by Julie Leto
“I don’t understand how this could be possible,” she admitted.
He sighed, but the sound held no impatience. “Of course you don’t. No sane person would. But when it comes to magic, I’ve found it best to put sanity aside.”
Mariah listened intently as he told a tale that would have made a fabulous bedtime story with an angry king, a vile wizard, a love-struck girl and a collection of Gypsies imbued with magic. She found herself so utterly caught up in the drama that the pounding in her head receded. She gasped when he told her how he’d driven his dagger into the stone, only to find himself trapped within the gem itself. He was sketchy on what happened afterward, but she supposed that was natural. As natural as any story of one enslaved by the unexplainable could be.
“Until you touched the gem,” he said, with a clipped edge to his voice that told her his story was finished, “I could not venture outside the stone. Now that you have touched it, I can’t seem to stay within.”
Mariah gulped, then, operating on automatic, restarted the car and drove in calm silence off the shoulder and into the nearest empty parking lot. Neon lights advertising a big, blowout furniture sale threw a funky red glare into the car as she shoved the gear into park. She looked behind her. The street was full of cars. The breeze from their passing tossed the branches of the scrawny trees in the median. Overgrown weeds sprang from cracks in the pavement, which glittered with brown shards of broken beer bottles. She wasn’t dead. She might not believe in heaven, but if she did she wouldn’t imagine the place looked like this.
Which left only one scenario to believe—Ben hadn’t been lying. The stone was magical. She’d seen so many strange and unusual things over the course of the years, but nothing that had made her believe that Rafe’s story could be true. Only, he was the proof, wasn’t he? There was no other explanation for how he could have materialized inside her car. She’d locked the doors. She’d driven away. She’d remembered catching sight of him in her rearview mirror. She had no doubt that she’d left him behind in the parking garage, and yet here he was.
“Remarkable,” he said, bracing his hands on the dash. He gazed out through the windshield, then spun around in his seat to watch the cars speeding by on the street behind them. “This is how everyone travels now? By...what did you call it? A car?”
She ignored his question. “You’re really from the eighteenth century?”
He nodded. The movement of his head was swift and decisive.
“And a curse trapped you in the stone?”
She’d heard his story, but the realization that he wasn’t making up some elaborate tale required her to verify some of the details.
He reached toward her crotch. Instantly, she grabbed his wrist and twisted.
“You are quite quick,” he said with a chuckle.
“If you’re being condescending, I can break your wrist to show you I don’t appreciate it.”
He relaxed his arm, which she pushed away.
“I apologize,” he said. “May I have the stone, please?”
She looked around. Even if he grabbed the mysterious rock and tried to make a break for it, she could run him over with the car before he got fifty feet away. Because, cursed or not, she suddenly understood the full breadth of this stone’s value. She had no idea what she was going to do with the damned thing, but she certainly wasn’t about to let it out of her sight. She placed the rock in his hand, then flicked on the map light.
His eyes rounded in surprise, but he made no comment. He merely raised the rock to the light and turned the stone over in his palm. Mariah gasped when she saw that the red gemstone embedded within had started to glow.
“What is that?”
He leaned closer to her, and she couldn’t resist inhaling the scents of leather and man that clung to his skin, along with a moist, clean fragrance, as if he’d just stepped out of a shower or a rainstorm.
“See here.” He traced an etched image with his fingertip. She hadn’t had any time to give the rock a decent cleaning. Dirt still smudged the surface. He used his sleeve to brush some of the filth aside, but the image etched into the stone was still hard to see.
“This is a hawk,” he explained. “The hawk was Rogan’s symbol, though I know not why. He never, to my knowledge, owned one. He preferred the company of a rather damnable cat, if I remember correctly.”
“This isn’t a ruby, either,” Mariah said, putting the stone as close to the dim map light as possible. “It’s too orange. It’s a fire opal. They were mined in my country at one time.”
“Rogan had an impressive collection. He embedded them into many items. Goblets. Weapon handles. Even a brooch he wore on his cloak?”
In her line of work, Mariah had come to know quite a bit about rare and expensive gemstones, which made her wonder how an eighteenth-century European had come into possession of so many. While they could be found on the continent, they were mostly mined in ancient Persia and India. But that wasn’t what had her hackles up.
The fact was that fire opals were most often found in Mexico. The ancient Mayans called the stone quetzalitzlipyollitli, for the native bird of paradise. Only in the last decade had Mariah started specializing in retrieving Mayan, Incan and Aztec treasure for deep-pocketed collectors, but she’d seen enough of the stone to know, even in the insufficient light, that this one was of extraordinary quality and size. Could it be a coincidence that this rock she’d found in some godforsaken corner of Germany might have ties to the native people who’d forged the coins she’d stolen and lost?
She restarted the ignition. Her brain was on overload. She needed to get someplace where she could think straight, and she supposed, for the moment, she’d have to take Rafe Forsyth, son of the Earl of Hereford, with her. Whether she liked it or not.
