Praise for the novels of

MAGGIE SHAYNE

“Shayne crafts a convincing world, tweaking vampire legends just enough to draw fresh blood.”

—Publishers Weekly on Demon’s Kiss

“This story will have readers on the edge of their seats and begging for more.”

—RT Book Reviews on Twilight Fulfilled

“A tasty, tension-packed read”

—Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water

“Tense … frightening … a page-turner in the best sense”

—RT Book Reviews on Colder Than Ice

“Mystery and danger abound in Darker Than Midnight, a fast-paced, chilling thrill read that will keep readers turning the pages long after bedtime … Suspense, mystery, danger and passion—no one does them better than Maggie Shayne.”

—Romance Reviews Today on Darker Than Midnight [winner of a Perfect 10 award]

“Maggie Shayne is better than chocolate. She satisfies every wicked craving.”

—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Forster

“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven … A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man

“[A] gripping story of small-town secrets. The suspense will keep you guessing. The characters will steal your heart.”

—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner on The Gingerbread Man

Kiss of the Shadow Man is a “crackerjack novel of romantic suspense”.

—RT Book Reviews

Also by Maggie Shayne

The Portal

DAUGHTER OF THE SPELLCASTER

MARK OF THE WITCH

LEGACY OF THE WITCH

Secrets of Shadow Falls

KISS ME, KILL ME

KILL ME AGAIN

KILLING ME SOFTLY

BLOODLINE

ANGEL’S PAIN

LOVER’S BITE

DEMON’S KISS

Wings in the Night

BLUE TWILIGHT

BEFORE BLUE TWILIGHT

EDGE OF TWILIGHT

RUN FROM TWILIGHT

EMBRACE THE TWILIGHT

TWILIGHT HUNGER

TWILIGHT VOWS

BORN IN TWILIGHT

BEYOND TWILIGHT

TWILIGHT ILLUSIONS

TWILIGHT MEMORIES

TWILIGHT PHANTASIES

DARKER THAN MIDNIGHT

COLDER THAN ICE

THICKER THAN WATER

Blood of the Sorceress
Maggie Shayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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In Loving Memory of

Jane O’Connor

A woman who soared above challenges

that would have held most to the ground.

Founder of the Central New York Romance Writers,

which has since turned out more than a

dozen authors and well over a hundred novels

that might not otherwise even have been written, much

less published. We love you, Jane.

You led us to our careers and, more important,

to each other. Thank you will never be enough.

But thank you all the same.

Prologue

February 2, Imbolc

Lilia was no angel. Lilia was a witch. Even though she was currently hovering between the worlds, watching over her beloved, waiting for the right time to manifest as a silvery-blond-haired, blue-eyed woman and save his life, she was still a witch. Had been for thirty-five-hundred years. Would be for as long as her soul lived on.

She watched, awestruck, as her beautiful Demetrius flashed into existence fully formed, fully grown, completely naked. The Portal, the opening between dimensions through which he had escaped his Underworld prison, was in the cave behind a waterfall. He arrived in the physical world in a blaze of light, crouching on the stones near that cascade.

Goddess, he was beautiful. She reached out as if to touch him. But she couldn’t. Not yet.

He was the same as she remembered him. His body had been reconstituted just as it had once been, since his soul had been ripped away before he died, an unnatural perversion of the order of things. She wouldn’t get her own body back when she returned to earth to join him. Hers had been dashed against the rocky ground from a great height before her own soul had flown free. She would have to manifest a fresh new form when the time came. She’d glimpsed that new form in a vision, so different from her former body that it had shocked her.

Oh, but look at him.

He rose from his crouched position, looking around, blinking in confusion, and her heart ached. So long … it had been so long!

He looked the same, and her heart twisted in her chest with a mingling of joy that she had come this far, was this close to success, and heartache that he was still out of reach. She hadn’t seen him since that bloody dawn in 1501 BC, in Babylon, when he’d murdered the King in defense of the woman he loved, the King’s harem slave: Lilia herself. When the quarters she shared with her two sisters were searched, the tools of their forbidden magic had been found and the three of them sentenced to be sacrificed to Marduk, chief god of the pantheon. Demetrius had been the King’s right hand, his friend. She never should have fallen in love with him. The cost had been so high.

But she had loved him. She loved him still.

The high priest Sindar had been in love, too—with the King, or so Lilia had always suspected—and so his wrath had been bitter. He’d used his own magic, dark magic, to strip Demetrius of his soul and banish him to a formless, sensory-deprived existence in an Underworld void—just after having Lilia and her sisters thrown from a cliff to the bloody rocks below.

But he hadn’t counted on the power of the three Daughters of Ishtar. They’d refused to cross the Veil until they’d taken Demetrius’s stolen soul from the twisted holy man and split it among themselves for safekeeping. Indira and Magdalena had reincarnated lifetime after lifetime until the opportunity came to right the ancient wrong, while Lilia had remained in limbo, pulling their strings like a master puppeteer, awakening their memories, making them keep their vow to set things right.

The newly reborn Demetrius pushed himself up from the ice-cold ground, rising slowly. Lilia saw the amulet he wore gleaming in the moonlight. And even as he stood there, two other magical tools fell from nowhere and clattered loudly to the rocky ground.

He jumped at the sound, then moved closer, picking up the golden chalice, turning it slowly and examining the semiprecious stones embedded in its rim. Then he reached for the blade, looking it over the same way. She wondered what he was feeling. Did he recognize the tools? Did he have any clue as to the power he could wield with them? They’d held parts of his soul for a time, so he must feel a bond to them, a connection, yes?

Indira had returned the first piece of Demetrius’s soul, along with the amulet in which it had been protected, thus freeing him. She’d opened the Portal, allowing him to escape his Underworld prison. But he’d had no form, and little ability to reason. And now Magdalena had returned another piece, one the sisters had secreted within a chalice accompanied by a blade, which, when used together, had allowed Demetrius to manifest physically here near the Portal, in the cold of a February night in the Northeast.

He was freezing and shaken, she was sure. But not entirely confused. He would know about this world into which he’d sprung. He’d been floating wraithlike about it since last Samhain, after all. By now he knew the language, the slang, the customs. But he wouldn’t know how to get by. Even with the powers he’d brought along with him, he needed food, shelter, clothing. And he didn’t even know he had any powers just yet.

Demetrius looked around, and as the snow began to fall everything in her yearned to go to him. To help him.

But she couldn’t. Not yet. Not until he used the magical tools that had been given to him to call her forth from the place that was not a place, and the time that was not a time. He had to bring her first into physical existence, and then he would have to render her fully human, fully mortal. He was the only one who could.

And when he realized what she would ask of him, he might wish her gone again. For Lilia had to convince him to give up his powers, his seeming immortality, and accept the final piece of his soul from her, so that they could have the lifetime together that had been denied them so long ago. And she wouldn’t even be allowed to tell him that if he refused, they would both die.

But first he must be allowed to live, to discover his powers, to experience this existence, so that he knew what he was giving up. He had to want to be human again—and want it badly enough to choose it over supernatural powers he had no idea would expire either way.

It was not going to be an easy sell.

But one way or another, this curse had to end now, and one way or another it would.

Cold. He was so cold. He hadn’t expected the sensations he was feeling, had been formless for so long that the notion of what form brought with it was alien to him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Demetrius knew that he’d been human once. But he didn’t remember it. It was a vague bit of knowledge floating around his subconscious and having little impact on anything. He felt no connection to that particle of information.

He looked behind him at the cave, knowing instinctively that that way lay the Portal, and beyond it the Underworld, his prison for as long as memory reached. He wanted no part of that. He didn’t remember it in detail. Not the way he would remember this … this night, the sensations racing through his body, the thousands of messages singing through his senses, the tastes in the air, the smells of the forest, the sounds of an infinite bird choir … this he would remember vividly.

As to what came before, he remembered an endless, vast, dense … void. There was nothing to remember but nothingness itself. No feelings. No light. No sound. Rage, there had been rage, and hatred, and struggling to get free without even knowing what freedom meant. It was a vague concept that he’d thought of simply as the opposite of what is. He’d known captivity, powerlessness, and craved its opposite. Time had no meaning. Emotion was nonexistent. Touch was not even a concept to him then.

Eventually he’d discovered that he could peer through the Portal at the world he could not reach. He could see through the eyes of some of the creatures that roamed the physical world, and from there he’d begun to understand what he wanted. Freedom from his world, entry into that one. And only then had he honed his focus enough to begin to plot his escape and to crave vengeance on whatever nameless force had imprisoned him.

Once his essence had been set free, anger had driven him, and he’d discovered the power to influence the minds of humans. He’d done things that even now, freshly born into this body, seemed evil to him. Human-beingness must have some sort of intrinsic, preprogrammed morality, he thought, and the things he’d done flew in the face of it. And yet, at the time, he hadn’t been human. He hadn’t been … anything. The desire for freedom at any cost had controlled him, alongside a rage so old he didn’t even remember its cause.

He shivered, hugging his arms around his unclothed chest, the golden blade that had fallen from the sky clutched in one fist, the silver chalice in the other, and started trekking downhill in search of warmth. That was first. Warmth. He was so cold. He took the tools with him because they had arrived here with him. They belonged to him. And along with the amulet they were, at the moment, his only worldly possessions.

But he was free, he thought, as his feet slowly went numb. He was free. He had a body. He could experience the pleasures he’d observed other humans experiencing. Warmth was one of those pleasures, but as he walked on, he thought of many others. Food, and the way they made such delighted sounds as they ate it. Laughter. The concept of laughter had fascinated him anytime he’d heard it, even from a distance, and he was eager to understand what caused it and what it felt like. And touch. The touch of another human being, embracing, kissing. Sex. The pleasures of sex seemed to him like the ultimate goal of being human, and he could not wait to experience it.

This was going to be beautiful. Wonderful. He could hardly wait to get started.

He found a driveway leading to a house with lights on inside, but he sensed people within. People he’d wronged recently. No, he could not stop there. He knew he must go farther.

It was a long walk. Twenty minutes, stark naked, in the cold, but he finally came to an empty house. No movement came from inside, no lights were on. But there was something beyond that, a palpable feeling that no one was home.

