by Julie Leto
“Punch me,” she yelled at the woman.
“What?”
Gemma threw a swing, connecting with the side of the woman’s head. She stumbled but didn’t fall.
“You did not just do that,” the woman yelled.
“Yes, I did. And I’ll do it again if it means saving my damned life. And yours. Now punch me.”
In a blurred spin, the woman kicked. Gemma felt her jaw snap just before she hit the ground hard.
In a haze of pain and disorientation, she watched the helicopter rise into the air. As the sound of the blades receded, she registered commands coming from the direction of the car.
“Gemma? Gemma?”
Farrow.
She attempted to grin, but the pain spiked and she rolled onto her stomach.
“What happened, baby? Were they headed to that island? I just got a communiqué. Where’s Rousseau going?”
Mustering all her strength, will, resolve and stubbornness, Gemma pushed one more lie through her bleeding mouth before she surrendered to the darkness.
“What have I—?”
Alexa cut off his shock with a kiss.
He indulged her for a moment, then pulled away.
“I nearly…” Shame shook his voice and turned his eyes to liquid silver.
She splayed her hands on either side of his face. “But you didn’t. You’re free of the evil, Damon. Now, finish what you’ve started.”
She clutched him tighter with her legs and he immediately knew what she needed. Back against the door, he thrust inside her again, this time more gently, until she tumbled over the brink into ecstasy.
Still holding tight to her, he braced his forehead against hers and tried to catch his breath.
“I—”
“Don’t say anything.”
“We can’t stay here.”
She lifted his chin. “You can take me anywhere, just not by magic. No. More. Magic.”
He lowered her to the ground, swept up their clothes and then lifted her back into his arms, this time cradling her against his chest. As he marched up the stairs and into the study, he said nothing. He tossed the remnants of their clothes onto the chair, then laid her gently on the chair near the fire.
She started to speak, but he’d already turned away. He filled two goblets with wine, downed one, refilled, then handed one to her. He grabbed the cloak from the corner of the chair and spread it over her to chase off the chill. The brooch, a massive fire opal that flamed in the light from the hearth, sat heavy on her shoulder.
“I am sorry, Alexa.”
She reached for his hand, but he stared down at her fingers as if she were poison. Or, more accurately, as if he was.
She took a sip of the bold red wine, closing her eyes as the flavors of oak and berry washed over her tongue, quelling the shivers running up and down her spine.
“You should have waited for me,” she said softly. “You shouldn’t have used the magic.”
She patted the plush footstool in front of her, but he clearly preferred to pace.
“I could have killed you.”
She twisted her fingers into the necklace with the triangle charm. “No, I don’t think you could.”
She relaxed against the cushioned wingback and lazed in her nudity, enjoying the way the wine warmed her from the inside out. She wondered how and if Damon, who now knew not to call upon Rogan’s magic, was going to reclaim his clothes, besides the ripped shirt that now lay tangled with her mangled outfit. He’d vanished his breeches, his last act of magic before she’d coaxed the evil out of him using her most powerful weapon—her sexuality.
Who knew?
The thought, coupled with the wine and the headiness of victory, made her chuckle.
“I see nothing funny about what just happened,” he chastised.
She waved her hand at him. “I was just wondering about your pants. Poof!”
Frowning, he glanced down at his naked body. This, for some unknown reason, made her laugh harder.
“You’re incorrigible,” he said, pointing his finger before stalking to the wardrobe, where he pulled out a new pair of breeches and punched his arms into the sleeves of a white shirt.
“No, I’ve just learned that life is too precious to waste on regrets. The charm protected me, Damon, but there’s no telling what the magic might have done to you if I hadn’t thought to ravish you.”
“It’s safe to say,” he said, tying the stays on his breeches with a firm tug, “ravishment is a welcome defense against the evil, but I’d rather avoid that situation in the future.”
“Agreed.”
In the quiet lull, she hooked her finger and motioned him to join her. Not quite as resistant as before, he managed to settle on the footstool in front of her, his long legs stretched across the carpet, nearly touching the fireplace grate. She hooked her arms around his neck and eased him back against her. Seconds later, the cat poofed into the room and immediately settled into Damon’s lap.
No matter how much wine she drank, a difficult question sat like a weight in the pit of her stomach. “Why did you risk everything? All you had to do was wait.”
Damon buried his fingers in the cat’s fur. “I’ve waited two hundred and sixty years to be free. Darkness came. You were not here. I rationalized that you could not find an answer, so you chose not to come.”
She rolled her eyes. Men, even those from the eighteenth century, could be so incredibly stupid. “I was running late. Women do that from time to time. I’d think I’d be worth waiting for.”
He took her hand and kissed each of her fingers. “No one who knew me in my time would deny I’m a fool where women are concerned.”
Chuckling at his own joke, he retreated to silence, and they enjoyed a rare and comfortable moment. So many struggles were ahead of them—the least of which was his transference from phantom to living and breathing man, but Alexa had no doubt they could face the challenges together. Even now, she suspected he was keeping something from her, but she wouldn’t force him to share. What had just happened between them, what had been happening over the course of the last week, had sapped her emotionally. She needed time to sort through the aftermath. She figured he needed the same.
