Sara strode down the corridor so she didn’t have to look at Jack another second. She didn’t know where she was going and didn’t care. Sick to her stomach, she briefly pressed both hands to her midriff. She was damned if she’d humiliate herself by puking in front of him. Cold sweat bathed her body, and she picked up her pace trying to ward off the nausea.
Images from the past hour flashed through her mind. How in God’s name had Alberto gone from weak as a baby to homicidal maniac in less than an hour? She shuddered, swallowing bile. None of it made sense. Not the business with Alberto, and certainly not Jack showing up in San Cristóbal.
He hadn’t changed physically. His dark shaggy hair still needed cutting, he’d always needed a shave, and his clothes were more often than not just this dusty and disheveled. He smelled the same, too—a heady, sexy combination of soap, clean sweat, and whatever color dirt he’d been digging in that day.
What wasn’t familiar was the coldness in his voice when he spoke to her, and the utter lack of warmth in his dark blue eyes. She’d only experienced that tone and look once, and once had been enough.
Not that she cared one way or the other. She had more immediate concerns. Where was Alberto? And had Carmelita gotten to her mother’s house safely? Rubbing her arms, she lengthened her stride, her heels clicking on the smooth gray floor. She had a million things to do. Funerals to arrange, staff to comfort—
God. Grant would be back from his business trip tomorrow. This was going to take some explaining. She turned around and headed back, slowly. Why had the council brought them here if they were going to leave them cooling their heels in this soulless hallway?
Annoyingly, the wait didn’t seem to bother Jack, who had one shoulder propped against the wall while he worked on his PDA. He was usually filled with restless energy and incapable of standing still. She used to find his mask of tranquility fascinating, knowing that it was his internal intensity that really drove him. He’d never been tranquil in the bedroom. On the contrary. Jack unleashed had been a force to be reckoned with in bed. There all bets of civility were off, and she’d liked it that way.
His dark hair almost brushed his rumpled collar, and Sara had a sudden, overpowering urge to go comb her fingers through the silky strands as she used to do. Then he’d cup her face, and his eyes would darken to a smoldering midnight blue as his mouth lowered, and he’d brush his dry lips over hers until her eyes fluttered shut. Then he’d take her offered mouth and kiss her as if nothing had changed between them.
And she’d knee him squarely in the family jewels, because she couldn’t kick her own butt. What in God’s name was she thinking? Had she lost her ever-loving mind? This was Jackson Slater, the man who’d single-handedly broken her heart, then stomped on it for good measure. He wasn’t back for her, she reminded herself furiously. Why he was there was a mystery. But he wasn’t there because of or for her.
The throbbing silence, chilly air, and creepy Repose Gray walls didn’t contain a single freaking door. Anywhere. Despite the open, endless hall, she felt closed in, trapped.
What could he possibly be computing now? How could he be so completely … oblivious? Adrenaline still surged through Sara’s body in sickening waves. She rubbed her arms again through her jacket. The last hour had been a terrifying nightmare; she wished to hell she had the opportunity to think this through before talking to the omnipotent Wizard Council. It was similar to being summoned to the headmistress’s office at boarding school. Something she was also unfamiliar with. She’d been a good girl in school, but she’d watched other girls walk the long green mile to the principal’s office.
How odd that the good girl had ended up—however briefly—with the bad boy. And Jack Slater would be considered a bad boy by any standards. She was lucky she’d come out of the relationship in one piece. She had Alberto, Carmelita, and Grant to thank for that.
Sara stopped a dozen feet away from him. Her heart did an annoying triple axel as she looked her fill while he was otherwise occupied. She felt the conflict of too many physical reactions to his presence. Anger was prominent. But the intense physical attraction she’d always felt for him was sending sparks of need jumping to every nerve in her body, and she was preternaturally aware of everything about him.
Jackson Slater: six feet and two inches of heartache.
He was a little leaner, a little tougher-looking, than when she’d seen him last, two years ago. He wasn’t a classically handsome man like her friend and partner Grant Baltzer. But it didn’t matter. Jack had a rough-and-ready, primitive sexiness that had little to do with looks and everything to do with chemistry.
