From Fear to Eternity: An Immortality Bites Mystery (21 page)

“She’s always been beautiful.” He traced his index finger over the frame of the oil painting, staring down at Betty’s face. “But I was the only one who seemed to see it.”

I really hadn’t wanted to be right.

It felt like someone had just punched me in the stomach.

Sebastien ran a hand over his mouth, his eyes filling with worry. “She didn’t want anyone to know this is her mansion.”

I tried to stay calm, but it was a losing battle. “She killed Jacob and she killed Anna.”

“How can you say something like that? Do you have any proof?”

I had to admit, a few strands of hair and some lip gloss didn’t guarantee a guilty verdict. “Call it a gut instinct.”

“Tasha wouldn’t hurt anybody. She’s wonderful and . . .” He touched the portrait again. “And . . . I love her.”

He loved Tasha Evans, Oscar-winning movie star.

And I didn’t think he meant only as a fan.

A few more pieces clicked into place with a sharp
snap
. “She’s the one, isn’t she? From your past? The plain girl Veronique said you were dating hundreds of years ago. Bettina. And now she’s Tasha, a famous actress.”

He gripped the edge of the painting, and stared down at it reverently. “She’s more than that. She’s the one who found me.”

Melanie had drawn closer and we exchanged a worried look.

“Found you?” Melanie said. “In the tomb?”

Sebastien nodded. “She never believed I was dead.
She said she worked closely with a witch to locate me and she rescued me just in time.”

“What do you mean, just in time?” I asked, my throat tight.

“Vampires can’t survive forever in hibernation like that—soon I would have wasted away to nothing. She nursed me back to health. She was there for me when no one else was. I’d do anything for her.
Anything
.” Anger flashed in his eyes as he turned to face me, his fists clenched. “That you’d accuse her of something so horrible when she’s the only one who was there for me—”

“Forget I said that.” I cut him off and pushed a smile onto my face. While I’d decided Sebastien wasn’t a horrible villain, he was still recovering from his ordeal. He wasn’t thinking straight. “Loose cannon” would be putting it mildly. “I’m being totally paranoid. Sorry about that. Tasha Evans is my favorite actress, like, ever. Of course she didn’t do anything wrong, especially if you say she’s the one who helped free you. She’s obviously one of the good guys.”

He seemed to relax a fraction. “I’m glad you’re seeing reason.”

And I was glad he was so easy to fool.

Then again, he believed Tasha had been a loyal and loving girlfriend throughout the centuries. Color me skeptical of anything to do with that woman at this point.

Still, I did have to admit, I had no solid proof she’d been anything tonight worse than a liar. Just because she owned this mansion but hadn’t told anyone about it didn’t mean diddly-squat. Maybe she owned a bunch of mansions and rented them out for parties.

I kept the sheepish smile on my face for accusing
his immortal beloved of anything unsavory. “Let’s keep looking for the amulet, all right?”

He nodded. “All right.”

Jack had stood up from his spot on the floor and moved close enough to look at the portrait. His brows drew together. “This woman looks very familiar.”

“Does she?” Sebastien’s face lost its friendliness again. “How so?”

“I’m not really sure.” He shook his head. “I can’t remember anything.”

I had a really sick and twisting feeling in my stomach that I might know exactly why Tasha looked familiar to Jack, but I didn’t want to say it out loud. Not yet, anyway.

I might be able to prod Jack’s memories, see if we were on the same wavelength. But I wanted to do this alone, considering how close to the edge of his emotions Sebastien currently was.

“Jack . . .” I touched his arm.

“Wait a minute. I do remember.” Jack gasped. “The woman in the portrait is the one who cut off my head!”

Um. Yeah, that was pretty much what I was thinking,
too.

S
ebastien may have been emotionally close to the edge all night, but this made him lose it completely.

He grabbed Jack by his newly mended throat, his eyes blazing with fury. “How dare you accuse her of something like that! She saved me!”

