Always

by Jude Deveraux

  That made Jack smile. “Yeah, well, okay, but you’re going with us, right?”

  “I…”

  “And you’ll wait until I get out of the hospital before you put that jewel on the base, right?”

  “Oh…uh…”

  “Darci!” Jack said in warning as his father approached. “So help me, if you do anything when I’m not there I’ll—Oh, no you don’t,” he said as her eyes became pinpoints of concentration.

  “Help!” Darci yelled and Mr. Hallbrooke hurried forward. “I think he’s fainted.”

  Mr. Hallbrooke caught his son and held him upright as the pilot came running. “Paralyzing him would have hurt his wound, wouldn’t it?” he asked her.

  Darci’s face turned red. The man caught on quickly. She couldn’t help a small smile and a nod.

  The pilot and Mr. Hallbrooke half carried Jack’s inert body to the helicopter, then got him inside and strapped him in. Darci stepped away.

  “Go with us,” Mr. Hallbrooke yelled over the noise of the chopper.

  She shook her head. “I have something I must do. Do you have a car?”

  Without a question, he tossed her a set of keys, then climbed in beside his son. “What about you?” he yelled, motioning to her shoulder.

  “Healed,” she said, and couldn’t resist pulling her shirt to one side to show him the wound that had closed now.

  Mr. Hallbrooke drew in his breath, and his eyes opened wide.

  His astonishment made Darci laugh as she stepped back and let the helicopter rise into the air. She waited for a long while, until all was quiet again, then she went in search of the car that fit the keys.

  • • •

  “Where is she?” Jack asked when he was being wheeled down the hospital corridor on a bed.

  “Mrs. Montgomery?” his father, walking close beside him, asked.

  “You know exactly who I mean. Where is she?”

  “She said she had something she had to do, so I gave her the keys to my car.”

  Jack closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m going to kill her.”

  “I think perhaps she might be able to prevent your doing that.”

  Jack looked at his father. “How much do you know?”

  “Not nearly enough, and I can tell you that I plan to find out a great deal more.”

  “You won’t be able to,” Jack said, smiling at the thought that there would be something his father couldn’t find out. “No one knows about the things that happen in her life.”

  “Except you.”

  “Not even me. I know what she and I have done, but—”

  “Such as?”

  Jack chuckled. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Looking up, he saw the face of the male orderly pushing the bed. It was a uniform he didn’t recognize.

  “Where is this place?”

  “You don’t think I’d take my son to the local emergency room, do you? You’re in a private clinic and you’ll be meeting with my private physician.”

  “I should have guessed. You know that there are people out there dying because they have no health care?”

  “Perhaps you should set up a free health care service in this country.”

  Jack looked at his father suspiciously. “Now we’re getting to the heart of the matter, aren’t we? I give up my job to work for you.”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? The truth at last.”

  “Mrs. Montgomery tell you?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, unable to suppress his smile, but the movement sent pain up through his shoulder. He really was going to kill Darci. She could have healed him with her little glass ball, then the two of them could have fit the jewel into the base.

  And then what? he wondered. What would happen then? Would the world go up in smoke? Or had Devlin been telling the truth and Darci would be able to look at history?

  “Here’s where I have to leave you,” Mr. Hallbrooke said as they came to closed double doors. Throughout all of it, the man had never lost his stiff formality, had never bent from his rigid posture. “When this is over, you and I will talk. I have something to discuss with you.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jack said. “And we’ll toss a ball around in the backyard.”

  “I hardly think—” Mr. Hallbrooke began, then gave that tiny smile. “Yes, I see. Perhaps we’ll talk about that hidden room and what’s in it. I didn’t quite tell the whole truth. I removed some of the items from the room. Perhaps you can use them to blackmail Mrs. Montgomery into doing what you want her to do.”

  For a moment Jack looked at his father with his mouth agape, then he let out a laugh that could be heard all the way down the corridor. “Now I know where I got everything,” Jack said. “Sure, Dad, we’ll talk as soon as we can.” The orderly pushed the bed through the doors.

