Face the Fire (34 page)

She was like a queen, Sam thought. A warrior queen addressing her troops. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the image. But as he focused on her, narrowed his vision on her, his belly did a queasy roll.

“Where did you go, Mia? When you left the island, where did you go?”

He saw from the quick race of surprise over her face that he’d caught her off guard. And because he had, he reached through that narrow chink and pulled out more. Pulled out enough to have him pushing to his feet.

“Remington? You went to see Remington?”

“Yes.” She sipped her coffee, gathered her thoughts while the emotions in the room bulleted and careened around her.

“Oh, that’s fine. That’s just fine!” At the explosion from Ripley, Mia looked over at her coolly. “You’re the one who’s always haranguing me about being cautious, controlled. About being prepared.”

“That’s right. And I was. I wasn’t careless or foolish.”

“And I am?”

Mia lifted her shoulders in an elegant little shrug. “I’d
use the word
reckless,
which you tend to be. Going to see him was a calculated risk, one that needed to be taken.”

“You had the nerve to ream us last night for not coming clean about Lulu, then you keep this to yourself.”

“Hardly,” Mia said smoothly. “I’m telling you what I did, and what happened. Freely.”

“You shouldn’t have gone alone.” Nell’s voice was quiet, and all the more effective for it. “You had no right to go alone.”

“I disagree. Remington’s feelings toward you would have prevented any possible discussion. Ripley’s temper would have very likely forced a confrontation then and there. Of the three of us, I’m most able to deal with him, and I have more need at this point to do so.”

“There are four of us,” Sam reminded everyone.

“There are fucking six of us.” He’d said nothing to this point, but now Zack got to his feet. “You’re going to start remembering there are six of us,” Zack ordered Mia. “I don’t care if you can shoot lightning out of your goddamn fingertips. There are six of us in this.”

“Zack.”

“Be quiet,” he snapped at Nell and had her gaping at him.

“You think because there’re two of us in this room who can’t whistle up the wind or pull down the moon or whatever the hell you call it, we’re just going to sit on our hands. I’ve got as much at stake as you do, Mia. And I’m still the sheriff on Three Sisters.”

“I come from them, the same as you do.” Mac drew Mia’s considering gaze to him. “I don’t have what you have, but I’ve spent most of my life studying it. Cutting us out this way is not only insulting, it’s arrogant.”

“Just one more way to prove you don’t need anyone else.”

She made herself look directly at Sam. “That wasn’t my
intention. I’m sorry if that was the result. I’m sorry,” she repeated, lifting her hands to encompass everyone in the room. “I wouldn’t have gone to see him if I hadn’t been certain I could deal with him. At that time and under those circumstances.”

“Never wrong, are you?” Sam shot out.

“Oh, I’ve been wrong.” Because the coffee lay bitter on her tongue, she set the cup aside. “But I wasn’t wrong about this. He couldn’t harm me.” She shut off the memory of claws and cold. “Remington is being used, and his hate, his madness, is a powerful tool. There was a chance I could reach him, that with his cooperation I could close him off, shut down that source of energy. He’s a conduit,” she said, looking to Mac for verification. “Shut off the valve, so to speak, and the power weakens.”

“It’s a valid theory.”

“Screw theories. What happened?” Ripley demanded.

“He’s too far gone. He believes the lies, the promises. And he’s damned himself. But that’s a weakness, that hunger to bring pain and misery. The singularity of that purpose is innately flawed. In the end it’ll destroy itself. But I think we can, and should, move that process along. After what happened yesterday, we must move it along. I won’t take any chances with Lulu, and as long as it can’t get to me, it will try for her.”

“I think you’re right about that,” Mac put in. “Your feelings for her would be seen as a weakness. An Achilles’ heel.”

“Then we act sooner—because it’s not a weakness. It’s another weapon.”

“A preemptive strike?” Sam suggested.

“In a manner of speaking,” Mia nodded. “An offensive move rather than defensive. I’ve been thinking about it for some time. I know, without doubt now, that his power builds over time. There was more when I faced off with it
yesterday. Why should we wait until September, give him that much more time to gather strength against us? With you and Ripley and Nell, we have the four elements represented. We have new life, a new circle inside the old—three children who carry the old blood—waiting to be born. That’s powerful magic. A banishing spell with full ritual.”

