The Lost Enchantress (32 page)

“How temporary?”

“About forty-eight hours, maybe a little more. After that he’ll be too weak to perform the ritual to make his stay permanent.”

Eve began to smile. “And you were afraid this was going to worry me? It sounds like you’re saying all we have to do is be patient and he’ll go away on his own.”

“No. I’m saying that he’s going to be desperate to perform that ritual, and getting more desperate by the minute. To do it, he’ll need to draw on the pendant’s full power, and for that he needs you. Get used to me being around, because I won’t be letting you out of my sight anytime soon.”

 

 

Hazard had no problem keeping an eye on Eve from a chair off to one side of the hospital waiting room. He would have been hard put to keep his eyes off her. That had been true from the start, of course, but there was something different about her today, something fresh and even more captivating to him.

The waiting room was already filled with people when they arrived. Allison Snow had asked Eve to be with her for the removal of her final bandages, but others had come on their own to surprise the young woman with an enthusiastic show of support. There were friends and family members, a couple of her college professors and several nurses who had cared for her along the way. And there were firefighters, some in uniform, some off duty, as well as the rescue crew that had been the first to treat her after she was carried from the building. They mingled and talked like friends, and Hazard soon realized that’s because they were. They’d been brought together by tragedy, and they’d run into each other in the hospital hallways and waiting areas many times in the months since, ready to do whatever they could to help put back together the young life some of them had risked their own to save.

When Eve walked in, there was an immediate outpouring of warm greetings. Accustomed to being a stranger wherever he went, he found an empty chair on the sidelines and watched her move around the room, giving and receiving hugs and affectionate teasing. She reminded him of a butterfly released into its natural habitat, free to spread its wings and soar. He’d seen her worried and afraid and dazed with passion, and he’d watched her on camera, both as the lost-looking fifteen-year-old in film clips from the days after the fire, and as the competent, controlled professional journalist she was today. But he’d never seen this easygoing and breezy side of her.

Even her clothes were different today; both the color and the fit were softer and, to his eye, more feminine. He liked it. A lot. Especially what she was wearing on top. Not that he didn’t appreciate the snug-fitting clothes she usually wore; there was just something about the blue and white thing she had on that reminded him of sunny skies and made him want to smile and never look away. Maybe it was the way it swirled with her body when she moved, and settled on her curves when she was still. And the teasing sheer-ness of whatever it was made of, seeming to offer a glimpse of what was underneath but never really doing it, no matter how closely he looked.

He wished they were alone so he could slide his hands inside, up over her soft, warm skin all the way to her breasts. And then he remembered his vow never to touch her that way again, and he just wished things could be different.

“Friend of Eve’s?”

The query broke his musing and he looked up, instantly on guard and ready with a frown for the man who had appeared beside him.

Not discouraged, the man held out his right hand and smiled. He had short sandy brown hair and was wearing a tan shirt with a Providence Fire Department emblem on the pocket.

“Jack Porter,” he said. “I saw you walk in with Eve and I thought I’d come on over and say hello. It’s easy to get lost in this crowd.”

He was trying to be friendly, Hazard realized. He’d seen him sitting there alone and had taken pity on him and decided to walk over and befriend him. It was the kind of basic human interaction that he vaguely remembered from long ago. He even thought there might have been a time when he was comfortable with such gestures, and the feelings that inspired them. But not now.

He stood and went through the motion of shaking the man’s hand. “Gabriel Hazard. I find it more comfortable on the outskirts.”

“Opposites attract, huh?” Jack Porter quipped. He caught Hazard’s puzzled look and gestured across the room to where Eve stood, laughing and surrounded by firefighters. “You and Eve. She’s really something, isn’t she? I mean, you see someone like her on television and what’s the first thing you think? Snooty. But she’s not. She mixes right in, no puttin’ on airs. And bighearted as all get out. Hell, she logged more hours by Allison’s bedside in those early days than anyone outside the family. Not afraid to get her hands dirty either; we held a car wash as a fund-raiser, and she was the first one to grab a bucket and a sponge. But then, you probably already know all that.”

