The Lost Enchantress (18 page)

“You did all the work.”

“I don’t know about that. I do know that if not for you I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do or how to do it. I guess I owe you one.”

“And I’m guessing you don’t like owing me.” He straightened suddenly. “So I’ll give you a chance to settle up—have dinner with me and we’ll call it even.”

“Hazard, are you asking me for a date?”

“I’m asking you to allow me to call for you, escort you to dinner and return you safely home.”

“Sounds like a date to me.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Was that a yes?”

“No.”

His eyes narrowed. “A no?”

“Oh, no. I didn’t mean it was a no, just no it wasn’t a yes.”

“So . . . it’s a no and a yes?”

“Actually, it was more of an ‘I really don’t think that’s such a good idea, but thanks for asking.’ ”

He stepped closer to her, a lot closer, and with the car at her back Eve had nowhere to go.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, his voice dark and silky.

“Should I be?”

“Probably.”

“Then why on earth would I have dinner with you?”

“Because you have questions, and I have answers. And because even if you are afraid, you’re not a coward.” He peered down at her, closer to looking amused than she’d seen him. “Or are you?”

“Dinner would be lovely.”

“Tomorrow night.”

“I’ll check my schedule.”

He smirked.

She caved.

“Fine. Tomorrow night. But there’s no need to call for me. Just name the restaurant and I’ll meet you there.”

He shook his head. “My date, my rules. When you invite me to dinner, I’ll let you make the rules.”

“Gee, how sporting of you.” She sighed. “Do you need directions?”

“No.”

“Of course not. What was I thinking?”

“Eight o’clock?” he suggested.

Eve nodded. “I’ll be the one with bells on.”

“I’ll look forward to seeing that.” His tone was dry, and a small smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he lightly swept her hand aside and opened the car door for her.

“Thank you,” she said. It was impossible not to be struck by how attentive he was, making sure she was in and settled before saying good night and closing the door.

He remained in the street, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking on as she started the engine, and then just before she pulled away, almost as an afterthought, he stepped forward and tapped on the window. When Eve lowered it, he lifted his hand as if to give her something and she instinctively held hers out to take it.

Without saying a word he dropped the pendant in her palm and walked away.

H
e walked into the house as Taggart was coming down the hall from the kitchen.

“Looks like I missed out on an exciting night hereabouts,” he said to Hazard by way of greeting. “Tried to set fire to the kitchen table, did you?”

“Not me. That’s Eve Lockhart’s handiwork. She was here earlier.”

Taggart’s whiskered face lit with glee. “She came to sell you the pendant.”

“No. She came looking for it.”

“Looking for it? Why would she be coming here looking for it when she’s the one . . .” His brows shot up and his eyes widened. “She lost it?”

“Not exactly. It disappeared from where she had it hidden. She was convinced someone stole it, and that brought her straight here.”

“She thought it was you who took it?”

“Yes. And her niece along with it.”

He grinned suddenly. “You sly devil, you did . . . you pinched it. The pendant, I mean. Can’t see you bothering to make off with a niece or anything else of hers. But stealing the pendant back, now that would be a grand coup indeed.”

Hazard scowled at the thought of just how close he’d come to that grand coup. And he hadn’t needed to break into her home or deal with any wards or protection spells to do it. He’d had the pendant in his hand because Eve Lockhart herself had placed it there; she’d handed it over, and then, as difficult as it was for him to believe, even now, she’d forgotten all about it. He could have walked away with it so easily. Even if she had remembered at some point and asked for it back, he could have lied. He could have said he lost it, that it had fallen out of his pocket. He could have apologized and looked concerned and promised to come back and help her search for it at first light.

But he hadn’t done any of that.

Instead of seizing the moment and taking advantage of her lapse and walking away with the prize he’d been seeking for so long, a prize that should have been his already and but for her trickery
would
have been, instead of taking what he wanted, he’d given it back to her. At the last moment he’d stopped her from driving off without it and handed it back to her.

