The entire outfit, right down to the watch fob hanging several inches below his waist and the carved walking stick in his hand, was very familiar to Eve. She might not be the diehard romantic her sister Chloe was, but she had still seen every Jane Austen film ever made, several times. She recognized classic Regency fashion when she saw it, and although this guy was closer to Mr. Darcy’s sickly grandfather than Darcy himself, he still looked like a time traveler from nineteenth-century England. Which made no sense at all.
For a second after he appeared, no one moved. Then Hazard lunged at him, only to be stopped short by the shield, which remained in place. That was probably a good thing, she thought, because Hazard looked ready to kill. Incensed, he raised his arms and pounded his fists against the shield, but nothing happened; as hard as he hammered it, the contact made absolutely no sound at all. Because, Eve realized, the barrier wasn’t material. It was a magical construct of pure energy and will. And it wasn’t budging.
It also wasn’t soundproof. She could hear Hazard loud and clear and there was no mistaking the single word he bellowed.
“Pavane!”
Pavane? Was this the jilted bridegroom who’d cursed Hazard? A descendent, connected by blood and dark magic, to the sorcerer who’d stolen the talisman and murdered poor Maura T’airna over two hundred years ago.
At the sound of his name, Pavane spun around to face Hazard, who looked like a caged animal without the cage. The two men glared at each other through the barely visible shield. After a moment, Pavane cautiously raised his hand and slid his open palm through the air close to the barrier. Whatever he sensed must have convinced him Hazard wasn’t an immediate threat, and with a dismissive sneer he turned his back on him and walked away.
And ran smack into the chalk boundary of the still-active circle.
Eve was torn between delight at seeing him trapped inside the circle, and concern that they were trapped in there with him.
Pavane glanced down and his startled expression gave way to one of disdain; this time when he raised his hand, palm out, fingers spread, the air in front of him crackled and shimmered as he blew a hole in the circle. Free, he strode across the room, his sharp gaze darting around, lighting here and there, the way a bird flits from branch to branch on a tree. He hunched forward to peer out the window, scanning the landscape in both directions.
“What place is this?” he demanded. His voice was strained and hoarse, like a rusty old pump needing to be primed after years of disuse. “What city?”
“Providence,” Taggart replied guardedly.
Behind the shield Hazard was silent and still, a coiled serpent.
When Pavane turned away from the window, his eyes were full of wonder and questions. “What year?”
When Taggart told him, Pavane’s eyes opened even wider. He pointed a gnarled finger toward the window beside him. “Those carriages . . . what manner of—”
Taggart cut him off. “Sorry, old man, my turn. I know who you are, so we can skip that one. Where the hell did you come from?”
“From here. And then nowhere, and now here again.”
“Here?” Taggart’s eyes narrowed. “You mean this realm? The mortal realm?”
Pavane nodded. His chest rose and fell with a faint wheezing sound.
“And nowhere?” Taggart persisted. “Where exactly would that be?”
“Nowhere. The void,” Pavane retorted, impatient. “That place which is not.”
“You mean death?”
He shook his head, his cracked pink-gray lips curling back over his teeth. “Not death, fool. Death is the end. As you can plainly see, I was not ended, merely interrupted. And now I am back.”
“And who, pray tell, had the good sense to do the interrupting?” inquired Taggart.
“Who would dare?” Pavane countered arrogantly. He strutted a few steps, his walking stick clicking on the wood flow. “I did it myself, of course. I hid my body and lulled my spirit and sent it forth to wait.”
Taggart’s eyes narrowed. “To wait for what?”
His dark gaze honed in on Eve in a way that made her shiver, but she refused to flinch or look away.
“For her,” he declared. “The Lost Enchantress.”
Thirteen
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Eve told him. Pavane angled his head and regarded her suspiciously. “I speak of the fulfillment of the prophecy, of course. I speak of the T’airna woman destined to restore her once mighty lineage. For eight score years and ten I have waited in wretched darkness for the enchantress with the power to pierce the realms and call me back. I waited for you.”
