by Julie Leto
“The only other reference I found to Valoren was in a book written twenty years ago by a Gypsy Chovihano whose family dated back to the seventeen hundreds,” Cat said.
Alexa slid onto the sleek leather couch beside her friend. “And?”
“That book was useless.”
“Then why—”
“The writer is dead, the mention to Valoren the equivalent of your father’s note on the deed, though it does lead me to believe that Valoren is a place, not a person or a Romani word. The Chovihano left no relatives. His publisher was no help. Small press. Out of business. But,” she said triumphantly, “in the acknowledgments, the author made reference to an anthropology professor in Texas. A Gypsy expert. I called him.”
“And he’s heard of Valoren?”
Cat nodded. “And not just an oral history, either. He’d read about the place, though his memory was sketchy. He remembered something about it being a Gypsy enclave. A sort of safe haven.”
“I thought Gypsies never stayed in one place.”
Cat shrugged. “They don’t, ordinarily, which makes the place all the more interesting, doesn’t it?”
“Could he remember his source?”
“No, but he seems to think it was a dissertation or an academic paper of some sort. Maybe a diary. Unfortunately, he has hundreds of professional journals and personal memoirs in his private collection and he can’t remember which one has the reference.”
Alexa cursed. Why she felt so compelled to figure out the answer to this puzzle perplexed her, except...she missed her father desperately. This gift seemed so personal, as if he’d searched for a castle for his little princess, remembering how fierce she’d been about her room, about her mother’s legacy. And her father had been just the type—loving and whimsical one minute, serious and driven the next—to try to turn her childhood dream into a moneymaking reality. In all practicality, a reputedly haunted, five-star hotel on an exclusive, hard-to-reach island could become the crown jewel for Crown Chandler. If Alexa made this project happen and filled the rooms with celebrities, dignitaries and nouveau riche entrepreneurs who appreciated privacy with their pampering, she might finally be accepted as the shrewd, creative new leader of Crown Chandler Enterprises and not just the spoiled little rich girl who’d inherited her legacy because she’d lived and her father had died.
Or was she simply so hard up for a decent lover that she was pinning all her hopes on some Sleeping Beauty fantasy?
“What’s our next step?” Alexa asked, shaking off her apprehension.
“I’m flying to Texas,” Cat informed her. “The professor said I could search his collection. I’ll check out the island when I get back. That is, if you’re still interested in the history of the castle before you move forward with your plans.”
“Oh, she’s interested.”
Alexa sat up straighter, her spine rigid. Ordinarily, she didn’t react so icily to her stepbrother walking into a room unannounced. However, she ordinarily didn’t allow Jacob anywhere near Cat, either—at least, not since their messy breakup.
“My, my,” Jacob said, his nose crinkled as if Catalina’s exotic scent offended his delicate sensibility. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
Cat skewered him with a sharp glare, tore off her glasses and snapped her briefcase closed. “God, Jacob. You’re such a drama queen. You could at least make an attempt at being original.”
Alexa jumped to her feet. Blood would be drawn if she didn’t act quickly. “Okay, now that we’ve had our warm reunion, can I talk to you, Jacob, in the other room?”
With a sneer, her stepbrother begrudgingly headed toward the suite’s bedroom. Just to be on the safe side, Alexa shut the door behind them.
“Why are you still hanging out with that freak?” he asked.
Alexa bit the inside of her mouth. Black pot? Meet kettle.
“Just because the two of you broke up—four years ago, I should remind you—doesn’t mean I can’t be friends with her.”
Clearly, time hadn’t lessened the bitterness between her brother and her friend. Catalina had kicked Jacob to the curb once she realized he’d been using her to meet the self-proclaimed witches and vampires who flocked to Catalina unbidden, sometimes because of her research into the occult, most times because of her legacy as the granddaughter of a Santería priest and a voodoo priestess.
