The Queen of Swords: A Paranormal Tale of Undying Love Read online

  He gave her a knee-weakening smile. “Ennui.”

  His hair, unfashionably long, fell around his shoulders like a skein of copper silk. His herringbone suit was slightly out of date, but finely tailored. Over his chair lay a plaid wool overcoat, also quality. Feeling a trifle dizzy, she pulled her eyes away from his and glanced down at his table. Surprise pricked when she saw tarot cards laid out in a spread. Curious about the nature of his query, she let her gaze roam over the layout.

  The Queen of Swords. A cerebral woman who hid her heart. Was it, perchance, a harbinger of their meeting? A smile pulled at her lips, but retreated the instant her eyes landed on the spread’s final card, the outcome.

  Death.

  She swallowed hard and spoke her thoughts aloud. “Death can herald many things. Change, for example, which is inevitable.”

  Desire sparked when her eyes met his. Her gaze dropped, landing on The Lovers. Would they become intimate? It seemed likely, given the stirrings in her womb. She bit her lip, keeping her eyes on the cards while he studied her. His gaze was as arousing as an intimate caress. She pressed her thighs together to douse her growing desire, but the flames of lust only leapt higher.

  Suddenly remembering Henriette, she glanced around. Her friend was still nowhere to be seen. Not that she gave a fiche at this point.

  “What do you make of The Devil?”

  His question brought her attention back to the spread. Taking a moment to study it again, she now saw The Devil beside the queen in the position of influencer.

  She lifted a gloved hand to her perspiring face. “The Devil represents...our bestial lusts, monsieur.”

  “Or, might he represent”—he arched a beguiling auburn eyebrow—“a dark wizard?”

  “Oui.”

  He must be familiar with the Tarot de Marseille, the ancient deck she used. In it, the card depicting the baphomet was called The Black Magician. His penetrating eyes still held hers. She lowered her gaze to his mouth, a sculptural masterpiece worthy of Le Louvre. She yearned so badly to kiss that mouth she almost couldn’t breathe.

  “Forgive me for staring, Mademoiselle Le Croix.” He seemed oblivious to his effect on her. “But, you bear an uncanny resemblance to a lady I knew once upon a time back in Scotland, a likeness I find most distracting.”

  She kept her eyes on the cards. If she looked at him again, she would surely swoon. “Where is the lady now, monsieur?”

  “In the grave,” he said with a rueful sigh. “Or so I have long believed.”

  * * *

  “Someone was asking about you,” Benedict told Graham, only half-listening until now, “after you decided to bugger off so abruptly.”

  “Oh, aye? And who might that be?”

  Did he really need to ask? They were in the gentlemen’s withdrawing room, Benedict drinking sherry while leaning on the fireplace mantel, him by the window staring out at the rain with a Gauloise and a dram of single-malt whisky he’d been cellaring for at least fifty years. When his friend came in, he’d abandoned the hunt for his diaries, but was itching to get back to it.

  “You know,” Benedict replied, confirming his suspicions, “the one you were practically shagging with your eyes.”

  He shook his head, still kicking himself over his indiscretion. He was supposed to be avoiding her, not striking up conversations and rushing to her rescue. Then again, he couldn’t really fault himself for coming to her aid, but still. He must resolve to absolutely avoid her from now on.

  “She asked how long I’d known you, how long you’d be in town, where you were from. That sort of thing.”

  Graham licked his lips. “What did you tell her?”

  “The truth. Without elaboration, of course.” Benedict’s grin broadened. “Not about how long we’d been mates, obviously. I mean, I could hardly tell her I’ve known you for more than a century, now could I?”

  “Hardly.” His mind jumped back a century to the night he first met the O’Lyrs while hunting in Green Park. In those days, the woods were thick with highwaymen and pickpockets lying in wait for unsuspecting passersby. The O’Lyrs appeared to be a well-bred couple out for a romantic stroll. Approaching to warn them of the lurking dangers, he caught their scent, which told him they also were of the Fae. They’d fled Ireland, he later learned, during the Cromwellian conquest and had no desire to return. Not that he blamed them. He hated Ireland too, but for different reasons.

