Jason approached slowly, his gaze holding hers. A visceral pulse awakened in all the vulnerable places of her body. All she could do was stand there helplessly, wondering how his mouth might feel against hers, if his kisses would be hard or soft, if his hands would be impatient or gentle. Taking a deep breath, she fastened her gaze on the logo of his T-shirt. She couldn’t help wondering what it would be like, with a man like this. She would be at his mercy as she had never been with Duane or any other man. He would demand total surrender—
“Would you go out to dinner with me tonight?”
Thrown off balance, Justine stared at him blankly. “Just the two of us?”
Jason gave a single nod, his expression unfathomable.
She shouldn’t. There was a complexity in him that was beyond her ability to untangle. Secrets contained like some volatile substance. If she were stupid enough to have anything to do with him, she would deserve whatever she got.
“No, thank you,” she said unsteadily. “But if you want company, I know some great women I could fix you up with.”
“I don’t want another woman. I want you.”
“You can’t always have your way.”
“Actually, I do most of the time,” he told her.
That drew a reluctant smile from her. “I can see that’s done wonders for your personality. What about your girlfriends? Do they have to pander to you and let you have your way?”
“My favorite ones do.”
Justine’s smile turned rueful. “About the question you asked me last night … the most I can tell you is that we were together almost a year. He’s a nice guy. I was lucky to be with him. But we broke up because … I don’t do well with nice guys.”
“Good,” he said promptly. “You can go out with me, then.”
She shook her head.
“Justine,” he chided, a wicked glint in those dark eyes. “What will it take to soften you up?”
“I’m sorry. Really. Any woman would be thrilled by the idea of going out to dinner with you. But you and I are not just from different worlds, we’re from different realities.”
“In these matters, I’ve learned not to factor in reality,” he said. “It’s very limiting.”
“The whole thing is pointless. I don’t do vacation flings or spontaneous hookups, and I don’t have any Cinderella fantasies about some rich guy sweeping me off my feet. So thanks for asking, but I think it’s better for both of us if I turn you down.”
“All I want is to spend a little time with you,” he said gently. “No games. We can talk about anything you want. Or not talk at all. Just you and me in a quiet place with a bottle of wine and maybe some candlelight.” Reading the uncertainty in her gaze, he added huskily, “Don’t say no. Because this has never happened to me before.”
“What hasn’t happened?”
Jason smiled into her puzzled face, a sincere and unexpectedly charming smile. “I can’t put it into words yet. But it may be as close as I’ll ever get to having a soul.”
Eight
Immediately after Justine had agreed to go out with Jason, she had known it was a mistake. Now that she’d committed to it, however, there was no backing out. “It may be as close as I’ll ever get to having a soul.” How was she supposed to refuse him after that?
After clearing the breakfast dishes and bringing them to the kitchen, she carried a bucket of cleaning supplies upstairs. Annette and Nita, local women who came to help clean the inn, were already busy stripping the beds.
“Nita, how are you feeling?” Justine asked, entering the Degas room and setting the bucket on the floor.
The petite young woman, whose Coast Salish heritage was evident in her gleaming black hair and smooth cinnamon skin, smiled and patted her still-flat stomach. “Pretty good. I’d be better if I didn’t have to take horse-pill vitamins.”
“Make sure not to overdo it today, Nita,” Justine said. “Take a break whenever you need to.”
“Annette and I already have it worked out. She’s going to do the heavy lifting, and I’ll handle all the dusting.”
Annette grinned and told Justine, “Nita was determined to come to work today, no matter what. She wanted to get a look at Jason Black.”
“Did you?” Justine asked.
Nita nodded, her expression turning dreamy. “Sweet, sweet man-candy.”
“He’s pretty good-looking,” Justine admitted with a rueful grin.
“He’s hot,” Annette said fervently. “The Inari people were leaving the bed-and-breakfast just as we were heading in, and Mr. Black held the door open for us, and the second he looked at me, I felt my ovaries explode while that Seal song ‘Kiss from a Rose’ started playing in the back of my head.”
