The Taking (36 page)

Chris didn’t move and Regan looked back at him. He was just staring at Felix.

“Chris! Go downstairs.”

He blinked and shook his head. “Right. Sorry. It’s just ... it’s like, how can that be real? How is that even possible? But it is and I’m going right now to find a book. Uncrossing. Got it.” He put his hands out and repeated the words several times as he left the room.

Regan circled Felix, murmuring, “It’s okay. We’re going to get you out of this somehow. I’m here.” She wanted to touch him, wanted to stroke her hands across his blood-stained face and reassure him, ease his pain somehow. But she knew if she reached out, she would get slammed to the ground again.

“I love you,” she told him, moving all around him in a slow circle, too agitated to stand still. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I had no faith in what I couldn’t see. You mentioned once that I try hard to be perfect for everyone, to please everyone but myself, and you were right. I try to be perfect because I’m afraid that if I’m just me, it’s not good enough. That no one will love me.”

That was her legacy of being the child who survived, she knew that. And it was a pattern she wanted to break, a limitation she didn’t want to place on herself.

“But you do, don’t you? You love me just the way I am, and I didn’t believe in that. When you told me the truth about who you are, it was like confirmation to me that if you were making up a crazy story about immortality, everything else you said and did was suspect too. That you couldn’t possibly just love me, flaws and all, unless you were crazy. My fears, made real.”

Silent tears were running down her cheeks, and she ignored them, just concentrated on walking one foot in front of the other around him so she could reassure herself that he was still breathing. “I don’t know if you still want me or not. I don’t know how a man who is going to live forever can possibly want to be with a woman who is going to age and die, but I want whatever time is possible with you. Please tell me you want that too.”

“Yes.”

Regan stopped walking. He had answered her. She was positive of it. Yet when she looked at his face, nothing had changed. He still stared sightless at the floor, his mouth not moving. But she was absolutely certain he had replied to her question with a solid yes, and that made her almost giddy with relief.

Felix was alive in there, and somehow, he had found the ability to reach out and communicate with her, to reassure her.

So she wanted to reassure him in return. Her voice rang with the conviction she felt. “Then I’m going to get you down from this contraption and we’re going to be together.”

When Chris came skidding back through the door, his arms full of various items, Regan knew she could do this. She would break this spell and bring Felix back to her. This was her life, Felix’s life. Not Camille’s. Not Beau’s.

Felix had told her that voodoo spells were real if you believed in them. She would believe.

“Give me the book,” she told Chris.

“I found something in this one.” He handed it to her. “I bent the page back. And I got the candles and the grain it says you need.”

Regan sat on the edge of Felix’s bed and opened the book. She quickly skimmed the spell, then went into action. “Read the steps to me as I do them so I don’t have to keep looking at the book.”

She made a circle on the floor in front of Felix with the jar of grain Chris had brought up. Over that she dusted rose petals. Glancing up at Felix again, she wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt and drew two intersecting lines across the circle.

Heart pounding, hand shaking, she drew a smaller circle inside the first, then placed a candle in the center, and one on either side as Chris read the instructions out loud.

“Which direction is east?” she asked Chris as she read the directions. She was supposed to light east first, but standing in Felix’s apartment, the urgency of the situation pressing on her, she couldn’t say with any certainty which way was what.

“I ... I’m not sure.” Chris was staring at Felix, swallowing hard, his hold on the book going slack. Then he pulled himself together and looked out the window of the bedroom, muttering to himself, “The river is there, the expressway is there, Canal Street is there ... east is towards the window.”

“You’re sure?”

Chris went a little pale, but he nodded. “I’m sure.”

Regan held out her hand. “Let me have your lighter.”

He dug it out of his pocket, and Regan lit the candle closest to the east, then the others, murmuring her petition under her breath. “Release Felix, uncross this evil, break these invisible bonds.”

She stared at the candles, their undulating flames tiny yet bright and strong in the fading sunlight. They swayed and moved as Regan stood still and prayed to whoever or whatever might be listening to undo the evil that had been done to Felix, to bring him back to her so she could tell him she loved him.

The room sharpened around her, her breathing loud and harsh to her ears, the smell of the burning candles mixing in an overwhelming jumble of scents, and Regan thought she heard whispering. Darting her eyes around the circle, she couldn’t tell where the voices were coming from, or what they were saying, but it seemed like they bounced, in a circle, from candle to candle, a chorus of whispers, and Regan felt like it was time.

She left the circle and took a step toward Felix.

“I’m going to touch him again,” Regan told Chris. “Watch out in case I go flying again.”

But this time when she dragged in a breath for courage and stepped forward, she stayed standing. Her trembling fingers made it all the way up to Felix, and she touched the sweat-soaked skin of his shoulder, felt the heat of his flesh, felt the clammy dampness covering him. Her own shoulders slumped in relief.

“Felix,” she whispered.

Moving in front of him, Regan wrapped her arms around his middle, feeling the tightness of his muscles, hearing the labored pain of his breathing. Giving him a hug, she sighed, then forced herself to focus. She didn’t know how long she had, so she tugged as hard as she could on his body.

