Daughter of the Spellcaster (19 page)

Ryan picked up the knife from its red velvet nest, bracing himself for it to come to life. If there really was no such thing as coincidence, then he’d received the blade for a reason. And since that reason could not possibly be to thrust it into Lena’s heart, despite what she’d dreamed, it must be to do something else.

But whatever it was, he had to master the thing first.

He held it upright, its blade aimed toward the night sky, and felt torn between
God, I must look ridiculous
and
God, I feel like some storybook hero.

And then he thought,
Storybook. Lena’s storybooks. She thinks I really
am
some kind of storybook hero.

Can I ever live up to that?

He looked at the blade. “Work for me, dammit.”

It spat a few sparks into the night. He drew it back down and, very intently, pointed it at a tree and tried to mentally force it to release a blast of energy. He actually
pushed,
but the knife only glowed.

He lowered it, shook his arm to loosen the muscles, raised the knife again and this time took aim at a rock.
Blast it to pieces,
he thought.

Nothing.

He took a deep breath, lowering the blade again, then closed his eyes and tried to gather his focus. Finally he raised the knife again and aimed it at a clump of weeds that were swaying in the breeze.

Still nothing.

“I knew it wouldn’t work. It’s not possible for a knife to shoot fire, and if I think I’ve seen proof otherwise, I must have been hallucinating. Because knives do not have supernatural powers. Even ancient golden ones.”

In frustration, he stomped back toward where he’d left the box. “Freaking thing. The question is, how am I supposed to use it to protect my—my
family—
if I can’t even get it to—” A blast shot from the tip, nearly hitting him in the foot.

He dropped the blade and jumped away from it.

Dammit!
What the hell was he missing?

Carefully he moved the open box next to the knife and managed to get the blade in using the toe of his boot. He slammed the box shut and carried it back around the house, then returned it to its spot under the front seat of the truck. He locked the doors, dropped his keys in his coat pocket and went inside, prepared to spend another long night reading and researching.

* * *

Lena couldn’t sleep. Something was very wrong. She had an entity in her home that was furious about being forced to leave and kept trying to tell her not to trust Ryan. She had a man in her house who refused to believe, even though he said he was keeping an open mind and pretended to be trying to learn about the ways of magic. He might be trying, but he simply
couldn’t
believe. He was out of touch with his own feelings, and magic and emotion were so tightly entwined that one could not exist without the other. And beyond that, she had a very strong intuition that Ryan was still keeping something from her, starting with what he was hiding in the truck. And that bothered her, given her recent dream.

So when she saw that truck light come on outside, saw him tucking something under the seat and then locking the vehicle up tight with the remote, she made up her mind. She had to know what he was hiding out there.
Had to know
.

He dropped the keys into his coat pocket. She went to the top of the stairs and hid in the darkness, then watched from there as he came back into the house, shrugged off his coat and hung it on a hook near the door. And her decision was made.

She waited until he’d returned to his bedroom. Even after that, she gave it another hour, pacing her bedroom floor in her socks, trying to be quiet so he would drift off to sleep and she could go snooping.

Snooping. God, she hated the idea! She was racked with guilt before she’d even done anything. And yet she had to know. She’d been hurled back and forth with the shifting currents of her belief in him. Not her love for him, never that. But dammit, she had to find out about his feelings for her, had to know whether they were genuine, even if shallow and cool. She got up, crept to his door, which was slightly ajar, and peered inside.

He’d fallen asleep reading. His head was crooked over onto one shoulder, his dark hair falling across his forehead in a way that made her ache to tiptoe closer and smooth it out of his eyes. But she resisted that urge and backed away.

Softly, so softly that her steps made no sound, she went down the stairs and to the door. As she slipped her hand into his coat pocket she caught his scent in the fabric, and her heart twisted into a knot. God, she loved him. And she hated spying on him this way.

She cupped the keys in her hand, so they wouldn’t jingle, slid her feet into a pair of boots and didn’t bother with a coat. She would only be a minute.

