Forever: A Novel of Good and Evil, Love and Hope

by Jude Deveraux

  “Well, so do I!” she shouted.

  He turned to her, genuine surprise on his face. “What personal interest do you have?”

  Suddenly, her eyes were on fire. This wasn’t the joking, laughing, devil-may-care Darci he’d seen up until now. “This is my one chance to do something with my life, that’s what. What’s out there for me with a degree from a school that most people don’t even recognize as a school? What chance do I have to compete against women like the ones I saw in New York? They have education and experience. They have skills that are valuable in the workplace. But what can I do? True Persuade someone into . . . into. . . .”Abruptly, she turned away, not able to say any more. If she did, she was going to start crying.

  When she turned back to him, she was calmer. “Let’s put it this way,” she said quietly. “If you send me away, I’ll return here to Camwell, and I’ll spread it around town that I want to join this coven, and—”

  “Are you blackmailing me?”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  Adam looked at her with pleading eyes. “I have relatives who could hide you,” he said softly. “I could call them and they could come and get you. They’d keep you safe until this is over.”

  “But without me, it won’t be over, will it?” she said. “If I am the one they want, then this thing can’t be solved without me, can it?” She took a deep breath to calm herself. “Why won’t you tell me all that I need to know? I haven’t known you very long, but I’m sure that you’re the kind of man who would only use a psychic as a last resort. I can’t imagine your being involved in spells and curses. How long did you work on this ...whatever it is,before you got so desperate that you went to a psychic and did what she told you to do?”

  “Three years,” he said softly.

  Darci blinked at him. “You worked on this for three years before you found me?” She wanted to get him to tell her what had driven him to work on this for all those years. But she didn’t want to see that closed look on his face, didn’t want to risk his shutting down again. “But now you’re going to throw all those years away in an instant?” she asked quietly.

  “I can’t put another human being in danger. These people have done....”

  “Something personal to you,” she said flatly, and with resentment in her voice at his not trusting her enough to explain.

  “Oh, yes,” he said quietly. “Very, very personal.”

  “Then I must stay and help you,” she said, her hands turned palms upward in a gesture of begging. “Please let me stay. You need me. You can’t do this without me. Please.”

  Adam had to turn away from the look in her eyes. He knew that every word she’d said was right. He did need her. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything without her.

  But he also instinctively knew that before this year was over, another, as she described them, “short, skinny blonde from the South” would disappear. And later her body would be found far away from Camwell. And her left hand—

  As Darci said, he wanted to stop this. With every breath he had, he wanted to stop this. Turning, he looked at her. “You’ll have to obey me,” he said at last. “And you’ll have to stay near me at all times. You can’t put on your cat suit and run off by yourself.”

  “Did I mention that I’m a coward to the very marrow of my bones?” she said softly, her eyes alight.

  Adam shook his head. “There is nothing cowardly about you, Darci T. Monroe. Nothing even remotely resembling cowardice.”

  For a moment she stood there looking at him. “Isn’t this where the hero and heroine fall on each other and make mad, passionate love?”

  Adam laughed, and when he did, she knew that she’d won, really and truly won. He would let her stay. He wasn’t going to send her back with her tail between her legs to have to listen to Uncle Vern say, “I knew she couldn’t hold a job like that one.” She wasn’t going to have to hear Aunt Thelma say, “I would have been proud of you, but it looks like you’re gonna be your mother all over again after all.” And she wasn’t going to have to face her mother looking her up and down, blowing cigarette smoke in her face, then smiling in that way that made Darci feel that no matter how many college courses she took or how well-spoken she was, she was never going to rise above where her birth had placed her.

  “You know what?” Darci said at last. “I want to take a shower. Would you mind . . . ?” Pointedly, she nodded toward the doorway.

