Heaven and Earth (25 page)

“That’s probably why the control and philosophy come more naturally to her.” He struck a long wooden match, set it against the starter. “Your power’s more—I don’t know—explosive, while hers is more centered.”

He got to his feet as the flames began to lick, rubbed his hands on the hips of his jeans. “I’m trying to think how to approach what I want to tell you.”

A flock of sparrows dive-bombed in her stomach. “You could just say it.”

“I work better with a buildup.” He bent down to pour the wine. “I had it pretty well set in my head before tonight. But, first seeing you, understanding to some extent what you went through, what you feel, then being with you. Ripley.”

He sat beside her, handed her the wine, then touched the back of her hand. “I want you to know that it’s never been like it is with you. Not with anyone else.”

There were tears in her throat, and for the first time in her life she found the taste of them lovely. “It’s different for me.”

He nodded, felt a little hitch in his heart as he took that to mean she experienced intimacy differently because of what she was. “All right. Well, what I’m trying to say here is that because of what’s—” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Because you matter, because what’s between us matters to me, the rest of it is a little more complicated. I guess I’m concerned that, especially after I get into the rest, you might think you matter to me only because of my work. That’s not true, Ripley. You just matter.”

Everything smoothed out inside her, like silk brushed with a loving hand. “I don’t think that. I wouldn’t still be here if I did. I wouldn’t want to be here, and I do.”

He took her hand and, kissing her palm, sent a long, slow ripple sliding from her toes to her throat. “Mac . . .” she whispered.

“Originally I was going to tell Mia first, but I want to tell you.”

“I—you—Mia?”

“Theoretically, she’s the main connection. But it’s all linked, anyway. Plus I realized I needed to tell you first.” He kissed her hand again, somewhat absently this time, then sipped his wine like a man wetting his throat before preparing to lecture.

Her lovely mood went ragged at the edges. “I really think you’d better spit it out, Mac.”

“Okay. Each one of the sisters had children. Some stayed on the island, others left, never to return. And others traveled, married, then came back to the island to raise
their families. I imagine you know all that, and that their children did the same, and so on down the generations. As a result, some of their descendants have always remained on Three Sisters. But others scattered over the world.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“I’d probably be better off showing you. Hold on a minute.”

She watched him get up, then wind his way through the equipment. Hearing him curse lightly when he stubbed his toe gave her small, but vicious, satisfaction.

The son of a bitch, she thought, rapping her fisted hand on the cushion. He wasn’t about to pledge his undying love, to pour out his heart, to beg her to marry him. He’d circled right back around to his stupid research while she’d been sitting there starry-eyed.

And whose fault is that? she reminded herself. She was the one who’d gotten it all twisted up. She was the one who’d left herself open for the clip on the jaw.
She
was the stupid one, the one who’d gone all mushy with love and stopped thinking clearly. She would just have to fix that.

Not the love. She was a Todd and accepted that she loved him and always would. But she certainly could get her head on straight again and start thinking.

He was the one meant for her, so he was going to have to deal with it. Dr. MacAllister Booke wasn’t just going to study witches. He was damn well going to marry one. As soon as she figured out how to make him.

“Sorry.” He skirted the equipment more carefully this time. “It wasn’t where I thought I put it. Nothing ever is.” His expression changed with the glittering look she sent him. “Ah . . . Something wrong?”

“No, not a thing.” Playfully, she patted the cushion beside her. “I was just thinking it’s a waste to sit alone in
front of the fire.” When he sat, she slid her leg intimately over his. “Much better.”

“Well.” His blood pressure began a steady rise as she leaned in and rubbed her lips over his jaw. “I thought you’d want to read this.”

“Mmm. Why don’t you read it to me?” She nibbled lightly on his earlobe. “You have such a sexy voice.” She took the glasses out of his pocket. “And you know how turned on I get when you wear these.”