“No. You’re wrong,” she insisted, shaking her head, even as things that Grand had told her—or tried to—about her destiny came to mind. “I didn’t call anyone back from anywhere. I don’t practice magic. And even if I did, I certainly don’t have the kind of power to . . .” She swept her hand in the air. “To do what you said, piercing realms and the rest of it. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“That proves I am right. You don’t need to know; you are. Before I departed this realm, I joined my essence to the talisman with a binding spell. I knew that only the prophesized one, she with the true gift of T’airna blood, would be able to summon the full power of the talisman to release the binding spell and summon me as well. And that’s what you have done. All my praise and gratitude is yours, dear Enchantress.”
Eve struggled to make sense of what he was saying. Could he be right? Could Grand be right? No, this was no time to start wondering about Grand’s predictions. She couldn’t even wrap her brain around what was happening at that moment. Could it be true that she somehow, unknowingly, brought about Pavane’s return by—how had he put it—summoning the talisman’s power and him along with it?
Consequences, there were always consequences. And judging by her experience, they were usually bad. How could she have forgotten that? She hadn’t forgotten, she realized. She’d simply wanted to help Hazard enough to put her convictions aside and hope for the best. And now the lamentable result was standing right in front of her, hands outstretched, and moving closer.
This time she couldn’t help flinching.
“Touch her and die, Pavane.”
Hazard’s voice came from behind her, soft and deadly and at that moment the most heartening sound she’d ever heard. It didn’t matter that he was still trapped behind the shield she’d conjured; she believed, with the same unsubstantiated certainty with which she once believed in Santa Claus, that he wouldn’t allow anything bad to happen to her.
Pavane sneered contemptuously, but he didn’t move any closer to her.
“Yours?” he inquired of Hazard.
“Not really,” Hazard returned in a careless drawl. “I simply enjoy taking women away from you. Not that it’s much of a challenge. Especially now. I didn’t think it was possible for you to look more withered and decrepit than when I saw you last.” He paused just long enough to run his derisive gaze down to Pavane’s feet and back up. “I was wrong.”
Pavane tried to hide his displeasure with a raspy laugh, but it was obvious Hazard had hit a sore spot.
“You lie,” Pavane said to him. “And try to distract me with insults. But I see the truth. You have feelings for the enchantress; that will make the coming days all the sweeter for me.”
“I’ll tell you what’s sweet,” countered Hazard. “Knowing you went to all the trouble of sending yourself on a roundtrip to nowhere just so you could come back here and end up dead at my hands.”
“It’s I who should have killed you, you swine,” retorted Pavane. “Instead, I bowed to pride and vengeance and cursed you, and by doing so I cursed myself. Immortality, that was my curse to you.”
Eve stiffened as if she’d touched a live wire. Immortality? Somewhere in her brain a dam let go and bits and pieces of information that had been getting caught and accumulating there rushed forward. The curious, dated aspects of the tale Hazard told of being cursed . . .
and the curious, dated quality of his speech and his manners. The way Pavane was dressed, and his claim that he’d been waiting for her for eight score years and ten, and how quickly Hazard had recognized him.
The only explanation that made sense made no sense: the man who’d appeared before them today wasn’t a descendent of the original Phineas Pavane as she’d first thought; he was the original. The man who stole the talisman from her family was the same man who used it to curse Hazard. And suddenly the notion that it was an immortality curse didn’t only sound less crazy, it sounded like the truth.
Lines spoken by Taggart just moments ago ran through her head . . . red for life, black for death, white for passage safe. And there had also been something about a last desire. She’d wondered what all that had to do with a bad-luck curse, but she’d figured they knew better than she did. Glancing down, she saw the pocket watch Taggart had placed on the mirror with such care. Magic was full of pomp and metaphor, and a watch was the perfect symbol for the passage of time, far better suited to immortality than bad luck.
