Interview With a Gargoyle (27 page)

Surely Helena knew the answer to that. Mel shook her head.

“Oh. You met after?”

“I don’t like the direction this conversation is taking.”

Helena reached out and placed a warm hand on Mel’s arm. She tried not to flinch. “I’m not in the market to get Blake back. I came here to help you because Palmer is my friend. The odds are, Blake is really serious about you regardless of the Cabochon, so you probably have nothing to worry about, but just in case his interest in you was dependent on what he thought you could do to help him…well, at least you won’t be surprised if he treats you differently now.”

Mel smiled to hide her seething. When one looked close enough, it wasn’t hard to see the demon side of Helena. “Thanks for that,” she said and turned to skip down the front steps.

“Aren’t you going inside to be with Blake when he ‘wakes up’?” Helena called as Mel’s feet hit the sidewalk.

“I’ll be back,” she said. “Don’t lock the door.”

“Where are you going?”

“To do what you should be doing. I’m going to find your cousin and get her to break the curse. Now.”

Mel didn’t listen for a response from Helena, and she didn’t care if the demon woman stayed at Blake’s place or not. She strode down the street, her anger carrying her on her quest.

Once again, by the light of the full moon, Percival stood at the foot of Margaret Thorne’s grave. This time, rather than a hand-tied noose, though, he held in his hand a single white rose.

Since he’d purchased the Thorne property from her grieving husband, no flowers had ever adorned the once-fine lady’s grave. Emmett Thorne and his three sons, in their haste to be rid of the estate and settle their mounting debts, had not requested the relocation of Margaret’s remains.

For a time, after taking up residence, Percival had ignored the tiny plot, fenced in wrought iron and set on a small hillock where Margaret, in her eternal rest, could survey the house over which she’d once presided and the back gardens that had been her joy to tend each spring.

Weeds grew thick over the grave for a time, obscuring the headstone which read simply: Beloved Mother—Devoted Wife, along with the date on which Percival had snapped her neck. His first visit here had been to gloat, to promise her tarnished soul that he would stop at nothing to rid the world of her insidious brand of evil.

Today he hovered at the gate, a cold hand curled around one of the filigreed posts, not to taunt her spirit but to offer an apology.

“I’ve tried everything, Mum.” He’d come to call her that…not to mock, but because over time he’d developed a kinship with this woman who shared his home, who slept on his land. Had he married Rebecca, he might have called her that name lovingly… He squashed that thought, having taught himself over time not to dwell on what might have been but to live only for the moment, since he never knew which might be his last.

“I’ve paid great sums for charlatans to cure me. I’ve walked such dark places, I fear even your lord and master would cringe at the things I’ve seen. I’ve begged and pleaded and threatened the lives of creatures I could never have imagined existed. And none of it has worked.” Percival shook the sturdy bars. A cold autumn wind stirred the grasses that had withered on the grave, and the scent of the rose he carried wafted from its silken petals, a cruel reminder of the world’s false beauty.

“I’ve only this left.” He opened the gate and stepped into the small space in which Margaret Thorne had dwelled for all these years. Reverently, he placed the rose upon her grave and stepped away, his back stiff, old bones creaking. “I am sorry, Mum. I should have let you live.”

Percival remained at the graveside until moonset, when the darkness grew so thick he could barely see to close the gate. Determined to continue this last, desperate bid for absolution, he trudged toward the main house with the Lord’s Prayer on his lips. This time he recited the familiar words not as a litany meant to cleanse his own soul, but as a gift to Margaret Thorne.

With this burden gone from his psyche at last, he could concentrate on his most important mission. He would find the witch who cursed him and tell her what he’d done.

Silence greeted Mel’s first tentative knock on Calypso’s door, so she graduated to pounding with her fist and yelling. “I know you’re in there,
Eugenia Maria Philomena Slovetski
. And if you don’t answer this door by the time I count to—”

The door flung open, and Cal reached out and dragged Mel into her dark apartment. “My real name? You had to stoop to using my real name?”