Twisting the doorknob as gently as if it might break, she opened it, almost holding her breath, willing it not to creak or groan, then breathed a silent thank-you when it didn’t.

She stepped out, closed it behind her ever so carefully, and then she turned and faced the big black truck. Everything in her rebelled against doing this. Sneaking, spying, snooping, deception, they were the last things she had ever thought she would do.

And yet she found herself walking down the porch steps and across the crispy frosting of ice on the ground to that truck. She turned to look up at Ryan’s bedroom window. Empty. Taking the key ring from her pocket, she clicked the unlock button and the truck obeyed with a snapping sound.

Her hand trembled as she touched the driver’s door, and the night wind drove goose bumps across her skin as she pulled it open. Swallowing hard, she reached beneath the seat and felt a box there. She pulled it out, admiring the elaborately engraved wood. It looked like an antique.

Don’t do this, Lena,
her mind told her.
Just slide it back under the seat. You don’t have to look. It’s not too late. Stop now, before it is.

“I have to know,” she whispered.

Bracing herself, she opened the box.

And there was the knife. The golden athame she had seen in her dreams—her nightmares. The one she dreamed Ryan used to kill her. She flashed on the recurrent vision again. Saw him standing over her bed with the others all around, wearing those stupid crystal pendants, their eyes gleaming red as they reached for her baby and Ryan, her child’s father, lifted the knife and prepared to drive it straight into Lena’s heart.

It wasn’t a dream. It was a premonition. A warning. The ghost was right. So was Bahru. She
couldn’t
trust Ryan. He wasn’t seeing a lawyer to steal her baby girl from her. He didn’t need to. He was just going to murder her instead.

* * *

The next morning, she managed to keep her horror from showing, or hoped so, anyway. She hadn’t told her mother yet, because she would want to murder Ryan if she thought he was a threat to Lena and the baby. And not Bahru, because she hadn’t seen him yet. But she was remedying that now.

Right after breakfast she had piled a basket full of fresh fruit, a couple of blueberry muffins and some of her mother’s specially blended teas, and tucked a towel around the lot of it, and now she was on her way to see Bahru. A shiver ran up her spine as she passed by the big black pickup truck with that golden blade hidden inside.

She kept telling herself that there could be a dozen reasons why Ryan would hide the blade away, keep it a secret from her. But that dream kept returning, fluttering through her mind like a giant hairy moth, confronting her with the vision in which he plunged that blade straight into her heart in the seconds after their baby was born.

Her dreams were never without meaning. Even if they sometimes seemed random and nonsensical, they always made sense eventually. And yes, sometimes in hindsight the meaning turned out to be something far different from what she had at first believed. But it didn’t seem there were too many ways to interpret this one.

Were there?

Bahru opened the door to her knock and greeted her with a genuine smile. “I am so glad to see you, Lena. Come in, come in. How are you feeling?”

“Tired, stressed. A little bit paranoid, maybe. But I think the baby’s fine. How about you?”

“Good,” he said. “I am very content here.” He closed the door behind her as she entered his cottage. She handed him the basket, and he moved the towel aside to see what it held as she shrugged off her coat and stepped out of her boots. “Oh, this is wonderful. Thank you, Lena.”

“Don’t thank me. It’s a bribe. You mind if I sit?”

“Of course not.” He quickly set the basket on the small wooden table and pulled out a chair for her. “You’re troubled, you have been since we arrived here. I can see it in your eyes. What’s happened, Lena?”

She sighed, wondering where to begin. “Well, a lot, actually. There’s a ghost in our house...or something. It’s never been a problem before, but now I’m feeling impatience, even anger, from it. And it feels...I know this will sound odd, but it feels possessive of me.”

He nodded slowly, his eyes hooded, as if he were looking inward. “Yes, I, too, have sensed the presence in your home,” he said, stroking his beard. “But the energy I picked up was more protective than possessive.”

“Protective? Really?”

He nodded again. “Yes, definitely protective.”

