He's A Magic Man (The Children of Merlin) (23 page)

“Well, what a fount of knowledge you are.”

That made him feel
good. So he pointed out the waxy, shiny leaves of a wild coffee bush and a snowberry that actually had fruit. They came to the crescent of beach like a little white island in the mangrove swamp. “Those roots also keep the beach sand from being washed away. Otherwise all the work to haul it in would be wasted in the first hurricane.”

“This beach is man-made?”

“Oh, yeah. All beaches in the Keys are. This one belongs to Heaven’s Acres.” He pointed to a speck at the point of land in the distance. “You can just make out the house over there. They were going to build a dock and a guesthouse on this site. They got as far as making the beach.”

“What happened?”

“Prison, I heard. Owner lost a lot of people a lot of money promising a sure thing.”

“If something’s a sure thing, the only sure thing is that it isn’t.”

“My, we’re getting cynical in our old age,” he said with a chuckle.

She sighed as she looked out over the ocean.

“What is it?” he asked.

“That aqua shade of water. I’m a Pacific girl. I’ll never get used to it.”

He smiled. He realized that he’d done a lot of smiling in the last twenty-four hours. “Yeah. Looks like another planet or something.” He let her look for a while and when she wandered down the little beach he followed, hands in the pockets of his shorts. How to broach this? Give her an out and see if she’d take it? Then he’d know how much she trusted him, but it was a horrible chance to take. He cleared his throat. “So, you wanna tell me what happened last night, before you fell?”

He saw her stiffen. “Not particularly.”

He took her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Truth time. Epileptic seizures? LSD flashbacks?” He smiled. Would she take the out? He saw her struggling. “No shame in epilepsy.”

She took a huge breath and let it out. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

He raised his brows. “A guy who uses his psychic abilities to find things? Really?”

She chewed her plump bottom lip. That really did something to him. “Okay, but I warned you.” She looked around, and led him over to the bole of a huge tree fallen onto the sand. They sat, looking out at the water as she worked up her courage. He didn’t push her.

“Here it is,” she said, taking a big breath. “I had a vision. In the water in the sink.”

“Okay. Visions. I buy that. Maybe you’re psychic, too.”

She shook her head, looking down. “I’m not psychic, Michael, and neither are you.” She looked up at his surprise. “Here’s the thing. There’s this gene we both have and it gives you a ... a special ability. Yours is finding things. I have visions of the future.” She said it matter-of-factly.

“So,” he said slowly, “like X-Men?”

She chuffed a half laugh. “Not exactly.”

But she didn’t say she’d been joking. His brows drew together. In a flash, he knew. “Alice ... Alice could heal minds.”

Drew nodded, but she turned toward the sea so he couldn’t see her expression. “My mother can heal your body. No broken bones in our house. No chicken pox. My brother Tris can power machines—no gas, no electricity, just him. And my father does everything really well. He’s an Adapter.”

This
was
crazy. But she didn’t look crazy. She looked calmer than he’d seen her since she got here. “So what did you see? In this vision, I mean.”

“Just a room filled with blue light. The ceiling was glass, I think. I was wearing a long red dress, old fashioned, sort of. There were some guys with guns standing around, looking like they were about to pounce on something or somebody. The elevator door was opening, and ... and I was afraid of who or what was coming out that door.”

“So ... you don’t know where this was?”

She shook her head.

“Or who the people were who were standing around?”

Another rueful shake.
“Or when. Doesn’t seem to be a very useful gift.”

“But it is a gift....” His mind began to race. “That’s why you came. You didn’t want to hire
The Purgatory.
You came because we have something in common. How did you know? A vision?”

Movement caught his eye in the trees behind Drew. The sounds of someone pushing brush out of the way as they came down the path echoed across the beach. Brandon St. Claire stepped out of the trees, followed by his arm candy, Rhiannon.

“Hey, Dowser,” St. Claire called. Rhiannon steadied herself against St. Claire’s shoulder while she bent to remove her platform espadrilles.