Shaggy dark brown hair, piercing read-your-mind blue eyes, and a stubborn chin. He would’ve had a perfectly straight nose if someone hadn’t broken it when he was a kid. Sara had thought the bump was sexy until Jack admitted that the someone was his father. It was one of the few external scars the bastard had left on him.
She glanced at her watch—they’d been there seven interminable minutes—then looked up and down the corridor for the umpteenth time. Still empty. Tension was slowly being replaced by temper, and heaven help them all if she reached the end of her fuse. Council or no Council, she wasn’t some lackey to be left to cool her heels this way.
Jack shifted his shoulder on the wall, drawing her gaze back to him. Every move he made was imbued with a masculine sensuality that called to every strand of female DNA in her body.
Had. Had called.
Not anymore. Now he was like a particularly attractive piece of artwork she’d purchase for the lobby of one of their hotels. One of a kind, maybe, but hardly the only appealing statue to be had. Sara wished with all her heart that looking at him didn’t remind her of sweaty skin and tangled sheets. God. Sex with Jack had been life-changing. Earth-shattering.
That’s how it had all started. How it had all ended.
He’d clearly been out in the field moments before he’d shown up in Grant’s kitchen. His pants, faded khaki shirt, hiking boots, and deeply tanned skin were filmed with red dust.
For some stupid reason, her eyes filled with tears. She blinked them back before he could glance up and take them as a sign of weakness. “Are you going to change before they call us in?”
“I’m not dining with the pope.” He didn’t glance up from his computer. “They grabbed me, they can deal with me as I am.”
He wasn’t exactly a social animal, the fact that they’d met at a party notwithstanding. Jack had been a loner before he met her, and she’d bet her new Jimmy Choos that he’d reverted the second he walked away from her. Just like a captured animal released back into the wild, Jack would never be domesticated.
Yet here he was. Why? It was a hell of a coincidence for him to teleport from wherever he’d been to San Cristóbal at such a crucial moment. She admitted, if only to herself, that if he hadn’t shown up, Alberto would probably have killed her just as he’d done the others. God only knew what had gotten into him. Mere hours before Alberto had gone berserk in his kitchen, Carmelita had called Sara to her husband’s deathbed. Then he’d seemed okay for a while and well enough to go back to his kitchen.
In the space of an hour, he’d gone from ethereally pale and weak, asking for the priest, to a knife-wielding, gibberish-babbling psycho who was seemingly immune to her magic.
Admittedly, magic wasn’t her forte, but even Jack had had a problem with Alberto.
None of it made any sense, least of all Jack’s unexplained appearance.
Click-click-click. His finger tapped out whatever on his handheld. “Did you know Alberto did drugs?” he asked. Click-click-annoying click.
Did he have any idea how loud that sounded in the echoing hallway? “He didn’t, doesn’t, never has used any kind of drugs.”
Jack met her gaze blandly. “Right.” He looked back down. Click-click-click. “That was a bad reaction to the shrimp scampi he made for lunch.”
Sara’s blood pressure rose, adding to the throb behind her eyeballs. “As usual, you can believe whatever the hell you want to believe without checking facts or asking the right questions.”
“Yeah?” He glanced up, his eyes unfathomable, his cynical mouth a hard line. “I’m not a mind reader.”
Not her mind anyway. “Do you really want to go back down this path?” she demanded tightly. “I believe we both said all there was to say on the subject.”
She’d told him one thing, Jack had believed another. ’Nuff said.
“I don’t recall being asked my opinion.”
“Do you want to do this here, Jackson?” The anger surging through her was so strong Sara had to grit her teeth to control it. “Really?”
His face was blank; his eyes cold. “No.” His voice was laced with boredom as he went back to his damn handheld. “I’d have to give a flying fuck.” Click-click-click. “And I don’t.”