  “Sure,” Adam said, seeming to be glad the great emotion of the last minutes was over. “Take some time to think this over,” he said. “And I will, too. Maybe we’ll both decide that this isn’t worth the risk. Maybe we’ll decide that—”

  She closed the bedroom door on him because she didn’t want to hear his negativity. And the truth was that she wanted to get into the shower and cry. She wanted to cry because she was scared. Really and truly afraid.

  8

  AFTER DARCI SHOWERED, she dried off, put on her nightgown, slipped her arms into the thick terry-cloth bathrobe that said “The Grove” on the pocket, then walked into her bedroom. The first thing she noticed was that there were no suitcases full of clothes on the end of her bed. And when she looked into the closet, she saw that it was empty; the drawers of the chest were standing open and empty.

  Immediately, panic seized her. He hadn’t changed his mind, had he? He wasn’t going to send her away after all, was he?

  Flinging open her bedroom door, Darci ran toward the living room. But the room was dark. Confused for a moment, Darci turned back and saw that Adam’s bedroom door was open a few inches and there was a light on inside. Slowly, she pushed open the door. He was sitting up in the bed nearest the bathroom door, wearing a T-shirt, the bottom half of him covered by the bedcovers, and he was reading.

  “Take that bed,” he said, without looking up.

  “Really?” Darci asked, stepping inside the room. “You know, don’t you, that I sleep nude?”

  “Not anymore, you don’t!” Adam said quickly, then looked up at her sternly. When Darci just stood there with a grin on her face, Adam put his book down and looked at her, unsmiling. “All in all, I think it would be better if you stopped making these . . . these overtures and these....”

  “Invitations?” Darci asked, smiling.

  “Whatever you call them, I think you should stop them. If you’re going to stay and help me with this, you’re not going to be allowed out of my sight for even minutes. And I am not going to leave you alone to sleep in a room with windows where anyone could. . . .”Again he trailed off, as though the thought of what could happen to her was too much for him to think about. “Now, get into that bed and stay there,” he said.

  But Darci was still standing in one spot and smiling broadly.”Sure thing,” she said as she took off her robe, then slipped under the covers. “Did you find out anything about the dagger yet?”

  “No,” he said, with his head down, still reading. “Tomorrow, we’re going to spend the day researching. I’d like to know more about....”He glanced at her, then involuntarily down at her left hand.

  “Me too,” Darci said, her smile disappearing. It was the thought of what she’d seen and heard today that took the merriment out of her. Suddenly, she was exhausted. Turning on her side, she pulled the covers up to her shoulders and said, “Good night, Adam”, then she let her body relax fully. Soon, she had the soft, slow breathing of a person asleep.

  Adam looked at her in disbelief. Could anyone over the age of four go to sleep that easily? he wondered. Looking back at his book, he knew that he wanted to read some more, needed to, but then he yawned. It had been an exhausting day so maybe he’d be able to go to sleep this early, too.

  After turning off the bedside lamp, he snuggled down in the covers, closed his eyes, and was instantly asleep.

  In the bed next to his, Darci smiled. True Persuasion worked every time, she thought, then did indeed go to sleep.

  “Nothing,” Darci said in disgust. “I found out absolutel
y nothing. At least not anything that was relevant to us, anyway.” Her shoulders were aching, and her eyes were burning from having spent the whole day in the Camwell Library trying to find out about a prophecy that said some skinny blonde Southerner was going to be the downfall of the witches in Camwell.

  Originally, they’d wanted to go to a library in another town to do research, but after a quick glance inside the Camwell Library they knew that they weren’t going to find a better selection of books on the occult than in this library. “They come from all over to see our books,” the librarian said with twinkling eyes. “Hardly a day goes by that Yale doesn’t call and ask if we have something.”

  “And do you?” Darci asked.

  “Do I what?”

  “Have the books that Yale wants.”

  “Oh, my, yes. I haven’t failed yet. If I don’t have it, I know where I can get it. I must say that one time I did have trouble finding a book that hasn’t been in print since 1736, but I did find it.”

