was and would ever be, that she could. "I promised."

  "Break your promise."

  She shook her head. She could not tell him, even now, why she had made her heinous bargain with Dathan—to save Eliette and Bree from possession. That was worth whatever she might have to suffer in consequence of the pact and, as much as she longed to be free to marry Max instead, she hoped with all her soul that the warlock would succeed.

  "At least tell me why," Max said. He went to the service bar and rummaged for a beer and a diet cola.

  At last Kristina removed her coat and crossed the room to accept the can of soda, which Max knew she preferred over every beverage except water and herbal tea.

  "You were right
," Kristina conceded miserably, "when you said I should never have let things get started between us in the first place. I can't begin to explain the kind of danger I've put you in, not to mention your children. I'm doing this to protect you, Max, all of you—and that's all I can or will say about it."

  He sighed and shoved his free hand through his hair. "Doesn't it matter that we love each other?"

  She sat down in one of the chairs near the hearth, still feeling chilled, and Max perched on the arm. "Of course it matters. It's the whole reason we have to say good-bye." Kristina raised her eyes to his face. There was one thing she had to tell him, even though he probably wouldn't believe her. "We were in love once before," she said very softly. "A long time ago. It was a star-crossed match, just like now."

  Max's brow furrowed into a frown. The hurt was still plainly visible in his eyes, but he was calmer than before. "I think I'd remember that," he said, sounding bewildered.

  Kristina smiled, though her heart was breaking, falling apart bit by fragile, splintered bit. "Not necessarily. Your name wasn't Max Kilcarragh then—it was Gilbert Bradford. You were the Duke of Cheltingham, Michael's elder brother."

  Max's eyes narrowed. "Reincarnation?"

  "Sort of. It's really more complicated than that. Time is not linear, so human beings actually exist in all their various incarnations at once. They're usually not aware of it, of course."

  Max set the beer aside. "I was—am—Gilbert? The good guy?"

  Kristina laughed. "Yes. And probably a lot of other people, too."

  He frowned. "Is this what Albert Einstein was talking about with his theory of relativity?"

  "In a way," she agreed.

  Max was silent, absorbing it all.

  Kristina took a sip of her diet cola, wishing it were something stronger, a potion capable of quelling the terrible heartbreak she felt. "It would seem," she said carefully, "that we simply aren't destined to be together." The next part was one of the most difficult things she had ever had to say. "Very likely, Sandy is your true mate, for all of time."

  Max rose suddenly from his seat on the arm of the chair and went to stand on the hearth, his broad back to Kristina, his hands braced, wide apart, against the mantelpiece. "I loved her very much," he said at great length, in a voice so low and hoarse that Kristina could barely hear him. Then he turned and looked deep into her eyes. "But I love you, too. And even though I don't remember being Gilbert Bradford, I know from the letters you showed me that he felt something similar to what I'm feeling now." He paused to draw a long, ragged breath and once again pushed his fingers through his hair. "I don't understand about eternity—I'm an ordinary man, Kristina. All I know is what I want this moment, in this lifetime. And that's to marry you."

  Kristina looked down at her hands, which were knotted painfully in her lap. She tried to relax her clenched fingers. "That's what I want, too," she admitted. "But we can't be together, Max. It's impossible, and the sooner we accept that, the better off we'll be."

  Even as she spoke the words, she knew she would never be able to accept losing Max, never get over this particular farewell. She dared not think beyond the moment when they would part, once and for all.

  He came to her then, drew her up out of the chair and into his embrace. He held her close, and they wept together in silence, while outside the little cabin the snow continued to fall.

  In a cabinet inside Max's garage, the package stirred. Brown paper fell away, followed by the festive Christmas wrap beneath. The thing quivered, grew hot enough to singe the paper, and toppled out onto the concrete floor with a metallic crash.

  It rolled a little way, and then, in a mere flicker of time, Kristina's spell was broken. Billy Lasser, boy criminal, came back to life.

  He was only eighteen years old, but in the course of his brief existence, he'd pulled off more than his share of convenience-store heists, muggings, and rapes. Once he'd even done murder, if that was what you wanted to call it, killing a whore down on the Sea-Tac strip and dumping her off out by the Green River.

  Billy smiled, remembering his cleverness. No doubt about it, the cops would have chalked that one up to a certain serial killer they'd been tracking for as long as he could remember.

  But his pleasure quickly faded, replaced by rage. He had another score to settle, with that weird chick who'd turned him into a goddamn monkey. Billy wasn't overly bright, and it didn't occur to him that messing with somebody who could do stuff like that might not be a good idea. He knew two things: that he was hungry and that he was pissed off.