Jack sputtered, clutching Sebastien’s arm. I ran over and tried to wrench Sebastien away from Jack, but it was no use. Sebastien now had both his hands on Jack’s fragile neck. With a vampire’s strength—especially a vampire who wasn’t thinking logically—he might be able to pop Jack’s head off again like a field daisy.

“She’d never hurt anyone!” Sebastien was shaking now, and sweat appeared on his brow.

“Jack, do something!” I cried.

“Do . . . something? Like?”

“You’re a djinn! You must have some magic in you!”

Jack’s face was turning red, but he focused on Sebastien before him and clutched Sebastien’s wrists.

“Sleep,” Jack managed.

The tingle of magic slid over my skin.

Sebastien’s eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the ground.

I grimaced. “See, Jack? I was right.”

Jack stared down at the unconscious Sebastien with shock. “Maybe I am a djinn.”

Melanie stood by with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her eyes wide. “Where did that anger come from?”

I couldn’t bring myself to blame Sebastien for any of this. To me, he was a pawn in someone else’s game. Too bad he didn’t realize it yet. “It’s not his fault. He’s having trouble controlling his emotions since he woke up on the wrong side of that tomb.”

“I hope he’ll feel better when he wakes up.”

“Me too. Although I hope that’s not anytime soon.” I’d felt Jack’s small burst of magic, but I hadn’t felt anything else up here that might pinpoint where the amulet was. “Have you found something yet?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

Jack gave me a bleak look. “I’m sorry I can’t be more of a help to you.”

Thierry,
I thought,
wherever you are right now, I sure hope you’re having more luck than we are.

Maybe having Jack in one piece by dawn would be enough to stop anything bad from happening. He’d just proven that he did still have some magic inside him.

Melanie stood by the portrait of Betty aka Bettina aka Tasha, studying the actress’s face with a frown. “You know, I never thought Tasha Evans was a very good actress. I have no idea how she managed to win those Oscars.”

But movie stars didn’t have to be great actresses. They needed the look, they needed the “it factor,”
and—as I’d discovered during my short time trying to be an actress—luck played a huge part in one’s potential success.

Once she’d established herself, Tasha’s roles trended toward big-budget blockbusters. Sure, she made tons of money—enough to own a mansion this huge, for starters—but as far as acting skill . . . now that I thought about it, both of her Oscar wins had been controversial.

Melanie twisted a finger through her blond hair, her expression thoughtful. “Sebastien said a witch helped her find him. Maybe she had a witch cast a spell to make her more successful.”

Of course, that had to be it. “And more beautiful.”

“What?”

“A spell. Magic. If Tasha had a witch help her locate his tomb, then that witch could have helped her with other things on her to-do list.”

Melanie’s eyes bugged. “You might be right.”

No “might be right” about it. This explained almost everything.

Unfortunately, if Tasha had magic like that at her fingertips and if she was also responsible for the murders and trying to steal Jack’s magic, we were in more trouble than I’d thought.

I needed to find Thierry. He would know what to do to give us a chance to stop Tasha.

Jack had moved off to the side, near where Sebastien lay on the floor. I studied the black and gray tattoos on his back.

Maybe it was my imagination, but they seemed even more faded than they had earlier.

One darker tattoo stood out on his upper arm now, words in a language that looked a lot like the one in the book Thierry had read earlier.

I approached him tentatively. “Jack, what are these marks on you?”

He held out his arms and looked at his skin. “They hold my magic. And they also bind me to the amulet.”

I stared at him. “You remember that?”

He turned to me and Melanie, his face a mask of confusion. “Maybe . . . maybe I do remember. Or I’m starting to.”

That was a good sign.

Or it was a very bad sign. Maybe Jack was a nice djinn only when he didn’t remember who he was. When his memories came back, would he turn into a demonic monster?

I had to remind myself that most people believed vampires to be monsters. Didn’t mean we actually were. Well, not all of us.

“Do you remember anything else?” Melanie asked gently.

He shook his head, then touched his throat along the red line. “No, nothing else. Sorry.”

