The Lost Enchantress (42 page)

His departure was a reversal of his arrival, and just as rapid. He began to fade, his form softening to a column of jelly, then dust, then nothing. He and the dark shadows that oozed from him were gone in a small burst of smoke and sparks that sizzled and lingered a few seconds longer and disappeared too.

There was a half a second of silence, and then Rory whooped and there was a resounding “Saints be praised” from Grand. But Eve turned first to Hazard.

He was winded, his face drawn and pale. He still managed a look that made her feel as though it was the sun shining down on her instead of a silver-white moon. “You did it.”

“
We
did it,” she corrected, shaking her head in amazement as she tried to absorb what had just happened. More than two hundred years of evil had just bitten the dust, and it couldn’t have happened in a more fitting place as far as she was concerned.

“All I did was hold your hand,” he said.

“It was more than that . . . you
made
it happen. I felt it and so did you. What I told Pavane about the magic of the talisman being in you was right. I’m sure of that.” She shoved the athame in the waist of her jeans and laid her hand on his cheek, feeling stubble and heat. “Thank you.”

His smile was no more than a slight twist of his bottom lip, and even that seemed an effort as he bent his head and brushed her mouth with his. “My pleasure, Enchantress.”

As soon as the words were out, he went down on one knee, and for one crazy, careening heartbeat Eve thought he was about to propose. Then he was flat on his back, not speaking, not moving, his skin chalk white except for his lips, which were too red.

Eve dropped to her knees beside him. “Hazard? Gabriel, are you all right?”

“He doesn’t look right.” Rory had come to kneel next to her. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Eve replied, shaking off a suspicion too scary to think about. She touched his face, her brain tripping over the fact that he looked like ice but felt like scorching coals, as though an inferno were blazing just beneath his skin, burning him alive from the inside out. That wasn’t normal.

Of course it wasn’t normal. They’d left normal a long way back.

“I don’t know,” she said again, shoving her hands into her hair, not sure whether to shake him or slap him or scream at him. “Oh God, I don’t know.”

“Eve, listen to me.” Grand’s voice was calm.

Eve looked up at her anxiously. Gratefully. Of course Grand would know what had happened to him and how to fix it. The vise squeezing her heart loosened a notch.

“Do you know what’s wrong with him?” she asked.

“Yes. And somewhere inside, so do you,” her grandmother said, her expression soft over steel.

Shaking her head, Eve turned back to Hazard. “No. I don’t.”

“What neither of us knows is exactly why,” her grandmother went on in her unflappable way. “But there’s no time now to look for reasons and explanations. This man is mortal, and his body was never intended to be subjected to the power of magic.”

“Except that, if I’m right, he’s been subjected to it for a couple of centuries and handled it just fine.”

“In a dormant state,” Grand said gently. “Eve, I believe you are right. I believe that for whatever reason, Gabriel Hazard was chosen to carry and safeguard the T’airna magic belonging to the talisman. As long as that magic was inactive, he was safe. But tonight you called on the power inside him, and by doing that you loosed fire and fury that no mortal could endure.”

“All right, but that’s over now,” she said, stroking his arm as if to soothe him even though he lay absolutely still. Too still . . . beyond soothing. She tried not to think about how much hotter he felt than he had just a moment ago. “Maybe whatever this is will pass. We could move him inside so he’ll be more comfortable. He might just need to sleep it off. Or an ice pack. It could pass. It could,” she insisted in the face of her grandmother’s discouraging silence.

“It won’t,” Grand said quietly.

“Then I’m calling 911.” Resolved, Eve started to get up but stopped when she felt Grand’s hand on her shoulder.

“That would be a waste of time, dear. He’ll die while doctors try to find a cure that doesn’t exist. Science can’t fix this,” she said to Eve in a voice of finality. “Only you can.”

Eve quickly looked up. “How?”

“By restoring the talisman to its original state.”