The door was unlocked, a bit of good luck for him. Better still, it was warm inside. Warm, safe from the cold. So he stepped in, his bare feet sinking into the carpet he knew would feel good to him when sensation returned. He went directly up to the second floor, where dressers and closets held clothing, and he picked through them, wondering if the jeans and shirts would fit his body, and realizing then that he had no idea, really, what he looked like. So he walked through into the adjoining bathroom, and stood face-to-face with his own image.

He was tall, he thought. He’d seen other men, knew their size. He was broad and hard, too. His chest and stomach rippled with muscle. Massive, powerful arms, big hands, thick thighs. He studied his features with a sense of wonder. This is me, he thought. This is my body. My face … He ran his hand over his bristly cheek. His face was dark, whiskered and sun bronzed, and he wondered how that could be, if this body was brand-new.

Then he lifted his gaze to meet his own eyes in the mirror, and it startled him, the intensity, the depth of them. Dark brown, his eyes, revealing turmoil and pain. A pain he recognized but didn’t remember. Startling, to look into his own eyes for the first time. It felt as if a complete stranger was looking back at him and, more, looking for something within him.

Eventually he dragged his gaze away from his reflection and realized there was a shower stall standing nearby. He knew what it was, how to use it, and he didn’t particularly care enough to worry whether the home’s owners would return before he finished. He needed to get warm.

Reaching into the stall, he adjusted the water flow until it was as hot as he could stand it, and then he stepped in and let the heat soak into his cold new body. It felt good. Not as good as it had seemed when he’d seen others stand beneath the spray, heads tipped back, eyes closed in pleasure. But it was good compared to freezing, and it was warming him up quickly. He stayed until the water ran cool, then toweled off and returned to the bedroom to dress himself in another man’s clothes: heavy jeans and a T-shirt, with a flannel shirt over that, woolly socks and a pair of running shoes that fit almost perfectly. Luck was with him. Or fate. Maybe the Universe thought he needed a break after what he’d been through.

Dressed, he went down to the kitchen, food being next on his list of priorities, and he ended up wolfing the leftovers he found in the refrigerator. Half a baked chicken, a bowl of chocolate pudding, a partial head of lettuce, browning at the cut edges. He tried one thing after another, but he didn’t find the pleasure he was looking for from the food. Why did people make such a big fuss? Aside from the consistency, one thing tasted much like another.

How disappointing.

After the food, he rummaged around the house a bit more, taking the money he found in the cookie jar, all of $85, and a bus ticket that was tacked to a cork-board in the kitchen. It was marked “Port Authority, New York, NY.”

When her beloved found the empty house, Lilia was delighted and relieved. When he took the money and found the bus ticket, she was horrified. Not only had he stolen, but he was going to New York? No! He needed to stay in upstate Milbury, near her sisters, so they could help him, keep him safe until she could take physical form and protect him herself.

And then he was off on foot again, but warm, wearing his pilfered clothing and a coat he’d added to the collection. Soon a passing car slowed down to offer him a ride, and he was on his way to the bus station.

“Why?” she cried at the Universe. “Why are you letting this happen?”

But as usual, the Universe remained silent on the subject.

1

March …

Being human was absolutely miserable.

“Hey, will you look at that?” The aging man nudged Demetrius with the toe of his tattered sneaker. Demetrius grunted at him, a warning huff, like an animal would make, and huddled deeper into the blanket he’d snatched from an empty baby carriage while the mother wasn’t looking. It wasn’t very big, and the soft smell it had emitted at the beginning was already fading beneath slightly less pleasing aromas.

“C’mon, D-man, stop being so damn grouchy and look.”

Muttering under his breath, he lifted his head. “My name is Demetrius.” He hated when Gus called him by made up nicknames, all of which began with his initial. D-man. D-dog. Just D. And yes, he was grouchy. He was cold, shivering in the bitter March wind. He was hungry, his belly burning with it. His head ached, his eyes watered, and his body was sore from sleeping on concrete and park benches. This experience was not turning out the way he’d hoped.

Gus grinned down at him, tobacco-stained teeth flashing in a weathered, whiskered face. “Over there,” he said.

Demetrius looked where the old man—who had somehow become his only companion—was pointing. Across the busy street, a newly erected digital sign was flashing its message for the first time. They’d been watching as work crews put it up, wondering what useless product it would advertise. Now the scrolling marquee-style message told them The New York State Lottery is now 12.5 Million Dollars!

“And all it takes is a dollar and a dream,” Gus said, shaking his head, a blissful smile on his face.

“We don’t have a dollar between us.” Demetrius wrapped the blanket around his face to protect it from the cold, his eyes peering out from above the warm flannel.

“You could sell your trinkets, trade ’em for a few bucks.” As he said it, Gus hunkered low, reaching for one of the plastic shopping bags Demetrius kept tied to his belt. Before Gus could blink, Demetrius clamped a large hand around the smaller man’s wrist.

“Don’t touch my things.”

“Awright, awright!” Gus pulled his hand away, rubbing his wrist. “Damn, D, I wasn’t gonna steal it. Why you always gotta be so touchy about those treasures of yours, anyway?” He waited for a reply he wasn’t going to get before going on. “I mean, I get it about the knife. A man needs a weapon out here. And I guess I understand about the necklace. Sort of. I mean, it’s kinda girly, but it’s nice enough.” Demetrius lifted his head and sent the other man a glare for that comment, but Gus went right on. “But that danged cup. What the hell does a guy like you need with a fancy-ass mug like that, anyway? We could pawn that thing. Prob’ly get enough to pay for a night in a nice place. A decent meal. A whole suit of clothes, for cryin’ out loud.”

“They are mine. They’re all I have. And they mean something. I just don’t know what yet.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the fairy tale. You’re not quite human. You came from another realm, got yourself a body with the help of three witches.”

“Two,” Demetrius corrected. Though there were supposed to be three. The mass of useless knowledge swirling around in his brain, more and more coming to the surface all the time in disjointed and mostly meaningless bits, had told him there should have been three. But he was sure there had only been two. One had freed him from the darkness where he’d been trapped for … always. It must have been always, because he didn’t remember there being a before. And yet, he had some vague notion of having once been human. But the witches, the three witches …

The first witch had opened the Portal, allowing him to see into the human world, where he’d observed, then absorbed everything he’d seen. And the second one had somehow helped him to manifest a body. And that body had come with the dagger, the chalice and the amulet.

They meant something.

He imagined the third witch was supposed to help him figure out how to make his way in this world where money was king and one had to have mountains of it in order to exist. This world where he had no idea how to get any of that money for himself. That had to be her task. But she had not arrived to help him yet.

Nearly two months of misery had him wondering if she ever would. Seven weeks of living on the streets with the other homeless, many of them suffering from broken minds, had him wondering if any of what he believed to be his history was real. Or if, perhaps, he was as mentally ill as Alice, who thought she’d been impregnated by an alien and was due to have her baby any day now. Gus said she’d been waiting to give birth for years, but that didn’t seem to affect her delusion. Maybe his own backstory was like that. A symptom of an illness, and not a real history at all.

“I don’t see why, if you have enough imagination to think you came from some other dimension, you can’t use it for something positive.”

“Something like what?”

“Like dreaming, D. It doesn’t hurt to dream, you know.” Gus put a hand on Demetrius’s shoulder. “Try it, huh? What else we got to do, anyway?”

“Dreaming?” He sounded irritated, because he was. Though he was doubting his own sanity, it angered him that Gus didn’t believe his tale. Maybe more than it should.

“Dream a little with me, Demetrius.”

Using his full name to soften him up, Demetrius thought. Clever old Gus.

“Come on, it’ll be fun. Just think about it. What would you do with twelve million bucks?”

Demetrius’s brows rose in two arches, the idea far more appealing than he’d expected it to be. Grudgingly, he lowered the blanket from his face, settling it around his shoulders, and looked at his only friend in this world. “I suppose it can’t hurt to dream.” He closed his eyes and thought about it. What would he have, if he could have anything he wanted? What, exactly, was the point of going through so much to manifest in a human body, anyway? What desires had driven him at the beginning? What desires did he have now?

He knew immediately, and his eyes popped open. “Do you remember that TV show we watched in the window of the electronics place the other night?”

Gus tipped his head, thinking back as Demetrius willed him to remember. They’d been standing together outside the appliance store, watching the televisions in the windows, which were always playing whenever the store was open. It was one of the few ways they’d found to alleviate the monotony of their lives, and the owner usually let them loiter for a solid thirty minutes before coming out to yell at them in broken Korean-laced English.

A smile split Gus’s face, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and Demetrius knew he had remembered. “The one about the Playboy Mansion?” he asked, grinning further. “Not likely to forget that one, am I?”

“That’s what I would do, if I had twelve million dollars. I’d have a place like that. Gated, private. A staff of servants to see to my every need. Heated swimming pools with waterfalls and fountains. Sprawling, fragrant gardens with every kind of flower and tree. The softest beds imaginable. Anything I want to eat anytime I want it. Beautiful women basking in almost no clothing, eager to satisfy my every desire. And a constant flow of cash without having to work.”

Something tickled at his side as he spoke, and he jerked his head down, pulling his blanket away to see what was crawling on him. The golden dagger seemed to be … glowing. A gleam of golden light in the exact shape of the knife and its sheath shone right through the plastic bag that held them.

“D-man! What the hell?” Gus crab-walked backward along the alley floor, his eyes wide and focused on the glowing bag.

Demetrius scrambled to his feet, turning his back to the sidewalk, intuitively wanting to hide the bag at his waist from the view of strangers. He moved fast, deeper into the alley that was, for the most part, their home, past Gus, and past the bins overflowing with trash, until he was well enough hidden to examine this phenomenon more closely. Gus came up behind him but kept his distance, his eyes wide and riveted on the illuminated grocery sack.

Demetrius removed his blade from the plastic bag that hid it from would-be thieves and slid the double-edged dagger from its jeweled sheath. It was glowing. No question.

“You were right, D! I can’t believe … but you were right. Them trinkets of yours … they’re some kind of magic.”

Demetrius shot Gus a look over his shoulder. “But why now?”

