Forever... Read online

  And Adam had brought her here. In his pursuit of knowledge about his own past, he had brought this young woman here and put her in mortal danger.

  So what did he do now? Adam was sure that as Darci had said, if they left now, they would be pursued. Already, someone had been sent to....To what? What had the gunman said? “They can have you.” Obviously, someone wanted her.

  Adam’s head came up and he looked at Darci walking ahead of him. If someone knew enough about her to know that she had a power that Adam thought even Darci didn’t know the extent of, then. . . . He drew in his breath. Then someone somewhere knew a great deal more than that about what Darci could do. They probably knew more than Darci did. And certainly much more than Adam did.

  He took another deep breath to calm himself. So, okay, maybe if he had more time, say, a year or so, he might be able to find out exactly what she could do and how her power could be used. But they didn’t have any time. It was close to the end of the year. It had been nearly a year since the last woman had “disappeared.” By the laws of statistics, that meant they had only a few weeks, eight at the most, to figure out what Darci could do and how to use it. And in the meantime, she had to be protected every second.

  And how could he, one man, do that? Truthfully, it was stupid of them to stay where they were right now. If he had any sense, he’d put Darci on the first plane and— What? Send her back to Putnam? As she’d said, how long would she last there? How long before she was found by whoever had sent that gunman this morning?

  In exasperation, Adam wiped his hands over his face. What did they want of her? How could he find out their intentions? How could he speed up this whole process? She could defeat them. He was sure of that. But how? What was her power? She couldn’t freeze the whole coven in place. Holding just two men for minutes this morning had drained her so much that it had taken hours for her to recover. And all it had taken was a sneeze to break her hold.

  But she did have the power to defeat them, or they wouldn’t be so afraid of her. But what was that power?! he asked himself again. It was his fault that she was here now and in mortal danger, so it was his responsibility to protect her. And the only way she would be protected was if her— and his—enemies were defeated.

  For a moment, Adam looked skyward and gave a little prayer asking for help, then he looked at Darci’s back. She had a stick and was trailing it through the fallen leaves. Surely, there was someone somewhere who knew what Darci could do, he thought. Maybe she had a grandmother who’d had this talent. Or a cousin. She seemed to have many relatives in that town of hers.

  In two long strides, he was walking beside her. “Are you the only one in your family, your extended family, that is— cousins, aunts, all of them—who has this power?”

  Darci seemed surprised at the question. “I don’t know. I know my mother’s side of the family hasn’t had a true thought in their lives, but I have no idea what my father’s family is like.”

  “I want to ask you something, but I don’t want to offend you,” Adam said slowly.

  “Go ahead. I have a thick skin,” she said, but, still, she lifted her shoulders as if he were about to strike her.

  “Is it possible that your mother had dealings with an . . . an underworld figure?”

  Darci relaxed, and a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. “Do you mean, is it possible that my mother went to bed with a warlock and conceived me?”

  “Sounds kind of dumb when you say it out loud,” he said. “But, yeah, I guess that’s what I did mean. More or less.”

  “It would have depended on what he looked like. My mother likes her men young and beautiful. So if he was, then she probably did.”

  Frowning, Adam refrained from commenting about Darci’s mother’s morals. “If you’ve been able to keep your abilities a secret, maybe your father did, too. Maybe someone else has powers like you do. But you don’t know who in Putnam that could be?”

  “She doesn’t confine herself to Putnam. Sometimes my mother travels all the way up to Louisville in search of a ‘party,’ as she calls it. My mother loves to party.”

  “Darci, what I’m thinking is that maybe you received this talent through your father’s family, so maybe there’s someone on that side of your family who knows something about what you can do. These people here are afraid of you. But why? What exactly can you do that can harm all of them? You can’t read minds. You can freeze people, but it exhausts you and you can’t hold it for very long. And we don’t have time to do what you did about Mr. Farnum so....”He shrugged in helplessness. “So I thought maybe a relative might know something. If it’s not your mother’s side, then maybe your father’s side would know something. But we need to know who your father is. Do you think you could persuade your mother to tell you?”

  Darci’s eyes shifted to the side. “It wouldn’t do any good to ask. She doesn’t remember her . . . parties. And I don’t think she’d like to remember that summer when I was conceived. She had her tubes tied after I was born because she said she didn’t want to make that mistake again.”

  Adam glanced down at her quickly, but he saw no sign of self-pity in Darci. “Can you call her?” he persisted.

  Darci punched her stick through a pile of dried leaves near a rock at the side of the path. “I don’t see any use in that. Besides, she’s rarely at home.”

  “She doesn’t have a cell phone?”

  “Yes, she does, but—” Breaking off, Darci looked up at him and saw he was staring at her intently. “Oh, no,” she said, backing away from him. “This job did not include calling my mother.”

  Shocked, Adam blinked at her. This young woman had the power to paralyze men, but she was afraid of calling her mother?!

  “The sooner you ask, the sooner we can find out.”

  Darci was still backing up. “My mother doesn’t like to be bothered. She doesn’t—” Halting, Darci took a deep breath, then put her hand to her ear as though she were holding a telephone. “What am I supposed to say to her? ‘Mom, I’ve just been told that I have some weird, strange power. Yeah, right, I can cast spells on people. Yeah, just like on Bewitched. Isn’t that a treat? Well, anyway, this guy here, my boss— Yeah, he’s beautiful, but he’s too old for you, Mom. So, anyway, my boss was wondering if maybe I inherited this ability from some relative of my father’s, so he was wondering if maybe you could remember who you were with that summer and who could have fathered me. Okay, Mom, it was just a thought. Mom, you don’t have to yell quite that loud and you don’t have to use those words. They’re not nice. No, Mom, I’m not back-talking you. No, Mom, I didn’t mean any disrespect. And, no, Mom, I won’t bother you again. Have a nice life.’”

  Darci put down her pretend telephone and looked up at Adam.

  It took Adam a few moments to recover from the vision she’d put into his head. “All right,” he said slowly, “if we can’t go through your mother, how do we find out who your father is? You told me that no one could keep secrets in Putnam, so who would know who your mother was with that summer?”

  “Her sister, Thelma,” Darci said immediately. “Aunt Thelma is quite jealous of my mother, and there’s always been tremendous rivalry between them. I think Aunt Thelma could probably remember every man my mother has, uh, dated.”

  “Shall we go call her?” Adam asked softly. “You won’t mind talking to your aunt, will you?”

  “Not at all. And if Uncle Vern isn’t at home to hear her, Aunt Thelma will enjoy ratting on my mother.”

  Try as he might, Adam couldn’t smile at this statement. After what he’d heard so far of the people in Putnam, he’d like to go into the town with a flamethrower. “All right,” he said, “Aunt Thelma it is. Shall we call from inside? We might need to take notes.” He knew was being overly gentle with her, and he expected her to snap at him that she didn’t want his pity. But he couldn’t get the images of Darci’s childhood from his head.

  As they were walking side by side, Darci tripped over a stone, and insti