Chains of Fire

  “You’ve read,” Samuel corrected her.

  “—I’ve read every word of When the World Was Young, A History of the Chosen Ones.” Charisma was enthusiastic, intelligent, and interested in everything. “I don’t remember anything about a safety-deposit box.”

  Irving closed his eyes wearily. “John. Talk.”

  “The safety-deposit box. When I was with the Chosen Ones before the tragedy”—no one knew whether John was speaking of the explosion of the Gypsy Travel Agency or his own personal tragedy—“the safety-deposit box was nothing but a myth, one of those things that came up when we were sitting around Davidov’s having a beer and discussing how to catch a unicorn.” He turned to Jacqueline. Both had long histories with the Gypsy Travel Agency. “Do you know anything? Did your mother ever mention the safety-deposit box?”

  Jacqueline shook her head. “Like you, I had heard rumors, but for a kid, a safety-deposit box isn’t nearly as interesting as whether throwing water on a witch would make her melt.” She turned to Samuel. “Did you really see it?”

  “It’s in a vault by itself,” he told her. “Wagner got it out. I touched it. But it’s locked and coded and spelled and heaven knows what, and I didn’t know how to open it.”

  “Couldn’t you force Wagner to open it?” John tapped his forehead.

  “With the mind control? I tried. He doesn’t know.” Samuel looked between John and Jacqueline. “What’s in the mythical safety-deposit box?”

  John sighed and shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  Jacqueline shook her head. “Something important. Something the Gypsy Travel Agency was guarding in the most secret of ways.”

  Samuel glanced at Irving. He appeared to be dozing. Or maybe he was just listening. But clearly, he wasn’t going to talk, at least not yet.

  “You’re the seer,” Samuel said to Jacqueline. “Can you see what it is?”

  Jacqueline glowered at Samuel. “You know it doesn’t work that way. I see what is given me to see—and that’s not something that has been given.”

  “Have you thought about trying to use the hand?” Samuel asked.

  “Now why didn’t I think of that?” Jacqueline’s voice rose. “It’s so simple! Just pick up the hand bones of the first prophetess, jiggle them like dice, and that exact moment in the past will fall out.”

  “It might work!”

  “Why don’t I just use a Ouija board?” Jacqueline had never had a vision before she became the seer; she got a little defensive sometimes.

  “I’ve wondered that.” Samuel was starting to enjoy himself, to feel normal for the first time in two weeks.

  “A few months ago I saw the whole prophecy that we needed, and I’m pretty proud of what I’ve accomplished since I took over the position of seer.” Jacqueline flushed with anger. “So put a sock in it, Samuel Faa!”

  Isabelle slid her arm through Samuel’s and grasped his hand. “Samuel? She’s right. Shut up. This is Irving’s first hour home, and he’s not well.”

  Samuel looked at Irving.

  The old guy sat with his eyes closed, wearing a slight smile.

  “I’ll bet he hasn’t enjoyed himself this much since he took a header down those stairs,” Samuel said.

  Irving nodded in agreement.

  A faint knock sounded.

  John opened the door.

  Martha pushed in the tea cart. As always, she’d prepared a delectable selection of foods. Hot water and coffee were in the correct carafes. Cokes were on ice. But rather than silently serving, as she always did, she stood staring at Irving, tears in her eyes.

  “Good to be home, Martha.” He took more care in enunciating for her than for the rest of them, and he smiled a lopsided smile.

  “Good to have you home, Irving. It hasn’t been the same without you.”

  “Going to be without me someday,” he told her.

  “Not yet.” Martha looked around at their little group and spotted Dina, sitting with her back to them, reading a book. “What is she doing in this house?”

  “With me,” Irving said.

  Martha’s expression passed from affectionate respect to stiffest formality. “Of course, sir. Forgive my impertinence.”

  Irving sighed. “Nothing to forgive. You’re not servant. Friend.”

  Martha rejected his kindness as much as she begrudged Dina her place here. Dina, her own sister. “May I pour your tea, sir?”

  “Martha . . .” Irving made puppy eyes at her.

  But Dina stood up and strolled over from the couch. “I’ll have to help him drink it.”

  The sisters locked gazes.

  “Because his hands tremble too much to hold the cup,” Dina added.

  With great restraint, Martha poured the hot water into the teapot.

  Samuel remembered his shock at discovering the two women were related—and his embarrassment that he hadn’t realized it.

  They looked alike—Gypsies, both of them, short with dark hair and eyes, and of a similar age.

  But so many things had pointed away from their kinship. Most significantly, Dina had a gift; that meant she had been discarded as an infant. Normally that meant there was no family, no relatives to care.

  The two women watched the pot as it steeped.

  Martha poured a cup for Irving.

  While Martha watched, Dina sauntered to Irving’s side and helped him sip.

  Samuel thought—and no one had spoken of it, so he wasn’t sure—that Martha was the eldest, that they’d both been abandoned when Dina was a baby, and Martha had rescued her sister. But somehow Dina had turned to evil, to the Others. Perhaps Martha resented the fact that she had done the right thing, and her reward had been . . . no gift.

