Forever: A Novel of Good and Evil Love and Hope Read online

He turned back to look at his beautiful daughter. “Do you think you could find something on a map for us?” Taylor asked softly. “We need to know where to start looking for the mirror.”

  “I don’t know how to do that. I’ve never . . .” she began, then cut herself off as she looked at the faces of the two men. They looked like children who’d been told they couldn’t have dessert. “But I could try,” she said at last.

  “That’s all we can ask,” Taylor said and breathed a sigh of relief.

  15

  “ARE YOU SURE?” Adam asked, looking at the very ordinary house in front of them. True, the house was old, but then this was Connecticut and there were a lot of old houses in the state. And, true, this house was surrounded by acres of mowed lawn, with no shrubs or trees where intruders could hide, but many houses in the state were surrounded by lawns. It was a two-story farmhouse, big and rambling, looking as though it had been added on to several times in the hundred or so years since it had been built. The house did not look as if it was a place of evil. And it certainly didn’t look like a prison. There were no high walls or fences surrounding the property, nothing that a person would expect when thinking of witches and covens and a woman who had been held prisoner all her life.

  “Yes,” Darci said, swallowing. “This is the house.”Couldn’t they feel it? she thought. Couldn’t they feel the evil that surrounded the house? To her, the evil was something she could see, like colors. No, the malevolence was more like flames leaping about the old house. “Yes, I’m sure,” she repeated. “Adam, you can’t go in there. You can’t.” She tried to keep the tears out of her voice, but she couldn’t.

  Darci had easily been able to close her eyes, run her fingers over a map of the Camwell area, and find a place that matched what she had felt coming from the little enamel picture of the slain girl.

  “You’ve done this before,” Taylor said, looking at her hard.

  “Yes,” she answered in resignation.

  “Darci, you know much more about what you can do than you let anyone know, don’t you?” her father asked.

  “Yes,” she answered. “It’s just that I’ve never wanted to find out what I could do. I’ve never wanted to be different, and I especially haven’t wanted others to know about me. I’ve never—”

  “It’s okay,” Taylor said, pulling her into his arms, her head down on his shoulder. “It’s all right. Once this is over, you can go home to live with me in Virginia. I have a very nice house, and—”

  “No,” Adam said. “She’s going home with me.”

  “We’re going to England,” Darci said to her father, moving away from him. “Adam’s promised me a six-week trip,” she said over her shoulder as she walked out the door of the guest house.

  “You take her anywhere without marrying her first and I will kill you,” Taylor Raeburne said under his breath to Adam as they left the guest house.

  At that, Adam smiled but made no answer. The truth was that he wasn’t ready to think about what he felt for Darci. He knew that he’d never met anyone like her, and he knew that she had the ability to get to him in a way that no one else ever had. With others from the time he was three years old, he’d kept a protective shell around himself. No one had been able to make him love, or hate, for that matter. After he’d been branded by that evil woman when he was so very young, it was as though he’d closed himself off from all emotion, both good and bad.

  But since he’d met Darci, he’d been able to laugh. He’d been able to tease. And he’d thought of things other than the black side of life. She’d made him want to buy her gifts and show her things. He wanted to show her the world. As he’d told her, he’d bummed around the world, had seen a lot of things and met a lot of people. But he’d never felt any joy in his travels. Once an old man had said to him, “Boy, I think you’re lookin’ real hard for somethin’. But I don’t think you know what it is you’re lookin’ for.”

  The old man’s words had seemed to sum up Adam’s life. And he hadn’t known what he was looking for until one fateful summer day a few years ago when he was watching his cousins play tennis. That day and a casual remark had set him onto a road that led here.

  Here, to Darci, he thought and smiled as he followed Taylor out the door.

  Darci pulled things from Adam that no one else had ever been able to. And, in return, he’d wanted to give back to her.

  He’d tried to make her laugh, and the few times he’d succeeded, he’d felt as though her laughter had been a rare and precious gift. He wanted to protect her and. . . .

  And he wanted to make love to her, he thought with a smile. She’d been angry that he’d known she’d been lying when she told him about her past sexual experiences, but he liked that she’d never known another man. He liked that she could belong to him and only him.

  But all that would come later, he thought. First they had to finish the onerous task that had brought Darci and him together.

  So now the three of them were lying on their bellies in the fallen leaves on top of a little knoll, several hundred yards from the house that Darci said was full of evil. Taylor passed out night-vision goggles to each of them, but they saw nothing unusual. They could see no people anywhere. There were no guards outside, no dogs, nothing that could be thought of as a barrier to their walking into the house. There was only one light on in the house and that was at the top of the third floor in what was probably the attic. There was a round window in the gable end of the roof, and a warm yellow light glowed from there.

  “I don’t like this,” Taylor said, sitting up. “This lack of protection scares me more than anything I’ve seen before in this business. Do you think the town knows that this house belongs to the woman and therefore they leave it alone?”

  “Probably,” Adam said, also sitting up. “But still, it’s spooky, isn’t it? I thought the place would be a prison, with walls and guards carrying guns. If she owns something as valuable as this mirror, wouldn’t she be protecting it?”

  “Do you know who else knows she has the mirror?” Taylor asked.

  “Besides me,” Adam said, “I think there are a number of psychics, and, from what I’ve seen, probably half of Camwell knows. How do you know about it?”

  “A student of mine has a sister who joined the cult, and, as far as I can tell, the mirror is what they base all their hopes of attaining power on.”

  “Psychics and hearsay,” Darci said as she sat up beside Adam. “What you two are saying is that you aren’t completely sure that this thing exists.”

  There wasn’t much light, but Darci saw Adam open and close his mouth a couple of times as though he were preparing to defend himself. But then he looked at Taylor. Finally, Adam looked back at Darci. “Right. That’s about it. I’m not sure about much of anything. I spent years trying human methods to find information, but I couldn’t find out much of anything. So I went to the inhuman side. Or the paranormal side, I guess.” While Adam had been saying this, he had been looking upward into the trees. Near them was an oak tree that had to be several hundred years old. It had thick, sprawling branches.

  “Taylor, old man,” Adam said, “think you could give me a boost up? I’d like to climb up there and see what I can of the inside of the house. Maybe I could see someone or something.”

  “Old man,” Taylor said with a snort. He was only seven years older than Adam. “Come on, child, and I’ll help you up.” Cupping his hands, he looked at Adam.

  Adam stepped into the older man’s hands, then up onto his shoulders until he caught the lowest branch of the oak tree and he began to climb upward.

  Not too far, Darci said to him in her mind. Please don’t fall. I don’t want you to get hurt. If you get hurt— “Quiet!” Adam hissed down at her. “I can’t think when you talk so much.” Carefully, he walked out onto a thick branch while holding an upper one, then stretched out on his stomach, put the night-vision goggles to his eyes, and looked.

  What do you see? Darci called up to him, but Adam didn’t