by Julie Leto
At this, Keith stopped typing. “The necklace worked?”
Now the teen was paying attention. The K’vr had long known the location of Rogan’s fortress when it was still in Germany, but had been unable to gain entrance to the structure, or so the legend told. Doors wouldn’t unlock. Windows would not break. Stone remained impervious to even the most destructive explosives. Then, more than fifty years ago, a man with a well-armed contingent of masons and bricklayers had somehow torn the castle apart and spirited it away. Though loyal and devoted, the K’vr lacked the money to pursue them. Only recently had they discovered where the castle had gone.
“Yes,” Jacob replied. “My stepsister stayed the night there, and I suspect she might not have left if the spirit hadn’t attacked me.”
“Rogan?”
Keith’s jaw slackened at the overwhelming possibility. The way the wraith had knocked Jacob on his ass, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the notoriously vindictive sorcerer had returned. But he expected if the K’vr’s patron had manifested himself, Jacob wouldn’t have simply been knocked down a few stairs. He’d be dead.
“I don’t know. But Alexa does, I’m almost sure. But of course, she won’t say a word to me.”
Keith’s lip curled into a snarl. “Sisters suck.”
Jacob understood the kid’s vitriol. Keith’s older sister, Gemma, pissed off that the leadership passed her by simply because she was a woman, had defected to Farrow’s side. But as much as Alexa cramped his style and lorded her superior position within the company over him, she’d never betrayed him or left him out in the cold. Not the way he’d betrayed her.
“Without Alexa, we wouldn’t have come this far,” Jacob pointed out.
“She’s in the way.”
“She might yet prove useful. I think she’s in contact with the spirit there. I think it listens to her.”
Keith’s eyes narrowed threateningly. “I hate how she has the deed. The castle should be mine.”
“It will be,” Jacob reassured him. “You can’t tip your hand to Alexa or to Pryce too soon. You know he’s watching every move you make. By allowing my sister to act as our unwitting emissary to Rogan’s castle, we’ve bought more time. With her money.”
Keith frowned over Jacob’s argument. Jacob glanced at his door. The milky glass panels on either side would reveal anyone listening from the other side. He could see the outline of his assistant at her desk, chatting on the phone as she moved file folders and consulted her computer.
“Time will run out soon if you don’t get back to Florida. Why are you back in Chicago, anyway?” Keith asked.
“I can’t raise my sister’s suspicions or she’ll toss me off the project altogether. There are a few matters I have to take care of here.”
Keith’s grin bordered on creepy. “You mean the sabotage in Boston?”
Jacob’s throat constricted. He had to cough to clear a passage for air. “That was you?”
His laugh was almost childish. Almost.
“When you told me your sister had found a way to land on that haunted island after so many others had tried and failed, I figured it was time we took her out of the mix. A quick check of the Weather Channel and I chose my target. You’re not the only K’vr follower in the Chandler organization, buddy. Using your sister’s resources to finance our project was brilliant, but I’ve taken out some insurance that she won’t get in our way. Once we have the source of the magic, we’ll be unstoppable.”
With as much casual ease as he could fake, Jacob sat back against the cold leather of his chair. “I don’t want my sister hurt,” he said.
All the warmth and guilelessness in Keith’s eyes disappeared, replaced with something hard and cold and ugly. “You can’t back out now. You tried once to have your sister killed. Now you’ll get what you want.”
The slice through his heart stabbed Jacob to his chair. He fought to keep his expression blank. He could feel his nostrils flaring as Keith threw his darkest shame back in his face. Of course, this is why the teen would make the perfect leader for the K’vr. He showed no mercy.
Jacob swallowed thickly. “You know I won’t get the company if Alexa dies.”
“No, but her will stipulates you receive the bulk of her personal assets.”
“Not everything,” he grumbled, remembering how much Alexa had designated to go to Cat, the rehabilitation center she’d used after her accident and the staff at their home in Chicago. More than anyone in their right mind would leave to servants, honestly.
