a kid and I stopped at the gate of that house, he chose me. Why do you think he did that? Not because he ever thought I’d be a good man and destroy his hard-won flesh, no, that wasn’t it. It was for the witch in me, Rowan. We come from the same Celtic root. You know we do. And I’m the worker’s son and so I don’t know my story. But it goes back to the same beginnings as yours. The power’s there. It was there in my hands when I could read the past and the future in people’s touch. It was there when I heard the music played by a ghost especially to lead me to Mona.”
She gave a small frown, and her eyes grew small for one tiny instant and then large again and wondering.
“I didn’t use that power to bring Lasher down,” he said. “I was too scared to use it. I used my strength as a man, and the simple tools, as Julien had told me I would. But the power’s there. It has to be. And if that’s what it takes for you to love me, I mean really love me, then I can reach down inside me and find out just what that power can do. That has always been my option.”
“My innocent Michael,” she said, but it had the tone of a query rather than a declaration.
He shook his head. He leant forward and kissed her. It was not the best thing to do, perhaps, but he couldn’t stop himself. He held her by the shoulders, and he did press her back against the seat and cover her mouth with his mouth. He felt her instant response, the way her body was united at once in passion, arms sliding up around his back, mouth kissing him back, back arching as if she would press her entire self against him.
When he let her go, it was only because he had to.
The car was moving swiftly along the freeway. The airport loomed ahead. And there was no time now for the passion he felt, for the consummation of anger and hurt and love that he needed so desperately.
This time it was she who reached out for him, who clasped his head in her hands, and kissed him.
“Michael, my love,” she said, “my one and only love.”
“I’m with you, darling,” he said. “And don’t ever try to change it. What we have to do—for Aaron, for Mona, for the baby, for the family, for God knows what—we do together.”
It wasn’t until they were over the Atlantic that he tried to sleep. They’d eaten their gluttonous fill, and drunk a little too much, and talked for an hour about Aaron. Now the cabin was dark and silent, and they bundled beneath a loose half-dozen blankets.
They needed sleep, he figured. Aaron would advise them to sleep now, wouldn’t he?
They’d land in London after eight hours, and it would be early morning there, though it was really night to their bodies, and there would be Yuri, eager to hear and entitled to hear how Aaron had died. Pain. Grief. The inevitable.
He was slipping off, not certain whether he was going right straight into a nightmare or into something as bright and meaningless as a bad cartoon, when he felt her touch his arm.
He let his head roll on the leather seat as he turned to her. She lay back beside him, hand clasping his hand.
“If we see this through,” she whispered, “if you don’t back off from what I do, if I don’t shut you …”
“Yes …”
“Then nothing will ever come between us. Nobody ever will. And anything you might have with a girl bride will be forfeit.”
“I want no girl brides,” he said. “I never did. I didn’t dream of other women while you were gone from me. I love Mona in my own way, and always will, but that’s part of who we are, all of us. I love her and I want the child. I want the child so much I don’t even want to talk about it. It’s too soon. I’m too desperate. But I want only you, and that’s been true since the first day I was with you.”
She closed her eyes, her hand still warm and tight on his arm, and then it slipped away rather naturally, as if she’d gone to sleep. Her face looked serene and utterly perfect.
“You know, I’ve taken life,” he said in a whisper. But he