by Nora Roberts
She felt the snap of heat, the spread of warmth from the gold circling her skin. Yes, it fit, she thought dreamily. It looked as if it had been made for her finger. “It’s beautiful. It’s absolutely beautiful.”
“You could say yes now.”
She looked up from the ring, into his eyes. “Life’s going to be a roller coaster with you. I used to be afraid of roller coasters because you just never know what they’re going to do next. They don’t scare me anymore.”
“Say yes. I’ll get rid of the lamps.”
On something between a sob and a laugh, she leaped into his arms. “Yes. You know it’s yes, even with the ugly lamps.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.” With her cheek pressed to his, she held up her ring hand and watched the diamond glitter. “How could the same man who bought this gorgeous ring have bought those hideous lamps?”
“The many sides of Flynn Hennessy.”
“Lucky for me.” She heard the front door open and moved nearly as fast as Moe. “Oh, they’re coming. I have to show it off.” She pushed away from Flynn, then nipped back to kiss him again. “I have to show somebody.”
She hurried toward the front of the house, even as Dana hurried toward the back with Zoe at her heels.
“What is it?” Zoe demanded.
“Have to show you both at once. Boy, have I got news for you,” Dana said when Malory rushed toward her.
“Whatever it is, it can’t top mine. I’ve got news for you.”
Zoe pushed between them. “Jeez, somebody tell somebody something before I explode.”
“Me first,” Dana and Malory said in unison, then both held out their left hands.
There were screams, followed by a burst of unintelligible words. At least they were unintelligible to the three men and a boy who looked on.
Simon watched his mother and her two friends jump and squeal like the girls did on the playground at school. Wrinkling his brow, he looked up at Brad.
“How come they do that?”
“It’s just one of the many mysteries of life, kid.”
“Girls are dopey.” He clapped for the dog, who was blindly joining in the female ecstasy, and hunkered down for some wrestling.
Flynn looked past the women to Jordan. “Beer?” he asked.
“Beer,” Jordan agreed, and skirted the madness to seek the relative sanity of the kitchen.
“I can’t believe it!” Zoe gripped both Malory’s and Dana’s hands and bounced on her toes. “Engaged! You’re both engaged. At the same time. It’s like magic. The rings. They’re so beautiful. Oh, boy.” She dug into her pocket for a tissue.
“Sheesh. Mom, get a grip.”
Zoe sent her son a glare. “I’ll give you a grip.”
He snorted, rolled with a delighted Moe. “Are we getting pizza, or what?”
“Why don’t you go back in the kitchen and ask Flynn? Politely,” she added as he scrambled up.
“I’ve got to show you the kitchen,” Malory remembered. “But first.” She grabbed Dana’s hand again to admire the ruby. “It’s gorgeous. So perfect for you.”
“So’s he. Wait until I tell you how he asked me.”
“I can top it,” Malory claimed.
“Were you naked?”
“No.”
Dana licked a finger, swiped it down an imaginary scoreboard. “I win.”
“Mom!” Simon shouted from the kitchen door. “The guys say if you all want pizza you have to say what kind, or else you have to take what you get.”
“Tell you what.” Zoe draped an arm around her friends’ shoulders. “When we don’t have a bunch of guys cluttering things up, you can tell me, and each other, every detail. We’ll have a little celebration at Indulgence in the morning.”
“Works for me,” Dana agreed. “I’m starved, and I don’t want a bunch of onions and mushrooms messing up my pie.”
AN hour later, Dana was polishing off her third piece. She stretched out on the floor beside Simon and Moe and said, “Ugh.”
“On that note,” Flynn began, “let’s talk about finding this key.”
“Simon, why don’t you take your book upstairs? That’s all right, isn’t it?” Zoe asked Flynn.
“Sure. He knows the way.”
“You and Moe can hang out. I’ll call you when it’s time to go.”
“How come we can’t hang out here while you talk about the magic stuff?”
“Where do you get that?” Zoe demanded. “Simon, have you been eavesdropping?”
