And he had no choice now but to kill Sabina King and Garner Rousseau.
He’d do whatever he had to. And this time he wouldn’t fail.
SABINA USUALLY LOVED mornings at the carnival. The freshness of the air. The quiet before the activities kicked into full gear. But this morning was different. This morning, the air seemed to carry a clammy chill despite the already building heat. And the quiet set her nerves on edge.
The fun-house entrance yawned in front of them, a large painted mouth framed with sharp teeth and bright red lips. Later in the day, it would be filled with children and their parents laughing at their distorted images in the mirrors, trying to find their way through the dark mazes, shrieking with fear when the unexpected popped out at them from behind a wall. But now it was silent except for the sound of Sabina and Garner’s footsteps on the wooden ramp.
“Leon?” Garner shouted. “Are you in there?”
A muffled thump and a curse filtered through the fun-house walls.
Garner chuckled and shook his head. “I’ll bet Florica told Leon to wait for us here.”
“I thought the same thing. It’s just her style.”
“She must think we gadje are a gullible lot. First she led me on a chase last night. And now she has Leon lost in the fun-house maze.”
Sabina paused. “Maybe we should make him promise to consider our evidence before we let him out.”
Garner gave her a smile. “Not a bad idea.” He pushed at the center of the huge lolling tongue and the mouth squeaked open.
Sabina followed him through the frame of teeth and lips. The maze was dark. Lights flashed ahead, illuminating moving eyes and wicked clown faces that watched from the shadows. Sabina and Garner approached the hall of mirrors, an attraction no good fun house was without. Mirrors of all shapes and sizes loomed around them. Sabina watched their distorted images move through the hall. Short and fat, thin and tall, and serpentine, but always hand in hand, together. For now, together.
A creak of floorboards caught her ear. She glanced in the direction of the sound.
A blur of movement emerged from the darkness. Dark feathers. A hawklike beak. Fingers as strong as talons dug into her arm with bruising force. A flash of steel came out of the darkness, swooping toward her. A scream erupted from her throat.
Garner spun around. He grabbed the hand with the knife, stopping its downward assault.
The birdman slammed him back against a mirror. The glass splintered and broke, showering to the floor.
Garner’s grip slipped.
The birdman wrenched his wrist free. He jabbed the blade at Garner.
No!
Sabina rushed the man. Leaping on his back, she grasped his throat with one hand and clawed at his face with the other, trying to gouge her fingers through the holes in the mask and into his eyes.
Garner lunged at the man at the same time. The attacker pushed Garner back into another mirror. His fist shot toward Garner’s stomach. The fist gripping the knife.
Please, God, no.
Garner stood still for a moment, staggering against the mirror, leaning against it. A red stain began to spread down his shirt. Blood.
The man rushed backward, driving Sabina into another mirror.
Air exploded from her lungs. Glass shattered behind her. She released his throat and fell from his back, gasping for breath. Just then a voice yelled from outside the fun house. Andrei. She could swear the voice belonged to Andrei. “Andrei!” she screamed.
The birdman leaped over Garner and thundered down the fun-house hallway, disappearing into the maze.
Sabina scrambled to Garner’s side. Shards of glass from the broken mirror cut her hands and knees. She clawed at his shirt, ripping the fabric wide to expose his wound. A deep gash slashed across his stomach, blood pulsing from it.
She looked into Garner’s face. His pale, strong face. His eyes were already growing glassy, unseeing. His breath shuddered from his lips. Darkness surrounded him. The black aura of death.
Oh, God, Garner was going to die.
Sabina leaned him back against a mirror and held her hands up in front of her. Her fingers stretched out, steady and strong. Garner couldn’t die. He couldn’t. Whatever it took, she’d save him. She would, because she was strong. Powerful. And she didn’t want to live without the man she loved.
She pressed her palms to his wound. Blood oozed between her fingers, hot and sticky.
Garner’s eyes widened. Understanding dawned in his glassy eyes. “No. Sabina, no.” He clawed at her hands with his fingers. He tried to push her away, but his strength had drained away, along with his blood.
She pressed her hands harder against his wound. “I love you, Garner. Always remember I love you.”
Slowly the blood flow lessened, then stopped. She could feel his cut flesh coming together, mending under her fingers. Just as pain ripped into her own flesh, and it seemed as if her blouse was wet with blood.
Strength seemed to pour out of her with each beat of her heart. She gasped, the roar of breath deafening in her ears. Raising her eyes, she looked at her own distorted image in the mirror. Her eyes grew sunken, her cheeks drained of color, of life.
And all around her hung the black aura of death.
Chapter Seven
Garner fought through the fog in his mind as if waking from a horrible dream. Sabina. He had to reach Sabina. He had to stop her. He forced his eyes to focus.
Sabina was crouched next to him in the narrow hall of mirrors. Shards of broken glass glinted all around her. Her fingers pressed his stomach, cold against his skin. She stared past him and into the mirror behind him. Her breathing rasped in the silence, fast and shallow.
A chill penetrated his bones and froze his heart.
