"And stop talking like I'm not here. I hate that."
"Why are you here?" Mia asked with annoyance. "Nell and I can make the third together." Which had been Mia's plan before she'd seen Ripley at the door. "We certainly don't need you and your pathetic, rusty attempts. She was never as good as me," she said to Nell. "It always infuriated her that what came so easily to me was such an effort for her."
"I was every bit as good as you."
"Hardly."
"Better."
Ah, Mia thought. Ripley never could turn down a challenge. "Prove it."
Weakened by sentiment, stirred by longing, and bristling with the dare, Ripley stepped into the circle.
No, Nell thought. She swaggered.
She didn't hold out her arms as Mia had, but seemed to throw them, and the fire that burst from their tips, onto the ground.
The minute she did, she hissed like a snake. "You did that on purpose."
"Perhaps, but so did you. And look here, the sky did not fall. You made the choice, Ripley. I couldn't have pushed you into it unless you'd wanted it."
"This doesn't change anything. It's one time only."
"If you say so, but you might as well have some wine while you're here." Mia studied the trio of flames as she picked up the bottle. Ripley's was bigger than hers, a result of temper. But not, Mia thought with satisfaction, nearly as elegant.
And, pouring the wine, she felt a fire inside herself. That was hope.
~•~
They had another glass when they returned to Mia's house.
Restless now, Ripley wandered from window to window. Jingling the change in her pocket. Mia ignored her. For as long as she'd known her, Ripley had never been a quiet soul. And at the moment, Mia understood there was a considerably testy war going on inside of her.
"Have you decided how you're going to handle your situation with Zack?"
Nell glanced up at her. She sat on the floor, mesmerized by the fire. "No. Part of me hopes that Evan will divorce me, take it out of my hands. And the rest of me knows that's not the core of the problem."
"If you don't stand up to bullies, they tromp all over you."
Nell admired Ripley. Strong, wiry, and ready, she thought. "Knowing that and acting on it are two different things. Evan would never have taken a piece out of someone like you."
Ripley lifted a shoulder. "So, take it back."
"She will when she's ready," Mia countered. "You of all people should know that it's impossible to push one person's beliefs, ideas, or standards on another. Or to erase someone else's fear."
"She's upset with me because I hurt Zack. I can't blame you."
"He's a big boy." Ripley shrugged, then sat on the arm of the couch. "What are you going to do about him—Zack, that is—in the meantime?"
"Do?"
"Yeah, do. Are you just going to let him slide through his brooding phase—which is what comes after the pissed-off phase with him and, let me tell you, is a lot harder to live with. I figure we've gotten to be pals, more or less, since you've been here. Do a pal a favor and snap him out of it before I have to smother him in his sleep."
"We've talked."
"I don't mean talk. I mean action. Is she really that much of a sweetie?" Ripley asked Mia.
"Apparently. Ripley, in her own delicate way, is suggesting that you lure Zack back to bed and soothe away your troubles with a bout or two of hot jungle sex. Which is her answer to all manner of pesky annoyances, including hangnails."
"Bite me. Mia's given up sex, which explains why she's such a bitch."
"I haven't given it up, I'm simply more selective than a cat in heat."
"It isn't about sex." Making the statement, making it firm and fast, was Nell's only solution to fending off another argument.
Ripley snorted. "Yeah, sure, right."
Mia sighed. "It pains me, more than I can say, to agree with Ripley. Even partially. Certainly your relationship with Zack isn't, as all of Ripley's are, based on sex. But it's a vital part of it, an expression of your feelings, a celebration of them, and your intimacy."
"You can put flowers on it, it's still sex." Ripley gestured with her glass. "However high-minded Zack is, he's still a guy. Being around you and not getting laid—"
"Ripley, please."
"Not having intimacy," she said in a prissy tone after Mia's reprimand, "is going to make him edgy. If he's going to deal with your L.A. asshole, he should be in top form."
"He's been very careful to keep me at a distance, in that area."