“The legend calls for something else,” he reminded her. “It calls for you to make a choice.”

“I’m aware of that. I’m aware of all the interpretations, all the nuances. All the risks and sacrifices. Our circle isn’t broken, as theirs was. Our power isn’t diminished, as theirs was.” Her voice went steely. “By hurting Lulu it has only given me more reason to finish it, by whatever means necessary. My part comes when it comes. And a banishing ritual would be a hell of a distraction—and very possibly put an end to things. Mac?”

“You’ll need the full moon,” Mac added, his brow furrowing as he calculated. “That doesn’t give you much time.”

Mia only smiled, but it was fierce and it was cold. “We’ve had three hundred years.”

“
W
hat didn’t you tell the others?”

“There’s nothing more to tell.” Mia sat at her dressing table, brushing her hair. She knew Sam wouldn’t go, and there was no point arguing.

Fruitless battles wasted energy. She intended to conserve hers for when it mattered most.

“If you thought a banishing spell would turn the tide, you’d have tried one before.”

“You weren’t here before.”

“I’ve been here since May. And will there ever come a time when you don’t throw that in my face?”

“You’re right.” She set her brush aside, rose to open the balcony doors to the sound of rain. “It’s annoying and repetitive of me. And it was more effective before I forgave you.”

“Have you, Mia?”

The rain was warm, wonderfully soft. And still, she longed for the storm.

“I’ve spent some time looking back, trying to see those two young people objectively. The girl was so wrapped up in the boy, and in her visions of what she wanted their life to be, she couldn’t see he wasn’t ready. It wasn’t that she
ignored it, or overlooked it.” Mia had searched her heart on that one point. “But that she really couldn’t see it. She assumed he loved as she loved, wanted what she wanted, and she never looked beyond that. What happened to them was as much her fault as his.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“All right. Maybe not quite as much hers, because she was as honest as she knew how to be and he wasn’t. But she wasn’t blameless. She held too tight. Maybe, maybe because she wasn’t any more ready than he was. She just wanted to be. She was so lonely in her house on the cliff, so desperately hungry for love.”

“Mia.”

“You shouldn’t interrupt when I’m forgiving you. I don’t intend to make a habit of it. It’s so weak, and so typical, to blame one’s parents for the flaws and the failures of a life. And a woman of thirty should certainly have come around to making her own flaws and failures—and triumphs.”

She had thought about that, too, very long and very hard in her time away. “But for the sake of that young girl, we’ll point the finger. She was young enough to deserve to assign the blame somewhere else.”

She walked back to the dressing table, absently opened a little cobalt pot, dipped her fingers in and rubbed the cream over her hands. “They never loved me. That’s sad and that’s painful, but more, they never cared that I loved them. So what was I to do with all that love just burning inside me? There was Lulu, thank the goddess. But I had so much more to give. And there you were. Poor sad-looking Sam. I heaped my love on you until you must have felt buried in it.”

“I wanted you to love me. I needed it. And you.”

“But not so I had us settled in a little cottage with three children and the faithful family dog.” She said it lightly,
though it cost her to dismiss that sweet and pretty image. “I can’t blame you for that. I can still blame you for the way you ended it—so abrupt, so harsh. But even that . . . You were very young.”

“I’ll regret for the rest of my life the way I ended it. Regret that the only way I thought I could save myself was to hurt you.”

“Youth is often cruel.”

“I was. I told you I was done with you and this place. That I wouldn’t be trapped anymore. That I wasn’t coming back. I wasn’t ever coming back. You just looked at me, with tears running down your face. You so rarely cry. It panicked me, so I was only more cruel. I’m sorry for it.”

“I believe you are. I’d like to think that eventually we could put that part of our life where it belongs. In the past.”

“I need to tell you why I waited so long to come back.”

She retreated without moving a step. “That’s the past, too.”

