The Key Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  “And the fact that even if I’m right, it doesn’t mean the key’s literally in a book. Could be figuratively. Or it could mean something in a book points the way to the key.” Dana shrugged and shoveled in more cold spaghetti. “I said it fell short of brilliant.”

  “It’s a good starting point. Past, present, future.” Malory pursed her lips. “Covers a lot of ground.”

  “Historical, contemporary, futuristic. And that’s just novels.”

  “What if it’s more personal?” Malory leaned forward, kept her attention on Dana’s face. “It was with me. My path to the key included Flynn, my feelings for him—and my feelings about myself, where I would end up, where I wanted to go. The experiences I had—we can’t call them dreams—were very personal.”

  “And scary.” Briefly, Dana laid a hand over Malory’s. “I know. But you got through it. So will I. Maybe it is personal. A book that has some specific and personal meaning for me.”

  Thoughtfully she scanned the room as she picked up her fork again. “That’s something else that covers a lot of ground.”

  “I was thinking of something else. I was thinking of Jordan.”

  “I don’t see how he’s in the mix. Look,” she continued even as Malory opened her mouth, “he was part of the first round, sure. The paintings by Rowena that both he and Brad bought. He came back to town with that painting because Flynn asked him to. That played into it, although his part should have ended with your quest. And his connection to Flynn, which connected him to you.”

  “And you, Dana.”

  She twirled her fork in the pasta, but her enthusiasm for it was waning. “Not anymore.”

  Recognizing the stubborn look, Malory nodded. “Okay. How about the first book you ever read? The first that grabbed you and made you a reader.”

  “I don’t think the magic key to the Box of Souls is going to be found in Green Eggs and Ham.” Smirking, Dana lifted her glass. “But I’ll give it a look.”

  “What about your first grown-up book?”

  “Obviously the steely wit and keen satire of Sam I Am escaped you.” She grinned, but drummed her fingers, thinking. “Anyway, I don’t remember a first. It was always books with me. I don’t remember not reading.”

  She studied her wine a moment, then took a quick gulp. “He dumped me. I moved on.”

  Back to Jordan, Malory thought and nodded. “All right.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t hate him with a rare and beautiful passion, but it doesn’t drive my life. I’ve only seen him a handful of times in the past seven years.” She shrugged, but it came across as a hesitant jerk. “I’ve got my life, he’s got his, and they no longer intersect. He just happens to be buds with Flynn.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “Yeah. Big time. Bastard.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, it happens.” She had to remind herself of that. It wasn’t life or death, it didn’t send her falling headlong into a vale of tears. If a heart couldn’t be broken, it wasn’t a heart to begin with.

  “We were friends. When my dad married Flynn’s mom, Flynn and I hit it off. Good thing, I guess. Flynn had Jordan and Brad—they were like one body with three heads half the time. So I got them, too.”

  You’ve still got them, Malory nearly said, but managed to keep silent.

  “Jordan and I were friends, and we both really dug reading, so that was another click. Then we got older, and things changed. You want another hit of this?” she asked, holding up her empty glass.

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m having one.” Dana rose, got the bottle from the kitchen. “He went off to college. He got a partial scholarship to Penn State, and both he and his mom worked like dogs to put together the rest of the tuition and expense money. His mom, well, she was just terrific. Zoe sort of reminds me of her.”

  “Really?”

  “Not in the looks department, though Mrs. Hawke was really pretty, but she was taller, and willowy—made you think of a dancer.”

  “She was young when she died.”

  “Yeah, only in her forties.” It still brought a little pang to her heart. “It was horrible what she went through, what Jordan went through. At the end, we were all practically camped out at the hospital, and even then . . .”

  She gave herself a hard shake, blew out a breath. “That’s not where I was going. I meant Zoe reminds me of how Mrs. Hawke was. It’s that good-mother vibe Zoe has. The kind of woman who knows what to do and how to do it and doesn’t whine about getting it done, and still manages to love it and the kid. She and Jordan were tight, the way Zoe and Simon are. It was just the two of them. His father wasn’t in the picture, not as far back as I can remember, anyway.”