“Because! Don’t you see? You were dreaming. Imagining. Visualizing. Isn’t that what those witches of yours do when they want to cast spells? Visualize?”

Demetrius stared at the glowing blade, saying nothing. Gradually the light began to fade, and then it was gone.

“Do it again, boss. Visualize the shit outta that dream life you were talking about before. And make damn sure I’m in it, too!”

“But—”

“Wait, wait, wait, let me help get’cha started.” Gus had lost his fear of the apparently enchanted weapon and moved up close, standing shoulder to shoulder with Demetrius, who thought Gus must have been an impressive man once. They were close to the same height, and there were traces of what must have been an almost regal bone structure in Gus’s face. Every once in a while, when Demetrius looked at him, he saw someone else in the old man’s eyes. Someone vaguely familiar.

“See it with me now,” Gus was saying. “See it real clear in your mind. Playboy Mansion. Big gorgeous house. And good old Gus is the head of security, D-dog’s right-hand man. He’s wearing fine clothes, shiny shoes, a nice suit. Catalogue nice. Gus decides who gets in and who has to stay the hell out.” He pounded his chest with a fist. “I’ll protect you from the swarms who’d take advantage of a guy like you, bein’ new here and all. Shoot, I know how. I was a soldier once.”

That brought Demetrius right out of his vision. “You were?”

“Shh. Not now, Dog. We got visualizing to do. Now see it, damn you. See it. See the pool? It’s bluer than blue, crystalline water sparkling in the sunshine. It’s warm all the time. Like summer, year-round.”

Demetrius nodded, wanting to examine the knife but resigned to shutting Gus up first. “All right, all right. I see the pool. It’s kidney-shaped. And there’s a waterfall off to one side, natural-looking, with stones all piled up.” He really was seeing it—and enjoying the vision playing out in his mind, though he would rather be shot than admit that to Gus. “And off to the side, just above it, there’s a bubbling spa tub that looks like a pond and spills over to feed the waterfall.”

“Ah, that’s nice. And there’s a—a poolside bar, fully stocked all the time. And women in bikinis everywhere you look. Can you see them, D-man? There’s a redhead with bazongas out to here, and there’s a brunette with a butt so round you want to bite it.”

Demetrius frowned. He could see the bikini-clad beauties, all right. But they all looked alike. Pale corn silk–haired angels with piercing blue, blue eyes.

No, no, no, not her. Not her. She’ll ruin it all.

What an odd thing for me to think, I don’t even know who she is.

“And the cars, oh, Dog, the cars. Be sure you visualize a big garage in there someplace, and fill it with the hottest cars. Like that Jag we saw the other day. And a long black limo, with a driver who knows everything we could ever need to know.”

Cars, yes, cars. A good way to get the blonde out of his head. He’d seen enough kinds of cars speeding past his alley to know what he liked. He wanted one of those giant SUVs, and the limousine and Jaguar Gus had mentioned. And then some of those sports cars that made his pulse speed up. A Mustang. A 370Z. A Carrera.

He tried to see himself behind the wheel, but every one of his imaginary vehicles had that blonde sitting in the passenger seat. Every glimpse of her made his heart rate speed up and his nerve endings jump with fear. Who was she? And why was he afraid of her?

There was more tingling going on. It was happening behind him this time, near his hip, where his silver chalice hung in its own plastic bag. He quickly ripped the bag open, tearing it in the process, which meant he would have to find another one. He took the cup out and looked inside it, where the light was coming from. It was filled with … something. Swirling colors, and … was that a face taking shape?

Do as I tell you, Demetrius.

“Who said that?” He looked left and right, then turned to look behind, too, but there was no one there.

“Who said what?” Gus asked.

Demetrius looked at his friend, saw the worry forming in the old man’s eyes. “Didn’t you hear that? A woman. Kind of whispering.”

Gus took a step backward. “What’d she say?”

“She said to do what she tells me.”

“Then do it, boy, there’s magic goin’ on here! And keep visualizing. Don’t you stop. Make sure I’m in it. Don’t leave me out, D.”

Demetrius tried to keep visualizing his own personal den of pleasures, tried to keep seeing Gus as a part of it, but that damned blue-eyed blonde kept popping in everywhere. She was in the sprawling living room with its wall-sized gas fireplace and in the theater room with its giant movie screen. She was sprawled invitingly on his giant four-poster bed’s satin sheets.

The knife in his hand was getting hot and feeling kind of jumpy. And the cup was vibrating, swirling.

Lower the dagger into the chalice and say these words.

“She wants me to put the knife into the cup,” Demetrius said.

“Well? Do it!” Gus stomped his foot. “Do it, damn you.”

Demetrius flipped the dagger so the point was aiming downward and moved it over the cup. Actually, he didn’t have to move it, because it felt as if something was pulling his hand toward that big sparkling mug. He started lowering the blade. It seemed to want to move slowly, so he let it—whatever it was—guide his hand.

Say these words as you lower it, she told him. As the rod is to the God, so the chalice is to the Goddess.

“That’s stupid. I’m not saying that. It doesn’t even make any—”

Say it!

“All right. All right. As the rod is to the God …”

“Huh?” Gus asked. “What’s this now?”

“It’s what she wants me to say. ‘As the rod is to the God.’”

“What for?”

“How the hell do I know what for?”

So the chalice is to the Goddess. Say it, Demetrius.

“So the chalice is to the Goddess.”

And together they are one.

“And together they are one.” As he said it, the cup pulled the blade down like a super magnet, and the tip of the blade clanked against the bottom of the chalice. There was a big flash of light, and some kind of sonic boom that blew him back toward the mouth of the alley. Gus’s eyes got huge as he backpedaled to join him, and then they both just stood there, staring at the fast-fading glowing orb.

And then it blinked out and there she was, that blonde. She was crouching in the alley, completely naked, and everything in Demetrius told him to turn and run like hell. But he couldn’t seem to move. He just stood there, staring at her.

Slowly she stood and lifted her head to look straight at him, and those blue, blue eyes hit him like a pair of lightning bolts.

He felt sheer terror. His gaze roamed up and down her lithe, naked form, pale skin, small, perky breasts. Everything about her was small. She was like a fairy or an angel.

“I’m no angel, Demetrius,” she said, as if reading his mind. “I’m a witch.”

He dropped his precious blade and chalice, spun around and ran out of that alley as if the devil was after him, because it seemed as if she was.

He never saw the car that hit him. But he sure as hell felt it.

In a private hospital on the shore of Cayuga Lake, an old priest who’d been in a coma since early November suddenly opened his eyes.

A nurse was bathing him, running a warm, wet sponge up and down his arms as if she had the right to touch him. He gripped her wrist, and she gasped and dropped the cloth, her wide eyes darting to his face.

“A little help in here!” she called.

He gave her a shove, and she stumbled backward, crashing into a shiny metal tray, knocking it and the instruments it held noisily to the floor. Others came, but he was busy by then, staring at his bony arms and concave chest with its curling white hairs and pale skin. How had he become so thin? So old? So frail? He’d been robust. He’d been plump and lush. Beautiful, really.

Ah, yes, but this wasn’t his body. His own body was long dead. This body might not even be capable of walking upright, but it was going to have to do. He’d known he would return when the time came, but he’d let himself forget how frail the host he’d chosen had become.

He peeled back the bedcovers and managed to sit up as the woman came closer again, holding out her hands, flanked by another female and a young man. Pretty thing, too, with his blond hair cut so that its short layers resembled feathers. How did he get it to do that?

“Easy, now, Father Dom. Easy,” the first woman said.

She did not speak his language. At first her words sounded like gibberish, but then, amazingly, his mind processed them and he understood what she was saying. That made sense, he supposed. The brain in this body knew the language. He wondered what else it knew.

There were racks on either side of his bed, barriers to keep him from falling out. He gripped one of them in his bony hands and tried to remove it, but it would not budge. He was too weak.

And then a mature man entered the room and came right to the bedside. He was not a pretty boy but a person of standing—one could tell these things by a man’s bearing, his walk, the tilt of his head. He had the dark skin of the desert lands, the black hair, the deep brown eyes. He extended a hand.

“Father Dominick, I’m Doctor Assad. I’m here to help you. Do you understand?”

He nodded and stared at the hand the man held out to him, trying to guess what to do, before slowly extending his own. The doctor took it, closing his own around it, pumping once, letting go.

“Good, that’s good. I imagine you’re very confused.”

He wondered if he could use the language as well as understand it, and thought before he spoke. “Yes,” he said. “I … am.”

“Of course you are. I’m going to explain everything to you.” Doctor Assad leaned down to touch a button, and the top of the bed rose with a noisy sound that captured his full attention for a long moment. Then it stopped, and the doctor reached behind him to plump the soft pillows. “Here you go. Just relax, lean back, get comfortable. Everything is fine.”

“Is … it?” He rested his head against the pillows, deciding he had little choice but to comply at the moment.

“It is,” the doctor assured him. “I’d like to know what you remember.” As he spoke, he motioned to the first female, who came closer to wrap a device with tubes and bulbs protruding from it around his upper arm.

He stared at her in wonder and a little fear as she attached the thing.

“She’s just checking your vital signs, Father Dom. We need to make sure you’re all right. Just ignore her and focus on me, all right?” the doctor said.

He watched the woman look up at him from beneath her lashes. She was pretty, he thought. And afraid.

She should be.

What did he remember? Ahh, so many things. His city, a gleaming jewel in the desert. Babylon. The power he’d had, the life he’d lived. And the tragedy that had torn it all apart.

But no. That wasn’t what the doctor was asking him.

He closed his eyes and searched the old priest’s memory, presuming this doctor wanted to know what had happened to him to put him here in this place, which, he had deduced, was a place of healing. And it came to him. All of it, playing out in his mind as if he were watching actors on a stage.

Father Dom had tried to kill the first witch to keep her from releasing the damned man Demetrius from the Underworld. The old priest believed Demetrius was a demon, the witch his accomplice. Because that’s what I wanted him to believe. He’d tried to kill her, to throw her from a cliff. He’d wanted her executed, sacrificed, as she and her wretched sisters had been sacrificed once before. Poetic. Very poetic.

