by Julie Leto
“You did this,” she accused. “You killed my brother. You caused this bloodshed and you hide in the bushes like a snake? Take it from someone who runs a multimillion-dollar empire, kid. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”
The young man accepted her challenge. He came out of the trees, his chin jutted forward. Only then did Alexa notice the automatic pistol clutched in his hand.
“You should have let me go when you had the chance,” he taunted.
Damon started down the steps. Keith held his gun higher. “You may have my magic, but you’re not impervious to bullets. And neither is she.”
Thirty Three
He turned the gun yet again on Alexa, who’d managed to back up a few feet, but not nearly enough to avoid being shot at close range if the kid had even halfway-decent aim.
Damon stopped. The fire in his eyes flickered, flaming and then burning out, then flaming again. He was struggling against the evil infection of Rogan’s magic. Struggling, but not winning. Sweat dripped down his face, soaking his shirt to his body. His hands shook.
Out of the corner of her eye, Alexa saw Cat crawl back into the castle. One less person in the line of fire, she thought. Now it was up to her and Damon to bring this to a close.
“Damon,” she said, turning to face him completely. “I love you.”
Behind her, Keith laughed. “How romantic, wasting your last breath on sappy shit. Go on,” he urged Damon. “Declare your love for her, too, so I can shoot you both and claim what is mine.”
“You can’t kill him,” Alexa said, her voice balanced and calm. She’d negotiated business deals with sultans and despots. She could certainly manage one homicidal teenager. “He’s the source of the magic. You need him or you’ll have nothing.”
The lie tripped off her tongue easily, and from the horrified look on the kid’s face, she knew he’d bought her story instantly.
“Is he?” he asked, his eyes wide and mouth agape.
“Rogan?” Alexa turned back to Damon, the fire still flickering in the stormy gray depths of his eyes. “I don’t know. Are you?”
Two words. One short question, but enough to push Damon over the threshold between victim and master. With a guttural shout that called up a mighty wind, Damon lifted his hand high, and Keith’s feet were ripped out from beneath him. He flew one way and the gun the other. Alexa dove over Jacob’s lifeless body, retrieved the weapon and threw it as far as she could into the bramble.
In the distance, she heard sirens. A bullhorn. The rattle of gunfire.
The Coast Guard.
And through the howling of Damon’s conjured tempest, a young man screamed for mercy.
“Damon, stop!”
She battled through the wind and threw her arms around him from behind, willing all the love she felt for him to pass through her and into him.
“I. Am. Nothing. Like. Rogan,” he shouted; then his voice turned icy cold as Keith cowered below him, tucked into the fetal position, whimpering. “If I were Rogan, you’d be dead.”
The wind died. The sand and shells stopped attacking Alexa’s arms and face like angry hornets, and when she gazed into Damon’s eyes, she saw nothing but silvery gray. Throwing her arms around his neck, she pulled him down until their lips were but inches apart.
“But you are Damon Forsyth. And you’re all mine,” she said.
The longer and more luxurious their kisses, the more the atmosphere around them stilled. Soon the only sound was the Coast Guard rushing toward them, guns drawn. Paulie broke through the line of seamen to reach her side.
“Are you all right?” the young woman asked. Alexa pulled back from Damon, glanced woefully at Jacob’s body, then with hope toward the castle, and then into the eyes of the former phantom she’d grown to love.
“I will be. Now I truly will be.”
***
From a chair set just in the arch of the main door, neither inside nor out, Damon watched the sailors zip Jacob’s body into a dark bag. The doctors that had arrived in the flying machine had tended to him, halting his bleeding and staunching the pain with something called an injection. While he waited for Alexa to supervise the removal of her brother’s body, he perused the island from his perch, wondering at the exotic plants that bordered the castle and imprinted the piquant scent of sea salt in his nose. He glanced at Alexa, who stood a few feet away, her arms wrapped tight around her middle and silent tears streaming down her face.
