Wendi only smiled, although Anna couldn’t see her with her eyes closed. She truly didn’t want Anna to look into the mirror behind her chair just then anyway. The young woman might be a little afraid when she saw the smoke rising from her cheek, but it reassured Wendi the spirits were aiding her today. Just then a tear slid from the corner of Anna’s eye, and Wendi hastened to catch it on her thumb before it hit the paste. A tear would raise a hiss of steam, one which Anna wouldn’t be able to ignore.
After a long two minutes, Wendi quietly said to Anna, “I’m going to wipe your face with a damp cloth.”
She cleaned off the paste, joy filling her at the new turn Anna’s life could now take. Her clear, soft skin was unmarred, an even, smooth peach like the rest of her face. When she opened her eyes at Wendi’s behest, her beauty was incomparable. Wendi stepped aside, so Anna could see in the mirror behind her.
“Sweet Mother of God,” Anna whispered. “It worked.”
She slowly stepped over to the mirror. Disbelief on her face, she stared at her countenance, turning her head, examining what wasn’t there any longer. With a twist, she grabbed Wendi, flung her arms around her and buried her face on Wendi’s shoulder.
As Anna sobbed her heart out, Wendi wrapped her arms around her in return and let the emotions run their course. Her own joy at what her magic had done--despite the problems she’d had with it in the past--was truly satisfying.
A shadow loomed in the doorway, and Wendi’s gaze flew toward it. She gasped, although she continued to pat Anna on the back as the woman controlled her sobs. Wendi’s own feelings did an about face so sharp she could have easily lost her balance and missed the chair on her side of the table if she fell.
The man from the ship stood in her doorway and, if anything, his aura was darker. The stir her emotions experienced was enough to make her want to fan her face. Which she would have, had Anna not filled her arms and needed her comfort. Anna seemed to sense some change, however, and she drew a deep breath and straightened. Instead of looking behind her, she stared into the mirror again.
“Oh, I can’t believe it,” she murmured.
“Believe it,” Wendi said at the same moment the man in the doorway said, “Neither can I.”
Anna whirled, her delicate chin tilting up when she saw who stood in the door. “Monsieur, you made your views well known when we waited on the porch. Now, how do you explain this?”
She turned her face so he had an unobstructed view of her flawless cheek, and the man shrugged.
“I don’t have to,” he growled. “You do. Now, if you’ll excuse us, I have business with . . . .” He let his gaze travel over Wendi, and she felt every inch of the scan, a mixture of disgust and something she couldn’t quite understand. “. . . with this person here.”
With a decided limp, he stepped to the side of the doorway. Anna glanced at his leg and pointed a finger at his walking cane, which dangled from his forearm.
“You won’t need that when you leave here, and I’ll thank you to promise to apologize to Mistress Chastain for your rudeness and disbelief after she heals your leg!”
“I didn’t come here for healing, Madame,” he said in a tightly polite voice. “Please. Excuse us.”
Anna gave him a supercilious glare, then took her good, sweet time removing some coins from her reticule and laying them on the table. Wendi divided her attention between Anna and the man, recalling that her aunt had said this man was trouble. Still, instead of feeling afraid of him when his impatience increased and his aura neared ebony, her amusement grew to the point where she had to bite her bottom lip to prevent her laughter.
Anna held out a hand and thanked Wendi profusely yet again, then pattered on for a few more minutes. The man’s face darkened, the deep red of tension and irritation tingeing the aura’s outer boundaries.
Finally Anna pulled her gloves on and headed for the doorway. She paused beside the man, tilting her head so her cheek was toward him and patting it with a gloved index finger to draw his attention to her newly unmarred skin. With a haughty sniff, she swept out the door.
At the flustered look on the man’s face, Wendi dissolved in silent laughter. She sank into her chair, dropping her head and trying to hide her face. When the man clump-thumped across the floor to the table and stood opposite her, though, she giggled aloud. Looking up, she wiped at her face, realizing too late she still held the baking soda/lemon juice soiled washcloth in her hand.