But of course the old priest had failed and gone over the edge himself.

“Do you remember anything, Father Dom?”

He lifted his gaze, shaking off Father Dom’s memories. “He—” He bit his lip, started over. “I … fell.”

“Yes. You fell. The impact should have killed you. You were pulled from the cold lake some four months ago. You’ve been unconscious—in a coma—ever since. Frankly, Father Dom, we didn’t expect you to ever wake up again, much less to wake as lucid as you appear right now.”

Well, I did wake up. But I’m not Father Dom.

But he couldn’t very well tell the doctor that. “This body …” he said, frustrated with how slowly this brain seemed to translate the simplest of commands into their corresponding actions. “This body is weak. Will it heal?”

Doctor Assad nodded. “There’s no way for us to know just yet how fully you’ll recover. We’re going to need to run tests, get you fully evaluated. Then, once you’re strong enough, we’ll get you started on some physical therapy. From there … well, only time will tell.”

“I do not have … time.” Then he frowned. “What month is it?”

“It’s March, Father Dom. March seventeenth.”

“Mmm.” He nodded while the slow-working, formerly comatose brain translated that for him. “I have … some time. A few weeks. No more.”

“It’s going to take considerably longer than that for a full recovery, Father,” the doctor said.

Then the nurse, who had removed her device once she’d finished squeezing his arm with it, said, “Maybe you’d like to talk to your friend.”

“My … friend?”

“He visits you every weekend. Even brought some of your most cherished belongings, so you’d have them near you,” she added with a nod toward the items on the stand nearby. Father Dom’s rosary, the aging journal, handed down to him through his priestly line, a well-worn Bible. “Tomas Petrosa?”

His smile was slow and knowing. “Tomas.” No doubt he was still with the witch. And she would lead him to Demetrius. That bastard was here somewhere, in human form again and using his powers. That was what had summoned him into this frail body that Father Dom had long since left behind. He had vowed to return if Demetrius ever managed to do so. To destroy him utterly this time, and the three witches with him.

“Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, please call my friend Tomas.”

He relaxed against his pillows, deciding he might have time after all.

When Demetrius ran from her as if in terror and was smashed into by a powerful automobile, Lilia was devastated.

The power of her beloved, performing the ancient Great Rite of witchcraft—lowering the blade into the chalice in a symbolic re-creation of the sex act—had brought her into physical existence at last. She’d been trying to get him to perform the rite for weeks now. But she hadn’t been able to reach him until he tapped into his own inner magic, his imagination. But he hadn’t even recognized her! Lord and Lady, this wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. Yes, she’d known he would resist what she wanted him to do, but she’d expected him to at least know her. Remember her.

People flooded out of their businesses onto the sidewalks, crowding around Demetrius, who lay broken and bleeding in the street. Lilia backed deeper into the alley as quickly as she could, knowing he would be fine. He might not know it, but she did. He wasn’t quite human. He was immortal. For now, anyway. She had to restore the final piece of his mortal soul in order for him to become fully human again, and she couldn’t do that until he asked for it. Just as she hadn’t been able to manifest until he used the powers he apparently didn’t know he possessed to bring her through.

One thing at a time, she told herself. And the first thing is clothing. I’m naked here, and that’s not the accepted mode of dress just yet.

She wrapped herself as best she could in Demetrius’s dropped baby blanket and slipped out the far end of the alley. It opened into a parking lot behind a series of stores whose rear entrances were labeled with their names.

Daisy’s Unique Boutique appealed, and the door was unlocked, so she opened it and walked in.

Through the glass windows in the front she could see that the shopkeeper was on the sidewalk out front, looking at the fallen man. She knew her by the Daisy’s emblem on her jacket. An ambulance was arriving now, and the scruffy homeless man who’d been with Demetrius was talking to a well-dressed man who’d emerged from the car and was wobbling on his feet.

Drunk driver?

No time to mull on that.

She took a few items from the racks and racks of clothes in the store, moving fast, feeling guilty. Quick as a wink she grabbed a pair of skinny jeans with a peacock embroidered all the way up one leg, a handful of undergarments, a vibrantly colored blouse, a faux suede jacket, a pair of leatherette boots and some socks. She grabbed a business card from the register so she could pay later for what she’d taken, then ducked out the back door and into the alley to put the garments on.

Demetrius would need some time to heal. A few days, she thought. She couldn’t be sure. But she knew he would live, and that he would heal more rapidly than anyone would likely believe possible.

She walked back out through the alley and onto the sidewalk, moving to the back of the crowd to keep out of the shopkeeper’s line of sight, so she wouldn’t notice her own merchandise on a stranger and realize she’d been robbed.

From a safe vantage point Lilia looked at her beloved Demetrius as several medics strapped him to a wheeled bed and lifted him into the back of the ambulance. His eyes were closed. She wanted them to open. She wanted them to meet her own eyes and fill with recognition, with desire. With love.

Goddess, she’d gone through so much to save him, waited so long to be with him again.

In time, she thought. In time.

When the ambulance attendant moved toward the driver’s door, she went to him, grateful that the vehicle blocked her from the crowd. “Where will they take him?” she asked the man.

He looked at her, and his eyes softened. “Are you family?” he asked.

“I need a ride to the hospital,” she said.

“That’s against regulations, Ma’am, but if you—” He stopped speaking as she began to hum softly, thinking the words that went with her tune but not saying them aloud. It would work either way.

“Sure you can ride along,” he said. “It’s no problem at all.”

She smiled. “Thank you.” She glanced back at the filthy homeless man. Gus, she thought Demetrius had called him just before he’d brought her through. Gus.

Gus was with the driver, whose car bore a very large dent in its nose due to its impact with Demetrius. The police were there, too, but Gus was stepping between them.

She frowned, sensing something momentous was about to happen, and moved closer to listen. “I was the one driving,” Gus said. “It was me.”

The nurses at the desk let Lilia use their phone, and she quickly got the number she needed and dialed it.

When Indira answered, Lilia felt tears brimming in her eyes. “By Goddess, I am so glad to hear your voice, my sister,” she said softly.

There was a moment of silence, and then Indira said, “Who the fuck is this?”

“It’s me. It’s Lilia. I’m here. It’s time.”

“Oh. My. Goddess.” Then, in a muffled shout, “Tomas, you’re not gonna believe this!”

Hours later, a battered old Volvo pulled into the hospital’s parking area. Lilia was outside, sitting on a stone wall, waiting. She’d had to leave the hospital before the staff started asking her questions she could not answer about Demetrius. Who he was, where he was from, a last name, even. In their time, last names had not been used. Demetrius was the son of Horum, who was the son of Ferigard, and so on back into history.

Indira got out of the car first, ran toward her, then stuttered to a stop two feet shy. “I … Is it you? Is it you, baby sister?” She squinted a bit, as if trying to see what was unseeable.

“You don’t look the same, either, Indy. I didn’t know there were that many shades of blonde.”

“Yeah, you should talk. You look like you took a shower in peroxide.”

Then Magdalena, who had been the eldest, came up beside Indy, with hair that was a mass of coppery red ringlets and the flawless skin of a porcelain doll. “Lilia?” she whispered. Her lower lip was quivering.

“Lena.”

The hesitation broke, and the three women were suddenly in each other’s arms and sobbing so hard they almost couldn’t remain standing. They held on for a long, long time.

“How?” Indy asked. “We thought we’d have to reopen the Portal, perform a ritual, to get you here.”

“Demetrius.”

They both went stiff, their eyes widening.

“He’s not what you thought he was, not in this lifetime, my sisters,” Lilia said, wishing for their understanding but refusing to use magic to get it.

Lena lowered her head, taking a step back. “He tried to take my baby, Lil,” she said.

“Your baby …” Lilia tore herself from the arms of her older sisters and gazed toward the car and the two handsome men who stood there, waiting patiently while the sisters had their reunion. The dark Spaniard, Tomas, former priest of Marduk, lifetimes ago. The other, Ryan, who had once been a prince of Babylon and was the father of Lilia’s precious niece, Eleanora. He was holding the baby in his arms.

Lilia wanted to rush to them, to hold the child, but she held herself back. “When the time comes,” she said softly, for her sisters’ ears alone, “you’ll want them far from us.”

“When will that be?” Indy asked.

“I don’t know yet, but it will be soon.”

“What happens when the time comes, whenever it is?” Lena was looking from her husband and daughter to her newly arrived sister over and over. “What happens, Lilia?”

“I don’t know. I only know the cycle is coming to an end, and that there will be a great battle.”

Indira rolled her eyes. “With who? Your pain-in-the-ass former demon lover?”

“He was never a demon,” Lilia snapped.

“He sure as hell acted like one.”

Lowering her head, Lilia sighed. “As soon as we know when it’s all coming to a head, you’ll need to arrange to have your loved ones far from you. That’s all I’m saying.” Her eyes were drawn to the baby again. “Now, may I please meet my beautiful niece?”

Lena sighed, but nodded. The moment she did, Lilia hurried closer, reaching out, and Ryan placed the wriggling infant into her arms.

Standing close to her side, looking on, Lena said, “Where is he?”

“Who?” Lilia was so distracted by the tiny baby, only seven weeks old, that she was no longer thinking straight.

“Demetrius, that’s who. I don’t care if he is your love, Lilia, I don’t want him anywhere near Ellie.”

Lilia nodded, tugging her eyes from the child to meet her sister’s steady gaze. “He’s in the Intensive Care Unit. He’s no threat to her now.”

They all looked at her, questions in their eyes. She returned her gaze to the angelic little bundle with her rosebud lips and gentle coo. She was holding Lilia’s forefinger in her tiny fist.

“What happened to him, anyway?” Tomas asked at last.

“He was hit by a car.” Lilia shuddered at the memory. “I … Oh, there’s so much to explain. Is there someplace we can—”

“We can take you back to our place, but then you’ll be hours away. Are you sure you want to leave him?”

Lilia closed her eyes and felt for the answer, and as always, it came from that deep well of knowing that had guided her this far. “I’m sure that I don’t want to leave him. Not ever again. But I have to. He needs to experience life without the final part of his soul before I offer it back to him. He has to choose. And he has to know what he’s giving up when he chooses it. He doesn’t yet. He needs more time to learn what he’s capable of, what life can be like for him as he is.”