He wanted to cradle her in his arms and quiet her heartbreak with soft words, but he knew she wouldn’t welcome the affection just now. Her brother had worked against her, betrayed her. In the end, he’d sought to save her, but his previous machinations had caused the conflagration in the first place. Damon would not soon forget having to draw from Rogan’s evil magic in order to save her—nearly losing himself in the process.
“She loved him,” Cat said, balancing her injured arm, newly bandaged, with her healthy one. “I never understood how deeply.”
“He was her family,” he said simply.
Cat eyed him narrowly, then tossed a look over to Ben and Paxton, who had strolled into the dining hall to examine the mosaic at the precise point where Rogan’s cloak and the magic fire opal were depicted. “Family is important to you?”
Damon stared at her, wondering at the odd question. “Of course.”
“And what about Alexa? If you run off now to try and find the rest of your brothers, your sister or even that Rogan creep, where does that leave her?”
Damon shifted in the chair, the ache of his injury nothing compared to the idea of losing Alexa. Even for a day. An hour. A minute.
“She shall be with me, Miss Reyes.”
Cat plopped down on the top step, then tilted her head so that her long hair brushed over her knees. “She needs to heal. She’s not only lost the last member of her family; she’s lost this,” she said, indicating the castle. “She’s put more than money and thought into rehabilitating this old castle into a hotel. To you and me, it’s just business. But to Alexa, it’s her—”
“Life,” Damon provided, then patted Cat’s shoulder reassuringly. “I understand her, Miss Reyes. She’s a woman driven by many goals, not the least of which is financial. I have no doubt Alexa and I will be able to merge our ambitions, but because I know you worry, I will not rush her. My brother took sixty years to find me, and while I’m not willing to wait quite that long, I will not abandon Alexa in my quest.”
“You won’t have to abandon her at all,” Ben said, joining them outside. “We’ll look for your brothers,” he finished.
Damon regarded his nephew quizzically. “Paxton is not of an age to go running about this new world searching for trinkets any longer. He is better served by remaining here, with—”
“I didn’t mean my father,” Ben clarified. “I meant Catalina.”
“Excuse me?” Cat asked.
Ben grinned and Damon had the sudden urge to leave, but when he moved, Cat jumped to her feet and pushed down on his shoulder, making it quite clear she didn’t wish him to go anywhere.
“Why not?” Ben asked excitedly. “We make an excellent team, you have to admit. And my father and I think I’ve put my life on hold long enough. Paschal knows he can’t go jaunting around the world in search of his brothers anymore. After today’s fireworks and finding Damon, he’s agreed to let me take on this mission. He has a good lead on a sword that his research shows was forged in Valoren.”
Cat listened, then a smile bloomed slowly on her face. “Yes,” she said confidently. “I think I might like roaming the world with you. You’re a fun guy, when you’re not stuffed up in some classroom.”
He smirked. “And you can be fairly exciting yourself, when you’re not trying to run the world.”
Ben opened his hand to Cat, who placed her palm in his and screeched delightedly when he pulled her into his arms. They both turned expectantly toward Damon.
“So,” Ben asked, “does this plan, work for y
ou?”
Alexa started up the stairs. “What plan?”
After a moment of thick silence, Damon explained the proposal to Alexa. The more he allowed the idea to take root in his head, the more he thought the plan sound. Ben and Cat would take charge of the search while Alexa and he remained at the castle, ensuring that her dream to turn the structure into a luxury hotel went forward as planned.
“I can’t ask you to abandon your dream,” Alexa said, kneeling at his side after she’d asked Cat and Ben to give them a few moments alone. “You waited three hundred years to leave this place, to explore the world. To find your brothers.”
“Then you believe they may still exist?”
She rolled her eyes. “You exist. Paschal, um, Paxton exists. Chances are good, I suppose.”
“And Rogan as well?”
She winced, fear skittering across her face.