Raw inside, she materialized her favorite Coach purse, took out a lipstick and mirror, and turned away so he wouldn’t notice how her hands shook. Jack Slater made her temper go from zero to a hundred faster than anyone she knew. Arguing with him used to be exhilarating. Now it was just annoying. He brought out the absolute worst in her. They were oil and water. She’d argue that black was white just because he infuriated her so much, and she didn’t want him to win. Stupid. Childish. It was a character flaw she thought she’d ironed out. Apparently not.
Lipstick applied, she got rid of the purse without giving it much thought. “You showed up without so much as a ‘Hey there, haven’t seen you in a while, thought I’d stop by and take over.’”
“Forgive me,” he said insincerely, glancing up for a second. “My prime concern was preventing Alberto from adding you and Carmelita to his body count. Obviously, I had my protocols wrong—I should have invited you to have coffee first. My bad.” He went right back to work.
She took a deep breath. She’d loved him, and he’d turned on her when she’d needed him the most. She didn’t want him anywhere near her. Ever. “I was handling him on my own.” Which was a solar system away from reality, and she knew it. Two years spent regaining her equilibrium, maturing—poof, shot to hell in a matter of minutes.
This time his head jerked up, and he gave her a hot look that made her flinch. “Jesus, Sara. Listen to yourself. By the time I arrived he’d already murdered five people and almost killed his own wife. He was a heartbeat away from breaking your head open like a watermelon. Your pal’s deranged. Tell me which part of that massacre you handled!”
Sara dropped down on one of the hard leather benches lining the wall, a safe distance from him. “Okay, I admit, the situation was completely beyond my ability to resolve. I’ve never seen Alberto like that. Not in all the years I’ve known him has he ever shown psychotic tendencies. To say that seeing him that—angry, that manic, was terrifying is an understatement.”
“Did you try using your powers?”
“Yes, Jack,” she mimicked, lifting her head to shoot him a kiss-my-ass glare. “I actually did try using my powers.” God, hating him was exhausting. Seeing him was ripping out her heart all over again. Sara wished for just a moment of peace. A moment when she could feel the strength of his arms holding her. Hear the steady beat of his heart. Know that she was loved. She’d do well to remember that Jack’s love was conditional. “Clearly they didn’t work any better than yours, did they?”
“You got that right. My powers were iffy, to say the least. I’d like to know why. Not in a gotta-know-right-now kinda way, you understand. It’s more of a hmmm-wonder-why-not kinda way. Your buddy Santos obviously had a psychotic break. The mental health of Baltzer’s staff is none of my business—you and the Council can figure it all out. I’m going back to work as soon as this meeting’s over.”
“Fine.” More than fine. She couldn’t wait to see the back of him. His front was bringing back disturbing memories, muscle memories. She inspected the gray flooring, looking for a seam. There wasn’t one. Maybe she could count the ceiling tiles next?
He glanced at his watch, using a thumb to clear the fine red dust off the multifunction face. “Five more minutes, then I’m out of here.”
“Can you do that?”
“I can do anything I damn well please. I don’t work for the Wizard Coun—”
An invisible door a few feet away snicked open to reveal a heavily made-up young woman dressed in black from her spiky, magenta-streaked hair to her provocative thigh-high boots.
“Tsk, tsk. Little birds shouldna fight in the nest,” she said in a lilting, accented voice. “Follow me, the Council is ready for you now.”
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A LITTLE CREEPED OUT, Sara followed her through the opening then turned as the door closed silently behind her and Jack. There was no indication in the raised-panel wood that there’d been a door there at all. Another hall with no exit.
She braced herself as he passed, determined not to lean in his direction, not to reach out, not to trace a fingertip across his lips as she used to do when she passed him. Casual touches that she still missed with a physical ache. She let out a soft, shaky breath. Once, they couldn’t bear not to touch.
Fortunately, her willpower was now a hell of a lot stronger, because Jack, without making eye contact, strode past her to catch up with their guide, who was already several yards ahead.
“Don’t lollygag,” the woman admonished without turning around. Her black leather miniskirt exposed long legs encased in skintight patent boots with FM heels. “The Council doesna fancy being kept waiting.”
Sara caught up and put the woman between herself and Jack. After this meeting, she never wanted to see him again. She didn’t want him anywhere near the life she’d painstakingly reconstructed after he’d torn it apart.
