“I understand. But you can go and still get back by tomorrow night. I won’t start until you get here.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone!”
She pulled her hand free. “And I’m not leaving here until after the seance, Nick. There are things to do--preparations to make. This isn’t just a normal reading like I’d do over on Canal Street. This is too important for me to take lightly and not make the proper preparations.”
“I don’t like it. Look, I’m not leaving until in the morning, anyway. If we go very early, we can stop by your house in town and ask Sybilla to come back out here with you. I’ll hire a hack for the two of you at one of the stables.”
“You can’t force me to go with you, Nick.”
When she first met him, he probably would have roared and blustered--threatened her, as he had indeed at times. Now, he looked at her quietly.
“No, but I can ask you to please come with me.”
She stepped into his arms. He’d learned how to get his way without worrying about her magic all too well, she thought with a smile.
“I’ll go,” she agreed. “But let’s get started early.”
“I said we would.” He kissed her, and she heard his stomach rumble, recalling that she hadn’t fixed much lunch for them, just some cornbread and beans Cecile had left. She took his hand and led him out of the room.
“Let’s see what we can find in the kitchen house for a nice, romantic meal.”
“Right now, I’d settle for filling rather than romantic.”
She whirled on him, and Nick backed away, holding up his hands. “I’m teasing,” he said with a chuckle. “Please don’t turn me into a toad!”
Laughing, she raced down the hallway ahead of him. “Last one to the kitchen house is a toad!”
They met Julian at the bottom of the stairwell, and Nick informed him of the fire and that he and Wendi would leave in the morning. He nodded, then told Nick that he’d left the weekly report from the overseer on the desk in the study, asking him to look it over so they could discuss it after dinner. Apologizing to Wendi, Nick headed for the study, but instead of joining him, Julian went the opposite way, toward the back veranda. With a shrug, Wendi decided to go with Nick and wait until he could walk out to the kitchen house with her.
* * * *
The evening mysteriously cooled far below normal temperatures for the season, and a pleasant breeze filtered through the kitchen house later while they ate. Wendi hadn’t lit the stove, since she found some melons, cheese and bread in the cooling room. And pie. Cecile had left them several pies to tide them over until she returned.
Leaning back in her chair, Wendi stifled a yawn. Across the table, the candle flames showed Nick’s eyes with heavy lids, and when he looked at her, he raised a hand to cover his own yawn.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s not the company. I’m just suddenly very tired.”
He pushed his dessert plate aside with his pie only half-eaten. She’d wrinkled her nose when he chose rhubarb to her apple as she named off the flavors of pies in the cooling room, but cut him a generous piece anyway when he assured her it really was his favorite. Cecile had evidently remembered that while she was preparing food to last them until she returned.
“I have a nice, stuffed feeling,” she said, “but my yawn wasn’t from tiredness. I was hoping we might go for a walk in this cool air. I doubt we’ll have weather like this again before November or December. I can’t get over how there’s no humidity, either.”
“Oh,” Nick said with a groan. “I guess I might manage a short walk. Not far though.” He started to rise, and suddenly a strange look came over his face.
“What is it, Nick?”
“I. . . don’t know if it’s my wound or what, but I can’t seem to get my legs to work.”
“Nick!”
He surged upward, as though determined to gain his feet, then toppled sideways onto the floor with a crash, pulling the tablecloth and dishes with him. By the time Wendi rounded the table and knelt by his side, he was unconscious.
“Nick! Nick!” She shook him frantically, but he failed to respond. Suddenly Sybilla’s face, tense with worry as it was in her bedroom earlier, flashed through her mind. With an obstinate effort, Wendi gained control of her emotions. She was in this alone, and she’d never figure out what was going on if she didn’t keep her wits about her.
Leaning closer to Nick, she heaved a sigh of relief when his breath feathered against her face. She placed a hand on his chest, feeling his heart beating strongly. That was it, then. He’d been drugged. Someone had put something in the rhubarb pie, knowing that would be what Nick chose. Someone who knew his favorites.