“But you’ll be set for a huge chunk of change. And once we have the source of Rogan’s magic, we’ll have everything we’ve ever needed. Now,” Keith snapped, the greedy sound popping out of his voice, “tell me about the castle. What did you find inside? Did you take pictures? I want pictures.”
Fed by eagerness, Keith moved even closer to his webcam so that Jacob could practically see the whitehead on top of the blemish beneath his nose.
“The designers took a boatload. I’ll forward them as soon as the file is sent to me, but otherwise, the place is barren. Nothing but an old painting on the landing.”
“A painting? Of Rogan?”
“No, I don’t think so. This man’s eyes are pale. A follower maybe?”
Keith’s tapping on the keyboard renewed. The kid had lost interest again. Jacob kept his expression steady.
If Keith had gone so far as to place spies within the Chandler organization, the kid likely had more up his sleeve than Jacob had ever imagined.
Maybe Farrow Pryce was not the only cunning one. “We could ask Rousseau to identify the painting,” Jacob suggested.
Keith frowned. “He’s useless.”
“He’s the only expert we know of—”
“He’s missing.”
“Missing? Did you?”
A whirling sound from the other side of the connection indicated that perhaps his computer game wasn’t progressing as planned. “Nah. He’s been more useful to us at the university. Led us to the charm, didn’t he?”
“Not on purpose,” Jacob reminded him.
Keith waved his hand dismissively. “Whatever. But there’s only one person who’d want to make sure he didn’t lead us to anything else.”
“Pryce,” Jacob said with a sneer.
The kid nodded, but boredom glazed his eyes. “Yeah. And if Farrow has the old man, he likely won’t be alive for long. Farrow’s ruthless, you know.”
He said the word “ruthless” with mock exaggeration, as if making fun of Farrow’s reputation would somehow lessen the danger his rival represented. “You can’t underestimate him,” Jacob warned.
Keith made a stupid face but didn’t respond.
“Without Rousseau, you’ll have to rely on my observations to figure out what kind of magic the castle possesses. But something is there,” Jacob promised, catching Keith’s eye. “Something malevolent. Maybe Rousseau does know something else important, though. Why else would Farrow move against the professor after all these years?”
Keith stopped messing with his computer. “Stay where you are for the time being,” he ordered, suddenly sounding very much like a leader. “Get me those pictures right away; then go back to Florida and explore the castle more thoroughly. And I want in. Make the arrangements.”
“Of course,” Jacob replied.
“You have the necklace back, right?” Keith asked.
Jacob swallowed hard and lied through his teeth. “Absolutely.”
Keith paused before disconnecting but gave no other indication that he suspected an untruth. Jacob had to trust that Alexa hadn’t truly lost the necklace. Knowing his stepsister as he did, he knew she’d find it. Alexa didn’t leave valuables lying around. Ever.
And yet, despite Keith’s cluelessness, Jacob was left in his office with an empty pit for a stomach and a serious case of the shakes. He’d gotten himself in deep this time, deeper than ever before. And the only way he was going to survive was to pull himself out on top.
To do that, certain things would have to be sacrificed. Certain people.
But not him. He’d worked too hard, too long, to let opportunity slip away now.
***
“One mewl and it will be your last, cat,” Damon declared the second the ghostly beast poofed into Rogan’s drawing room. The room of his entrapment. With the curtains drawn, he’d lost track of how long he’d been sitting on the wing chair with the sorcerer’s cloak curved just behind his ear, the plush rugs and velvet trappings of his old enemy pressing in on his consciousness. He imagined he could smell the foul stench of his rival in the fabric. A rival he’d once admired. A rival he’d once hoped to learn from. Damon had been well traveled and immensely educated, but Rogan’s life experiences made Damon a churl in contrast.
Now Damon was getting his wish—he was becoming Rogan. Angry. Arrogant. Uncontrollable. Obsessed with fulfilling his own needs without concern about the consequences to others.