He made some sound, then fumbled the glasses on. “These are, ah, photocopied pages. I have the original journal in a vault, because it’s old and fragile. It was written by my great . . . well a number of greats, grandmother. On my mother’s side. The first entry was made September 12, 1758, and written on Three Sisters Island.”

Ripley jerked back. “What did you say?”

“I think you should just listen. ‘Today,’ ” he read, “ ‘my youngest child had a child. They have named him Sebastian, and he is hale and healthy. I am grateful Hester and her fine young man are content to remain on the island, to make their home and family here. My other children are so far away now, and though from time to time I look into the glass to see them, my heart aches that I am unable to touch their faces, or the faces of my grandchildren.

“ ‘I will never leave the island again.

“ ‘This, also, I have seen in the glass. I have time yet on this earth, and I know death is not an end. But when I see this beauty of life in this babe of my babe, I am saddened that I will not be here to see him grown.’ ”

He risked a quick glance at Ripley, saw she was staring at him as if she’d never seen him before. Best to finish it all, he told himself. Just get it all out at one time.

“ ‘I am saddened that my own mother did not choose life,’ ” he continued, “ ‘that she denied herself the joy I
have felt this day on seeing a child come from one of my own.

“ ‘Time moves swiftly. What comes from this boy will one day balance the scales, if our children remember and choose wisely.’ ”

Though she’d forgotten she held it, Ripley’s knuckles were white on the stem of her glass. “Where did you get this?”

“Last summer I was going through some boxes in the attic of my parents’ house. I found the journal. I’d been through those boxes before. I used to drive my mother crazy because I was always pawing through the old stuff. I don’t know how I missed it, unless you subscribe to the theory that it wasn’t there for me until last June.”

“June.” When a shudder worked through her, Ripley got to her feet. Nell had come to the island in June—and the three had linked. She sensed that Mac started to speak, and she held up a hand. She needed to focus.

“You’re assuming this was written by an ancestor.”

“Not assuming. I’ve done the genealogy, Ripley. Her name was Constance, and her youngest daughter, Hester, married James MacAllister on May 15, 1757. Their first child, a son, Sebastian Edward MacAllister, was born on Three Sisters Island. He fought in the Revolutionary War. Married, had children, settled in New York. The line runs down through my mother, and into me.”

“You’re telling me you’re a descendant of . . .”

“I have all the documentation. Marriage records, birth records. You could say we’re really distant cousins.”

She stared at him, then turned to stare into the fire. “Why didn’t you tell us when you first came here?”

“Okay, that’s a little sticky.” He wished she would sit back down, cuddle up against him again. But he didn’t think that was going to happen until they got through this.
“I thought I might have to use it as an incentive, a kind of bargaining chip.”

“Your ace in the hole,” she remarked.

“Yeah. If Mia put up roadblocks, I figured this information would be a good way to knock some of them down. But she didn’t, and I started to feel uncomfortable about withholding it. I was going to tell her tonight. But I needed to tell you first.”

“Why?”

“Because you matter. I realize you’re ticked off, but—”

She shook her head. “Not really.” Unsettled, she thought, but not angry. “I’d’ve done the same thing to get what I wanted.”

“I didn’t know you’d be here. You know what I mean. You. I didn’t know we’d be involved like this. I’m in what most people consider an illogical field. It’s only more essential to approach it logically. But under it, on a personal level, I’ve been pulled to this place all my life without knowing where it was that I was being pulled. Last summer I finally knew.”

“But you didn’t come.”

“I had to gather data, research, analyze, fact-check.”

“Always the geek.”

She sat on the arm of the couch. It was, he thought, a step. “I guess. I dreamed of the island. Before I knew where it was—or if it was—I dreamed of it. I dreamed of you. All of that was so strong, so much a part of my life, that I needed to approach it the way I’d been trained. As an observer, a recorder.”

“And what do your observations tell you, Dr. Booke?”

“I’ve got reams of data, but I don’t think you’d be interested in reading it.” She shook her head at his questioning look. “Right. But I’ve also got one simple feeling. That
I’m where I’m supposed to be. I have a part in this. I just don’t know, yet, exactly what it is.”

