All You Desire

by Kirsten Miller

  “Let me think for a second. . . .” Iain tapped his temple and arched an eyebrow. “I’ll come up with something suitably shocking.”

  As she waited, Haven’s attention was drawn to a woman who had risen from her seat at the back of the restaurant. She was making her way toward the exit, draped in a fur that she hadn’t deigned to leave at the coat check. Haven couldn’t figure out which unfortunate animal had given its life for the sake of fashion. The pelt was as exotic as the woman herself, who didn’t appear to be entirely human. As the lady passed by, the empty sleeve of her fur brushed against their table, and Haven grabbed her glass to keep it from toppling. Startled by Haven’s sudden movement, the woman clutched her fur to her chest before it could be sullied by a stranger’s touch. A single platinum ring adorned one of her hand’s elegant fingers. It was in the shape of a serpent swallowing its own tail. An ouroboros.

  “Haven, are you all right?” She barely heard Iain’s voice over the pounding of her heart. She scanned the crowd, checking every face in view. Seated at a table against the far wall, beneath a painting of a Renaissance nobleman with a shifty smile, were two men in suits. They were too plainly dressed to be Italian. They could have been traveling businessmen. Or vacationing undertakers. Or men sent to find her.

  Haven flagged down a waiter and requested the check, just as their first course arrived.

  “Is something wrong?” the waiter inquired.

  “Haven?” Iain joined in.

  “I’m not feeling well,” Haven managed to explain as she dug through her purse and fished out a credit card. Once the waiter had disappeared, she leaned across the table toward Iain. Protecting him was the only thing that mattered now. “You have to get out of here,” she whispered. “There’s a chance they haven’t figured out who you are.”

  “Who?” Iain asked. Haven nodded toward the two men in suits.

  Iain stole a quick look and laughed with relief. “Those guys? They’re not from the Ouroboros Society, Haven. They’re copy machine salesmen. From Cleveland. I could hear them talking when we walked by.”

  “You’re sure?” Haven asked. “There was someone from the Society here tonight. The woman in the fur—she had a ring. An ouroboros ring. I saw it.”

  “Haven, it’s okay. It was just a coincidence. Why don’t we stay and have our dinner? There’s something—” Iain started to say.

  “No, we’re not safe here!” Haven insisted. “I felt it in Rome, and now I feel it here. He’s looking for me, Iain.”

  “Signora, I’m terribly sorry.” The waiter was hovering over them. “I’m afraid your credit card has been declined.”

  “That’s impossible,” Haven snipped.

  “No, signora,” the waiter said, growing snootier by the second. “It is not. Perhaps the gentleman has a card?”

  Of course he doesn’t, Haven wanted to say. The gentleman is supposed to be dead.

  “I’ll be happy to pay with cash,” Iain told him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There was no one on the streets of Florence. Snowflakes swirled in the air, never seeming to land, as though repelled by the ground’s icy touch. The night was silent, and the lights from the restaurant didn’t stretch far into the darkness. Haven surveyed her surroundings and recognized nothing. She couldn’t even recall which route they’d taken from the hotel.

  “I gave that waiter all of my cash,” Iain told her. “I don’t have enough money left for a taxi.” Haven was surprised to see that he didn’t appear worried. He even grinned as he tightened the scarf around her neck and tucked it into the collar of her coat. “Are you going to be okay if we walk?”

  “Am I going to be okay? Iain, listen to me,” Haven pleaded, her teeth already chattering. “He’s got to be here somewhere.” She half expected to see the figure in black emerge from around a corner or behind a car. There was no dark crevice that couldn’t have held him. “He’s followed us from Rome. We can’t stay here anymore.”

  “Haven, I promise you. He’s not in Florence. I would know if he was. And in any case, my question was rhetorical. Unless you’d like to hitchhike, walking is our only option.”

  “Then let’s hurry.” Haven led the charge in her three-inch heels.

  “Haven!” Iain called out to her. She turned to see him pointing in the opposite direction. “Our hotel is that way.”