  “She seemed quite keen on you,” Benedict was saying “and, as it happens, she lives with the lass I was chatting up. I got her number...and thought it might be nice if we doubled sometime.”

  “Thanks all the same, but, no.”

  Even as he said it, longing squeezed his heart. Outside, he saw a flash of lightning, heard the retorting thunder. He sipped, swallowed, and glimpsed her ghost behind his eyes as the whisky burned its way down.

  Benedict chuckled. “Well, you could have fooled me.”

  “You know perfectly well I never involve myself with humans. Beyond what can’t be helped, of course.”

  He sipped his whisky, eyes on the rain. He hadn’t just seduced the Queen of Swords with his stare, he’d read her thoughts, shocked to find her remembering the afternoon he ruined her. It also confirmed her soul’s motive for returning was revenge. He’d seen other things too. She was a witch, like the other two. She also was yet a maiden, though she’d foolishly used an enchantment to draw him. If she had any sense, she’d cast a spell to bind him from getting anywhere near her.

  “For the life of me,” said Benedict, “I’ll never understand why you insist on being so bloody miserable.”

  Graham turned on his companion with a reproachful glare. “And I’ll never understand why you insist on playing with young women like a cheetie with a wee mouse.”

  “Because it’s the way I’m made, old friend.” Benedict shrugged. “And if you ever stopped fighting your nature, I daresay you’d be a vast deal more contented.”

  * * *

  She gasped and found herself back on her bed. What had she just experienced? Psychic vision? Wrinkle in time? Past-life memory? She began to reflect on the scene, narrowing in on as many details as she could. The clothing was Edwardian, the city Paris, and the cards on the table from the Rider-Waite deck—the original version of the one she used, but unfamiliar to Catharine Le Croix.

  She strained to remember the cards and their configuration. The spread he’d used was the Celtic Cross and, in addition to the Queen of Swords, he’d drawn at least three Major Arcana cards. That made the reading significant. But how did it all turn out?

  Taking a seat at her desk, she called up Google France and did a search for Catharine’s name. Drilling down through the links, she eventually found a mention of her in an article from the Paris News archives. It reported the authorities recovered the body of a missing woman with that name near Sacred Heart Basilica on March 19, 1914. A chilled slithered down her spine when she read the coroner had ruled the cause of death as exsanguination. The fatal loss of blood. The article went on to say the police were seeking her fiancé, an ex-pat Scot named Graham Logan, for questioning.

  So, it seemed as if Graham and Catharine had become lovers and gotten engaged. Then, she was killed. Drained of blood and dumped in Montmartre. But had he done it? His sudden disappearance and the cause of death invited suspicion.

  Might he really be...?

  Pulse quickening, she returned to Google UK and searched for his name. Plenty of Graham Logans popped up—it was a relatively common name—but only one seemed a plausible candidate: a Scottish nobleman who’d died under mysterious circumstances back in 1814, at the age of thirty-one. Graham Logan, the fifth earl of Druimdeurfait, had been laird of a castle called Tur-nan-Deur on the Black Isle, a peninsula in the Highlands. At the time of his death, he’d been betrothed to a woman named Caitriona Fraser.

  While searching the name, she stumbled upon a portrait that nearly stopped her heart. A miniature on ivory by the renowned Scottish portraiti
st Sir Henry Raeburn. The sitter wore a turban festooned with ostrich plumes, a dark-blue Regency-era gown, a tartan shawl, and a Mona Lisa smile. In every other respect, it was like looking in a mirror.

  The portrait, according to the accompanying article, went missing from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh back in 1972. The thief gained entrance late at night, triggered no alarms, and took nothing else. He remained uncaught and the painting, unrecovered.

  Goosebumps erupted across her flesh. Had he become something other than human back in 1814? Had she been both Caitriona and Catharine in past lives? Had he killed her both times? Was he planning to kill her again?

  Was that why he’d warned her to stay away?