She was up again. “A part in what?”

“Balancing the scales.”

“Do you believe, in that detail-filing brain of yours, that this island is doomed to fall into the sea? How can you buy some centuries-old curse? Islands don’t just sink like swamped boats.”

“There are a number of respected scholars and historians who would argue that point, using Atlantis as their example.”

“Of which you would be one,” she said sourly.

“Yeah, but before you get me started on that and I bore you senseless, let me just say that there’s always room for less-than-literal interpretations. A force five hurricane, an earthquake—”

“Earthquake?” She’d felt the earth tremble under her feet. She’d
made
the earth tremble. And didn’t want to think of it. “Jesus, Mac!”

“You don’t want me to start on plates and pressure and shifts, do you?”

She opened her mouth, shut it again, and settled for shaking her head.

“Didn’t think so. I’ve got degrees in geology and meteorology, and I can get really boring. Anyway, put simply, Nature’s a bitch and she barely tolerates us.”

She studied him consideringly. Earnest, sexy, quiet. Somehow unshakably confident. Hardly a wonder that she’d fallen for him.

“You know what? I bet you’re not as boring when you get going as you think.”

“You’d lose.” Because he thought she would accept it now, he reached out to take her hand. “Heaven and Earth,
Ripley, do more than hold us between them. They expect us to deserve it.”

“And we have to decide how far we’ll go.”

“That pretty much wraps it up.”

She puffed out her cheeks, blew out a breath. “It gets harder to tell myself this is all crap. First Nell, then you, and now this,” she added glancing down at the copies of journal pages. “It starts to feel like somebody’s added bars to a cage, so there’s less and less chance of squeezing out again.”

She frowned down at the pages as another thought sprang into her head. “You’ve got a blood connection to the Sisters.” Her gaze flashed up to his. “Do you have magic?”

“No. Seems like a rip-off to me,” he said. “I may have inherited the interest, the fascination, but none of the practical usage.”

She relaxed and slid down on the seat beside him. “Well, that’s something at least.”

Fifteen

Mia read the
first journal entry while sitting at her desk in her office. A freezing rain had come in behind the wind and was now battering her window.

She’d dressed in bright, bold blue to dispel the gloom and wore the little stars and moons Nell had given her for her last birthday at her ears. As she read, she toyed with them, sending star colliding with moon.

When she’d finished the entry, she leaned back and studied Mac with amusement. “Well, hello, cousin.”

“I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.”

“I try to take things as they come. May I keep these a while? I’d like to read the rest of them.”

“Sure.”

She set the pages aside, picked up her latté. “It’s all so nice and tidy, isn’t it?”

“I realize it’s quite a coincidence,” he began, but she stopped him.

“Coincidence is often what tidies things up. I can trace my family back to its start on the Sisters. I know some stayed, some scattered. And I remember now, there was a MacAllister branch. The one son, among three daughters.
He left the island, survived a war, and began to make his fortune. Odd, isn’t it, that I didn’t think of that until now, or connect it with you? I suppose I wasn’t meant to. Still, I felt something for you. A kinship. That’s nice and tidy, too. And comforting.”

“Comfort wasn’t my first reaction when I put it all together.”

“What was?”

“Excitement. Descended from a witch and a silkie. How cool is that?” He broke off a piece of the applesauce muffin she’d urged on him. “Then I was pretty irked that I didn’t get any power out of the deal.”

“You’re wrong.” The affection and admiration in her voice nearly made him flush. “Your mind is your power. The strength and the openness of that mind make very strong magic. Stronger yet because it doesn’t close off your heart. We’ll need both.” She waited a beat. “She’ll need you.”

It gave him a jolt. Mia had said it so quietly, so simply. “Do me a favor and don’t mention that to Ripley. It’ll just piss her off.”

“You understand her, recognize all of her various flaws, numerous shortcomings, and irritating habits. But you love her anyway.”

