The Lost Enchantress (14 page)

Someone would have to have lead her to it. Someone who knew Eve had the pendant and could have found out where she lived as easily as where she worked and random details about her family. The house itself was warded against intruders—more of Grand’s handiwork that she’d ignored because no one else knew about it—but the wards wouldn’t have prevented Rory from letting someone in, someone glib enough to talk his way around any obstacle, someone attractive in a brooding rock-star way sure to appeal to a fifteen-year-old, someone who might even have claimed to be a friend of the “World’s Best Aunt.” And if that someone was able to sense where the pendant was hidden and had the power to either charm or force Rory to do his bidding . . .

Now it was time to worry. Eve banged the cabinet door shut and hurried back to where she’d dropped her things when she arrived home. She pulled Hazard’s card from her purse to find his address and went cold inside, suspicion mushrooming into full-blown fear.

Hazard lived at 128 Sycamore. That was Grand’s old house, the house she’d grown up in, the place she’d first tasted the thrill and power and deadly evil that was magic. After the fire, the house had eventually been sold and the damage repaired, but Eve had never been back to see it. She made a point to never even drive down Sycamore Street, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t far from where she lived now.

She was afraid to go back. She feared that seeing the house again would set loose a torrent of memories of that night, memories of heat and panic and the awful sounds of sirens and screams and tears. Chloe’s. Grand’s. Her own. It had taken years to build a wall strong enough to hold back those memories and keep them from crushing her. She never wanted to go back there and risk having that wall crumble around her.

Now she had no choice. She had no idea how or why he’d come to live in that house, but she refused to believe it was mere coincidence. Her fear that Rory was in danger ratcheted up another notch. She had to find her and the obvious place to start was with Hazard.

She drove to Sycamore Street as if there were no speed limit, parked across the street from Grand’s house,
his
house now, and stared at it. She fully expected to be bombarded by bad memories and wanted to get the ordeal over with right away, preferably while sitting in the relative privacy of her own car.

Outside was twilight, inside was silence and she could feel dark thoughts hovering all around her. But to her surprise instead of closing in, they were held at bay by all the other memories that came flooding back, happy memories, a long sweet, unexpected rush of them. She remembered sitting on the front porch steps and blowing soap bubbles with her mother, and learning to ride her first bike along the long narrow driveway, her father trotting alongside, pink plastic streamers flying from her handlebars, and the rainy-day joy of curling up with a book in the window seat in the sunroom.

And she remembered how Grand’s roses looked in summer and the quiet buzzing of the honeybees they attracted and how the sweet, safe scent of them saturated the air so that even with her eyes closed she could have found her way home.

Home.

Suddenly the scent of roses was all around her, calming and comforting her. Olfactory recall, she thought with a smile as she closed her eyes and drank it in until there was no room for fear.

“Thanks, Grand,” she whispered, releasing a final breath and reaching for the door handle.

She crossed the street slowly, wanting time to study the house.

The cosmetics had changed. Gone were the peeling paint and overgrown hedges of her childhood. But the bones of the house, all that the fire had failed to turn to ash, were the same. And achingly familiar to her. There was the same wide, wraparound front porch and the same lofty windowed turret standing sentry to all of Providence. She let her gaze climb higher, to where the raven should have been perched and was disappointed to see that the weather vane that had stood guard through blizzards and hurricanes was also gone. But even that loss was balanced by the paving stone remaining in place by the front steps, the Celtic protection runes chiseled into its surface, a bit worn by time and nature.

She’d once asked Grand what the ancient symbols meant.

“Enter here in peace or not at all,” Grand told her.

Apparently the stone’s power to ward off danger had also worn a little thin over the years, noted Eve, reaching for the heavy brass knocker on the front door.

Because she definitely had not come in peace.

Hazard answered the door too quickly, making her suspect he’d seen her coming. Or maybe he’d sensed she was near the same way she’d sensed him earlier. Whatever the reason, he didn’t look surprised to see her.