  She took a moment to reflect on the scenario. She believed in reincarnation, so the possibility that she’d been Caitriona and Catharine in previous incarnations wasn’t all that implausible. The part she couldn’t swallow was him being Catharine’s killer. It raised too many questions, not the least of which was this one: if he didn’t drain her blood, who did?

  He’d said vampires didn’t kill except on purpose. So, one of his kind had murdered her intentionally. The question was, why? Chewing her lip, she got up, crossed to her altar, and grabbed her tarot cards. Taking them to the bed, she sat cross-legged and took several slow, deep breaths to still her mind as she unwrapped the deck. While shuffling, she concentrated on him and the things she’d seen and read, asking for clarification. When the cards felt sufficiently energized, she split the deck into three roughly even piles. Holding her breath, she overturned the card representing the past.

  The Lovers.

  Her pulse quickened as she studied the colorful image of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Above them floated a red-winged angel, suggesting a union blessed. Behind Adam stood the Tree of Life, behind Eve, the Tree of Knowledge. Adam looked at Eve and Eve at the angel, signaling the masculine principle of the intellect could only access the spiritual, the mountain between them, through the feminine principle of emotion.

  The card generally indicated a passionate love affair with some sort of choice involved. But what might it mean in the context of her reading? Had one or both of them made choices in past lives now influencing the present? If so, what might those choices have been? Reaching for the card representing the here and now, she flipped it quickly.

  The Devil.

  She stared wide-eyed down at the pagan deity now associated with Satanism. Before the creature, chained by the neck, stood a pair of naked demons, who, except for the horns and tails, uncannily resembled the couple on The Lovers.

  A sudden, chilling realization struck her. She’d now drawn two of the same cards she’d seen in her vision. With a trembling hand, she reached toward the final card, the card of the future, but lost her nerve and drew it back. If it turned out to be Death, she would lose it.

  Pulse-racing, she crawled off the bed and walked to the window. Sweeping aside the lace curtains, she looked out through the rain-dappled pane. The night sky was stormy. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. She could not see Wicken Hall from here, but she could feel him the way she’d felt his gaze in the library. Something dragged a claw across her sex. Something mewling with need.

  She was almost certain he was a vampire, but there was a way to be sure. Returning to the altar, she took down her grimoire. She’d copied a few summoning spells, but had never cast one, partly because, as a practitioner of White Magic, she didn’t believe in bending another to her will, and partly because, well, the need hadn’t arisen until now.

  She turned the pages until she found just the thing: a spell to call a shadow lover. She scanned the recipe, pleased to find she had everything needed on hand. The first step was to select a candle. But which color? Different colors attracted different shades of love. Red, for example, called intense, carnal love, while blue brought the deep, emotional kind, and so on. She studied her stock, trying to decide which hue would best fulfill her desire. After much consideration, she settled on indigo, the color for “strange, otherworldly love.”

  Following the spell’s instructions, she first drew on a scrap of paper a series of runic symbols to prevent him from lying or escaping and to strip him of his preternatural powers. Next, she anointed the candle with a mixture of oils—juniper for potency, coriander for summoning, cinnamon and clove to inspire love and lust, caraway for passion as well as honesty—saying as she did, “Oil of need, oil of desire, I summon Graham Logan by scent and by fire.” Lighting a stick of incense, she added, “Herbs of love shall call him near, smoke of magic, bring him here.”

  That done, she pricked her finger and, on a clean scrap of paper, drew a summoning sigil in her blood. She then marked the paper with oil and passed it through the smoke while reciting another verse. Finally, she lit the candle and said,

  “Queen of Heaven, Queen of Hell,

  I call him to me with your spell.

  Shadow free, come to me,

  And we shall love both long and well.”

  Summons invoked, she went to the window, peered out through the rain, and waited for the magic to do its work.

  Chapter 5: Playing With Fire

  He’d just come upon the misplaced diaries—in the cupboard under the stairs, oddly enough—when he caught a whiff of something burning. Concerned, he stepped back into the foyer. A quick look around revealed nothing unusual. He sniffed the air, again detecting smoke, though none of the toxic undertones of a house fire. Neither did it smell of a choked chimney. It was, in fact, pleasantly herbal, like the juniper-laced bonfires of Beltane he knew in his youth. Was Branwen burning incense...or Benedict trying out a new pipe tobacco?

