Always

by Jude Deveraux

  “Does it say that in there?”

  “No, I just know it.” She grinned. “I know it. Isn’t that wonderful? I don’t have to read about it or strain my mind trying to figure it out, I just know it.”

  “How nice for you,” Jack said, sarcastic. “Okay, what’s next? Let’s see. Here’s one on Adam Drayton, of Drayton Falls.” Silently, he scanned the article, then put it down on the bed. “What else is in there? What happened to Tom and Tula?”

  “Give it to me,” Darci said softly. “I want to see what happened to Adam.”

  “I don’t think—” Jack began, then, as Darci stared at him, he had an overwhelming compulsion to give her the paper. He had to, couldn’t stop himself from handing her the paper.

  “Oh no,” she said. “Not Adam.” As her eyes teared up, she handed the copy of the article to Jack so he could read it aloud.

  About three weeks after Lavender’s and Jack’s deaths, Adam Drayton had been discovered by Fontinbloom Nokes inside the tunnels with a keg of gunpowder and fuses. Adam was planning to blow the tunnels up. Nokes shot Adam Drayton, killing him with one shot. At his trial, Nokes said that before he died, Adam had said that he was going to blow up the tunnels so they couldn’t be used for evil later.

  Darci fell back against the bed, tears in her eyes. “Adam did it for us. Because of us. If we hadn’t gone to him, he’d never have known about those tunnels and would never have tried to destroy them.”

  “Wait,” Jack said. “Look at this one. It’s dated 1850, and it says that the old garnet tunnels are said to be haunted. ‘There have been two serious attempts by Fontinbloom Nokes’s heir to see if there are still garnets to be mined, but the sounds of two men arguing and of a single gunshot that echoes through the tunnels scares all workers away. Frustrated, Mr. Nokes’s nephew boarded up the entrances to the tunnels and went back to his country of origin, Australia. He left warnings that all trespassers would be prosecuted.’ ”

  “I wonder if the tunnels stayed empty until the witch began to use them?” Darci asked. “All those years of sitting there empty when they could have been destroyed.”

  “But wouldn’t she have just gone somewhere else?” Jack asked. “There are lots of tunnels around the world, and it was my understanding from the file I read that she had special reasons for wanting your sister-in-law. And you,” he added softly.

  She held up her left hand. “Nine moles. She’d foreseen that the person who would kill her had nine moles on her left hand.”

  “Too bad she could foresee anything,” Jack said.

  Darci’s eyes widened. “Take away her ability to foresee the future and she wouldn’t know what was going to happen to her or who was going to do it.”

  “If you take away her ability to foresee the future, do you still have a witch?”

  Darci thought of several replies to that, but before she could say anything, the phone rang and Jack answered it.

  “Greg, old man, how are you?” Jack said cheerfully.

  “No, nothing’s wrong with me, I’m just in a good mood, that’s all. Now, now, Greg, that’s not true. I’ve been in a good mood before.”

  Pausing, he smiled at Darci. “Uh, no,” he said, “we haven’t made any progress in finding my father. Yeah, I know where my relatives are. No, Darci didn’t do it. She was asleep. I sent my relatives to work in the homeless shelter. Yeah? That clean, huh? Send them to another one. Yeah, we’ll report to you if anything happens.” He hung up the phone.

  “Let me guess,” Darci said. “Greg wants us to do what we’re supposed to be doing.”

  “More or less,” Jack said, sitting back down and looking at her. “Can you still feel my dad?”

  “Yes. He’s safe. In fact, he’s more comfortable today than he was yesterday. He’s waiting for something. I’m not sure he’s a prisoner at all.”

  “Ah.”

  “What does that mean?” Darci asked.

  Jack looked at the two objects on the table. “You have that healing ball with you?”

  “Always. What do you have in mind?”

  “I wonder what would happen if we went into that room in my father’s bedroom and took all these things in with us.”