“Wonder what he wants,” Michael muttered, standing. There was more movement in the trees. These two weren’t alone. St. Claire and his girlfriend made their way down the beach. He didn’t like that they knew where he lived, or that they’d brought friends. Drew stood. He had an overpowering urge to protect her from what might be going on here. He would have put his arm around her but he might need his hands free. Something wasn’t right.

“What brings you out here?” he asked, when the two came within speaking range.

“Wanted to offer that job.”

He started to wave them away.

“And Dowser, honey, it’s a treasure,” Rhiannon said, sashaying up to him and putting a hand on his forearm. “We have pictures of the some of the pieces so I’m sure you can find it. We’ll cut you in for a quarter.”

Drew was looking at Rhiannon like she was a centipede that had crawled out from under a rock. Jealous? He
kinda
liked that. He shook Rhiannon’s hand off. “I told you, I don’t need the money. Get somebody else.”

“There isn’t anybody else and you know it,” St. Claire barked.

“Calm down, honey,” Rhiannon said sharply to St. Claire. But
she
was
all smiles
when she turned back to Michael. “He just needs to see what we’re really talking about. Look, I got a drawing sent to the hotel this morning....” She dropped her espadrilles and reached into her gigantic purse to pull out a large folded piece of paper. She opened it and held it out.

It was a line rendering, in great detail, of a sword with a huge crosspiece just under the hilt. The whole hand guard was encrusted with jewels.

“That’s ... that’s the Sword of Gwynedd,” Drew said in a very small voice.

Rhiannon’s thin brows shot together. “How did you know that?”

“She’s a Dark Age history major,” Michael snapped. “What’s the Sword of ... of whatever?”

Drew straightened her shoulders and said in a flat voice, “It’s supposed to be Arthur’s sword. He called it Caliburn. Later that got translated as Excalibur. It might not be from Arthur’s time though. Most everything attributed to Camelot is actually medieval.”

“It would be worth a lot either way, wouldn’t it?” Rhiannon folded the paper and put it back in her purse. She slithered nearer and put her arm in Michael’s. “And that’s only one piece of the treasure we’re talking about. It was buried in 1587. Just think—you could leave your hovel behind you. Buy a really big boat. Whatever you want.”

Michael caught movement in the trees again. These guys were about as professional as pro wrestlers. Drew hadn’t realized there were others yet. “Think I’ll pass.”

Rhiannon turned and shouted. “Come on out, boys.”

Drew gasped as first two and then three more men came out of the brush. They were big, hulking guys chosen by someone who didn’t know you wanted some brains along with the muscle. Dowser recognized a couple of the guys who had cleaned his clock at O’Toole’s.

Well, he wasn’t drunk now. He stepped in front of Drew. She pushed out beside him. She was a game one.

Rhiannon was obviously in charge here. St. Claire was a front. “You think you can make me perform on command? Think again, honey. These pieces of meat
might
be able to take me when I’m not drunk. But they can’t make me work my magic.” He said it like magic was a joke, though with what Drew had just been saying, he was only half-sure of that.

Rhiannon tapped one long blue glitter-painted nail on her lips. “True. But I think you’ll do it willingly. After all, I have something you want more than money. Now listen up.” She paused for effect. “I work for someone who can bring Alice back to life.”

Michael felt like he’d been punched in the gut. It took three breaths before he could say, “That’s not possible.”

“Demonstration,” Rhiannon said and closed her eyes. Nothing happened for a long minute. Michael was still stunned. Bring Alice back to life? An overwhelming yearning came over him. It couldn’t be. Yet what if it was? He was still blinking in confusion when Rhiannon started to almost vibrate. Her hands splayed out at her sides. He glanced over to Drew and saw she was wide-eyed. She believed
something
was going to happen here.