  Shrugging it off, he grabbed the box of diaries and headed for the stairs. As he climbed, so did the smoke. A picture of Caitriona came into his mind. Or was it Catharine...or the new one? He couldn’t be sure as she was naked and her hair hung loose. As she reached for him, he saw something odd: a blue fire the size of a pilot light in the center of each palm.

  Like moth to flame, you yearn for light. Come from shadow into my sight.

  The words whispered. Caitriona disappeared. Desire blossomed. What was going on? At the top of the stairs, he was sweating and dizzy. Every nerve ending, every vein, burned like fire. He raced down the hall toward his bedchamber, dropping the box as he shot through the doorway. Bending to collect his spilled diaries, he startled at what he saw.

  He had no hands. And no feet.

  The smoke and ethers enveloped, pulling him apart cell by cell until he felt like the sands of time moving through an hourglass. The cosmos was silent except for a haunting echo reminiscent of the sound inside a seashell. He felt at once connected to everything and nothing. Adrift and yet highly attuned. He was blind yet all seeing; numb yet hypersensitive; defenseless yet omnipotent. Others were there too—phantasmal energies blowing past and passing through like sleet.

  The next thing he knew, he was on his back, winded and disoriented. The room was dark save for the flicker of a solitary candle. He could make out only two pale shapes. The larger one, he presumed, was a bed, the smaller one, by the window, his summoner. His nostrils flared, seeking her scent, but found only the spices of the smoke.

  “I told you to stay away from me,” he bit out through clenched teeth. “Why did you not listen?”

  Not only had she ignored his warning, she’d thrown caution to the wind. He knew the witch’s craft, knew the herbs used for what amounted to a preternatural bootie call. She’d summoned him here to claim her maidenhood.

  She came toward him out of the darkness, a ghost from the past. He drew up his knees and pushed up on his elbows, still dazed. He caught the intoxicating scent of blood. His mouth began to water, his fangs to break free. He clamped his jaw and turned away, willing himself to be gone. When nothing happened, he swore under his breath.

  “Let me go,” he told her, “before something happens we both regret.”

  Withdrawing, she returned to the window. To his eyes
, she was no more than a pale shadow now, but her presence filled the room. And his senses.

  “How do we know each other?” she asked softly.

  Lightning cut the sky outside. In the sudden flash, he saw her dressing gown was very like one he’d given Catharine. The sight of it brought up more buried pain. Thunder boomed, rattling the window. Rain pelted the glass. A loon cried somewhere in the distance, the lonesome sound of it wrenching his heart.

  “You have some power over me,” she said, watching the storm, “and I want to know why.”

  He didn’t answer; he was too busy kicking himself. Why hadn’t he fled beyond the reach of her spells the minute she reappeared? He should never have let her see him, or spoken to her, or gone to the bloody pub. What had he been thinking? At some level, of course, he knew why he’d been so reckless. She had power over him too. Power having nothing to do with witchcraft.

  “At the library, you said we’d met before,” she went on. “A couple of times. Did you mean…in another life?”

  The answer rose in his throat unbidden. He swallowed to thwart its escape. If he told her anything, he’d have to tell her everything, which he was unprepared to do. He started to say something evasive, but could give no voice to the words. Damn her and her witch’s snare. She’d enjoined him from speaking falsehoods.

  “You’re playing with fire by bringing me here. Do you ken that?”

  She just stood there for the longest time, looking out and saying nothing. Then, in a low, even voice, she asked, “Did you kill Catharine and Caitriona?”

  The question jolted him. How could she know? His mind groped for explanations and words, but found none.

  “I saw you with them,” she continued. “In a vision. Or, rather, us. I was they, wasn’t I? In past lives.”

  “Aye,” he blurted, unable to stop the answer from spilling forth.

  “But you were still...who you are now. Isn’t that right?”

  “Aye.” Damn her spell. “More or less.”