by Julie Leto
That left the people who’d attacked her in the hotel back in Texas. All morning, she’d racked her brain for exactly what the thug had said to her.
Thought you could steal from us, did you?
Those words could come only from someone hired by the government official she’d lifted the coins from—except…the guy wasn’t rich. He wasn’t even influential outside of his tiny corner of the world. And if he had enough money to hire muscle in the States to track her down, why had he left the coins so vulnerable in the first place? The man lived high on the hog by some standards, but he hadn’t spent a single penny on security. Mariah was certain he had no idea of the true value of the stash.
Was there, then, a fourth player in this increasingly dangerous game?
The instruments on her tracking system beeped impotently. The range on the device was supposed to pinpoint the item with the matching frequency within one mile. Though the signal had grown stronger in the past fifteen minutes, it was nowhere near specific enough for her to know how to proceed.
“This isn’t working,” she groused.
A whisper of a touch pressed at the small of her back, propelling her a few feet forward until she fell under the cool shadows of the treetops.
“Rest, Mariah. I shall return.”
“Return? Where are you…?”
But a second later, she could feel that he was gone. Instinctively, she reached into the dilly bag and took out Rogan’s marker, clutching it between her hands. The warmth she associated with Rafe still buzzed against her skin, and the fire opal, when held up to the dappled sunlight, glowed with the fire that had won it its name.
Assured that Rafe hadn’t somehow left her for good, she unscrewed the top of her canteen and drank. The cool water reminded her of the river, of the falls and of the lovemaking she and Rafe had shared under the silver moonlight. She’d never been one to fall for romantic clichés, but damned if she didn’t totally understand the appeal now. The sensations of the humid air, the churning pool and Rafe’s amazing body had her antsy all over again. She was suddenly very aware of the sweat pooling between her breasts and the nearly imperceptible breeze tickling the hairs at the back of her neck. She removed the hat she’d donned against the strong Mexican sun and waved the wide brim in front of herself, ignoring the buzz of mosquitoes that flitted nearby, confused by the intermingled scents of human flesh and bug repellent.
She took another swig of water, then splashed some across her neck, moaning appreciatively at the refreshing trickle of coolness down her shirt. They had to find the coins soon, if for no other reason than to save her from melting. Not just physically, but emotionally. Like it or not (and she decidedly did not), Rafe Forsyth was starting to get to her.
“Mariah.”
His voice made her jump. She twisted around but saw, appropriately, nothing. Rafe sounded distant, as if he were only marginally tethered to the stone she’d dropped into her lap.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Follow me.”
The stone rocked against her thighs. Knowing somehow that the GPS tracker was no longer necessary, she shoved it and Rogan’s marker into the bag and marched toward the northwest, wielding the machete with renewed vigor. She must have hiked a half mile before she felt Rafe’s invisible hand on her elbow, tugging her deeper into the jungle than she thought one measly blade could penetrate.
Amazingly, the thick wall of leaves began to rustle, undulate and part. A tremor vibrated through her—whether from the excess of magic or something else, she didn’t know. Machete at her side and the dilly bag with the stone and extra water and supplies on her shoulder, she walked into the utter darkness, propelled by Rafe’s continued assurances that she was moving in the right direction.
When a break finally came, the trees behind her folded inward and trapped her in a scene that might have come straight out of an archaeologist’s dream.
A flat-topped pyramid rose up to the top of the jungle canopy. The apex was just shy of the height of the tallest branches, as if the jungle itself wished to keep this amazing find hidden from the outside world. Thick vines crept up the tall, thick blocks of sun-baked limestone, and the carvings, though darkened by moss, remained visible.
What she saw next made her stumble.
Rafe emerged from a doorway that had been hidden by an illusion of the stone.
He shimmered. He was not solid as he was in the night, but his body was outlined in light that did not come from the sun, which barely mottled the overgrown clearing with specks of golden light. The colors that surrounded him—vivid greens and deep blues and warm coppers—nearly hurt her eyes.
“What…?”
His smile stole her breath.
“The magic here is powerful,” he said, and his voice shook the leaves around her, as if imbued with command equal to the supernatural forces. “From the land, the sky, the jungle itself.”
She chanced a step forward.
“How are you doing this? I can see you.”
He raised his chin, bathing his face in the light that came from within rather than from above. “I’m drawing on the native magic. Tenuous threads weave together the spirits in this jungle with the structures they built centuries ago. Civilization has broken some of the connections, but the path here was strong. I simply followed the strands. Use your device now, Mariah. See what you find.”
Device? The splendor of Rafe’s appearance stunned her. More than anything, she wanted to touch him and be touched by him. Almost absentmindedly, she slipped her hand into the bag as she walked up the stone steps of the pyramid, which had alcoves and indentations at many different levels, as if statues had once stood as sentinels for this ancient place of worship. Or perhaps hid soldiers from the tribes, caked with limestone mud so that they blended in. Her hand brushed against Rogan’s marker, which, while still warm, had cooled considerably. She found the GPS tracker, but could barely muster the energy to hold it in her hand.