The flesh of his palms still sizzled with unused magic. The dark evil that had spawned the magic now infected him, and yet, he had no more means to free himself of the magic’s effects than he did to dispel Rogan’s curse. He’d tripped into a cycle of impossible choices, and hours of grappling with the contradictions left him no closer to discovering a solution.
Without the ability to re-create the castle, he’d never find the secret to free himself of the curse. Yet the more he utilized Rogan’s legacy, the more he lost himself to the evil.
The cat ignored his warning and meowed softly. The beast leaped onto a squat tuffet near the hearth, padded in a wide circle, then curled in the center and eyed him warily. Its thick tail flicked up and down of its own accord, and the feline’s amber eyes bored through him mercilessly.
Damon fought to keep his rage in check. Instead, he engaged in a staring contest with the cat, wondering what knowledge existed behind those mysterious golden orbs. He’d always suspected the animal was more than just a companion to Rogan. Ever since Damon’s first visit to Rogan’s residence in London, the beast managed to turn up whenever Rogan spoke of the Gypsies. Damon had once suspected the cat was more curious about the Romani than the man who kept him as a pet.
Perhaps the cat wasn’t a cat at all. More like…a familiar?
Damon eased off the chair and stalked stealthily toward the animal, who seemed unalarmed by his drawing closer. Its tail continued to swish to and fro, its eyes staring intensely, its ears perked, but its body perfectly still.
Reaching the tuffet, Damon knelt on the floor and met the cat stare to stare.
“You know, don’t you?” he asked.
The cat remained completely still. Except for the tail.
“You heard his curses. You know his secrets. Why, then, would he trap you? Deny you access to the next life? Except, perhaps, to bestow you with immortality?”
The cat raised its paw and took a long, purposeful lick.
Damon turned on his knees and dropped to the ground. Was this what he’d been reduced to? Trying to extract information from an animal? Still, if this cat held the secret he sought, it certainly wasn’t going to tell him. He’d done nothing but snap at the feline since its first appearance in his portrait prison so many years ago.
Perhaps this could change?
Damon turned again and, closing his eyes, used a tiny bit of magic to conjure a plate of freshly smoked and salted herring. The cat stopped its grooming and stretched its neck to sniff at the plate.
Damon grinned. “Interested?”
The cat stretched its paws forward, seemingly to elongate its spine, but its paws touched nearer and nearer to the plate.
He tugged the pewter serving tray aside.
“It’s yours, cat. But for a price.”
The cat bounced onto all four paws and let out a protesting howl.
Damon shook his head. “Sorry, but there is a price to be paid.”
A price to be paid.
The words crashed back at him with an ocean of meaning. Only two people on this earth would care if Damon’s pursuit of freedom turned him evil. He was one. A gentleman of honor, Damon understood that there were times when ruthlessness was unavoidable, when self-preservation or the protection of the family demanded excessive means. But never in his life had he sought revenge or retribution without cause. He had to hope…he had to pray…that no matter what magical blackness swam though his veins, he could resist the total annihilation of his soul.
Then there was Alexa. Damon had meant his initial seduction of the woman to be nothing more than a means to an end—a pleasurable way to ensure that she assisted in his quest to be free from the castle and achieve permanent corporeal form. But while his goal hadn’t changed, his emotions toward her had. Even under the influence of Rogan’s magic, he acknowledged the great pain and loss she’d suffered in her lifetime. The death of her mother when she was just a child. The tragic demise of her father in an accident that had nearly killed her as well. She cared deeply for her stepbrother, but her love existed with a certain cynicism Damon could hardly understand, since he’d loved both Rafe and Sarina, his half siblings, with just as much ferocity as he had his full-blooded brothers. Alexa was cautious with her feelings, but kind. She possessed all the qualities he’d searched for in his wife and mistresses but had never truly found.
And yet his anger with her before dawn had been both without true merit and all-consuming. Only by removing himself from her presence had he kept from lashing out in ways that, in retrospect, made his stomach turn.