  “That must’ve been difficult for him.”

  “It would’ve been, I think, if his mother hadn’t been who she was. She’d grab a bat and join in a pickup softball game as quickly as she would whip up some cookie batter. She filled the gaps.”

  “You loved her too,” Malory realized.

  “I did. We all did.”

  Dana sat down, sipped at her second glass of wine. “So anyway, the Hawke goes off to college, gets two part-time jobs up there to help pay his expenses. We didn’t see much of him the first year. He came back for summers, worked at Tony’s Garage. He’s a pretty decent mechanic. Palled around with Flynn and Brad when he had the chance. Four years later, he’s got his degree. He did a year and a half postgrad and was already getting some short stories published. Then he came home.”

  She let out a long breath. “Holy Jesus, we took one look at each other, and it was like bombs exploding. I thought, What the hell is this? This is my buddy Jordan. I’m not supposed to want to sink my teeth into my good buddy Jordan.”

  She laughed, drank. “Later on, he told me he’d had the same sort of reaction. Whoa, hold on, this is Flynn’s little sister. Hands off. So we danced around those bombs and each other for a couple of months. We were either bitchy with each other or very, very polite.”

  “And then?” Malory prompted when Dana fell silent.

  “Then one night he dropped by to see Flynn, but Flynn was out on a date. And my parents weren’t home. I picked a fight with him. I had to do something with all that heat. The next thing you know the two of us are rolling around on the living room rug. We couldn’t get enough of each other. I’ve never had that before or since, that . . . desperation. It was incredible.

  “Imagine our chagrin when the smoke cleared and the two of us were naked on Liz and Joe’s pretty Oriental carpet.”

  “How did you handle it?”

  “Well, as I recall we lay there like the dead for a minute, then just stared at each other. A couple of survivors of a very intense war. Then we laughed our butts off and went at each other again.”

  She lifted her glass in a mock toast. “So. We started dating, belatedly. Jordan and Dana, Dana and Jordan. It got to be like one word, whichever way you said it.”

  Oh, God, she missed that, she realized. Missed that very intimate link. “Nobody ever made me laugh the way he could make me laugh. And he’s the only man in my life who’s ever made me cry. So, yeah, Christ, yes, I loved that son of a bitch.”

  “What happened?”

  “Little things, huge things. His mother died. God, nothing’s ever been as, well, monstrous as that. Even when my dad got sick, it wasn’t as bad. Ovarian cancer, and they found it too late. The operations, the treatments, the prayers, nothing worked. She just kept slipping away. Having someone die is hard,” she said softly. “Watching them die by inches is impossible.”

  “I can’t imagine it.” Malory’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ve never lost anyone.”

  “I don’t remember losing my mother; I was too young. But I remember every day of losing Mrs. Hawke. Maybe it broke something in Jordan. I don’t know—he wouldn’t let me know. After she died, he sold their little house, all the furniture, just about every damn thing. And he cut me loose and moved to New York to ge
t rich and famous.”

  “It wasn’t as cut and dried as that,” Malory commented.

  “Maybe not. But it felt like it. He said he had to go. That he needed something, and it wasn’t here. If he was going to write—and he had to write—he had to do it his way. He had to get out of the Valley. So that’s what he did, like the two years we were together was just a little interlude in his life.”

  She downed the rest of the wine in her glass. “So fuck him, and the bestsellers he rode in on.”

  “You may not want to hear this, at least not now. But part of the solution might be to resolve this with him.”

  “Resolve what?”

  “Dana.” Malory laid both of her hands on Dana’s. “You’re still in love with him.”

  Her hands jerked. “I am not. I made a life for myself. I’ve had lovers. I have a career—which, okay, is in the toilet right now, but I’ve got a phoenix about to rise from the ashes in the bookstore.”

