“You’re wrong.” The affection and admiration in her voice nearly made him flush. “Your mind is your power. The strength and the openness of that mind make very strong magic. Stronger yet because it doesn’t close off your heart. We’ll need both.” She waited a beat. “She’ll need you.”
It gave him a jolt. Mia had said it so quietly, so simply. “Do me a favor and don’t mention that to Ripley. It’ll just piss her off.”
“You understand her, recognize all of her various flaws, numerous shortcomings, and irritating habits. But you love her anyway.”
“Yes, I . . .” He trailed off, set the muffin aside. “That was very sneaky.”
“I’d apologize, but I wouldn’t mean it.” Her laughter was too warm and soft to sting. “I thought you were in love with her, but I wanted to hear you say it. Can you be happy living on the island?”
He said nothing for a moment. “You really know her, don’t you? Ripley would never be happy anywhere else. So, yes, I can be happy here. I’ve been heading here all my life, in any case.”
“I like you, very much. Enough to wish, just a little, that it had been me you were meant for. And you,” she added when he looked slightly panicked, “who’d been meant for me. Since neither of those things is, I’m glad we can be friends. I think you’ll help each other find the best you can be.”
“You really love her, don’t you?”
For an instant, Mia’s calm ruffled. Color washed her cheeks, a rare occurrence. Then she shrugged. “Yes, nearly as much as I’m irritated by her. Now, I trust you’ll keep that to yourself as I keep your feelings to myself.”
“Deal.”
“And to seal it—” She rose and turned to the shelves behind her. She took down a carved wooden box and, opening it, removed a star-shaped pendant of silver, set with a sunstone.
“This has been in my family—our family,” she corrected, “since we began here on the Sisters. It’s said that she who was mine forged the pendant from a fallen star and the stone from a sunbeam. I’ve kept it for you.”
“Mia—”
But she only kissed him lightly and slipped the chain over his head. “Blessed be, cousin.”
Harding paid onemore visit to Evan Remington. His plans were set, his schedule outlined. But he felt it imperative to see Remington again before he left.
He felt an odd kinship with the man. The realization of it was both appalling and alluring to him. Remington was a kind of monster. And yet . . .
Didn’t all men have that beast lurking inside them? The sane, the civilized—and Harding considered himself both—restrained it. Controlled it.
He supposed it only made those who did neither—who indulged it, kept it fed and ready—more fascinating.
He told himself that his regular visits to Remington were research. Business. But in truth, he had come to find those frequent brushes with evil thrilling.
We were all one step away from the pit, Harding thought, composing notes in his head as he waited to be admitted. Only by observing, by learning from those who had fallen, would we understand what waited for us on the other side of sanity.
Harding stepped into the visitation room, heard the echo of the lock. Is that the last sound we hear as we fall? he wrote in his head. The hopeless shooting of the bolt?
Remington wasn’t restrained this time. Harding had already been told that as part of his treatment and rehabilitation, Remington had been taken off full restraints. He’d exhibited no violence to others or himself and had been responsive and cooperative in recent sessions.
The room was small, and nearly empty. One table with two chairs. While the restraints were missing, Harding heard the bright jingle of chain from the cuff on Remington’s right wrist. There was a third chair in the corner, occupied now by a broad-shouldered, pasty-faced guard.
Security cameras recorded every sound and movement.
The pit, Harding thought, whatever name we gave it, offered no privacy and little comfort.
“Mr. Remington.”
“Evan.” Today you could hardly see the madness. “After all this, we can hardly be formal. I’ll call you Jonathan. Do you know, Jonathan, you’re the only one who comes to talk to me? They tell me my sister’s been here. But I don’t remember. I remember you.”
The voice was quiet but perfectly clear. Harding experienced a small inward shudder as he remembered just how Remington had looked and sounded on his first visit.
He was still thin, and too pale, his hair lank. But Harding thought if you put him back in a designer suit and shipped him off to L.A., his associates would take a look and simply think he’d been working a bit too hard.
“You’re looking well. Evan.”