“Jeez, Mom.” He sent her an insulted, sulky frown. “I don’t have to go sneaking around, I just have to have ears.” He pinched them between his fingers, wiggled them. “Hey, look! I’ve got two of them.”
“We’ll talk about your ears later. Upstairs, to that horrible prison with a TV and a dog. You can write a letter of complaint to your congressman tomorrow.”
“Man.” Though his lips twitched, he rolled his eyes for form, then they widened and focused on what Brad held in his hand. “Holy Cow! WWF Smackdown!”
“Maybe you want to borrow it, take it for a few rounds.”
“Yeah? Smackdown! It really kicks—” He caught himself, swallowed back the word that would get him in serious hot water with his mother. “Really kicks,” he amended. “Thanks.”
“No problem. This way when we go mano a mano and I humiliate you, you won’t be able to whine that you didn’t get to practice.”
“Yeah, sure, right.” Simon took the video disk. “This is so way cool. Thanks.”
He streaked off, hooking his book bag under one arm and calling for Moe.
Zoe folded her hands in her lap. “That was very nice of you.”
“He may not think so when I trounce him in the upcoming match.”
“I don’t want you to feel obligated to—”
“I don’t.” Brad cut her off, coolly, firmly, then deliberately looked at Dana. “You want to get this rolling?”
“As long as I can start it from the supine position. As previously discussed, Jordan wrote up the sequence of events.”
“He gave me a copy,” Malory interrupted. “And I made copies for everyone. I’ll go get them.”
“She’s something, isn’t she?” Dana commented as Malory left the room. “Our own Debbie Detail. Since Mal’s already read it, and the rest of you will, I’ll just say that it puts everything into a comprehensive and cohesive form. It’s helpful to see just how everything’s unfolded to this point. Malory, Zoe, and I getting the invitation to Warrior’s Peak, meeting there for the first time. Our first contact with Rowena and Pitte, and hearing the story of the Daughters of Glass. Though we didn’t know they were called that until Flynn stepped in.”
“There’s the way Flynn met Malory, and became a part of the quest,” Jordan continued. “The fact that each of you was at a crossroads, jobwise.”
“We were in trouble, jobwise,” Zoe corrected. “And that made the offer of twenty-five thousand dollars for agreeing to look for keys—keys I don’t think any of us really believed in—that first night too tempting to pass up.”
“It’s more than that.” Malory came back in and distributed manila envelopes, neatly labeled with names. “There was the financial incentive, yes. But there was also a sense of mutual frustration, of being in flux, not knowing what we were going to do next. And that almost instant connection between us. Jordan caught that, very clearly, in writing it out.”
“Add to that how those tendrils spread out,” Dana went on. “How they hooked Jordan and Brad in. Connecting them to us, to the quest, to Rowena and Pitte, and to the daughters. I think that’s an important point. Each of us has a role, each of us has to be here for this thing to go through.”
“Then there’s Kane.” Malory slid her copy out of the envelope. “The way you describe him, Jordan, it’s so spooky—and so accurate. As if you’d seen him through my eyes.”
“Seeing him through my own was enough. I think we need to look at him as
more than the bogeyman, more than a foe. He’s another element to the quest.”
“I agree with that.” Brad nodded. “He’s as essential to this as the rest of us are. In the end, I think, it’s not going to be just a matter of outwitting him, as Malory did, or twisting his game to our advantage, as Dana’s done so far. It’s going to be a matter of destroying him.”
“How do you destroy a god?” Zoe demanded.
“I don’t know, but first I’d say by believing you can do it.”
“Maybe. But right now I’ll settle for getting my hands on the key.” Dana sat up. “I’ve only got a few more days. And here’s what I know. While I may have to find it on my own, Jordan is essential to the search. Kane has tried to separate us or pull us apart, and it’s not just because he doesn’t want us to live happily ever after. What he did, however, was push us closer together. He’s not going to be pleased by that.”