  She stopped, hearing the way her words tumbled out. “No more wine for me if I mix metaphors that pitifully. Jordan Hawke’s old news,” she said more calmly. “Just because he was the first man I loved doesn’t mean he has to be the last. I’d rather poke my eye with a burning stick than give him the satisfaction.”

  “I know.” Malory laughed a little, gave Dana’s hands a squeeze before she released them. “That’s how I know you’re still in love with him. That, and what I just saw on your face, heard in your voice when you took me through what you had together.”

  It was appalling. How had she looked? How had she sounded? “So the wine made me sentimental. It doesn’t mean—”

  “It means whatever it means,” Malory said briskly. “It’s something you’re going to have to think about, Dana, something you’re going to have to weigh carefully if you really mean to do this thing. Because one way or the other, he’s part of your life, and he’s part of this.”

  “I don’t want him to be,” Dana managed. “But if he is, I’ll deal with it. There’s too much at stake for me to wimp out before I even get started.”

  “That’s the spirit. I’ve got to get home.”

  She rose, then ran a comforting hand over Dana’s hair. “Whatever you’re feeling or thinking, you can tell me. And Zoe. And if there’s something you need to say, if you just need someone to be here when you have nothing to say, all you have to do is call.”

  Dana nodded, waited until Malory was at the door. “Mal? It was like having a hole punched in my heart when he left. One hole ought to be enough for anybody’s lifetime.”

  “You’d think. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Chapter Three

  THE odds of finding a magic key tucked in one of the thousands of books at the Pleasant Valley Library were long and daunting. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t look.

  In any case, she liked being in the stacks, surrounded by books. She could, if she let her mind open to it, hear the words murmuring from them. All those voices from people who lived in worlds both fantastic and ordinary. She could, simply by slipping a book off the shelf, slide right into one of those worlds and become anyone who lived inside it.

  Magic keys and soul-sucking sorcerers, Dana thought. Incredible as they might be, they paled for her against the power of words on a page.

  But she wasn’t here to play, she reminded herself as she began dutifully tidying the stacks while keeping an eye on the resource desk a few feet away. This was an experiment. Maybe she would put her fingers on a book and feel something—a tingle, a hint of heat.

  Who knew?

  But she worked her way through the mythology stacks without experiencing any tingles.

  Undaunted, she wandered to the section of books on ancient civilizations. The past, she told herself. The Daughters of Glass had sprung from the ancients. Well, who hadn’t?

  She worked diligently for a time, reordering books that had been misplaced. She knew better, really she did, than to actually open the volume on ancient Britain, but it was suddenly in her hand, and there was this section on stone circles that swept her onto windy moors at moonrise.

  Druids and chanting, balefires and the hum that was the breath of gods.

  “Oh, gee, Dana. I didn’t know you were off today.”

  With her teeth going to auto-grind, Dana shifted her gaze from the book in her hand to Sandi’s overly cheerful face. “I’m not off. I’m working the stacks.”

  “Really?” The big blue eyes widened. Long golden lashes fluttered. “It looked like you were reading. I thought maybe you were on your own time, doing more research. You’ve been doing a lot of research lately, haven’t you? Finally starting on your doctorate?”

  With a bad-tempered little shove, Dana put the book back in place. Wouldn’t it be fun? she thought, to get the big silver scissors out of the drawer in her desk and whack off that detestable bouncing ponytail?

  She’d just bet that would wipe that bright, toothy grin off Sandi’s face.

  “You got the promotion, the pay raise, so what’s your problem, Sandi?”

  “Problem? I don’t have a problem. We all know the policy about reading on the clock. So I’m sure it just looked like you were reading instead of manning the desk.”

  “The desk is covered.” And when enough was enough, Dana thought, you finished it. “You spend a lot of your time worrying about what I’m doing, slinking around in the stacks behind me, eavesdropping when I’m speaking with a patron.”

  Sandi’s perky smile turned into a perky sneer. “I certainly do not eavesdrop.”