“How much time?” Indy asked.

Lilia shrugged. “I’ll know when it’s time to go to him. That’s all I can tell you.”

She gazed up at the hospital, and her heart ached for her love. “Yes, my sisters. For now, yes. I would love to go home with you.”

Demetrius felt pain, and with it, relief.

He’d been in some other state, not feeling anything at all, and wondering if he’d been somehow returned to the Underworld prison, the dark, sensory-deprived void from which he’d escaped. It was similar to that, the darkness, the confusion, the mind-without-body-attached feeling. Not identical, of course, but that sense of being trapped in a dream, of trying to wake and being unable to—it had been enough to terrify him.

So when he felt the pain of his broken body, it brought a rush of relief so big that he was almost limp with it. Only then did he realize that, as miserable as this physical experience of life had been for him, he did not want it to end.

He was alive. Thank the Gods, he was still alive.

Sighing, he forced his eyes open and blinked the room around him into focus. He was in a bed, a real bed, soft and clean. There were crisp white sheets and warm blankets over him, and one arm was in a cast. He looked beyond the stranger who was sound asleep in a chair beside the bed and took in the white walls, the single window, the TV set mounted on the wall. A long curtain suspended from a track in the ceiling to his right ended his visual tour just as the sleeping stranger began stirring in his chair.

“D-man?” he asked.

Frowning, Demetrius turned his head and realized the man in the chair was no stranger after all. “Gus?” He was … he was clean. He’d shaved, gotten a haircut and was dressed in clothes that looked new. Brown trousers, with a matching suit jacket over an ivory button-down shirt without a stain in sight. “Did I wake up in some other dimension? Or am I dreaming you now?”

Gus smiled. His teeth were still stained yellow, which reassured Demetrius that they hadn’t both died and moved on to some heavenly realm.

“I’m just glad you woke up at all, boss. You feel okay?” Gus got up, went to the foot of the bed and pushed a button that raised the top part of the mattress until Demetrius was sitting up.

“I’m sore all over, but otherwise fine. I think. What is this place?”

“Hospital,” Gus said. Returning to the bedside, he poured water from a pitcher on the nightstand, held it out. “You remember what happened?”

Demetrius sipped the water, thinking, nodding, sipping some more. “I remember the car hitting me. I thought my brief stay in the physical world was over, I’ll tell you.”

“It’s just getting started, D-man. Do you remember before that? You remember the magic that started happening with those treasures of yours?”

At the mention of his sole possessions, a cold bolt of panic shot up Demetrius’s spine, and he found himself looking down, even knowing his blade and chalice couldn’t be at his waist. He pressed one hand to his chest, but his amulet was gone, as well.

“Don’t worry, boss,” Gus said. “I got your things. They’re safe and sound, and so are you.”

More memories returned in a rush, and he brought his head up to meet Gus’s eyes. “What about the woman?”

Gus glanced quickly toward that door, as if to be sure no one was listening in. Then he leaned closer. “That was something, wasn’t it? The way she just flashed into that alley, buck naked, like some kind of Terminator?”

“I don’t know the reference.” While his body seemed to have come preprogrammed with knowledge of language and customs and the ways of the world, he did, on occasion, find things lacking. Pop-culture references were topmost on the list. But mention of the woman sent another shot of ice into his blood. “Where is she?” he asked, all but whispering, eyeing the curtain, wondering if she lurked on the other side.

“Don’t know. She was gone by the time I looked for her. Course I was distracted by your … accident.”

“She just vanished?”

“Or ran away. Who is she? Or maybe I oughtta ask, what is she?”

“I don’t know.”

Gus frowned hard, his whole face puckering. “Now I know you’re lying, D.”

“Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know. But I know you know something. Because when that naked blonde popped in, you were scared, man. I saw it, dead fear all over your face, just before you ran for your life, straight into traffic. As lucky as that was for us, I still wanna know what’s so damned scary about her.”

Demetrius lowered his eyes. “I’m not lying to you, Gus. I don’t know. But you’re right, the sight of her scared the hell out of me.” Then he paused, frowned, looked up at Gus again. “What do you mean, it was lucky for us?”

Gus smiled, yellow teeth gleaming. “I’m not sure it was luck, exactly. You were doing all that visualizing, after all.” He nodded. “That fella who hit you? Drunk as a skunk. But even then, I knew who he was. Everyone knows who he is. Ned Nelson.”

Demetrius pursed his lips, shook his head.

“Owns what they call a media empire. TV stations, publishing companies, radio, God only knows what all. He’s so rich he gives billions to charity. I mean, we’re talking big money, D. Big money. Been rumors he wants to run for President next time around, and I guess they’re true, ’cause he was in a dead panic about being arrested for driving drunk and damn near killing a homeless guy. A dead panic. No one else saw it happen—and I don’t think that was just luck, either.” He shrugged. “So we made a deal.”

Demetrius blinked. “What kind of a deal?”

“I tell the cops I was driving him home, take the rap for driving without a license. They probably know better, but they also know him, so they’re not gonna buck it. And he’ll pay any fines laid on me, hire me a lawyer if needs be. Won’t be, though. You did run out in front of me, after all.”

Demetrius was sitting up in bed. “And in return?”

“He said we could have anything we wanted. So … I got us what we wanted. And enough shares of stock in his companies to keep it for a long, long time.”

“You got us … what we wanted?” Demetrius repeated, trying to process what Gus was saying.

“You remember, don’t you? What we were dreaming about when your trinkets started glowing? You remember. We’ve got it now, my friend. We’ve got all of it.”

2

Lilia walked with her two sisters along the path that meandered from Indira and Tomas’s fairy-tale cottage high on the craggy mountainside beyond the forest, down to Magdalena and Ryan’s reclaimed vineyard, Havenwood. The trees were just beginning to show tiny buds as late March went out like a lamb, morphing into April. It was warm, and the sun was beaming down from a blue sky. And though there was little vegetation, you could smell spring in the air.

Halfway along the path, they emerged onto a level spot with a waterfall out of a storybook splashing into a small rocky pond. Beyond the pond was a cliff, and far below, Cayuga Lake.

“The cave is behind the falls,” Indy said. “That’s where the Portal was. Still is, I guess.”

Magdalena stared at it but didn’t move any closer. Lilia saw the fear on her face. “You really want us to go in there?” she asked.

“We have to close it, Lena,” Lilia said. “We can’t leave a portal to the Underworld just hanging open.” They’d all agreed earlier that closing the Portal should be their first order of business on this, Lilia’s first day there, but now that they were facing it, Lena appeared to be having second thoughts.

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” Indy clapped her sister on the shoulder. “Our first spell together in three-thousand, five-hundred years. What’s not to like about that?”

Lena didn’t even crack a smile.

When they’d gotten home late the night before, it had been decided that Lilia would stay with Indy and Tomas at their cottage. Lena’s place, though larger, was already housing her and Ryan, along with Ellie and Lena’s mother, Selma. Bahru, the Hindu holy man Ryan had sort of inherited from his father, occupied the guest cottage but spent most of his time in the house. He’d become the world’s most unconventional nanny, Lena said. He was almost as attached to the baby as her parents were.

Indy cleared her throat, drawing Lilia’s attention back to the matter at hand. The Portal. “You have to dash through the edge of the waterfall to get into the cave,” Indy said. “We’ll get wet.”

“I remember.”

Indy frowned. “But you’ve never been here before.”

Lilia only smiled and cupped her cheek. “Big sister, I’ve been watching everything play out. You know that. You saw me.”

“In mirrors. In visions. And then at the end—”

“I was here with you. I saw it all, the struggle right here and that twisted old priest, Father Dom, falling from the cliff after trying to kill you. Attacked by a wolf.” She shook her head sadly for a moment, then smiled. “A wolf under the control of Demetrius, you’ll recall. A trace of the man he once was, shining through. He couldn’t let you die. Just as he couldn’t try to take your baby,” Lilia said, shooting her eyes to Magdalena’s and holding them by force. “Right at the end, he couldn’t go through with it. You know that.”

“I don’t know any such thing.” But Lena averted her eyes.

“And just before that wolf came,” Lilia said, turning to Indy again, picking up where she’d left off, “your brave, beloved Tomas threw himself in front of a bullet for you and was gravely wounded. It was I who healed him.”

Indy’s look of surprise changed instantly. Her face went soft, and she wrapped her arms around Lilia so hard it almost hurt. “I knew it was you,” she whispered. “Thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome.”

When she could pull away from her sister’s fierce embrace, Lilia looked into her eyes. “It’s what this whole thing was about from the start.”

“What is?” Indy asked.

“Love. It’s all about love. Love destroyed, love denied, love betrayed, love that outlives death and defies all the rules of the Universe to fulfill itself. Your love for Tomas. Lena’s love for Ryan. My love for Demetrius. Demetrius’s love for the King he murdered to try to save us, because of his love for me. All of that is eating away at him, still, though I don’t think he remembers any of it. It’s still there in his fractured soul, the love. It’s all the same. All of it. If we can focus on the love, we’ll get through this.”

Indy nodded very slowly, then glanced over at Lena as if to make sure she was listening. She was. Raptly.

Coming closer, Lena asked, “Do you still have the ability to heal people, Lilia?”

“No more than a garden variety witch has, which is plenty. Being in spirit form it was just a more direct current to Source, I think. But I did bring a little something extra with me.”

“What?” Lena asked, her eyes eager.

Lilia was glad to give her something to distract her from her fear. “I have the power of enchantment. I can get anyone to do anything I want—with the usual limitations, of course. It can’t go against their true will. I just sing my will to them.”

“Nice,” Indy said as Lena grinned and nodded her agreement.

A cold breeze whispered across Lilia’s neck, and she shrugged deeper into the shawl she’d borrowed from Indy. “What about the two of you?” she asked. “Once the magical tools were returned to Demetrius, did your powers go with them?”

“No,” Indy said, speaking before Lena could. “I was going to ask you about that next. I still have the telekinesis.” Indy looked around, spotting a pomegranate-sized rock on the ground near the falls and pointing at it. “Watch.” She waved her arm with a flourish, and the rock shot into the air, arcing across the front of the waterfall and then splashing down into the pond.