It all added up to one thing: if Pavane was telling the truth, then Hazard hadn’t.
It was as simple and as devious as that.
He’d lied to her, and used her . . . or tried to. He might well have succeeded if Pavane and his binding spell hadn’t gotten in the way. Eve could feel her face growing hot as the direction of her thoughts made her bristle and fume inwardly. The ritual was meant to block the energy fueling the curse so that natural order would be restored. And it didn’t take a genius or an evil sorcerer to figure out that for a man cursed with immortality two hundred years ago, the natural order was dead.
If things had gone as planned, Hazard would be dead. And she would have had a hand in it. The realization infuriated her, but the sharp sudden pain in her chest went deeper than anger. It cut right through to the fear buried beneath all the little bits and pieces of life that make up the days and the weeks and the years, all the things that dull and distract and make it possible to go on living when you’ve lost someone you love, when grief and guilt join forces and threaten to obliterate everything you were before, and everything you could have been.
Refusing to give in to fear, she concentrated on breathing, and to listening to Pavane rant about his reason for cursing Hazard, his twisted desire for Hazard to go on living so he would feel the pain of losing someone he loved over and over again.
“A fitting punishment for your transgression, don’t you think?” Pavane taunted.
Hazard refused to take the bait. He stood with arms folded, his weight resting on one leg, saying nothing. He appeared almost bored save the dark steel blade of his gaze fixed unblinkingly on Pavane’s face.
“That foolish curse cost me dearly,” Pavane went on, his wild-eyed expression turning bitter. “Better I had taken my revenge by ripping your still-beating heart from your chest and been done with you. Cursing you drained the talisman of its power, power I needed, power I had earned, and without it . . .”
His words were choked off; he stared into the distance, rigid with anger and resentment. “Without it I was at the mercy of those who sought to do me great harm. I had no choice but to do what I did. If I wanted to live, I had to seem to die. And bide my time.”
There was a faint rasping sound as he pulled in a deep breath. He looked from Hazard to her with a malicious smile, and then with surprising speed he snatched the talisman off the pedestal and held it in his clenched fist. “Now I’m back and all is well. Or soon will be. I have my talisman, and soon I will have—”
“Your talisman?” Eve blurted before she could stop herself. “That pendant belongs to me. It was stolen from my family over two centuries ago.”
“Not stolen,” he corrected. “Claimed. By me. Foolish Maura. She hoped to win my favor with her tale of the powerful talisman that safeguarded T’airna hearts, and she got her wish. I favored her then as I now favor you, sweet Enchantress.” He pinned Eve with his gaze. “Though I expect you to prove a great deal more useful to me.”
His tongue came snaking over his lips in anticipation.
“Is that why you murdered her?” Eve asked. “Because she wasn’t useful?”
“She was beyond useless,” he replied, not bothering to deny the accusation. “And you have already proven to me you are not. You are the one awaited, the most powerful enchantress in a millennium. Together we will be unstoppable.”
“I stopped you once,” Hazard reminded him. “And I’ll do it again.”
“Silence, blackguard.” With the hand not clutching the talisman Pavane scooped a ball of fire from the candle flames and hurled it at Hazard. It hit the shield and bounced back at Pavane, but just before it struck him, Pavane serenely lifted his hand and the fireball disappeared.
“Parlor tricks,” scoffed Hazard. “Is that the best you can do, old man?”
“Take down your shield and I will show you my best,” Pavane shot back.
“You’re the big bad sorcerer—take it down yourself.”
Hazard wanted the shield down and he was trying to goad Pavane into doing it, Eve realized, not sure how she felt about that. She was wary of what might happen if he and Pavane were both unleashed.
Pavane appeared to consider the challenge and then shook his head. “I think not. I have much to catch up on and much planning to do. And besides, I want to savor the anticipation of your grisly demise as long as possible.”