“No, I want you to know that when I said I wasn’t coming back, I meant it. That need to be away, to breathe some other air, pushed me through those first years. Every time I thought of you, waking or sleeping, I slammed the door shut. Then one day I found myself standing in that cave on the west coast of Ireland.”

He wandered to her dressing table, picked up her brush. Just turned it over and over in his hand. “Everything I felt for you, the joy of it, the fear of it, came rushing back into me. But I wasn’t a boy anymore, and those feelings weren’t a boy’s.”

He set her brush down, looked at her. “And I knew I was coming back. That was five years ago, Mia.”

It left her shaken, caused her to carefully control her thoughts, her voice. “You took your time.”

“I wasn’t coming back, to you, to this island, the way I’d left. Thaddeus Logan’s son. That Logan boy. I’d carried
that around like a goddamn chain around my neck, and I was going to break it. I needed to make something of myself. For me. And for you. No, let me finish,” he said when she started to speak. “You had all the dreams before, all the goals, all the answers. Now I had my own. The hotel isn’t just a piece of real estate to me.”

“I know that.”

“Maybe you do.” He nodded. “Maybe you would. It was mine, always, part symbol, part passion. I needed to prove I was coming back here with more than a name and a birthright. I started to come back countless times in the last five years, and every time I did, something stopped me. I don’t know if it was my own doing or a shove from fate. But I do know that before this, it wasn’t my time.”

“You always had more than a name and a birthright. But maybe you could never see it before.”

“That brings us to now.”

“Now, I need time to consider if the step I take is my own, or a shove from fate. You’re welcome to sleep here. I need to check on Lulu. Then I want to spend some time up in the tower before I go to bed.”

Frustration pushed through him again, had him balling his fists in his pockets. “I’m asking for a chance to prove to you that you can trust me again, that you can love me again. I want you to live with me, be with me knowing that whatever else I might do or not do, I’ll never deliberately hurt you again. You’re not giving me a lot of room.”

“I can promise you this. After the full moon, after the ritual, that will change. I don’t want to be at odds with you. We can’t afford to be.”

“There’s something else.” He took her arm as she started past him. “There’s more.”

“I can’t give it to you now.” Her fingers itched to push his hand off her arm before he pushed too hard, saw too much. Timing, she thought, would be an essential element.
She resisted, and met his gaze levelly. “You want me to trust and believe in you. Then you have to trust and believe in me.”

“I will, if you’ll promise me you won’t do anything that could put you in jeopardy, without your circle, without me.”

“When it comes to the sticking point, I’ll need my circle. That includes you.”

“All right.” If that was all, he would settle for it. For now. “Can I use your library?”

“Help yourself.”

When she was sure Lulu was sleeping comfortably, Mia went up to the widow’s walk to stand outside in the soft rain. She could see, from that height, everything that was hers. And the dark that pressed against her borders, breathing cold against her warmth so the steam rose up in fitful spurts.

Almost absently, she lifted a hand skyward, let the power tremble up her arm. She plucked a lightning bolt out of the night, hurled it like a lance through a puff of steam.

Then she spun away and slipped inside, into her tower.

She cast the circle, lighted candles and incense. She would seek a vision, but wanted no whisper of it to leak outside that ring. What was in her heart and mind could be used against her, and against those she loved.

She ate the herbs, drank from the chalice, and kneeling in the circle, at the center of a pentagram, she cleared her mind. She opened her third eye.

The storm that she had sensed burst over the island, and despite the gales of wind, the land was blanketed in a thin gray fog. The sea lashed at the base of her cliffs as she flew over them, through the driving rain, the strikes of lightning, and over the fog that spread and thickened.

In the clearing at the heart of the Sisters was her circle. Their hands were linked, and hers with them. The greedy
fog licked and lapped at the edges of the ring, but crept no further.

Safe, she thought as she knelt in her tower. Safe and strong.

She could feel the rumble of the earth below, the rumble of the sky above. And her own heartbeat where she knelt, and where she saw herself.

They called, in turn. Earth, air, water, fire. Power was rich. Rising up, streaking out. Though it tore at the fog, those mists reknit themselves. Out of them stalked the wolf that bore her mark.

