Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor 4)

Setting the wine and cookies on a bistro table, Justine went into her bedroom. She sat on the floor by her bed, pulled out the spellbook, and held it in her lap. A slow, unsettled breath escaped her.

What’s wrong with me?

She had felt this ache before, but never so intensely.

As Justine unwrapped the linen, a wonderful perfume rippled upward, honey-sweet, greeny-herbal, lavender-musty, candle-waxy. The cloth, with its frayed selvage and ancient fingerprint smudges, fell away to reveal a leather-bound book with ragged deckle-edged pages. The leather binding gleamed like the skin of black plums and cherries. A design of a clock face had been tooled on the front cover, with a small copper keyhole in the center.

She traced the single word emblazoned on the book’s spine: Triodecad. It was the word for a group of thirteen, a number that bonded multiplicity into oneness. The ancient book, more than two centuries old, was filled with spells, rituals, and secrets.

Usually a grimoire was burned upon its owner’s death, but a few, like the Triodecad, were too powerful to destroy. Such rare and revered volumes had been passed down through generations. Since a grimoire preferred to remain with its keeper, it was almost impossible to steal one. But even if someone did manage such a feat, he or she would never be able to open the book without a key.

“Never read page thirteen,” her mother had warned on the day she had given the spellbook to Justine.

“What’s on page thirteen?”

“It’s different for everyone. It will show you how to achieve your heart’s desire.”

“What’s so bad about that?”

“It never turns out the way you expect,” Marigold had said. “Page thirteen teaches one lesson only: Be careful what you wish for.”

Justine had looked down at the grimoire with a chiding grin and jostled it playfully. “You wouldn’t get me into trouble, would you?”

And she had felt the Triodecad’s cover flex as if it were smiling back at her.

Now, as she stared guiltily at the spellbook, she knew that what she was considering was wrong. But she wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. She wasn’t asking for anything extraordinary. Was it so terrible to want to change her own heart?

I should leave well enough alone, she thought uneasily.

Except that leaving well enough alone was only an option as long as things really were well enough. In Justine’s case, they weren’t. And if she didn’t do something, they never would be.

She reached beneath the neck of her T-shirt and pulled out the copper key on a chain. Leaning forward, she unlocked the Triodecad. Instantly, the book rustled and flipped of its own accord, fanning her with the resinous perfume of vellum and ink. The rag paper pages revealed a rainbow blur of illustrations … sunflower yellow, peacock blue, medieval red, soot black, deepest emerald.

The spine of the volume slumped abruptly as it reached 13. Unlike the rest of the book, this page was blank. But beneath Justine’s curious gaze, symbols appeared in random places like bubbles rising to the surface of champagne. A spell was forming. Justine stared at the page, her pulse thumping hard at the base of her throat.

The first line, written in elaborate and archaic letters, puzzled her:

TO BREAK A GEAS

Justine knew little about a geas, except that it was pronounced like “guest” with a sh sound instead of a t. A geas was a lifetime enchantment, most often a curse. The effort to break one was so difficult and dangerous that the results were potentially even worse than the original curse. The unlucky victim of a geas was usually better off learning to live with it.

“This can’t be right,” Justine said in bewilderment. “This won’t fix my problem. What does a geas have to do with anything?”

The page rippled emphatically, as if to say, Look at me. Slowly it dawned on her: This was the answer.

The words played through her mind with strange variations on emphasis … this was the answer … this was the answer …

“I’ve been cursed?” she asked after a long time, in the insulated silence. “That’s not possible.”

But it was.

Someone had condemned her to a lifetime of solitude. Who would have done such a thing to her? And why? She had never hurt anyone. She didn’t deserve this. No one did.

Too many feelings were coming to her at once. The cage of her chest was too small to contain them, pressure building behind her ribs. She trembled, breathed, waited, until the shock and pain burned down to a white-hot core of fury.

It took considerable skill and power to cast a spell of lifelong duration. The crafter would most likely have had to permanently sacrifice a portion of her power, which was sufficient deterrent to make a geas a rare spell, indeed.

All of which meant that this had been done to Justine by someone who had hated her.

But a geas wasn’t unbreakable. Nothing was. And no matter what it took, Justine would break this one.

