Nightwing (16 page)

“The mirrors. This is how you made love to me.”

He nodded and brushed a kiss behind her right ear. A rush of awareness, of his body solid against hers, made her heart flutter. She felt Johnny lift her hair, felt the graze of his lips as he kissed the nape of her neck.

She felt as fragile as she looked cradled against Johnny, caught in the nimbus of sunlight reflecting off the mirror. She closed her eyes, imagined her turtleneck was a lace collar and savored the feel of Johnny’s mouth as he kissed her hair. She felt the chill in his arm as she gripped his wrist, tried to imagine it warm, and swayed against him.

He moved with her, looped his arm around her throat and held her against him at shoulder and hip. She could almost hear lace rustle, the slow tick of a wind-up dock, the whinny of a horse, carriage wheels crunching on gravel.

Oh, it was heaven, but it wasn’t real. Johnny wasn’t real, except in a mirror. He was trapped in time and she was trapped in his eyes, her heart catching as he raised his head and looked at her.

A lock of his long dark hair curled over his forehead, gleaming in the glass. His eyes gleamed, too, dark and heavy lidded, as he smiled again and dragged his mouth down the curve of her jaw.

Her lips parted on a mew of longing and she rolled her head against his chest. She thought he meant to kiss her mouth and strained to meet him, but he kissed the tip of her nose instead, tenderly, keeping one eye on the mirror.

It felt like a tiny electrical tingle. Just as it had all those years ago when he’d kissed her on the beach—when the starfish had stung her, Willie realized, the rest of the memory rushing out of her subconscious: the shimmer she’d seen in the air, the dizzying sweep she’d thought was the poison in the sting.

“It was
you,”
she breathed. “You kissed me on the beach. When I was a little girl and a starfish stung me.”

He smiled, the bittersweet curve of his mouth making her heart catch.

“The monster in Whit’s closet. The pirate on the beach. That was you, too, wasn’t it?”

Johnny nodded. Willie’s eyes filled again. He’d been here always, the man Raven was and claimed he wanted to be again. Watching out for her, keeping her safe, bringing Granma flowers and sand dollars.

“Oh, Johnny,” she said again.

He laid his right hand against the mirror, thumb, index and little fingers raised. “I love you,” he said, and all the tears Willie had been too afraid to shed in front of Raven burst out of her in a throat-wrenching sob.

She pressed her hand next to Johnny’s, thumb, index and little fingers raised. His fingers were strong and brown, sunbaked over a century ago by the Egyptian sun. Her own never tanned, and were splashed with nutmeg freckles.

“I love you. I always have. I thought it was Beaches, but it was you. I was just too dumb to know it.”

Johnny mouthed
no, no,
turned her and folded her into his arms. Willie felt the rough weave of his shirt against her cheek, smooth, well-toned muscle beneath the brown skin of his chest, but no warmth, no heartbeat. He felt like marble, beautiful but lifeless marble. She threw her arms around his waist and almost howled with sorrow.

Johnny laid his cheek against her hair, rocked her and let her weep. Willie cried until she’d soaked his vest and shirt, until she tasted salt and rust on her tongue, raised her head and saw the bloodstains she’d smeared with her tears. In the mirror she saw that she’d bitten her lip, and she wasn’t sure if the blood she tasted was hers or Johnny’s.

“This is wonderful but it isn’t real,” she said. “It can’t ever be real. Not unless—”

Willie’s breath caught and her eyes went wide in the mirror. It hadn’t dawned on her, not once, while she’d listened to Raven tell her about the Ritual of Rejoining. It did now, and it dawned on Johnny, too. She saw it in the slow, miraculous smile spreading across his face.

It
was
possible—if Raven was telling the truth.

They dove for the diary together. Johnny’s hand closed on it first. He snatched it up and opened it, skimming the pages. A piece of illuminated, age-yellowed parchment fluttered out. Willie caught it before it hit the floor.

“Well, this is swell. It’s in Arabic or something.”

Johnny tapped his finger against a page of the diary and passed it to her. Raven had entered the translation in the same precise copperplate with which Johnny had written the note he’d left on the monitor. Even in English it made no sense. Still, Willie felt gooseflesh rise as she read.

Eternal is the Power of Three,

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

Sun and Moon and Earth Eternal.

When the Three are One, the One will be Three.