She’d saved him. She’d healed him. She’d placed her hands on him and absorbed his wound, just as she’d described.
And now she was going to die.
“No.” The word exploded from Garner’s lips again, from his heart, from his soul. She couldn’t die. She couldn’t. He loved her.
Just as he’d loved Mary Ann. Just as he’d loved his mother and even in some strange way, his father.
Love is death.
Sabina would die because he loved her. She was right. That was his curse. Love is death.
He gathered her in his arms. She slumped against his shoulder, as if she didn’t have the strength to hold her body upright one more second. He tilted her face toward his, and latched on to her gaze. What he wouldn’t give to lose himself in the rich green of her eyes, to plunge in over his head, without a life vest, without a safety line, just plunge in and let the tide sweep him away.
She’d been right when she’d said what they had was rare and precious. Too precious to waste. And what had he done? He’d wasted it. All because he was too busy protecting his heart until it was too late.
No. It wasn’t too late. It damn well wasn’t too late. He wouldn’t let it be. “You’re not going to die, Sabina. I’m not going to let you.”
She looked up at him, her eyes unseeing.
His gut twisted with anger. “Damn it, Sabina. You can’t die on me now. I love you. I want you here with me.”
The corners of her lips quirked upward, as if she’d heard him. As if she’d tried to smile. She drew a deep, shuddering breath.
“You’re strong, Sabina. Strong enough to heal yourself. Strong enough to come back to me.” He drew her close and held her tightly against his shoulder. “Damn it, come back to me.”
He heard mirror shards crunch underfoot. Looking up, he met the eyes of Sabina’s cousin. Andrei seemed to take in the situation with a glance, his eyes rounding with fear for his cousin. He didn’t rush forward, though, but stayed in the shadows. As if he understood that he couldn’t help. That only Garner could save Sabina now.
Garner kissed Sabina’s hair and held her tighter against his body. “I want to marry you. I want us to have children. You said you loved children. We can have as many as you want
. And I want all of them to be filled with your strength and zest for life. I want all of them to be just like you.”
She stirred in his arms, but he didn’t let her go. He couldn’t.
“But you have to come back to me first, Sabina. You have to heal yourself. You can do it. I know you can. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known.”
“You make me strong.”
Her voice was weak as a whisper, but it hit him with the force of trumpet fanfare. He loosened his embrace so he could see into her eyes.
Dark, rich green stared back at him. The color of life itself.
He swallowed into an aching throat. “You’re strong, Sabina. You always have been. You just didn’t know it.”
A smile flitted over her lips. “I’m glad you were around to let me in on the secret.” Her voice was still weak, but gaining strength with each word.
“You’re strong enough to heal yourself. You’re strong enough to come back to me.” He hadn’t asked a question, but still he waited for her answer. A few moments ago he wouldn’t have dared hope for a miracle like this. Now he couldn’t stop hoping.
She nodded. “Help me sit up so I can see myself in the mirror.”
“Your aura?”
“Yes.”
He did as she asked.
She stared at her reflection a long time in silence.
“What do you see?” He held his breath.
Finally she turned to face him, sitting upright under her own power. “I see love. The clear, pink color of love.”
Tears blurred his vision. Tears of relief. Tears of hope. “Yes. I think I can see it, too.” And he could. If not in the air surrounding them, then in his heart. In his soul.
All the brilliant colors of life sparkled and danced in her eyes. “My aunt’s curse is broken. You love me, and yet I didn’t die.”
He slipped his fingers over her cheeks and into her hair, cradling her face in both hands. The curse was broken. But there was more than that. So much more. He wanted to tell her about the rush of joy that made his head spin. The hope that filled his heart to bursting. The love that touched his soul. But the words wouldn’t form on his tongue. All his life, words had been his tools. Tools to defend the meek. Tools to fight back against his father. Tools to protect himself against pain and loss. But now, for the first time, words failed him. Because he didn’t need them now.
He traced his thumbs along her cheekbones. Leaning down, he fitted his lips to hers. And when he finally found the strength to pull away, he looked deep into the green of her eyes and found his peace.
ANDREI
PATRICIA ROSEMOOR
Thanks to my agent Jenn Jackson,
for all her hard work in my behalf.
Chapter One
A throwback to days past, Granville Plantation set the standard against which other such estates were compared. Framed by live oaks, the mansion dripped with Louisiana character. Strong white pillars. Welcoming front porch. Charming landscaping. Tall, wide windows like the eyes of a living being gazing out on the world haughtily, as if certain of its own superiority.
Just like its owner, Andrei Sobatka remembered ruefully.
He was staring at the best of bayou country and stewing about the past when the front door opened, jolting him out of a memory better off forgotten.
A woman stepped onto the porch, a tall glass in one hand, and leaned a slender shoulder into one of the columns. She looked out at the land with the possessiveness of a lifelong lover. Wearing tan riding pants, black boots and a bright white shirt open at the throat, she was a study in equestrian elegance. She’d surely been riding—her boots were mud-spackled and her shirt, stained with sweat, clung to her like a second skin. Seeming satisfied with her own narrow world, she raised the glass to her lips, her chin lifting to reveal a long, elegant neck as she sipped at her drink.
