The Lost Enchantress (3 page)

Not that he permitted his own past to burden him overmuch. Most of the time it existed only as shadows and ghosts, hazy memories of memories locked deep inside him, as deep as he could bury them. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow anything he’d once thought or felt or was interfere with what he was now.

A hunter.

First, last and only.

It wasn’t always so. Once he’d been something more. Something better. But that was ages ago. Once he’d been a loyal son, a passionate lover, a good man. Once he’d fought for a cause greater than himself and been glad for the privilege.

Now all he cared about was the hunt. It was, quite literally, his life. It dominated his every waking thought, and at night it filled what passed for dreams. And, if the hairs that had lifted at the back of his neck the instant he got out of the car were to be trusted, it might soon be over.

If his sources—and his gut—were correct, the hunt would end there, at 128 Sycamore Street, in the gracious Victorian-style home with its ample front porch and beguiling turret and who knew what dark secrets locked inside.

Even now a subtle but unmistakable current of excitement told him that this was it, that this house held the key to success. He wasn’t sure how—yet—but he had faith it would provide the missing piece of a centuries-old puzzle. He’d followed enough false leads and blind alleys to have learned not to get his hopes up so early in the game, but for reasons he couldn’t fathom, tonight, for the first time in a long time, he couldn’t stop himself from hoping. He couldn’t suppress the thrill of knowing the prize was in sight and all that remained to do was make it his own.

He’d intentionally arrived early for his appointment with Ms. Darden of East Side Realty. He’d wanted to be alone when he saw the house for the first time. He knew his limitations and that he would need time and silence if he was to pick up on any sense of connection with the old house. And he had picked up on it, quicker than he’d hoped. It was faint, but it was there.

Reaching to his inside coat pocket, he pulled out the Realtor’s report that had been delivered to him that afternoon at the hotel and moved closer to the circle of light from the street lamp to read it once again. According to the report, the house had been built in 1902 on an oversized parcel of land and had been largely rebuilt following a fire twenty years ago. Hazard paused to mull that over for a moment, just as he had the first time he read it, wondering how any damage done by the fire might effect his search and once again concluding there was no way to know. He frowned. He didn’t like questions he couldn’t answer or problems he couldn’t solve.

He continued reading. The three-story Victorian had six bedrooms, three baths, and a turret room ideal for use as an artist’s studio or romantic hideaway. Hazard had no interest in either. What did interest him was what was described as the room’s “stunning panoramic view of the city.”

A panoramic view meant the turret also had 360-degree access to the flow of light and energy, and that fit perfectly with other useful facts he’d discovered about the house, facts not mentioned in the Realtor’s report. With good reason; the form had no little check boxes for “magical protection wards” or “lingering traces of mystical activity.”

The rest of the report was prattle. Central air-conditioning, three-zone heat, backup generator in basement. New roof, galvanized gutters and downspouts. He glanced up to assess the roofline. As if, thought Hazard, he could see a damn thing in the darkness or that anything he did see would influence his decision to buy the house. That decision had been made before he ever set foot in Providence, and any flicker of remaining doubt had now been extinguished. The meeting with the Realtor and tour of the inside was merely a formality.

He considered it a stroke of luck—or fate—that his arrival had coincided with the current owner’s transfer to his firm’s West Coast office and his decision to sell the house. It simplified matters considerably; it meant he could acquire the property using his weapon of choice, cash. Cash was quick and tidy and he had plenty of it. The timing only added to his certainty that he’d been drawn to Providence and to this house in particular because this is where his search was fated to end.

What else could it be?

MARCH

T
he night started out like any other. At least on the surface and the surface is where Eve lived. It was her comfort zone, so much so she sometimes forgot about all the things that were hidden, some just below the surface, others in plain sight . . . if you knew where to look. Sometimes she forgot there was more to the world than most people were able to see. Or willing to believe.

Eve was definitely a believer. Given her family history, she’d be a fool not to believe, and she was no fool. She’d always known there was another world interwoven with this one, a world of magic. She wanted no part of that world, not even that which was her birthright—
especially
not her birthright. But unlike most people,
normal
people, she wasn’t blind to it. So if fate had seen fit to send some kind of sign to warn her that her life—the orderly, successful, blessedly normal life she’d worked so hard to build for herself—was about to be split into a before-and-after scenario, she would have noticed.

She was inclined to think that fate simply hadn’t bothered. She was, after all, an experienced journalist, a good one, trained to observe small details and pick up on the random snags that occur in the fabric of everyday life. There had been no noteworthy snags in her life recently: no shooting stars, no flickering lights or birds flitting through the house, not even a decent chill up her spine.

Only a night that started out like any other.

The streets of downtown Providence were busy, the way they usually were on weekends. The traffic was heavy and impatient and snarled here and there the way it always was when so many people were trying to get places at the same time. The blustery weather was typical for late March, and in spite of a fine mist in the air a few hearty souls, mostly couples, mostly young, strolled along the River Walk.

The river hadn’t always run through the heart of the city. For decades it ran below, hidden beneath a web of concrete and asphalt. Then came a mayor with a vision of what the city could be, and soon streets were being ripped up, buildings torn down and the jewel of Providence was restored to its rightful setting. The mayor even got to see the transformation completed before all that pesky business with the racketeering charges and the trial and the being shipped off to federal prison. It was a scandal worthy of the capital of a state once known as “Rogue’s Island.”

Journalists from all over descended on Providence. At the time, Eve was still a rookie at WWRI-TV, earning her stripes by standing out in the cold to report on snow storms and spending her evenings in stuffy, overheated rooms to cover school board meetings. She was desperate for a chance to show what she could really do and knew the trial was a golden opportunity to be seen. Determined not to let it pass her by without a fight, she hounded the news director until he agreed to let her hang out at the courthouse when she wasn’t working on her real assignments. As she watched seasoned reporters elbowing and tripping over each other on the courthouse steps everyday, she realized that if she was going to get any airtime at all, she had to come up with her own angle on the story, a good one.

