Something Wicked (24 page)

Ben’s excuse for a smile was even more lopsided than ever. “Good heart,” he whispered, before his eyes closed. Even if his partner would sell his own mother for publicity.

I was happy to let Ben be right about this one. Especially if Al could help me hide the grail without stealing it. He slipped it into his oversized camera bag when we got ashore—which meant leaving the cameras under a bush—muttering about the chance of rain.

The next hour became a blur of police and ambulances—and yelling, frustrated Italians. While we waited for word of Ben outside the emergency room, Al explained that he’d changed planes in London—when he could get his luggage—and headed back to Rome, both to keep an eye on his partner and in hopes of getting more of a story. That Ben had been using their corporate credit card the whole time made him pretty easy to track. Al saw Victor go into the cave after us, so he called the police.

I stopped pacing. “Why didn’t you come after us?”

Al stopped pacing, too. “Because Victor’s a psychotic killer? Was, anyway.”

I hoped he was right. The doctors managed to remove the knife and repair most of the damage that it had caused, and that’s what really mattered. Ben was going to be okay.

But nobody found Victor.

Not that day. Not the next.

“I think he’s dead,” said Ben, finally.

I’d come up behind him where he sat on a bench by the lakeshore, watching the
polizia
dredge Lago d’Averno. I wasn’t even sure he knew I was there, until he said that. He’d just gotten out of the hospital that morning. His arm was in a sling, to help keep him from pulling the stitches in his shoulder. He was on painkillers.

And he wasn’t magically bound to me anymore.

At least I’d had the distraction of Maggi Stuart’s long-distance help, arranging for me to carry the Hekate Grail to a place in England called Glastonbury. I was supposed to leave later this afternoon, but I hated to leave Ben, even with Al, until he had his answers. Or before I had mine.

Yeah, I’d won…more or less. And I definitely felt stronger now. But I didn’t feel triumphant. Diana was still dead. My world was still permanently changed.

And Ben had lost, too. In so many ways.

Without that subtle bond of the curse, I felt awkward around him. In a way, we were still strangers. Everything between us, up until now, had been colored by either magic or murder.

But I couldn’t just leave.

“What do you mean, you
think?
” I settled onto the grass by his feet so that I could lean on the bench, beside his thigh. That way I could comfortably watch him while he watched the lake. “I thought twins were psychically connected.”

Ben didn’t even go into a long explanation about that, which seemed especially sad. He just said, “The person I knew as Victor is definitely gone.”

“Are you sure you ever really knew him?”

Ben nodded, his dark eyes still focused on the boat. I wondered if he was hoping they would find a body—or hoping they wouldn’t. “Yeah, I really knew him. I knew a part of him I think was lost even to himself. He didn’t use the knife at first. Did you notice?”

I looked up, in time for Ben’s gaze to drop to mine, and he looked…stronger. More tired. More balanced.

Still Ben, of course. There was no chance that this might be Victor in disguise. But I couldn’t help thinking that Ben had found a little more of his power over the last few days, too.

“When we were fighting,” he clarified. “In the cave. Victor must have had the knife on him, but he didn’t use it on me.”

I reached up and touched his sling. “He used it on you.”

“Only after he saw the grail. That’s—” He swallowed, hard. “That’s when I really lost him. The sense of him, I mean.”

Oh, hell. More guilt. “Because of Hekate?”

To my relief, Ben shook his head. “Because of his need for power. I still think he was a victim, in his own way. He was injured when our parents died. Did you know that the majority of serial killers suffered frontal-lobe injuries as children?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t known that last part. But I wasn’t surprised that Ben did.

“Sure, he should have come with me, gone for help like we’d been told, instead of heading back into trouble…but he was only six. I could have tried harder to protect him.”

“You were only six, too.”

“Still, in the things he had some say over…he chose power over everything else. That’s what destroyed him.”

“And you. It almost destroyed you.”

Ben shrugged, then winced, probably from whatever pangs were caused by his injury. “That’s how it works. We’re brothers.”