“I guess it makes sense, then, that it would be acting out more now that Ryan is around. It doesn’t seem to like him. Even warned me not to trust him.”

He watched her, listened intently, but didn’t say more.

“Bahru, do you think Ryan is capable of harming me?”

His eyes widened. “Why would you ask such a question?”

Lena got up from the table, paced slowly away. Bahru sat down, the picture of patience. “I keep having this dream about having the baby. You’re there, and Doc Cartwright, and that nurse he keeps pushing on us, Eloise Sheldrake. And Ryan’s there, too. You’re all standing around my bed, and he’s right beside me. Mom is in a chair in the corner, but she’s either asleep or unconscious or...or I don’t want to think what.”

“Bizarre.”

“Oh, I’m just getting started on the bizarre part. Everyone’s eyes are glowing red,” she said. “And they’re all wearing quartz pendants, like yours.” She frowned as Bahru lifted his necklace and examined it.

“Where did that come from, Bahru?”

He smiled. “I was meditating in a cave not far from here the last time Ernst and I came to town. We were just getting things ready to put Havenwood on the market. I’d discovered the cave before and been drawn to it. Always...so drawn.” He had a faraway look in his eyes, and his voice had softened, deepened.

“And...?”

“I found a very large deposit of quartz, and I just couldn’t resist helping myself to the few pieces that were loose. It felt...it felt like they were meant for me. Like a gift. I kept one for myself and gave the rest as gifts to people who admired them. They’re harmless, Lena. I promise you.”

She sighed, nodding slowly. “I don’t know why they would seem so important in my dream,” she said softly.

“Nor do I. But go on. Tell me the rest. You are in your room. We are all there around you. And you’re about to give birth.”

She nodded. “The ghost, or whatever he is, he’s there in another corner, watching, waiting, bigger and...denser than ever before.”

She paused in her pacing to look at Bahru. He was listening intently.

“I feel the baby emerge from my body. And I feel consumed with fear. And then I look up to see Ryan raising this blade up over me, like he’s going to plunge it straight into my heart.”

Bahru jumped to his feet. “
Ryan
is holding the blade?”

She nodded, pacing away again. “I wake just as he starts to bring it down, but I feel the horrible pain in my chest even though the dream is over. Bahru, what can it mean?”

He was standing in front of his chair, his palms pressed to the table. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if he had to steady himself. Softly he said, “In the dream, what does the blade look like?”

“It’s very unusual,” she told him. “Gold, not silver or stainless. The hilt and the blade are both covered in odd etchings, symbols, like some kind of ancient writing. Double-edged. Like an athame.”

She shook her head slowly as the guru listened. He rubbed his hands together as if they were cold, and his eyes were so intent on her that she knew this all meant something. “There’s more. I can see there’s more,” he said softly.

She nodded, swallowing down her fear and heartache and nerves. “Bahru, I told Ryan about the dream. He swore he would never hurt me. But I saw him hiding something under the seat of that new truck of his, and I couldn’t bear not to know what it was. So last night I sneaked out there after he’d gone to sleep to take a look.” She closed her eyes, shaking her head as she lowered it in shame. “I know it was wrong.”

His hands on her shoulders startled her, and she looked up fast, surprised he’d crossed the room so quickly.

“What did you find?” he asked.

“The blade from my dream. The same one.”

“Ryan has the blade?”

A red flash in his eyes made her suck in a sharp breath and jerk backward, so that his hands fell to his sides. “What the hell was
that?
”

13

B
ahru frowned. “What was
what,
child?”

“Your eyes. Your eyes, they just... They were...”

His expression turned to one of extreme sympathy and concern, and he studied her with care. “Dear, sweet Lena. You asked for my advice, and I will give it to you now. I believe you are suffering from an extreme amount of stress. It makes sense, with your body in flux, your hormones raging in your bloodstream, your mother having just suffered a health scare. You’ve lost a friend in Ernst—more than a friend, the grandfather of your child. And you’ve been reunited, for good or bad, with your baby’s father. I believe the things you’ve been observing of late are more medical than magical. The nightmares, the fear, the hallucinations—symptoms, Lena, not events.”