“Come on.” I offered him my hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

He eyed my hand warily. “You’re going to force me back into the amulet, aren’t you?”

He remembered enough to know what was to come.

I decided to be honest with him. He deserved that much. “That was the original plan, but there has to be
another solution. Nobody should be forced to do anything they don’t want to do because of a decision made more than a millennium ago.”

“I don’t want to go back.”

“Then you won’t.” I gave him a smile. “And since we can’t find the amulet anywhere, that makes everything much simpler. But please try to remember as much as you can by dawn so we won’t implode. Okay?”

“Okay.” He finally took hold of my hand and I began leading him out of the attic like he was a little boy lost at the zoo.

And, quite frankly, that was what he was starting to feel like. For all of my theories about him, and what I was certain he was—the djinn of the Jacquerra Amulet—he seemed harmless to me. Innocent. Lost.

Trapped.

“What’s the plan?” Melanie asked.

“I want to find Thierry, but first I have to go get Atticus.”

“Atticus? Where is he?”

“He’s somewhere . . . safe.”

My gut had been confused when it came to the boss of the vampire council, but now I’d almost decided that he was more of an asset out of the chest than he was in it.

Tasha had locked him up, but I doubted it was to protect me.

She needed him out of her way.

Which meant, I needed him
in
her way.

As we moved toward the stairs, I brushed against several broken grandfather clocks. “Tasha likes things that tell time, doesn’t she?”

“Maybe it reminds her of how old she really is,” Melanie said.

Broken clocks stuffed in the attic. They had to be worth money, but were currently useless until she had them fixed. Each one of them frozen at the exact time it had been when their inner workings died.

One froze at ten after eleven. Another at quarter past six. Another at five minutes past seven.

I stopped moving and I stared at that clock.

Behind us, Sebastien groaned. He was starting to wake up.

“Sarah?” Melanie whispered. “Are we going or what?”

Five minutes past seven.

My heart began to pound harder. “Seven oh five. This clock reads seven oh five. And it’s in the attic.”

“So?” Jack asked, letting go of my hand.

I closed my eyes and tried to feel something.
Sense
something.

And there it was. A tingle—a magical tingle.

My eyes shot open. “This is it.”

I began touching the clock all over, searching for a compartment, a hole, anything.

Near the bottom, there was a wooden button. I pressed it and a hidden drawer slid open.

“Thomas,” I whispered, grabbing hold of the amulet’s chain, “if you’d been a little more specific, you could have saved us all a lot of time.”

Another low, groggy groan came from Sebastien’s direction and I tensed.

“Let’s get out of here.” I reached out to take Jack’s hand again.

He staggered back from me. “Don’t come any closer with that thing.”

His eyes had turned bright emerald green, just like the amulet.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I assured him.

He nearly fell in his hurry to get away from me—away from the amulet.

“I’m claustrophobic. Do you know what it’s like to be trapped in something that small when you’re claustrophobic?” He reached the stairs first, and he practically fell down them because he was moving so fast. “It’s not fun!”

What was with his eyes? It must show the connection between him and the amulet—that he was still bound to it whether he liked that or not.

“Jack, don’t run away. It’s okay, really.”

“It’s not okay! I could hear things, sense things, feel things, but I wasn’t a part of them. It is Hell, Sarah. And my previous masters—the wishes they wanted. Not pleasant, let me tell you! They were all so greedy, hedonistic, horrible. And I had to do what they asked. Please—I beg you—don’t force me back inside that thing.”

The farther he moved away from me the more the green faded from his eyes. The magic that had begun coursing up and down my arms also dissipated.

Maybe that had been my window of opportunity to fix this, to return the magic—namely Jack himself—back to the amulet.

Even as I watched him, his tattoos faded even more until a few of them disappeared completely.

Jack looked down at his arms. “The magic is leaving me. Good. I don’t want it anymore.”

He disappeared down the ladder.

I exchanged a worried look with Melanie. “We can’t let him get away,” I said.

“I know.”