He paused and grinned, and Hazard tried to decide what he was supposed to say at this point. Porter spared him the trouble.

“You’re lucky I’m a happily married man,” he told Hazard, “or you’d have some real competition. So. What is it you do, Gabe? Can I call you Gabe?”

“Why not?” Hazard countered, thinking that the other man’s friendliness might be motivated at least in part by a desire to find out if he was good enough for Eve. “I’m in finance.”

Porter nodded. “Investments, that kind of thing?”

Hazard nodded. It was true enough. He was good at managing investments. You could become good at most anything if you had enough time.

Porter winced and whistled softly between his teeth. “That’s got to be a tough business these days, with the economy tanking and all.”

“It has its moments. I’m sure your work does also.”

“Oh yeah,” Porter agreed heartily. “Long hours, the city always trying to stiff us at contract time, and I threw my back out humpin’ hose the other day. Hurts like a bastard.” He braced his hands at his waist and bent slightly from side to side. “I still wouldn’t trade it for anything else. It’s in my blood; my grandfather was a fire-man, I’ve got uncles and cousins on the job, and my dad worked a ladder until he got bumped up to investigations.”

Hazard regarded him with new interest. “Your father is a Providence fire investigator?”

“Was. He retired a few years back, but he was lead investigator for over twenty years. He handled all the big fires in the city. And man, has he got stories.”

“I’m sure he does.” Hazard formed a smile and held his hand out toward the empty chair beside his. “Have a seat, Jack. I’d love to hear a few of them.”

E
ve had greeted nearly everyone before she noticed Allie’s boyfriend, Matt, sitting by himself just outside the glass doors that separated the burn unit’s waiting area from the treatment rooms beyond. The receptionist had told her that Allie and her mother were with the doctor, going over last-minute details, and that she would let Eve know when it was time to join them. She settled into the seat beside Matt to wait.

He had short, spiky blond hair and the solid build of a line-backer. Over the past year Eve had gotten to know him and discovered his heart was also solidly built. He and Allie had been high school sweethearts, and at the risk of losing his football scholarship, he’d taken the year off from college to be by her side as she recovered.

In the days immediately following the fire, when Allison was still in critical condition and visitors were limited to immediate family, Matt had camped out in the waiting room and made coffee runs and trips to the hospital cafeteria so her parents didn’t have to leave her side. When he was finally allowed to see her, he’d held her hand through excruciatingly painful dressing changes and brought her smoothies when she couldn’t chew and read to her when she couldn’t sleep. Everyone said how lucky Allie was to have Matt, but whenever he looked at Allison or talked about her, Eve could see in his eyes how lucky Matt thought he was to have Allie.

“How is she?” Eve asked him.

“Pretty good,” Matt replied. “A little worried, I think, but hanging in there. And trying not to show she’s worried, for her parents’ sake. You know how Allie is.”

“She’s a trooper, all right,” Eve agreed.

“I think the doc is in there right now giving her an idea of what to expect.”

His expression was hopeful. Maybe too hopeful based on case histories she’d come across in researching the fire story.

“That’s good,” she told him. “After all, Dr. Abrams has been through this hundreds, maybe even thousands of times.”

“Yeah. I just hope that . . . I mean, I know we can’t expect, you know, for her to be exactly the way she was before, but I just keep hoping . . .” He trailed off, shrugging and staring at the toes of his sneakers, suddenly looking awkward and younger than his twenty years.

Eve said the words so he didn’t have to. “You hope she looks like the Allison you fell in love with.”

“No,” he blurted, swinging his horrified gaze her way. “I mean, yes, I guess that is what I hope, but not for me, not because I want the girl I fell in love with back . . . I just want Allison. I can’t even stand to think about how close I came to losing her . . . how it could have been her who . . .”

He stood, shoved his hands in his pockets, looking ready to bolt, and then sat back down and jiggled one blue-jean-clad leg restlessly. “I know Allison sometimes wishes it could have been her and not Cassie who . . .”