What happened was that clouds boiled up out of nowhere a few hundred yards out. One minute it was all blue sky and calm aqua sea, and the next the sun was blotted out by black billows heading toward the tiny crescent of beach. Inside the turbulence, flashes of sheet lightning flickered. Thunder beat a tympani assault on their eardrums. Rhiannon stood like a trembling statue. St. Claire wore a smug expression and the muscled hulks they’d recruited stared nervously at the sudden and very isolated storm.

Michael turned to Drew. “Is she doing this?” He almost had to shout.

“I think so,” she yelled, her words all but lost in the cacophony.

Suddenly, the storm stopped rolling in toward them. About fifty yards out, it started to pour. Drops burst against the surface of the sea, making a haze of
splash-back
. The flickering lightning was hypnotic. Booming made it impossible to think.

Rhiannon raised her arms, her hands still vibrating. Then, without warning, she dropped them, gasping. They all just stood there as the storm collapsed in on
itself
and disappeared. The rain stopped. The sky was blue—no sign of clouds. The water flickered dappled aqua-green.

Michael stared down at Drew, who looked a little frightened. Behind them, Rhiannon picked up her purse and her shoes. “Dear me. I almost got wet. But you get my point.”

“You ... you’ve got some kind of power.”

“You bet I do.” A hard edge of ruthlessness transformed her face from merely bitchy to something that might actually be evil. “You might say I’m your local weathergirl. And I owe my allegiance to someone whose power is even greater than mine. She brings the dead back to life, Dowser. And if you find this sword for her, she’ll give you Alice in payment.”

Michael was having trouble breathing. Alice.
Sweet, angelic Alice.
The woman he loved more than he loved his own life. There had to be a catch. “Alice without cancer?”

Rhiannon let out a peal of laughter. “When you come back from dead a little thing like cancer can’t hurt you anymore.” She sobered. “All you have to know is where she’s buried.” She peered at him. “You know that, don’t you Dowser?”

The hill in Virginia, green and white plaid with inset tombstones, burned in his memory.

She must have seen the look on his face. “Then we’re good to go.”

“Don’t do this, Michael. You can’t trust them,” Drew pleaded. Michael knew that the last thing Drew would want was Alice alive. But Drew hadn’t said it wasn’t possible.

Michael looked out at the sea and sky that had so recently boiled with a storm. The whole world had just changed. Drew was right. There was magic in the world. And Rhiannon was sure as hell a lot more than psychic. So maybe he and Alice were more than psychic too. Maybe this woman Rhiannon talked about could do what she said she would. “How do I know this woman, whoever she is, will stand by your promise?”

Again the annoying cascade of titters.
“Oh, we’re going to want you to find a lot more things for us. You’ll be a treasured partner. Someone we’ll want to keep happy. Morgan will take both you and Alice into the Clan. We can do great things together.”

He had leverage here. That was good. He wasn’t sure he wanted this Morgan woman taking them in to some society but there was time enough to deal with that later. And really, what did he have to lose? Life without Alice had nearly killed him.

Until recently.
He glanced back to Drew. The look on her face startled him. Devastated. Resigned. God, he’d never meant to hurt her. He should never have made love to her. She’d come all this way to find him. How? Why?
Just because they both had some magic gene?
But whatever the reason and however she’d found him, she’d brought him back to life in the last days. She’d freed him from his numbness. He couldn’t refuse to care that he’d hurt her.

“Drew....”

“I know,” she said. The rueful twist of her lip was like a knife in his gut. “It’s an offer you can’t refuse.”

He couldn’t. No matter whom it hurt. He turned to Rhiannon. “I’ll find your sword.”

The bitch (he had no illusions about that) smiled. “Welcome to the club. Come on.” She turned on her bare heels in the sand and gestured to the hired muscle. “Bring them along.”

That sounded bad. He glanced again back to Drew. If Rhiannon knew Drew had visions, she might want Drew for her little association too. Drew could have told Rhiannon about her visions. She hadn’t. So she didn’t want into this clan thing, and he had to get her out of this. She shouldn’t be involved in his deal with the devil.