Face the Fire (13 page)

“I think my father and yours played in the same foursome for some charity golf tournament,” Mac commented. “Just last month, in Palm Springs, or Palm Beach. Or something with a Palm in it.”

“Really?” Sam had never been interested in his father’s pseudo charity events. And it had been years since he’d had to bow to the pressure of participating in any of them. “I met your parents at various functions in New York.”

“Yeah, same circles.”

“More or less,” Sam agreed. “I don’t recall meeting you at any of those various functions.”

Mac only grinned. “Well, there you are. So . . . do you play golf?”

Now, Sam smiled. “No. Do you?”

“Mac’s pretty much a spaz,” Ripley put in. “If he tried to tee off, he’d probably slice his big toe into the woods.”

“Sad, but true,” Mac agreed.

“Last week he tripped going down the deck steps. Six stitches.”

“The dog tripped me,” Mac said in his own defense. “And it was only four stitches.”

“Which you could’ve avoided if you’d come to me instead of going to the clinic.”

“She rags on me every time I get a bump or a bruise.”

“Which is daily. On our honeymoon—”

“We’re not getting into that.” The flush started creeping up Mac’s neck.

“When we were using taking a shower as an excuse to have some hot, steamy sex—”

“Cut it out.” Mac spread his hand over Ripley’s face and gave it a nudge. “And that towel bar was not properly installed.”

“He ripped it right out of the wall in the throes.” She batted her lashes at him. “My hero.”

“Anyway,” Mac said on a long breath. “Seeing as you’re in the hotel business, Sam, you might want to make sure your towel bars are secure.”

“I’ll make a note, particularly if the two of you decide to take a weekend at the Magick Inn.”

“Well, if Nell and Zack make a reservation,” Ripley continued, “you’d better check the stability of the bathroom sinks. They knocked the one upstairs out of alignment when—”

“Ripley!” Nell hissed it, horrified.

“Do you have to tell her everything?” Zack demanded.

“Not anymore.” Ignoring Ripley’s laughter, Nell pushed to her feet. “I’ll get dessert.”

“I had no idea bathrooms had become such erogenous zones,” Mia commented as she rose to clear her plate.

“I’ll be happy to show you mine,” Sam said, and was given a shrug as she strolled into the kitchen.

“She didn’t eat. She only pretended to.” Sam kept his voice low.

“She’s tense,” Mac added.

“There’s no point in my being here if it closes her off.”

“The world doesn’t revolve around you.” Ripley snagged her glass and drank.

“Rip.” Zack’s voice was a quiet warning. “Let’s just see how it goes from here.”

With a nod, Sam picked up his own plate. “She trusts you,” he said to Mac.

“Yes, she does.”

“Maybe that balances things out.”

Sam had nerves of his own when they settled back
in the living room. What he was had never been an issue for him. It simply was. But neither was his gift something he discussed. He joined no coven. And though only four out of the six there were hereditary witches, it was very much a kind of coven.

“We all know the legend,” Mac began.

The historian, Sam thought. The scientist. The detail man with the facile mind.

“During the Salem witch trials, the three who were known as Fire, Earth, and Air conjured what became Three Sisters Island as a haven against persecution.”

“While innocents were hunted and murdered,” Ripley added.

The soldier. Sam idly stroked the cat, who had deigned to join him on the sofa. A woman with grit. The earth.

“They couldn’t have stopped it, or if they’d tried,” Zack said, “others might have died.”

And here, Sam decided, was reason and authority.

“Change one angle of destiny, change all.” Mac nodded, continued. “The one called Air fell in love, married a merchant who took her back to the mainland. Bore his children, kept his home. But he could never accept what she was. He abused her, and ultimately killed her.”

“She blamed herself, I think, for not being what he wanted. For not staying true to herself, and choosing poorly.”

Nell, the nurturer, Sam thought when she spoke. The cat stretched under his hand, as if agreeing. She was the air.

“She saved her children, sent them back to her sisters. But the circle was diminished. Weakened. And the horror of it, the fury of it,” Mac went on, “festered in the one known as Earth until she surrendered to the anger, the rage, and the need for revenge.”

“She was wrong,” Ripley said now. “I understand what she felt, why she felt it, but she was wrong. And she paid. Using her power to kill the one who’d killed her sister destroyed her, and came back threefold. She lost her husband, a man she loved; was never able to see her children again; and shattered what was left of the circle.”

“There was one left.” Mia’s voice was clear, her gaze level. “One left to hold it.”

Intellect, pride, and passion. Was it any wonder that she stirred him? Sam thought. She was the fire.

“Despair can crush even the strongest.” Nell laid a hand on Mia’s. “But even alone, even heartbroken, she wove a web of protection. Three hundred years strong.”

“She made certain her children were taken care of.” Mac thought of Lulu. “Which brings us to now.” He frowned into his coffee. “A still unbroken circle.”

“You’re worried I’ll fail when my time comes. Nell faced her demons, and Ripley hers.” In what seemed an idle gesture, Mia stroked Mulder with the side of her foot. “Of the three of us, my knowledge and practice of the Craft is the most extensive.”

“Agreed. But—”

She lifted a brow at Mac. “But?”

“I wonder if, on the other side of the scale, what you’ll have to deal with is more, well, insidious. Nell had Evan Remington, a man.”

“He was a piece of shit,” Ripley corrected.

“Be that as it may, he was human. She had to find the courage to face him, to defeat him and embrace her gift. I’m not saying any of that was a walk on the beach, but it was pretty tangible. If you’re following me.”