She approached him cautiously. She raised her fingers to his face, but did not touch him.
“May I?” she asked, unsure why she sought permission. Even amid the wash of light, his eyes glowed with his need to be touched by her.
“Please,” he responded.
His flesh was not solid, but he wasn’t ethereal, either. His skin reverberated with warmth, and the vibrations traveled across her nerve endings until she was nearly engulfed in the magic. He took her moment of surprise to wrap her in his translucent arms, pull her tight against his chest and kiss her.
In that instant, Mariah experienced sensations beyond her wildest imagination. He was against her, inside her, behind her, above her—all at the same time. Heat flooded through her, and her senses exploded so that she could smell not only the musk of his skin, but the scent of the flowers blooming on a vine hanging yards above them. She tasted his tongue against hers with the same deliciousness as the flavors of the moist jungle wind. Unbidden and unexplained, tears filled her eyes from the conflagration of emotions she couldn’t begin to process—euphoria, deep despair, intense need and complete surrender.
“What…what was that?” she asked. “What are you doing to me?”
His lips turned downward in a frown, and the colors that surrounded him seemed to darken, as if a shadow had passed overhead.
“Do not be afraid,” he said softly.
“I’m not afraid. I’m confused. I’m…” Overwhelmed. Intrigued. Tempted. Oh, so tempted. “What do I do?”
He reached toward her. Involuntarily, she stepped back. Only when she felt the tug on the GPS did she remember to check the device for new readings.
The screech was unmistakable—the coins were close. She scuttled around the pyramid and then determined that, in order to find her missing treasure, she had to go up. As with so many Mayan temples, slivers of stairs had been carved on all four sides. She took them three and four at a time, using her hands to ensure her balance, until she reached the very top.
She found the packag
e she’d dropped out of her airplane nearly dead center, as if it were an offering to the Mayan gods. She snatched the pack, gave it a cursory kiss, then climbed back down slowly, attempting to keep her occasional bout with vertigo at bay. Once she was six or seven feet from the ground, she leaped the rest of the way, fell to her knees and unzipped the case to make sure she’d finally found the treasure.
Mariah couldn’t contain a whoop of triumph as the coins spilled from the packaging into her palms, perfectly asymmetrical, chunky and, since she’d polished them for delivery shortly after she’d stolen them, iridescent gold. She turned to show them to Rafe when a loud crack exploded from behind her, and the unmistakable sound of a bullet sliced by her ear.
Fifteen
Bullets tore through Gemma’s body, ripping her from her neck to her groin. She gasped and clutched at her stomach, expecting blood and pain.
There was nothing.
She scrambled to her feet. The flute she’d rested on her chest what seemed like seconds ago clattered on the hardwood floor and rolled away.
Paschal’s chair scraped as he pushed back from the table. “Gemma?”
She blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of the images she’d just witnessed. She must have fallen asleep. Or had she? Somewhere between dreams and reality, someone had shot at her. No, wait. Not at her. At a woman with a straw hat dangling across her back, dressed in khakis that rode low on her hips and a long-sleeved T-shirt, crouching beside Rafe Forsyth, who’d been engulfed by an eerie, otherworldly glow.
“How is that possible?” she whispered.
She dropped back onto the love seat, still staring at her uninjured chest and stomach. Rafe must have been hit. But in his insubstantial state, he was unharmed. Like her.
Paschal abandoned the collection of books he’d spread across the dining room table and limped over to her.
“What did you see?” Paschal asked.
Gemma concentrated, trying to reconstruct what had happened before she’d had the vision. Bored with watching Paschal work, she’d snuggled onto a love seat in the adjacent sitting room, twirling the flute in her fingers like a truncated baton. She’d watched the instrument roll over her knuckles, the tiny holes spinning, the ivory mouthpiece flashing white against an increasingly dark room. She had not drifted to sleep, but into a trance, and she’d seen Rafe Forsyth, the man Paschal claimed to be his brother, in some distant jungle with a woman who was not from the past.
Gemma glared at Paschal, suddenly realizing that there was much more to this story than the old man had told her. Much, much more.
“I just had a vision of your brother,” she snapped.
“Where? Where is he?” he asked, reaching for the flute on the ground.
Gemma kicked it away. “You weren’t anywhere near me. I wasn’t piggybacking on your power. I saw that scene on my own.”
Paschal’s mouth flattened into a thin line. After a long second regarding her with surprisingly hard eyes, he nodded. “I suspected this would happen.”
“Suspected what would happen?” She grabbed him by the shirt, balled the soft knit in her fist and dragged him up close. “What aren’t you telling me, old man? What have you done to me?”
He seemed utterly impervious to her attempt at intimidation. He merely arched a brow and gave her grip on his person a cursory glance. “There’s no need to beat the information out of me, my dear. You asked a valid question. I am fully prepared to give you an adequate answer.”
Rage and frustration shook her, not to mention fear. All the cool detachment she’d worked so hard to perfect peeled away from her body, sliced off by the magic she’d always believed belonged to others. Her grandfather. Her great-uncle. Her father. But never her. Never, ever her.