  Family relations . . . they were always tangled. Sisters told different truths, and who knew which was right?

  When the tension in the room was thick enough to taste, Caleb asked, “Irving, what can you tell us about the safety-deposit box?”

  “Don’t know what’s there. Important secret held by”—Irving lifted his hand, struggled until he was able to lift three fingers—“only three people at any time.”

  “Not you?” Aaron asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you know who they are? Or were?”

  “Everyone I knew is gone.” Irving’s eyes fluttered as if he were keeping secrets.

  “The story I heard was that the contents are greater than all the riches in the world,” John said.

  “Yes.” Irving waved a hand at Martha. “Answer.”

  “Martha knows?” Aaron asked.

  She smiled tightly. “Not all of us have gifts, but we do have our uses.”

  “I never thought any differently.” Aaron stared at her until she acknowledged him with a gruff nod.

  She passed the plate of cheeses, then the fresh-baked breads. “I believe it’s true that the contents are valuable. The bank has always had instructions to make sure the box was protected by the most modern safeguards available and to change those safeguards at will, notifying only those people who are the keepers. But in addition, there is magic that secures the contents.” She gazed at Samuel. “You are lucky you didn’t open the safety-deposit box and then try to open the case. I believe that would have been the last thing you did.”

  Isabelle’s hand tightened on Samuel’s.

  “Could I steal it?” Aaron was their cat burglar, the man who could turn into mist, slip into any hidden place, and retrieve any treasure.

  “I don’t believe that’s a good idea,” Martha said. “The magic doesn’t care what form you take. It attaches to your soul and sends it elsewhere.”

  “How come everything is so hard?” Charisma asked plaintively.

  Samuel knew what she meant. The tension, the frustration, the pure difficulties thrown at them at every turn—it made him want to break things.

  “When I was a teen, I worked out with a personal trainer,” Isabelle said.

  Everyone looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
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  But Samuel knew her; she had a point to make.

  Isabelle continued. “I worked out three times a week with her, and then three times a week by myself, and then once a week, I’d take a day and sulk because I still didn’t look like Angelina Jolie.”

  Charisma gurgled with laughter.

  Isabelle smiled back at her. “The longer I worked, the stronger I got, and you know what my reward was?”

  Caleb grinned. He knew.

  John looked like he knew, too. “No, tell us.”

  “I had to lift stronger weights. I had to work out longer. The better I got at working out, the harder it got.”

  “Is that what’s happening here? We bust our asses every day fighting evil, learning the ropes, and every time we succeed, the next challenge is harder? Is that fair?” Samuel’s voice rose.

  “I don’t know about fair.” Isabelle sounded cool as always. “But it beats having all the hardest stuff at the beginning, when we would have gotten our asses kicked.”

  They laughed, all of them, the Chosen and their mates, Irving and Dina. Even Martha.

  Samuel stared at them in chagrin.

  His friends. His crazy friends.

  He looked down at the hand he had intertwined with Isabelle’s.

  She . . . was so much more than a friend.

  “Missed you,” Irving said. “Good to be home.”

  A quiet knock sounded on the door.

  John opened it, and stepped back to allow Amanda in the room.

  In the imperious tones of a dictator, she said, “Mr. Shea is exhausted and needs his rest.”

  “No!” Irving struggled to speak.

  “Whatever you need to say, it can wait until you’ve had some sleep.” Putting her hand on him, she leaned over and looked into his eyes. “Sleep.”

  He took a long breath, nodded, and closed his eyes.

  For all intents and purposes, he seemed to slip instantly into slumber.

  Like an anxious bumblebee, McKenna hovered in the doorway. “Is the exhaustion because of his move home today?”

  Amanda looked at him. Looked at them all, and her young face was as stern as any elderly schoolteacher’s. “It’s a miracle he’s alive at all, and that his mental capacities remain intact. His body is mending itself, but very slowly, and he can’t do—will never be able to do—what he did before. In addition, he needs physical therapy.”

  “So he can walk again?” Jacqueline asked.

  “So his joints don’t freeze. He’s in constant pain from his hip and shoulder replacement, and the fall down the stairs impaired not his thought processes, but his speech. The mere act of putting words together exhausts him. If you must consult with him, plan on short sessions, and clear it with me first. I will do my best to assist you, but my first responsibility is to Mr. Shea and his health, not to you.” Amanda took his wheelchair and pushed him from the room.

  “I guess she told us,” Charisma said.

  “She’s right,” Martha said.

  “Yes.” John stepped into the center of their circle. “We have to be careful with Irving. It seemed as if we would have him forever, but we know that’s not true. We’ve got to take care of him. We’ve got to keep him as long as we can. Because without his knowledge, we’re groping in the dark.”

  Chapter 39

  Dina followed Irving and his nurse out of the library. She watched them get into the newly installed elevator, watched the door close.

  Swiftly, before anyone could catch her, she grabbed her jacket and headed for the door.

  Irving had his nurse.

  He was surrounded by his Chosen.

  He was going to be okay.

  And she was outta here.

  She made it all the way through the foyer before Martha clutched her arm and asked, “Where are you going?”

  “Out to smoke.” Dina jerked herself free.