She hadn’t changed, Andrei thought, moving closer, mesmerized by the golden locks of hair plastered along her neck. He hadn’t seen her since the last summer he’d worked with the carnival ten years before, but it might just as well have been ten days.
For a moment he was caught, lost in the fantasy of trailing his fingers through those silky strands, of brushing them back from her warm flesh, of running his mouth along the alabaster column of her neck and drinking her in.
Suddenly he realized she’d looked straight through the trees and noticed him. The color in her cheeks rose, and as he drew closer, he could see the pulse in her throat. Her heart was hammering, he thought, rushing aristocratic blue blood through her delicate veins. She clutched the glass as she might a lifeline, and he could see she wore no wedding ring.
“What are you doing on Granville property?” she demanded.
“Now, Lizzie,” he drawled, purposefully emphasizing the nickname, “is that any way to say hello after all these years?”
“I would rather say nothing at all to you, but since you’re trespassing, you leave me no choice. And don’t call me by that wretched name. It’s Elizabeth.”
He moved closer still, stopping inches from the step. “You used to love it when I called you Lizzie.”
“I allowed you to call me Lizzie.”
That haughty tone sparked memories. Her voice as smooth and sleek as her long legs and high breasts had haunted his dreams for years after the last time he’d seen her.
He laughed. “You loved it when I called you Lizzie. And when I trespassed on sacred Granville land, if I remember correctly, it was because you invited me.”
“So I was young and foolish. A teenager,” she added as if that should explain it all. “I’m a woman now.”
He eyed her with the lust of a connoisseur, his gaze intimately brushing her breasts. The areolas were large enough and dark enough to show just slightly through her thin bra and damp shirt. “You certainly are a woman.”
Her nipples pebbled visibly through her thin shirt, and Andrei felt a surge from below in answer.
“A different person,” she emphasized, crossing her arms before her as if she needed to protect herself from his gaze.
He shook his head. “You’re the same as I remember you.”
Liquid spilled from her glass. Flustered, she set it down on a nearby porch table.
Softly, he taunted her. “I could make you like my calling you Lizzie again.”
“Never.”
She was a little breathless and he was so close he could see the perspiration dotting her skin, making her look all dewy and soft, like a woman who’d just been made love to. The thought plagued him, filled him with a lust she would never know.
“I could make you beg me to take you, not in a bed with nice clean sheets, but out in a pasture or deep in the heart of bayou country—”
“Stop it! Why have you come back here, Andrei? What is it you want?”
An easy grin tugged at his lips. “And if I said you?”
“I would call you a liar.” Her jaw tightened and she added, “A Gypsy.”
As if the words were interchangeable, Andrei thought, quick anger slashing through him. He narrowed his gaze on Elizabeth Granville and took the two steps up to the porch. Something flashed through her expression—fear?—and he knew the advantage was his.
“To be Rom does not automatically make one a liar.” His tone lacked its former come-on. He was all straight arrow now, no more nonsense. “I’m looking for your father.”
“Daddy? Why?”
“We have business.”
“What kind of business?”
“As a state senator, he represents me, doesn’t he?” Andrei said this as if that was all the reason he needed.
“I work for Daddy. Whatever the business, you can tell me and I’ll see that it’s taken care of.”
“You’ll take care of me?” he asked, grinning at her again just to throw her off balance.
“I can see this conversation is going nowhere.” Abruptly she turned and headed for the door.
“Tell me where your father has slithered off
to and I’ll leave you be.”
Her spine stiffened. She turned back and gaped. “Excuse me?”
“A simple request. What rock did he crawl under?”
“You’re calling Daddy a snake?”
“That would be an insult to snakes.”
“How dare you!”
“I call them like I see them.”
“You haven’t seen Daddy in almost a decade, so what do you have against him? His politics?”
“If that’s what you want to call it. I don’t like that he’s walking around free while Carlo Mustov is still sitting on death row.”
Because he believed that no Romany would ever get a break from the law, Andrei had tried to stay out of the investigation. But now Valonia had been murdered, and his beloved cousins Alessandra and Sabina had both put their lives on the line. Too bad their sacrifices had come to naught—they still hadn’t achieved the result they all wanted, which was to free Carlo.
After a stunned silence, she asked, “Would you care to explain that?”
“You don’t think your father is capable of murder?” He could see that she didn’t.
“Whom do you imagine he killed?”
“Your mother, Lizzie,” he said, watching her amber eyes go round with shock. “Thankfully, he failed when he tried to kill Garner Rousseau.”
Andrei had chased away the would-be murderer but hadn’t caught the bastard. As he’d expected, District Attorney Leon Thibault had not been overly excited by the letter Sabina had handed him when the whole frightening episode in the fun house was over. The D.A. had been searching for Sabina and Garner at the opposite ends of the midway. Florica must have been confused, but then, Andrei knew better than to rely on the childlike woman he had befriended upon returning to the carnival.
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