“Any witch could do that.”
“I lived two hundred years before I found you again, Raven. And I never managed it.”
“You got by.”
“Getting by is irrelevant. Have you looked at our bank statements lately?”
I sighed. Making good financial decisions had always come as naturally to me as breathing. It wasn’t something I was overly proud of, but I doubted I could help it if I tried. If I bought a stock, it skyrocketed. If I opened a bank account, the interest rate went up. If I bought so much as a lottery ticket....
“And now there’s your age, as well,” Arianna went on. “Nathanial would get a lot of life force from a heart three centuries strong. Besides all of that, the more times you thwart him, the more angry and determined he becomes. You know that, as well.”
Lowering my head very slowly, I said, “I’m going to have to kill him, aren’t I?”
Arianna nodded. “I’m afraid it’s the only way you’ll ever find peace.” She searched my face. “You’ve killed before, Raven. He wouldn’t be your first.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “but only in battle, when it was forced on me. Only when I had no choice. It takes something from me when I take a life, Arianna. I die a little each time.”
“The bastard needs killing,” Arianna told me.
“But not by me. Not unless he forces me to.” I bit my lower lip. “We’ll leave here for a while. Tomorrow. I’d rather avoid confrontation if I can.”
Tipping her head skyward, Arianna rolled her eyes. “Raven! Why must you be such a pacifist? After three centuries of living as a being who must kill or be killed, how can you cling to that mortal idea of morality? I swear, if I get the chance, I’ll cut out that black heart of his myself.” I looked at her harshly. “I will!" she vowed. “I’ve owed that bastard for a long time. But he’s as slippery as a snake where I’m concerned.”
“He does avoid you,” I said, contemplating. “It’s as if he’s always out there, watching us, waiting. Every time he’s attacked me since Duncan, it has been when you and I were apart. In Virginia, when I stayed behind to care for that ailing woman, while you went off to find her husband. In California, when I sat on the beach thinking of Duncan while you slept soundly in the beach house. In New York when we got separated in that crowd at the theater....”
“Because he knows I can take him.”
“I suspect you’re right,” I told her. “And that’s why he never gives you the chance. It’s me he comes after. Always me, and those I love.”
“So you’ll run from him again,” Arianna went on. “And what if Duncan returns here while you’re hiding from Dearborne? What if you miss your chance to find him again?”
I only shook my head. “That won’t happen. We can keep watch from a safe distance.”
“He won’t come after you if I’m here, Raven.”
“You can’t watch over me twenty-four hours a day, Arianna.”
“But we’re not even sure Dearborne is here yet!” she wailed.
I turned to stare out at the night sky, at the full moon, and even as I did, a dark cloud eclipsed its golden face.
“He’s here,” I whispered. “I feel it. He’s here.”
* * * *
Duncan stood near the curving glass windows of the lighthouse for a long time. Alone, as utterly alone as he’d always been.
She’d been out there again tonight.
The same woman, he was sure of that. The same one he’d glimpsed that first night he’d come here, a month ago. When this had been just another job, and not one he particularly wanted at that. Not that restoring a century-old lighthouse wasn’t exactly the kind of thing he loved best, just that it meant spending months surrounded by water. And he hadn’t been over his crippling fear of water for all that long. Heights barely gave him a second thought anymore, but water....
Still, he’d agreed to come out here, take a look at the place. And he still wasn’t exactly sure why he’d done that when he’d been certain this was one restoration job he’d be turning down. He only knew that a strange sort of pit-of-the-stomach feeling had started gnawing at him from the moment he’d set foot in this tourist mecca town. And when he and the owner left shore in a small motorboat the first time to head out to the lighthouse, the physical reactions, the cold sweat and rapid heartbeat he’d been expecting, hadn’t come. They’d been overpowered by different reactions, unexpected ones as he stared back at the peninsula, and the cliffs at its tip. A clenching sensation in his stomach. An empty well opening in the vicinity of his heart. A tightening in his throat that made it hard to swallow.
