Magick Rising (20 page)

She
knew
. He had nothing to give her but his words, and they hadn’t

made a difference, except perhaps to absolve him of some tiny bit of guilt

for not lying to her all those years ago.
But at what cost?

Penelope remained in danger.

Richard saw her fingers twitch. Hope trickled into his pounding,

terrified heart. They needed time for Penny to break free. They needed a

distraction; Lance had given them one.

“Manon Boulanger, this is Mr. Lance . . . ?” He turned to face the

young man, uncertain of his last name.

“Griffin,” supplied Lance.

Penelope’s hand lifted an inch, then two, her wrist limp, as if drawn

slowly, slowly through water.
She was after the amulet,
Richard realized.

“He is an occultist, like yourself,” Richard hurried to add. The madness

of this—introducing the two as if at a ball—did not escape him.

“Whoa there. Not like her.” Lance raised his hands defensively. “I’ve

never murdered anybody, not even in self-defense.”

Nor, Richard finally realized, had he. He hadn’t
murdered
anyone. Not

the innocents of Galveston, anyway. And he’d killed Manon to save them all

in self-defense.

The relief, to realize that, dizzied him.

Even as Penelope’s hand slowly lifted, her face—remarkably like

Manon’s now, despite their difference in coloring and height—scrunched

into a familiar frown. She defended herself. “I killed for love.”

“Yeah,” Lance argued. “But you weren’t really about love, was she

Rick?”

At least the fellow had given up calling him
Dick
, as he had last night,

holding Richard hostage in his magic circle.

Lying had not helped Penelope. Perhaps the truth would. “No. You

wished only to control me.”

She perverted Penny’s face with a scowl. “I could have made you love

me.”

Penelope’s hand lifted higher yet, still inches from the amulet.

“No.” Richard stepped nearer her, hoping to distract Manon further.

“You could not. Either love comes freely or not at all. And you—”

Penelope’s fingers touched the amulet—and a bell jingled.

With a scream of betrayal, Manon snatched her hand back. “No! If I

cannot have you, then you
cannot
have her!”

She lunged for the window.

Richard dove between them, never so glad for physicality as when

Penelope’s body hit his, hard, but could not continue to its death. He

grabbed Penelope tight, though Manon came with her. “You promised not

to hurt her!”

“I lied!” Manon thrashed toward the window. He struggled to hold her,

but the insanity of the woman gave her inhuman strength, even now. They

staggered closer to the window . . .

Then, suddenly, something repelled him back from Penelope and, hard,

into a wall. She collapsed into a blonde, beautiful heap—

With a protective talisman around her neck.

And Lance Griffin screamed, a masculine version of Manon’s most

furious, throw-her-head-back, spread-her clawed hands scream. He no

longer wore his amulet. While Richard had kept Manon from leaping to

Penelope’s death, Lance had dropped his own talisman over their beloved’s

head, expelling Manon—and leaving himself vulnerable to Manon’s

possession.

Richard lunged for Penelope’s original amulet, on its nail.

It repelled him.

“I hate you all!” The words tore from Lance’s voice, an eerie mix of his

deeper voice with Manon’s shrill fury. “I wish you all dead!”

“Too late!” Richard reminded her, easing between Lance and the

window. “I died soon after you did.”

“I . . .” Lance staggered back, his handsome face now taking on a

purse-lipped, eye-slanted cast remarkably similar to the spoiled girl. “I am
not

dead
!”

“Yeah.” Penelope managed to stagger to her feet and reclaimed the

second amulet herself. She started toward Lance—Manon—slowly,

readying to drop the thing over his head. “You are. You have to stop hurting

people. Your eternal peace lies in leaving this—”

But Lance’s body spun, bolted across the attic. Richard lunged after

him. So did Penelope.

They were too late.

With a crash, Lance’s body leapt through and out the opposite window.

“NO!” I SCREAMED. I tried to grab Lance, but Manon was too fast for

that. Glass broke. She screamed with his voice, and then—worse—their

scream cut off.

I flung myself half out that window, catching my balance on the sill

with one hand.

My former boyfriend sprawled on the walk, below. Even as I stared

downward, Dawn and Teddy came running, Teddy dialing something on his

cell phone.

“No,” I whispered, my horrified gaze meeting Dawn’s as she looked up

at me then laid her jacket over Lance’s twisted, deathly still shoulders.

I couldn’t bear her gaze. I drew back inside and stood there, trying to

catch my breath, trying to reorient myself to owning my own body again.

The body that Lance had given back to me . . .

At the cost of his own.

“She’s gone,” offered Richard, and my head snapped up. “I can’t feel

her anymore. She’s always been a presence I could sense, ever since my

death trapped me here. But now she’s gone.”

“At what cost?” I asked, my tone grim.

“You cared for him more than you thought.”

When I looked up, I saw the pain in Richard’s eyes, a pain I immediately

wanted to allay until I saw the expression fading.

Richard didn’t seem as solid as he should.

I reached for him, and he stumbled back from me. Stupid protective

amulet!

I tore off the amulet that Lance had used to save my life and let it fall on

the floor. I reached for Richard again, needing his comfort, needing his

presence.

My hand went right through his, just as when the others had been

watching. He was turning transparent, losing his corporeality.

“Richard . . .” I whispered.

“Apparently,” he told me, his eyes gentle, “Your friend was right.

Manon’s ghost held me here. Now that she has moved on, so must I.”

Panic clawed at my throat, my chest. “I don’t want you to.”

“Nor do I. And yet . . .” He spread his arms, shrugged. “I’ve had more

happiness than I deserve already.”

“No! You had to do what you did, to stop her magic, to stop the storm.