“Yes, I . . .” He trailed off, set the muffin aside. “That was very sneaky.”

“I’d apologize, but I wouldn’t mean it.” Her laughter was too warm and soft to sting. “I thought you were in love with her, but I wanted to hear you say it. Can you be happy living on the island?”

He said nothing for a moment. “You really know her, don’t you? Ripley would never be happy anywhere else. So, yes, I can be happy here. I’ve been heading here all my life, in any case.”

“I like you, very much. Enough to wish, just a little, that it had been me you were meant for. And you,” she added when he looked slightly panicked, “who’d been meant for me. Since neither of those things is, I’m glad we can be friends. I think you’ll help each other find the best you can be.”

“You really love her, don’t you?”

For an instant, Mia’s calm ruffled. Color washed her cheeks, a rare occurrence. Then she shrugged. “Yes, nearly as much as I’m irritated by her. Now, I trust you’ll keep that to yourself as I keep your feelings to myself.”

“Deal.”

“And to seal it—” She rose and turned to the shelves behind her. She took down a carved wooden box and, opening it, removed a star-shaped pendant of silver, set with a sunstone.

“This has been in my family—our family,” she corrected, “since we began here on the Sisters. It’s said that she who was mine forged the pendant from a fallen star and the stone from a sunbeam. I’ve kept it for you.”

“Mia—”

But she only kissed him lightly and slipped the chain over his head. “Blessed be, cousin.”

Harding paid one
more visit to Evan Remington. His plans were set, his schedule outlined. But he felt it imperative to see Remington again before he left.

He felt an odd kinship with the man. The realization of it was both appalling and alluring to him. Remington was a kind of monster. And yet . . .

Didn’t all men have that beast lurking inside them? The
sane, the civilized—and Harding considered himself both—restrained it. Controlled it.

He supposed it only made those who did neither—who indulged it, kept it fed and ready—more fascinating.

He told himself that his regular visits to Remington were research. Business. But in truth, he had come to find those frequent brushes with evil thrilling.

We were all one step away from the pit, Harding thought, composing notes in his head as he waited to be admitted. Only by observing, by learning from those who had fallen, would we understand what waited for us on the other side of sanity.

Harding stepped into the visitation room, heard the echo of the lock. Is that the last sound we hear as we fall? he wrote in his head. The hopeless shooting of the bolt?

Remington wasn’t restrained this time. Harding had already been told that as part of his treatment and rehabilitation, Remington had been taken off full restraints. He’d exhibited no violence to others or himself and had been responsive and cooperative in recent sessions.

The room was small, and nearly empty. One table with two chairs. While the restraints were missing, Harding heard the bright jingle of chain from the cuff on Remington’s right wrist. There was a third chair in the corner, occupied now by a broad-shouldered, pasty-faced guard.

Security cameras recorded every sound and movement.

The pit, Harding thought, whatever name we gave it, offered no privacy and little comfort.

“Mr. Remington.”

“Evan.” Today you could hardly see the madness. “After all this, we can hardly be formal. I’ll call you Jonathan. Do you know, Jonathan, you’re the only one who comes to talk to me? They tell me my sister’s been here. But I don’t remember. I remember you.”

The voice was quiet but perfectly clear. Harding experienced a small inward shudder as he remembered just how Remington had looked and sounded on his first visit.

He was still thin, and too pale, his hair lank. But Harding thought if you put him back in a designer suit and shipped him off to L.A., his associates would take a look and simply think he’d been working a bit too hard.

“You’re looking well. Evan.”

“Hardly my best, but one must take the facilities into account.” A muscle twitched in his cheek. “I don’t belong here. My attorneys bungled the entire business. But I’ve taken care of that. Dealt with that. Stupid, incompetent bastards. I’ve fired them. I expect to have new representation within the week. And my freedom shortly after.”

“I see.”

“I think you do.” Remington leaned forward, then he gazed up toward the security cameras. “I think you do see. I was defending myself and mine.” His eyes stayed on Harding’s now, and something dark seemed to swim behind their colorless surface.