She released him. “Start talking.”
He pursed his lips. “Where to begin?”
“I’d say at the beginning, but I don’t have all day while you recount more nonsense about the eighteenth century. Start with what just happened and work your way back.”
“I hear suspicion in your voice,” he noted.
“Do you blame me?”
Up until now, Gemma had accepted Paschal’s story. She’d been raised on the possibility of a great magic that could transcend time and space, so his claims to be an eighteenth-century member of the British peerage seemed, comparatively speaking, reasonable. According to Paschal, a powerful curse set forth by her ancestor had trapped him in an enchanted mirror until the end of World War II and had since then given him the excessive vigor he now enjoyed despite his advanced age.
Even the fact that he could mentally travel into the past had not entirely surprised her. What shocked her, from the start, was her ability to experience his vision.
But this time, she’d had a psychic episode on her own, and she wanted to know why. And how.
“Sit down,” he instructed. She glared, prepared to argue, but he gave her shoulder a shove, and she teetered back into the love seat. “You are a mimic,” he said.
She leaned forward, assuming she’d misheard. “A what?”
“A mimic. It’s a rare psychic ability. It allows you to absorb the preternatural skill of someone you come into close contact with.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Tell me about your father.”
“He was an asshole who ignored me because I was a girl. What else do you need to know?”
“You are certain your gender alone explains why he continually kept you at arm’s length?”
She attempted to stand, but he pushed her down again.
“What do you know about him?” she demanded.
“Nothing more than what you’ve told me. But you’ve left out the more relevant details. From what I’ve been reading,” he said, gesturing toward the stacks of papers on the dining room table, “the grand apprentices of the K’vr all possessed some psychic powers. Clairvoyants, mostly. Or at the very least, clever con men. What could your father do?”
Gemma frowned until her face hurt, not really wanting to remember the man she’d called Father—a man she barely knew. When he was home—which wasn’t often—he expected a cursory visit from her in the morning to give his instructions for the day to her nanny, and a sometimes longer audience during dinner, particularly when they had guests. Even then, she sat at the opposite side of the table in the space normally reserved for her mother—at the farthest distance from the man she both admired and hated with all her soul,
Outside these scheduled interactions, Gemma saw her father only when she secretly watched him from one of the many hidey-holes in this house. And as Paschal suspected, she’d seen and heard a great deal during that time. Secrets she’d told no one—not even Farrow. Particularly not Farrow.
“Lies,” she answered begrudgingly. “He had the uncanny ability to root out lies. Neither Keith nor I could ever get away with anything. Never mind the people he worked with every day. He just knew when people weren’t telling the truth.”
Paschal arched a brow. “How did he use this to increase his wealth? That is one of the key tenets of the K’vr, yes?”
She nodded. The search for the source of Rogan’s magic wasn’t cheap, and descendents of Lukyan Roganov had never lost the taste for living high on the hog. “Blackmail. He’d watch politicians and public figures on television or would meet them in person at black-tie affairs in New York or Washington. When he sensed a lie, he’d do some digging. Invariably, he’d find the truth and exploit it. He made millions.”
“And how long have you shared his talent?”
“Not long enough,” she quipped, always suspecting that she had inherited her father’s ability, but she was never entirely certain.
Her father had always refused to hear a single question about it. Then he’d died, leaving a permanent wedge between his children and the organization that had been his only legacy. Or had it?
“I certainly had no idea you were nearly three hundred years old,” she said.
“Ah, yes.
But I never once lied about my age,” he countered. “I always claimed to be more than ninety…and you rarely believed even that much.”
“You old dog,” she replied, realizing that, despite her gift, he had indeed found a way to fool her.
From the first time she’d met Paschal, she’d known he was keeping a secret. Trouble was, no amount of research on her part into the supposed university professor’s life had revealed that he’d been born in the seventeen hundreds and had survived the centuries because of exactly the black magic she’d spent her life searching for.
Her father’s ability was not to know the truth—only to recognize the lie. And that much she’d done.
“Big lot of good this gift has done me so far,” Gemma said.
“You knew Farrow was going to dump you long before he had a chance to. You were able to make preparations so that you are still in the running for the leadership.”
“Only by staying alive.”
More and more, Farrow Pryce had teetered toward obsession in his quest to take over the K’vr. He already had mounds of money and, therefore, a shitload of power. She could never understand why he so desperately wanted to be in command. His family had amassed millions simply by working alongside the grand apprentices. Why did he need the title?
“Women know when they’re about to get kicked to the curb,” she reasoned. “Most just have too many romantic notions to get out before it’s too late.”
“Explain then,” Paschal continued, “how you knew the picture of the chalice you showed me back in my hotel room all those months ago was important to me, even when I claimed at first that it was not? Not to be a braggart, but I’m quite an adept liar. And yet you knew I was not telling you the truth.”
Gemma rubbed her cheeks, then her eyes and finally her arms. She’d always thought her talent for ferreting out lies was courtesy of her father, but only because she’d inherited his cynicism, not because she’d stolen some paranormal ability.
“So, being around my father, I just absorbed what he could do?”