It occurred to her that when the mighty fall, the aftershocks ripple through their circle of friends and family the same as they do anyone else’s. No one knew better than she did how rumors and half-truths and outright lies take their toll, and how maddening it is not to be able to fight back and defend someone you love. Fame and money could work a lot of wonders, but they couldn’t stop a heart from breaking. That was her angle, she decided; she would tell the story from the inside looking out.

At first the mayor’s teenage daughter and his elderly mother refused her overtures, wary of anyone with a press pass. But as the long trial ground on and the competition for headlines grew heated, the coverage got nastier and more personal and eventually her simple, honest reporting of the facts won them over. When they were ready to tell their side of the story, Eve was the one they called. The finished piece painted a picture of the mayor as a complex man, not merely a disgraced public figure. It ran over five nights and won a New England Excellence in Journalism Award. More important to her than any award, the piece had helped her find her voice and establish her own style of reporting the news. And she never had to stand shivering in the snow with a microphone in her hand again.

One of the benefits of being a first string reporter was enjoying weekends off, so instead of having to rush home or change clothes in her office, she’d had plenty of time to get ready for this evening. Though not a primper by nature, today she had primped. She wanted to look her best tonight. . . no, she wanted to look better than her best.

Not that her best was bad. She’d seen herself on camera enough to be objective and determine that the bits and pieces of her were all perfectly fine and they came together in a pleasing, perfectly ordinary way, and she was at peace with that. Tonight, however, she wouldn’t be on camera; tonight she would be on stage, as one of the celebrity presenters at the Historical Society’s annual auction, a lavish and elegant affair. There would be spotlights and a live audience, and—shallow though it might be—she wanted to dazzle. Nothing crazy, since she wasn’t really the dazzling type. “Sparkle” might be a better word; she wanted to sparkle. She rarely got the chance to dress up, and she was going to make the most of it.

No basic black tonight. Her work wardrobe was a rainbow of black that she jazzed up with jewelry and simple silk T-shirts in the jewel tones that flattered her fair complexion on camera and off. She’d put together a sensible collection of classic, well-made pieces that coordinated so well she could dress without thinking about it, which is just the way she liked it. Usually. Today she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what she was going to wear, specifically about the dress that hung at the very back of her closet. A deep shade of teal, the soft fabric had a slight sheen that subtly reflected the light. The straps were narrow, the back low, and the calf-length skirt floated and fluttered when she walked. It was an amazing dress because it made her feel sexy and like Cinderella at the same time, and she’d worn it exactly never.

She’d come across it in the suit department after it had been returned to the wrong rack. It was the right size and marked down enticingly low, and she’d walked out of the store telling herself that buying the dress hadn’t been a whim but a smart investment. Someday she would need a knockout dress and she wouldn’t have to waste time looking for one. And now someday had arrived.

She also had a practical reason for wanting to look good. The auction wasn’t only a charity event; it was what the station’s on-air personalities referred to as a “command performance,” also known as a public appearance. Her contract required her to make four of them a year; the other dozen or so she ended up doing because she didn’t have the heart to say no to any worthy cause. She would be there representing WWRI, with the station’s owners and upper management watching from one of the pricey reserved tables up front.

The auction was held in the Biltmore’s Grand Ballroom, on the hotel’s uppermost floor. The ballroom looked out over the city through towering arched windows clad in crimson velvet. Small recessed lights twinkled like stars overhead, and vintage crystal chandeliers hung above a gleaming parquet dance floor. Whenever she was there, Eve felt as if she’d stepped back in time to a more glamorous era. She could easily imagine Bette Davis holding court at the brass-railed bar or Bogie nursing a gin and tonic in an out-of-the-way corner.

The items to be auctioned were donated and ran the gamut from original works of art to lavish weekend getaways. Local politicians and “personalities” did the presenting, which basically consisted of smiling and pointing to an item or holding it aloft from the time the auctioneer introduced it until he banged the gavel and barked, “Sold.” Eve lucked out by being assigned to work collectibles, one of the first groups on the schedule. The sooner her duty was done, the sooner she could relax and enjoy the rest of the evening.

Her first item was an autographed New England Patriots lunchbox, followed by several framed movie posters, including an original from one of her favorite films, the forties classic
His Girl Friday.
The final item in the lot was a limited edition replica of the original
Knight Rider
vehicle. The car struck a chord with the men in the audience and bidding on it was raucous, with it finally selling for what Eve considered an appalling amount, even for a crowd with notoriously deep pockets. As soon as the gavel went down on the car, she very gently handed it over to a backstage assistant and headed back to her table.

“Nice job, Eve,” Barbara Vines called to her as she made her way from the stage area. Barbara was the media spokesperson for the Historical Society and the driving force behind the auction. “Can you believe the price on that
Knight Rider
thing?”

Eve grinned and shrugged. “Boys and toys.”

“So damn true. Great dress, by the way. And don’t forget to pick up a paddle at the registration desk,” she called over her shoulder. “Every bid counts.”

Eve considered passing on the paddle since she’d never bid in the past and had no intention of breaking with tradition tonight. Not because nearly everything was out of her price range, though that was definitely a consideration; she just wasn’t an impulse buyer. Or an impulse anything for that matter.

She could be the poster child for the Better Safe than Sorry Society. She might be willing to follow her hunches and take leaps of faith when she was putting a story together at work, but when it came to her personal life she thought things through carefully, considering the potential consequences from every angle before making a move. She balanced her checkbook and changed the oil in her car right on schedule and saved for a rainy day.