Four

Justine didn’t give a damn about what it would cost her to get rid of the geas. She would do whatever it took. So mote it be. A blaze of injustice filled her. She had spent the past few years waiting and wishing for something that was never going to happen. Because that choice had already been made for her, regardless of what she might have wanted or dreamed of.

She would find out who was responsible. She would turn the geas right around back on them. She would …

Her plans for vengeance faded as she blinked hard against a salty blur. She pressed her palms hard against her eyes. A headache throbbed behind the front and sides of her skull, the kind of pain that no medicine could ease. She thought briefly of calling her mother, even though she and Marigold had been estranged for four years. Even knowing it would do no good. Marigold wouldn’t be sympathetic, and even if she knew something about the geas, she wouldn’t admit it.

Some women gave their children unconditional love. Marigold, however, had meted out affection to Justine like expensive arcade tokens, withholding it whenever Justine had disagreed with her. Since traditional education didn’t interest Marigold, she had done everything possible to discourage Justine from going to community college. She had mocked and criticized Justine’s job as a hotel desk clerk. The last straw, however, had been Justine’s decision to buy the inn.

“Why have you always been so impossible?” Marigold had demanded. “You’ve never wanted to do the one thing you’re good at. Are you really telling me that the biggest dream you can come up with for yourself is housework? Cleaning toilets and changing dirty sheets?”

“I’m sorry,” Justine had said. “I know how much easier it would be for both of us if I’d turned out the way I was supposed to. I don’t belong anywhere … not in a magical world and not in an ordinary one. But between the two, this makes me happier. I like taking care of people. I don’t mind cleaning up after them. And I want a place that’s all my own, so I’ll never have to move again.”

“There’s more to consider than what you want,” Marigold had shot back. “Our circle is the oldest lineaged coven on the West Coast. Once you’re initiated, we’ll have a total of thirteen. You know what that means.”

Yes, Justine had known. Thirteen witches in a coven would result in a power greater than the sum of its parts. And she had felt horribly selfish for not wanting to join, for putting her own needs above the others’. But she had known that no matter how hard she tried, she would never be like them. A lifetime was an awfully long time to be miserable.

“The problem is,” Justine had said, “I’m not interested in learning any more about the craft than I already know.”

That had earned her a scornful glance. “You’re satisfied with knowing a handful of bottle spells and crystal runes? With having barely enough magical ability to entertain children at a birthday party?”

“Don’t forget, I also do balloon animals,” Justine had said, hoping to coax a smile from her.

But Marigold’s face had remained stony. “I never would have had you if I’d thought there was a chance you wouldn’t be part of the coven. I’ve never even heard of a natural-born witch who turned away from the craft.”

The impasse had been hopeless. Marigold was convinced that her plans for Justine’s life were infinitely better than anything Justine could have come up with. Justine had tried to make her understand that it was every person’s right to make those decisions for herself, but eventually she had realized that if Marigold had been capable of understanding the point, she never would have been controlling in the first place.

And if Marigold couldn’t have the kind of daughter she wanted, she didn’t want a daughter at all.

As a consequence, Justine had developed an ambivalent relationship with magic, which was inherently an all-or-nothing proposition. Trying to remain a magical dilettante was like trying to stay a little bit pregnant.

She read the spell again. If she were reading correctly, the rite had to be performed beneath a waning moon at midnight. That made sense: The last phase before the new moon was the ideal time for banishing, releasing, reversing. To succeed in lifting a curse as powerful as a geas, it was best not to cut corners.

Standing, Justine went to the antique writing desk by the window to consult a lunar phase Web site on her laptop.

As luck would have it, tonight was the last night of the waning crescent. If she didn’t try to break the geas now, she would have to wait a full month before she could have another shot. Justine was certain that she couldn’t make it that long. Every cell in her body screamed for action. She felt off course, like a comet that was about to break free of its solar orbit and hurtle out into space.

She should call Rosemary and Sage for advice, except they might try to talk her out of it, or at least tell her to wait, and Justine didn’t want her mind to be changed for any reason. Even a good one. The geas had to be broken now.