“This is a lot to swallow,” she said, “but I can’t forget that someone broke into my hotel room and tried to steal the stone. Someone who thought the stone belonged to them. Any idea who they were?”
Rafe shrugged noncommittally. “This is your world, my lady, not mine. I have no enemies here. Can you say the same?”
She snorted. “Lately, I’ve got more enemies than a croc has teeth.”
After showing him how to use a seat belt, Mariah shifted into reverse, executed a rather tight turn that had Rafe clutching the dashboard again, then headed toward the one place she knew they’d be safe—the sky.
6
Rafe pressed his hands to the contraption Mariah Hunter had strapped over his ears before she’d announced that they were about to rise into the air. They’d transferred from the car to an elaborate mechanical wonder she called a helicopter. It had taken her hours to prepare the odd vehicle, and as she did, she’d explained precisely how it worked. He was amazed. Never in his life had he imagined such things as internal combustion engines, or crude oil that could be refined into a fuel that would power them safely into the air. She’d spared little time answering the myriad questions pummeling his brain, but he’d learned enough to know that his expectation of adjusting to this new time and place with ease had been wholly fanciful.
With each moment that passed, Rafe realized that he’d possessed no true conception of how fully society had changed. Mariah was born in a land that had not existed in his time, and now lived in another country. He’d heard his father speak once of the colonies in the Americas, but he’d never given the community much thought. He’d been concerned with only one colony—that in Valoren, home of the Gypsies.
As if to fully illustrate just how out of time he was, Mariah had buckled him into a machine with giant blades that chopped the air, drawing them into and across the sky. Magic in this time, called technology, knew no bounds.
He shifted in his seat, nearly dislodging the bag Mariah had given him to safely hide and transport the stone. More than once, he considered the consequences of simply tossing the cursed rock into the darkness that surrounded them. Would he fall after it? Would he then die?
And was that what he wanted
?
His Romani beliefs allowed for an afterlife. The Chovihano himself had taught Rafe how, after death, a Gypsy spirit either returned to Grandmother Earth or risked entrapment in obscure realms from which they could not escape. Was this what had happened to him? Was he dead, yet trapped in the living world because he had not been burned with his belongings, as was Romani custom? But if he was but a specter, why, after all these years, did he feel so incredibly alive?
“You doing okay?” Mariah asked, her voice invading his ears through the device she’d called headphones.
He nodded.
She reached across and adjusted a small arm so that a round piece she’d told him was a microphone crossed his lips. “Go ahead and talk,” she instructed. “It’ll be a long, boring ride otherwise. You must have a million more questions, now that we’re in the air.”
He bowed his head again, but she tapped the microphone, indicating she wanted to hear his reply.
“I hardly know where to begin,” he said.
“Well, feel free to start anywhere,” she said, making adjustments to the various instruments in front of and above her. “Because if it weren’t for hearing your voice, and the fact that these jeans are pinching my naked arse, I’d think I was mad as a cut snake and dreaming this whole night.”
He could translate only every other word of what she’d said, but the sentiment came through. Rafe had long ago accepted magic as a real and powerful force. Despite her ability to fly, Mariah had insisted that magic did not exist in her world—just technology based on invention and science.
While he was not knowledgeable in the subject, he at least understood the concept, thanks to his educated father and brothers.
Still, there was so much he did not know, particularly why they were running from the men who had tried to capture the stone. Rafe did not believe in fighting, but turning tail from a blatant attack seemed cowardly and unwise. They knew nothing of their enemy. What would save them from falling prey to yet another offensive assault?
“Who do you think attempted to steal the stone?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I wish I knew. I’d suspect Hector Velez sent them, but he didn’t have the time. I’d only just gotten off the phone with him. Unless he was having me followed or tracked, which, I suppose, is a distinct possibility.”
“Who is Hector Velez?”
“A collector I pissed off.”
“A collector of what?”
She kept her vision trained through the glass windows of the helicopter, her mouth turned downward in a frown. She did not like his question.
“Antiquities. Coins, usually, but statues and jewelry and tools—anything associated with the Mayan empire. Or Incan. Or Aztec. I, um, acquired a collection of rare gold coins for him a month ago, but through absolutely no fault of my own,” she said, sarcasm tingeing her tone, “I had to dump them in a Mexican jungle. When I went back for them, the GPS device I’d attached to the package would not work. I couldn’t find them, and he’s not happy about it.”
Rafe spent the next hour asking her questions that would lead him to understand what she’d just said. She explained about a place called Mexico, about Spanish exploration and invasion against the native people, about the value of artifacts from this era, about her talent as a pilot of various aircraft and the basics behind a system of electronic tracking...and then electricity.
“There is so much I don’t understand,” he admitted.
She reached over and patted his hand. The minute their skin made contact, Rafe pulled back. Now that she’d explained the concept of electricity, he finally appreciated the sensation of her flesh on his. So much like lightning, yet more deliberate. More controlled.
And yet as wild as the open sea.
Her frown returned.
