The Lost Enchantress (25 page)

“Reality bends to desire,” she murmured, contradictory thoughts running laps in her head.

“For you,” Taggart told her. “Me? I’m but lowly fae. I need the words and charms to bring my will about. But together we can get this done.”

Again she looked to Hazard, undecided. “Is he right? All I’ll have to do is focus?”

“Evidently,” he said tightly. “Taggart will be doing the work; I’m the target. You just have to be present, an innocent bystander.”

“Right . . . just your average, everyday innocent bystander with a zillion-watt battery at her disposal,” quipped Taggart. “So you’ll help?”

She hesitated for only a second before nodding. “I’ll try.”

It sounded simple enough, Eve thought. Except for the part where she didn’t have a clue what she was doing, and the fact that it was a powerful bad-luck curse they were messing with, and her unfortunate history with the house. Other than that, it was as simple as pie . . . very complicated and dangerous magic pie.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

 

Taggart prepared to attempt the ritual a second time by rolling back the living room rug and using yellow chalk to draw a circle on the wood floor. Eve stood out of the way and watched as he arranged the items he’d brought down from the turret inside the circle. She was more interested in details than her small role required, and she wasn’t sure if it was because what they were doing involved Hazard, or magic, or both.

When Taggart placed a pentagon shaped mirror at the center of the circle and made a smaller circle on its flat surface with what appeared to be dried herbs, she leaned closer to get a better look at the pieces of leaves and stalks. Grand had grown herbs as well as roses, and she’d taught Eve how to tell one from another, as well as their uses and dangers. Grand had called it folk medicine; her mother had called it madness and warned Eve to stay away.

“Agrimony?” she ventured.

“Aye,” confirmed Taggart. “Some call it cockelbur. For cleansing the blood. There’s belladonna and valerian root too.”

Inside the smaller circle he placed a gold pocket watch and candles bound with twine. The candles were standing upright, with a single red taper in the center, surrounded by five black candles and a ring of white candles on the outside. The final item was a small silver pedestal. When it was in place, he removed the pendant from its case and held it out to her.

“Would you care to do the honors?” he asked.

From across the room Hazard made a rough, impatient sound.

Eve took the pendant and placed it on the silver pedestal, noticing as she did so that the candles, the watch and the pendant formed a triangle.

Taggart stepped back and considered his work with a critical expression. Then he bent and moved the candles an inch to the left, stepped back for another look and moved them back.

“For God’s sake,” snapped Hazard. “Stop fussing and get on with it.”

“A bit touchy, aren’t you?” countered a blasé Taggart. “These things can’t be rushed. It’s not my fault that having time to think about what you’re about to do makes you edgy.”

“I’m not edgy,” growled Hazard.

“Jittery then.”

“Or jittery.”

“Why would he be edgy?” Eve directed the question to Taggart, but it was Hazard who answered.

“I am not edgy,” he snapped.

Taggart turned and rolled his eyes for Eve’s benefit. “ ‘Not edgy,’ he says. What do you think, Enchantress?”

“Please. Call me Eve,” she said to him. To Hazard she said, “You do seem a little on edge. Are you afraid this won’t work?”

“Or afraid it will,” muttered Taggart.

Eve frowned. “I don’t understand. Why would you be afraid it
would
work? I thought you wanted to end the curse.”

“I do,” responded Hazard. “I’m not afraid . . . or edgy or jittery. I just want to get on with it. Can we do that?” He glared at Taggart. “Or do you want to waste more time rearranging the bloody candles?”

Taggart gave a lofty shrug. “I’m ready when you are.”

“Finally,” muttered Hazard.

“You’re going to have to walk me through this step by step,” Eve reminded Taggart. “Starting with where you want me to stand.”

“Anywhere inside the circle will do fine,” he told her, waving her forward.

Eve stepped over the yellow chalk line, and the two men did the same. The circle was a snug fit for the three of them; she was standing close enough to Hazard to smell him. He smelled good.