All of that only got worse once he was inside the lighthouse, discussing the renovations with the owner, who wanted to fix it up and sell it. Already, he’d been reconsidering his earlier decision not to take on the job.
Then he’d glimpsed her, through these very windows. She stood like some kind of sea goddess on those cliffs, with the wind lifting her satin hair like a flag. Her face turned up to the rising moon as if she were drinking in every moonbeam. And he’d lost track of what the owner was saying, of what he was supposed to be doing here as he’d watched her, mesmerized. Someone said, “So how much do you want for this place?” and he realized later it had been him.
And now he owned it. Him. The guy who’d had a crippling, inexplicable fear of water ever since he’d been a toddler had bought himself an old abandoned lighthouse surrounded by the stuff. And he wasn’t even sure why.
But he was pretty sure it had something to do with her.
She’d been out there again tonight, soft breeze fingering her long, dark hair, yellow moonlight bathing her face. There had been another one with her, a tiny blond, but he’d barely noticed. The two had gone inside now, back into that twisted-up mishmash of a house that towered up there.
Odd, that house. He’d commented on it to lighthouse’s former owner, and the guy claimed he’d never even noticed the place.
How could anyone not notice that?
He shook his head and looked at the place atop the cliffs once more. The bonfire burned low, and by and by the blond one came back outside with a pail of water to pour over it. But of the dark one, he saw no more.
The cell phone buzzed, and Duncan reached for it, still watching for a glimpse of the woman on the cliffs as if he were some sort of stalker.
God, what was wrong with him? He jerked his gaze away deliberately and answered the call. Just before he brought the phone to his ear, he thought of his father, and almost laughed at himself. He often got an inkling of who was on the other end when the phone rang.
Then his jaw dropped when he heard his father’s voice on the other end. “Is that you, Duncan? Damn phone is breaking up.”
“Father?”
“Ah, then it is you. Good.”
Duncan licked his dry lips. His father wouldn’t be calling unless.... “Is something wrong?”
“No, no. I heard you’d bought a lighthouse, on an island of all things! Couldn’t believe it.”
Frowning, Duncan shook his head. “It’s true. To be honest, Father, I can’t imagine you’d be all that interested.”
His father cleared his throat. “I know we haven’t been...close, since you left home.”
“Since I left home?” If he sounded sarcastic, he ought to. His father had ignored him most of his life, and Duncan often wondered why the man had bothered adopting him in the first place. As a newborn, no less. He couldn’t imagine a less paternal man. There had been nannies, an entire staff to care for him, until he’d been old enough to ship off to boarding school, followed by summer camp, followed by an expensive, private college. He’d barely known his father.
But he’d always wanted to. A relationship with the cold, distant man was something he’d craved in secret all his life. Sometimes he thought that might be the answer to that emptiness, that ache in his heart that he’d never been able to explain.
“I’m in Sanctuary, son.”
Duncan’s thoughts groun
d to a halt. “You’re . . . where?”
“In town. I arrived on Monday.”
Blinking, Duncan gave his head a shake to clear it. “You’ve been in Sanctuary for three days? And you didn’t even call me? No, no, that’s not the surprise, the surprise is that you’d bother calling me now. What do you want, Father?”
There was a long pause. “I want...to be your father, Duncan.”
The breath seemed to have been stolen from Duncan’s lungs. He couldn’t inhale, and couldn’t speak until he did. How long had he imagined his father saying those words? How many nights had he dreamed them, wished for them, as a child? And why, why had his father waited so long? Why couldn’t he have started this conversation years ago, when a little boy had needed it so badly? Why now?
Swallowing, Duncan said, “I’m a grown man with my own business and my own life. I don’t need a father now.”
“I know. Duncan, I know, believe me. My mistakes...well, they’re too numerous to mention, but I’m well aware of every last one of them. I want to start over, to try to make up for the past. Please, give me that chance.”