Could it be Cecile--who knew different herbs from using them in her cooking? But what had she used? How dangerous was whatever he’d eaten?
Forcing herself to her feet, with his broken china plate and the remains of the pie in her hand, Wendi stared at the half-eaten pie in dismay. Finally she sniffed it, catching a very faint odor beneath the tangy rhubarb.
Henbane! Devil’s Eye, as some of the healers called it. A form of the deadly nightshade. She could barely smell it, but there was no doubt in her mind it was there, almost covered up by the rhubarb’s strong odor. Anyone not familiar with the various aromas of the healing herbs--or the dangerous ones--would have missed it, as Nick had.
If left untreated, he would die. She needed bitterroot to counteract the poison. There was bitterroot in her room, among the ceremonial supplies she carried.
Wendi started for the door, then stopped when she heard a step on the stairway leading to Cecile’s living quarters. Whirling, she faced Julian, who was standing just far enough down on the stairs for her to be able to see his face, which had a demonic look on it. He held a deep-bladed knife in his right hand.
“You!” Wendi cried. “It’s been you all along, not Nick.”
“You should have insisted he let you stay behind when he went in to investigate the fire I paid to have set. Then I wouldn’t have had to poison him.”
“You killed my mother.”
“And you’re next,” Julian hissed. “They’ll think Nick went berserk over your resemblance to his father’s whore. Killed you, too.”
“You drugged the pie.”
A maniacal laugh erupted from his throat. “That’s the least of what I’m going to do this night! Wasn’t it nice of my cousin to get rid of everyone, so I don’t have to worry about someone interfering with me? And this time, I won’t leave him alive to take the blame. He can take it just as well dead. The henbane will take care of that.”
“Nooooo!” Wendi raised her hand, but nothing happened. Her magic was failing her.
Please, she pled of the Goddess. Don’t make me handle this without magic!
She’d heard of things like this. She should have seen it coming when her magic began giving her trouble. When Sybilla and Thalia set this up, then deserted her. As Sybilla had warned, she was deemed to right the karma with her wits alone. She hadn’t realized that meant without the aid of her magic also.
“What’s the matter?” Julian sneered, moving down the stairwell. “Sabine couldn’t protect herself that night either. I asked the old voodoo woman, who I got the henbane from in case I needed it, what the deal was. It had bothered me for ten years. Sabine was a witch. Why couldn’t she protect herself from me?”
Wendi edged toward the door. She hated desperately to leave Nick, but the part of her mind separate from the almost debilitating fear allowed her to rationalize that her only chance would be to draw Julian away before he used the knife on Nick. Escape, then come back and administer the antidote to the henbane. She had a little while. Henbane worked effectively, but slowly.
“Even magic can’t work against karmic intentions,” she said, trying to keep Julian’s mind off Nick.
“That’s what she told me.” He snickered. “Right before I killed her so she couldn’t tell anyone I’d bought the henbane from her.”
He stepped off the last step. Caught his toe on a rag rug at the foot of the stairs as he made his next move. Staggered.
Wendi fled. Out the door. Across the porch. She heard him cursing behind her. Close. Too close. He had to have regained his balance almost immediately.
She tried to turn toward the house, but the words no, barn flashed into her thoughts, and she quickly changed direction. Racing toward the back gate, her mind worked frantically. The words she’d heard confirmed there was some magic here. If not hers, someone’s. And the barn was where it would all come together.
Her heart beat frantically and she fought the dread filling her. The barn would also be silent and empty. There would be no one there to help her. No one to see her die. No one to find her body until the stable hands came back in two days.
If her death was the karmic intention, it would happen there. Where her mother had died.
Nick. She couldn’t let Nick die. If she died, Nick died. No one would be able to administer the antidote in time.
Aunt Sybilla! she screamed in her mind. No one answered.