“No, I didn’t take it,” was all he said to Taggart, who heaved a disappointed sigh, like a father finding out he has a dullard for a son.

“Then who did? Vasil?”

“No, it wasn’t Vasil,” Hazard told him. “It turns out her missing niece took it . . . borrowed it, in her words.”

“Well, it’s a shiny enough trinket; I can see how it might catch a young girl’s fancy.”

“Not this girl,” Hazard declared, his mouth quirking as he recalled Rory’s confident grin as she came sailing over that fence. “This one has moxie, but she seems more calculating than fanciful.

She mentioned it being a family talisman, said something about using it to tell if a man’s heart was true.”

Taggart snorted. “Sounds like a young girl’s romantic drivel to me.”

“Maybe. Eve cut her off before she could say more.”

“So it’s Eve now, is it? Tell me, did
Eve
happen to tell you why she waited till she got here to scry? Would have made more sense to do it first thing.”

“It never occurred to her until I suggested it. She didn’t even know how.”

“Is that so?”

“I had to walk her through it . . . until she came into her own, that is, and then . . . well, you saw the result.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “It was like the room exploded with energy . . . sent me flying and sparks shooting off in every direction.”

“Amazing,” drawled Taggart. “Bloody amazing . . . it being her first time and all.”

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“That there’s a sucker born every minute and a woman born to take him?”

“That’s not what happened.”

“So you believe her then?”

“I’m not saying I believe her,” Hazard countered. “I’m not an idiot; I know it doesn’t make sense. How could so powerful a witch not know how to scry for someone? There’s something . . . wrong about her. Something I can’t quite figure out. Hell, I can’t even put my finger on it exactly. She obviously has power, but she denies it . . . vehemently at times. I know she used her magic against me at the auction, and she knows I know, and she still denies it.”

He paced a few steps to the bottom of the staircase, rubbed his hand along the banister and looked around. “And then there’s this house. It was your sixth sense for these things that brought us to Providence and led us to believe the house was somehow linked to the hourglass pendant. Tonight I found out it’s also linked to Eve. Her grandmother once owned this house and Eve lived here as a child. And she still feels a strong connection to it. I could tell that from watching her face and listening to her voice when she spoke of it.”

Taggart moved to stand in front of him.

“She lived here? In this house?” he asked, his tone urgent. “You’re sure of it?”

“That’s what she said.” He thought for a few seconds and added, “And I believe her.”

“I thought you said you looked into her background.”

“I did,” replied Hazard. “But apparently not back far enough.”

“You can say that again. Come with me,” Taggart said, moving toward the front door. “I’ve something to show you that just might explain what’s
wrong
with your witch.”

Curious, Hazard followed him outside, across the porch and down the steps to the brick walk. Taggart stepped onto the grass beside the walk and pointed at a flat stone embedded in the earth at his feet.

“I noticed this as I was coming up the walk; never noticed it before tonight, though. Have you?”

“No,” Hazard admitted, hunkering down for a closer look. Between the moon and the porch globe there was just enough light to see the marks on the stone.

“Course you didn’t, because it was covered up with dirt and twigs and such. Until tonight. Until someone uncovered it. And I don’t think it’s any mystery who that someone was.”

“Eve.”

“Had to be.”

“So what? She probably remembered it being there and wanted to see if it still was, so she kicked the dirt aside. If that means something more, I don’t know what it is.”

“Take a closer look,” Taggart urged, crouching beside him and tapping his finger on the marks etched into the stone. “Do you know what these are?”

“Runes,” Hazard replied. “Celtic from the look of them, though I can’t recall seeing these particular marks before. Protection symbols most likely.”

“Bloody right they’re protection symbols. Powerful ones. And special. The kind you don’t dare use unless you’ve a right to them.”

“So Eve comes from power,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t need some old stone to tell me that.”