The mixture landed in her mouth, and Wendi spit and sputtered, standing abruptly. “Excuse me, I need to go in the kitchen--”
“Sit down!” he roared. “I’m not waiting one more minute to talk to you!”
“Well, snippity, snip to you, too, Monsieur,” she flung at him. “You can leave right now, or--”
“Or what? You’ll turn me into a frog?”
She gave him a calculating look. “No, not a frog. A toad. An ugly, repulsive toad, to match your aura and manners.”
She strode toward the kitchen, hearing him start after her. Whirling, she pointed her finger at him, a stab of fear at last penetrating her exasperation when she noticed the angry glower on his face. He could be so handsome if he would only smile--
“I told you to leave,” she said.
All at once a tingling surge swept along her arm, out through her finger. Sparks crackled in the air around her fingernail, and a violent wind swirled through the room. The man stopped as abruptly as though he’d run into a wall, then staggered backward. At the very moment Wendi thought he would fall, the chair sidled over beneath his rump, and he sat in it rather slowly, almost as though the wind floated him downward. His rear met the seat, and he uttered a disbelieving “oomph.”
The wind died for a second, but when the man moved as though to stand, it heightened again. He sat back in the chair.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he snarled.
Wendi looked at her finger in surprise, then curled it to her palm. The wind died once more, but when she uncurled her finger, another spark flew and the wind grew.
Huh. She flexed her finger, and the wind played a here-I-am, here-I’m-not tune a couple times.
“Damn it--” the man said.
She gave him a warning look. “If you’re still here when I come back from the kitchen, you better plan on spending the rest of you life on hinged legs.”
With a satisfied twist to her lips, she lifted her head and scurried into the kitchen, slamming the door behind her this time. Halting as soon as she had privacy, she held her hand out in front of her. She worked her index finger up and down, curled and uncurled, but nothing happened.
Glancing at the ceiling to send her words speeding to the spirits, she said, “What on earth are you doing? Is this my magic, or yours? Or does it have something to do with him being here?”
No one answered. A fine time for them to leave her to her own devices once again!
She crossed to the dry sink and rinsed out the wash cloth, then wiped her face. Suddenly a well-rehearsed clamor filled the back yard, and Wendi shook her head as she hurried over to the back door. She got there just as the neighbor’s mottled tomcat raced up the trunk of the magnolia tree and sat hissing on the branch it well knew was a couple inches beyond what Aunt Sybilla’s hound, Alphie, could reach, even with his highest leap.
Sure enough the ragged red and white Afghan, which walked around with a tattered coat no matter how many times a week Sybilla brushed it, set up his usual roar of frustration at the cat’s escape. Leaping and twisting beneath the branch, the hound roared its fury and demanded the tom leave his territory. The tom casually sat in a corner where the branch met the tree, lifted a leg and took a bath.
For once, Sybilla ignored the fray, rather than joining the hound and yelling at the cat--something she hadn’t the courage to do without the dog’s backup. She hurried onto the porch.
“He’s here, isn’t he?” she demanded. “I can sense it. His aura’s inside the house.”
Alphie
, his game not following the normal routine, sat down beneath the tree and looked over his shoulder. Whining, he gave his mistress a puzzled look.
“If you mean the man who was on the ship--the one you warned me about then took off and refused to explain to me what you meant--” She cocked a fist on her hip. “That man’s inside. And yes, he does have a very nasty aura.”
“Has he hurt you?”
Sybilla stepped close and ran her palms down Wendi’s arms. Shorter by inches, she peered up into Wendi’s face, and some of Wendi’s irritation left her as she realized exactly how worried her aunt was.
“He didn’t get close enough to hurt me--” she began.
“He tried?” Sybilla interrupted. “Oh, no! What did he try to do?”
“I’m fine, Aunt,” Wendi told her in exasperation.