"Then close the distance, in that area," Ripley said simply. "Here's what we do. You drop me off at your place. I'll bunk there tonight. You go over to the house and take care of business. You've been hanging out with him long enough to know what buttons to push."
"That's sneaky, deceitful, and manipulative."
Ripley cocked her head at Nell. "What's your point?"
Despite herself, Nell laughed. "Maybe I will go over. To talk," she added.
"Whatever you want to call it." Ripley polished off her wine. "Maybe you could take these glasses and things back into the kitchen, get your stuff together."
"Sure." She rose, began to gather the glasses. "I'll just be a minute."
"Take your time."
Mia waited until Nell was out of the room. "It won't take her long, so say what you didn't want to say in front of her."
"What I did tonight doesn't change anything."
"That's redundant."
"Just shut up." She paced again. She'd opened herself—only for a short time, but that's all that had been needed. She'd felt that heaviness in the air, the pressure. "Okay, trouble's coming. I'm not going to pretend I don't feel it, and I'm not going to pretend I haven't tried to figure a way to deal with it. Maybe I could, but I won't bet Zack on it. I'm going to sign up for this, Mia." She turned back. "But just for this."
Mia didn't rub it in. In fact, it didn't occur to her to do so. "We'll light the balefires at midnight on Samhain eve. We'll meet at ten on the Sabbat. Zack already wears Nell's talisman, but I'd protect your house if I were you. Do you remember how?"
"I know what to do," Ripley snapped. "Once this passes, things go back the way they were. This is—"
"Yes, I know," Mia retorted. "A one-time-only."
~•~
Zack had given up on paperwork, given up on his telescope, and pretty much given up on the idea that he could will himself to sleep. He was trying to bore himself to sleep now, by reading one of Ripley's gun magazines.
Lucy was sprawled beside the bed in a deep sleep that he envied. Every now and then her legs would twitch as she chased dream gulls or swam in her dream inlet. But she lifted her head, one sharp motion, let out a soft, warning woof seconds before Zack heard the front door open.
"Relax, girl. It's just Ripley."
At the sound of the name, Lucy was up and scrambling for the door, where she stood wagging her entire body.
"Forget it. It's too late to play."
The knock on the bedroom door had Lucy barking joyfully and Zack cursing. "What?"
Lucy whipped herself into happy circles as the door opened, then she leaped enthusiastically on Nell.
Zack shot up in bed. "Lucy, down! Sorry. I thought it was Rip." He nearly threw back the covers, then remembered he was buck naked. "Is something wrong?"
"No. Nothing." She bent over to pet Lucy, wondering which of them was more embarrassed, and decided it was a tie. "I just wanted to see you. Talk to you."
He peeked at the clock, noted it was coming onto midnight. "Why don't you go downstairs? I'll be right there."
"No." He wasn't going to treat her like a guest. "This is fine." She came over, sat on the side of the bed. He still wore the locket, and that meant something. "I made fire tonight."
He studied her face. "Okay."
"No." She laughed a little, and scratched Lucy's head. "I made it. Not with wood and a match. With magic."
"Oh." There was a tickling inside his che
st. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say to that. Congratulations? Or… wow?"
"It made me feel strong, and excited. And… complete. I wanted to tell you. It made me feel something like I do when I'm with you. When you touch me. You don't want to touch me because I have a legal tie to someone else."
"It doesn't stop the want, Nell."
She nodded, let the relief of that come. "You won't touch me because I have a legal tie to someone else. But the fact is, Zack, the only man I have a real tie to is you. When I ran, I told myself I would never tie myself to another man. Never risk that again. Then there was you. I have magic in me." She lifted a hand, fisted, to her heart. "And it's amazing and thrilling and sweet. Still, it's nothing—nothing, Zack—to what I have in me for you."
Any defense, any rational reason he may have had quite simply crumbled. "Nell."
"I miss you. Just being with you. I'm not asking you to make love with me. I was going to. I was going to try to seduce you."
He skimmed his fingers through her hair. "What changed your mind?"