  “You mean the box and key, the crucifix, the egg, and the Touch of God?”

  “Yeah. If two of them together hum, what do you think all of them together would do?”

  “Find spirits?”

  Jack jumped up. “I’ll get these two, you get the other two. Meet you in the secret room.”

  “I’ll get there before you do,” Darci said and took off running.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE OR WHAT THEY do,” Darci said, looking at the eight objects before them.

  “You’re the soothsayer,” Jack said, “so why don’t you know?”

  “You’re the FBI agent, so why don’t you know what these things are and where your father got them? Was he involved in some nasty occult thing? Maybe he’s a warlock.”

  “If you knew my father, you’d know how absurd that was. And how do we know these things have anything to do with the occult? Maybe he just liked them. Or maybe they were here when he bought the house and he doesn’t know about them. The previous owner died and my father bought the house from his heirs, so maybe the last owner put them in here.”

  “Is the man you’re now defending the same man you used to despise?”

  Jack grinned. “Yeah, but back then I…”

  “Had a very angry spirit around you.”

  He cocked his head at her. “You don’t think that schizophrenics have other spirits around them, do you? And what about those people who hear voices?”

  Darci decided it was better not to answer that question. They’d spent over an hour in the hidden room and had been unable to figure out anything. She had four objects that hummed in a way that even Jack could feel, but their vibrations didn’t increase when she put them next to the four objects that had been in the room. They had all eight of them lined up on the shelf beneath the gory painting and had looked at them in every way possible. They’d even tried to fit them together.

  “What interests me is that there are like items,” Darci said. “It’s like in the coloring books of my daughter and my niece. Match the objects.”

  Jack put the Touch of God next to the blue glass ball, the iron egg next to the stone egg. The ivory statue of a Biblical-looking figure went next to the crucifix. The key went next to the silver box. “We know that those two go together.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “You’re not thinking of putting the key and that box together again and going back to Lavey, are you?”

  “No. I had a night to sleep on it and the lack of dentists began to scare me. I think I’ll bide my time and let you find her here.”

  “Hope she’s what you want,” Darci muttered, but Jack wasn’t listening. He was looking up at the painting of the man with the branding irons.

  “We haven’t paid any attention to this thing. Other than probably being worth millions, I wonder if it has any significance.”

  “Except to scare away evil spirits?”

  “Or to attract them,” Jack said, his face pressed to the wall as he looked at the back of the frame of the painting. “Get that side and help me get it down.”

  It took them several minutes, as the painting was large and heavy, but they eventually managed to get it down and set it against the far wall. When they turned they saw a little door set into the wall.

  “We’re good,” Darci said.

  “The best.”

  “My abilities and your devious mind.”

  “Glad to be of service,” Jack answered.

  They both expected a lock to be on the little door, but there was none. But before he opened the door, Jack made Darci stand as far away as possible. “Last time we used anything from this room we ended up a couple of centuries from here. I don’t want to take any chances with this.”

  “All caused by you,” Darci
said, but she smiled at him.

  Slowly, he opened the door and looked inside.

  “What’s in there?” Darci asked from close behind him. “I don’t feel any energy, so it can’t be too bad or too powerful.” Disappointment was in her voice.

  Jack put both his hands into the compartment and withdrew an object that he set on the shelf. Both he and Darci peered at it.

  “What is it?” he asked. It seemed to be a blob of fired clay, rather like a kid’s science project of a volcano, except that it looked as though it had been knocked around a bit. There were some holes and dents in the surface.

  “I have no idea.” Darci ran her fingers over the thing. “It seems to be ceramic, but then again it’s almost like it’s metal. It’s certainly cold enough to be metal. I feel absolutely nothing from it. Which means that it’s probably the most powerful thing I’ve ever touched.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Even pencils give off energy. Trees do. Someday I’ll tell you a story about a tree in Alabama that was angry because a car had hit it. I—What are you doing?”