Duncan had to close his eyes, because they burned. When he spoke, his voice was gravelly, coarse. “Do you mean it?”
“I do, son. I swear to you, I do.”
But Duncan was almost afraid to let himself believe it. He’d wanted this too badly for too long to trust that it could be real.
“You aren’t convinced,” his father said. “But you will be. I sold my house, Duncan. And today I bought a new place, the old courthouse right here in Sanctuary.”
Frowning, Duncan took the phone away from his ear, stared at it for a moment, as if he could read his father’s expression through it somehow. Then he brought it back.
“That’s how serious I am about this. I want to be close to you, close enough so that we can work on building a relationship, Duncan. I want to start over with you. Will you let me try?”
Blinking the moisture from his eyes, Duncan nodded. “Sure, Dad. Sure, we can both try.”
His father sighed in relief, and Duncan could almost imagine the stern face cracking in a rare smile. “Meet me for breakfast tomorrow?” his father asked. “Here in town, at the Coast Road Cafe?”
With a quick swipe at his eyes, Duncan said, “Okay. Around eight?”
“Perfect,” his father said. And then he hung up without another word.
Duncan set the phone down after a long moment. He told himself not to hope for too much, not to invest any emotions in this apparent softening of his father’s hard heart. It would only lead to disappointment. But he’d had plenty of that over the years. He should be used to it by now.
Kneeling, he resumed the unpacking he’d been in the midst of when he’d become distracted by the dark woman on the distant cliffs. It was the first box. He traveled a lot. Always searching, it seemed, though he could never quite figure out what for. But wherever he went, this was always the first box he unpacked. His collection, the one he’d been accumulating ever since the fourth grade, when he’d bought the first piece at a five and dime with his allowance money. He thought the fascination might have begun when he’d read that poem by Edgar Allan Poe, or maybe the love of the birds had already been there, and that was why the poem had affected him so deeply. Why, that haunting refrain “Nevermore” could still bring tears to his eyes.
Either way, he liked them. Had over a hundred now. And the tiny sills along the insides of all these curving windows would be the perfect shelves for them.
He opened the box, removing the protective paper that cushioned them, and began taking out his collection of ravens, one by one, placing them carefully, just so. And as he did, he whispered the words of the poem he sometimes heard in his sleep.
“Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door! Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’”
Chapter 13
Duncan was early. His father wasn’t at any of the round, lion-footed stone tables or their matching rock-hard benches outside the Coast Road Cafe. And the inside of the place was all but deserted. Too nice a day for anyone to want breakfast inside, he figured. The foliage-seekers filled almost every available spot outside—uncomfortable stone benches notwithstanding. The tourists wore cardigans and sunglasses. The locals wore flannel and baseball caps with the names of their favorite products on them. John Deere. Mack. Ford. His father fit into neither group, but Duncan would spot him easily enough. He’d show up in his traditional funereal suit with his thin ribbon of a tie dangling.
Duncan glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes. Daddy dearest wouldn’t be a minute early, either. Well, he’d walk, then. He was too nervous to stand still, or grab a table and wait. Besides, it was high time he got to know this town a bit, if he was going to live here.
The sun blazed so brightly from the clear blue sky that the hillsides nearby seemed fluorescent. The air had a bite to it, but it was invigorating rather than chilling. Made a man want to taste it.
Something had lifted his spirits this morning. He had a good feeling, and he hoped he was intelligent enough that it wasn’t because of his father’s apparent change of heart. That would be a foolish mistake. It didn’t seem as if it was, however. Something else lingered in the air. Expectation. A sense that something big was going to happen. A feeling that he ought to be holding his breath.
He often got feelings, intuitions about things. But he’d never had one like this before.
Strange.
He walked a full block, then stopped dead in his tracks and stared. Across the street a woman stepped out of a small shop. She carried boxes, empty boxes, stacked inside one another. They towered so tall in her arms that they hid her face. But it didn’t matter. He knew her.
He knew her.