But that didn’t give either of them a reprieve from discovering a way to counteract the magic. “What was that room down there? It was practically outside.”
Damon gave the cat a generous scratch behind his ears. “Practically, but not quite. Rogan used it for spiritual purposes, I understand. I’d completely forgotten about it until I read more of Sarina’s diary. She wrote that he called it the castle’s heart. He invoked the magic of the Gypsies there. I thought perhaps—”
“Now, see, that’s where you’re going wrong,” she said, gesturing with her goblet, which was suddenly in need of a refill.
He quirked a brow. “Excuse me?”
“Not in reading the diary,” she insisted. “It’s actually about time you did that, after all the trouble Cat and Rousseau’s son went to in order to get it. But I have my doubts about you re-creating the castle and its furnishings in order to locate the source of the magic. I understand what you meant to accomplish, but you’ve done every room now, haven’t you? Have you found anything?”
Damon cradled the cat in his arms as he stood and retrieved the decanter. “I thought perhaps the answer was in the mosaics. Rogan had several of them, nearly one in every room. I re-created them tile by tile, but when I called to the magic, nothing responded.”
“Maybe what’s wrong is that what you’re re-creating is just that—a re-creation. You’re not conjuring the actual objects, are you?”
He frowned. “I cannot say one way or another with any certainty.”
After dropping the cat, who curled up near Alexa, Damon poured her wine and then abandoned the decanter. Hooking his hands behind his back, he paced the room with long, pensive strides, his unfastened shirt billowing around him, his bared chest gleaming in the firelight. His skin still shimmered with sw
eat, and Alexa’s mouth watered for a salty taste of him. She’d come so close to losing him—perhaps forever.
She cleared her throat. “Then let’s assume the objects you conjured are just magical copies. Nothing could exist for nearly three hundred years without fading or cracking or being destroyed. Everything you’ve created looks brand-new.”
He gave a curt nod. “Go on,” he urged.
“As I promised,” she said, not hiding the reproach in her voice, “I spent the day trying to work out a solution. And I realized that while re-creating the castle might give you a clue as to the location of the magical source, you are working on too many suppositions and not enough facts.”
“And what are the facts?”
“That when you materialized in this castle, there was only one object here with you.”
Damon crunched his brow. “The cat?”
Dante mewed nastily.
“No, he’s ghostly like you.”
“You mean the painting?”
She nodded. Instantly, Damon dashed out of the room.
“Damon, wait!”
He did not. Still naked, she wrapped the cloak around herself and ran toward the landing.
Damon had removed the painting from the wall. His likeness, frozen in oil, stared back at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was peering close to the canvas, looking over every single detail. In the shadowed corner where he’d claimed to have first spotted the redheaded woman. Along the edges where the canvas tucked tightly into the frame. In every fruit basket and representation of fire.
“The answer has to be here,” he muttered.
Banging sounded on the front door. Alexa jumped. Daylight was at least an hour away. Who could be on her island?
“Paulie?” she called, walking cautiously down the steps.
The reply was muffled.
Damon pointed at the door.
“Let no one in!” he shouted.
The thumping continued. The rhythm was unmistakably frantic.
Damon had turned back to the painting. Alexa hurried down the steps. The closer she got, the clearer the muffled voice became.
“Alexa, it’s Cat! Open up! We have Rousseau.”
She struggled with the latch, but once the door opened, Cat flew into her arms. Their hug conveyed a backlash of emotion neither of them had time to process. Relief. Fear. Desperation. Elation. Suddenly, Cat pushed her back but kept her hands on her shoulders.
“What are you wearing?” Cat asked.
Alexa tugged at the dark material, pulling the sides close around her naked body. “Um, a cloak?”
Cat arched a brow. “I can see that. And you got this cloak from whom?”
Alexa glanced over her shoulder. Damon had the painting held high above his head, as if about to smash it to the ground.
“Damon!” she screamed.
Her shout didn’t deter him. He stalked to the railing, frustration etched deep into every line on his face. He was on the verge of hurling the cursed painting over the landing when another voice, this one male and booming, echoed against the stone walls.
“Stop or you’ll never be free of Rogan’s curse!”
“What?” Alexa asked, shocked. How did they know? “Damon!”
He jerked to a halt, but the weight of the frame and the forward momentum stole the painting from his hands. Alexa screamed as the key to Damon’s freedom flew over the banister and shattered on the stone floor below.
28
Standing at the end of the dock, Jacob watched the yacht’s stern lights until they were nothing more than tiny pinpoints. Sure. Take the witch bitch and her new posse to Alexa, but don’t take him. See if he cared.
He turned away from the water, but the fact that he did care about his sister vexed him more than Cat’s frantic arrival at the marina just before dawn or the way both the guy in the bomber jacket and the old man stuck to his ex like glue. He’d considered confronting them, challenging them when they’d ordered Alexa’s feisty captain to shuttle them to the island, but he’d decided to keep his mouth shut. He also needed to get to the island so he could find the magic source for the K’vr. He only hoped he could keep Alexa out of the cross fire.