  He’d picked up the stone egg and was holding it near the thing they’d found in the cupboard. “This has to work with these things. Somehow, they must be related.”

  Idly, Darci picked up the iron egg and did what Jack was doing, moving the egg around the sides of the object. It was fairly large, about a foot square and eighteen inches high. Since it exactly fit into the cubbyhole behind the painting, she was sure the cabinet had been made for the object. But who had done it? And more importantly, why?

  “Oh!” Darci said as the iron egg suddenly stuck to the blob. “Oh!”

  Jack looked at her, then at the thing, then at the egg he was holding—and they had the same thoughts at once.

  “They fit,” Darci said. “The objects they had are the right shape and size, it’s just that—”

  “They aren’t magic. They’re not the correct items.”

  “Exactly,” Darci said. She glanced at the blue glass ball as she picked up the clear Touch of God. “Whoever collected these wanted this, but settled for that.” When the Touch of God was grabbed by the base, she grinned at Jack.

  He picked up the silver box and waved it around the base. In a second it, too, found its place.

  When he picked up the key, Darci grabbed it out of his hand. “Oh, no you don’t. I have a feeling that sticking that key back into that box activates the whole thing, and we’re not doing anything until I figure out what all this means.”

  “I guess I should be grateful you’re saying ‘we.’ ” He picked up the last item, the crucifix, and looked at it.

  “What do you think will happen when I put this into place?”

  “I don’t know,” Darci said, shaking her head. “It would be too much to hope that it would give me a way to find my husband.”

  “Or my dear ol’ dad.” Reaching out, he touched the ceramic base to turn it, then drew back his hand. “Ow! That thing is hot.”

  Darci held out her hand over the base, but didn’t touch it. She could feel the heat of what had, minutes before, been ice cold. “Oh yes,” she said. “We are doing something now.”

  “I just wish I knew what,” Jack muttered as he moved the crucifix around the base. When it was sucked into place, he put his burned fingertips into his mouth, then took Darci’s arm and pulled her to the far side of the room. “Stand back,” he said, one arm raised as though he meant to put it over his face in protection. The other arm he put around Darci, ready to throw her to the floor and fling his body over her.

  Nothing happened. The base just sat there on the shelf, the four items attached to it, but it did nothing.

  “Look outside and see what year it is,” Jack said.

  “You look outside.” Darci moved toward the base and the objects, which were so hot she couldn’t touch them. “There’s energy here,” she said softly, “but I don’t know what kind. I think—Oh! Here’s the problem. There’s something missing.”

  Jack looked at the side of the base and there was indeed a small, oval indentation that would fit another object. He looked at the three objects left on the shelf. None of them would fit the space. “The key?” he asked.

  Darci had the key in her hand, held tightly as though she thought Jack was going to wrestle her down and take it from her. Cautiously, while trying to keep the key away from the box, she held it near the depression. “Nothing,” she said. “I feel nothing at all, not even any energy.”

  “May I?” Jack asked. “And don’t give me that look. I’m not going to use it on the box.” As he held the key near the base, he said, “It’s cooled off.” The base was yet again cold to the touch. When he tried to remove the iron egg, it came off easily and went back on easily, but the base didn’t heat up again.

  “We’re missing something,” Darci said again. “I can feel it, but I just wish I knew what it was—and what happens when we put all the objects together.”

  “Isn’t there somebody—alive or dead—that you could call and ask?”

  “I think that right now we’re on a higher plane than what anyone I’ve ever met knows about. Although Henry probably knows—” Her head came up. “Devlin!” In the next second, she said loudly, “Devlin, come here!”

  Jack, his eyes on Darci, thought he saw a movement behind her so he looked up. “I’m not sure, but I think I just saw the paneling blink.” He was swallowing hard, working to keep himself from running from the room.

  Turning quickly, Darci narrowed her eyes at the wall. “Come here this minute and stop that!”