  Behind her cashmere scarf, Haven bit down on her lip until she could taste her own blood. She wasn’t insane. She knew what she’d seen. The woman’s ring—the platinum snake swallowing its own tail—marked her as a member of the Ouroboros Society. The secret organization run by the man in black. Adam Rosier. And when Adam was involved, there were no such things as coincidences. Haven had been a fool to imagine she could ever deceive him.

  MANY MONTHS HAD passed since Haven had last set foot in the Ouroboros Society headquarters. But while the organization lay on the other side of the Atlantic, it was never very far from her mind. Housed in a stately, ivy-covered mansion on the edge of Gramercy Park in Manhattan, the Society had once been devoted to the scientific study of reincarnation. Its benevolent founder had always maintained that people born with knowledge of previous lives—people like Iain Morrow and Haven Moore—should devote themselves to improving the world. Adam Rosier had changed all that. Since he had taken over the OS, he had turned the organization into his own sinister social club. Individuals with unusual memories still flocked to Gramercy Park from all over the world, hoping to learn more about the lives they’d once led. Many of them arrived with remarkable skills they had built over multiple lifetimes. There were medical savants and mathematical geniuses. Artists and actors. Politicians whose words could fire up crowds or leave them in tears. Pianists who could conjure heaven with their fingertips.

  It didn’t matter who they were or what their abilities might have been. Once they became members, they found themselves slaves to the OS’s system. The Eternal Ones (as they called themselves) were all given accounts and instructed to earn valuable “points” by helping one another. The system seemed perfectly harmless until members discovered that OS points could buy anything the heart secretly desired—fame, fortune, drugs, or sex. Eventually, power and points became every member’s obsessions. Those who refused to play the game were visited by Adam’s obedient army of “gray men”—and some were never seen again. But few refused, and each time the Society recruited a new member, the world grew just a little bit darker.

  That was Adam Rosier’s plan, after all. He was the subject of Marta Vega’s eerie paintings—the dark figure who set tragedies in motion. What he was could only be answered by scholars, shamans, or priests. For thousands of years he had wandered the globe, wreaking havoc, spreading lies, and feeding chaos wherever he found it. But in 1925, he had made Manhattan his home. The Ouroboros Society allowed him to continue his dark work while he waited for the only girl he had ever loved to arrive in New York and fulfill the destiny he had designed for her.

  Adam may have preyed on people’s darkest desires, but he had a weakness of his own. Haven Moore. They had been married once in a life two thousand years in the past, but Adam’s fear of losing her had led him to lock Haven away. She escaped from confinement with the help of a servant she’d come to see as her soul mate, but Adam was unwilling to let her go. Instead, he had followed Haven across countless lifetimes, and there were few crimes he hadn’t committed in his pursuit of her.

  In this lifetime, Adam had located Haven when she was too young to run from him. He had been watching her since she was nine years old—keeping her safe and waiting for her to come of age. But despite Adam’s best efforts, Haven and Iain were drawn together once more. In order to live out their days in peace, they’d had to trick the man in black. Haven had convinced Adam that she’d fallen out of love with her soul mate, and Iain had faked his own death. Believing he’d defeated his adversary, Adam promised Haven one life of freedom. He would patiently wait until she was reborn to make her his wife once again.

 
It was a promise Adam made because he believed that his rival was dead—and that the love that brought Haven and Iain together again and again had finally been destroyed. If Adam discovered that Iain was alive—if he knew they were still madly in love and living in Italy—there was no telling what the consequences might be. Before Iain “died,” Adam had framed him for the murder of a musician named Jeremy Johns. One call to the police, and Iain could be locked away. But prison might be the least of their worries if Adam Rosier was in Florence. If Iain were to lose his life, there was no telling how long it might take before he and Haven could be reunited. A year without him would be terrible. A century would be torture.

  Which is why it surprised Haven to hear Iain speak as though Adam were no longer a threat. As if an ocean could keep him at a distance. Haven knew they hadn’t escaped him. Adam might have stayed behind in New York, but a part of him still followed Haven wherever she went. He frequently appeared in her dreams of the past. And while she rarely recalled many details, there was one terrible fact Haven couldn’t forget. Not all of those dreams were nightmares.