  “You’re running away.” Judgmental as always—and right.

  “What if I am?” Dina said. “What do you care?”

  “I care because Irving cares. After what you did to him—”

  “After what he did to me!” Dina pointed to her nose. “This is his fault.”

  “If you hadn’t gone running back to the Others—”

  “If I hadn’t gone running back to the Others, they would have caught up with me anyway.”

  “If you hadn’t joined them in the first place, you wouldn’t be in trouble for breaking your vows to them.”

  They always picked up just where they left off, fought the same fight, hated each other in the same way.

  “That’s true.” Dina looked her sister in the eye. “I could have been like you, part of the Gypsy Travel Agency and a female who was never as important as the males. Remember the men who always imagined themselves to be better than anyone else, and never mind that I had a gift and the most important thing any of those jackasses possessed was a dick?”

  “The sixties were difficult,” Martha allowed.

  “And the seventies and the eighties and the nineties. At least with the Others, the organization wasn’t run by men for men about men. People like me with gifts of power were honored for our contributions.”

  “That’s no excuse for turning to evil.”

  “Maybe I’m just evil. Maybe it runs in the family.” Dina stepped forward until she was standing on Martha’s toes. “Have you ever thought of that? That our mother and father were evil for abandoning me, for leaving you to find me and keep me and raise me? Have you ever thought that evil is bred into our bones, and there’s no escaping our destiny?”

  “No!”

  Dina was glad to see her sister back away. She’d been thinking about her parents her whole life; now she had taken her sister’s oh-so-perfect nose and rubbed it into the pile of crap that had been their early days. “Maybe that first time when Irving tossed me out on the street, I could have run away and hidden myself well enough to live.” She sneered. “We’re about to find out.”

  Martha recovered her superiority. Of course. She always did. “I knew it. You are running away.”

  “You know, I can’t make you happy no matter what I do. You don’t want me to stay, but you bitch at me because I’m leaving.” Dina lost her temper. “What do you expect me to do? By now, the Others know I’ve been caring for Irving, and I like these Chosen kids, but they can’t protect me from . . . him.”

  “You’re going back to him.”Martha’s dark eyes, so much like Dina’s own, snapped with rage.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Why should I believe you? You’ve already switched sides twice.”

  “Right. You don’t trust me. I don’t trust you, either.” Dina had a strength gained from the realities of a life marred by evil and challenged by love, a strength Martha had never had to draw on. “But I’d like to think that since you’re my sister and you practically raised me, you won’t call the Others as soon as I set foot out the door.”

  “No. I won’t do that.”

  “For Irving’s sake.”

  “Yes. For Irving’s sake.”

  “Take care of him. For my sake.” Dina slipped out the door. Stopping, she looked back toward the mansion.

  Irving occupied her whole heart, but that stupid boy occupied her mind.

  Samuel. While half a world apart, she’d been in his mind, communicating so smoothly. While he was in the Swiss bank, she’d heard his every thought clearly, as if he’d been speaking. And he heard her, too, and it hadn’t taken the usual effort.

  She thought . . . well, she suspected there might be a reason for their success, or at least a better reason than the fact that they were both reprobates.

  She suspected they might have a blood connection between them.

  They were, obviously, both Romany.

  She couldn’t linger here, so she started walking. Fast.

  Samuel was facing challenges that in his cockiness he couldn’t comprehend.

  She ought to worry about herself and let him fall on his fa
ce on his own. But she recognized his arrogance, and she wanted to spare him a little of the agony that had broken her life.

  So she sent him a message. Be careful where you use your gift. There are traps that catch power like yours, and you can’t trick the devil. Believe me. I know.

  She heard his bewildered response. What?

  But she shut down the connection and hurried away.

  Amanda settled Irving into his bed, brought the covers to his chin, and asked, “Mr. Shea, is there anything I can do to make you comfortable?”

  Irving opened his eyes. “No. There is no comfort in purgatory.”

  Walking to the window, Amanda watched Dina hasten down the street, her hat pulled over her hair, her collar pulled close around her neck. “No. There isn’t. We all go to hell in our own ways.”

  Chapter 40

  Samuel slid his arm around Isabelle’s waist and, in a tone both cajoling and firm, said, “I imagine you want to talk now.”

  She shook her head. He was angry; she was embarrassed . . . a talk was most definitely not going to go well for her.

  Samuel, being Samuel, paid no attention, and led her—dragged her—toward a door under the stairway. A door that led to the winter coat storage.

  She set her heels. She did not need to be reminded of Frau Reidlinger’s fur and what it felt like on her naked skin, and how he used it to brush her nipples, her belly, and how she had reciprocated.

  Opening the door, he pushed her inside, followed her, and shut the door behind him. When he faced her, he looked pleasant.

  This was Samuel. So she didn’t trust pleasant.

  “What a surprise when you weren’t there to greet me after my rescue!” he said.

  She would have sworn he was going to be furious that she had fled before he was rescued, but . . . he actually did look amiable. Genial. Friendly.

  It was spooky. “I . . . thought it would be best if I returned right away to give a report to John and the team.”

  “So generous of you to take that burden off me.” He took a long step toward her.