“You do,” Duncan said softly, without judgment. “You do consider yourself a witch, don’t you Raven?”
She swallowed, faced him, a new fear lighting her eyes.
“Oh, do tell him,” Nathanial urged with a smirk. “He won’t hang you for it, after all.”
“Shut up, Father.” He searched Raven’s face. “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.”
At those words her eyes welled with tears. “I won’t lie to you again, Duncan. I don’t consider myself a witch, I am a witch. I live by the Witches Creed, which tells us to do harm to no one. But there are those who don’t. There are those who harm who they will without a hint of remorse. Some who even enjoy the harm they bring.” And she shot a poisonous glance at his father.
Duncan felt his eyes widen. “I’m not even certain I believe there are such things as witches.”
“How can you doubt it when there are four of them in the room right now, Duncan?”
He looked at the blonde, then at his father. But that was only three. “Oh, come on now.”
“You’ve no idea what you were born into this time around, Duncan. You’re a High Witch, like Arianna and me, a Witch of the Light. But your father isn’t. He’s one of the Dark Ones, and he means to kill me—”
Duncan threw up his hands. “That’s enough.”
“You know you have powers, Duncan,” she rushed on. “Think about it. Haven’t you ever known things before they happened, sensed things, heard someone’s thoughts, wished for something and had it come about almost instantly? Haven’t you ever–”
“That’s enough.”
She fell silent.
“I’m trying to understand you, Raven, but you’re way over my head with this. I think the best thing would be for you and your friend–”
“Arianna,” the blonde said.
“Arianna.” Duncan glanced at her, saw familiarity in her eyes, as if she knew him. But she couldn’t. Then he returned his gaze to Raven. “It would be best if you went home. You’re angry. My father’s angry. Go home, Raven.”
“Is that what you truly want?”
Those eyes of hers–God, they had something so powerful pouring out of them he could almost believe her nonsense. Right. She was a witch and his father was a murderer. “You just tried to pull a knife on my father,” he told her, or was he reminding himself? “If it was anyone else, Raven, I’d be calling a cop.”
“If you were any kind of a son, you’d have done just that!” his father yelled.
“I didn’t let her kill you,” he said softy. “Leave, Raven. I need to have a talk with my father.”
“Dammit, Duncan, this man you call your father is nothing to you! He can’t be! He conspired and plotted to get control of you from the moment you were born, but I tell you he’s not your father. He’s evil.”
“Have it your way, Raven.” Duncan reached for the phone. He had no intention of calling any cop on her, but she’d have no way of knowing that, and right now he just wanted her to leave so he could sort this out, and make his father tell him what the hell was going on between the two of them.
“He hanged my mother and me in a snowy square in England in the winter of sixteen eighty-nine, and you were there, trying to stop him!”
Duncan paused with the phone in midair. Because when she said those words an image passed through his mind–one so vivid it startled him. He saw two women, one unmistakably Raven, the other looking like an older version of her. They stood on a gallows with nooses draped round their necks. He saw his father wearing pastoral robes, eyes gleaming and cruel, and himself on the ground below, struggling against men who held him back. Raven and her mother faced the crowd, chins high, proud, unafraid, and then the floor fell away from beneath them and–
He closed his eyes fast and tight, lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose hard, as if to pinch away the disturbing image and the physical reaction it had evoked in him. Dizziness spun his brain wildly. He thought he might vomit.
“Duncan?”
He blinked, shook himself, met her eyes.
She stared back at him, and he kept doubting himself. Doubting she was the disturbed, confused beauty she appeared to be. Doubting everything he’d ever known or believed in. “I’m sorry,” he said softy. “But you really do have to leave.”
Tears brimmed, but she lifted her chin, looking a lot like she had on that gallows in the vision or whatever the hell it had been. “All right,” she whispered. “All right, if that’s what you want.”
She turned away from him, heading for the door.
“Leave the cauldron,” Nathanial commanded.