He greeted her with a small nod and a slow, satisfied smile that made Eve feel like the silly little canary to his big, shrewd cat. It was galling, and she purposely drew herself up and lifted her chin.

“Miss Lockhart. I’m glad to see you’ve decided to be sensible about this. For both our sakes.”

“Don’t get too excited, Hazard. I’m not here to sell you anything. I’m here to take back what’s mine.”

She stepped past him and kept going, crossing the foyer in a few long strides to peer into the sunroom that ran along the front of the house.

“Please, do come in,” he drawled in a sardonic tone as he closed the door. “And tell me what you’re talking about.”

Eve ignored the question, and him, and started down the hall in the direction of the living room, still moving quickly in case he was of a mind to stop her. Thankfully the layout of the house hadn’t changed, although even a quick glance revealed that the look was entirely different. There was no flowered wallpaper or drapes or comfy overstuffed seating. The walls and woodwork had been painted the same mellow shade of white, and the only window coverings were white pleated shades.

The furniture—what there was of it—was tasteful and understated, low-slung sofas dressed in crisp white slipcovers and dark, highly polished wood tables and accents. Except for the liquor bottles lined up on the marble bar, it felt more like a Pottery Barn showroom than a home. And what she found even more interesting was what wasn’t there: no photos, no books, no knicks or knacks of any kind anywhere. The Pottery Barn actually had more warmth and personality.

Most significantly, there was also no Rory. Eve wasn’t naive enough to think Hazard would stand by and allow her to barge in so easily if he had a kidnap victim sitting around in plain view, but she thought she might spot something belonging to Rory. Maybe even something she’d dropped intentionally as a clue for when Eve came looking for her. And Rory had to know that she would come looking . . . and keep looking until she found her. All she needed was one little clue to tell her she was searching in the right place.

And she wasn’t going to find it standing there. She was impatient to keep moving and search the rest of the house from top to bottom, but there was only one way out of the living room and Hazard was blocking it. He stood with his shoulder resting on the doorjamb, the sleeves of his black sweater pushed to the elbow, presenting a picture of calm indifference that was a stark contrast to her own tightly wound nerves. Then she noticed the tension in those nicely muscled forearms of his and the rigid set of his jaw and she realized he wasn’t as relaxed as he appeared. He reminded her of a tiger, still and silent and poised for the kill; she put her odds of sashaying past him a second time at negative something.

“Shall I roll back the rug so you can have a look under there as well?” he inquired, indicating the black and gold and burgundy Oriental. It was funny how his British accent made sarcasm sound so much more . . . sarcastic.

“Thanks, but that’s not necessary.”

“Beneath the seat cushions? Inside the chimney perhaps?”

Hmm. Either would make an excellent hiding place for the pendant, but the fact he’d suggested them meant it wasn’t there. Unless, she mused, he was using reverse psychology and intentionally dangling the truth in an attempt to mislead her.

Eve caught herself mid-conjecture and stopped. It didn’t matter what he was or was not dangling. All that mattered right now was Rory, and she wasn’t going to find
her
under a rug or a seat cushion.

She shook her head firmly to decline his offer.

“Good. In that case, perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me what’s going on.”

“The pendant is gone,” she announced, and took careful note of the reactions that flickered rapid-fire across his face: surprise, confusion, disbelief. They all appeared genuine, but he might just be a good actor, delivering a clever, even
magical
performance.

“What do you mean it’s gone?” he demanded, his deep voice taut. “Gone where?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me. That’s why I’m here.”

“Why would you think . . . ?” He stopped and frowned. “Are you saying you lost it? It’s been in your possession for less than a day and you’ve lost it?”

“Of course I didn’t lose it. It was taken from me. There’s a difference.”

“Not one that matters a rat’s ass,” he shot back. “What matters is that you don’t have it.” He bit off the last word, his expression darkening as if the reality of the situation was settling on him in stages. “And you think I do. That’s why you came here . . . you think
I
took it.”