Sure he knew her. She was the woman who stood on the cliffs in the middle of the night. The woman he was compelled to watch. That was all.
It doesn’t feel like that’s all, though. It feels like something more.
When she turned and that long ebony hair swung around her shoulders, his heart did a crazy leap in his chest. He couldn’t make his legs work, could barely make his mind work. He could only stand there, staring at her, wondering why the hell she got to him this way. Cars passed back and forth between them, traffic increasing as the morning aged, but they didn’t disturb his intense study of her. He couldn’t have looked away even if he’d wanted to.
She shifted the boxes to one side, balancing them on her hip. She wore black. Leather, he thought. A snug leather dress with a zipper that traced a path up the front of her, cool metal, he imagined, pressing to her center and running right between her breasts. The hemline hugged her thighs. Below that her legs were encased in black stockings that ended at short, laced up boots with pointy toes.
His gaze rose once more. Her head turned toward him, slowly. Very slowly. As if she sensed him there, looking at her. Her dark, dark eyes met his, locked on them, held them. Then widened, and the boxes fell from her hands. The smaller ones spilled out of the larger ones when the stack tumbled in the stiff autumn wind. Her hair danced with the breeze, moving in apparent slow motion. Her lips parted, seemed to form his name.
She stepped off the sidewalk and into the street. Into the traffic. Eyes glued to his, blinking rapidly now, but never glancing to one side or the other, she came closer.
He did manage to look away—but only when a shadow loomed and a horn blared. The traffic—she was stepping right into the traffic, and there was a truck, and—
He opened his mouth to shout a warning. Before he made a sound, the dark enchantress lifted a hand toward the rumbling vehicle—like a traffic cop signaling “stop”—and abruptly the truck skidded to the left as if something had shoved it. Something big. It came to rest neatly against the curb. She never even looked at it, never took her eyes from his, just kept coming. The wind blew harder, and her hair writhed and twisted like Medusa’s.
And suddenly Duncan felt an icicle of fear slide up his spine. Why?
She stepped up onto the sidewalk. Came closer. Tears, he could see them now, welling deep in her eyes, glimmering, spilling over. Wet black lashes shining, dampening her cheeks. Longing so intense he could feel it, beaming from her eyes with the pain and the tears. Closer. And she was so close now she was nearly touching him. God, was he dreaming this? Her body brushed his and he felt a snapping, crackling electricity spark between them as she tipped her head back, searched his face. A trembling hand rose to touch his cheek, brush at his hair, and he felt an electric shock at her first touch. Her delicate brows drew together. She tilted her head slightly to one side, and she whispered, “Duncan?”
“Yes,” he said, amazed he could speak at all with the force of these unnamed, and illogical, emotions swamping him. He felt absurdly like pulling her into his arms, like kissing her endlessly. It was an effort to keep his arms at his sides, and the muscles flexed and his fists clenched as he reminded himself to do just that. “How did you know my—”
“Duncan?” she asked again, both hands running over his face now, as if she couldn’t believe he was real. Her breaths came faster, and the tears flowed like rivers. “Oh, Duncan....” There was more, but the words were garbled and choked out on sobs so he only got bits and pieces. “Waiting” and “centuries” and “living without you.” Not that it mattered what she said. Not to him, because it was what she did that had his full attention.
She pressed herself against him, twisted her arms around his neck, and she kissed him. Even with the sobs making her hiccup and gasp, she parted her lips over his, so that he tasted the salt of her tears. She clung to him as if she’d never let go. And something happened to him. He didn’t know what. Something. It was as if he was someone else, someone who knew this woman and returned her wrenching emotions fully. He wrapped his arms around her slender waist and it felt...familiar. The shape, the size of her, the way her body rubbed against his. And he bent over her—just the right amount to compensate for the differences in their heights. He returned her kiss. But it was more than a kiss. It was like coming home when he touched his mouth to hers.
Eternal Love: The Immortal Witch Series Page 19