Mel put her hands on her hips. “The things we confess after ten tequila shots come back to haunt us sometimes, don’t they? And besides, you deserve it. How could you…
how could you
take the Cabochon and leave Blake like that?” Tears threatened Mel’s resolve. The long walk from Blake’s house had left her legs trembling and her throat tight. She probably needed a dose of the medicine they’d given her at the hospital, but it would have to wait until she’d said her piece. All the way over, she’d rehearsed what she wanted to say to Calypso when she found her, and now the eloquent words left her in favor of this pleading.

“How did you know I was here?” Cal asked, avoiding the question along with Mel’s stare.

“I saw your car around the block. I know you park it there when you don’t want the landlord to know you’re home.”

Cal sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t enough. We could have helped him, Calypso. We could have ended it.”

“No, we couldn’t.” Indigo eyes flashed, and Cal whirled away. She paced the length of the cluttered living room, hands massaging her lower back above the waistband of her tight black jeans. “Helena was right. The release of all that power would have killed us.”

“Then why not give the Cabochon to the Witches’ Council?”

“That’s exactly what we shouldn’t have done. Don’t you see, Mel? Once the gem was out of you, the urgency was over. They were trying to figure out a way to transfer the gem safely in order to save your life. Now that you’re not in danger anymore, they’re more likely to keep the gem and study it rather than destroy it. No one casts spells like that anymore. The Cabochon is a rare antiquity, and there would have been those opposed to damaging it for any reason.”

“I’m not sure I believe that.” Mel wanted to. She really did want to think that everything Calypso had done had been with Blake’s interests at heart, but she also had to keep reminding herself she was dealing with a demon.

“I don’t know how I can convince you, but the fact is, if I hadn’t absorbed the gem, someone else would have, either by accident or on purpose. Now that it’s in me, you’re safe. Palmer is safe, and—”

“Don’t say Blake is safe.” The venom in Mel’s voice surprised her. Her heart had never ached so badly as when she’d spent the day watching Blake stare out the window on the world he’d been denied access to for ten years. Not even when she’d realized her marriage to Larry was over had she felt such an acute yearning for something she couldn’t have.

“I wasn’t. I was going to say the balance of power in the demon world is safe.”

Mel turned her back on Calypso, partly to hide her growing rage. “And why is that? Because you’re the queen now? Because you’ve got all the power?”

“Yes.” Cal’s response wafted across the room.

“Well, that’s just—”

“Wait, Mel. Hear me out. Please?”

“I don’t want to hear why you can’t help Blake.”

“Then will you listen to how I
can
help him?” Calypso touched her shoulder, and this time Mel allowed herself to flinch away from the contact.

Guilt washed through her at the reaction, but she couldn’t bring herself to apologize. “Go ahead.”

“I probably have enough power to break the curse myself, but if I don’t, if it doesn’t work, the Cabochon will have to be transferred to another demon, preferably to Helena because she’s Domaré also.”

“Why would it need to be—oh.”

Calypso’s unspoken words sank in. She would have to risk her own life to save Blake, and if her spell failed, if she died, nothing would be able to save him.

“The Cabochon is too strong for us to break it, isn’t it?”

“Yes. The gem can’t be shattered. If it was, the release of power would be like setting off a bomb.”

“So if this doesn’t work, Blake will never get another chance in his lifetime, will he?”

“Probably not.”

Mel lowered herself to Calypso’s couch. “He told me the curse ends with him. He’s the last of his bloodline. What happens to the Cabochon when he…dies?”

Calypso shrugged. “I think it will just keep getting stronger. The power of the curse will live on beyond DeWitt.”

“Maybe that’s not a good thing.”

“It probably isn’t. If I break the curse, the power of the Cabochon will be diminished if it’s not destroyed outright.”

Mel thought of Blake. He might once have been willing to sacrifice anyone or anything to get his life back, but he wasn’t like that anymore. Regardless of what Helena believed or wanted Mel to believe about him. “He might not let you do it. He wouldn’t want you to take that kind of a chance.”

“That’s why we have to do it before sunset, so he won’t be able to stop me.”

Mel should have stopped her. She should have said no, but she couldn’t make that choice for Blake. He deserved his freedom—not at Calypso’s expense, even if she was a demon, but there was no alternative except to let him continue to live his life in darkness. She’d seen what little Cal could do for him without breaking the curse. He’d gotten to see the sunlight, but he’d been too weary to enjoy it, his form too monstrous to allow him to walk safely outside. That wasn’t a good-enough life for him. He deserved so much more. “What do you need to get started?” she asked, rising on shaky legs.