Eve nodded understandingly.

“I sort of get that,” he continued. “And I would never say this to Allie or to her folks, but I thank God every night that it was her who made it out of there. I wouldn’t want to live without her.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being thankful the woman you love is alive,” Eve assured him.

“Well, right or wrong, that’s how I feel. And yeah, I do hope the grafts took perfectly and she looks like she used to look, but not for me. I swear to you that I’ll love her just the same no matter what she looks like. I want it for her.” He hunched forward, his forearms resting on his thighs. “It’s going to be tough enough for her to get up every morning and look in the mirror and see Cassie’s face looking back at her. But I think it’ll be even harder if there are scars to remind her why Cassie’s not around and how bad that last night was. Maybe if the scars aren’t that bad, then someday, not right away, but someday, she’ll look in the mirror and remember only Cassie, only the good stuff.”

Tears welled in her eyes as she threw her arm around his shoulders to give him a quick hug.

“Does that make sense?” he asked her.

“Perfect sense. And if Dr. Abrams is half as good as they say he is, you could get your wish. All we can do now is keep our fingers crossed.”

Dr. Abrams, the plastic surgeon who’d grafted new skin onto Allison’s forehead and left cheek and down the left side of her neck, specialized in treating facial burns. Patients and colleagues alike used words like “genius” and “miracle worker” to describe him. For Allie’s sake, Eve prayed they were right.

Matt’s words haunted her.

On her office bulletin board, she had a picture of Allison and Cassidy taken the summer before their freshman year. They’d just returned from a marathon off-to-college shopping trip and were sitting on their front porch drowning in stuff—shopping bags and shoe boxes, oversized pillows and a mini fridge, and matching lamps with beaded fringed shades. Pink for Cassie and lavender for Allison. Just a couple of pretty, blue-eyed blondes with flawless skin and perfect teeth and a nightmare waiting for them just around the corner.

Allie once told her that she knew that as long as she lived, there would be a Cassie-sized hole in her world. Eve had wanted to tell her she was wrong, that time heals all wounds, but she couldn’t lie. Instead, she told her that time would dull the ache of her loss, and as impossible as it seemed to her at that moment, a day would come when it wasn’t the first thing she thought of when she woke up and the last thing before she fell asleep. But there would always be a hole in her world where her sister should be; it would be right beside her wherever she went, like a shadow, like the missing limb of an amputee that goes on hurting long after it’s not there anymore.

Matt’s words haunted her, and it wasn’t until she was in the treatment room with Allie and her mother that she realized she’d been only half right when she said the only thing they could do now was keep their fingers crossed. It was true that all he could do was cross his fingers and perhaps pray for the best possible outcome. But if she chose to, she might be able to do considerably more.

The question was, should she?

She didn’t have time to mull over the potential consequences or debate the moral and ethical fine points of using magic to tweak reality and give back to Allie a little of what had been taken from her.

Hazard was right: rejecting magic was her way of atoning for her mistakes. But what if there was a better way?

Dr. Abrams was already loosening the special tape securing the bandage on Allie’s forehead. She was seated on the examining table facing him, with Eve and Olivia Snow standing on the other side of the table.

Her father had opted to wait outside. He’d pleaded a weak stomach, but throughout this whole ordeal, Eve had never seen a hint of squeamishness in Daniel Snow. She surmised it wasn’t the sight of soiled bandages or raw scars that scared him, but the fresh pain and disappointment he might see in his little girl’s eyes. She’d already been through so much. They all had. For better or worse, Allison’s face would be an ever-present reminder of Cassie for her parents too. The invisible waves of hope and fear coming from her mother were every bit as strong as what she was picking up from Allie herself. How could she not do everything in her power to help them?

She was still opposed to magic. At least she thought she was. It had all become so complicated. Once her opposition had been drawn with sharp, bold stokes, as black and white as a pureblood Dalmatian, as black and white as magic itself; now there were patches of gray, and in places the lines between black and white had blurred until they were almost impossible to see.