She flew through the gate and raced onward. The night was silent and still. Overhead, a bright, orange moon floated. From the corners of her eyes, she saw tree trunks and bushes blurring past as she ran, indicating her extreme speed. But she felt as though she were running in quicksand, and the barn door never seemed to get any closer.
Suddenly it was there. She went through, ducking immediately to the side as though someone had whispered that’s what she should do.
Julian barreled past her, but he immediately plowed to a stop and whirled. Knife in his hand, he threw back his head and laughed.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t see you duck over there?” he said after a second. “That goddamned white dress is the same color Sabine wore that night. And believe me--” He lowered his voice to a growl. “Believe me, it made the blood stand out like a crimson river. A crimson river running from her throat.”
He curled his lip as he stared at his knife and gloated, then cocked his head to one side, worrying Wendi when he didn’t move towards her immediately. What was he thinking about? What should she try next?
Surely she was far enough back in the shadows that he couldn’t see her move her eyes. Without turning her head, she slid her eyes sideways to measure the distance to the barn door. Not that far, if she could distract him. But if she led him outside, he might go back and kill Nick.
“It’s almost as though it’s happening all over again,” Julian mused. “Do you feel it? It was cool that night, too. It was late November, though, not June. The moon was full. Do you remember?”
Throat closed in fear, she couldn’t answer him, and he snarled, “Do you! Answer me, bitch!”
“Why?” Wendi managed. “There was no reason for you to kill her.”
“No reason?” he said in a puzzled voice. “No reason? There was every reason.”
Wendi lunged for the pitchfork by her side, throwing it at him in the same motion. He tried to deflect it, but one tine pierced his arm, and he howled in pain. She leapt for the ladder to the loft beside her and scrambled up it. Plunging over the top, she peered back down to see him watching her, not attempting to follow.
He threw back his head again, demonic laughter filling the air as he plucked the pitchfork tine out of his arm and dropped the pitchfork as though he felt no pain now. Probably he didn’t, in his demented state.
“How do you think that’s going to help you?” he asked. “Are you going to try to fly out the loft window? Leave here without one last attempt to help your lover, dying on the floor in there?”
He wasn’t completely insane, Wendi realized. He could still think rationally. She wouldn’t leave Nick. She couldn’t.
At that moment, she heard a sound at the barn door. Aware Julian had heard it, too, and turned his head, she froze in fear.
Nick. Nick was clutching the side of the doorway, barely able to maintain his feet.
“Nick!” she yelled. “Get out of here!”
He kept his drugged gaze on Julian, not saying a word.
“Well, well, well,” Julian mused. “Looks like you didn’t eat enough of the henbane to keep you out cold while I killed your play pretty here, like I got rid of the one Uncle Dominic had before she could ruin everything. But that’s all right. Now all the players are here. Maybe we’ll just reenact the little drama that took place here ten years ago.”
Chapter 28
“By the Goddess, you won’t kill him!” Wendi screamed.
Her answer from Julian was another maniacal laugh, which mingled with the echoes of her shout and bounced off the barn rafters. The noise startled a flock of pigeons roosting for the night, and they flew out through the loft window, their coos and throaty chuckle-warbles an idiotic counteraction to the drama taking place below.
Wendi ducked when one white bird flew close to her face, a wingtip brushing her cheek as it whooshed past. Off balance, she fell to her knees, quickly scrambling to the side of the loft to peer down again.
Julian didn’t seem in any hurry to kill Nick. He tossed the knife back and forth from one palm to the other, carefully keeping his gaze trained on the other man. Nick tried to stagger forward a step, but had to clutch the door frame again before he fell.
“Let her go,” Nick gasped. “There’s no reason for you to kill her.”
Julian shook his head slowly from side to side. “You know that’s not true, cousin. Or haven’t the two of you figured it out that far?”
“I’ve already deeded Belle Chene over to you,” Nick said with a gasp. “Justin sent someone out yesterday and I signed the deed. The courier took it back to town to file for record.”
