The Lost Enchantress

by Patricia Coughlin

  He wished they were alone so he could slide his hands inside, up over her soft, warm skin all the way to her breasts. And then he remembered his vow never to touch her that way again, and he just wished things could be different.

  “Friend of Eve’s?”

  The query broke his musing and he looked up, instantly on guard and ready with a frown for the man who had appeared beside him.

  Not discouraged, the man held out his right hand and smiled. He had short sandy brown hair and was wearing a tan shirt with a Providence Fire Department emblem on the pocket.

  “Jack Porter,” he said. “I saw you walk in with Eve and I thought I’d come on over and say hello. It’s easy to get lost in this crowd.”

  He was trying to be friendly, Hazard realized. He’d seen him sitting there alone and had taken pity on him and decided to walk over and befriend him. It was the kind of basic human interaction that he vaguely remembered from long ago. He even thought there might have been a time when he was comfortable with such gestures, and the feelings that inspired them. But not now.

  He stood and went through the motion of shaking the man’s hand. “Gabriel Hazard. I find it more comfortable on the outskirts.”

  “Opposites attract, huh?” Jack Porter quipped. He caught Hazard’s puzzled look and gestured across the room to where Eve stood, laughing and surrounded by firefighters. “You and Eve. She’s really something, isn’t she? I mean, you see someone like her on television and what’s the first thing you think? Snooty. But she’s not. She mixes right in, no puttin’ on airs. And bighearted as all get out. Hell, she logged more hours by Allison’s bedside in those early days than anyone outside the family. Not afraid to get her hands dirty either; we held a car wash as a fund-raiser, and she was the first one to grab a bucket and a sponge. But then, you probably already know all that.”

  He paused and grinned, and Hazard tried to decide what he was supposed to say at this point. Porter spared him the trouble.

  “You’re lucky I’m a happily married man,” he told Hazard, “or you’d have some real competition. So. What is it you do, Gabe? Can I call you Gabe?”

  “Why not?” Hazard countered, thinking that the other man’s friendliness might be motivated at least in part by a desire to find out if he was good enough for Eve. “I’m in finance.”

  Porter nodded. “Investments, that kind of thing?”

  Hazard nodded. It was true enough. He was good at managing investments. You could become good at most anything if you had enough time.

  Porter winced and whistled softly between his teeth. “That’s got to be a tough business these days, with the economy tanking and all.”

  “It has its moments. I’m sure your work does also.”

  “Oh yeah,” Porter agreed heartily. “Long hours, the city always trying to stiff us at contract time, and I threw my back out humpin’ hose the other day. Hurts like a bastard.” He braced his hands at his waist and bent slightly from side to side. “I still wouldn’t trade it for anything else. It’s in my blood; my grandfather was a fire-man, I’ve got uncles and cousins on the job, and my dad worked a ladder until he got bumped up to investigations.”

  Hazard regarded him with new interest. “Your father is a Providence fire investigator?”

  “Was. He retired a few years back, but he was lead investigator for over twenty years. He handled all the big fires in the city. And man, has he got stories.”

  “I’m sure he does.” Hazard formed a smile and held his hand out toward the empty chair beside his. “Have a seat, Jack. I’d love to hear a few of them.”

  Seventeen

  Eve had greeted nearly everyone before she noticed Allie’s boyfriend, Matt, sitting by himself just outside the glass doors that separated the burn unit’s waiting area from the treatment rooms beyond. The receptionist had told her that Allie and her mother were with the doctor, going over last-minute details, and that she would let Eve know when it was time to join them. She settled into the seat beside Matt to wait.

  He had short, spiky blond hair and the solid build of a line-backer. Over the past year Eve had gotten to know him and discovered his heart was also solidly built. He and Allie had been high school sweethearts, and at the risk of losing his football scholarship, he’d taken the year off from college to be by her side as she recovered.