Then the Dark will be Light,

Made One by the Sacred Cedar.

The Dead Shall Live and Stand Unscathed

In the Light of the Sun,

And of the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit.

“I’ve never been any good with riddles,” she said as she gave the diary back to him. “How ‘bout you?”

Johnny frowned and shook his head. Willie’s heart sank.

“Then we have no choice but to trust Raven.”

“I must, yes,” Johnny signed, “but you must—”

Something. His fingers moved too fast for Willie to follow. She picked up the dictionary and said, “Sign it again.”

He dragged a frustrated hand through his hair, rose and turned on his knees, plucked a pencil and a notepad out of the clutter on her desk, scribbled and gave it to her.

“The Ritual may be dangerous. You must go before Raven comes. You will be safe and the other will not come back.”

“Other?” Willie blinked at him. “What other?”

Johnny shrugged, took the pad back and wrote, “I don’t know. It came last night in the body of a lynx. I thought it was Raven, but it was a creature far worse. It came for Raven and the stone he wears in his ring.”

“Yikes.” Willie remembered the column in the
Chronicle
and shivered. So much for hoping Nekhat was just a clever vampire lie. If Johnny had seen him he had to be real. So did the threat to Stonebridge. “Raven said he’d come for the moonstone.”

“Who?” Johnny flashed the sign in her face, startling her out of her daze.

“Nekhat,” she said, rubbing her arms. “The monster who made Raven a vampire and you a homeless person.”

He finger-spelled the name slowly, a frown of concentration drawing his eyebrows together. He spelled it again, shaking his head, and made the swipe across his forehead that meant, “I can’t remember.”

“Thank God for small favors.” Willie sighed and pushed to her feet, steadying herself against the pedestal mirror as her head spun. Too many shocks and not nearly enough brandy, she thought ruefully.

The sun had faded; the shadows beneath the oak tree outside the window were deepening. No wonder. Her desk dock said it was nearly six-thirty. How long had she and Johnny slow-danced in front of the mirror?

Long enough, Willie realized as he straightened beside her, to make her forget all about hopping a plane to Alaska. The open throat of his shirt made her pulse thud; Lord Byron himself would have done murder for the unconsciously artful tangle of Johnny’s hair over his forehead. And what a shame it was that breeches that fit like a banana skin had gone out of fashion.

Not that he didn’t look good in jeans. Or was that Raven? Willie didn’t know. She only knew that she’d no more been sucked by happenstance into Johnny and Raven’s struggle than Betsy Boyle had bought Beaches by accident.

It was a heavy concept and cosmic beyond her grasp. She didn’t understand it; she only felt the rightness of it in her heart. It wasn’t coincidence that she had come to Beaches every summer when Johnny came. She was meant to play a part in this. Willie didn’t know the what or how of it, but there was only one way to find out. God help her. God help them all.

“We’ve met the enemy, Johnny,” she told him solemnly. “And he’s you.”

Chapter 16

It was their first fight, a real doozy. Willie cried and threw things. Nothing worked until she ran upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom. It took Johnny three minutes and four seconds to slide a hastily scrawled note under the door. “You win. I’ll let you meet with Raven on the terrace first to make sure of his intentions.”

“Yesss!” Willie made a victory fist and opened the bathroom door. Johnny glowered at her in the mirror and handed her another note. “Next time I’ll have my body back and I’ll break down the door.”

“Oh, yeah?” Willie ripped the note in two and tossed it in the air. “Before or after you hit me over the head with your club and drag me off to your cave?”

Johnny grabbed half the fluttering note, scribbled with the blue pencil he’d found on her desk and thrust the note at her. “Gentlemen of my day used a buggy whip.”

“Oh, really?” Willie’s gaze shot from the note to Johnny’s face. “Well, now, hear this, Mr. Edwardian tyrant—”

He grinned and winked, his eyes dancing with amusement. Willie stared, openmouthed. She was looking straight at Johnny, not the mirror, but she didn’t feel the least bit dizzy. Yesterday he’d looked fuzzy; now he looked—opaque. The outline of his body was quite distinct.

“Ether you’re getting stronger,” she said, “or I’m getting used to this. I can almost see you without the mirror.”

He blinked, held up his hands, turned them over several times and then raised an eyebrow at her. She could also see the first fingers of sunset backlighting his hair and washing his shirt lavender.