“But I’ll not search for them without you,” he declared. “And first, you need to see your dream to its fruition.”
With a withering sigh, Alexa sat on the step and dragged her hands through her hair. Hands still marred with stains from his blood. And Jacob’s. “I don’t know,” she said finally.
“Paschal said you could do with the island and the castle whatever you wished,” Damon reminded her.
“I know, but what’s the point? Jacob’s gone.”
“You did not want to do this for Jacob.”
“I don’t know what I want anymore.”
He leaned closer. “Are you so sure?”
Despite her heartbreak, she managed an intimate smile. He’d lost his brothers, too, but he hadn’t had to witness their betrayal or their violent death. Alexa had healed once physically, but now it was her heart that had been battered and bruised. And more than any ambitions he had to reunite with his brothers or avenge his family on Rogan or his murderous heirs, Damon wanted to help Alexa find her joy again. If she could find her happiness in him, so much the better.
She’d changed his destiny. Now it was time for him to repay the debt.
“I want you,” she answered simply.
“Good,” he said. “I was hoping that would be your answer.”
He ignored the pain from his injury and wrapped his arm around her. She climbed gingerly onto his lap and pressed her cheek softly to his. “I can’t ask you to stay here. You have a whole world to see.”
“And I’m sure you will be an excellent guide. We’ll explore the world, Alexa. Together. For centuries, I thought I had no time at all to act, to take revenge, to live again. Now I realize, even if I have only fifty years, that’s all the time in the world, as long as I’m with you.”
Her smile rivaled the sun, and when she kissed him, he could think of nothing but stripping away her torn and bloodied clothing and washing her clean with his own hungry hands.
For an instant, he thought he might have inadvertently transported them inside the castle, but when he fluttered his eyes open, he found them sitting still on the steps, the ocean waves crashing on the rocks nearby, the sun beating softly on their shoulders and the sky a brilliant and unrivaled blue.
She pulled away softly. “That reminds me,” she said ruefully. “What are we going to do about the magic? Judging by Keith’s threats before he and Rose were carted off to jail, the K’vr will be back. One faction or the other, they’re going to be trouble.”
Damon patted his pocket, where the magical source still thrummed against his skin. “And we’ll be ready for them.”
“How?”
Unsteady, but determined, Damon stood and enveloped her as tightly in his arms as his wound would allow. “I’ll master the magic, my lady. With your…assistance,” he said delicately, “I’m quite certain I’ll learn to keep the evil—and Rogan’s followers—at bay.”
The grin curving her lips reached her eyes so that they sparkled. “That might mean a whole lot of lovemaking.”
Damon suddenly forgot all about pain or suffering or curses. He thought only of magic. Not the type created through the fire opal still hidden in his pocket, but the rare and wonderful kind he’d invoke with Alexa at his side. “Yes, my lady. It will, indeed.”
************
PHANTOM’S TOUCH
PROLOGUE
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Catalina Reyes circled the table, her eyes darting between noted Gypsy researcher Paschal Rousseau and his mouthwateringly sexy son, Ben. They sat across from each other, arms folded tightly as they competed in a frowning contest that, in Cat’s opinion, could have neither winner nor prize. Between them, still cradled in plain brown paper and nestled in a cardboard box, was a quarter-size piece of brass. A casual observer might see only an old button inside the package, but to the Rousseau men, the fastener was a major bone of contention.
“Cat’s right, Dad,” Ben insisted. His eyes, lighter than his father’s yet still stormy gray, darted to her. “After last time, you were too weak to protect yourself. You were kidnapped the very next day.”
Paschal’s eyes shone with the cockiness that Cat had come to associate with both Rousseau men, as well as their Forsyth ancestors. She supposed it was a blessing to women everywhere that they didn’t make men like them anymore.
“Won’t happen again,” Paschal blustered. “You and Cat will protect me.”