“Nothing, except some moral support. Can you round up Palmer and Helena and have them meet us at Blake’s house just before sunset?”

“Why not right now?”

Calypso gave her a sad smile. “I need to talk to Angelo first.”

Mel stiffened. Surely Angelo would stop her. “Helena told me he’s Domaré too.” She didn’t need to voice her concerns. Cal seemed to sense them.

“I won’t tell him about this. I can’t. I just want him to know a few things, just in case something goes wrong.”

“Do you love him? Really?”

“I used to think I did, but that was just the Domaré mating bond. Sometimes I can’t resist him, but it’s not really love.”

“Oh, Cal.”

Calypso patted Mel’s shoulder and guided her to the door. “I’ll be okay. I promise. Now go.”

Melodie left Calypso’s apartment, ignoring the nagging fear that on the one hand she might never see her friend again and on the other she might have just been taken for a fool.

She shook off her doubts. What choice did she have but to trust Calypso? And, if it didn’t work out, she’d find another way to break the curse. If she had to track down every witch and every demon in the world, she’d find a way to give Blake back his life.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Half an hour before sunset, Calypso appeared on Blake’s doorstep. Mel felt like she’d finally let out the breath she’d been holding all day, and her head swam a little from the sudden rush of oxygen. Palmer hadn’t believed Cal would return, and Helena had remained noncommittal, though Melodie hadn’t actually sought her opinion on the subject.

The two of them waited now in Blake’s bedroom. They both gave the witch curious looks but said nothing as she began emptying the contents of her voluminous purse onto the bed.

“I thought you didn’t need anything for the spell,” Mel said. She eyed the usual witchy paraphernalia as Cal arranged familiar objects on the bedspread. A canister of sea salt, two white taper candles, a quartz crystal and a small bottle of vodka completed her array.

“What’s this for?” Mel picked up the bottle. No more than a shot’s worth, it looked like the ones sold on airline flights.

“Courage.” Calypso laughed, and Mel felt a pang of sympathy for her. “Why isn’t the Witches’ Council helping you do this? Shouldn’t someone be here…?”

“It’s too dangerous. They don’t want me to do it at all.”

“I guess the Domaré don’t want you to either.”

Cal nodded and glanced at Helena. “I’m pretty much on my own.” She put up a hand to stop Mel’s protest. “It’s fine. It’s got to be done. Two hundred and seventy-four years is plenty of penance for Percival’s soul. Another minute is too long for Blake to endure this.”

Mel hugged Calypso, and she swore she felt the Cabochon’s power surge over the witch’s skin. She wondered what Cal might become over time with all that bottled up inside her. Maybe draining off the Cabochon’s power would be a good thing in the long run. “What do you need us to do?”

Calypso instructed them to set up a circle of salt with a white candle at either end, a makeshift altar. Before kneeling between the flickering flames, she opened the vodka bottle and downed the clear liquid in one convulsive swallow.

She handed the bottle and its tiny aluminum cap to Palmer and closed her eyes. Her incantation was long and complicated, half prayer, half song. Mel wished someone could translate, but it appeared even Helena didn’t understand the words.

Finally Calypso bowed her head. The candlelight glinted off her shiny hair, and for a long, long time, nothing moved.

Then she exploded. Light and sound akin to that which had accompanied the expulsion of the Cabochon from Mel’s body arced around the room. From the witch’s eyes and mouth a brilliant blue glow burst forth, obscuring her features.

Helena and Mel jumped, and Palmer skittered back a step, reaching for Cal and heading for the bedroom door at the same time.

Through a conflagration of cold blue flame, Calypso moaned. The sound was desolate and inhuman, and it set Mel’s teeth on edge. When the flames shot out farther from Cal’s body, licking the icy pillars of Blake’s granite legs, Mel rushed toward him.

“Don’t touch him!” Helena lunged after Mel. “Let it happen.”

Calypso’s body stiffened, and her head fell back. Tongues of sapphire energy danced over Blake’s body and finally, as had happened before, a small patch of his sleeve changed color, morphing from gray stone to white cotton. Inch by inch he transformed. Cold rock became warm human skin.