"I don't want to ever lie to you again, even in a harmless way. And I won't use one set of your feelings against another set. I just want to be with you, Zack, just be. Don't tell me to go."
He drew her down until her head was cradled on his shoulder, and he felt her long, long sigh of contentment echo his own.
Chapter Nineteen
It wasn't easy for an important, successful man to get away by himself for a few days. It was a complicated and tedious business to reschedule meetings, postpone appointments, inform clients, alert staff.
There was a whole world of people dependent upon him.
More tedious yet was making travel arrangements personally rather than using the services of an assistant.
But after careful thought, Evan decided there was nothing else to be done. No one was to know where he was, or what he was doing. Not his staff, not his clients, not the press. Naturally, he could be reached via cell phone if there was a crisis of any sort. Otherwise, until he'd done what he set out to do, he would remain incommunicado.
He had to know.
He hadn't been able to get the information his sister had so casually passed on to him out of his mind.
Helen's double. Helen's ghost.
Helen.
He would wake up at night in a cold sweat from images of Helen, his Helen, walking along some picturesque beach. Alive. Laughing at him. Giving herself to any man who crooked his finger.
It couldn't be borne.
The terrible grief he'd felt upon her death was turning slowly, inexorably, into a cold and killing rage.
Had she tricked him? Had she somehow planned and executed the faking of her own death?
He hadn't thought her smart enough, certainly not brave enough, to try to leave him, much less succeed. She knew the consequences. He had made them perfectly clear.
Till death do us part.
Obviously she couldn't have done so alone. She'd had help. A man, a lover. A woman, especially a woman like Helen, could never have devised such a scheme on her own. How many times had she sneaked off to lie with some wife-stealing bastard, working out the details of her deception?
Laughing and fucking, plotting and planning.
Oh, there would be payment made.
He could calm himself again, continue about his business and his life without an outward ripple. He could nearly convince himself again that Pamela's claims were nonsense. She was, after all, a woman. And women, by nature, were given to flights of fancy and foolishness.
Ghosts didn't exist. And there was only one Helen Remington. The Helen who had been meant for him.
But at times in that big, glamorous house in Beverly Hills, he thought he heard ghosts whispering, or caught the bright sound of his dead wife's taunting laughter.
What if she wasn't dead?
He had to know. He had to be careful, and clever.
"Ferry's loading."
His eyes, pale as water, blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
The ferry worker stopped blowing on his take-out cup of coffee and instinctively stepped back from that blank stare. It was, he would think later, like staring into an empty sea.
"Ferry's loading," he repeated. "You're going to Three Sisters, ain't ya?"
"Yes." The smile that spread over the handsome face was worse than the eyes. "Yes, I am."
~•~
According to legend, the one known as Air had left her island to go with the man who promised to love her, to care for her. And when he'd broken those promises and turned her life into a misery she had done nothing. She'd borne children in sorrow, raised them in fear. Had bowed, and had broken.
Had died.
Her last act had been to send her children back to the Sisters for protection. But she had done nothing, even with her powers, to protect or save herself.
So the first link in the chain of a curse was forged.
Nell thought of the story again. Of the choices and mistakes, and of destiny. She kept it clear in her head as she walked down the street of what had become her home. What she intended to keep as her home.
When she walked in, Zack was delivering a blistering lecture to a young boy she didn't recognize. Automatically, she started to step out again, but Zack merely held up a finger and never broke rhythm.
"You're not only going straight over to Mrs. Demeara's and clean up every last scrap of pumpkin guts and apologize for being a moron, but you're going to pay a fine for possession of illegal explosives and willful destruction of property—five hundred dollars."
"Five hundred dollars!" The boy, thirteen at the outside, Nell calculated, lifted a head that had been sunk low. "Jeez, Sheriff Todd, I ain't got five hundred dollars. My mom's going to kill me as is."
Zack merely raised his eyebrows and looked merciless. "Did I say I was finished?"