“I think it’s possible. Either you or the warlocks; for all I know you’ve been working together all along.”

He glared at her in icy, arms-folded, jaw-clenched silence.

She folded her own arms and glared back. “The pendant’s not my biggest concern. I think whoever took it also took my niece.”

“I see. So you’re accusing me of not only breaking into your home and stealing from you, but also kidnapping a child while I’m at it.”

“Not a child exactly. Rory is fifteen.”

“Trust me,” he growled, “as far as I’m concerned that’s close enough. Do you really believe I’m capable of that?”

“I have no idea what you’re capable of,” Eve snapped. “I don’t know you. And I really don’t want to.”

Hazard stiffened, her words striking like darts. Emotions he hadn’t felt in a very long time were stirring inside him and he didn’t like it. Some of them he wasn’t sure he could even put a name to anymore; others, like anger, he knew intimately. Anger was both familiar and useful, though admittedly his usual brand was cold and controlled, not the seething, wild thing straining at the bit inside him now. Over the years he’d nourished his anger until it was more than a feeling, it was armor and motivation and, in a perverse way, comfort.

It was failing him now, however, because he didn’t feel either comforted or protected. He felt raw and exposed, with nothing to buffer him from the accusations that Eve Lockhart’s fiery green eyes were shooting at him. And nothing to shield himself from the maelstrom of other feelings she unleashed.

Damn witch.

This ridiculous ruckus inside him was her fault. She was to blame for the peculiar heaviness around his heart and the odd lump in his throat and the completely asinine way he was standing there as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him for no better reason than that she thought ill of him.

That was plain enough. And what did it matter that her reasoning was dead wrong? He hadn’t taken the pendant, and he certainly hadn’t kidnapped her niece . . . though he was thinking now that he should have. The pendant, not the niece.

Instead of wasting the morning tracking down Vasil and paying him to stay away from her, and then going to the trouble of bluffing his way into her office to try again to appeal to the common sense he now realized she was clearly lacking, he should have gone straight to her house, stolen the pendant and put an end to his misery. And spared himself all this nonsense in the bargain. But no, for some ungodly reason he hadn’t wanted to leave her with the belief that he was no better than Vasil’s henchmen. The longer he’d laid awake thinking about her, the more he’d found himself wanting to deal with her . . . honorably.

A fool never learns.

All that was irrelevant now. He knew he hadn’t stolen anything from her and that would have to be enough to satisfy his honor. In fact, when you got right down to it, she was the one who stole from him. If not for her bloody magic tricks he would have been the high bidder and walked away with the pendant. Instead, she’d pilfered it from him and then turned right around and lost it before he could pilfer it back. He was the injured party in all this. So why should it matter to him if she thought him a liar and a thief?

It shouldn’t. It
didn’t
. He refused to let it. It simply rankled to know that she was standing there, toe-to-toe with him, green eyes blazing and chin high, thinking exactly that. It rankled nearly as much as the ease with which she managed to twist him up inside and throw him off his game. It was humiliating. Not to mention dangerous. He couldn’t afford to be distracted now. Too much time and effort had gone into planning this, and everything hinged on him getting his hands on the pendant. He might never get a second chance, so the prospect of failure ought to be enough to command his undivided attention.

Witch
, he thought again, wishing it were that simple. Unfortunately, his turmoil had nothing to do with Eve Lockhart being a witch and everything to do with her being a woman.

The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, he thought for the second time. Others might disagree, but he knew it to be true. Everything about her pleased and tempted him. Just looking at her made him want to touch, and he knew that touching her would make him want everything. Would make him want all of her.

He wouldn’t take it all at once. Not that he would ever get the chance, but if he did he wouldn’t ravish her in a greedy rush, as much as his senses would rage and clamor for him to do just that. If he could, he would claim her in a hundred, no, a thousand small, excruciatingly slow bites. He would savor her as if they had all the time in the world, as if they had forever.