  “Where?” Adam asked, and when the librarian just looked at him, he said, “Where did you find such an old book?”

  “Why at—” the woman began, then broke off. “There’s the telephone. Excuse me as I must answer it.”

  There was no telephone ringing.

  “Probably her black cat calling her,” Darci muttered.

  But even in this extensive collection, Darci found nothing about a left hand with moles on it.

  While Darci had been imprisoned in the library, Adam had spent the day on the Internet and on the telephone, trying to find out what information he could—on what, Darci didn’t know because he put down the cover on the laptop, whenever she got near him. With the library’s permission, he’d hooked his computer up to a phone line in the library, so Darci was in his sight at all times. But a good part of the day he’d been outside in the sunshine talking on his cell phone—all the while keeping watch on Darci through the window. She’d tested him once by spending ten whole minutes in the rest room. But he was standing outside the door when she reentered the library.

  “It would help if you’d tell me what this magic object is,” Darci had said when they’d stopped for lunch. She’d run across the street to a shop and purchased sandwiches and bottles of juice, which they ate while sitting on the library steps. Adam didn’t even ask for his change. “And what about me allows me to open this . . . this thing?” she asked as he took a bite of turkey on whole wheat. “Whatever it is, that is? I can’t keep calling it a ‘thing.’ And how do I open it?”

  “You probably pester it to death,” Adam had muttered.

  But, pestered or not, Adam wouldn’t tell her more than he already had. No matter how hard she tried, Adam would give her no more information than he had the night before.

  And by the end of the day when they got back to the guest house, Darci was more than annoyed with him. “You put me in the library just to keep me where you could see me, didn’t you?” she said, glaring at him. “I couldn’t find out anything about any prophecy and certainly nothing about left-handed witches. Or moles. Whatever. And you knew I wouldn’t find anything, didn’t you? You knew because you know about a thousand times more than you’re telling me, don’t you? But you plan to give me enough busywork that I stay out of your way until you find this . . . this thing, then I what? Open it for you, you find out what you want to know, then you send me back to Putnam? Is that your plan?”

  “Putnam the man or Putnam the town?”Adam asked, trying to make a joke and lighten the mood. But he wasn’t as good at jokes as Darci was, and his attempt at humor fell flat.

  “I think I might turn in early tonight,” Darci said, her eyes cool and her jaw set in a firm line.

  Adam smiled in a smug way. “Sure? How about a steak dinner at the diner? Maybe you can get some information out of Sally.”

  “No, thank you,” Darci said, then turned on her heel, went into her own bedroom, and closed the door behind her.

  Adam was left standing in the living room with his mouth hanging open. Darci had just turned down food?

  Good, he thought. She’s angry at me. Now it’ll be easier to get her out of here. Now is the time to stop this whole thing. What he should do is get both of them on the next plane out of Connecticut and go home.

  But where was home? he thought. Was home where he’d grown up with his aunt and uncle and his cousins? A place where he’d never fit in? And wasn’t this trip an attempt to find out the truth about himself? To find out about his sister?

  And what about Darci? Would she return to Putnam to her big strong fiancé and get married? Or would she return to her aunt and uncle and— As Darci had said, she had very few job skills. He couldn’t see her as a receptionist. Maybe as a personal assistant for some fat old man who’d chase her around a desk or—

  Before he had any more thoughts, Adam walked to Darci’s bedroom door and raised his hand to tap but didn’t.”It’s a mirror,” he said through the closed door.”The witches have a mirror that shows the future—and the past: what has happened and what will happen. I doubt if there is a prophecy about anyone written anywhere. Someone, whoever is now reading the mirror, probably saw you in it and saw that you would be the next reader.”

  He waited for a few moments but heard no sound from inside the room.

  “What is it that you want to see in the mirror?” came her voice through the door. “The past or the future?”

  “Don’t press your luck,” Adam answered.