“I did
not
hallucinate that blade.”

“Are you sure, Lena? Are you
very
sure?”

“Positive.” She’d backed up all the way to the door and was reaching behind her for the knob, fumbling to grasp it.

“It makes no sense for you to be afraid of Ryan, nor of me, Lena. Think about this. Neither of us would harm you, not ever. I distrust Ryan, but I know he wouldn’t physically hurt you. And I’ve lived my entire lifetime as a pacifist, you know that.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s fine. I have to go.” She got hold of the knob, twisted the door open and all but stumbled outside.

“Talk to Doctor Cartwright, Lena. At least consider that there might be more at work here than you realize.”

“Sure, I’ll do that.” She turned and ran down the three short steps to the driveway, then kept on running until her side cramped up so bad it almost put her on her knees. As she stumbled to a stop, bending over and clutching her belly, that black cat darted across the drive in front of her and vanished into the woodlot that overlooked the lake.
Black cat crossing my path. Again. This can’t be good.

Panting to catch her breath, she turned and looked behind her.

Bahru was nowhere in sight.

Then she straightened, rolled her eyes at her own panic and realized how ridiculous that thought was. As if Bahru would be chasing her through the snow in his flowing robes and sandals. What the hell was wrong with her? She started walking again, limping due to the hitch in her side.

His eyes flashed, dammit. And not for the first time.

Come on, Lena,
her logical side argued.
You know magic isn’t about special effects and flashing eyes. It’s about focus and will.

That chalice sure is a special-effects machine, though. I mean, it’s not like any sort of actual scrying I’ve ever experienced before, not mental images but real ones, real visuals and an almost time-travel sort of effect, the way it sucked me in. What about that, huh?

Well, what if you hallucinated that, too?

She reached the house, breathless, mounted the steps and stumbled inside to find her mom and Ryan in the living room, holding mugs of cocoa, smiling and apparently in the middle of a conversation—until they looked her way. Selma pressed her fingers to her lips and her eyes widened. Ryan slammed his mug on the coffee table and crossed the room in two long strides, his arms going around her shoulders fast, as if he thought she was on the verge of collapse.

“What happened? Are you okay?” He helped her to the sofa and lowered her onto it.

“Where were you?” Selma asked, bending over her. “Hell’s bells, your face is as red as a beet!”

“I’m fine.” Lena tried to straighten, but her mother pressed her down onto her back, while Ryan moved to her feet to pull off her boots.

“Guys, really, I’m fine. I just...I spooked myself and ran a little, which is really not a great idea when you’re carrying a watermelon in your belly.”

“I’ll get you some water,” Selma said. “Or tea. Yes, tea.”

“Some of that cocoa you guys are drinking sounds better.” She tried to inject some lightness into her tone, but Selma still looked worried as she hurried to the kitchen.

Ryan helped her sit up, his arm wrapping around her, and it was so much like an embrace that her heart tripped over itself in response. Stupid, if he was just going to stab her later. And yet she couldn’t help herself.

It would be wonderful, really, if all this really were due to some kind of hormone-induced mental lapse. Women went crazy from hormones sometimes, right? Postpartum psychosis was real enough. Women heard voices, believed them, did terrible things. Not that she would ever—
could
ever—harm her daughter. But still, it happened. So what about
pre
partum delusion? Was that even a thing?

She let Ryan peel off her coat, and then he lowered her back down and took the boots and jacket away. He set the boots by the door, hung the jacket on one of the hooks there. Selma was rattling things in the kitchen.

“So what spooked you?” he asked.

Lying, sneaking, they just didn’t suit her, despite her actions last night. “I was talking to Bahru, and I swore I saw his eyes glow red. Just for a second. But it seemed so real. And in that dream I had, that nightmare vision thing, everyone’s eyes were glowing red, and it scared the hell out of me.”