  “Bullshit,” Dana said in a quiet, pleasant tone that had Sandi’s dollbaby eyes going bright with shock. “You’ve been stepping on my heels for weeks. You got the promotion, I got the cut. But you’re not my supervisor, you’re not my boss. So you can kiss my ass.”

  Though it wasn’t quite as rewarding as hacking off the ponytail might have been, it felt fabulous to just walk away, leaving Sandi sputtering.

  She settled back at the desk and assisted two patrons with such good cheer and good fellowship that both left beaming. When she answered the phone, she all but sang out, “Pleasant Valley Library. Reference Desk. May I help you? Hey, Mr. Foy. You’re up, huh. Ah, uh-huh. Good one.” She chuckled as she scribbled down today’s trivia question. “It’ll take me a minute. I’ll call you back.”

  She danced off to find the right book, flipped through it briefly in the stacks, then carried it back to the desk to make the return call.

  “Got it.” She trailed down the page with her finger. “The Arctic tern migrates the farthest annually. Up to twenty thousand miles—wow—between the Arctic and Antarctic. Makes you wonder what’s in its birdy brain, doesn’t it?”

  She shifted the phone as she caught sight of Sandi marching, like a damn drum majorette, toward the desk. “Nope, sorry, Mr. Foy, no complete set of American Tourister luggage for you today. The Arctic tern nips out the long-tailed jaeger by a couple thousand miles annually. Better luck next time. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  She hung up, folded her hands, then lifted her eyebrows at Sandi. “Something I can do for you?”

  “Joan wants to see you upstairs.” Thrusting her chin in the air, Sandi looked down her tiny, perfect nose. “Immediately.”

  “Sure.” Dana tucked her hair behind her ear as she studied Sandi. “I bet you only had one friend in elementary school, and she was just as obnoxious as you are.” She slid off the stool.

  Speaking of elementary school, Dana thought as she crossed the main floor, started up the stairs to administration, she herself felt as if she’d just gotten hauled into the principal’s office. A lowering sensation for a grown woman. And one, she decided, she was sick of experiencing.

  Outside Joan’s door, Dana took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. She might feel like a guilty six-year-old, but she wasn’t going to look like one.

  She knocked, briskly, then opened the door without waiting for a response. “You wanted to see me?”

  At her desk, Joan
leaned back. Her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled into in a no-nonsense bun that, oddly enough, flattered her.

  She wore a dark vest over a white blouse that was primly buttoned to her throat. The material hung flat, with barely a ripple to indicate there were breasts beneath it.

  Rimless half-glasses dangled from a gold chain around her neck. Dana knew her shoes would be low-heeled and sturdy and as no-nonsense as the hairstyle.

  She looked, Dana decided, scrawny and dull—and the very image of the cliché that kept children out of libraries in droves.

  Since Joan’s mouth was already set in disapproval, Dana didn’t expect the meeting to be a cheerful one.

  “Shut the door, please. It appears, Dana, that you continue to have difficulty adjusting to the new policies and protocol I’ve implemented here.”

  “So, Sandi raced right up to tattle that I was actually reading a book. Of all the horrors to commit in a public library.”

  “Your combative attitude is only one of the problems we have to deal with.”

  “I’m not going to stand here and defend myself for skimming a couple pages of a book while I was working in the stacks. Part of my function is to be informed about books, not just to point the patrons toward an area and wish them Godspeed. I do my job, Joan, and my evaluations from the previous director were never less than exemplary.”

  “I’m not the previous director.”

  “Damn straight. Less than six weeks after you took over, you cut my, and two other long-term employees’, hours and paychecks nearly in half. And your niece gets a promotion and a raise.”

  “I was hired to pull this institution out of financial decline, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m not required to explain my administrative decisions to you.”

  “No, you don’t have to. I get it. You don’t like me, I don’t like you. But I don’t have to like everyone I work with or for. I can still do my job.”

  “It’s your job to follow the rules.” Joan flipped open a file. “Not to make and receive personal phone calls. Not to use library equipment for personal business. Not to spend twenty minutes gossiping with a patron while your duties are neglected.”