We left the attic as quickly as we could and raced down the hallway after Jack, turning corners that twisted through the mazelike third floor.

But Jack was nowhere to be seen.

“What now?” I asked, clutching the amulet tightly in my hand.

Melanie didn’t answer me. I turned to see if she’d caught up to me, but she wasn’t there.

“Melanie?” I called, running back along the route I’d taken.

I’d lost Jack and I’d lost Melanie.

Damn. I had no time for another impromptu game of hide-and-seek with a memory-challenged djinn and a werewolf that smelled like vanilla.

I stared down at the amulet in my palm. “At least I found you.”

The amulet, thankfully, didn’t reply.

Without wasting any more time, I headed down to the second floor to the room Atticus was in. This might go badly, but I had to try.

He might be a jerk and a womanizer, but . . . added up, it didn’t necessarily equal villain.

At this point, I needed all the help I could get.

As I navigated the twists and turns of the second floor trying to retrace my steps, a shadow loomed up ahead. I flattened myself against the wall and glanced around the corner to see that the shadow belonged to Tasha.

She entered Atticus’s room.

There was a sharp wooden stake in her hand.

There was no time to second-guess myself. I blew out a breath and approached the door.

“Hey, Tasha,” I said as calmly as I could.

She spun around, now holding the stake behind her back and out of view. I’d slipped the amulet into my pocket, thanking the designer’s brilliance of adding pockets to this dress.

“Sarah.” She smiled at me. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Have you found anything?”

“Not yet. You?”

“This place is like a labyrinth. I have no idea where to search next and it’s nearly dawn.”

She shrugged. “I honestly don’t think anything bad’s going to happen at dawn.”

“No? I’m glad you said that. I’ve been thinking the same thing. I mean, ominous collective voice of a dead coven emanating from a werewolf cocktail waitress. Not too scary, you know?”

“Agreed.”

We both went silent as I grappled for something else to say.

“By the way,” Atticus growled from inside the chest, “this is a gentle reminder that as soon as I get out of here I’m going to destroy you.”

Even though he sounded furious, I was happy to hear his voice. “He’s still conscious. I thought he might slip into a coma.”

“That takes a while,” Tasha said.

Yes, I was quite sure she knew firsthand how long something like that might take.

“I’m not slipping into a coma, you bitches! Now let me out of here.”

“That’s not going to happen, Atticus,” Tasha said. “And there’s no reason to be rude to us. But you could never help that, could you? You’ve always been rude, from the very beginning. It’s impossible to teach an old dog like you new tricks.”

Atticus slammed his fist against the lid of the chest. “You’ve always had it in for me, haven’t you, Tasha? I told you that you could work for me. I thought that would finally appease you. What more do you want from me?”

“I want a great deal more than a glorified office assistant position. I want to rule over the council.”

“Rule over it?” I echoed. This was unexpected. “You’re saying you want Atticus’s job.”

“Of course I do. Why aim low when you can aim high—the highest. Ever heard of the law of attraction, Sarah? If you believe you can, you will.”

I fought to keep any accusatory expression off my face. “I believed I’d win the lottery. It never happened.”

“Bottom line—Atticus is in my way,” she said bluntly, finally revealing her wooden stake.

My heart jumped into my throat. “I agree he’s a problem, but I don’t think this is the best way to deal with him.”

She ran her thumb over the sharp tip of the stake. “Nobody has to know about this, Sarah. He won’t leave a body behind. A mop and a bucket will get rid of any evidence.”

“Is this how you normally handle problems?”

Her gaze flicked to mine. “Sure. Nice and easy. He’s a brute, he’s abusive, and he has way too much power, which he refuses to share.”

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Atticus growled. “The other elders . . . the path to my position with the Ring, anyone who would take it next if something happened to me. You’re the one who killed them.”

Tasha raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think I’m capable of something so bold, Atticus?”

I forced a smile, although it felt twitchy after that revelation. “Men. They can’t understand how motivated a woman can be if she wants something badly enough.”