  A moment later, the knob turned and Darci came out of the room. She didn’t look at him directly, but he thought she was still angry with him. And Adam’s only thought was to get her back into a good humor. A quiet Darci wasn’t much fun. “Did you learn anything at the library today?” he asked as he opened the coat closet and took out her jacket. It was deep burgundy, and the leather was as soft as . . . well, almost as soft as Darci’s hair. “I mean, about anything besides witchcraft? I saw you reading a lot, and you asked the librarian quite a few questions. I thought maybe you’d been reading about something else.” His eyes twinkled. “Did you have any movie magazines hidden under there?”

  As she slipped her arms into the sleeves, she looked at him with narrowed eyes. All day long he’d known that she was going to find out nothing, because what she’d been looking for didn’t exist.

  As he held the door open for her, she gave him a sweet smile. “Actually, I did find out a few things,” she said, looking up at him with eyes full of innocence. “I learned that your family is one of the richest in the world and has been for centuries. Your family is mentioned in at least a dozen books. They say that you can trace your family back to medieval knights who fought well but also had a knack for marrying rich women. The house you grew up in was built by one of those robber barons, named Kane Taggert, who—” She gave a little laugh when Adam put his hands on her back and pushed her out the door.

  “You were supposed to be researching something that I don’t know,” he said tightly once they were outside. “You’re being paid to help me, not to snoop through my personal life. And furthermore—”

  “By the way, don’t you owe me a paycheck?”

  “If I take out all the shampoos and meals I’ve paid for, I don’t owe you—”

  At his words, Darci turned and started back to the guest house, obviously not willing to eat if it meant that she was going to have to pay for anything. But Adam grabbed her arm and pulled her back to walk beside him, and when she still hesitated, he tucked her arm into his and kept walking. “What is it with you and money, anyway? Are you saving for something? Other than freedom, that is.”

  When she didn’t answer right away, he knew that he’d hit on one of her secrets. “Ah ha!” he said. “So now you are in the hot seat. Maybe I should look you up on the Internet instead of Putnam’s car factories.”

  The minute he said it, he knew that he’d made a mistake. Maybe Darci wouldn’t notice what he’d just said. Maybe she’d think that—

  Darci came to
an abrupt halt and looked up at him. “You looked Putnam up, didn’t you? Somebody told me that the Internet was worse than the Doomesday Book. You can have no secrets from anyone. In fact—”

  Then, before Adam could blink, Darci had flung open his jacket, stuck her hand inside, and withdrawn the sheaf of papers he had in his inside pocket.

  This was too much! “Give those back to me!” he said as he made a grab at the papers.

  “I was right!” Darci said, holding the paper up to the light. “Putnam’s name is all over these papers. You ran a check on him!”

  Reaching over her head, Adam snatched the papers out of her hands, jammed them back into his jacket pocket, then zipped up the front to his throat. “I was curious about him, that’s all,” Adam said tightly. “You have this obsession with money down to the penny, so I thought. . . .” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t want to lose this easy lightheartedness. “I thought that maybe Putnam was blackmailing you,” he said, trying to make her laugh.

  But once again, his attempt at humor fell flat. Instead of laughing at his nonsensical statement, Darci said nothing. She pulled away from him, then ran ahead to the corner light and pushed the button. As always, she didn’t wait for the light to change before she ran across the street, making a woman in a big, black behemoth of an SUV slam on the brakes.

  Minutes later, when Adam entered the diner, frowning, ready to lecture her on safety, Darci spoke before he did. “Someone’s in our booth,” she said, nodding toward two people who sat with cups of coffee before them.

  “There are four empty booths,” Adam said as he removed his jacket and hung it over his arm. “We can take one of them.”

  “No,” Darci said quietly as she looked at the people in “their” booth. “That’s where we’ve always sat and that’s where I want to sit now.” Her voice was getting softer, and there were pauses between her words. “I’m going to apply my True Persuasion and ...make...them...move.”