“That’s not all this stone is telling you. You said you sensed there was something wrong with your green-eyed witch, something off about her.” He jabbed his finger in the air, pointing. “There’s your answer. What’s off is that she’s not a witch at all. Eve Lockhart is an enchantress.”

Hazard stared at him and then gave a short laugh, straightening. “That’s impossible.”

“Is that so? Do you even know the damn difference?”

“Of course I do.”

“What is it?”

“For God’s sake,” he snapped. Then, sighing, “A witch draws power from the world around her, from nature. An enchantress’s power lies within; it’s in her blood.”

“And in her heart,” added Taggart. “In every breath she takes. It’s stronger than anything any witch could ever summon, and harder to control. If someone was new to the art, or unschooled, things might happen without her intending them to. From what you’ve said, it sounds to me like that could be happening to your Eve.”

“She’s not my Eve,” he retorted, more sharply than called for.

“Sorry. Slip of the tongue. But it fits, doesn’t it?”

“Possibly. But you’re forgetting one crucial detail. Enchantresses are the dinosaurs of the magic world: extinct.”

“
Nearly
extinct,” corrected Taggart. “It’s said the T’airna line endures to this day.”

“Really?” His tone was beyond skeptical. “I’ve spent years researching magic in all its loathsome and manipulative guises, reading ancient, barely decipherable texts until I thought my eyes would fall out, and chasing down one false lead after another, and I’ve learned that just because a thing is
said
to be doesn’t make it so.” He slapped one palm against the other to knock off some bits of dirt and grass. “And even if there were a few stragglers around, their blood would be so diluted they wouldn’t possess a shadow of the power of a true enchantress.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Taggart argued. “It’s not science; it’s magic. Some things can’t be diluted. Or ended.” He folded his arms in front of him, his expression bright and stubborn. “There’s a prophecy, you know. About a lost enchantress. Did you happen to come across that in all that eyeball-popping reading of yours?”

“I’ve seen references to it. But if you’re asking if I’ve ever read the actual prophecy, the answer is no. Not that it would be likely to help much; the damn things are always so vague and mysterious.”

Hazard shoved his hands in his pockets and stared down at the stone.
Lost enchantress.
It was ridiculous. When it came to false prophets and wild imaginations, the mystical world had more than its fair share of both.

Still.

“What do you know about the prophecy?” he asked Taggart. Simply to humor him, he told himself.

“Just bits I’ve picked up here and there. Not much for ancient texts myself. I’ve heard that it predicted their demise of power and that it could only be restored by the Lost Enchantress . . . one born to be the most powerful enchantress in a millennium and lost to the art by her own deed.”

“See? Vague and mysterious.”

“Like I said, it’s not science. Not every answer comes from a book, or from up here—” He tapped his temple with his forefinger. “Some you have to find here,” he declared, making a fist and thumping it against his heart. As he brushed past Hazard on his way back inside, he muttered under his breath, “Assuming it’s not too late to thaw yours out and have a look around.”

Hazard followed at a safe distance. He’d heard all he wanted to hear about telltale runes and ridiculous prophecies. What had started out to be a simple task—obtaining the pendant—had somehow become thorny and complicated. And he was to blame because he was the one who’d let it happen. Now he was going to be the one to put a stop to it. He was going to get his plan back on track, and that meant getting
himself
back on track too. It was a matter of focus and willpower. It would be simple, he told himself.

And he might have believed it if not for Taggart stomping up the steps ahead of him. Hazard couldn’t help noticing the socks he was wearing.

They were blue.

 

 

“I guess we should talk,” said Rory.

Eve pulled herself from thoughts, and second thoughts, about Hazard. Such as why he had invited her to have dinner with him, and why she’d accepted. She focused instead on what she wanted to say to Rory. She would have liked more time to think it through, but getting it over with now was better than waiting until they got home and risk having Grand get involved in answering the questions Rory was sure to ask. She was going to have enough trouble parsing her own words without having to rein in the loose cannon who was her grandmother.