Lilia smiled broadly. “Very handy!”

“I’m kick-ass at martial arts, too, without a day of formal training. But mostly I never have to land a blow. I can strike without touching, at least physically.”

“It’s the energy that hits them.” Lilia nodded toward the pond. “Can you put the rock back?”

Indy shrugged. “Never tried.” She pointed toward the ripples still radiating from the surface of the blue-green water, swung her arm again, and the rock burst out and sailed in the general direction it had come from, hitting the ground and rolling several more feet before bumping to a stop against a tree trunk.

Lilia nodded. “You can slow it down, move things deliberately, precisely. It just takes practice.”

“I can?” Indy looked at her forefinger. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“What about you, Magdalena? Did any of your powers remain after your mission was accomplished?”

“Scrying.” She walked to the pond and looked at the water. “I’ve always been very good at that, ever since I was little, seeing visions of our past in ancient Babylon in my mother’s scrying mirror. But the ability seemed to get turbocharged when I had the chalice. And that didn’t fade away after the chalice vanished. Give me a cup of water or a candle flame or anything, really, to focus on, and I can see all sorts of information in it.”

“And sometimes she gets visions without even looking for them. They just pop into her head,” Indy put in.

“‘Where the rippling waters go, cast a stone and truth you’ll know,’” Lilia quoted softly. “Can you ask for and receive specific information?”

“I try. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t, and some unrelated random thing pops up instead.”

Lilia nodded. “You’ll get better with practice, too. Though I don’t imagine we’ll get to keep our abilities very long. We set all this into motion long ago, to restore an innocent man’s soul and free him from a prison beyond imagining. The Gods allowed it, apparently even granted us the skills and powers we’d need to make it happen. But once Demetrius accepts the final soul-piece, our mission ends. We’ll probably go back to being normal.” She looked from one sister to the other. “Or as normal as any witch can be.” Her sisters laughed, and she felt herself tearing up. She knew that if Demetrius refused her, she would die and be separated from her sisters again for a long time. But she pushed that thought away. “It’s so good to be together again.”

“Group hug,” Lena said, pulling her sisters into her arms. They leaned their heads against each other, and Lilia closed her eyes and saw them as they had been so long ago. Three harem slaves, with wild raven hair and deep brown eyes that hid the mysteries of the forbidden craft taught to them in secret by their mother.

They’d died together. While casting one final spell together. And together they were going to bring it to completion at long last.

Finally they separated again, and it was Lena who looked at the cave. “Let’s get this done,” she said. “I want to get back to the baby.”

Together they strode to the falls, pulling their shawls over their heads and dashing through the icy spray into the darkness beyond. Indy drew a flashlight from her backpack and clicked it on, aiming the beam down nature’s dark corridor. “This way,” she said.

As they began walking every step echoed, and even Lilia felt a shiver of fear rasp up her spine after they’d gone a couple of hundred feet. “We’re close,” she said. “I feel it.”

“It’s right here.” Indy pointed at a smooth stone wall without a single unusual characteristic. “Or at least, it was.”

“Maybe it closed on its own,” Magdalena said, reaching toward the wall.

Lilia caught her wrist, stopping her from touching. “It’s still here. You just can’t see it until someone activates it, or there’s an energy surge or something. Watch.”

She bent low, picked up a pebble and tossed it at the wall. It did not ping against the stone and bounce back. It vanished instead, swallowed by a soft blue glow. And then the wall changed before their eyes as that glow widened, morphing into a swirling oval of blues and greens that looked like sparkling water but defied gravity.

“Yep,” Indy said. “That’s just how I remember it.”

“Get the gear out, Indy,” Lena said.

“I’m on it, I’m on it.” Indy was already pulling her backpack around, kneeling, removing items one by one. A shell, a sandwich bag filled with herbs, a vial of holy water, a lighter, a geode, a box of sea salt, a red candle. She set the items down on the cave floor, quickly filling the geode with sea salt and the shell with the herbs.

“Ready,” Indy said then. “Let’s kick the tires and light the fires, ladies.”

They moved to form a circle around the items on the cave floor, then stood still, eyes closed, heads lowered, as they prepared themselves for magic. When Lilia lifted her head, the others did, as well, and when she looked into their open eyes, they had turned dark brown, just as they’d been in the past, almost black, channeling the witches they had been, melding them with the witches they were now.

Lena picked up the geode filled with salt and spoke in a voice that was deeper, more powerful than her usual tones. “What was open, Earth now seals.” She moved the dish of salt in a widdershins circle, spiraling it inward, making smaller and smaller passes each time.

The swirling oval grew smaller as she worked, and then she stepped back and placed the salt back on the floor. Then Lilia picked up the shell, which was filled with angelica, sage and rosemary. Touching the lighter to the herbs, she got them smoking thickly, then stepped forward. “What was open, Air now seals.” She moved the smoking herbs in the same counterclockwise spiral pattern, and the Portal continued to shrink.

She stepped back and placed the smoking herbs on the floor but let them continue to smolder.

Indira stepped forward with the red candle, its flame dancing. “What was open, Fire now seals.” She moved the candle in the same diminishing spiral. The candle flame hissed and spat and shot higher, until the Portal was only about eighteen inches in diameter.

Lilia picked up the vial of holy water and removed its ornate stopper. This time, they stepped forward together, Lilia in the middle, shaking the bottle at the Portal, sprinkling it with droplets of water, her hand following the same shrinking spiral pattern. “What was open, Water now seals,” she said.

Then they all spoke as one. “What was open, the Goddess now seals.” They moved their hands in unison, shrinking the swirls of light on the wall.

The Portal became a tiny dot of unnatural light that could have come from someone shining a laser pointer at the stone face. Lilia stood very close to it. “Thank you for what you returned to me, Portal. Your task is complete. Your energy can now return to Source.” She gazed at the dot and snapped her fingers.

It blinked out.

“It is done,” she said.

Both her sisters sighed in relief. Indy starting picking up the items they’d used, blowing out the candle, smothering the herbs until they stopped smoking. She dumped the remaining herbs in a line in front of where the Portal had been, right along the edge of the wall, and poured the salt alongside them.

Lena dug several little herb sachets from the backpack. “Same herbs we just used, and some onyx to boot. Just to make sure it stays closed.” She lined the tiny drawstring pouches up in a row beside the herbs and salt on the floor.

“Can’t be too careful,” Lilia said, dampening her fingertip in holy water and drawing an equal-armed cross on the now-solid stone wall. Then she poured the remaining holy water along the barrier they had created on the floor.

When everything was packed up, they headed out of the cave and started hiking back down the hill, toward Lena’s place, Havenwood, where her mother was preparing a massive welcome home dinner to celebrate Lilia’s arrival “properly.”

“I’m surprised that went so well,” Indy said. “Tomas and I tried to close it once before, you know. I didn’t realize we’d failed.”

“I think it’ll stay closed this time,” Lilia said. “But we’ll check periodically to make sure. I’m afraid the challenge we face is the biggest one yet, and we can’t afford to have astral nasties popping in and out of existence on top of it. We’ll need to keep all our focus on what’s ahead.”

“Damn.” Lena lowered her head. “I was hoping the worst was over.”

“I’m afraid not.” Lilia felt sympathy for her but quickly shifted her attention to Indira. I’m going to need the box, Indy. The Witches’ Box.”

Indy nodded. “I have it. But I’ve read all the scrolls in there, and I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to help.”

“Still …”

Indy nodded. “I’ll get it for you tonight, after dinner.”

“Thanks, sister.” Lilia stretched her arms out to her sides, looking down at them with a smile. “It feels good to be human again. Well, almost human.”

“I’ll bet.”

Lena had been silent during this entire exchange, but finally she spoke. “Lilia, what’s going to happen? You said it would be the toughest challenge yet, and you told us before we’d need to get our loved ones out of the way when the time comes, but why? What exactly are we fighting here? I mean, I thought this was as simple as Demetrius making a choice. Either he accepts his remaining soul-piece or he doesn’t, right? So what’s the big deal?”

Lilia licked her lips, trying to form an answer she didn’t really want to give, and then was saved by a soft buzz-buzz coming from Indy’s jeans pocket.

Indy quickly pulled out her cell phone. “Text from Tomas.” Then her expression changed. “Oh, my Goddess.” She looked from the screen to her sisters. “The hospital phoned him. Father Dom came out of his coma this morning. He’s awake and alert.”

“On this day of all days,” Lilia said, shaking her head. “The same day Demetrius first used the tools, the day he called me back into existence. This can’t be a coincidence.”

“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” Lena said softly. “We’d better get home.”

Lilia stopped shoving food into her mouth when she realized that everyone was looking at her. Of course, as soon as they saw her noticing, they all returned to their own lasagna dripping with cheeses and sauce and stuffed with mushrooms and vegetables. The bowl beside her plate, where a fresh green salad had been, was all but licked clean. She realized she had consumed about a square foot of the main course within the first three minutes of its arrival. And a couple of slices of warm, buttery garlic bread, too.

She laid her fork down, sipped from her water glass, then set it carefully on the table. “I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed food,” she said. “The sensual pleasure of eating is … I think when you do it every day you forget how incredible it is. All those flavors bursting on your tongue. The taste, the texture. Oh, it’s so good.”

Selma, Magdalena’s mother, smiled at her. She’d been smiling at her the entire evening, and it had been all Lilia could do not to fling herself into the older woman’s arms. But all in good time. “I think that’s the best compliment my cooking has ever received,” she said softly.

“Then,” Bahru said, “we’ve all been lax in our praise. Your culinary skills are unmatched, Selma.” He was a bronze-skinned Hindi who wore red-and-white robes, sandals, dreadlocks halfway down his back and a matted beard.

Lilia sighed. “It’s a shame Demetrius won’t be able to enjoy food like this.”

“He won’t?” Tomas asked. “Why not?”

“Well, he’s still missing a part of his soul. The part I carry with me. When Indy returned the amulet to him, he received the soul-piece it held, and that let him escape the Underworld through the Portal. And, Lena, when you relinquished the chalice and the blade, you gave him a body.”