And for the first time since Vic’s disappearance, it occurred to me just what that meant—what I’d been asking Ben to give up all along. Sociopath or not, Victor had been part of his life. They’d suffered the loss of their parents together, and even if Victor hadn’t reacted the same way, his presence had probably helped “Benny” not feel so alone. They’d had birthdays together for decades, a routine that Ben had now lost. If Victor really was dead, Ben had lost his brother at holiday dinners, had lost the chance of nieces and nephews, had lost all hope that maybe, just maybe, something could have saved the murderer who, all the same, shared his DNA and his history.

In comparison, I was lucky. Diana had left me with mostly happy memories.

I slid up onto the bench beside him, on his uninjured side. “We’ve both lost the last of our immediate family, haven’t we?”

Ben’s dark gaze sliced quickly over to me, suspicious, like maybe he expected me to gloat. Like I thought we were even now. I hadn’t meant it that way, though I guess I could understand….

“I just mean…I’m here for you. If you need me.”

He studied my face, then asked, uneven, “Like a sibling?”

It’s not like I’m the sort of woman really smart men seek out. On the other hand…I didn’t scare as easy as I used to. “Not like a sibling. Unless that’s what you want, I mean. If—”

“Shut up, Katie.” But Ben said that very softly, with a sad, lopsided smile. Then he kissed me….

And damned if I didn’t feel our immediate connection, curse or not. It was every bit as good, as slow, as tender as when we’d been linked by magical energies.

When Ben drew back, I almost slumped onto him, for wanting to not let him move away.

“Vic was right, wasn’t he?” he asked. “In the cave. You removed the curse before he ever drank from the grail?”

Before he ever went crazy and drowned himself?
I nodded, relieved.

So Ben kissed me again—not shy, not tentative, and not at all bewitched. “I guess you were right,” he whispered. “Everything
is
magic.”

So what we’d had together…was
real?

Ben looked back out at the lake, at the dying hope that he’d ever know what had happened to his brother. And I tried to make peace with what he’d just said, despite me having said it first.
Everything…?

Since my vision of Hekate, on the night of the full moon, that truth was becoming undeniable. Even sitting here, I could feel magic in the warmth of the Italian sun on my face, in the coolness of the lake water at the shore, in the scent of new spring grass under our feet. There was stabilizing magic in the earth, beneath us, and expansive magic in the sky, above us. There was the magic of beginnings, off to the east—
Greece,
I thought,
and Turkey
—and the magic of endings off to the west, where England waited, then home. If I reached out, with my fingers spread, I imagined that the magic would ripple around me, like when you trail fingers through water from a boat, or spread a hand out a car window to comb the wind.

Hekate was only as strong as her children. She needed my strength. That meant my happiness as well as my magic. And…daring.

“You’re going after the Comitatus, aren’t you?” I asked, after a while. I suppose I could have found that out with tarot cards or a scrying bowl, but truth is, it just made sense.

“To expose them, if nothing else.”

“Do you want help? From a witch, I mean?”

Ben asked, “Do
you
want help going after more goddess cups?”

I nodded. And Ben nodded. And that was that.

My gaze memorized the angle of his jaw, and the dark quickness of his deep-set eyes, and the way his hair fell in those wonderfully floppy black curls across his forehead, over his ears, along his collar. Then I followed his gaze to the lake. He hadn’t asked me for help in locating Victor’s body….

Taking slow, deep breaths, I tried to extend my awareness outward, seeking Victor. And I found…absolutely nothing.

The same nothingness that had greeted me when I tried to find Diana, the last few days—except when I thought to look inside myself.

It had to be enough.

And with the strength of Hekate inside me, and Ben beside me, you know what? It was.

More
than enough, in fact. Because we two were alive, and together. In more ways than one.

And I guessed that might be the best magic there is.

I should know, after all.

I’m a witch.

Don’t miss Evelyn Vaughn’s next book!

LOST CALLING, first of the
MADONNA KEY
stories,
will be available in July 2006
wherever Silhouette series books are sold.