“Too late,” Julian said. “What good’s all this to me without someone to share it with?”
“No one need ever know!” Nick insisted. He took a step away from the doorway and stood swaying on his feet. “Whatever you want, we’ll do. I’ll take Wendi back to California with me.”
One of the pigeons had landed in the corner of the loft, and it fluttered its wings. Wendi ignored it while she desperately searched the loft for some sort of weapon. She saw only crates too big for her to move, and none of them were open so she might find something inside to use.
Just then, a small kitten stumbled into view near the pigeon. The bird flapped its wings again, startled, and a mother cat snarled nearby. The cat weaved out of a pile of hay, where the rest of the kittens were probably burrowed, and the hay shifted. For a moment, Wendi thought there was another white pigeon there, but then she realized what she saw.
Down below, Julian said, “It’s time to get this over with.”
His voice was amazingly calm and flat. He took a step toward Nick, and Wendi screamed at him.
“Don’t! Julian, Nick’s right. We’ll do anything you want!”
He didn’t even look up at her. Gripping the knife in his right hand, he advanced another cautious step toward Nick. Nick straightened and shook his head as though clearing it of the vestiges of the drug, and Julian stopped to study him.
“You’ll never be able to fight me, Nick,” Wendi heard Julian say as she got to her feet. “The drug doesn’t leave your system that fast, even if you didn’t swallow that much of it.”
The hay cushioned Wendi’s silent steps as she raced to the corner of the loft and grabbed the statue there. Smaller than most of the other statues she and Nick had found in the garden, she easily lifted it and headed back to the edge of the loft.
Julian was shaking his head at Nick, who had taken a step back again, standing in the barn doorway. Nick still swayed dangerously, and Julian feinted a jab at him, too far away to connect but close enough to make Nick jerk in reaction.
Wendi sent a brief prayer to the Goddess and threw the statue at Julian. It fell soundlessly, crashing into Julian’s right arm--knocking the knife free and sending Julian to the floor.
Nick got to the knife while Julian pushed the statue aside and stumbled to his f
eet. Wendi scrambled over to the loft ladder, grabbing her skirts in one hand and stepping onto it. She tried to watch what was happening below as she started down the ladder.
“Get back up there!” Nick ordered as he and Julian faced each other.
Wendi ignored him and took another step downward.
Shaking his head at Nick, Julian then threw back his head again. This demonic laugh was worse than any other, a mixture of howls and anger, which sent chills up Wendi’s spine. Right in the middle of it, Julian lunged for the statue on the floor beside him.
He grabbed it, swinging it back and then throwing it at Nick, crouched and holding the knife out defensively. Suddenly Julian’s face changed to terror, and it was almost as though the statue had attached itself to him. He staggered behind it, stumbling into Nick as the statue whizzed on past Nick’s head when he ducked. Both men fell to the floor, and Wendi scrambled down the rest of the ladder, staring horror-stricken at where the two of them lay on the floor.
For a too-long period of time, neither man moved, and Wendi took a hesitant step forward. She couldn’t tell which one of them groaned right then, but it was Nick who shifted free and stood. Blood dripped from the knife blade in his hand.
“I saw it, but I can’t believe it,” Nick whispered. “His shirt caught on the statue, and it jerked him forward, into me. It wasn’t as much that I killed him as that he fell right onto the knife blade.”
Wendi raced over to him, and Nick tossed the knife aside when she reached him, pulling her into his arms. They stood wrapped in each other’s embrace for a long, quiet moment before the atmosphere in the barn changed so dramatically that they pulled apart and stared at each other.
“What’s going on?” Nick asked.
“I think I know,” she replied. “Just wait and watch.”
She pulled him back from Julian’s body, over by the ladder, where they halted. The air chilled even more, and not even one sound penetrated the silence in the barn. To their left, in the area where Sabine had died, a white light began to glow. At the same moment, a darker, more grayish light engulfed Julian’s body.
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