The mahogany-paneled hallway was wide enough for the three of them to walk abreast with plenty of room to spare. Sara saw absolutely no reason for the Goth girl to walk that close to Jack, practically brushing at the hip. “I believe we were the ones kept waiting,” she responded, her tone cool.
The other woman laughed lightly. “Now, you be sure to tell Duncan Edge that when you seee him.”
“He’s the Head of Council,” Jack clarified.
Sara ignored him. His actions in Alberto’s kitchen had underscored how little she’d known him. This cold-eyed man, who had efficiently disabled her friend, wasn’t the dusty, disheveled geologist she knew.
She’d be fair about it later, but right now, she was annoyed that he’d popped in unannounced for no apparent reason other than to shoot someone she loved, even when she’d begged him not to.
The adrenaline was slowly seeping out of her body, leaving her exhausted and more confused than ever. Her spike of temper had subsided. She suspected that asking either of them a question would be a waste of time. She saved her breath and looked around with an appreciative, professional eye.
Unlike the bland waiting area, this long hallway had weight to it. The heavy antique furniture, gilded mirrors reflecting lush oil landscapes, and coats of arms all spoke of permanence. Of history. Of power.
The soft wool wall-to-wall carpet underfoot was museum-quality, the vegetable-dyed yarns aged to a glorious patina evident even in the subdued lighting of the wall sconces on the glossy wood walls. Antique Kerman Persian for sure and several hundred years old, if she wasn’t mistaken. An area rug of this quality would cost as much as a small house. Sara had never seen acres of it like this anywhere. She would’ve enjoyed getting down on her knees to inspect the stunning workmanship. The thought brought a faint smile at what the council would think of that.
“Where are we exactly?” She brushed her fingers reverently over a kingwood and ebony Louis XIV commode as she passed.
“The Wizard Council.” The woman stated the obvious in her charming Scottish lilt. The ring in her arched black eyebrow glinted in the subdued lighting as she turned to Sara with a smile. “I’m Lark, by the by.”
If one looked beyond the thick black eyeliner and white skin, Lark was really beautiful, Sara realized. Her appearance was jarringly at odds with her environment. The fuchsia streaks in her long black hair, the piercings, the black nail polish, and the Goth makeup were better suited to a groupie of a heavy-metal band than these august chambers.
“I’m—”
“Sara Jeannette Temple. I know, lovey.” They came to the end of the hallway and stopped at a pair of intricately and exquisitely carved doors, easily twelve feet high. “In here with you then, they’re waiting.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I meant—” The massive doors opened silently.
“Hell,” Jack muttered under his breath.
Ditto, Sara thought, unconsciously moving closer to his side as they stepped into a large, dimly lit chamber filled with an elusive fragrance. Beeswax? The honeyed scent of the unseen candles coupled with the warm, earthy base note of balsam.
This was what pure magic must smell like. Magic wasn’t for her. But here she could feel the resonance of magic pass through her body like the vibration of a tuning fork. Being here felt like being thrown in the ocean when you’d never been in water, and told to swim.
“Go on with you, then,” Lark murmured, giving Sara a little shove between the shoulder blades to get her moving.
The gloomy, hundred-foot-long room could easily have been the plush offices of a prosperous law firm, with its expensive carpeting, wood paneling, groupings of burgundy leather furniture, and, at the far end, an enormous William and Mary walnut desk with high-relief carvings across the front and sides. The only lighting appeared to be a spotlight over the desk that was bright enough to require sunglasses. Even without anyone seated there, it was the perfect focal point.
The designer in her was impressed. The Council Chamber was designed to intimidate. And God, it worked. She felt small and insignificant as she and Jack walked forward, their footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. She had an overwhelming urge to slip her hand into his, which she ruthlessly squashed.
She just wanted to get the questions over with and get back home. Was someone here taking care of Alberto’s injuries? Was he still alive?