“Jason Black is mine,” Nita said, spraying ammonia solution onto the bedroom mirror. “We’re like one of those movies where fate wants us to meet and we keep missing each other, and then when we find each other, I’m accidentally engaged to John Corbett. But John Corbett lets us off the hook because he never stands in the way of true love.” She ran a squeegee over the glass in expert strokes.
“Nita,” Annette said, “you’re happily married and pregnant.”
“For Jason Black, I would kill my husband with this squeegee.” Nita paused reflectively. “I might even kill him for John Corbett.”
Justine was laughing. “Death by squeegee … how does that work, Nita?”
“Well, basically you—”
“No, never mind. I don’t need to know. I have to sweep and mop downstairs.” And she fled while Annette and Nita argued over who was going to end up with Jason.
After working for the rest of the morning and the first part of the afternoon, Justine went into the office and closed the door for privacy. Picking up her cell phone, she autodialed the Cauldron Island lighthouse where Rosemary and Sage lived.
She called frequently to ask how they were and to find out if they needed anything. In good weather, she would paddle her sea kayak across the nautical mile between the north of San Juan Island and Cauldron Island to visit them weekly.
The elderly women, who had lived together for almost forty years, refused to consider moving to a less isolated place. Cauldron Island was approximately two square miles in size, with only a handful of full-time residents. The only way to reach the island was by private boat, or to land a small aircraft on a mown grass landing strip.
Coven meetings were held at the lighthouse about a half dozen times a year. Marigold attended the meetings, of course, and according to Rosemary and Sage, she was doing well. She had started an Internet store that sold magical supplies, including herbs, stones, candles, divination tools, and even some bath and cosmetic products.
“Does she ever mention me?” Justine had asked Rosemary recently.
“She asks how you are,” Rosemary had said. “But she’s as stubborn as ever. Until you agree to join the coven, she says there’s nothing for you to discuss.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“I believe you should decide what’s best for yourself,” Rosemary had said, “and don’t allow anyone, even your mother, to pressure you into making a commitment you’re not ready for. I’ve said as much to Marigold. If you don’t feel called to it, you shouldn’t join.”
“What if I never feel ready?”
“Then the coven will go on as we always have. Maybe it’s fate’s way of telling us that we’re not ready for the power of thirteen.”
Sage had agreed. “No one can tell you what your path is,” she had told Justine. “But someday you’ll discover it.” She had smiled pensively. “And it won’t be at all what you expected.”
In her twenties, Sage had met and married Neil Winterson, a lighthouse keeper, and had gone to live on Cauldron Island with him. The lighthouse had been built at the turn of the century to guide shipping in the active waters of Boundary Pass, between Washington State and British Columbia. Every night Neil had climbed the curving staircase to the glass cupola, and had lit the Fresnel kerosene lamp, made with forty pieces of French crystal. Once lit, it could be seen from fourteen miles away. In heavy fog, Neil and Sage had taken turns ringing the lighthouse’s thousand-pound bell to warn approaching ships.
Sage and Neil’s marriage had been a happy one despite their disappointment over not having children. Five years after the wedding, Neil had gone out in a small wooden dory in good weather, and had never returned. His boat was found capsized, and his body was later found still wearing a life jacket. Most likely a gust of wind had knocked the dory over, and Neil hadn’t been able to right it.
The members of the coven had all helped Sage through her mourning, some of them living with her at the lighthouse for short periods of time. Sage had assumed her husband’s job as lightkeeper, and she also taught a half dozen children in the one-room schoolhouse on the island.
Approximately a year after Neil’s death, Rosemary had come to stay at the lighthouse for a week. Sage had asked her to stay another week, and another, and somehow that visit had turned into a lifetime together. “Love will break your heart,” Sage had once told Justine, “but love can also mend it. Not many things in life are both the cause and the cure.”
The phone rang twice, and someone picked up. “Hello?” came Sage’s familiar voice, sweetly frayed like antique lace and faded roses.
“Sage, it’s me.”