She reached over, peeled a round of pepperoni off a slice of pizza and nibbled. “And he miscalculated by showing me the past. That was one of the steps I had to take, and might not have, at least not as decisively, if he hadn’t thrown me back in time. Past, present, and future. I’ve resolved and accepted the past, I’ve made my peace with the present, and . . .”
She held up her ring hand. “I’m looking toward the future. This is important stuff, not only to me personally but to what I’m meant to do. One of the constants in those three time frames is Jordan.”
“Thanks, Stretch.”
“Don’t get all puffed up. Some of this is just fate. Now if you read some of this stuff . . .” She plucked the copy out of Malory’s hands. “You start to feel it, see it, even if you weren’t part of that particular event. You get a good, clear picture. Here—that blue fog that took over Indulgence. The bone marrow chill of it, the oddness of the light, the color, the texture. You start to feel it creeping over your skin.”
“Writer’s tools,” Jordan said.
“Yeah, and you’re damn good with them.”
“Excuse me?”
Mildly annoyed with the interruption, she glanced up to see him staring at her with a kind of narrowed intensity that brought heat to her face. “I said you were good. So what?”
“So . . . there’s a first time for everything. Need another drink,” he said and walked out of the room.
Dana shifted, then huffed out a breath. “Short break,” she announced, and followed Jordan to the kitchen.
“What’s the deal?”
He pulled a soda out of the refrigerator. “No deal.” he popped the top, then shrugged. “You never—well, since I moved to New York, you’ve never had a good word to say about my work.”
“I was pissed at you.”
“Yeah, I get that.” He started to take a swig, then set it down. Truth, he thought again. No matter how it exposed him, there had to be truth between them.
“The thing is, Dana, it mattered. There’s nobody’s opinion I respect or value more when it comes to books than yours. So it mattered what you thought of my work.”
“You want to know what I think of your work? My honest opinion?”
“Yeah, let’s be honest.”
“Well, you did buy me this really terrific ring, so I guess I should come clean.” She took the soda, sipped, handed it back. “You have such an amazing talent. You have a gift, and it’s obvious that you nurture and appreciate it. Every time I’ve read one of your books I’ve been astonished by your range, your scope, your skill with the language. Even when I hated you, Jordan, I was proud of you.”
“How about that,” he managed.
“I’m not sorry I swiped at it before. Maybe it made you work harder.”
He had to grin at her. “Maybe it did.”
“Are we okay now?”
“We’re a lot better than okay.”
“Then let’s go back, because I haven’t finished. And I’m going to be very interested in what you think of what I have to say next.”
She walked back out to the living room, settled down on the floor again. “Okay,” she said, raising her voice over the conversations. “Break’s over. The point I was trying to make was that however skilled Jordan might be, this is more than a writer’s point of view. It’s more than a series of events entertainingly woven together in story form. When you read it, you start to see how often he’s linked to one of those events, or is to one of the people involved in the event. In fact, he was the first, years ago, to see or feel anything, well, otherworldly about the Peak. He once thought he saw a ghost there.”
She stopped, amused to see Malory pick up a highlighter from the crate and begin to mark the sections under discussion on Flynn’s copy.
“Jordan was the first of us to see, and own, one of Rowena’s paintings,” Dana continued. “Flynn’s my brother, Brad’s my friend, but Jordan stepped up from being a kind of brother, from being a friend, to being my lover.”
“He broke your heart.” Malory meticulously coated typed words with bright yellow. “A shattering of innocence. Sorry,” she said to Jordan, “but there’s a very strong kind of magic in that.”
“And it was Jordan’s blood that Kane shed.” Nodding at Malory, Dana smiled. “He’s the one who left home—orphaned, alone, young, on a quest. And came back,” she concluded, meeting Jordan’s eyes, “to finish it.”
“You think I have the key.” Fascinated, Jordan sat back. “I follow the logic, and the traditional elements of your theory, Dane, but where? How? When?”