From the moment Jacob Sharpe’s mother had married into the Chandler family, Alexa had realized that her new brother had interests that were more than a little weird. While Alexa herself had always been interested in ghosts, her reasons leaned toward the capitalistic and had nothing to do with Cat. Long before Alexa had met her friend, her interests in the paranormal had always stemmed from how a rumor of ghostly hauntings in the hotel world nearly always equaled financial gain. Travelers often paid big money to have a cold, otherworldly breeze blow across their cheeks in the dead of night.
Jacob, on the other hand, had proclaimed himself Wiccan, Goth and anything else that would drive his parents crazy. After college, he’d stopped trying to shock everyone. Alexa had figured he’d finally grown out of his rebellious stage. Cunningly, he’d let the inky dye fade out of his brown hair, gave up lining his icy blue eyes with black kohl, and traded his favorite black duster jacket and Nazi storm trooper boots for Armani suits and Bruno Magli shoes just long enough to land himself in her daddy’s will. Which was why she had to deal with him on a regular basis.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “I told you I could handle this situation on my own.”
He had an unnerving habit since the accident of following her around like a guard dog, despite the fact that she’d given him an entire division of established, top-performing hotels to supervise. She’d survived the car wreck, even if his mother and her father had not. Therapy for her concussion, punctured lung and broken thighbone had been a bitch, but she’d recovered with even more strength—and determination—than she’d had before.
Jacob shrugged in that boyish way that made her forget he was nearly thirty years old. “Things are running like clockwork as usual. But I’m bored. I need a challenge.”
“You can always look into that ski lodge in Utah.”
He scrunched his nose. “Too many Mormons in Utah.”
She blew out a frustrated breath. “Yes, they do tend to gravitate there.” And the good Lord knew that Mormons weren’t her stepbrother’s speed.
“Let me help you here,” he said, his tone vaguely whiny. “I am the one who brought you the deed. I didn’t have to, you know.”
She supposed he didn’t. He’d taken his mother’s death pretty hard—harder than she’d expected for all the tension that existed between the two of them. Apparently, he’d waited until recently to go through the last of her effects, and Alexa supposed that if he had wanted to be cruel, he could have kept the deed to himself. But while Jacob had nearly always been a pain in her ass, he’d never been underhanded or mean.
“Come on, sis,” he pleaded. “I can make myself more useful with your spooky castle than I can approving budgets for bed linens. With your knowledge of hotels and mine of all things mysterious, we can build a property that will make our competitors weep with envy.”
Jacob’s grin quirked up on the right side of his face and his eyes glittered. They might not have been related by blood, but Alexa couldn’t deny that they both suffered from a condition that caused hot flashes at the possibility of growing their portfolios.
“Yes, well, I can’t make any decisions until I see the place close-up,” Alexa said, wearing her most unengaged expression. She didn’t want anyone, even her stepbrother, to know how desperately she wanted this venture to work out. “But since you’re here, you can at least come with me. I hate flying.”
Alexa’s father had taught her everything he knew about hotels in particular, but also about business in general. He’d also insisted that a smart woman adhered to the old adage of keeping her friends close and her enemies closer. She wasn’t exactly sure
where her stepbrother fell most of the time, but as she was on the brink of a spectacular opportunity, she’d rather not take any chances.
At least not until she arrived on the island.
*********
Please continue reading for an excerpt from Book Two in the Phantom series, Phantom’s Touch
Silver-screen action heroine, Lauren Cole, has one more film to make before she’s free from her producer ex-husband, a smothering role, and a life she wants to leave behind. There’s only one thing she wants from that life: the antique sword her husband promised her in the divorce. So she steals it. Holding the weapon for the first time, she unleashes a magic that rivals Tinsel Town special effects—and makes her wonder if she has truly lost her mind.
In 1747, Aiden Forsyth stormed a gypsy camp and fell captive to a powerful curse that has held him within the sword for more than two centuries. Lauren’s touch releases him, but his liberation has limits. Corporeal only during the night, he remains bound by a dark and dangerous magic in the light of day—complicating his vow to protect the woman who holds the key to his ultimate freedom.