  Gradually the room filled with a blue smoke that neither Jack nor Darci could smell, and from the smoke formed the upper half of a body—a large body with black hair and a huge black mustache. The figure loomed over them, its massive arms crossed over its huge chest.

  “What do you want of me?” came a voice that filled the room, making it vibrate. Neither of them flinched.

  “I really am going to tell Henry on you,” she said, glaring up at Devlin.

  Jack glanced up at the figure with one eye. “Too bad you can’t make him get into a bottle and we could put a cork on it.”

  When he said these words, Darci saw the light that was Devlin flicker. It was only for a split second, then he was back to being a looming giant, trying to intimidate both of them. “Say it again,” Darci said to Jack.

  “Say what? You mean about putting an evil genie in a bottle?” When he looked up at Devlin, he, too, saw the tiny flicker. Jack stood up straighter. “I said,” he said loudly, “that if you can control him, as you now seem able to do, maybe you can command him to put himself inside something, like, say, a bottle. Then we could put a cork in the bottle and leave him there. That would be great, wouldn’t it? You’d have your own personal genie whenever you wanted him.”

  While Jack had been talking, Devlin had been growing smaller, looking like a balloon that was deflating. He still looked like a child’s image of a pirate, but he was smaller. By the time Jack finished, Devlin was the size of Darci, much smaller than Jack.

  Darci stood there blinking at Devlin for a moment, then said over her shoulder to Jack. “Now what do I do with him?”

  “Beats me. You’re the psychic, not me.”

  “Technically, I’m not a psychic since I can’t read minds. And I really can’t tell the future, so I’m not a soothsayer, as you called me. I think maybe I’m—”

  “A procrastinator,” Jack said. Both of them were staring at Devlin, who was defiantly staring back, but saying nothing. “Ask him something.”

  “What will happen if we get all the pieces put into the base?” Darci asked.

  “You’ll have to find that out for yourself,” Devlin answered.

  “He really is an evil genie, isn’t he?” Jack said.

  “Where do you think we can find one of those jeweled bottles like they have on TV? Or should we just use an old beer bottle?”

  When Devlin shrank a bit, as though he were
frightened, Jack smiled maliciously. “How much does he have to obey you?”

  “I don’t know,” Darci said. “This is new to me. I don’t even know why he now has to obey me. Have I gained some new power, or have these objects given me more power? And if so, which one or what combinations?” She looked at Devlin. “Either you start talking or I will let him go get that bottle and a cork.”

  At that, Devlin seemed to recover himself somewhat. In a flurry, he changed into coveralls with prison stripes, with a ball and chain around his ankle. He was a mousy-looking little man who portrayed innocence and persecution.

  “Really!” Darci said. “You are too dramatic.”

  Devlin, with chained wrists, gave her a slight bow.

  “If you put all the pieces together, the egg will open.”

  “What’s inside it?” Darci asked quickly.

  “Something that you can use.”

  “Wasn’t there an empty wine bottle from last night?” Jack asked.

  Devlin, now seeming over his fear, turned himself into an Elizabethan courtier, all velvet clothes, with jewels winking. “If you have everything, you will be able to find all that you want to find.” He gave a sly look. “Even to finding the two people you seek.”

  Darci drew in her breath. “How?” she whispered.

  “As you so clumsily found out, the box opens to allow you into the past, but with the box alone you have no control as to where you go in history. This time you were guided by another, but soon you will be on your own.”

  “You mean when Henry dies, don’t you?”

  Devlin shrugged. “Your earth bodies die easily and quickly.”

  “So how do I choose the time periods and what do I do when I get there?”

  Devlin gave a little smile. “You will discover what you need to know when you need it.”

  “I’ve about had enough of this psychic mumbo jumbo,” Jack said, stepping toward Devlin. “Darci doesn’t seem to know the power she has, but I could help her find out. I’m not nice like she is, so either you tell us all of it, or I’ll have her stick you in an aspirin bottle.”