“Not the body he thought I was going to give him, though,” Lena said, glancing at the wicker cradle in the living room with a combination of love and ferocity.

Lilia nodded. “He was imprisoned, inhuman, a soulless beast raging against his captivity for so long—it’s understandable he was mixed up. And I know you couldn’t see him at the end, my sister, but I could. He changed his mind. He wouldn’t have gone through with it. I know this. He was confused—”

“Confused is putting it mildly, Lilia,” Ryan said. He sat at the table’s head, Lena at its foot. “He used some kind of mind control on people. On me, even.”

She nodded. “I know. I saw it all. He’s powerful.”

“Still?” Ryan asked, pressing on. “I mean, now that he’s got a human body, is he human, or is he … something else?”

“And is he still dangerous?” Lena asked.

Lilia lowered her head, but it was Selma who answered. “Why don’t we let Lilia enjoy her first full-fledged meal in thirty-five-hundred years and discuss this later, over coffee and dessert?”

Everyone muttered, but they nodded all the same.

Lilia was grateful and sent Selma a loving look while deciding it was time to tell her the truth. “You are mothering all of us, Selma, even though you’re only Magdalena’s mother … in this lifetime.”

Selma stilled with her fork halfway to her lips and lifted her head. “In this lifetime?”

Lilia smiled warmly. “We didn’t get to stay with you for very long, Selma. Teenagers in those days were adult enough to leave home. But you taught your three daughters well. If you hadn’t, our powers then wouldn’t have enabled us all to be here now. Together. About to set things right after thirty-five centuries.”

“I was …” Selma’s voice broke.

“Our mother. You were our mother in Babylon.”

Selma dropped her fork to her plate with a clatter and looked at each of the women in turn, her eyes beginning to shimmer. “I knew it. I felt it.”

Sitting beside her, Bahru put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Lilia sighed and set her napkin down. “It seems odd, me being the youngest but knowing more of what’s going on than the rest of you. It’s unfair to make you wait any longer for the answers you’ve been looking for all this time. And I’ve eaten so much already that my belly is straining to hold it. So I will tell you what I know.”

“It’s about time,” Indy muttered, but she gave Lilia a wink to temper the words. “I thought we might have to stick bamboo shoots under your nails to get you to talk.”

Lilia frowned—even though Indy’s grin said she was kidding—failing to see the humor in such a notion. She dabbed her mouth with her napkin, and then she began.

“Demetrius came into humanity with the knowledge that he was human once, but no real memory of what that means. He doesn’t know of our history. Didn’t even—” Her throat tightened. She loosened it with another sip of water. “He didn’t even recognize me when I first appeared in physical form.” It hurt to admit that. But there it was.

“He came forth with the intention to experience every human pleasure. But without the final piece of his soul, his senses are dulled. He can’t taste the deliciousness of food or see the beauty of nature. He won’t understand why people take pleasure from music or a warm, soft pillow. He won’t realize what he’s missing, of course, having no basis for comparison.”

“But he is human?” Tomas asked.

“He is. Sort of. He’s also immortal—for the moment, anyway. His injuries will heal rapidly. Nothing will kill him. And he can’t become ill.” She went silent, rubbing her hands together in her lap.

“And what else?” Indy asked. “C’mon, spill it. I can see there’s more.”

Lilia looked up at the sister who sat beside her. “He has the same powers you received from the amulet, Indira.”

“Telekinesis,” Indy whispered.

Nodding, Lilia looked to Magdalena. “And he has the powers you received from the chalice, Lena. The ability to scry and find any knowledge he seeks.”

“And he has the dagger,” Ryan said softly. “That thing’s like an unregistered WMD.”

Lilia didn’t understand the reference, and it must have shown on her face.

“Weapon of mass destruction,” Ryan said.

She nodded in agreement. “Also, using the two together, he can manifest anything he desires. Turn any wish into physical reality.”

The baby fussed, and Bahru was on his feet before any of them, hurrying to the cradle in the next room. Lena had started to get up, but she relaxed into her chair again with a grateful look the guru’s way. Then she faced Lilia again. “What special power did you bring back with you, Lilia?”

“I hold a piece of my love’s soul,” Lilia said, lowering her head to hide the wave of longing that rose in her when she acknowledged that tiny part of him that remained in her possession.

“Is it embedded in some magical tool?” Tomas asked.

“No. It’s in my heart. Where it’s always been. I’m bound to him through it. I can find him anywhere he goes. The rest of his soul cries out for it, the way the moon pulls at the Earth. It’s a constant effort to resist. But as I said at the hospital, I must give him some time.”

“And what else?” Indy asked, getting up from the table and beginning to gather the plates, since everyone had finished eating. Selma got up to help, as did Bahru, who handed Ellie to her mother first.

“I’m immortal, impervious to illness or injury—as long as my body isn’t destroyed—just as he is.”

Everyone went silent and just stared at her. It was Indy who finally spoke. “Uh, in case you’ve forgotten, baby sis, your impervious immortal is in the hospital right now.”

“He’s most likely fully healed by now. I imagine this was the Gods’ way of making sure he and I have time enough here in the physical realm to fulfill our destiny. If one of us were to be killed before Demetrius has the opportunity to make the decision he must make, it would be a terrible waste of all our efforts.”

She pressed a hand to her throat. “If I die before Beltane, in a way that prevents me from reviving, with his soul-piece still inside me, it will die forever. The rest of his soul-pieces will die slowly without it, and he will expire into a death from which there is no return. He will simply cease to exist.”

“That’s unbelievable,” Ryan said, getting up to help with the cleanup. Lilia did likewise, but as she passed her sister’s chair carrying the lasagna tray, Lena gripped her arm.

“What about the baby?” Magdalena asked. “Demetrius wouldn’t have any reason to want to hurt her, would he, Lil?”

“No. None. And you needn’t worry about his powers, either. Once he receives the final part of his soul he’ll return to being an ordinary mortal again, to live out an ordinary lifetime without any extraordinary abilities. And so will I. And so, I imagine, will each of you.”

“Right,” Indy said. “So what’s the catch?”

“I don’t—”

“She means it sounds too easy,” Lena said as Bahru returned to the table. “There’s more to it, isn’t there? Otherwise you’d have given him back the final piece already.”

Lilia lowered her head, nodded once. “Yes. First he has to be given time to experience life, as he is now. And then I have to offer him his soul-piece back, explaining that he must give up his powers and immortality if he accepts it.”

“You mean he gets a choice?” Ryan asked.

Lilia nodded. “Yes. The choice has to be his.”

Everyone looked at each other, and then Indy said, “Who in their right mind would accept if it means giving up immortality, immunity to illness, rapid healing and superpowers, sis? I mean, what’s the upside for him?”

“Oh, so much,” Lilia said softly. “He’ll be able to experience being human—fully. His senses will no longer be dulled. Being human is a highly sensual experience—we don’t get that when we’re in spirit form. The tastes and smells, the sounds and visual beauty. The sense of touch, of physical pleasure, none of that exists where there’s no body, and for him, they’re mere shadows compared to the fullness and richness he’ll experience with his soul intact.”

Tomas set his napkin on the table, chewed his lip for a moment, and then said softly, “What if he chooses not to accept?”

Of them all, Lilia knew, he was most familiar with their story, with the curse, the legends and mistaken interpretations, the history. Clearly he understood that all of it, the entire three-thousand, five-hundred-year cycle, was coming to an end with her arrival and Demetrius’s decision.

“If he chooses not to accept his soul-piece, then at the precise moment of Beltane, he will die. He’ll be released into the afterlife, and it will go there to join him. There he’ll process all he’s learned, rest and understand, and reincarnate again if he so desires.” She lowered her head, not wanting to finish, but knowing they had a right to know the whole of it. “And so will I.”

Her sisters shot to their feet, shouting denials, but Lilia held up her hands. “I’ve been allowed to linger all this time to right the wrong that was done so many years ago. The Gods allowed that as a way of correcting the imbalance, righting the dreadful wrong committed against us. But you all know it’s not the natural order. We’re supposed to live, to die, to rest, to live again. We’ve been allowed to circumvent the natural order. For three-thousand, five-hundred years, you have reincarnated lifetime after lifetime with the same names, with the memories ready to return to you—with the same loves you lost then reincarnating with you to give you a chance to find each other again.

“And I’ve been allowed to linger between life and death, to watch over you, to call you to action when the time was right. None of that is natural. And it all comes to an end now, with me. But we must not—cannot—tell Demetrius that part of it. He has to make his decision out of the desire to be fully human, to embrace life and love again, not out of fear of death. We all know death is nothing to fear, anyway.”

Selma was using her napkin to dab a tear from the corner of her eye, and the others were looking shocked and afraid.

Lilia realized she’d risen to her feet in the fervor of her speech. She got hold of herself, took a deep breath and sat down again. “I will know when the time is right to go to him,” she said softly. “I’ll feel it. But until then, I’m here. We’re all here, together. Let’s enjoy this time while we have it.”

Tomas looked troubled but nodded in agreement. “She’s right.”

“I know that look,” Indy said, staring at her husband. “What are you thinking, hon?”

“That Father Dom waking up from a coma on the same day your sister arrived is … too unlikely to have happened by chance,” he said. “Lilia, do you think there’s a connection?”

“I’m certain of it.”

Tomas lowered his eyes, and Lilia realized he’d been hoping she would give a different answer. “I’ll go see him,” he said. “I had no intention of ever talking to him again, not that I expected it to be an option. When the hospital called to tell me he was awake and asking for me, I—” He broke off, then took a breath, cleared his throat and went on. “But maybe I need to see what I can find out.”

“It wasn’t his fault, what he did,” Lilia told him, watching his face, knowing this was a sore subject. Father Dominick had been like a father to him and then betrayed him bitterly.

Anger rose in Tomas’s dark eyes. “He tried to kill the woman I love. He drugged my sister. He lied to me about who and what I was. He—”

“He was playing his part in a complex story far too old for him to have understood fully, Tomas,” she told him. “I know you feel betrayed, but … you’re a spiritual man. Don’t you understand that things happen the way they’re supposed to, and that sometimes even bad things, things we hate and curse, we later realize happened for very good reasons? To move us on toward where we want to go. To make room for better things to arrive.”

