Forever...

by Jude Deveraux

  But then, one of the children moved, and Adam realized that they were asleep. And he had no doubt that Darci had used her mind to put the children asleep.

  A few more steps took Adam past the children, and as he stepped around the wall, he saw three people lying on the floor, two men and a woman. Each of them wore long, dark robes. And each of them had a pool of blood at the base of one nostril—just as Adam had on the day Darci blasted him with her power.

  To his left was a stone altar—and when Adam looked at it, he remembered what had happened to him so long ago. He remembered the altar, the woman, and the knife—and the red-hot end of the branding iron coming toward him.

  Adam had to stand still for a moment to overcome the hideous memory, then he took a step forward.

  Around the edge of the altar he saw a woman’s head, with her artificially blackened hair spread across the stone floor. Her face was turned away from him, but Adam knew who she was: She was Sally the waitress, the one who’d waited for him to bring Darci to her.

  As Adam took another step forward, he could see about two-thirds of her body, and part of her face. Except for a tiny trickle of blood from one nostril, he could see no injury on her, but her body lay lifeless.

  As he took another step, his heart was racing. Where was Darci? Was she alive? The woman at his feet was clutching the knife, the one that he’d stolen from behind the iron bars. Adam realized that he had brought that knife back to her.

  Now he was only one step away from her spread-out robes. Another step and he’d be able to see what was behind the altar.

  Adam stepped across the dead woman. Behind the altar was Darci’s pale body. Kneeling, tenderly, gently, Adam picked up Darci’s body and cradled her to him. He couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive.

  It was Taylor who grabbed Darci’s arm and found a pulse. “I think she’s still alive,” he said, “but we need to get her to a hospital immediately.”

  Michael said that he would carry Darci, since Adam was in no shape to carry anyone, but Adam wouldn’t release her. At the door, he saw Putnam looking at Darci with lovesick eyes. A short time ago, Adam had wanted to hurt this young man for all that he’d done to Darci, but now he could see the love in Putnam’s eyes. And he could see that the young man knew he’d lost the woman he loved.

  When Putnam turned away, Adam said, “Where are you going?”

  “To find Jerlene,” he said.

  It had been a moment of indecision for Adam. He didn’t want to leave Darci, but he knew he owed a great deal to both Putnam and Jerlene. With reluctance, Adam slipped Darci into his cousin’s arms, picked up a rifle, and followed Putnam. When he heard someone behind him, he turned, ready to shoot, but it was Taylor and Boadicea, rifles on their shoulders.

  Adam started to tell them to stay with Darci, but he didn’t. If nothing else, it was Boadicea who knew the tunnels. Adam motioned to Putnam to tell him to let Boadicea lead, then the four of them crouched down and began to run.

  With the woman who had led the coven dead, there was mass chaos all around them, as her followers fled for their lives—but they took time to loot the many rooms in the tunnels as they ran.

  After an hour of fruitless searching, Putnam leaned back against a wall and there were tears in his eyes. “She’s dead. I know she’s dead. What kind of Putnam am I if I can’t protect my own?” he said.

  “You don’t own—” Adam began, but when he looked at Putnam’s face, he didn’t have the heart to go on. Taylor was standing under a torch and had pulled the mirror out of his backpack. As Boadicea had warned him, the mirror was being uncooperative and, no matter how many ways he asked, he was not being shown Jerlene’s whereabouts.

  Adam turned to Putnam. “Why does Darci say that she owes you seven million dollars?” he asked softly.

  “Oh,” Putnam said, looking down at the floor. There were remnants of the mass desertion everywhere around them. A half-open box of paper cups was against one wall, a broken table against the other. “I told her that if she’d marry me I’d forgive all the debts of everyone in Putnam.” He looked up at Adam. “You know, mortgages, car loans, that sort of thing.”

  Adam narrowed his eyes at the young man. “But you’re going to forgive the debts anyway, even though Darci isn’t going to marry you, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “But there ain’t nobody else like Darci. I’ll never find—”

  “Oh!” Taylor said, looking at the mirror. “That’s not true. You’ll marry quite soon and I. . . .” He looked up atAdam. “Since the church in this vision is filled with what look to be your relatives, I think Putnam marries someone in your family.”

  At that Adam grimaced and Putnam grinned. “Can I call you ‘Dad’?” Putnam asked.

  “You do and you won’t live very long,” Adam said. “Now get moving.”

  An hour later, they found Jerlene—and her beauty was startling—so heavily drugged that, later, the doctor said it was amazing that she was still alive.

  “All them diet pills,” Putnam said. “Her body’s so used to drugs that it can fight off anything.”

  When Jerlene recovered, she told how she’d talked to the witch enough that she’d given herself time to empty her coat pockets of the prescription diet pills, break the capsules apart, and gather about a tablespoonful of the powder. While pretending to make an incantation over her daughter, she’d put the powder in Darci’s mouth. The stimulant had revived Darci enough that she was able to use her power to stop the witch and her four followers. There’d been four of them against Darci, but she’d won. She’d used her True Persuasion, her great and wondrous gift from God, to kill them. Later, autopsies showed that all four of them had died of massive cerebral hemorrhages.