“I was betrayed and misused. Those who stood against me, they belong in here. Not I.”

Harding couldn’t look away, couldn’t break the connection. “Your ex-wife?”

“My wife,” Remington corrected, then in barely a whisper mouthed, “Till death do us part. Tell her I’m thinking of her when you see her, won’t you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You can’t finish what you’ve started, you can’t get what you want, until you deal with her, and the rest of them. I’ve thought about it.” Remington nodded slowly and his eyes, pale as water, stayed locked on Harding’s. “I have plenty of time for thinking. I need someone to remind
her I haven’t forgotten. I need someone to show them all that I can’t be ignored. An agent, if you will.”

“Mr. Remington. Evan. I’m a reporter. A writer.”

“I know what you are. I know what you want. Fame, fortune, recognition. Respect. I know how to get those things for you. I made it my business to get those things for others. You want to be a star, Jonathan. I make stars.”

Something seemed to move behind his eyes again, like sharks swimming in a deep pool. Harding shuddered, but couldn’t look away. And as his skin crawled cold, he could feel himself being pulled in. His breath came short beneath a terrible pressure in his chest.

“I’m going to write a book.”

“Yes, yes. An important book. You’ll tell it as it’s meant to be told. End it as it needs to be ended. I want them punished.” He reached over with his free hand, clasped Harding’s limp fingers. “I want them dead.”

Something snapped in the air, sizzled, and brought the guard to his feet. “No contact.”

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” Harding said dully as a fierce grin flashed on Remington’s face.

“No physical contact,” the guard ordered and strode toward the table. But Remington was already breaking his grip.

“I’m sorry.” Remington kept his gaze averted, his head lowered. “I forgot. I just wanted to shake his hand. He comes to visit me. He comes to talk to me.”

“We were just saying good-bye.” To his own ears, Harding’s voice sounded tinny with distance. “I have to take a trip, and won’t be able to visit for a while. I have to go now.” Harding got unsteadily to his feet. A headache blasted in his temples.

Remington lifted his gaze one last time. “I’ll see you again.”

“Yes, of course.”

Remington allowed himself to be led away. He kept his head lowered, shuffled obligingly back to his cell. In his heart, black glee bloomed like a fetid flower. For he had discovered that there was power in madness.

By the time
Harding was on the ferry for Three Sisters, he could barely remember his last visit to Remington. It irritated him, made him worry that he was coming down with something. His memory for details was one of his most polished skills. And now an event less than eight hours old was like some sketchy scene behind foggy glass.

He couldn’t remember what they’d spoken of, only that he’d been suddenly struck with a blinding headache. It had made him so ill, he’d been forced to stretch out on the front seat of his car and wait for the chills, the pain, the nausea to pass before he’d dared drive away.

Even now, just thinking of it gave him the shakes. His condition wasn’t helped by the fact that the seas were rough and a needle-sharp icy rain was pounding. He had to huddle inside his car, dry-swallow more seasickness pills.

He was terrified that he would have to race through that vicious rain and vomit into the pitching sea.

In defense, he once more lay down across the seat, fighting to breathe slowly and evenly. He began to count the minutes until he reached solid land again.

And must have fallen asleep.

He dreamed of snakes sliding under his skin, the slither of them ice cold.

Of a woman with blue eyes and long gold hair who cried out—all pain and pleas—as he brought a cane down, again and again, to batter her.

She’s quiet now.
Quiet now. Spawn of Satan.

Of a bolt of blue lightning that shot like an arrow out of the sky and into his heart.

He dreamed of terror and vengeance and hate.

He dreamed of a lovely woman in a white dress who wept as she curled on a marble floor.

Of a wood, dark under a new moon, where he stood holding a knife to a smooth white throat. And this time, when it sliced clean and her blood covered him, the world erupted. The sky split and the sea opened its mouth wide, to swallow all who had stood against him.