“Father.”
“No. It’s...it’s all right.” She looked at the pot she clutched, eyes tormented. But she set the cauldron down, stroked it lovingly, then pressed a kiss to her fingertips, and her fingertips to the rose painted on the front. That was when the tears spilled over. That was when Duncan’s insides churned, and his throat tightened up.
Facing the door unblinkingly, she strode through it like a martyr to the flames.
Arianna shook her head hard. “You’re going to pay, Dearborne,” she stated. “This is one time you won’t wreak your havoc and walk away unscathed. I’ll see to that, I vow it.”
“You’re no part of this, Arianna,” he said in a low voice.
“Oh, I’m a part of it. Make no mistake about that.” Then she swung her gaze to Duncan’s. “And you–I’m beginning to wonder if you’re even worthy of her this time around.”
Then she, too, sailed out the door.
Duncan shook himself, pressed his hands to his temples, closed his eyes, and tried to clear his head. “What the hell just happened here?”
When he looked up, he saw his father quickly wiping an expression of fear away from his face as he stared after the blonde woman who’d just left, watching so intently it was as if he was afraid she’d burst back in at any moment. He was afraid of the pixie-like Arianna. But Raven was the one who’d all but threatened him with a blade.
Nathanial covered the look quickly, and shrugged. “We were accosted by two admittedly attractive, but seriously disturbed women who think they’re some kind of witches, and who take offense at our establishment.” He waved a hand. “That’s all.”
“No, Father, that’s not all. Those two ‘attractive but seriously disturbed women’ acted as if they knew you.”
“Yes,” Nathanial said, rubbing his chin and moving to a window to watch as the two moved away down the street. “That was rather strange, wasn’t it?”
“Well, is it true? Do you know them?”
Nathanial faced Duncan, put one hand on his son’s shoulder, as fatherly a gesture as he’d ever made. But he took that hand away again very quickly. Just as well. There was that static again. Duncan was always getting shocks from Nathanial on those rare occasions when the man deigned to touch him.
“I swear to you, son, I’ve never seen either of them before in my life. And you can believe that. I’d sooner cut the heart from your chest than lie to you.”
Lowering his head, Duncan released all his breath at once. “I just wish I knew what the hell their problem is,” he muttered. Then he glanced at the pot, and recalled the pain in Raven’s eyes when she’d had to set it down and leave it behind.
Forget about her, he told himself. Unbalanced, crazy women who broke into houses and accused innocent men of murder while wielding blades did not make the best love interests.
If he could just convince himself of that, he’d be far better off.
* * * *
He couldn’t Sleep. The events of the day kept replaying in his mind.
Nathanial had spent the rest of the afternoon showing Duncan around Sanctuary. The old man hadn’t even been angry when Duncan told him he couldn’t in good conscience have any part of museum. He’d said he understood, and that he hoped the incident with the two women wouldn’t derail things between Duncan and him. He said he respected Duncan for defending t
he women, that he’d been far too angry to think rationally himself, and that he regretted having been so harsh with them. He said he hadn’t been himself lately, and apologized for it.
And the part of Duncan that was still a desperate, lonely son aching for a father wanted to believe him.
Wary, burned too often not to know how foolish the still small gleam of hope was, he nonetheless gave the old man the benefit of the doubt. One more time. One more chance.
Jesus, when would it be enough?
There had been a strained banter between them that day. At lunchtime his father insisted on buying.
It was almost as if they were...real. A real father and son for the first time. It had never been this way before. Not because he was adopted, Duncan knew that had nothing to do with it. But because his father had never seemed to care.
Now he did. Or...he was pretending to.
So why, just when things were going so well, did a mysterious beauty have to come along and throw a wrench into the works? Why did Raven have to show up now and make him doubt his father even more than he had before?
Why was this tiny voice whispering in his mind that he ought to be with her tonight? He ought to be with Raven.