He frowned hard. “That dream where I’m going to stab you?”

She nodded. “Yeah. That was what I went out there to talk to him about. I thought he might have some...insight.”

“And did he?”

She pressed her lips together and swallowed hard. “He thinks I’ve gone mental due to stress and hormones.”

Ryan lowered his chin, sighed soft and deep.

“You agree with him?”

He met her eyes, and his seemed...angry? No, that wasn’t it. Intense. No, not that, either. Something she hadn’t seen in them before. And then he said a single word that shocked her right to her toes. He said, “No.”

“No?”

“No, Lena, I don’t think you’re
mental
. I think there’s something going on here, and I’m damn well going to find out what.” And then his face softened.
Way
softened. His eyes were swimming, and he stroked her hair up off her face and back behind her ear. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Okay? She was baffled. If he was planning to kill her, why wouldn’t he agree with Bahru and try to convince her that she was having a preggo-induced nervous breakdown? And why was he looking at her now just the way she’d been dreaming he would look at her since the day they’d first met—in this lifetime, at least?

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

He put his hand on her belly. “How about you, Peanut? You okay, too?”

The baby kicked, right on cue. And Ryan’s face lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning. His smile was full and genuine, and his eyes gleamed. Not in a demonic way, like Bahru’s had, but in a beautiful way. “It’s like she’s answering me.”

“Maybe she is. She’s a witchling, after all.”

He met her eyes, his smile fading slowly. “Thank you, Lena. I haven’t said it, but...thank you.”

Lena blinked. “For what?”

“For this.” He ran his hand over her belly. “You didn’t have to keep her. It’s just now hitting me how hard this must have been on you physically, to say nothing about—”

“It’s not hard, Ryan. It’s...magical. And blissful. And beautiful. I’m in love with her already, and she’s not even here yet.”

“I am, too.”

Oh my Goddess,
she thought.
I believe him
. He loved their baby. She no longer had any doubt about that.
But what about me?
her heart cried.
How do you feel about me?

Her mother came in with the cocoa, looked at them briefly, and then the worry in her eyes evaporated. “Here you go, honey.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Lena blew on the top of the mug, then took a tentative sip.

“Ryan was just saying he was ready to show us the nursery,” her mother said. “Weren’t you, Ryan?”

“I just have to pick up a few drop cloths. There’s no furniture yet, no curtains, but I can’t wait for you to see it.”

Lena stared at him with what felt like puppy-dog eyes as he backed away and darted up the stairs like an excited kid. God, she loved him.

Please don’t let him be planning my murder!

As soon as he was gone, she turned to her mother. “I want you to do something for me as soon as Ryan and I go upstairs.”

She frowned. “What, honey?”

“His truck keys are in that coat pocket.” Lena pointed at Ryan’s big fleece-lined denim coat, hanging on the hook beside her own. “Take them. Go out there and look under the front seat, driver’s side. Tell me what you find there.”

Her mother’s frown deepened. “What do you
think
I’m going to find there, Lena?”

“An ancient ritual dagger tucked inside an ornate wooden box. The box looks a lot like the one my chalice came in.” That was the first time she’d put those bits of information together in her mind, she realized. And since the two tools were intimately connected, there must be something there, something more for her to mull on. But first she had to be sure the knife was really there.

“Either it’s real and he’s hiding it from me for some reason, or I imagined or dreamed it was there. I need to know which it is. Please?”

Selma’s concerned eyes searched Lena’s face. “Are you sure you’re okay, hon?”

“I honestly don’t know, Mom.”

Ryan came back downstairs and held out his hand toward her. “Ready?”

Lena nodded and started to get up, but before she made it to her feet he jumped over the coffee table and grabbed her hands to help. Something had changed in him. She was sure of it. He led her to the stairs, and they started up. She spared her mom a parting look full of meaning, and Selma gave a firm nod. She would do what Lena had asked her to do.