“A few points before we begin,” Taggart said.

Hazard groaned with frustration; Taggart ignored him.

“The ritual itself is simple,” he told her. “A curse is really nothing but a spell with evil intent. Sometimes it’s cast and done with, like when you curse someone to break a leg or miss an appointment. Sometimes it’s meant to go on long after the casting is done. What we’re dealing with here is a continuous curse, one of those that goes on and on, and since magic—white and black alike—needs energy to fuel it, something is fueling this curse.”

“What is it?” she asked.

Taggart’s mouth quirked grimly. “Good question. I’ve known of curses that tapped into ley lines, or particular ceremonial rites, ones that could be counted on to reoccur frequently enough to provide the energy needed to keep the curse going.”

“Is that what’s happening here?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“What’s happening here,” Hazard chimed in, his tone dripping sarcasm, “is that we have no idea what’s happening here. And we’re wasting time. Just tell her what to do so we can get this over with.”

“He’s right,” acknowledged Taggart. “We can’t say for certain where the energy for the curse is coming from. But I dare say we’ve found a way around it. Or rather he did.” He hitched his head toward Hazard. “He’s moody but clever.”

He explained to Eve that regardless of what was fueling the curse, stopping or interrupting that flow of energy would cause the curse to fail and the natural order of things to be restored. Since they couldn’t find the source of the energy, they couldn’t stop it; so they were going to block the flow instead by raising a protective shield around Hazard. The energy would hit the shield and be bounced back to who knows where, and Hazard would be free.

And that would be that and they would all live happily ever after if only magic were a science instead of an art. It wasn’t, and so they needed exactly the right catalyst to make it work; in this case only the catalyst that had been used to cast the curse could break it. They needed the pendant, and according to Taggart, they needed her help. He had a lot more faith in her abilities than she did. When she told him that, he assured her that all she had to do was conjure an image of Hazard surrounded by an impenetrable protective shield, one strong enough to deflect whatever came at it, and then gather her power and focus it on turning that image into reality.

“Do you think you can do that?” he asked.

Eve nodded, and he closed the circle. It made a small snapping sound, like the magnetic clasp on a purse.

She linked her hands behind her and rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet the way she sometimes did when she was anxious. Hazard stood still and watchful as Taggart lit the candles. His arms were loosely folded, his stance relaxed, but he didn’t fool Eve. She was able to read him well enough to discern the tension in his squared shoulders and the taut line of his jaw. She could understand him being apprehensive; what she didn’t understand were Taggart’s remarks suggesting that Hazard could be—or should be—having second thoughts about what he was doing.

Speaking in a quiet voice, Taggart moved the lighting taper from wick to wick, starting with the red candle in the center.

He switched to what sounded like Latin, chanting briefly, and then calling out,
“Tributo is votum.”

Instantly the candle flames flared higher and brighter to form a single glowing sphere of fire. Using that as her focal point and following Taggart’s instructions, Eve formed an image of Hazard in her mind’s eye and envisioned a shield around him.

“Rector succurro,”
Taggart said.

The room grew warm, and the air seemed to vibrate silently. Eve felt the power gathering inside her; it was a heady feeling. She drew it in, focused on the image in her mind and released it fully. She hadn’t sought to do this, but that didn’t make it any less thrilling to see the shield, a translucent silvery film, begin to slowly materialize around Hazard. So far so good, she thought, envisioning it becoming stronger and harder, impervious to everything but her will.

She continued to focus as faint tendrils of light appeared above the silver pedestal, curling around the pendant like ribbons of smoke. More continued to appear, bands of grainy gray light, each about six inches wide; they drifted upward, spinning and weaving into a column that grew steadily more solid and defined until it had taken on the unmistakable shape of a man. No one had mentioned this part. She glanced around to see if the others were as surprised as she was and realized they were.