I know. I saw it. I saw
her
. What you did took a courage I’m not sure I have.

Just like—” I looked toward the window and then looked quickly back at

Richard. There would be time to grieve them both.

I stepped very close to him, so close that if I stumbled, we would

intersect, coexist again. It would only make him seem less real. And that was

already becoming unbearable.

At least I could search his handsome face. “I don’t know how to say

goodbye.”

A smile creased his half transparent face, now only as visible as a

reflection in a car window. “Then don’t.”

His words sounded faded, too, but they carried weight. This time, I

didn’t have to share that with anybody else.

Too soon, too
soon
! There were so many things unsaid. He didn’t even

know . . . did he? Had I managed to convince him of how I felt?

“I will always hold you in my heart, Richard Pemberley!” I called,

desperate.

The hint of him leaned nearer, his lips pursing—

And I brushed my own lips across the space where his had been.

I WANTED TO crumple to the attic floor and weep, but this had been my

party, my responsibility. So I managed to stagger downstairs to join my

friends . . .

“I can’t
tell
if he has a pulse,” Teddy was exclaiming into his cell phone,

while Dawn, for once not dancing anywhere, laid a blanket from Teddy’s

truck across our friend’s deathly still form, as if it mattered now if he kept

warm.

When the ambulance and authorities arrived, the EMTs started CPR

and started pumping air through a mask with a ventilation bag, but you

could tell even as they loaded my ex-boyfriend’s remains into the ambulance

and left, full sirens-and-lights, that they were just going through the

motions. Lance had dropped from an
attic
. He was gone.

The rest of us answered the authorities’ questions honestly—they

thought we were insane, but at least we were consistent. Nobody got sent to

a mental hospital.

Hooray for government budget cuts, right?

I considered searching the house again, but it was a crime scene now.

Still, I couldn’t leave. Not yet.

“He might come back,” I explained—and I wasn’t talking about Lance.

I could see the pity on my friends’ faces, and I didn’t care.

Teddy went on to the hospital to make arrangements for Lance’s body.

Dawn stayed with me at Sorrow’s End.

I told her everything that had happened in the attic, and she nodded or

growled as required. When finally I agreed to leave with her, it felt like giving

up on Richard. Giving up on love. But seriously—had it ever been mine to

lose?

She insisted on driving, which is good. My tears snuck up on

me—stealth crying. Then a sob hit, and another, faster and faster until

Dawn pulled over and held me, and I fell into awful, agonized pieces. Lance

was dead, partly because of me.
And Richard
—

Should I feel guilty that I mourned the man who’d died over a century

ago more than I mourned the one who’d died this morning?

I could breathe only through my mouth when the hospital called.

“We have an injured man asking for you,” explained the nurse. “A

Lance Griffin. He says he fell out of a house . . . can you come?”

What the hell?!
Lance was alive?!

While she drove the streets of Galveston like our own version of
Grand

Theft Auto,
Dawn had me call Teddy. He knew even less than us, admitting

that he’d gotten lost in the warren of the hospital and had only just left the

morgue with no word of Lance.

“He’s alive?!” he exclaimed, as thrilled as I wished I felt. “If I still can’t

find him, I’ll meet you at reception, okay?”

The whole time, my brain skipped across a jumble of hopes and fears.

Fear: What if it wasn’t Lance at all?
What if it was Manon?!
But Manon

was what had stolen away Richard. So hope: it was Lance.

Dawn screeched around corners and slid into a parking space outside

the ER so fast that it threw me against the passenger side door. Our sudden

stop made our seatbelts yank us back.

I escaped the car, reminding myself that even if Lance had survived

until now, that might not mean his injuries couldn’t kill or cripple him. This

might not be miraculously good news.

I’d started to feel as if good news didn’t exist.

It was Dawn who asked at the front desk about our friend. Teddy

found us and wrapped his arms around her as the receptionist answered. We

were told Lance had been rushed to surgery on the fourth floor on his

arrival. What followed that information was a kind of scavenger hunt for

information, with us sent from one clerk or nurse to another, then another,

trying to find the right wing, the right room—the truth!

“Only one person can go back until we transfer him into his room,” a

nurse told us when we finally reached recovery. “Is one of you a Ms.

Hamilton?”

I stepped forward. “Me.”

“Hey.” Before I could leave them, Teddy lifted his protection amulet

up over his head and dropped the leather thong over mine. I smiled weakly.

So I wasn’t the only person who’d had the crazy idea that this could be

Manon Boulanger. “Be straight with him, ‘kay?”

I nodded.

Because he was in recovery, only a half-closed green curtain gave

Lance’s rolling bed some privacy. But when I ducked past, it really was

Lance, his sooty eyelashes on the dark shadows under his eyes as he slept,

his head wrapped, his arm in a cast. Various wires and tubes spidered off of

him. A monitor beside the bed, scrolling with numbers, chirped a steady

beep, beep, beep
.

He lived.

“Hey, Pal,” I whispered. Buddy. Friend.
Compadre
. Begin as you mean to

end. Be kind.

But then his eyes opened

They must have him on a helluva lot of painkillers, I thought. He

seemed mellow. Different.

His eyes seemed steadier than before. Calmer. They crinkled into a tired

smile, strangely different—and yet strangely familiar. Instead of flashing his

usual, everybody-loves-me grin, Lance’s mouth quirked in quiet

appreciation.

“Hello,” he said. “Penelope.” And the formal lilt to the way he said my

name . . .

I stumbled.

His good hand caught mine, steadied me. The concern on his bruised

face was also familiar.

But it wasn’t Lance’s kind of concern!

“Are you well?” he asked, his voice Lance’s but his words somewhat