He blinked twice and shook himself as if she’d hit him between the eyes with a mallet.

“I think it might be a good idea if I go with you to see him,” Lilia said. “Chances are he’s still a part of this. Possibly being manipulated by unseen forces, even now.”

He nodded. “I’ll call the hospital, make the arrangements. We can go first thing in the morning.”

They all continued clearing until the table was bare and gleaming, and the dishwasher was chugging softly. As everyone but Tomas gathered in the living room, sitting comfortably around the fireplace, Selma brought around coffee and dessert, eventually taking a seat herself. Tomas had gone off to make his phone call, and now he returned. He looked pensive.

“What’s up, babe?” Indy asked, reading his face.

He met her eyes, frowning and shaking his head. “Father Dom. He’s … gone.”

“He died?” Indy whispered.

Tomas blinked out of his state and focused on his wife. “No, no, he’s not dead. He’s gone. He got up and walked out of the hospital. They tried to stop him, they couldn’t even believe he was strong enough, but …” His frown deepened. “What the hell is he thinking?”

Gus pushed Demetrius’s wheelchair through the hospital corridors toward the exit, because that was hospital policy. Demetrius didn’t think much of it, but Gus was having a ball, so he put up with it. Besides, he’d already upset the staff by checking himself out before they’d deemed him healed. He, however, knew that he was.

Gus was brimming over with childlike excitement. “Wait till you see our ride, boss. We’re finally getting what we deserve outta this life, let me tell you that.”

The automatic doors opened at their approach. Demetrius was looking behind him to ask Gus what he was talking about, but then he turned and saw the gleaming black stretch limo through the open doors, and blinked. “Are you kidding me?”

There was a man in a chauffeur’s cap standing beside the car, holding a passenger door open. He was young, a green-eyed redhead with a friendly smile and a smattering of freckles across his nose and spilling onto his cheeks. “Mr. Demetrius, Mr. Gus,” he said with a friendly nod. “I’m Sid, I’m your driver.”

Demetrius got out of the wheelchair and shook the kid’s hand. “Sid. And, um, where exactly will you be driving us?”

“To the airport, sir. Mr. Nelson’s private jet is waiting to take you to his—that is, to your new home.” He beamed.

“A private jet,” Demetrius repeated, because the words were not making sense in his brain quite yet.

“He said nothing but the best for you, Mr. Demetrius. And I’m assigned to you for as long as you need me.”

“Assigned to me?”

Sid gave a shrug and a smile. “Your right-hand man.”

“I’m his right-hand man.” Gus’s tone was unfriendly.

Sid laughed. “Don’t be silly, Mr. Gus. I’m the employee. You’re the boss.”

“I’m the boss?”

“Well, one of them, anyway.”

Gus looked at Demetrius and then back at Sid again, smiling this time. “Well, let’s get this show on the road, then.”

“Yes, sir!”

Gus climbed into the back of the limo and made himself comfortable. Demetrius got in beside him, wondering if he’d hit his head during the accident and was dreaming all of this.

But he didn’t wake up, and everything seemed to flow in logical order, so he didn’t think so. Within an hour they were flying through the skies in an airplane, Sid in the passenger cabin along with them.

“Do you need anything to make you more comfortable?” Sid asked. “It’s going to be hours before we land.”

“Is there any food on this bird?” Gus asked. “’Cause I’m so hungry I could—”

“I’d like to get this cast off, Sid,” Demetrius interrupted. “Is there anything I could use to cut it?”

Sid looked a little alarmed. “But it’s only been a few days since your accident.”

“I know, but …” He shot a quick look at Gus, seeing the same kind of worry in his eyes. “The doctor was being overly cautious. Nothing was actually broken.”

“It most certainly was,” Gus said. “Your arm was broke in three places. I was there when the doc showed you the X-rays.”

“He misread them, Gus. My arm is fine.” And it was. It had been since about twenty-four hours after the accident. He’d felt the bones knitting and known that he was healed. Every other injury had vanished, too. Where he had been scraped and cut, he now had smooth tanned skin without a mark on it. Where he’d been bruised, there was nothing. His pain was gone. He thought he might be immortal. At the very least, he had supernatural powers. He healed in a single day. He had a cup and a knife that could make his wishes come true, and he had a blonde from some other realm stalking him. He didn’t know what had existed before the void. But he was sure there had been something, and he was suddenly very curious to know what. And whether it would explain his current abilities.

In the meantime, he intended to enjoy everything life had to offer.

Sid brought him a steak knife, and he proceeded to divest himself of the cast. He made a mess of it, scattering white dust and fragments all over the carpeted floor, but Sid assured him he needn’t worry about it. When his arm was free, though dust-coated, he turned it, bent it, moved his wrist and elbow. “That’s better,” he said.

Sid and Gus looked at him as if he’d just walked on water. But he pretended not to notice, put his seat back and closed his eyes.

He didn’t wake until they landed, and as he leaned forward to look out the tiny window beside his seat he saw a barren wasteland.

“Where are we?”

“Arizona,” Gus said. “Don’t worry. It gets much more colorful where we’re going. You just relax, the journey’s almost over.”

He’d certainly traveled far, Demetrius thought. Perhaps too far for the blonde woman to track him down again. He hoped so.

Then why did something inside him ache at the thought? He didn’t even know her.

Soon he was in the back of another limo, with Sid driving once again, and two hours after that, give or take, they were winding through fascinating scenery. Sid and Gus were oohing and ahhing and pointing as they passed towering rock formations of rust red, fronted by acres of desert. Demetrius thought the colors were interesting. Different, certainly, but hardly worthy of all the fuss they were making. They were just rocks, after all.

They drove through Sedona, heading north, then turned onto a side road. To the left were more of those massive red rocks. To the right, a sprawling, gated mansion where he figured some celebrity must live.

“Well? What do you think?” Gus asked.

“What do I think about what?” Then he realized the limo was turning toward the closed wrought-iron gate, which opened to allow it to move slowly through. The gate, he noted at last, bore two entwined N’s.

Beyond the tall gate lay paradise. There was no other word for it. Dead ahead, at the end of the wide paved drive, was a four-car garage with a rooftop patio protected by ornate rails, and with tall glittering fabric “sails” to provide shade. The house that rose above the garage was like a small red stone palace. It had a circular painted third story and even an observatory atop that. He noticed that the driveway continued past the garage, curving up a small hill and circling a huge fountain where a trio of topless mermaids poured water from their cupped hands into a pool. Beyond the fountain was the front door.

“Ned Nelson told me confidentially that he’s gonna have to unload most of his houses anyway,” Gus said as the gate closed behind them.

A beautiful Latina woman was working in a flower garden. As they passed, Demetrius stared out the tinted window into her dark brown eyes, which flashed blue, and for a split second she became a platinum-haired avenging angel.

He jerked away from the window.

“People won’t vote for a President who seems too wealthy,” Gus went on. “He can probably keep three, maybe four, but more than that would be pushing it.”

“So the staff …?”

“Are paid for the next twelve months,” Sid said. “So are the taxes.”

Gus nodded an agreement. “Ned says by then our stock in his companies should be earning us enough to maintain the place on our own. He threw in the limo, a pimped-out Jeep Wrangler and Jag. A Jag, D-man. And an expense account for incidentals. Wait, I have it here somewhere.” Gus felt around, then finally pulled a small leather ledger from an inner pocket of his designer suit jacket and handed it over.

Demetrius opened it and looked at the dollar amount noted at the top of the first page. Then he lifted his head and blinked. “Those must be some incidentals.”

The limo circled the mermaid fountain and stopped at the front entrance, which was just as spectacular as the rest of the place. Sid got out, came around and opened the car door.

Demetrius stepped out and into his new life. The life he deserved. The one he’d come here for. He savored that knowledge, then turned and walked up the broad flagstone steps, passing between two pillars into a domed entryway to a pair of massive hardwood doors with dragon-head knockers. “This is living,” he said softly.

Gus sent him a knowing look, then returned his gaze to the entrance. “It was no mistake you gettin’ hit by that car, D-dog. No mistake at all. You see that naked blonde again, you oughtta be thankin’ her.”

A throat cleared. They both turned. Sid was standing behind them in his crisp uniform and chauffeur’s cap, with some of his carrot curls peeking out from beneath the hat.

“What is it, Sid?” Demetrius asked.

A small smile tugged at the corners of the younger man’s lips. “I was told to remain at your service. I’ll just park the limo and make use of one of the rooms in the staff quarters behind the garage—with your permission, sirs.”

Demetrius looked at Gus, who shrugged.

“How many bedrooms does this house have, Sid?” Demetrius asked.

“I believe there are twelve, sir.”

“That has to stop. It bothers me. Call me Demetrius, all right? And he’s Gus.”

“All right. Demetrius.” Sid looked as if he was battling a smile.

“I know. It’s a mouthful. So, Sid, you say we have twelve bedrooms. And how many staff members live here?”

“I’d have to find out.”

“Still, I don’t see why you should take a room in the garage.”

“It’s fine, really, sir—Demetrius, sir. The staff quarters are nice.”

“Still—”

“I’ve stayed there before. I really like it.”

“All right, then, if that’s the way you want it.”

“It is, sir.” He looked as if he was about to correct himself, then decided not to. “Will there be anything else?”

Demetrius glanced at the front doors. “No, I guess not.” But for some reason he couldn’t seem to make himself open them.

Sid looked at the two of them for a long moment, then nodded. “Maybe I should give you the grand tour of the place, show you everything you might need to know, introduce you to the staff.”

Demetrius sighed in abject relief, only realizing what he was doing when it was too late to prevent it.

“Yes,” he said. “That would be great, Sid. I am completely out of my element here anyway, and this … this is just a little bit overwhelming, even though …” He turned to look at the sprawling lawns, the gardens, the koi swimming in the fountain, his heart swelling a little in his chest. It was nice here. He would have everything he had ever wanted here. “Even though it was meant for me.”

Sid couldn’t possibly have understood, but he nodded as if he did and, reaching past Demetrius, opened the massive doors.

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