  In the days immediately following the fire, when Allison was still in critical condition and visitors were limited to immediate family, Matt had camped out in the waiting room and made coffee runs and trips to the hospital cafeteria so her parents didn’t have to leave her side. When he was finally allowed to see her, he’d held her hand through excruciatingly painful dressing changes and brought her smoothies when she couldn’t chew and read to her when she couldn’t sleep. Everyone said how lucky Allie was to have Matt, but whenever he looked at Allison or talked about her, Eve could see in his eyes how lucky Matt thought he was to have Allie.

  “How is she?” Eve asked him.

  “Pretty good,” Matt replied. “A little worried, I think, but hanging in there. And trying not to show she’s worried, for her parents’ sake. You know how Allie is.”

  “She’s a trooper, all right,” Eve agreed.

  “I think the doc is in there right now giving her an idea of what to expect.”

  His expression was hopeful. Maybe too hopeful based on case histories she’d come across in researching the fire story.

  “That’s good,” she told him. “After all, Dr. Abrams has been through this hundreds, maybe even thousands of times.”

  “Yeah. I just hope that . . . I mean, I know we can’t expect, you know, for her to be exactly the way she was before, but I just keep hoping . . .” He trailed off, shrugging and staring at the toes of his sneakers, suddenly looking awkward and younger than his twenty years.

  Eve said the words so he didn’t have to. “You hope she looks like the Allison you fell in love with.”

  “No,” he blurted, swinging his horrified gaze her way. “I mean, yes, I guess that is what I hope, but not for me, not because I want the girl I fell in love with back . . . I just want Allison. I can’t even stand to think about how close I came to losing her . . . how it could have been her who . . .”

  He stood, shoved his hands in his pockets, looking ready to bolt, and then sat back down and jiggled one blue-jean-clad leg restlessly. “I know Allison sometimes wishes it could have been her and not Cassie who . . .”

  Eve nodded understandingly.

  “I sort of get that,” he continued. “And I would never say this to Allie or to her folks, but I thank God every night that it was her who made it out of there. I wouldn’t want to live without her.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being thankful the woman you love is alive,” Eve assured him.

  “Well, right or wrong, that’s how I feel. And yeah, I do hope the grafts took perfectly and she looks like she used to look, but not for me. I swear to you that I’ll love her just the same no matter what she looks like. I want it for her.” He hunched forward, his forearms resting on his thighs. “It’s going to be tough enough for her to get up every morning and look in the mirror and see Cassie’s face looking back at her. But I think it’ll be even harder if there are scars to remind her why Cassie’s not around and how bad that last night was. Maybe if the scars aren’t that bad, then someday, not right away, but someday, she’ll look in the mirror and remember only Cassie, only the good stuff.”

  Tears welled in her eyes as she threw her arm around his shoulders to give him a quick hug.

  “Does that make sense?” he asked her.

  “Perfect sense. And if Dr. Abrams is half as good as they say he is, you could get your wish. All we can do now is keep our fingers crossed.”

  Dr. Abrams, the plastic surgeon who’d grafted new skin onto Allison’s forehead and left cheek and down the left side of her neck, specialized in treating facial burns. Patients and colleagues alike used words like “genius” and “miracle worker” to describe
him. For Allie’s sake, Eve prayed they were right.

  Matt’s words haunted her.

  On her office bulletin board, she had a picture of Allison and Cassidy taken the summer before their freshman year. They’d just returned from a marathon off-to-college shopping trip and were sitting on their front porch drowning in stuff—shopping bags and shoe boxes, oversized pillows and a mini fridge, and matching lamps with beaded fringed shades. Pink for Cassie and lavender for Allison. Just a couple of pretty, blue-eyed blondes with flawless skin and perfect teeth and a nightmare waiting for them just around the corner.