“I was expecting your call. What’s the trouble?”
“Why do you assume there’s trouble?”
“I was thinking about you last night. And I saw blood on the moon. Tell me what’s happened.”
Justine blinked and frowned. A red-hazed moon was a bad sign. She wanted to contradict Sage and tell her that nothing had happened, and the sign had nothing to do with her. But she was more than a little worried that it might.
“Sage,” she asked carefully, “do you know anything about a curse that someone might have cast on me? A geas?”
The silence was as thick as molten tar.
“A geas,” Sage finally repeated in a meditative tone. “What in the world would give you that idea, dear?”
“You’re not fooling me, Sage. You’re an even worse liar than I am. Tell me what you know.”
“Some conversations,” Sage observed, “aren’t meant to fly through the air between telephones. They’re meant to happen in a civilized way with people talking face-to-face.”
Justine had sometimes found Sage’s evasiveness charming. However, this was not one of those occasions. “Some conversations have to happen on the phone because some people are busy working.”
“We haven’t seen you in so long,” Sage said wistfully. “It’s been months since you visited.”
“It’s been three weeks.” Anxiety spread inside her like an ink stain. “Sage, you have to tell me about this geas. What exactly is it? And what would happen if I tried to break it?”
She heard the rush of an indrawn breath.
“Don’t do anything rash, Justine. There are things you’re not aware of.”
“Obviously.”
“You’re a novice at spell-casting. If you tried to lift a geas, you could go from the frying pan right into the fire.”
“Yeah, see, that’s what I’m pissed about. Why are my only choices ‘frying pan’ or ‘fire’? Why have you been keeping this from me? Didn’t it occur to you that I had a right to know?”
“Where did you get this idea of a geas in the first place?”
Although Justine wanted to blurt out that she’d found out the truth from the Triodecad, she managed to hold her tongue.
The silence rode out until Sage asked, “Have you spoken with Marigold?”
Justine’s eyes widened. “Does my mother know about this, too? Damn it, Sage, tell me what’s going on!”
“Wait a moment. Rosemary has just come in from the garden.”
Justine heard a muffled conference. She fidgeted and drummed her fingers on the desk. “Sage?” she asked impatiently, but there was no reply. She stood, pacing around the tiny office, the cell phone clamped to her ear.
Finally she heard Rosemary’s voice. “Hello, Justine. I hear you’re asking about a geas, of all things. What an upsetting word.”
“It’s more than a word, Rosemary. It’s a curse.”
“Not always.”
“Are you saying a geas is a good thing?”
“No. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
“Just tell me yes or no: Did someone bind a geas to me?”
“I can’t confirm or deny anything until we can talk face-to-face.”
“That means yes,” Justine said bitterly. “It always means yes when someone won’t confirm or deny something.”
The revelation that Rosemary and Sage had both known about the geas hurt even more than Justine would have believed. All the times she had sat at their kitchen table and confided in them, told them how lonely she was, how much she longed to find love and was afraid it would never happen. And they had said nothing, even though they had known the truth: It was never going to happen because she’d been cursed.
“Come to the island and we’ll talk,” Rosemary said.
“Sure, I’ll just drop everything. It’s not like I have a business to run.”
Rosemary’s tone was reproachful. “Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Justine.”
“Neither does a lifelong curse.” Yanking out her ponytail elastic, Justine scrubbed her fingers through her hair and pressed her palm against her tense forehead. “I’ll come tomorrow morning after breakfast. It’s supposed to be good weather—I’ll take the kayak.”
“We’ll look forward to seeing you. We’ll have lunch.” A brittle pause. “You haven’t … tried anything, have you?”
“What, like breaking the geas?” Justine asked with careful blandness. “Is there a spell that could do that?”
“It would be a difficult feat to accomplish on one’s own. Especially for someone who hasn’t practiced magic any more than you have. However, if someone did manage such a thing, the consequences could be severe. A geas is a powerful enchantment. Creating or breaking one exacts a heavy price.”
“What do you mean?”