A sudden explosion of sparks filled the air with smoke and sizzle. Eve squeezed her eyes shut to protect them and when she opened them again, the swirling bands of light were gone and a man she had never seen before stood in the center of the circle and the receding smoke.

He was tall and thin, gaunt really, with a long narrow face and a chin that jutted out of proportion. His mouth was cruel, his eyes dark and angry. And he was gray. His skin was the pale, fish-belly gray of someone who’d been living in a cave, without sunlight, for a very long time. But none of those things were as striking to Eve as the way the man was dressed. He was wearing a dark brown cutaway coat over a striped silk waistcoat and fawn-colored trousers tucked into knee boots. His white linen neck cloth was elaborately knotted, and rode so high on his throat it called even more attention to his prominent chin.

The entire outfit, right down to the watch fob hanging several inches below his waist and the carved walking stick in his hand, was very familiar to Eve. She might not be the diehard romantic her sister Chloe was, but she had still seen every Jane Austen film ever made, several times. She recognized classic Regency fashion when she saw it, and although this guy was closer to Mr. Darcy’s sickly grandfather than Darcy himself, he still looked like a time traveler from nineteenth-century England. Which made no sense at all.

For a second after he appeared, no one moved. Then Hazard lunged at him, only to be stopped short by the shield, which remained in place. That was probably a good thing, she thought, because Hazard looked ready to kill. Incensed, he raised his arms and pounded his fists against the shield, but nothing happened; as hard as he hammered it, the contact made absolutely no sound at all. Because, Eve realized, the barrier wasn’t material. It was a magical construct of pure energy and will. And it wasn’t budging.

It also wasn’t soundproof. She could hear Hazard loud and clear and there was no mistaking the single word he bellowed.

Pavane? Was this the jilted bridegroom who’d cursed Hazard? A descendent, connected by blood and dark magic, to the sorcerer who’d stolen the talisman and murdered poor Maura T’airna over two hundred years ago.

At the sound of his name, Pavane spun around to face Hazard, who looked like a caged animal without the cage. The two men glared at each other through the barely visible shield. After a moment, Pavane cautiously raised his hand and slid his open palm through the air close to the barrier. Whatever he sensed must have convinced him Hazard wasn’t an immediate threat, and with a dismissive sneer he turned his back on him and walked away.

And ran smack into the chalk boundary of the still-active circle.

Eve was torn between delight at seeing him trapped inside the circle, and concern that they were trapped in there with him.

Pavane glanced down and his startled expression gave way to one of disdain; this time when he raised his hand, palm out, fingers spread, the air in front of him crackled and shimmered as he blew a hole in the circle. Free, he strode across the room, his sharp gaze darting around, lighting here and there, the way a bird flits from branch to branch on a tree. He hunched forward to peer out the window, scanning the landscape in both directions.

“What place is this?” he demanded. His voice was strained and hoarse, like a rusty old pump needing to be primed after years of disuse. “What city?”

“Providence,” Taggart replied guardedly.

Behind the shield Hazard was silent and still, a coiled serpent.

When Pavane turned away from the window, his eyes were full of wonder and questions. “What year?”

When Taggart told him, Pavane’s eyes opened even wider. He pointed a gnarled finger toward the window beside him. “Those carriages . . . what manner of—”

Taggart cut him off. “Sorry, old man, my turn. I know who you are, so we can skip that one. Where the hell did you come from?”

“From here. And then nowhere, and now here again.”

“Here?” Taggart’s eyes narrowed. “You mean this realm? The mortal realm?”

Pavane nodded. His chest rose and fell with a faint wheezing sound.

“And nowhere?” Taggart persisted. “Where exactly would that be?”

“Nowhere. The void,” Pavane retorted, impatient. “That place which is not.”

“You mean death?”

He shook his head, his cracked pink-gray lips curling back over his teeth. “Not death, fool. Death is the end. As you can plainly see, I was not ended, merely interrupted. And now I am back.”

“And who, pray tell, had the good sense to do the interrupting?” inquired Taggart.