Sitting on the dock, he dangled his feet over the edge, just inches from the sloshing salt water, and tried to remember the man he used to be—the boy, really—who’d been so consumed with jealousy and hatred toward his stepsister that he’d arranged to have her killed. He’d siphoned thousands of dollars out of a little-used Chandler account and paid off not only an ex-con with auto mechanic experience to tamper with the brakes on the company limo, but the driver of the semi whose job it had been to run the car off the road. He’d had no idea his mother and stepfather would be running late for a trip to Bermuda and that they’d hop into Alexa’s limousine to share the ride.
He’d watched them drive away, frozen, too afraid to stop them before they left with Alexa or waylay their departure or even volunteer to drive them himself so only his stepsister would die in the crash. All the options had come to him only later. At that time, he’d been paralyzed by his fear. The first hour passed in a frantic blur.
The waiting. The dread. The oh-so-secret delight.
He’d snorted his way through that hour. Shot up through the next. Drank through the third. It wasn’t until morning when he’d learned that Richard Chandler and his beloved second wife had died while Alexa, his target, had only sustained serious injuries.
He’d learned a hard lesson that day. About fate. About retribution. About karma. As he’d helped his sister recover, he’d searched for spiritual cleansing. He’d found it with the K’vr.
“Toss aside past sins. Embrace the future power.”
That mantra had saved his life. And Alexa’s. He’d studied hard, often alongside the leader’s odd but intelligent son. Over time, the kid—on his father’s orders, probably—had encouraged Jacob to get close to his sister, not knowing the devious teen would call on him later to use Alexa to build his road to power. But then, Jacob hadn’t objected. He’d agreed.
Now he had to figure out how to get her out of the mix without getting her killed.
“Waiting for the sunrise?”
Jacob spun so fast, he nearly lost his balance. Alexa’s assistant grabbed him by the shirt and tugged him away from a cold, dark dunking.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, trying to remember the girl’s name.
Her hands buried deep in the pockets of a long windbreaker, she hugged herself against the salt-scented breeze. “Couldn’t pass up a chance to see dawn over the Atlantic.”
He twisted so he faced the water again. He really didn’t need or want company right now. He had to figure out what to do about Keith and Alexa and the charm and the castle and who knew what else. Keith had been calling his cell phone for hours. He could claim bad reception for only so long. He didn’t need his sister’s gopher interrupting his thoughts.
“The view’s likely better over there,” Jacob replied, pointing to the main pier, which jutted farther into the water.
“Company’s better here.”
The sensual tone in her voice caught his attention. He’d interacted with the woman many times, but in Alexa’s presence, he’d never gotten more out of her than a curt brush-off.
“What’s your name again?”
“Rose,” she replied, scooting down onto the edge of the pier beside him.
“Rose,” he repeated. He glanced sideways at her, but she was staring intently across the inky black ocean. The stars that had blanketed the sky when he’d first decided to wait at the marina rather than return to his hotel room were fading from view. Unless Cat fucked things up, Alexa would soon return to the mainland. If Jacob wanted her safe, which he was growing more certain he did, he’d have to convince her to abandon this project until he could get the situation under control.
“You been here all night?” Rose asked.
“Hard to beat the view,” he said.
“You can’
t see anything in the dark. I thought maybe you were avoiding someone.”
He stared at her, but she still hadn’t turned her face away from the water. “Why would you think that?”
“You’re not answering your cell phone.”
“You called me?”
“He’s not pleased that you’re avoiding him,” she said cryptically. “Not pleased at all.”
When she finally faced him, her cold stare chilled him to the marrow.
“Who are you?” he asked, but the answer popped into his head before her mouth curved into a self-satisfied smile.
The mole?
“How do you know Keith?” He asked the question on the off chance Rose was relaying an innocent phone message.
“Same way you do.”
No such luck.
She twirled a blond lock behind her ear and revealed a tattoo—a hawk carrying a fire red jewel—along the base of her neck. Most K’vr members had the brand in inconspicuous places or hidden among other, more mundane tattoos. That this woman wore hers so boldly spoke to her devotion.
“I’ve never noticed that before,” he said.
“Makeup does wonders.” She glanced behind her, as if waiting for someone, and seconds later, Jacob saw a stretch Hummer pull up the marina drive, gaudy lights trimming the windows and a purple glow emanating from underneath. Crass and juvenile.
Keith.
Jacob moved to stand, but an icy steel jab in his side stopped him cold. The weapon, clutched confidently in Rose’s hand, dispelled any thought he might have of escape.
For him…or for Alexa.
With a deafening slam, the portrait shattered against the marble floor. Gold-leafed wood splintered in every direction. Damon watched as Alexa ran forward, her hands shielding her face from the spray of sharp spikes.
“Alexa, no!” Damon commanded.
She skidded a few feet away from the ruined portrait, the cloak flapping around her, revealing her nude body in a flash of fabric. His throat tightened. His heart raced. His image lay amid the ruins, wilted and torn, and still he felt nothing.