As he turned toward the door, Eve—driven by something stronger than common sense—blocked his path. She nodded at the talisman in his hand. “That belongs to me,” she said again.
He smiled. “And you want it?”
“Yes, I do.”
He twined the chain around and through his fingers and then held his hand up so that the pendant dangled in front of him.
Eve gasped. His palm and the inside of his fingers were red and smoldering, as if he’d grabbed a handful of hot embers and embedded them in his flesh. She could feel the heat six feet away.
“Come and take it from me, Enchantress.”
“Don’t do it, Eve,” ordered Hazard. He no longer looked or sounded the least bit bored.
She hesitated, itching to snatch the pendant from him but afraid to get close enough to do it.
“No?” Pavane laughed softly and moved his hand just enough to make the pendant swing back and forth. “Don’t fret. You shall see your precious talisman again; you shall see both of us again. And soon. I promise you that.”
With that same surprising swiftness, he brushed past her. “Follow him,” Hazard growled at Taggart, who was already on his way. Then he slammed his fists against the shield and shouted, “Stop. First take down this blasted shield.”
“Can’t,” Taggart said with an impatient nod at Eve. “It’s her doing. Only she can take it down.”
He was gone before the words were out, and Hazard shifted his frustrated glare to Eve. “Do it. Now.”
She didn’t care for his tone, but she didn’t think that was the moment to say so. Not sure exactly how she was supposed to do it now, she tried the opposite of what she did the first time. She focused on making the shield disappear and it worked.
As soon as it was gone, Hazard bolted forward and was out of the room in two long strides. By the time Eve reached the hallway, he was standing at the open front door. Though he had his back to her, she could tell he was glaring out at the street—his hands were balled into fists and he seemed to be straining at the end of an invisible leash. After a few seconds, he slammed the door and turned around.
Still glaring.
He looked volatile, and if she had been even a tiny bit less consumed by her own ire, Eve might have reasoned that perhaps it also wasn’t the time to launch an important and quite possibly contentious discussion.
As it was, she didn’t give a damn. She was feeling more than a little volatile herself. In the very pit of her stomach was a churning brew of anger and indignation and blind panic over what might have been.
> “Would you mind explaining to me what just happened?” she asked.
He responded to the cool note of demand in her voice by raising one dark brow. “Why? You saw everything I saw.”
“Yes, but apparently I don’t know everything you know. I don’t like being kept in the dark. And I don’t like being used.”
He looked as startled, and hurt, as if she’d struck him. “I didn’t use you. I never would. As for lying . . . I simply told you what you needed to know.”
“You told me it was a bad-luck curse. Was that a lie?”
He shrugged. “It’s an interpretation of the truth. The curse has been nothing but bad luck and misery for me from the day it happened.”
“And exactly what day was that?”
After a slight hesitation, he said, “May 3. 1828.”
So it was true. Stunningly, bizarrely true. And though she’d already pretty much come to that conclusion on her own, it was still jarring, and more than a little strange, to hear him say it.
“So Pavane was telling the truth,” she said. “About everything.”
“It would seem so.” His tone was rueful on the surface, bitter underneath. “Though I need to investigate his claim that he was able to attach himself to the talisman with a binding spell before I can say for sure. I didn’t think he had the skill or the power to pull off something like that.”
“He had the power of the talisman to tap into,” Eve pointed out.
“Did he? I seem to recall him blaming me for draining that power by provoking him into cursing me.”
“But he also said that I summoned the talisman’s full power. How could I do that if cursing you drained it? Can a talisman recharge itself?” she asked.
Hazard gave a slight shrug. “It’s your talisman.”
“But I haven’t spent close to two hundred years obsessing over it the way you have,” Eve retorted.
He shrugged again, but his black brows lowered in concentration. “I know it wouldn’t be possible for it to spontaneously regenerate. Something from nothing. It doesn’t work that way. For all its mystery, magic is governed by a few—a very few—principles, the exchange of energy being one of them.”
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