So the sexy warrior who haunts her days and inflames her nights must stay intimately close, especially after they learn that the madman trying to kill Lauren has ties to the very curse that has entrapped Aiden’s soul...
Phantom’s Touch
PROLOGUE
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Catalina Reyes circled the table, her eyes darting between noted Gypsy researcher Paschal Rousseau and his mouthwateringly sexy son, Ben. They sat across from each other, arms folded tightly as they competed in a frowning contest that, in Cat’s opinion, could have neither winner nor prize. Between them, still cradled in plain brown paper and nestled in a cardboard box, was a quarter-size piece of brass. A casual observer might see only an old button inside the package, but to the Rousseau men, the fastener was a major bone of contention.
“Cat’s right, Dad,” Ben insisted. His eyes, lighter than his father’s yet still stormy gray, darted to her. “After last time, you were too weak to protect yourself. You were kidnapped the very next day.”
Paschal’s eyes shone with the cockiness that Cat had come to associate with both Rousseau men, as well as their Forsyth ancestors. She supposed it was a blessing to women everywhere that they didn’t make men like them anymore.
“Won’t happen again,” Paschal blustered. “You and Cat will protect me.”
“From kidnapping, sure,” Cat argued, “but not from the toll that physically connecting with that button will take on your body. You may look younger than ninety, Paschal, but you’re actually how old?”
As Ben leaned forward, his dark hair, which he hadn’t cut since he and Cat had met nine months ago, hung rakishly over one eye. “Well, let’s do the math, shall we? You were born in 1717, correct?”
Paschal frowned and refused to answer.
Cat rubbed her arms. Despite her experiences as a paranormal researcher, she still shivered when she thought about how Paschal Rousseau was actually Paxton Forsyth, the fourth son of an English earl. Through magical means that defied modern explanation, Paschal had been trapped inside a cursed Gypsy object—a mirror—and released sometime during World War II by Ben’s mother. Over the last sixty-plus years, he’d aged—exceptionally well—and had used his latent psychic abilities to try to locate the sister and five brothers who had been ripped away from him so many centuries ago.
So far, he’d found one family member. Now, with the aid of the button, he might find another.
Cat slid into the empty chair beside Paschal. “Ben’s right. Let me try.”
Though her own psychic abilities had been dormant for most of her life, connecting with Rousseau and his son had sparked skills that Cat now could use with a fairly decent success rate. Perhaps if she touched the button, which was stamped with the Forsyth crest, she’d be able to focus in on the energy of Aiden Forsyth, the brother who’d reportedly worn the notion on his army uniform sometime before, during or after the Battle of Culloden. They desperately needed a clue as to what had happened to him all those years ago. Damon, the eldest, recently released brother, had found the button while scouring Europe for evidence about the fate of his family. The least they could do here in the States was coax some information from the tarnished bit of brass.
There was, at least, precedent. Through a seascape painted by Damon over two centuries ago, Paschal had discovered that despite the passage of time, his brother lived. And with help from Cat’s best friend, the hotel heiress Alexa Chandler, Damon was now entirely free of the curse. The new couple, currently in Dresden searching for other items that might have been used by the Gypsies to imprison his siblings or, as in this case, articles that might have belonged to them, relied on the Rousseaus and Cat to take the search to the next level.
“You can’t do it,” Paschal said, his voice hearty, even though she’d noticed a few more wrinkles on his face lately, more visible thanks to an increasing paleness both she and Ben tried to ignore. He spent nearly all his time in his house or at his university office, searching, hoping. Trying to find his brothers and sister in whatever time he had left.
“I can try,” she assured.
“Go ahead,” he replied with a confident swing of his hand, gesturing at the box. “Try if you like, but you’ll never connect to the past when you haven’t lived it—you’re not that good a psychic yet. No offense.”