Alphie trotted over to the porch, up the steps, then plopped at Sybilla’s feet, while the tom eyed them balefully from the tree branch. Evidently disgusted that the game was over so quickly this time, the tom stood, stretched, and sauntered along the limb. Jumping over the fence dividing their yard from the neighbor’s, it disappeared.
Wendi sighed in resignation when the hound looked up at her with mournful eyes. “You should give this animal a bath so he’s not smelling up your bedcovers when he sleeps with you,” she said to Sybilla.
Sybilla bristled. “I just bathed Alphie last week. He--” She shut her mouth and studied Wendi. “You’re trying to get me off the subject here. Tell me what Nick wants.”
“Is that his name? He didn’t introduce himself.”
“I don’t imagine he did. Nick. Nick Bardou is his name.”
Wendi stared at her. “My mother’s lover’s son? He doesn’t look that much like Dominic.”
“The other son, Pierre--the one who was killed in the war-- looked more like his father. Nick got his mother’s Creole coloring.”
Wendi whirled and shoved through the door, muttering, “I’ll turn him into something a hell of a lot worse than a toad! What does he think he’s doing--coming here bothering our clients and trying to order me around?”
Sybilla shouldn’t have been able to move so fast at her age, but she did. Surprising the fool out of Wendi, she caught her and yanked her back into the kitchen before she barely touched the door to the parlor. Pushing her ahead of her, Sybilla didn’t stop until they were back on the far side of the kitchen--well out of danger of being overheard in the parlor.
“You listen to me, Missy,” she hissed. “We can both be in a world of trouble karma-wise if we don’t find out what’s going on here before we start messing with whatever the Fates have set up! I should have known something was up when we found Sabine’s first Book of Shadows a month ago. We’ve walked across that piece of floor thousands of times and never suspected it was rotten.”
The hound shoved through the door, whining and sidling up to Sybilla. Wendi caught the concern in Alphie’s manner and noticed the strain and beaded sweat on Sybilla’s upper lip. Carefully, she took her aunt’s arm and urged her toward the kitchen table.
“He’s probably not even still here, Aunt,” she said as she gently pushed Sybilla into a chair. At fifty-five, her aunt should have many years ahead of her, but she didn’t need this sort of worry, especially with her own magical powers failing for some reason. “I told him to leave.”
Relief filled Sybilla’s face, but only for an instant. “Then we’ve got time to--”
The door between the rooms opened, and Sybilla’s face whitened when she glanced over her shoulder.
“You should come out here, I think,” Nick said in a weird voice. “That thing you left on the table is glowing. Does it get hot? I doubt you want your house to burn down if it starts a fire.”
Chapter 4
Nick stepped back, holding the door and expecting the two women to barrel into their parlor. Instead, the older one clasped her throat and stared at him in horror. Sabine’s daughter speared him with the knife thrust of her blue gaze, and he quickly glanced at her right hand, relieved to see her fingers curled into her skirt instead of pointing at him.
“I thought I told you what would happen if you didn’t leave,” the daughter said.
“Hush, Wendi,” the woman said. Nick mentally noted the name once more, so different than anything he’d ever heard before. Maybe short for Gwendolyn?
The daughter turned her attention to the woman. “Aunt Sybilla--”
“I said hush.”
Sybilla. He was right. She was Sabine’s sister. She stood, laying her hand on the head of a hound that crawled out from under the table and growled at Nick.
“You, too,” she murmured to the animal, then said to Nick, “You are definitely entwined in our fate if you’re making the scrying speculum glow without either one of us in the room. Do you have the courage to face what it might tell you?”
He snorted a quick sound of disbelief. “I don’t for one damned minute think there’s anything illogical about that lure making it glow. And I’ve never been faulted for my courage.”
“Oh, but you’re wrong, Monsieur Bardou,” Sybilla said. “You ran away ten years ago, didn’t you?”
“Damn you,” he snarled at her. “There wasn’t any reason for me not to leave.”
“Only in your own mind, Monsieur.” She turned to Wendi. “I want you to give him a reading.”
“No!” she said. “I want him out of here. I’ve already told him to leave once.”