“Hardly my best, but one must take the facilities into account.” A muscle twitched in his cheek. “I don’t belong here. My attorneys bungled the entire business. But I’ve taken care of that. Dealt with that. Stupid, incompetent bastards. I’ve fired them. I expect to have new representation within the week. And my freedom shortly after.”
“I see.”
“I think you do.” Remington leaned forward, then he gazed up toward the security cameras. “I think you do see. I was defending myself and mine.” His eyes stayed on Harding’s now, and something dark seemed to swim behind their colorless surface.
“I was betrayed and misused. Those who stood against me, they belong in here. Not I.”
Harding couldn’t look away, couldn’t break the connection. “Your ex-wife?”
“My wife,” Remington corrected, then in barely a whisper mouthed, “Till death do us part. Tell her I’m thinking of her when you see her, won’t you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You can’t finish what you’ve started, you can’t get what you want, until you deal with her, and the rest of them. I’ve thought about it.” Remington nodded slowly and his eyes, pale as water, stayed locked on Harding’s. “I have plenty of time for thinking. I need someone to remind her I haven’t forgotten. I need someone to show them all that I can’t be ignored. An agent, if you will.”
“Mr. Remington. Evan. I’m a reporter. A writer.”
“I know what you are. I know what you want. Fame, fortune, recognition. Respect. I know how to get those things for you. I made it my business to get those things for others. You want to be a star, Jonathan. I make stars.”
Something seemed to move behind his eyes again, like sharks swimming in a deep pool. Harding shuddered, but couldn’t look away. And as his skin crawled cold, he could feel himself being pulled in. His breath came short beneath a terrible pressure in his chest.
“I’m going to write a book.”
“Yes, yes. An important book. You’ll tell it as it’s meant to be told. End it as it needs to be ended. I want them punished.” He reached over with his free hand, clasped Harding’s limp fingers. “I want them dead.”
Something snapped in the air, sizzled, and brought the guard to his feet. “No contact.”
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” Harding said dully as a fierce grin flashed on Remington’s face.
“No physical contact,” the guard ordered and strode toward the table. But Remington was already breaking his grip.
“I’m sorry.” Remington kept his gaze averted, his head lowered. “I forgot. I just wanted to shake his hand. He comes to visit me. He comes to talk to me.”
“We were just saying good-bye.” To his own ears, Harding’s voice sounded tinny with distance. “I have to take a trip, and won’t be able to visit for a while. I have to go now.” Harding got unsteadily to his feet. A headache blasted in his temples.
Remington lifted his gaze one last time. “I’ll see you again.”
“Yes, of course.”
Remington allowed himself to be led away. He kept his head lowered, shuffled obligingly back to his cell. In his heart, black glee bloomed like a fetid flower. For he had discovered that there was power in madness.
By the timeHarding was on the ferry for Th
ree Sisters, he could barely remember his last visit to Remington. It irritated him, made him worry that he was coming down with something. His memory for details was one of his most polished skills. And now an event less than eight hours old was like some sketchy scene behind foggy glass.
He couldn’t remember what they’d spoken of, only that he’d been suddenly struck with a blinding headache. It had made him so ill, he’d been forced to stretch out on the front seat of his car and wait for the chills, the pain, the nausea to pass before he’d dared drive away.
Even now, just thinking of it gave him the shakes. His condition wasn’t helped by the fact that the seas were rough and a needle-sharp icy rain was pounding. He had to huddle inside his car, dry-swallow more seasickness pills.
He was terrified that he would have to race through that vicious rain and vomit into the pitching sea.
In defense, he once more lay down across the seat, fighting to breathe slowly and evenly. He began to count the minutes until he reached solid land again.
And must have fallen asleep.
He dreamed of snakes sliding under his skin, the slither of them ice cold.
Of a woman with blue eyes and long gold hair who cried out—all pain and pleas—as he brought a cane down, again and again, to batter her.
She’s quiet now.Quiet now. Spawn of Satan.
Of a bolt of blue lightning that shot like an arrow out of the sky and into his heart.
He dreamed of terror and vengeance and hate.
He dreamed of a lovely woman in a white dress who wept as she curled on a marble floor.