  It had taken Adam, Darci, Taylor, and Boadicea a long time to recover from what they’d been through. Darci had been in a comalike state for nearly a week. The doctor had said in wonder, “You’re not going to believe this, but she’s asleep. Could she be that exhausted?”

  “Yes,” Adam answered, looking at Darci sleeping peacefully in the hospital bed. He’d filled the room with yellow roses, and he’d sat by her, holding her hand, for all the days that she slept. The few times that he’d seen her use her power had exhausted her, so he couldn’t imagine what it had taken from her body to kill four people.

  While Adam waited for her to wake up, he had her hair that he’d secretly saved from when he’d cut it from the gate put into a little gold locket that he carried with him always.

  The first time she awoke, she’d smiled at him, tried to sit up, but the exertion had been too much for her, so she went back to sleep. The next morning, the sun came through the big windows in the pretty hospital room that Adam had procured for her, and Darci opened her eyes to see Adam, Taylor, Boadicea, Putnam, and her mother standing there watching her.

  Darci blinked at her mother, then clutched Adam’s hand tightly.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “She came to help.”

  Darci turned to Adam with eyes filled with disbelief.

  “Weird kid,” Jerlene said, then left the room.

  An hour later Putnam asked Adam to come into the corridor, where he said that Jerlene wanted to go home.

  “What does she want?” Adam asked.

  Putnam looked confused. “To go home,” he repeated.

  “No, I mean, is there something in the world that she’d like to have? Something that I could give her?”

  Putnam smiled. “Between you and me, I think Jerlene would like to be a movie star.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Adam said, smiling at Putnam. “And is there anything you want?”

  “Naw, I got money. Lots of it. I wanted. . . .”He trailed off and glanced toward the door to Darci’s room. “He said . . . I mean, Darci’s dad said that. . . .”Putnam looked down at his shoe.

  “That he saw in the mirror that you marry a relative of mine?” Adam asked, smiling. “Think you could stand to spend a few weeks at my cousins�
�� house in Colorado? I’ll make sure they invite every one of the Montgomerys and the Taggerts to meet you. A fine young man like you should find someone in that crowd.”

  “Think so?” Putnam asked, his face alight. “The girls back home just want me because I’m a Putnam. Darci was the only one that didn’t want me.”

  “Darci is unique,” Adam said softly, then held out his hand to shake Putnam’s. “Thanks for what you did. If it hadn’t been for you a lot of people wouldn’t be alive now.” He lowered his voice. “Including Darci and me.”

  Putnam shook Adam’s hand, but he looked away because his face was red with embarrassment.

  “Come back in an hour and I’ll have made arrangements,” Adam said. “And why don’t you take Jerlene with you to Colorado? Hey! Maybe you should take her shopping in New York before you go.”

  “I thought you wanted to thank me. Now you wanta send me shopping with a woman?”

  Adam laughed. “Sorry. They have stores in Colorado. I’ll see that she gets to go shopping there.”

  Smiling, Putnam turned to leave.

  “Wait a minute,” Adam called after him. “What’s your first name?”

  “Don’t have one,” Putnam said over his shoulder. “Why bother with one, is what my dad said. Nobody ever used his so he didn’t give me one.”

  “What does the t in Darci’s name stand for?”

  Putnam smiled. “Taylor. Looks like Jerlene named her after her dad.”

  The young man turned the corner, and Adam leaned back against the wall. Yet another secret that Darci had kept from him. When she’d seen the picture of her father on the computer screen, she hadn’t told him that her middle name was Taylor.

  Now Adam turned as he heard the door to the nursery open and Darci entered. Even when she was pregnant, she hadn’t put on much weight. Her stomach had grown to enormous proportions, but she’d not added any fat to any of the rest of her body.

  A year ago, as soon as Darci had been well enough, they’d flown to Colorado. She needed a place where she could be quiet and rest, and Boadicea wanted to meet her family.

  But after the initial few days of chaos, with all the Montgomerys and Taggerts flying in from around the world to meet their long-lost relative, Boadicea couldn’t stand it anymore. She’d had a lifetime of solitude, and she couldn’t take the noise of her boisterous family. One afternoon, she and Taylor had quietly slipped away and been married; then they’d flown back to Virginia and Taylor’s home.

  “I wish we could do that,” Darci said to Adam.

  “What?” he’d asked. “Go to Virginia?”

  “No. Get married quietly and have our own home. With a cook.”

  “Married quietly?” he asked, smiling and pulling her into his arms. “But you said you wanted to have the biggest wedding the United States had ever seen.”

  “I did until that woman—”

  “The wedding planner?”

  “Yes. Her. She asked me if I wanted pink doves or blue doves to fly out of the cake. Adam, I don’t want any of those messy creatures at my wedding. I just want....”

  “What do you want?”

  “Our family. You, me, your sister, my dad, and....”She looked down.

  Putting his hand under her chin, Adam lifted her face. “And your mother?”

  “Yeah,” Darci said. “Think she can find the time now that you got her in that movie with Russell Crowe?”