“And if I do, he’ll be all right?”

“I can’t promise you that. I have no way of knowing for sure,” Grand admitted. “But if you don’t do it, I fear he won’t survive.”

“But if magic is what’s kept him alive all this time, much longer than he ever would have lived without it, and I take that magic from him—assuming I can even do it—then . . . then . . .”

“Then he could die,” Grand said for her. “Yes. But if you don’t do it, and quickly, it’s my belief that he will die.”

“And mine.”

Eve glanced past Grand and saw Taggart standing just outside the circle.

“I only saw the end of what happened here,” he said, “but that’s enough for me to know that what your grandmother says makes sense. You have to help him.” He was pleading with her, and impatient at the same time.

“I want to help him,” Eve retorted. “But I don’t want to kill him doing it. I can’t do that . . . I can’t take that chance. And that’s what I’d be doing, taking a chance with his life.
Do no harm.
Isn’t that the golden rule? If I call for that magic I’d be . . .” She waved her hand as she struggled for words. “I’d be stirring it up all over again, and
that
could kill him. But if I wait, he might be able to . . .” She sighed, uneasy in the face of Taggart’s open disapproval. “I could be doing him harm. Can’t you see that?”

“What I see is a good man dying because he stuck his neck out to help you, and you not having the gumption to do the same for him.”

Eve flinched, but he wasn’t done.

“Maybe it is a chance you’ll be taking, Enchantress,” he said. “But you’re acting as though you have a choice and you don’t. So just do what you need to do and hope that luck is with you.”

Who was it who told her that? Madame Lavina. It felt like weeks had passed since then.

What the hell could she rely on? Grand’s opinion? Taggart’s?

She gazed down at Hazard, watched the painfully slow rise and fall of his chest and remembered resting her head there, right over his heart, right over the mark they shared. That felt like weeks or months or lifetimes ago too. But it wasn’t. She’d known him only a handful of days and he had changed her forever. He’d given her back herself.

It was as if a veil had lifted inside her, and thanks to him she had the courage to face what was hidden behind it.

Now the very magic that had brought them together threatened to rip them apart. Did she have the courage to face that?

No. The answer erupted inside her, burning her throat. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t bear to lose him now that she’d finally found herself . . . he was part of that self.

She leaned forward to lay her head on his chest and listen to his heart beat. It sounded very far away.

“I love you,” she breathed into his shirt. “Everything I am is yours. Please come back to me.”

As she lifted her head, a passing breeze made the candle flames flicker and wave so that the light seemed to dance around them, and when she looked at his face in that dancing light, the memory of seeing that face lit by another circle of candlelight, on another night, came sweeping back to her. It was the night she cast the Winter Rose Spell. She did have the promised vision that night in the turret, and the face she had seen was Hazard’s.

Hazard was her one true love. Her soul mate. Her destiny.

And clearly she was his. A destiny two hundred years in the making was not to be taken lightly, or surrendered easily.

That was the rest of Madame Lavina’s advice to her. And her heart
was
willing . . . willing to risk everything for their shared destiny.

She just hoped it wasn’t too late.

It couldn’t be.
Reality bends to desire.
And no one had ever desired or wanted anything as much as she wanted to hear Hazard’s voice, and feel his fingers on her skin and that silly little thrill she felt every blessed time the man looked at her and smiled.

Slipping the pendant off, she placed it carefully on his chest, not at all surprised to see the crystals in the hourglass turn red. Then she took a deep breath and did what she needed to do. Right away a shimmering mist appeared around the two of them, mist like the one that had saved them from the warlocks that first night, and had stopped Hazard from tangling with Pavane before the time was right. She understood now that the mist appeared only when she and Hazard and the talisman connected in a certain way, and she wondered if it had been there tonight when they came together to battle Pavane for the last time.

Quietly, she said words to invoke the Goddess Danu and ask her help in restoring the magic of the talisman. She finished with gratitude and a plea that it be done with harm to none.