She knew Grant’s staff would all be too terrified to go back into the house, let alone the kitchen. If for any reason Grant came home early—Lord, he’d completely freak out. He was one of the few people in her life who even knew wizards existed, and he accepted in a vague way what she was, but he’d be less tolerant when he saw his home torn apart by a wizard run amok.
Another twenty feet or so. Somebody better show up pretty darn soon, her nerves were starting to unravel. The heavy, burgundy velvet drapes covering the twenty-five-foot-tall windows blocked all natural light, making her aware that she hadn’t a clue where in the world they might be. Nerves flipped over and over like little goldfish in her stomach. What did she know about the Council anyway? Zip.
They were walking the longest mile. Shimmer us closer and get this over with. The desperate thought surfaced on its own. No. She did not want to shimmer.
“Keep your cool,” Jack whispered as if he could read her mind. Mind-reading, she knew, was not one of his powers.
“Hot, cold, or tepid,” she shot back under her breath, her attention caught by arcing balls of fire against a deep black background behind the desk. What the hell was that? “I’m none of your business.”
“Hallelujah,” Jack muttered.
“Couldn’t have said it better my”—Sara sucked in a startled breath—“self.” Seven shadowy figures had suddenly materialized on a raised dais behind the desk. The brilliant light just a few feet away cast no illumination on the figures shrouded in darkness. Even though their unexpected arrival had almost given her a freaking heart attack, Sara appreciated the theatrics of it all. She didn’t sense any malevolence from the Council, but the power pulsing in the room made the hair on her arms and the nape of her neck rise. Her heart pounded in a fight-or-flight adrenaline rush.
“Take a seat.” A tall man dressed in a black-and-silver ceremonial robe materialized behind the desk. Like the others’, his face was deeply shadowed. Sara presumed this was Duncan Edge. Two tapestry-covered wingback chairs appeared a dozen feet in front of the antique desk. She and Jack sat down.
Edge might be head of the Wizard Council, but he was just a man, she told herself. A powerful, terrifying man, but a man nevertheless. Right. You just keep telling yourself that, Sara thought nervously. Which annoyed her, because it was rare that anyone intimidated her.
Senses sharpened, she noticed a loose silver thread on Edge’s sleeve, heard the soft, sibilant breathing of the motionless majority, felt the utter stillness in the room before the head of council spoke.
“Slater,” he said by way of greeting, then glanced at her. “Miss Temple, my name is Duncan Edge. We have a serious situation on our hands. The ramifications of what’s happening in South America could very well be cataclysmic.”
Cataclysmic? More theatrics? Sara wondered. But the goose bumps on her arms and the way her heart thudded in fear as the Edge spoke made her think that he wasn’t exaggerating.
“With all due respect,” Sara said, “how exactly do Alberto’s actions translate into something ‘cataclysmic’?”
“In a moment, Miss Temple,” Edge murmured without looking at her. “Start with what happened when you arrived, Slater. Then Miss Temple can take us back to the beginning.”
She didn’t appreciate being dismissed. Yes, she got that this—whatever it was—was serious. But Alberto was her priority. “First, can you tell me if Alberto’s gunshot wounds are being treated?” Sara stressed the words for Jack’s benefit.
A muscle jerked in Jack’s strong jaw. “Maybe I should have let him finish you and his wife off and called it a day.”
“Maybe you should—”
“Santos is recovering from his injuries,” Edge interrupted, his voice tinged with annoyance and a trace of amusement. “He’s in restraints and being monitored.” He looked at Jack. “Slater?”
It took Jack only a few minutes to fill them in on what he knew. He was scientific and succinct. He didn’t explain how he’d come to be there.
The Head of Council indicated it was Sara’s turn. “I appreciate your concern for your friend, Miss Temple. But let me impress upon both of you that this situation has dire and far-reaching consequences. Consequences that far outweigh the life or death of a single wizard, or even six of them. Please proceed.”
Sara’s cheeks flamed at Edge’s reprimand, and her mouth went bone-dry. She’d been smacked on the hand very firmly, but it was fear more than embarrassment that made her heart pound painfully against her rib cage. She had to swallow before she could make herself speak again.