Then Lena turned her focus to the nursery door, which was standing slightly ajar. They reached it, and Ryan pushed it wide and opened one arm with a flourish. “Ta-da!”

Her jaw dropped, and she clapped her hand to her mouth in surprise. The walls were green on the bottom, yellow on the top, with a row of turtles stenciled along the middle where the two colors met, each and every one of them unique. Some were smiling, some looking up, some down, some had tufts of hair or whimsical ponytails, one wore glasses. One wall also sported larger animals. A happy elephant and a tall giraffe. The elephant had painted its toenails red, and the giraffe wore a necktie. He’d added a playful monkey wearing tennis shoes, and a prancing zebra with a laughing little cartoon girl on its back. She had wild red curls and big green eyes.

Her own eyes filled. “Oh, Ryan...”

“Do you like it?” he asked, almost nervously.

“It’s wonderful.” She moved closer to the wall, soaking up the details. A palm tree in the corner, fronds extending to either side, bananas and pineapples and coconuts all growing from it, and a brightly colored toucan on one limb. Tall grasses extended from the floor to waist height, and as she looked more closely, she saw a pair of lion cubs at play there. “You did all this by hand, in just two days’ time?”

“Yeah, I’ve been on fire.”

As she turned to stare at him in wonder, he moved around the room. “I figured the crib could go here, by the window. Sunshine is supposed to be good for babies, right? And see, I already set a hook in the ceiling. One of your books says that every child’s room should have a crystal prism in the window, so I thought we’d find a really amazing one and hang it right there, over the crib. But on the foot end, not over her head, so it can’t fall and bop her on the noggin,” he added quickly.

He moved to another spot. “My mother’s antique rocking chair can go here, if you want. It’s still in Dad’s house. It’s the one she rocked me in.” He turned to the third wall. “We’ll put a dresser over there, maybe a changing table. There’s still space left, but I don’t know what else we might need, or—” He’d turned to face her again as he went on and stopped suddenly, tilting his head to stare at her. “You’re crying!”

Her stupid face just crumpled, and she nodded as jerky sobs tore through her heaving chest.

“Why? Is it the color? ’Cause we can change—”

She hurled herself against him, wrapping her arms around him, mashing her tear-wet face to his chest and her bulging body to his solid one. His arms came around her, strong and soothing, as she proceeded to soak his shirt with her tears. She couldn’t talk. She heard her mother come in, heard her delighted gasp and almost breathless, “Oh, my!”

“You like it?” Ryan asked.

“Oh, Ryan, I had no idea,” Selma said. “This is amazing!”

Lena nodded, so he would know that she agreed, then sniffled and tried to look up at him. “It’s even better than I could have imagined.”

He seemed relieved and hugged her closer, one hand in her hair. “You had me worried.”

“She was probably knocked speechless with surprise and sheer joy,” Selma said. “Ryan, if you hang around us a while, I’ll help you learn how to tell happy tears from sad ones from furious ones, okay?”

“That would be extremely helpful.” There was laughter in his voice.

“And by the way, Lena dear,” her mother went on. “You know that bracelet you lost, the one you asked me to look for?”

Sniffling, Lena lifted her face from Ryan’s chest and looked her mother’s way, wiping her cheeks with the back of one hand. She was terrified her happiness was about to take a nosedive.

“I looked right where you told me you thought it might be, and there wasn’t anything there.”

“Nothing?” Lena blinked in surprise.

“Not a thing, honey.”

Bahru was right. She
had
been stressed out. And it had been awfully late when she’d gone out to look under the seat. Very late. Maybe she had dreamed the entire thing, or even sleep-walked out to the truck and imagined seeing the knife of her nightmares there.

Worse things had happened to stressed-out, hormone-flooded women.

And that meant...that meant that she could believe...this. She could relish this. She looked up at Ryan’s face, vaguely aware of her mother backing out of the room.

“I’m going to the grocery store now,” Selma said, pausing in the doorway. “I’ll be...a while.” She pulled the door closed.