“You believe in that stuff? Chanting and spells and palm reading?”
Mavis cocked her head and looked thoughtful. “It’s major bullshit.”
“You never fail to surprise me,” Eve decided. “I figured you’d be into it.”
“I ran a con once. Spirit guide. I was Ariel, reincarnation of a fairy queen. You’d be amazed how many straights paid up for me to contact their dead relatives or tell them their future.”
To demonstrate, she let her head fall back. Her eyes fluttered, her mouth went slack. Slowly, her arms lifted, palms turned up. “I feel a presence, strong, seeking, sorrowful.” Her voice had deepened, attained a faint accent. “There are dark forces working against you. They hide from you, wait to do harm. Beware.”
She dropped her arms and grinned. “So, you tell the mark you need to have trust in order to offer protection from the dark forces. All they have to do is put say, a thousand cash—cash is all that works—in an envelope. Seal it. You make sure you tell them to seal it with this special wax you’re going to sell them. Then you’re going to do this cool chant over it, and bury the envelope in a secret place under the dark of the moon. After the moon’s cycled, you’ll dig up the envelope and give it back. The dark forces will have been vanquished.”
“That’s it? People just hand over the money?”
; “Well, you string it out a little longer, do some research so you can hit them with names and events and shit. But basically, yeah. People want to believe.”
“Why?”
“Because life can really suck.”
Yes, Eve thought when she was alone again, she supposed it could. Hers certainly had for long stretches of time. Now she was living in a mansion with a man who, for some reason, loved her. She didn’t always understand her life or the man who now shared it, but she was adjusting. So well, in fact, that she decided not to go bury herself in work, but to go outside, into the golden autumn evening and take an hour for herself.
She was used to streets and sidewalks, crowded sky-glides, jammed people movers. The sheer space Roarke could command always astonished her. His grounds were like a well-tended park, quiet and lush, with the foliage of rich man’s trees in the dazzling flame of fall. The scents were of spicy flowers, the faintly smoky fragrance of October in the country.
Overhead, the sky was nearly empty of traffic, and even that was a dignified hum. No rumbling airbuses or lumbering tourist blimps over Roarke’s land.
And the world she knew, and that knew her, was beyond the gates and over the walls, in the seamy dark.
Here she could forget that for a short time. Forget New York existed with its death and its anger—and its perpetually appealing arrogance. She needed the quiet and the air. As she walked over thick, green grass, she worried the ring with its odd symbols on her finger.
On the north side of the house was an arbor of thin, somehow fluid iron. The vines twisting and tumbling over it were smothered with flowers wildly red. She had married him there, in an old, traditional ceremony where vows were exchanged and promises made. A ceremony, she thought now. A rite that included music, flowers, witnesses, words that were repeated time after time, place after place, century through century.
And so, she thought, other ceremonies were preserved and repeated and believed to hold power. Back to Cain and Abel, she mused. One had planted crops, the other tended a flock. And both had offered sacrifice. One had been accepted, the other dismissed. Thus, she imagined, some would say good and evil were born. Because each needed the balance and challenge of the other.
So it continued. Science and logic disproved, but the rites continued, incense and chanting, offerings and the drinking of wine that symbolized blood.
And the sacrifice of the innocent.
Annoyed with herself, she rubbed her hands over her face. Philosophizing was foolish and useless. Murder had been done by human force. And it was human force that would dispense justice. That was, after all, the ultimate balance of good and evil.
She sat on the ground under the arbor of bloodred blossoms and drew in the burning scent of evening.
“This isn’t usual for you.” Roarke came up quietly behind her—so quietly, her heart gave a quick trip before he settled on the grass beside her. “Communing with nature?”
“Maybe I spent too much time inside today.” She had to smile when he handed her one of the red flowers. She twirled it in her fingers, watched it spin before she looked over at him.
He was relaxed, his dark hair skimming his shoulders, as he leaned back on his elbows, legs stretched out, feet crossed at the ankles. She imagined his pricey and beautiful suit would pick up grass stains that would horrify Summerset. He smelled male, and expensive. Lust curled comfortably in her stomach.
“Successful day?” she asked.
“We’ll have bread on the table another day or two.”
She flicked her fingers at the ends of his hair. “It’s not the money, is it? It’s the making it.”
“Oh, it’s the money.” His eyes laughed at her. “And the making it.” In a quick move she told herself she should have seen coming, he reached up, cupped the back of her neck, and overbalanced her onto him and into a hot kiss.
“Hold on.”