She felt movement in the air above where Hazard lay, and miniscule specks of light swirled around the hourglass, its crystals now dazzlingly bright.

Something was happening, and the effect of it rippled outward, like rings of current from a stone tossed in a lake. The butterfly effect, Eve thought, aware of the ruffling of the grass and rustling of leaves. Soon there was the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance, and overhead the sky was ablaze with shooting stars.

When the swirl of light around the talisman dimmed, and the last star had shot across the sky and disappeared, Eve released the breathe she was holding, not surprised that her chest went on aching.

It was done, she thought, and she waited for Hazard to open his eyes.

In summer, when roses spilled like scarlet blankets over the high stone walls, filling the air with their unique, almost unbearably beautiful scent, the garden at 128 Sycamore Street was the perfect setting for a wedding, and there was no place on earth where Eve would rather be standing when she clasped hands with Gabriel Declan Hazard and promised him everything, and forever.

If it had been up to her, they would have done it months before, back when March was melting into April, with nature still waking from winter and Grand’s once resplendent flower beds shabby and bare of blooms. They would have done it without a harpist and a four-tier cake too beautiful to cut and a crisp white carpet strewn with rose petals. Without the circle of white chairs trimmed with wildflowers and white tulle bows; without dozens of friends and family gathered to witness the start of their new life together, and to share in their joy.

When it came to marrying the man she loved, none of that mattered to her. What mattered was that she had come whisper close to losing him—the one man she thought she’d never find and worried might not even exist—and she hadn’t. In defiance of logic and collective wisdom, and against all odds, Hazard had opened his eyes and come back to her.

Eve would have wed him that very moment, or any of the countless thousands of moments since, but Hazard would hear nothing of it. He was determined she would have the wedding of her dreams, and her sister had been quick to second the idea. And so she was outvoted, and the months-long endeavor began, starting from the ground up. Literally. By night Hazard studied old photographs of the property; by day he shoveled and sweat and planted and trimmed to restore the gardens to their former glory.

Only Rory and Grand were allowed to help. He taught Rory a myriad of useful things, like how to use a wheelbarrow and sift stones from topsoil and tell flower from weed, but most important, he taught her that there are decent men in the world, men worth waiting for, no matter how long the wait. The physical labor was backbreaking, but whenever Eve suggested hiring someone to help unroll all that sod or take down that dangerously tall tree standing between the sun and the sunflowers, Rory would shake her head and roll her eyes and remind Eve that
this
was a labor of love, and a labor of love was something you had to do yourself.

From the mouths of babes . . .

Watching from the kitchen window as the two of them worked side by side, with Hazard teaching her niece about life and Rory providing him with a crash course in pop culture, Eve had to agree. The restoration of the garden was, in many varied and subtle ways, a true labor of love. If she hadn’t already fallen hopelessly in love with Hazard, she would have tumbled head over heels on the spot.

Grand’s contribution to the project was to pour lemonade and stand by, armed with an umbrella for shade and a plethora of opinions and advice. In her own inimitable way, she had also seen to it that every last rose and peony and lilac was in perfect bloom when the sun rose that morning; Eve wouldn’t be surprised if the blue sky and gentle cooling breeze were also her work.

While the others were getting the yard in shape, Chloe devised a plan to turn it into an enchanted garden for the big day, with fairy lights and garlands of fresh flowers and songbirds in gilded cages high in the surrounding trees. Eve loved the idea, though the number of lists and phone calls and decisions involved in making it happen left her head spinning . . . and gave her a new, deeper understanding and respect for her sister’s talents.

It was almost a shame Chloe was getting out of the wedding-planning game. She’d found a kindred spirit to take over the business, and she was returning to school to study mythology, a youthful fascination rekindled by a new friendship with the best man at one of her weddings . . . that March wedding off the coast of Greece to be exact. He was a college history professor, and also a kindred spirit.