Of a wood, dark under a new moon, where he stood holding a knife to a smooth white throat. And this time, when it sliced clean and her blood covered him, the world erupted. The sky split and the sea opened its mouth wide, to swallow all who had stood against him.
He awoke with screams strangling in his throat, slapping at himself as if to kill whatever was crawling inside him. For an instant he stared horrified in the rearview mirror.
And eyes that weren’t his, eyes pale as water, stared back.
Then the ferry let out its blasting note to herald the docking on Three Sisters. The eyes that stared back at him as he dragged out his handkerchief to wipe his damp face were red-rimmed, haunted, and his own.
Just caught a little bug, he assured himself. He’d been working too hard, traveling too much. Crossing time zones too often. He would take a day or two to rest, to let his system catch up.
Bolstered by the idea, he snapped on his seat belt, started his car. And drove off the ferry ramp and onto Three Sisters Island.
The storm turnedinto a gale. On the second day of it, Mac surfaced from his work and took a good look around. He’d had another shipment of books sent in, and replacement parts for some of his equipment. Right now he had pieces of a sensor spread all over the little kitchen table. A monitor that was acting up stood on the counter with its guts spilling out.
The kitchen still smelled of the eggs he’d burned that morning—which, he had to admit, he’d had no business making when his mind was elsewhere.
He’d broken a glass, too. And had a nice slice in his heel, since he’d gotten distracted before he swept it all up.
He’d turned the entire cottage into a lab, which wasn’t so bad. But without a lab assistant cleaning things up behind him, he’d also turned it into a disaster.
He really didn’t mind working in a disaster area, but it certainly wouldn’t do as a permanent living arrangement.
If the cottage was too small to accommodate him and his work on more than the short term, it was certainly too small to accommodate a . . .
Ripley, he thought quickly. He wasn’t quite ready to use the term “wife,” even in his thoughts.
Not that he didn’t want to marry her, because he did. And not because he doubted she would marry him. He would just wait her out in that area until she caved. He’d match his patience against her stubbornness any day of the week.
But first things first.
When a man wanted to settle down permanently, he had to find a place to settle. However much affection he had for the cottage, it wouldn’t fill the bill. And he doubted seriously if Mia would sell it.
He rose, and managed not only to tread on a screw but to step on it at the exact point of his recent cut. He spent a little time on some inventive cursing and hobbled out to find the shoes he’d thought he’d already put on.
He found a pair in the bedroom doorway, where they had obviously planted themselves, cagily waiting for him to trip over them.
And holding them, took a look at the bedroom. Winced.
He didn’t usually live like a slob. Okay, he admitted, he didn’t usuallyintend to live like a slob. It just happened.
Forgetting the shoes, he pushed up his sleeves. He would shovel out the bedroom and use the manual labor to clear his mind. He needed to think about a house.
It needed to be a pretty good size so his equipment didn’t get in everybody’s way. He would need an office, too.
Not entirely sure when he might have changed his sheets last, he decided to err on the side of caution and stripped them off.
It would be good if there was space to set up weights and exercise equipment. Ripley would want some space of her own, too, he imagined, and started gathering up socks, shirts, underwear. Somewhere she could get away from him when he started to drive her crazy.
His mother called hers an escape hatch, he remembered, and reminded himself to phone home.
He carted the laundry to the tiny room off the kitchen, missed stepping on the same screw by a hair, and stuffed everything that would fit into the washing machine. He added soap, then deciding he should write down some of the basic house requirements, wandered out to find a pad and forgot to turn on the washing machine.
Three bedrooms minimum, he thought. Four would be better.
Someplace close to the water. Not that anywhere on the island was far from it, but Ripley was used to living right on the beach so . . .
“Booke, you idiot! It’s staring you right in the face. You knew the first time you saw it.”
He dashed to the phone and dialed long distance information. “New York City,” he told the operator. “I need the number for Logan Enterprises.”
An hour later,to celebrate what he considered the first step in becoming a homeowner, he braved the elements. Thaddeus Logan hadn’t jumped at the offer, but he hadn’t dismissed it out of hand, either.
It hadn’t hurt that Logan was acquainted with Mac’s father. Connections within connections, Mac thought as he hissed in his breath and decided to walk to Café Book rather than risk the iced-over roads in his Rover.