“I can’t know everything. But it makes sense. It just plays through. I haven’t hammered it all out yet. There’s still that business about goddesses walking and waiting. Walking where? Waiting for what? Then there’s that image I saw when I was trying to put myself into a trance.”
Something started to click in his head, then shut off again at her last statement. “When you did what?”
“An experiment. Like meditation. Blank out the mind, that sort of thing, and see what formed. I saw the key, just sort of floating on this blue-green field. Probably my wall at Indulgence, as that’s what I’d been staring at. It was like I could reach out and touch it. But I couldn’t.”
Frowning, she looked back, imagined it all again. “Then the field changed. White with these blurry black lines running across it. And I heard these words in my head.”
“You heard voices?” Brad asked her.
“Not exactly. But I heard the words. Wait a minute, let me think, get it right. ‘She walks the night, and is the night with all its . . . all its shadows and secrets. And when she weeps, she weeps for day.’
“So, doesn’t it make sense that she’s the goddess—whoever the hell she is? That’s got to be one of the last pieces to put into place.”
“I can put it in place,” Jordan told her. “It’s mine. I wrote that. Phantom Watch.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, then everyone began talking at once.
“Hold it!” Brad got to his feet, held up his hands. “I said hold it! Let’s not lose the thread. First, let’s eliminate any coincidence. Dana, did you read the book?”
“Yes, but—”
“You did?”
She rolled her eyes at Jordan. “I’m not going into another round of pumping your creative ego. Yeah, I read it, but it was years ago. Even I don’t remember every line of every book I’ve ever read. I didn’t recognize it when I heard it.”
“I read it, too.” Zoe raised her hand like a girl in a schoolroom, then, mortified, immediately lowered it. “It was great,” she said to Jordan. “But the woman, the one you wrote about walking at night, wasn’t a goddess. She was a ghost.”
“Good point,” Brad put in. “But it’s an interesting touch that Jordan wrote that book about Warrior’s Peak, that he created that ghost because he thought he saw her one night.”
“You did?” Zoe asked. “That’s so cool!”
“We went up there to camp. Brad and Flynn and I. Brad managed to . . . liberate some beer and cigarettes.”
> Now Zoe turned to Brad. “Is that so?”
“We were sixteen,” he muttered.
“As if that makes it better.”
“Scold him later,” Dana demanded. “Let’s pull this thread through.”
“I saw her walking on the parapet,” Jordan continued. “In the moonlight. Washed in light and shadows with her cloak streaming in a wind that wasn’t there. I thought she was a ghost, and when I wrote her I drew her as one. Lonely, trapped in the night and weeping for the day. But she wasn’t a ghost.”
Dana laid a hand on his knee. “She was a goddess.”
“She was Rowena. I understood that today, when I went to see them at the Peak. I didn’t know what it meant until now.”
“You were the first to see her,” Dana said softly. “And you wrote of her, in whatever form. You gave her another kind of substance, another kind of world. She, the key holder. The key’s in the book.”
Her hand trembled as it slid into place for her. “The white field with black lines across. Words on a page. And the key melted into it. Into the page. The book.” She sprang to her feet. “Flynn, you’ve got a copy.”
“Yeah.” He looked around the room. “I’m not exactly sure where. I haven’t unpacked everything yet.”
“Why should you? You’ve only lived here nearly two years. Well, find it,” Dana demanded.
He gave her a weary look, then rose. “I’ll go upstairs and look.”
“I’ve got a copy at home,” Zoe put in. “A paperback. I’ve got all your books, but my budget doesn’t run to hardcovers,” she said in apology.
Jordan reached over, yanked her hand to his lips. “You are the sweetest thing.”
“I could go get it. I might be able to bring it back before Flynn finds his.”
“Give him a little time.” Malory glanced at the ceiling, imagining Flynn upstairs rummaging through boxes. “I’ve got a copy, too, and my place is closer if it comes to that.” Then she stopped, lifted the index fingers on both hands. “What do you want to bet we all have copies of Phantom Watch?”