For the rest of the evening, Justine studied the spell and pored feverishly through the Triodecad. If she was going to do this, it had to be done right. Many factors played into the art of magic. If any of the steps of a spell were conducted in a haphazard manner, if words were mispronounced or left out, if the crafter’s focus wavered, if her magic supplies were of poor quality, the spell might not work. Or it might work in reverse, or on the wrong person. A mistake as apparently minor as using a candle made with paraffin instead of beeswax could lead to disastrous consequences.

Justine concentrated so deeply on the Triodecad that the sound of her cell phone caused her to start. She reached for it with her heart racing unpleasantly, and read the caller ID.

“Hi, Priscilla,” she said. “How’s it going?”

“Everything’s fine. Got everyone settled into their rooms, and then they walked to Downrigger’s for dinner. Most of them are back. I’m calling to remind you to bring the vodka to Jason’s room in fifteen minutes.”

“Oh.” Justine looked down at her T-shirt and jeans, which she hadn’t changed since cleaning the rooms earlier in the day. She smelled like ammonia and floor wax. The knees of her jeans were filthy, and her ponytail had come loose. “I thought he’d probably want you to do it,” she said hopefully.

“Nope. He wants you.”

Justine sighed inaudibly. “I’ll be there.”

“Nine o’clock on the dot,” Priscilla reminded her. “He doesn’t take well to people being late.”

“I’ll be there. Bye.”

Ending the call, Justine scrambled to the bathroom, tore her clothes off, and jumped into the shower. After a brief but thorough scrubbing, she got out and towel-dried her hair.

She rummaged through her closet until she found a sleeveless knit dress with a drawstring waist, and a pair of flat white sandals. Pulling her hair back into a low ponytail, she swiped on some ChapStick and applied a couple of flicks of mascara to her upper lashes.

As Justine strode across the small yard, she risked a glance at the second-floor window, but it was empty. She had to admit it: She was curious about Jason Black, who kept his private life under such tight control.

Entering the back door of the inn’s kitchen, she pulled the bottle of Stoli from the freezer. She measured two shots of biting-cold vodka into shot glasses, and settled them into a small high-sided silver tray filled with crushed ice. Carefully she carried the tray upstairs.

The quietness of the inn was disrupted only by discreet sounds: the opening and closing of a drawer, the muffled ring of a phone. As Justine approached the Klimt room, she heard a man’s voice inside. It sounded like he was in the middle of a phone conversation. Should she knock? She didn’t want to interrupt, but it was nine o’clock. Schooling her features into a polite mask, Justine rapped her knuckles lightly on the door.

Footsteps approached the threshold.

The door opened. Justine had a brief, dizzying impression of midnight eyes and hard features, and a sexy disorder of short black hair. He gestured for her to enter the room, pausing just long enough to tell Justine, “Don’t leave yet.” He looked at her directly.

The glance lasted only a half second, but it was nearly enough to knock Justine backward. His fathomless eyes—shrewd and opaque as blackstrap molasses—could have belonged to Lucifer himself.

Justine responded with a dazed nod and managed to set the tray on the table without spilling it. She was so unsettled that it took her a minute to realize he was speaking in Japanese. His voice was mesmerizing, a quiet baritone wrapped in shadow.

At a loss for what to do, she went to one of the windows and looked outside. The vestigial light was melon colored at the horizon, darkening to a black-plum meridian overhead. The fissure of a crescent moon gleamed white and clear like a claw mark in the sky.

A night made for magic.

Her attention returned to Jason Black, who paced slowly as he talked. He was a big man, elegantly lean, the easy athleticism of his movements hinting at deep tracts of muscle beneath the crisp white button-down shirt and khakis. Leaning over the table, he scrawled a few words on a notepad. A stainless-steel Swiss Army watch gleamed on his wrist.

His face could have been honed from amber, the cheekbones steeply angled. Weathering at the outward corners of his eyes betrayed a pattern of sleepless nights and restless days. Although his mouth was set in ruthless lines, his lips looked soft, as if erotic tenderness had been kneaded into the surface.

“Forgive me,” he said, shutting off the phone as he approached Justine. “Tokyo is sixteen hours ahead of us. I had to get in one last call.”

His manner was relaxed, but Justine had to fight the instinct to step back from him. Even though she knew he posed no threat to her, she had the sense of him as a dangerous creature, a tiger behind a thin glass wall.