  He looked around, his eyes adjusting to the darkness, and realized more from the smells than anything that he was in somebody's garage. Maybe if he broke into the house he'd find that bitch who'd locked him up inside a hunk of metal and make her wish she'd never been born.

  After he'd had a sandwich and maybe some beer, if there was any.

  Billy tried the inside door and found it locked, but that hardly slowed him down. The light switch was right there handy, and he turned it on. There was a toolbox on a workbench nearby; he took a screwdriver, and in no time he was inside.

  He paused, waiting, listening. The place was empty; he'd have bet on that. There was no dog and probably no alarm system.

  Billy flicked on the kitchen lights and went straight to the refrigerator. There was plenty to eat—he stuffed two packages of lunch meat down his throat without bothering to find the bread, then guzzled two beers in a row before taking a third one to sip as he went through the house.

  He figured out right away that the bitch didn't live here, but he found some cash in a cookie jar on top of the fridge and stuffed that into the pocket of his jeans.

  Billy checked out the upstairs, reckless with relief that he was finally free, and high on the beers he'd downed so fast. Two little girls shared one room, and one was obviously reserved for company. The third belonged to a man, judging by the clothes in the closets and bureaus. No mommy in this family.

  What a pity, Billy thought.

  He went downstairs, feeling a little less reckless now that the food was getting into his system, and tried to figure out what to do next. It was cold outside, and all he had was his fake leather jacket, bought at a swap meet a couple of years before.

  He helped himself to a beat-up down-filled coat he found in a closet by the front door and pulled it on. It didn't fit, hung clear to his knees in fact, but Billy didn't care. It would keep the chill off.

  It was snowing, and Billy walked a long way before he finally managed to catch a bus headed downtown. The weather in Seattle was usually mild, and when they got a little white stuff, the whole place freaked out.

  The bus driver gave him a look, and Billy barely suppressed an urge to strangle the bastard then and there. Instead, he brought out some of the money he'd lifted from the big man's cookie jar and paid the fare.

  The shop on Western Avenue was closed, of course, since it was late. Billy let himself in through the back door, a little disappointed to find that it wasn't even locked. A few seconds later he knew why—the place was empty to the walls—and now he was even more pissed than before.

  He paced the darkened shop restlessly, barely able to contain his agitation. Nobody—nobody—was going to get away with treating him the way that woman had. What was her name?

  He'd been able to hear things, once in a while, since he'd sat, helpless, for weeks, maybe even months, in this prissy-assed store, though most of that time he'd just sort of drifted, as if he'd been high on top-grade stuff.

  He thought hard.

  Kristina, he recalled at long last. Kristina Holbrook.

  Billy went out the same way he'd come in, hurried through the bone-chilling cold to the nearest phone booth, and shut himself in. Sure as hell, the stupid slut was right there in the book, big as life, along with her fancy address.

  It was almost too fucking easy, Billy thought, but he was grinning as he left the booth. Feeling triumphant, he hailed a cab.

  The driver bitched ab
out the snow all the way, and that was good, as far as Billy was concerned. Kept the guy from wondering what business a hood like him would have in such a ritzy area of the city. Not that it mattered, Billy reflected smugly, what some dumb-ass cabbie thought about anything.

  Her house was big and expensive-looking.

  It was also dark.

  Billy blessed his continued good luck as he paid the cabbie with cookie-jar money, crossed the sidewalk, opened the front gate, and walked up to the door. He was running on attitude now, and adrenaline.

  The cab pulled away, it's taillights glowing red through the heavy white flakes.

  Billy sprinted around the side of the house to the back, where he broke in through a basement window. The lots were big in this part of town, and the neighbors wouldn't have heard the glass breaking anyway, he figured, because the snow was still coming down thick and fast. Billy was no weatherman, but he knew from TV that snow muffled sound.

  He crawled through the space and found himself in a pretty standard basement.

  It was dark as hell, but he couldn't risk turning on any lights, not yet, so he just stood there, waiting and breathing hard, until his vision had adjusted again.

  Then he made his way to the cellar stairs.

  No big surprise: They opened onto a kitchen.

  Billy found a flashlight in one of the drawers—he'd burgled a lot of houses in his time, and they'd all had a little cubbyhole where things like that were stashed, along with a lot of assorted junk.

  After pausing once more to listen, Billy switched on the flashlight and, keeping the beam pointed low so there was less chance of it showing at one of the windows, he began to explore the home of the woman he meant to punish.

  He went upstairs first, found her bedroom, touched the perfume bottles on her vanity table, and fingered the jewelry lying in a pricey, Chinese-looking box on one of the dressers. These rich bitches, they didn't even care enough about nice things to take care of them right. Just left them laying around, waiting to be stolen.