  “Dr. Shepard will be here in a minute,” the orderly said.

  “Glad to hear it,” Jack said, closing his eyes, trying to think about all that had happened in the last few hours. His father had faked a kidnapping to get his son to come after him. “What made him think I’d do it?” Jack muttered.

  “You say something?” the orderly asked.

  “No, just mumbling.” Jack tried not to think of Darci and how she’d betrayed him. If she’d used that ball on him, he could be with her now. They could be trying to find Lavender. Instead he was on a bed, weak, light-headed, frustrated that he couldn’t do anything, and angry that his father had played him for a fool.

  “I’ll go see if I can find the doctor,” the orderly said and left the room.

  When he was alone, Jack suddenly missed Lavender so very much. In the few days since he’d seen her, he’d tried to keep so busy that he couldn’t think about her—or remember her. But now that he was incapacitated, all he seemed able to do was think about her. He remembered her eyes, her sweet ways, the night she belly danced atop the wagon. He remembered holding her hand while they both died. He hadn’t told Darci, but after they’d returned to the twenty-first century, he’d remembered the time after he and Lavey had fallen. He remembered the long, long fall down, remembered the crash onto the hard ground. He remembered touching her. He knew exactly when her spirit left her body, and he’d willed his to go with her. They’d held hands and looked down at their bodies on the ground, then they’d drifted into the light, happy at last.

  “Here, now, none of that,” said a gentle voice, and a soft tissue wiped at the tear that had trickled from Jack’s eye. “We’ll have you up and about in no time.”

  Embarrassed, Jack opened his eyes to look into…into Lavender’s eyes. He stared, unable to blink. Her head was turned slightly away from him, but he could still see her eyes. He gasped loudly.

  “I know,” she said as she cut away his jacket to get to the wound, “purple eyes are strange.”

  “Lavender,” he said hoarsely.

  “That’s what I say they are, too.” Her attention was on his arm, not his face. “But the kids all say they’re purple. Now hold still, this might hurt a bit.”

  Jack could only look at her; he couldn’t speak. There were physical differences between her and the Lavender he’d known in the nineteenth century, but he knew who she was.

  “You’re a good patient,” she said, then turned and, for the first time, looked into his eyes.

  For a moment, they stared at each other, unable to speak, just looking at each other in silence.

  The swinging doors opened with a crash. “Mr. Hallbrooke is outside and he’s antsy. Wants to know what’s going on,” a man said. When the doctor didn’t answer, he said, “Doc! Earth to Dr. Shepard. Come in, please. The man who owns the hospital has asked a question so it must be answered.”

  “Uh…yeah,” she said after a while and finally broke contact with Jack’s eyes. “Mr. Hallbrooke.”

  “Yeah, the head honcho. The big daddy.” He glanced at Jack on the bed. “What do you have to do with Hallbrooke?”

  �
�He’s—” Jack hesitated. Whatever decision he made at this moment would be forever. He wouldn’t be able to take it back. “He’s my father,” Jack said at last.

  “Yeah? I thought he was childless. I heard—”

  “You heard too much,” Dr. Shepard snapped. “Now go tell Mr. Hallbrooke that his son is doing fine and he’ll be—”

  Reaching up to the side of the bed, Jack put his fingers over hers. She didn’t look down, but her neck became very pink. She straightened her shoulders. “Tell Mr. Hallbrooke that his son needs a great deal of rest—and many tests. I think he’s going to have to be in this hospital for a great many days.”

  The orderly looked from Jack to Dr. Shepard, back again, then he smiled. “Sure thing, doc. You’re callin’ the shots. I’ll tell him that his son will be well looked after. Very, very, very well looked after.” Chuckling, he left the room.

  When they were alone, Dr. Shepard looked at Jack in embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to hit on the boss’s son,” she said. “I mean, I don’t usually—”

  “You don’t by chance know how to belly dance, do you?”