Is this how Rogan had felt toward Sarina, all those years ago? He thought of the broken necklace. The torn charm. Had Rogan ripped it from his sister’s neck in anger as Damon had from Alexa’s? Had the blackguard sorcerer, with mercenaries closing in, struck out at his sister with murder in his heart instead of the love he’d once professed?
The cat made short work of the fish. Purring contentedly, it strode to Damon and pressed its flattened face against his. The moment it did, his brain burst with an image. Tiles. No. Mosaic. Intricate puzzles of glass and ceramic that formed artistic renderings like no other.
Rogan had been particularly proud of his, themed with tales of Gypsy legend and lore. Why hadn’t Damon remembered? Why hadn’t he recalled? He could not remember the exact locations of the mosaics, but he’d conjure them sufficiently…once he called upon the magic.
Twenty
“Here’s your necklace, repaired as you requested.”
Alexa looked up from the cost projections and for the first time this morning made eye contact with her assistant, Rose. She closed the report and focused on the young woman standing so eagerly in front of her.
“Thank you, Rose.”
“The jeweler said the necklace looked very old. Is it a family heirloom, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Alexa slipped the magical charm into the pocket of the bag she’d take with her later to the island. “Definitely a family heirloom.”
Just not her family.
“It’s very unusual,” the young woman said, her voice haunting.
“You have no idea.”
Rose glanced at her watch. “Is there anything else, Ms. Chandler?”
Alexa stopped to think. Her world had resumed the calm, focused pace she’d grown accustomed to, likely because Rose had hopped the first plane to Florida with her highly organized and irreplaceable skills packed in a single carry-on suitcase. Alexa had nearly succumbed to the madness of discovering first the castle and then the ghost inside, especially after Damon’s strange behavior this morning. But by logging a full day’s work, she now felt surprisingly refreshed and balanced. In her element.
Crown Chandler meant the world to her. It was her world. Was that sad or incredibly lucky?
“How long have you been with Crown Chandler?” Alexa asked.
Rose’s eyes widened. Her eyes were blue. Had Alexa ever noticed that before?
“Excuse me?”
Alexa stacked the cost projections atop the collection of files
on the polished teak desk Rose had had delivered to her suite-turned-office and wondered how often, if ever, she smiled at her assistant. Sure, she said her “pleases” and “thank-yous.” Her father had drilled the polite words into her everyday speech since before she’d uttered her first full sentence. But did she make it a habit to look Rose in the eye when she spoke to her, or was she too distracted by her computer, her BlackBerry, her reports, files and phone calls?
She pushed the papers away from her and folded her hands gently on her desk. “How long have you been working for me?”
“Two years, ma’am.”
Two years. Two years and Alexa had no idea how old Rose was, if she was seeing anyone or, heck, if she was married. Did she have children? A mother she took care of? A father who came over to her apartment to fix broken pipes? Heck, did she live in an apartment or did she own a house?
“Is there something wrong?” Rose asked.
Alexa leaned back and exhaled deeply. So she wasn’t good at interpersonal relationships. Wasn’t like she didn’t have any. There was Cat. Jacob. The members of her upper-management team. She knew all sorts of things about them. Of course, that was more for security reasons than for friendship. Still, the fact that her assistant had been running her office like clockwork for two whole years without Alexa knowing more about her was inexcusable.
“Nothing a chat wouldn’t fix.” She gestured toward the chair in front of her desk.
Rose eyed her warily. Poised, efficient and smart, Rose reflected the best of Crown Chandler. Alexa wrote Rose’s performance reviews in appropriately glowing terms and gave her regular raises and bonuses, but she couldn’t remember ever telling the woman in clear and simple terms that she appreciated all her hard work.
“I’m sorry you had to come down to Florida on such short notice,” Alexa offered. “Flight okay?”
Rose’s mouth dropped open, and she snapped closed the PDA in her hand while she hesitantly made her way to the chair. She didn’t sit down immediately.
“Flight was very nice,” Rose answered. “The first-class ticket was a nice treat, thank you. And the suite down the hall? It’s breathtaking. Bigger than my apartment.”