  FEAR HAD SHARPENED her senses, and Haven heard the Vespa’s motor long before its headlight came into view. It appeared at the intersection ahead of them and sat idling at the stop sign a little too long before it turned toward them. Blinking in the harsh light, Haven and Iain paused to let the scooter pass. As it rumbled by, Haven fought the urge to flee. The last time she and Iain had faced death, it had come in the guise of two OS members on a motorbike. But the person riding the Vespa wasn’t one of Adam’s gray men—it was a teenage girl in a long brown coat and motorcycle boots. She wore neither helmet nor hat, and the snowflakes in her blonde hair sparkled like glitter. The Vespa slowed, and the girl stole a long look at Haven. She showed no interest in Iain. Even in the darkness, there was something about the rider that struck Haven as familiar. She knew they’d met at some point in the past, and the smirk on the girl’s lips seemed to suggest that she knew it too.

  Several blocks later the Vespa’s motor could still be heard in the distance. The rattle kept Haven marching on, though her feet had lost all feeling. She imagined the girl on the scooter circling nearby blocks, like a predator waiting for the right moment to make its kill. Even when the lights of their hotel appeared through the swirling snow, Haven wouldn’t allow herself to feel any relief. She knew there was still a chance she’d never make it to safety—that she’d be snatched up like a rabbit at the edge of its burrow. The girl was following them. Haven was sure of it.

  Once they were inside the doors of the hotel lobby, Haven spun around and peered outside with her nose almost pressed to the glass.

  “Do you see something out there?” Worried at last, Iain put a hand on her shoulder and looked out into the night.

  “Shhh,” Haven told him. The streets were empty, and the shadows didn’t move. Several blocks away, a tiny light flickered. She thought at first that it might be the Vespa, still circling, until the light stayed in place for more than a minute. Then Haven’s anxiety began to fade into the desire for a long, hot shower. She let Iain take her by the hand, and together they forged their way through the lobby.

  “Excuse me, Miss Moore.” A prissy woman from hotel reception was blocking their path to the elevators. Despite her small stature, she made an effective obstacle. “May I have a word?”

  “We’re in a bit of a hurry,” Haven said wearily, attempting to step around the woman, only to find the way blocked once more.

  “It will just take a moment.” The woman pointed toward the open door of an office. Haven and Iain reluctantly followed her inside.

  “Yes?” Haven asked, feeling like a naughty child who’d been summoned to the principal’s office.

  “There’s been a problem with your credit card. The hotel has been instructed to decline any additional charges.”

  “Instructed by whom?” Haven demanded. She could feel the crimson blotches growing on her face and chest.

  “The issuing company. Now, would you like to settle your bill in cash, or would you prefer to check out early?” It was no secret which option the woman would have chosen for them.

  “We’ll pay in cash,” Iain stated for the second time that evening. “I had an envelope placed in the hotel safe. Would you mind retrieving it for me?”

  “Not at all,” the woman responded curtly.

  “Now do you believe me?” Haven asked as soon as she and Iain were alone in the office. “Someone’s shut down my accounts. It has to be Adam. Who else would be able to do this to us?”

  “Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Iain said, still determined to comfort her. “It’s only four thirty in New York. We should have time to deal with the problem. Check your e-mail first, and see if there’s anything new. Maybe the credit card company sent you an alert. It’s probably a misunderstanding.”

  “A misunderstanding? Then how do you explain the girl on the Vespa? She was watching us.”

  “This is Italy, Haven,” Iain said. “Do you know how many girls here ride Vespas?”

  “In snowstorms?” Haven countered.

  “Please, Haven. Check your e-mail.”

  Haven rifled through her handbag for her phone. Sure enough, a message had arrived two hours earlier from Haven’s lawyer in New York. She scanned the note.

  “Well, that explains it,” Haven announced. “Your mother is suing me.”

  “She’s what?” Iain’s calm façade finally cracked.

  “She says I forged your will.”

  “Read me the note.”