  Her eyes widened. “I started taking lessons for Middle Eastern dance when I was only six.”

  Closing his eyes, Jack smiled. “Ever hear of a stone called Nokes garnet?”

  She reached into her blouse and pulled out a chain that held a pendant of what looked to be a five- or six-carat stone. “My favorite, but most people have never heard of them. How did you—”

  He still didn’t open his eyes, but his smile grew broader. “Where did you grow up?”

  “Camwell, Connecticut, and if you say one word about witches I’ll let another doctor work on you.”

  Jack had no intention of saying anything about witches. Opening his eyes, he looked at her. “Do you have a first name?”

  “Lillian,” she said. “And you?”

  “Jack, short for John Hallbrooke the fourth. Do you mind?” They both knew he was asking her if she minded that he had a father who had too much power and far too much money.

  “I don’t mind,” she said softly. “Now, let’s look at that wound. I wouldn’t want you to die now that I’ve found you again.”

  Jack smiled, knowing that she had no idea she’d said “again.” She’d found him “again.” As he watched her, he forgot all about Darci and the jewel and the magic objects. Jack knew that he was where he should be, doing what he was supposed to be doing, and, most of all, he was with who he was supposed to be with.

  Smiling, he closed his eyes again. At last, all the anger he’d held inside of him all his life was gone.

  Chapter Twenty

  DARCI TOOK HER TIME WHEN SHE GOT BACK TO the Hallbrooke house. She knew she needed to sleep, but her adrenaline was pumping too hard for her to be still.

  The first thing she did was sit down in Mr. Hallbrooke’s bedroom and visualize that no one would disturb her. She made sure that if anyone showed up, he wouldn’t come into the house.

  Holding the jewel in her hand tightly, and the papers Simone had left her under her arm, and a tray with a big bottle of fruit juice and a glass in the other hand, she went into the hidden room. For a while she stood looking at the base with the artifacts stuck to it. After setting down the things she carried, she put the Touch of God back into place, then smiled when the base grew warm. She felt it grow warmer by the second, and when she held out the jewel, it was almost greedy in the way it drew it into place.

  Once all the objects were on the base, Darci stepped back, smiling with deep satisfaction. In her heart, in her soul, she knew that she had finally come to the right place. If she was ever going to see her husband again, now was the time.

  The base began to hum in a pleasant, happy way, and it grew so hot that she could feel the warmth all through the room.

  When she picked up the key to the silver box, she was almost afraid, but she let out her breath and told herself to calm down.

  Slowly, she put the key into the hole in the box, then waited. What will happen now? she wondered.

  In the next instant, to her right, against a wall of plain paneling, a tiny drop of what looked to be water appeared. As Darci watched, the drop grew and enlarged until it was a huge round surface, wavy at the edges, but clear in the middle.

  Cautiously, she reached out to touch it and saw her hand disappear. Quickly, she drew back, almost afraid that her hand had been taken from her. When she saw that her hand was all right, she put it back in to the elbow, and when that was safe, she put her face into the circle to see what was in there.

  What she saw was history—if that were possible. Scenes of time seemed to be whirling about her. Here a horse-drawn carriage, here an automobile that drove even though it had no wheels, there a castle, there a cave dwelling. When a toothless man leered at her, she drew back to the safety of the room.

  She poured herself a large glass full of cran-raspberry juice and thought about what she’d just seen. For a moment she thought of commanding Devlin to appear so she could question him, but she didn’t want to have to deal with his arrogance and his eternal body changing.

  Putting down her glass, she went to the circle and looked at it. “I want to see Adam Drayton with his wife,” she said, then stuck her face into the circle.

  Before her was an idyllic setting of apple trees in bloom and Adam Drayton teasing a young woman who looked very much like Darci. With her powers intact, Darci knew that her guess had been correct: Diana was ill and it was her heart. There was something wrong with one of the valves, a hole in it perhaps.