Duncan closed his eyes, rolled over in his bed, told himself to forget about her. Sleep eluded him like some rare butterfly flitting away from a clumsily swung net. And as for forgetting about Raven, hell, he knew better, didn’t he? Not why, not how, but he knew he couldn’t forget her. It was as if she was already a part of him, even before he’d met her. As if she’d somehow wheedled her way into his soul and waited there like a spider in the center of a web. Waited for him to stumble into Sanctuary, into her sticky clutches. And now the more he struggled, the more entangled he became.
A witch. He sighed, rolled again, punched his pillow. A witch of all things. Hell, the way he was feeling, maybe she was.
* * * *
I sat alone in a darkened room. Arianna was out. Making herself scarce, knowing I needed some time alone. Privacy to lick my wounds. She wouldn’t have gone far, though. Not with that predator so close. She’d be watching over me like a tigress guarding a cub. My big sister. Three hundred years–over four, since she’d lost me the first time–and she still played the part.
It made me feel warm inside. And it was a warmth I needed, because everything else suddenly seemed cold and dark and barren.
I’d been sitting there a long time, bathed in candle glow, smothered in a cloud of incense. A round table that had a pentacle painted on its surface sat in front of me, with a few tools laid out and ready. A slip of paper with Duncan’s name on it lay in the center, to represent him, since I had no photo. Surrounding it was a ring of stones. Fluorite to bring past life memories. Bloodstone to remove the blocks in his mind that prevented those memories from coming. Around the stones were purple candles, for purple is the color of hidden knowledge. And in each candle I had engraved Duncan’s name in sacred runes, along with the spiral of rebirth and the eye, representing the conscious mind. My herbs stood ready.
It was manipulative magic I was about to perform. The memories were his, but if his conscious mind was ready for them, he’d have regained them himself by now. And yet I knew he might be in danger from the man he called his father. Unless he could remember, unless he could know the truth, he would be defenseless.
This was the Temple Room. Sacred space, because Arianna and I had made it so. This place was used only for magic, on nights when we preferred to work indoors, whether it be due to the weather or for some other reason.
The reason tonight was privacy. I didn’t want Duncan spying on me, because I would know he was there, in that lighthouse, staring out across the waves. I’d know his gaze was on me, burning over my skin. And knowing that tonight would only distract me from the work to be done.
I’d been still for a very long time, chanting, breathing, keeping my mind utterly blank until I had descended into an altered state. My body was limp, and I could barely feel it now. I was sinking into my soul, connecting to the utter essence of my spirit, because that is the where the power pulses strongest. That is where my connection to the Universe lives. Only when I felt that connection open, felt the power flow freely through me, did I move. Slowly, very slowly, I opened my eyes, focused on the candle flames, and then on the censer, where charcoal burned, heating the powdered incense I’d sprinkled atop it. Now I added other herbs.
I sprinkled rosemary and watched it turn cherry red, sizzling and popping and sending its scent to the heavens, as I whispered, “Sleep.”
A pinch of dried marigold petals went next, crackling, blazing up briefly only to settle into a gentle smolder again as I whispered, “Dream.”
Then the holly, dropping from my fingertips in tiny green bits, and burning with the rest as I whispered, “Remember.”
Settling again into a comfortable position, legs crossed, eyes falling half closed, I watched the smoke rise steadily as the herbs burned, releasing their magic. And I continued to chant those three words over and over. I only hoped it would work. For without the memory, Duncan might never believe me. And unless he did, he’d be putting his life in grave danger. I wouldn’t lose him again–especially not to the likes of Nathanial Dearborn.
* * * *
Funny, he thought he smelled something. A smoky, pleasant scent that.... No, he must have been imagining it. There was nothing now.
Scent or no scent, his eyes were finally getting heavy. Lids drooping as his body relaxed bit by bit. Better. Sleep wasn’t eluding him now, but coming closer. Timidly, but steadily, and finally curling up beside him like a favorite pet. He drifted away, relieved that he was finally able to.
