"What 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.
Gently, he closed his fingers over the ring and brought out a dimly remembered spell suited to housewives. When he opened his hand again, the little ring gleamed silver. He studied it for a long time, then slid it onto the chain with its mate. In her office, Mia printed out e-mail orders, set them aside to fill, then efficiently began on the paperwork generated during her brief absence. She'd used the backlog as a legitimate excuse to leave the house early. Though, she recalled, Sam hadn't seemed eager to keep her around. By nine, she'd made considerable progress, and stopped to make her first phone call. She needed to
see her lawyer at the first opportunity and make a few adjustments to her will. She told herself she wasn't being fatalistic, just practical.
From her satchel she took some of the personal papers she'd brought from home. Her partnership agreement with Nell in Three Sisters Catering was in order. But she intended to leave Ripley her share, should anything happen.
She thought Nell would appreciate that.
As the will stood now, the bookstore went outright to Lulu, but she'd decided to change that and designate a percentage to Nell. Lulu, she had no doubt, would approve. And she intended to start a small trust fund for her sisters' children, including the deed for the yellow cottage. It was something she would do in any case.
She would leave her library to Mac, as he would make the best use of it. For Zack there was her star collection, and her great-grandfather's watch.
It was the sort of thing one left to a brother.
She would leave the house to Sam. She could trust him to preserve it, to see that her garden was tended. And to guard the heart of the island.
She put the papers in her bottom drawer, locked it. She didn't intend for any of these arrangements to be necessary anytime soon. But she strongly believed in being prepared. She gathered up the printouts, took them downstairs to fill the orders. And she got on with the day, and her life.
"Something is just not right."
"Yeah," Ripley agreed. "There are too many people on the beach, and half of them are idiots."
"Seriously, Ripley. I'm really worried about Mia. We only have a couple of days before the full moon."
"I know what day of the month it is. Look at that guy there, on the Mickey Mouse towel. Frying like a fish in a pan. Bet he's from Indiana or someplace and hasn't seen a beach before. Give me a minute here."
She marched across the sand, nudged the brilliantly pink man with her toe. Nell waited, shifting from foot to foot while Ripley launched into her lecture, pointed skyward, leaned down and poked a finger in the man's shoulder, as if testing doneness.
As she marched back, the man dug out sunscreen and began slathering it on.
"My public service for the week. Now, about Mia - "
"She's too calm. She's breezing along like it's business as usual. She came to the book club meeting last night. She's in there right now checking inventory. We're doing the biggest spell I've ever done in a matter of days, and she just pats me on the head and tells me it'll be fine."
"She's always had ice water for blood. What's new?"