“From kidnapping, sure,” Cat argued, “but not from the toll that physically connecting with that button will take on your body. You may look younger than ninety, Paschal, but you’re actually how old?”
As Ben leaned forward, his dark hair, which he hadn’t cut since he and Cat had met nine months ago, hung rakishly over one eye. “Well, let’s do the math, shall we? You were born in 1717, correct?”
Paschal frowned and refused to answer.
Cat rubbed her arms. Despite her experiences as a paranormal researcher, she still shivered when she thought about how Paschal Rousseau was actually Paxton Forsyth, the fourth son of an English earl. Through magical means that defied modern explanation, Paschal had been trapped inside a cursed Gypsy object—a mirror—and released sometime during World War II by Ben’s mother. Over the last sixty-plus years, he’d aged—exceptionally well—and had used his latent psychic abilities to try to locate the sister and five brothers who had been ripped away from him so many centuries ago.
So far, he’d found one family member. Now, with the aid of the button, he might find another.
Cat slid into the empty chair beside Paschal. “Ben’s right. Let me try.”
Though her own psychic abilities had been dormant for most of her life, connecting with Rousseau and his son had sparked skills that Cat now could use with a fairly decent success rate. Perhaps if she touched the button, which was stamped with the Forsyth crest, she’d be able to focus in on the energy of Aiden Forsyth, the brother who’d reportedly worn the notion on his army uniform sometime before, during or after the Battle of Culloden. They desperately needed a clue as to what had happened to him all those years ago. Damon, the eldest, recently released brother, had found the button while scouring Europe for evidence about the fate of his family. The least they could do here in the States was coax some information from the tarnished bit of brass.
There was, at least, precedent. Through a seascape painted by Damon over two centuries ago, Paschal had discovered that despite the passage of time, his brother lived. And with help from Cat’s best friend, the hotel heiress Alexa Chandler, Damon was now entirely free of the curse. The new couple, currently in Dresden searching for other items that might have been used by the Gypsies to imprison his siblings or, as in this case, articles that might have belonged to them, relied on the Rousseaus and Cat to take the search to the next level.
“You can’t do it,” Paschal said, his voice hearty, even though she’d noticed a few more wrinkles on his face lately, more visible thanks to an increasing paleness both she and Ben tried to ignore. He spent nearly all his time in his house or at his university office, searching, hoping. Trying to fi
nd his brothers and sister in whatever time he had left.
“I can try,” she assured.
“Go ahead,” he replied with a confident swing of his hand, gesturing at the box. “Try if you like, but you’ll never connect to the past when you haven’t lived it—you’re not that good a psychic yet. No offense.”
Cat slid the box closer to her and smirked. “None taken.”
She peered inside, then, with a determined inhalation, took the button into her palm. Paschal crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, the certainty of her failure etched on his face.
Ben, however, shifted forward and slid his warm, supportive palm over her knee. She allowed herself a split second to enjoy the feel of his flesh against hers and the memory of how much higher those fingers had sneaked up her thigh only a few hours ago.
When he cleared his throat guiltily, she guessed the same memory had occurred to him as well.
“Go ahead,” Ben urged. “Show the old man that he’s not the only one who can do this.”
Great. No pressure.
She inhaled again, but this time she allowed the breath to fill her lungs to maximum capacity. She concentrated on the oxygen expanding in her system, and when she felt entirely full, she blew out the air through her mouth, tightened her fingers around the button, closed her eyes and concentrated. The voodoo chants taught to her by her grandfather looped in her brain. She called upon the Santería spirits invoked by her grandmother to guide her way.
The button’s age instantly struck her. A blast of odors. Stuffy rooms. Stale sweat. Piquant perfumes. Images popped across her inner eyelids like tiny, fragile bubbles. Boxes. Cartons. Envelopes. Even a beaded sachet. Hand after hand after hand. Some warm and gentle. Some cold and hard. Cruel.
She dropped the button.