“It’s not possible yet,” Sybilla said in a troubled voice. “I don’t think he can.” She looked back at Nick. “Have you tried?”
After staring at her for a few seconds, wondering how she knew, he nodded curtly. “The door appears stuck. But believe me, if I want out of here, I’ll go. If I have to, I’ll bash that door down.”
He didn’t bother telling them the door had closed virtually in his face when he gave up waiting for Wendi to return to the parlor. The only reason he hadn’t forced it right then was because he’d glimpsed that stupid glass fishing lure from the corner of his eye when it started glowing on the table. Whatever he might have done in the past, he couldn’t walk out when there was a possibility the house might catch fire.
“Do you want to leave?”
This time Sabine’s daughter spoke, and he couldn’t decide if the tone of her voice dared him to stay--or not. Sultry as a bayou summer night, it taunted him, making him realize how much lower than her mother’s it was. But then, he’d been listening to that voice for an hour on the porch before he confronted her, thinking the brandy clouding his mind must be what was making him so aware of the distinctive nuances in it. Thinking how much it reminded him of the dead one just by being so different.
“I want to know if the two of you have been in my house,” he said grudgingly, at that very moment realizing why he had indeed come here. “There’s a portrait of . . . .” He curled his lip, reluctant to speak her name out loud. “Of . . .” He nodded his head at Sybilla. “. . . your sister hanging in my study. I’ve never seen it before, and I’m going to find out where the hell it came from.”
“It must be the one your father had commissioned,” Sybilla said, and Wendi looked at her in surprise. “But I thought it was still out at Belle Chene. As far as I know, it was never uncrated after it was finished and packed for shipping.”
“Have you seen it?”
Sybilla shrugged. “Only once, when it was nearly done. Two weeks before she died.”
Nick flinched as though her words had struck him. It didn’t help that the daughter stood there taking in every word, quiet but more noticeable that way than if she had butted into the conversation.
She’d removed her hands from the folds of her skirt. She wore several rings on her fingers, almost as though in the middle of dressing for a ball and having yet to don the rest of her jewels. All the rings were unadorned except one, which caught the light now and then when she moved her hand. The plain green gown was a far cry from anything more than just a cover for that bo
dy, which rivalled her mother’s and then some. Sabine had been able to do the same--turn cotton into feigned silk just by wearing it. After he found out who she was, he’d noticed a lot of things about her.
“You didn’t answer my other question. Have you been in my house?”
Sybilla evaded his gaze, patting the hound and then glancing at Wendi. The look passing between them almost seemed as though they were communicating without words. He’d heard married people could do that after years together, so an aunt and niece should have no trouble with it. Yet it made him uneasy--and irritated him.
“The truth shouldn’t take you ten minutes to say,” he growled. “It’s lies that take planning to tell.”
“Not necessarily.” Wendi stepped forward, shielding her aunt whether or not it was her intention. It brought her close enough to him to smell a tantalizing mixture of jasmine and honeysuckle on her skin. “If you’ll take a seat in the parlor, I’ll be right there.”
“And if I don’t?”
Blue didn’t really describe her eyes, but then, it hadn’t described Sabine’s either. Had he believed in magic, he might think they were capable of toying with his will. They were smaller versions of clear blue crystal, depthless yet filled with secrets better left to unfold in the night--preferably between a set of satin sheets.
But then, that’s exactly what his father had done with her mother.
The fury and aching agony for the pain his mother suffered, never far from the surface no matter now deeply he buried it, rose in him. Before he could spew it at her, however, she spoke.
“We haven’t been in your house. However, we did search the garden one evening. Aunt Sybilla saw a vision, and we thought that’s where it wanted us to go. We didn’t think it would matter to anyone, since the house was empty.”
“It probably wouldn’t have mattered--had it been anyone else trespassing on my land. And just what the hell were you searching for?”
She looked at Sybilla again, that communicating look passing between them. Evidently, Sybilla gave her permission to explain.
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