“So you think this Hector Velez sent his men to take the stone to replace the gold you lost?” he asked, hoping an increase in conversation would make up for his unfriendly reaction to her touch.
“It’s a theory, but it doesn’t quite add up. I told him I might give him something else willingly, after I found out what it was worth. But I never told him what it was. Those men who attacked me knew what they were looking for.”
Yes, they’d known about the stone. Had Rogan sent them? Had he also found a way to cheat death and was now seeking Rafe out? To what end?
He gazed out of the windows, marveling at the glow of a city beneath him. With miracles like electricity and air travel at the disposal of so many, a man like Rogan might never have risen to power. Despite the fact that Rafe had only hours ago fought against his release from Rogan’s cursed stone, his curiosity and natural need to understand the world around him fueled his desire to remain free.
If he had to battle the rogue in this century, he had to be prepared, though having Mariah Hunter as his guide in this new and fascinating world posed both problems and solutions. From her description of her profession, she was undoubtedly untrustworthy, and wily as a fox. He’d once believed his sister to be headstrong and resourceful, but Mariah’s actions thus far made Sarina look every bit the child she’d been. Even his wife, Irika, who possessed the wisdom of centuries, had not known how to fight like a man or how to protect herself against attackers intent on doing her harm.
Mariah navigated this strange world with a confidence he’d never seen before in a woman and a sensuality he believed she greatly underestimated or, perhaps, ignored completely.
“What will you do now that you know that I am still tied to the stone?” he asked.
She spared him a sidelong glance. “You’ve certainly complicated my plans.”
“I apologize,” he said, wholly unrepentant. “Of course, I might point out that I did not ask you to remove the stone from the forest of Valoren, nor did I request that you take me away from the man who seemed to know what Rogan’s marker was really about.”
“Those blokes were trying to kill me,”
“I mean the man you shot at in Valoren.”
“Ben?” she said with a laugh that was neither flippant nor funny. “He was bluffing.”
Rafe turned to face her as fully as he could, restrained as he was by the straps she insisted would assure his safety. “And how, precisely, do you hold to that judgment? He warned you that the stone was cursed by black magic. On this point, he was entirely correct.”
She scoffed at him, waving away his assessment. “I know Ben,” she insisted. “Intimately. Every so often, he makes a good guess. That’s all that happened.”
Rafe arched a brow. “You were married to him?” he asked.
She grimaced. “Crikey, no. But I wasted several years thinking he might pony up at some point. Suffice it to say I do know him well, and he was after the rock for profit and for profit only. His ramblings about black magic were meant only to scare me.”
Rafe focused again on the sky outside. Streaks of red and purple shot up from the horizon in the east, lightening the blackness to a dusky gray. Though sunrises remained constant, the world had truly changed more than he imagined if a woman could confess relations with a man outside of marriage with no shame. Even if she were not herself Romani, the conventions of his era precluded a woman speaking of such intimacies. Although the female servants in his father’s British household did not hold to such lofty ideals, coupling regularly with whatever soldiers had been sent to man the small garrison outside the valley, Rafe followed the customs of his mother and her Romani kin.
In the village of Umgeben, marriages were arranged by the elders and blessed by the puri or the Chovihano, as Rafe’s had been. His father, who had taken a Gypsy wife long after he’d been made a widower by Rafe’s brothers’ British mother, had tacitly approved. John Forsyth, Earl of Hereford, was a great many things that Rafe had not approved of, but he’d never been a hypocrite.
Nor was Rafe. He’d made love to only one woman in his lifetime, and she had been his Irika. And yet, the idea that Mariah had experienced the pleasures of lovemaking freely and without disgrace
spawned an interest he had no right to feel.
“Did I shock you?” she asked, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Then our next discussion needs to be about the society’s changed attitudes toward sex.”
Rafe had no idea whether he was prepared for what he was about to learn, but he knew without a doubt that if Mariah Hunter had decided to impart this knowledge, he would not have a choice but to listen.
That was, until a bright light broke through the windows to his right. He had only a moment to recognize the full sunrise before his world went dark. The last thing he heard was Mariah shouting his name.
7
“This doesn’t look good,” Cat said, eyeing the destruction that had once been Mariah Hunter’s hotel room. When they’d lost her in Europe, Ben had insisted they travel to Texas, where he’d guessed—correctly—that she’d pick up a getaway car she kept stashed near the airport and then would register in a hotel under an assumed name, paying with cash. They’d been calling around to low-cost car-rental companies when the police scanner had given them their first solid, albeit disturbing lead—an assault of some sort in a hotel room rented to a woman using one of Mariah’s noms de plume.
Again, Ben had anticipated his ex’s actions to the letter. Either Mariah Hunter was a terrible creature of habit, or Ben had seriously underrated the intimacy of an affair that ended a decade ago. Either way, Cat found herself inexplicably miffed. She was too self-confident to be jealous, but she copped to annoyance, which wasn’t lessened by the concerned look on Ben’s face while he knelt over a patch of dried blood on the carpet.
“You think she’s hurt?” he asked.