"No, sir," the boy mumbled, and went back to looking so hangdog that Nell wanted to go pat his head.
"You can work off the fine by cleaning the station house. Twice a week, three dollars an hour."
"Three? But it'll take me…" The boy had smartened up enough to shut up. "Yes, sir. You weren't finished."
His lips wanted to twitch, but Zack kept them in a firm, hard line. "I've got some odd chores around my place, too. Saturdays."
And oh, Zack thought, that one stung. There was no crueler fate than being imprisoned by chores on a Saturday.
"Same rate. You can start there this Saturday, and in here Monday after school. If I hear you're in any more trouble like this, your mother's going to have to stand in line to skin you. Clear?"
"Yes, Uncle Zack… um, I mean, yes, sir, Sheriff."
"Beat it."
He beat it, nearly spinning the air into a funnel as he raced past Nell.
"Uncle Zack?"
"Second cousins, really. It's an honorary term."
"What did he do to earn the hard labor?"
"Stuck an ash can, that's a firecracker, in his history teacher's pumpkin. It was a damn big pumpkin, too. Blew that shit all over hell and back again."
"Now you're sounding proud of him."
He pokered up, as best he could. "You're mistaken. Idiot boy could've blown his fingers off, which is what I nearly did at about the same age when I blew my science teacher's pumpkin to hell and back. Which is beside the point, especially when we'll be in for similar Halloween pranks tomorrow if I don't make an example now."
"I think you did the job." She walked over, sat down. "Have you got time for another matter, Sheriff?"
"I could probably carve out time." It surprised him that she hadn't leaned over to kiss him, and that she sat so straight, so still, so solemn. "What's the matter?"
"I'm going to need some help, and some advice. On the law, I suppose. I've generated false identification, and I've put false information on official forms, signing them with a name that isn't legally mine. I think faking my own death is illegal, too. At least there must be something about life insurance fraud
. There were probably policies."
He didn't take his eyes off hers. "I think a lawyer would be able to handle that for you, and that when all facts are known, there'll be no charges brought. What are you telling me, Nell?"
"I want to marry you. I want to live my life with you, and make those children with you. To do that, I have to end this, so I will. I need to know what I'm going to have to do, and if I'll have to go to jail."
"You're not going to jail. Do you think I'd let that happen?"
"It's not up to you, Zack."
"The false papers and so on aren't going to put anyone's sense of justice up. The fact is…" He'd given this angle a great deal of thought. "The fact is, Nell, once you tell the story you're going to be a hero."
"No. I'm no one's hero."
"Do you know the statistics on spousal abuse?" He pulled open his bottom drawer, took out a file and dropped it on his desk. "I've put some data together on it. You might want to have a look at it sometime."
"It was different for me."
"It's different for everybody, every time. The fact that you came from a good home and you lived in a big, fancy house doesn't change anything. A lot of people who think it's different for them or that there's nothing they can do to change their situation are going to look at you, hear what you did. Some of them might take a step they might not have taken because of you. That makes you a hero."
"Diane McCoy. It still bothers you that you couldn't help her. That she wouldn't let you help her."
"There are a lot of Diane McCoys out there."
She nodded. "All right. But even if public sentiment falls on my side, there are still legalities."
"We'll handle them, one at a time. As far as the insurance, they'll get their money back. We'll pay it back if we have to. We'll do what we have to do together."
When she heard that, a weight lifted. "I don't know where to start."
He rose, came around to her, crouched at her feet. "I want you to do this for me. That's selfish, but I can't help it. But I want you to do it for yourself, too. Be sure."
"I'll be Nell Todd. I'll have a name I want."
She saw his expression alter, the deepening of emotion in his gaze, and knew she had never been more sure of anything. "I'm afraid of him, and I can't help that either. But I think I realize I'll never stop until this is done. I want to live with you. I want to sit out on the porch at night and look at the stars. I want that beautiful ring you bought me on my finger. I want so many things with you I thought I'd never have. I'm scared, and I want to stop being scared."
Books by Nora Roberts Page 169