“Alberto started getting sick about a week ago. He said his body ached from the inside out. After a few days, his temperature spiked and he had a very high fever. A cold or the flu, we thought. He got progressively weaker, and the fever didn’t let up.” She paused, trying to tell Edge anything that might be relevant, that could help Alberto now that he was in the Council’s care.
“Carmelita and I are extremely worried about him. Dr. Muller de Canizales, a wizard and a physician, has been coming every day—several times a day, in fact. But he couldn’t find anything specifically wrong. The best he was able to do was treat the symptoms. Alberto refused to see him today because he suddenly felt better. But clearly that didn’t last. We’re all puzzled by his atypical behavior.” Try terrified out of our minds.
“What about his powers?”
Sara frowned at the non sequitur. “His powers? He rarely used them.”
“When last did you, or anyone else, observe Santos using his powers, Miss Temple?”
She bit her lip, trying to remember. “The sicker he became, the less he seemed capable of using them.”
Edge pushed his robe’s cowl off his dark head, exposing his strong, angular face to the merciless light. The silver threads in his robe caught the light like tiny zings of lightning as he moved. “All of them?”
Sara nodded. “Apparently. He collapsed in his kitchen and couldn’t teleport to his casa. Nor could he do simple telekinesis when he was too weak to reach the glass of water at his bedside. We didn’t think much of it. He rarely used magic.”
“His power to call is the ability to walk on nonsolid surfaces, correct?”
She let out a tight breath. “Yes. I saw him do so a couple of years ago.” He’d walked across a swimming pool to retrieve his favorite colander when Carmelita had tossed it there during an argument. He rarely teleported, claimed invisibility nauseated him, and, like herself, preferred living without magic.
It worked for both of them.
“You live together?” Duncan Edge asked her.
Sara glanced at Jack. For a moment she’d thought she felt his hot gaze on her, but he was focused on Edge.
“It’s a large compound. We all live there. Alberto and Carmelita have a small house on the grounds, as do other members of the household staff. We all work for Grant Baltzer, who’s building a string of luxury hotels and spas down the west coast. Grant’s primary staff remain with him when he’s in a place for any length of time.”
“There are a hundred and twenty people living on Mr. Baltzer’s estate in Venezuela,” a man announced from behind Edge. His voice was thin and reedy. He sounded a hundred years old.
“Four wizards and one Half, Silas,” added a woman with a light, silvery voice. “At least, there were.”
“Thank you, Deborah,” the Head of Council murmured dryly. “Anyone else in the compound have the same symptoms as Santos, Miss Temple?”
“Not that I’m aware of. I’m sure I would have been told had this happened to anyone else.” Sara tried to ease the tension in her shoulders without actually fidgeting.
Another Council member spoke, his face shadowed by the black cowl covering his head. “Do you know where he might have gone or who he met on his last days off?”
“Alberto gets dizzy teleporting, and he takes the company helicopter when he absolutely must go into town. But he rarely leaves the estate. His two passions are his wife, Carmelita, and cooking. He prefers staying at the hacienda even on his days off. …” She trailed off, her palms damp. “Is this some sort of wizard pandemic? Do you think it’s something he caught from someone else?”
“He’s the ninth wizard this has happened to in the last three weeks.” Edge paused. “That we know of.”
Her gaze slid up Jack’s long legs past his broad chest to his face. A longing so fierce it hurt rippled through her entire body as she let herself look her fill for just a moment.
What happened to us, Jack? How did we go from so right to so horribly, hideously wrong?
The bright lights showed the lines fanning out around Jack’s eyes. He looked … older. Harder than when she’d last seen him. Sara felt older and a hell of a lot harder since they’d parted too.
“Does this—whatever it is—only affect wizards?” Jack asked intently, rubbing a strong, elegant hand across his stubbled jaw.
In contrast, Duncan Edge’s handsome face was clean-shaven, his hands covered by the long sleeves of his robe. “It appears so, yes,” he told Jack, his demeanor somber. The glinting silver threads in his robe were the only indication that he wasn’t completely motionless.
Jack dropped his hand from his face. “What happened to the other patients?”
“All dead.”