“A man with a knife.” Sam spoke for the first time since Mac had begun, and drew everyone’s attention. “A sociopath, psychopath, whatever the term might be for that kind of evil, in the woods, in the dark of the moon. No, not a walk on the beach. It took great courage, deep faith, and a formidable power to do what Nell did. But it was an evil whose face she knew.”

“Exactly.” Mac beamed as if Sam were a prized student. “In Ripley’s case—”

“In Ripley’s case,” Ripley repeated, “I had to accept a power I’d rejected, and walk the line when part of me wanted to cross it.”

“Emotional turmoil,” Sam agreed. “It can affect the tone of power in the same way it can affect the tone of your voice, the tone of your actions. The gift doesn’t protect us from flaws, or mistakes. That kind of turmoil was tailored
toward you, and Nell’s was turned toward her as a potent weapon. With—”

He broke off, glanced at Mac.

“No, keep going.” Mac waved a hand. “It’s good to hear it from someone else’s point of view.”

“All right. The force that was unleashed centuries ago used Remington as a conduit and fed itself into the reporter who followed Nell’s cross-country route to the Sisters.”

“You’ve kept up,” Mia said quietly.

“Yeah. I’ve kept up. Holding the line, power against power, without crossing that line isn’t a simple matter. It requires conviction, compassion, strength. Even so, in the end Ripley, like Nell, faced a man. Whatever was inside him, he was flesh and blood.”

“It looks like Sam and I have circled around to the same theory.”

“Then why the hell don’t you punch through to the point of it and stop circling?” Ripley complained.

“Okay.” Since Sam gestured the go-ahead, Mac took over. “What came at Mia today wasn’t flesh and blood, not a living thing, but a manifestation. That tells me a couple of things. Maybe, just maybe, because the circle’s intact, because twice now it’s been defeated, its power’s diminished. It can’t possess, but can only deceive.”

“Or it hordes its strength. Waiting for its time, and its place.”

“Yes.” Mac nodded at Sam. “Waiting for the right circumstance. There isn’t that much time—when you measure by three centuries—left on either side. It’s going to keep pushing, trying to weaken the circle, and Mia most specifically. Undermining the bedrock of your power. It’ll use your fears, doubts, any weaknesses that trickle through the chinks. Tailored to you,” he added with a nod to Sam. “That’s just exactly right. It’ll try to prey on you as it did on her three centuries ago. Through her loneliness and
loss, her despair at the thought of living without the people she loved, and needed most.”

“I’m aware of that,” Mia acknowledged. “But I’m not lonely, and I’ve lost nothing. My circle holds.”

“Yes, but . . . I don’t believe the circle can be considered complete, and whole, until your step is taken.” Since this was tricky ground, Mac took his time. “Until then, there’s a vulnerability, and that’s where the pressure will be the greatest. It only needed to break Nell, and it failed. To seduce Ripley, and it failed. With you . . .”

“It needs to cause my death,” Mia finished calmly. “Yes, I know. I’ve always known.”

When she started to leave, Nell held on to her.

“Don’t worry so, little sister.” Mia pressed her cheek to Nell’s hair. “I know how to protect myself.”

“I know. I just wish you’d stay. I know how stupid that sounds, but I wish you’d stay with one of us until this is really over.”

“I need my cliffs. I’ll be fine, I promise.” She gave Nell one last squeeze. “Blessed be.”

She’d lingered longer than the others, hoping to avoid any more conversation. But when she stepped outside, she saw Sam leaning against her car.

“I walked over. How about a lift back?”

“It’s a pleasant night for a short walk.”

“Give me a lift, Mia.” He took her wrist as she started to move past him. “I want to talk to you, for a minute anyway. Alone.”

“I suppose I owe you a favor.”

“Do you?”

She circled the car, slipped in behind the wheel. She waited until she’d started the car. “For cleaning up my
mess on the coast road this morning,” she said as she eased into a U-turn. “Ripley told me she ran into you. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Well, that didn’t hurt too much. Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”

“I wondered about you and Mac. There’s something there.”

“Really?” Deliberately she took her attention away from the road long enough to bat her lashes. “Do you think I’m trying to tempt my sister’s husband into a wild, illicit affair?”

“If you were, he’d already be there.”

She laughed. “What a lovely compliment, even if you’re wrong. He’s sweetly, madly in love with his wife. But you’re right about one thing, there is something between us. You’ve always been good at picking up atmosphere and emotion.”

“What is it?”

“We’re cousins.”

“Cousins?”

“It happens that the granddaughter of the first sister married a MacAllister—Mac’s mother’s side of the family.”

“Ah.” Sam did his best to stretch out his legs in the little car. “So he’s of the blood. That explains a number of things. I felt a connection the minute I met him, but couldn’t pin him down. Just as I felt one for Nell, even when she wanted to drop me into a dark pit and leave me there to rot. I like your friends.”

“Well, I’m so relieved.”

“Don’t snipe at me, Mia. I meant it.”

Because she knew it was true, she sighed. “I’m tired. It always make me cross.”

“They’re worried about you. How you’ll handle things.”

“I know. I’m sorry about it.”

“I’m not worried.” He paused when she pulled up in front of the cottage. “I’ve never known anyone, witch or woman, more vital than you. You won’t give in.”

“No, I won’t. But I won’t say I don’t appreciate the confidence, particularly after a long, difficult day. Good night, Sam.”

“Come inside.”

“No.”

“Come inside, Mia.” He slipped a hand through her hair to rub the back of her neck. “And be with me.”

“I’d like to be with someone tonight,” she continued, “to be comforted and soothed. To be touched and taken. So I won’t.”