And then he forgot all that, because his bed seemed to be tilting back and forth. . . as if his island had become a boat, rocking on the waves. His throat was dry and sore, his skin burning hot. He was sick. Damn, when did he get sick, anyway? He’d been fine just minutes ago.
Wait, someone was there. Hands, cool and soft on his forehead. For just a moment he saw Raven’s face in the glow of a candle, saw her hair, tumbling freely over her shoulders. “‘Tis you, lass,” he whispered in a brogue not his own. And then he realized that it couldn’t be her, because Raven was dead.
Dead. No, that wasn’t right, but even as he thought that, the images faded from his mind. He wasn’t on a boat anymore, and her hands were not on his skin, nor was she soothing away his fever. No. The hands on him now were hard, strong, callused ones. And he struggled against them.
In front of him was a gallows, and upon it he saw Raven, with her mother beside her, and his own father standing with his gnarled hand on the lever. “Do you confess?” his father demanded.
“My soul is less stained than yours, Nathanial Dearborne. You’re a murdering thief. You enjoy the harm you cause. You stole my mother’s cauldron.” Raven said those things, and Duncan sensed he was mixing her words together with more recent ones. But it didn’t matter. His father’s hand closed around the lever.
“Nay!” Duncan screamed. “I willna watch her die!” But he heard the horrible groan of the hinges, and the sudden slam of the trapdoor flinging open, slamming downward. He even heard the snap of delicate bones when the two women plummeted to their deaths.
And then he was standing there in the snow, gathering Raven’s broken body into his arms, cutting the filthy rope away from her bonny neck, kissing her hair, her face. He couldn’t believe the force of the pain that engulfed him. He felt empty inside, crippled, devastated. He’d lost her. Lost her!
“Dinna die,” he whispered hoarsely. “You canna die, Raven, I love you.”
Her body stirred, then, and he brushed the hot tears from his eyes to look down at hers, and saw them open. “Don’t cry, my love,” she whispered. “See? I’m not dead.”
He felt his heart leap in fear. Sitting up in bed his eyes flew open wide, and he drew in fast, open-mouthed gasps in an effort to catch his breath. His skin beaded with cold sweat, and real tears burned p
aths on his face.
“Damn!” He flung back the covers, put his feet on the floor–not far away, since his bed was just a mattress–and then leaned over, elbows braced on his bent knees. “Damnation, lass, what’re you doin’ to me?” Then he clapped a hand over his mouth, for he’d shouted the words in some other man’s voice. The accent...Scottish and archaic and....
“What’s the matter with me?” he whispered in his own voice.
Her. That was what. It was all her. Raven St. James. What he could do about that, he didn’t know. Was she really some kind of witch? Could she possibly have powers he never would have believed in? Making him obsessed with her? Making him think of her ahead of his own father, for God’s sake? Subconsciously, at least.
Right, right. And making him dream crazy dreams and wake up speaking with an accent. It wasn’t even possible.
But some small part of his mind didn’t believe that.
All right, all right, enough. There was a library in town. First thing tomorrow he’d go there and read up on this nonsense. He’d find out once and for all if there was such a thing as magic, or witchcraft, or whatever she called it. And then he would confront her, armed with at least a small amount of knowledge, and he’d tell her to stay the hell out of his life. And out of his father’s life.
And most of all, out of his mind.
Chapter 17
I need to see him. Alone. Without worrying about that bastard Nathanial bursting in on us at any moment.” I paced, as I’d done most of the night, wringing my hands and wondering if anything I could say or do would ever make a difference, when I could see so clearly the feeling in Duncan’s eyes for that bastard. He cared for Nathanial. Dearborne had made him care. Learning the truth was going to break Duncan’s heart. And for that I hated Nathanial even more.
But Duncan had to know. He had to.
“I have to make him believe me,” I told Arianna.
“He doesn’t want to believe you.”
Eternal Love: The Immortal Witch Series Page 24