“Uh-oh,” she said. “It’s almost sundown.”

Johnny glanced at the window, then at Willie and made a sign with his arms crossed.

“You bet I’m scared. You’ve had 117 years to get used to the idea that your evil twin is a vampire. I’ve only had a couple days.”

Two days that seemed like a lifetime. How ironic that was, since two lives, hers and Johnny’s—three, including Raven’s, if you figured it that way—hinged on what would happen when the moon was full three nights from now.

Not only full but eclipsed. Willie had read that in the almanac, too, but Raven hadn’t said a word about it. He’d told her only that the Ritual had to be performed on the second night of the full moon. The night of the eclipse, when the earth passed between the sun and the moon.

Maybe that’s what the line in the Riddle meant—”When the Three are One.” Still, she didn’t like the fact that Raven hadn’t mentioned it. But if he was up to no good, she intended to find out. Brave talk from the woman who’d almost wet her pants when he’d eaten her clove of garlic.

“Well.” Willie smiled and wiped her suddenly clammy palms on her jeans. “Guess I’ll light the luminarias.”

Johnny nodded absently, a frown on his face as he held his hands up to the window and studied them. Willie left him to it, touching the cross around her neck for comfort as she went downstairs. The chain was whole, and had been when Raven gave it back to her. She had no idea how he’d done it, or what she was going to say to him.

Pretend he’s alive, she told herself. You didn’t have any trouble talking to him when you thought he was a living, breathing, rich young doctor.

What would he be—or better yet,
who—
after the Ritual? Still Raven, cool and remote as the moon, or Johnny, warm and vibrant as the sun? Would Johnny still love her? Would she still love him? Would the Ritual even work?

How on earth was such a thing possible? How could the dead become the living? Was she talking to herself? Yes, but not answering—not yet, anyway—so there was still hope. Was there hope for Johnny’s immortal soul? Or was it Raven’s?

Was it even a mortal soul, and was it theirs rather than his? Willie sighed and ruffled a hand through her hair.

“You’re right, Frank,” she said as she stepped outside through the French doors. “I
am
strung out.”

The sky was a pale, washed-out blue from the storm, fading into a tired, mostly mauve-and-orange twilight. The moon was up, a gray, pockmarked ghost. From the almanac Willie knew it was two-thirds full.

A hunter’s moon, she thought, and shivered. She opened the storage bin, plucked up three luminarias in each hand and looked at Frank’s house. The windows were dark, the carport empty, and she was glad.

She’d promised to tell him what was going on, but what could she say? Raven’s a vampire and Johnny’s his disembodied soul, but don’t worry. They’re getting back together, and then he and I will. Until death do us part—again.

The thought gave Willie a chill as she went back for the rest of the luminarias and the butane fireplace lighter she kept in the bin. She laid it on the table next to the watering can she’d forgotten to put away last night.

She was exhausted, physically as well as emotionally. Her back and her head ached, her good-as-new-in-the-morning ankle pulsed like a sore tooth. She hadn’t had a shower since... the night before last. Good grief. No wonder she thought she smelled something dead.

And then she heard the low, snarling growl behind her. She hadn’t smelled anything so vile since old Patches had lugged home a cod that had lain rotting on the beach for at least a week.

“Like father, like daughter, eh, Callie?” Willie pinched her nose and turned around.

The cat crouched on the edge of the terrace was a lynx, tawny and spotted. Its tufted ears lay flat against its head, its bobbed tail flicked like a snake’s tongue, and red flames flickered in its eyes.

Willie’s heart slammed into her ribs and then plummeted to her toes. It came in the body of a lynx, Johnny had told her, for Raven and the stone he wears in his ring.

The lynx growled, raising gooseflesh on Willie’s arms. She flung a panicked look at the French doors she’d left open, twenty feet away across the flagstone terrace. Quick as a cat moved, she’d never make it.

Something flickered in the doorway. Hope and her pulse leapt, but it was only the sheers lifting in the evening breeze.
Oh, God! Oh, Johnny, help me!
She screamed silently, but he didn’t come.

She was on her own; her only weapon the butane lighter on the table a good five feet away.

The lynx crept closer, its growl deepening, reverberating on Willie’s bones like the thrum of a big engine in low gear. She thought she saw a flash of red near the top of the driveway behind her Jeep, but didn’t dare look at it.