  Allie once told her that she knew that as long as she lived, there would be a Cassie-sized hole in her world. Eve had wanted to tell her she was wrong, that time heals all wounds, but she couldn’t lie. Instead, she told her that time would dull the ache of her loss, and as impossible as it seemed to her at that moment, a day would come when it wasn’t the first thing she thought of when she woke up and the last thing before she fell asleep. But there would always be a hole in her world where her sister should be; it would be right beside her wherever she went, like a shadow, like the missing limb of an amputee that goes on hurting long after it’s not there anymore.

  Matt’s words haunted her, and it wasn’t until she was in the treatment room with Allie and her mother that she realized she’d been only half right when she said the only thing they could do now was keep their fingers crossed. It was true that all he could do was cross his fingers and perhaps pray for the best possible outcome. But if she chose to, she might be able to do considerably more.

  The question was, should she?

  She didn’t have time to mull over the potential consequences or debate the moral and ethical fine points of using magic to tweak reality and give back to Allie a little of what had been taken from her.

  Hazard was right: rejecting magic was her way of atoning for her mistakes. But what if there was a better way?

  Dr. Abrams was already loosening the special tape securing the bandage on Allie’s forehead. She was seated on the examining table facing him, with Eve and Olivia Snow standing on the other side of the table.

  Her father had opted to wait outside. He’d pleaded a weak stomach, but throughout this whole ordeal, Eve had never seen a hint of squeamishness in Daniel Snow. She surmised it wasn’t the sight of soiled bandages or raw scars that scared him, but the fresh pain and disappointment he might see in his little girl’s eyes. She’d already been through so much. They all had. For better or worse, Allison’s face would be an ever-present reminder of Cassie for her parents too. The invisible waves of hope and fear coming from her mother were every bit as strong as what she was picking up from Allie herself. How could she not do everything in her power to help them?

  She was still opposed to magic. At least she thought she was. It had all become so complicated. Once her opposition had been drawn with sharp, bold stokes, as black and white as a pureblood Dalmatian, as black and white as magic itself; now there were patches of gray, and in places the lines between black and white had blurred until they were almost impossible to see.

  She’d been willing to break her own rules to help Hazard because she believed he’d been wronged and deserved a second chance. Didn’t Allie deserve the same?

  Of course she did. If there was a moral, righteous reason for an innocent nineteen-year-old girl to be permanently disfigured, Eve wasn’t interested in hearing it. At that moment her only reservations were of a more logistical bent. What if by altering just the tiniest bit of the fabric of reality, a swatch no bigger than, say, Allison Snow’s face, she was screwing with some elaborate, finely woven and minutely detailed cosmic plan to benefit all mankind. Fate, in other words.

  On the other hand, if there actually was a grand cosmic scheme, she had a part in it just like everyone else. She was a cog in the wheel, and for all she knew it was her cogly duty to use the power she’d been born with to help Allison. It might be her mission to correct some other cog’s screwup. If she had the courage.

  She remembered what Grand had said about a prophecy being only a possibility, that there was still a choice. There was a choice to be made here too.

  Her head was beginning to hurt. And time was tick-tick-ticking away. If she was going to act, she better do it fast. It seemed to Eve that someone far wiser and more experienced than she was ought to be making the call, but that someone wasn’t here. Her vote was the only one that counted, and she voted to give Allison the break she deserved.

  Her decision made, Eve hung the “Second Thoughts Need Not Apply” sign and focused her attention on the light over Dr. Abrams’s left shoulder, tuning out everything else.

  When her thoughts had quieted, she conjured an image of Allison as she appeared in the photo in her office, consciously filling in one detail at a time until the image in her mind’s eye was as close as she could possibly make it to the way Allie must have looked on the day the picture was taken, bright with happiness and anticipation, her chin high, her cheeks flushed with laughter. When the image was solidly in place, Eve gathered her power from deep within and released it, willing it to flow to Allison. Immediately she felt a change in the air between them.

  “Is it me, or is it getting very warm in here?” Allison asked, evidence she felt something too. It was the first time she’d spoken since the doctor began his work and her voice trembled.

  “It’s just nerves, honey,” her mother soothed. “Try to relax.”