He dropped so suddenly, she didn’t have time to react, and they wound up on the floor, him on top of her, her hip slamming into the wood with a sharp jolt of pain. His dead weight was compressing her, and she had cracked her head, but she didn’t care. She just needed to know he was okay.

“Felix, answer me.” Regan ran her fingers over his back, wiping the sweat from his brow, everything but her hands immobile from his weight pinning her.

He shifted, and his eyes focused on her. “I love you,” he said.

Regan gave a sob of relief. “Are you okay?” she asked, staring at him, watching his blue eyes shadowed with pain.

Nodding, he rolled off of her and lay on his side. “I’m fine.”

“What was that?” she asked. “You were just hanging there.”

“Punishment,” he told her. “It is what it is. I’m fine.”

Regan reached over and kissed him, hard. “It’s not fine. He can’t do this to you.”

Felix stared at her, eyes questioning. “Why did you come here? What day is today?”

“It’s April 20th. Is that what you mean? And I’m here because I realized that what you told me is the truth, and I love you. I had to make sure you were okay.” A sob choked out before she could stop it. “And you weren’t okay.”

“Shh.” Felix brushed his thumb over her lip. “I am okay now. Thank you. For believing me, for loving me, for rescuing me.”

Regan swallowed hard, determined not to lose it. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? This is impossible to believe and I understand why you had to break things off.”

The last few weeks alone had been so empty, so awful, and Regan wanted to know that Felix just wanted her, in whatever way. “I ... I want to be with you if you still want to be with me.”

“I do. More than anything.” Felix gave her a soft smile. “And I need to deal with Alcroft so that we can be together.”

He stood up, wincing, and moved gingerly to his dresser, where he pulled out clean clothes. “I’m going to shower and go have a meeting with him.” He glanced toward the door, and nodded to Chris, who was hovering with the book still in his hand, sucking hard on a cigarette. “I want you to go with Chris back to his house.”

Regan stood up too, pain shooting through her hip. She was worried about Felix’s plans, her palms sweaty, heart racing. “You’re going to confront him? I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“I have to.” Felix held his clothes with one hand, his other moving to his face to wipe sweat off his brow.

Regan wasn’t sure how much Felix knew, if he knew the purpose behind Beau marrying her. The words made her feel sick, but she needed to make sure he understood. “But it’s him, you know, he is the one who is trying to force Camille into me, so that he can be with her again.”

“I know. Which is why I need to do this. I have to make sure you’re safe, do you understand? It’s not fair to Camille either... she doesn’t want to be here.”

Regan thought of the pained plea on the video, Camille speaking through her. “No, she doesn’t. But what is he going to do to you?”

Felix just gave her a jaded smile. “There’s nothing he can do to me that he hasn’t already done. I have to do the right thing, Regan.”

What the hell was she supposed to say? She was steeped in a fluid world she didn’t understand, where she had no power and no knowledge, yet she was terrified something would happen to Felix. Something horrific beyond anything she could ever imagine.

“Be safe,” she whispered. “Call me as soon as you’re done.”

Then before she could change her mind and beg him to stay, to run away, to pretend none of this existed, she turned and fled the room, Chris on her heels, a wide-eyed stare on his face.

Felix watched Regan leave, then showered the grime off of himself in two minutes, and got dressed in clean clothes, wincing at the use of his fingers, still tender even though they were healing quickly. Having his nails torn out had been a new form of torture, a layer of pain and humiliation laid down over the agony of that brutal stretching sensation. His body still hurt everywhere, battered and screaming in protest with each step he took, but he tried to ignore it.

What was human pain when before the day was over he was going to die?

Regan argued with Chris. “No, I need to go to the house! You can come with me if you like, or you can go home. But either way, I’m going home.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” Chris kept pace with her on the sidewalk, puffing madly on a cigarette. “Did you see what we’re dealing with here? This is intense. This is freaky shit. Come home with me and wait for Felix to call you.”

Except that Regan’s greatest fear was that Felix wasn’t going to call her. That something horrible was going to happen to him before he could stop it.

Which was why she was not going to sit around passive and worried, but instead was going to take action. “No.” She was fast-walking, and she turned quickly onto her block, digging in her pocket for her house keys.

“At least let me get Nelson’s camera. We can be back here in half an hour.”

“You go ahead. Meet me back here.”

“Don’t do anything,” he warned. “We want this recorded so Felix can see it if anything happens. And wait outside in the courtyard.”

“Of course.” She had no intention of waiting outside, but if it got rid of Chris, she would agree to anything. Regan crammed the key in the gate of her courtyard. Her courtyard. This was her house, her life, damn it. No one, dead or alive, had the right to manipulate it.

Running up the curving stairs, Regan paused on the Juliet balcony, hands on the railing, looking down at the spot where Camille had died. “Camille,” she whispered. “Tell me how to free you.”

There was no answer, not even a breeze stirring the foliage of her trees and potted bushes.

Frustrated, she tried the French doors into her bedroom and was surprised they were unlocked. Then again, that night she had left she hadn’t exactly been in a coherent frame of mind. Stepping in, she left the doors open behind her to air the stuffy room out.