He had a good feeling about it, and he was certain Logan would negotiate. Which reminded Mac—he should call his father for advice in that area. The one thing he was sure of was if you wanted something too much, and the other party knew it, you were asking to get skinned.
He needed to do some research on real estate values in the area, and he patted his pockets absently, hoping for a handy piece of paper to make a note to himself.
Not that the money mattered all that much, but the principle did. And he imagined that if he let himself get taken, Ripley would get torqued about it. That would start the whole process off on a bad note.
Tomorrow, Mac promised himself, he would take a drive and get another good look at what was going to be theirs.
Delighted with the idea, he strolled along, head down, as the wind screamed in his ears and the ugly mix of ice and snow swirled and spat.
Just look at him, Ripley thought. Out in this mess when he doesn’t have to be. Not looking where he’s going and bopping along as if it’s a sunny day in July.
The man needs a keeper.
She would just have to take on the job.
She started toward him, then judging time and distance, planted herself. And let him walk straight into her.
“Jeez.” Since she was braced and he wasn’t, he went skidding.
Reflexively he grabbed her, and that took them both on a fast slide. “Sorry.”
But she was laughing, and the little elbow jab she gave him was friendly. “How many walls do you walk into on your average day?”
“I don’t count. It’s demoralizing. Gosh, you’re pretty.” He grabbed her again, but was steady this time. Lifting her to her toes, he planted a long, warm kiss on her mouth.
Her system tilted, sweetly. “What I am is cold and wet. My nose is red, and my toes are ice cubes. Zack and I just spent a miserable hour out on the coast road. We’ve got power lines down, and cars off the road, and the best part of a tree through Ed Sutter’s workshop roof.”
“Nice work if you can get it.”
“Very funny. I think the worst of it’ll blow out by tomorrow,” she said, looking, as islanders had for centuries, out to sea and sky. Both were gray as pewter. “But we’re going to be cleaning up after this one for a while yet. What the hell are you doing out here? You lose power?”
“It was on when I left. I wanted some decent coffee.” He clued in to the direction from which she’d come, and the direction she’d been going. “Were you coming to check on me?”
“It’s my job to check on the residents of our happy little rock.”
“That’s really considerate of you, Deputy Todd. How about I buy you a cup of coffee?”
“I could use it, and someplace warm and dry for ten minutes.”
He took her hand as they headed into the wind up High Street. “How about if I buy a quart of soup and whatever, take it home? We can have dinner at my place later.”
“Chances of the power lasting in the cottage through the night are slim. We’ve got a generator at our place. Why don’t you pack what you need and plan on staying there tonight?”
“Is Nell cooking?”
“Is grass green?”
“I’m there.” He pulled open the door for her.
Like magic, Lulu popped out from behind a bookshelf. “I should’ve known it was a couple of lunatics. Sensible people are home whining about the weather.”
“Why aren’t you?” Ripley asked.
“Because there are just enough lunatics on this island to keep the store open. Got a few of them up in the café right now.”
“That’s where we’re heading. Did Nell go home?”
“Not yet. Mia cut her loose, but she’s sticking. Didn’t see why Peg should have to come out in this when she was already here. We’re closing early, in an hour, anyhow.”
“Good to know.”
Ripley pulled off her soaked cap as she started up the stairs. “Do me a favor?” she said to Mac.
“Sure.”
“Can you hang around till closing, make sure Nell gets home safe?”
“Glad to.”
“Thanks. It’ll be a load off. I can let Zack know, and he won’t worry.”
“I’ll ask her to come by my place, help me get my stuff together.”
Ripley shot him a smirk. “Pretty smart, aren’t you?”
“People are always saying so.” He kept her hand in his as they walked to the café counter.
“Zack just called,” Nell told them. “You’ve had a hell of a day, haven’t you?”
“Goes with the territory. You can give me two large coffees to go, and I’ll take one back to him. This guy’s springing for them,” she added, jerking a thumb at Mac.
“A large for me, too, but I’ll have it here. And . . . is that apple pie?”
“It is. Want a slice warm?”