  Drawing back, Darci smiled. Yes, she could see the past. But what she needed was to be able to see what would happen if the past changed.

  She put her face back into the circle. “I want to see what the world would be like if Lavender Shay had lived.”

  To her disappointment, all she saw was the world as it currently was. She could see nothing different. But that was good, wasn’t it? she thought. If Lavey lived, it would change nothing.

  She looked back into the circle. “Let me see Camwell, Connecticut, three years after Lavender does not die.” It was an awkward way of stating it, but that’s what she wanted.

  To Darci’s horror, Camwell seemed to be mostly charred buildings—and she knew that Millie had been the cause of the fires. Curious, Darci looked back at the shelf in the hidden room and saw that all the papers that Simone had left her were gone. Millie had burned down the church. “Where is Tom?” she asked, and was shown a gravestone.

  Stepping out, Darci had to think about what she’d seen. She’d wanted Lavender and John Marshall to live and have a happy life together, but if they did, the anger of Millie would hurt a lot of people. She felt bad about this, but at the same time she felt good. She and Jack had changed history for the better. They’d changed history in a small way, for what did one town burning down matter? But what they’d done had made a big difference to some very deserving people.

  She looked back at the circle. “Show me the witch in 1992,” she said. If Millie burned Camwell down in the 1800s, perhaps the witch…no, it seemed to have no effect on the witch. She was still in the tunnels and still had Adam’s sister as her captive.

  Darci drank more juice and realized that she was going to have to leave it that Lavender and John Marshall had been killed. Millie’s going to medical school seemed to have been the right thing in the long run.

  “I want to see what happens if Diana Drayton lives,” she said as she put her face back into the circle. She was shown a happy Adam and Diana, both gray-haired and walking arm in arm. “More,” Darci said. “Farther ahead.” She was rewarded with seeing a great-great-grandson of theirs, the descendant of a third child. He had invented something that would help cars in the twenty-first century operate on very little gasoline.

  “Nice,” Darci said, smiling. Originally, Diana had died before having a third child. Now all Darci had to do was figure out how to make it happen.

  As she sipped her juice and contemplated
, she knew she was a bit afraid to step fully into the circle. What if she couldn’t get back? When she’d gone back in time before, her powers had been taken from her. What if she stepped through and the circle closed behind her and she was trapped somewhere with no powers?

  “Then I won’t step all the way through,” she said. But how did she change things without being there? And when did she want to arrive? Smiling, she set down her glass, went to the base, and put her hand on the Touch of God. “May I borrow this?” she asked, and wondered, if she did, would the circle disappear?

  To her pleasure, it seemed that the funny-looking little sculpture changed its tune and was now humming something that seemed to be assent. Like the tree, Darci thought, smiling, and vowed to someday explore this concept of inanimate objects having feelings.

  She took the Touch of God, said “thank you,” and the sculpture seemed to hum a “you’re welcome.”

  Darci went back to the circle. “I want to see Diana when she was a child, and I want her to be alone. I want her close to the edge of the circle.”

  When Darci put her face through, there was a little girl, about six, sitting under a shade tree playing with her doll and singing to herself. Darci stepped halfway through the circle, keeping her left arm and leg in the room.

  “Who are you?” the girl asked, looking up at Darci with curious eyes.

  “I’m your fairy godmother and I want to show you something. Let me hold this onto your heart.”

  It was a different time and the child had not been taught not to talk to strangers. Smiling, she got up and went to Darci, who put the Touch of God on the child’s chest, over her heart.

  “You’re beautiful,” the child said.

  “Thank you. Do you feel anything?”

  “Yes. It feels very nice. You’re the prettiest lady I’ve ever seen, but your clothes are funny.”

  “Very funny,” Darci agreed, concentrating on the ball. It wasn’t easy keeping her balance, and in the end she had to leave only her left foot on the other side of the circle. After several minutes the ball grew cool and stopped vibrating in her hand, so she knew that the hole in the child’s heart had been healed.