  “She was there when you needed her before, so I think she’ll probably be there when you need her this time.”

  “Yeah,” Darci said softly, then pushed Adam’s hand off her thigh. “Behave yourself!”

  Adam removed his hand. “What happened to the girl who offered me her body at every opportunity?”

  “That was before you loved me,” Darci said, smiling. “My plan was to go to bed with you and make such wild, passionate love to you that you’d fall in love with me. But now you are in love with me so I don’t have to debase myself with sex before marriage.”

  “Debase?” Adam said. “You do realize that this is the twenty-first century, don’t you?” Chuckling, he shook his head. “All right, so what is it you’re dying to tell me? I can almost read your mind.”

  “Where are we going to live? I mean, neither you nor I have a job, so we can live anywhere we want to.”

  “And where do you want to live?”

  When Darci looked at him, her eyes narrowed to pinpoints.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said, then he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. “None of your True Persuasion on me! Where do you want to live?”

  When Darci didn’t answer, he put her down and looked into her eyes. This time, they were wide open. She was silently asking him something, but the silence didn’t last long. When she did answer, she said it with her voice and her thoughts—and the resulting sound was so loud that Adam put his hands to his ears. “Virginia!” she shouted.

  “Okay, okay,” Adam said. “Your dad, my sister. I got it.”

  “Thank you,” Darci said, leaping onto him, her legs around his waist, her arms encircling his neck.

  And that’s how they came to live in Virginia. Adam bought a big, old southern colonial house set on twenty-five acres, and two weeks after he and Darci were married, she asked him to allow her father and Boadicea to move in with them. At first Adam hadn’t liked the idea. He’d grown up surrounded by too many people, so he wanted his privacy. But the four of them had shared so much that it was difficult for them to separate.

  After they were all living in the big, old house, Adam became the one to introduce Boadicea to the world. And Taylor and Darci began to work together to try to find out what she could do with her True Persuasion.

  Darci gave birth to their daughter one week before their first wedding anniversary. And that’s when Adam told her that his cousin Michael had purchased the Grove in Camwell, and had hired men with bulldozers to destroy the underground tunnels.

  What Adam didn’t tell his wife was what had been found inside some of the rooms in the tunnels. One week when Darci had been in bed with endless morning sickness, Taylor and Boadicea—who didn’t have a sick day during her pregnancy—drove to Connecticut and went through the objects the workmen had found. Some of the things they buried—with prayers and a service—some things they destroyed, but a few they put into Taylor’s new Range Rover and took back to Virginia. Most of the objects were put in a vault that was hidden inside the house in Virginia. But Taylor kept the mirror of Nostradamus in his bedroom and consulted it daily. He worked with his daughter to change or prevent what he saw.

  Now, as Adam looked down at his wife, he smiled. “Happy?” he asked.

  “Perfectly,” she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss him.

  “No regrets?”

  “None,” she answered; then, holding his hand, she walked to their daughter’s cradle.

  Epilogue

  Three Years Later

  THE TWO LITTLE GIRLS, Hallie Montgomery and Isabella Raeburne, were always into everything. Two women had been hired to look after them, but the toddlers still escaped.

  “Where are you?” the frustrated nanny called, looking behind the chairs and doors. “When I catch you, you’ll be sorry.” But she knew it was an idle threat, because the girls had a way of making her anger dissolve as soon as they looked into her eyes. In a single ten-minute afternoon spree, they had taken six cartons of yoghurt out of the refrigerator, opened each carton, and poured the yoghurt into the flour bin. When they tossed a few dog biscuits into the concoction, the two Irish setter puppies had jumped in and out of the sticky goo and frolicked all over the kitchen.

  When the nanny saw the mess, she was so angry she decided then and there to quit. But when the girls looked up at her with their big eyes, she’d forgiven them everything. In the end, she hadn’t even made the girls help her clean up. She gently washed them, while singing their favorite songs; then she’d given them cookies and milk while she set about scrubbing the kitchen.


  But now she knew she’d had it. She loved the children madly, but she was tired of searching for them, tired of cleaning up horrendous messes. She was tired of—

  The nanny stopped thinking because she’d found the girls. They were sitting on the carpeted floor of their playroom tossing a ball from one to the other.

  The nanny didn’t say a word, just backed out of the room until she hit the wall of the hallway, then she took off running. She’d been told that she was only to disturb the parents in the case of an emergency, but now she didn’t hesitate. Without knocking, she threw open the office door.

  “You have to come now!” she said, breathless.

  “Who’s hurt?” Darci asked, coming out of her chair. There were newspaper articles in front of her, and she’d been trying to solve the problems the articles told of.

  “No one’s hurt,” the nanny said. “Your daughters are playing ball!”

  “I hardly think that’s a reason to interrupt us,” Taylor said. “We—”

  Boadicea looked at Darci, and the next moment the two women were running for the door, Adam and Taylor behind them.

  In the nursery, the two little girls were indeed playing ball. A bright red ball was floating through the air from one girl to the next.

  The only thing unusual was that no hands were being used. The children were using their minds to toss the ball back and forth.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Darci said.

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Pocket Books eBook.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.