  “‘Dear Miss Moore, I regret to inform you that your accounts have been temporarily frozen. Your late boyfriend’s mother, Mrs. Virginia Morrow, has filed a lawsuit accusing you of inheritance fraud. She believes the signature on Iain’s will may not be authentic. A Manhattan judge has ordered that the Morrow family fortune be placed in escrow until the issue is resolved. He has also requested that the original document signed by Iain Morrow be forwarded to Mr. Harold Tuckerman, a noted expert on the subject of forgery. Please telephone me at your earliest convenience. We need to discuss this matter at once.’”

  “I can’t believe it,” Iain muttered. “I left that woman five million dollars in my will. I thought it would take her a decade to drink her way through it.”

  “Well, let’s look on the bright side,” Haven said, though she could barely see one herself. “At least Adam isn’t behind it.”

  “Don’t underestimate my mother,” Iain replied. “When it comes to pure evil, she makes Adam Rosier look like the Easter bunny.”

  In the past year, Haven had heard dozens of stories about Iain’s father, who’d passed away shortly before she and Iain had reunited. A difficult man, Jerome Morrow had made Iain’s childhood far more complicated than it had to be, escorting his son to countless psychiatrists, each with a different flavor of pill to prescribe. Yet it was clear that Jerome Morrow had loved his son, even if that love had been poorly expressed. However, Iain rarely spoke of his mother. Whenever the subject came up, he would always do his best to change it.

  “You’re exaggerating,” Haven said softly.

  “No.” Iain was adamant. “I’m not. She once held me hostage at her villa until my father agreed to increase her alimony payments. I missed an entire month of sixth grade. Believe me, she’d let us both starve if she thought there was the slightest chance of getting her hands on the Morrow fortune.”

  “We’re not going to starve, are we?” Haven laughed nervously. “We must have some money set aside for emergencies.”

  “Some,” Iain admitted. “But it won’t last forever.”

  “Well, there’s always my boutique. We should be able to live off the shop’s profits for a while.”

  Iain shook his head. “They’ll shut it down. The building and the supplies were all purchased with Morrow money. You’re worried,” he added when he saw the horror on Haven’s face. “Don’t be worried. I can always hop on a flight to New York. I still have a few conta
cts there. I can try to get my hands on some cash while we fight the suit.”

  “Contacts? Since when do dead guys have contacts?” Haven sighed and rested her cheek against Iain’s chest. His heartbeat was still slow and steady. She wondered what it would take to make it race as fast as hers. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I want you here with me. Virginia Morrow can take our money, but I’m not going to let her separate us.”

  She felt Iain plant a kiss on her neck. “My mother isn’t going to get her hands on our money, Haven. She’ll just make our lives unpleasant for a while. We’ve been poor before. We’ll survive.”

  “I know,” Haven said, though the thought of scrimping and saving held little appeal. She was already wondering how she might plead for a loan from her loathsome grandmother back in Snope City.

  “We’ll just have to be careful for a while. We won’t write any big checks.”

  The last two words hit Haven hard. She broke out of Iain’s embrace and stumbled backward. “Oh my God!” she gasped. “I sent out a check right before we left Rome. It probably hasn’t even gotten there yet.”

  “A check for what?” Iain asked.

  “Beau’s college tuition. The payment is due next week.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Well, if it isn’t Haven Jane Moore, formerly of Snope City, Tennessee. To what do I owe this rare pleasure?”

  Haven’s heart surged at the sound of Beau’s deep drawl. They communicated mostly by e-mail these days, and she hadn’t seen him face-to-face in six months—since his visit to Rome the previous July. She had never expected to miss him so terribly. Being away from Beau was one of the few disadvantages of living in Italy. Having seen him every day for almost a decade, Haven still found it hard to believe that she couldn’t just jump in her mother’s car and drive up to the old Decker farmhouse whenever she needed to talk.

  Beau had been like family since the day they’d first found each other, and when Haven had learned that Beau had once been her brother, she hadn’t felt a single twinge of surprise. Beau knew all about Haven’s many faults, and, like a brother, he loved her anyway. So when she’d inherited the Morrow family fortune after Iain faked his own death, Haven’s first act as an heiress had been to foot the bill for Beau’s college tuition. It was the least she could do to repay him. Telling him that the Morrow money was gone was one of the most painful tasks she’d ever had to take on.