Cat slid the box closer to her and smirked. “None taken.”
She peered inside, then, with a determined inhalation, took the button into her palm. Paschal crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, the certainty of her failure etched on his face.
Ben, however, shifted forward and slid his warm, supportive palm over her knee. She allowed herself a split second to enjoy the feel of his flesh against hers and the memory of how much higher those fingers had sneaked up her thigh only a few hours ago.
When he cleared his throat guiltily, she guessed the same memory had occurred to him as well.
“Go ahead,” Ben urged. “Show the old man that he’s not the only one who can do this.”
Great. No pressure.
She inhaled again, but this time she allowed the breath to fill her lungs to maximum capacity. She concentrated on the oxygen expanding in her system, and when she felt entirely full, she blew out the air through her mouth, tightened her fingers around the button, closed her eyes and concentrated. The voodoo chants taught to her by her grandfather looped in her brain. She called upon the Santería spirits invoked by her grandmother to guide her way.
The button’s age instantly struck her. A blast of odors. Stuffy rooms. Stale sweat. Piquant perfumes. Images popped across her inner eyelids like tiny, fragile bubbles. Boxes. Cartons. Envelopes. Even a beaded sachet. Hand after hand after hand. Some warm and gentle. Some cold and hard. Cruel.
She dropped the button.
“Too many people have touched this,” she said, wincing from the icy ache in the center of her palm.
Paschal’s grin was maddening. “You don’t say?” His expression darkened. “Without knowledge of the precise person we’re looking for in all that psychic detritus, he’s impossible to find.”
She supposed he was entitled to his omniscient tone, but she still shoved the button back into the box angrily, then glanced at Ben.
“He’s right,” she conceded.
With a harrumph, Paschal snatched the box from Cat.
Ben opened his mouth to argue, but Paschal had already grabbed the button and tossed the box aside. He clutched the brass tightly in his gnarled hand, closed his eyes and fell utterly silent. If not for the way his empty hand gripped the edge of the table, they might have thought he was asleep.
But Cat recognized the trance for what it was. With any luck, he was even now psychically jetting back into the past and then, hopefully, into the present, where they’d find his brother Aiden. Only when they found out what had happened to the entire Forsyth
brood, including the sister who betrayed them all, would Paschal finally find peace.
When Paschal gasped, both Ben and Cat shot forward. His closed eyelids rippled from the rapid movements underneath. His jaw slackened, and a barely audible moan mixed with the sounds of his suddenly shallow breathing.
“Paschal?” Ben asked, his voice so deep and desperate, Cat knew the ever unflappable man was teetering on the edge. “Dad?”
Paschal groaned.
She swallowed deeply, said a silent prayer, then whispered, “He’ll be okay.”
“You don’t know that,” Ben snapped.
“Do you want me to know?”
Ben’s gaze locked with hers. “How can you?”
With another wordless plea for help to the God who had bestowed her with her gift, Cat held on tight to Ben with one hand. With the other, she slid her fingers into the thick white hair at Paschal’s temple and attempted a connection.
After all, what did they have to lose?
Valoren, outside Germany
October 1747
With his hand clutching the hilt of his sword, Aiden Forsyth reined in his skittish steed and watched his youngest brother, Rafe, ride across the craggy wasteland that separated their family estate and Umgeben, the village of the banished Gypsies.
When he reached his brothers, Rafe slid off his horse’s back, stomped into the center of the circle of brothers, and reported to Damon, the eldest.
“The mercenary army advances at dawn.”
Damon nodded. “Then we have time to find Sarina.”
“Not if Rogan has spirited her away.” Aiden drew his weapon, admiring the pull of its weight against his hand. This was what he knew—dueling, honor, war. No matter how tired of bloodshed he was, he’d rather face the oncoming horde of mercenaries than the infinite mysteries of magic. “He’s brought this danger on our sister. On us. He must pay for his betrayal!”