  “Always listen to your mom,” Dr. Abrams teased without taking his eyes off what he was doing. “And don’t you dare faint on me.”

  “I won’t,” Allie promised. “I just felt weird for a second. Guess I am a little nervous.”

  “That’s natural,” the doctor assured her. “Just remember what we talked about. Today is only the next step on what could be a long road. We’re not expecting to find perfection under these bandages, only progress. There may be things we’ll need to adjust, or maybe even redo.” In a lighter tone, he added, “Don’t worry; I have all kinds of magic tricks up my sleeve.”

  That makes two of us, Eve thought wryly.

  “Eve?”

  “I’m right here, Allison.”

  “Would you mind . . . do you think you could hold my hand?” She turned her hand palm up on the paper-covered examining table.

  “Of course.” Eve took her hand and felt the physical connection strengthen the invisible flow of energy. Her focus was clear and strong and pure, her single intention to use her power to restore the natural order.

  Let what once was, be again, she thought, over and over.

  The words were both simple and profound. She couldn’t restore all that Allie had lost; she couldn’t give her what she wanted most. She couldn’t bring Cassie back. The best she could provide was a true image of herself—and her sister—when she looked in a mirror, and whatever peace of mind that brought her in the days and years to come.

  There was silence in the room. Everyone present understood the significance of the next few moments; idle chatter would not be welcome.

  Finally Dr. Abrams peeled away the first bandage, the one covering Allison’s forehead, and dropped it on the steel procedure table at his side. He stood very still and blinked several times; he and the nurse assisting him exchanged a quick look that could mean anything.

  Allison caught it too. “What?” she demanded. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all,” Abrams assured her. “So far, so good.”

  “Hold still, Allie,” instructed the nurse.

  He worked more quickly after that. Probably anxious to see what was under the remaining gauze, Eve thought. He wasn’t alone. From where she was standing, Eve could see only the back of Allison’s head. Trying to curb her impatience, she concentrated on concentrating. The bandage covering Allie’s cheek was removed next, followed by the one on her neck. All the while, Allie’s grip on her hand became steadily tighter . . . and damper.

  Without shifting his intense gaze fr
om Allison, Dr. Abrams reached behind him to pull the wall-mounted light closer. As he carefully examined her face, it looked to Eve as if he was doing his best not to look surprised. Like a man who’d just had the antiseptic white tile jerked out from under him, she thought.

  “Amazing,” he said quietly.

  “Good amazing or bad amazing?” Allison asked.

  “Good. Very, very good actually,” he told her.

  “So good I almost can’t believe it,” added the nurse.

  The doctor picked up a hand mirror and held it out to her. “See for yourself, Allison.”

  Allison let go of Eve’s hand to take the mirror; a deep breath lifted her shoulders as she positioned it to see her face.

  As she moved, Eve caught a quick glimpse of one side of her forehead and thought it looked a little red, but smooth.

  Seconds ticked by like hours, and Allie didn’t say a word. Then she squealed, a loud sound of unmistakable joy and relief, and she bounded off the table and across the room to the larger mirror hanging on the wall.

  She stared at herself in the mirror and touched her cheek, and then she lifted her chin and turned her head back and forth several times.

  “Wow,” she said softly. “Oh . . . wow.”

  “Allison, honey, turn around so we can—” Olivia Snow gasped as Allie turned to face them. She clasped her hands over her mouth, tears spilling. “Oh, dear Lord, thank you. It’s a miracle, I swear.”

  Allison looked beautiful. She looked . . . like Allison.

  Reality bends to desire, thought Eve, no less amazed because she understood more than the others possibly could what had just happened.

  There were tears and hugs and laughter, and then Matt and Allison’s father were there and there were more hugs. Dr. Abrams was thanked again and again, and he continued to look a bit stunned. When Allie was eventually allowed to go out to the crowded waiting room, there were more gasps, followed quickly by cheers.