When it leaped, she was alone on her cliffs. She saw the red eyes burning. She heard her own voice cry out—despair and triumph—as she wrapped her arms around it. And took it with her off the cliffs.

As she fell she saw the moon, full and white, break through the storm and, with the fire of stars, shine over the island.

In her tower, she knelt on the floor, her eyes blurred with visions, her heart pounding.

“You give me this only to take it away? Is there a price for the gift, after all? You would have let the innocent be harmed, the mother of my heart? Does it all come down to blood?”

She slid to the floor, curled in the circle. For the first and last time in her life, she cursed the gift.

“She’s holding something back.” Sam paced the
kitchen in the house where he’d grown up. “I know it.”

“Maybe she is.” Mac pushed through the documents spread over the kitchen table. They’d been his breakfast companion until Sam had shown up. “Something started bugging me last night, but I can’t put my finger on it. I’ve
been going through everything I have on Three Sisters: the island, the women, the descendants. I’ve read over my own ancestor’s journal. I feel like I’m missing something. Some angle. Some, what was the word Mia used?
Interpretation
.”

Sam pushed the bag he’d brought with him over the table. “You can add these to your research pile, at least until she realizes I pulled them out of her library.”

“I’ve been meaning to get to these anyway.” Carefully, reverently, Mac took an old and scarred leather book out of the bag. “Mia gave me the go-ahead to scour her books.”

“Then we’ll use that when she gets pissy about me hauling them over here. I’m going to talk to Zack.” Sam jingled change in his pockets and paced again. “The Todds have been on the island as long as anyone can remember, and he’s had his finger on the pulse of things all along. Maybe if I can think of the right questions, he’ll have the right answers.”

“We’ve got just over a week until the full moon.”

“Start cramming, Professor.” Sam checked his watch. “I’ve got to get to work. You come up with anything, let me know.”

Mac grunted his assent, already absorbed in the first book.

Instead of going to his car, Sam followed the urge and walked down to the beach, heading toward the cave.

There had always been something pulling him there, even before Mia. As a little boy he’d slipped away from his mother or his nanny and wandered there. Even if it had been only to curl up and sleep. He could still remember the time—he had been only three—when the police had been called to search for him. Zack’s father had rooted him out, scooping him out of a dream where he’d slept in the arms of a beautiful woman with red hair and gray eyes.

She’d sung to him in Gaelic, a story-song about a
handsome silkie who had loved a witch, then had left her for the sea.

He’d understood her words, and the language of her song had become his own.

When he was older, he and his friends had played inside the cave, used it as a fort, a submarine, a den of thieves. Still, he’d often gone in alone, sneaking out of the house after bedtime to stretch out on the floor, make a fire with a thought, and watch the flames play on the walls.

As he’d grown from child to boy, the woman had come to his dreams less often, and less clearly. But he’d seen her in Mia. The two images had blurred in his mind until there had been only Mia.

He stepped into the cave and could smell her. No, he corrected, fascinated. He could smell them both. The soft, herbal scent of the woman who had sung to him, and the deeper, richer scent of the woman he loved.

Mother, Mia had called her the night they’d seen her carry the pelt from this place. With the warmth of affection, the formality of respect, she had addressed the vision as though they had met many times before.

He supposed, though she’d never told him—even when she had seemed to tell him everything—that they had.

He crouched, studying the smooth cave floor where he had seen the man curled in sleep.

“You had my face,” he said aloud. “Just as she had Mia’s. Once I let myself believe that meant we weren’t supposed to be together. It was one of my many excuses. You left. I left. But I came back.”

He shifted, reading the words he had carved into the stone so long ago. As he read, he reached under his shirt to pull out the chain he wore. His foot tapped against something and sent it clinking against the stone.

With one hand closed around the ring he wore on the chain, he picked up its mate.

The smaller ring was badly tarnished, but he could feel the carving that circled it. The same Celtic knot pattern that circled the one he’d found in the cave on the west coast of Ireland. The same pattern as the design Mia had etched under the promise he’d carved in stone.