Agave Kiss

couldn’t see me anymore.”

“I bet you didn’t take that well,” Shannon said.

A half smile quirked one corner of his mouth. “Rather the contrary. But I left her alone, as she asked, while I wallowed in wretchedness.”

“That doesn’t explain how you ended up stuck here.”

“It doesn’t. Ironically, after the child was born, she felt honor-bound to confess all to her husband. He forgave her . . . but he did not forgo vengeance.”

Aha. Now everything makes sense.

“So you’re stuck here because your former lover cleared her conscience at your expense,” Shannon summarized.

“Not as I would have put it, perhaps, but yes.”

“What are the specifics of the curse?” I turned my thoughts to practical matters, as I imagined he wanted help in destroying the spell. At this point, I wasn’t sure why that would bring about his death, but I needed information.

“Yeah, what is this place?” Shan added.

“It is the country cottage my father purchased just before the war, where I retreated to lick my wounds after Marlena refused me. It’s also where Donal Macleish confronted me for my sins against him. We . . . fought. I had some mad idea of making her a widow, claiming the child as my own.”

“You lost.” From the state of the house, that much was obvious.

“Yes. The result was the isolation you behold. He set the spell so I could never interfere in another marriage, never touch another woman.”

“But how?” Shannon demanded.

“This place is . . . between,” Booke explained. “Slightly out of step with the real world. Impossible for me to leave, impossible for anyone else to get in.”

“In time or space?” I asked, trying to understand the challenge we faced.

“Both,” he answered, “so far as I can tell. The spell does not respond well to any attempt to meddle with it. Or at least, it didn’t for many years. In the past six months, however, I’ve noticed a decay in its potency.”

I nodded. “No spell can remain intact forever.”

“Not unless it’s tied to a permanent power source.” Booke gestured. “But there are no ley lines here, no pocket of crystals in the earth. Macleish was a powerful practitioner, but he has been dead and buried these many years. His casting wanes.”

Shannon frowned. “But that’s good, right? I mean, you’ll get out soon.”

His expression twisted with melancholy. “Dear Shannon, I was thirty-six when Macleish confined me here. Do the math, my girl.”

I could tell Shan was crunching numbers by the way she looked upward and to the left, chewing on her lower lip. The truth dawned on her around the same time I worked it out. He looked sixty or sixty-five, tops. But he’d been trapped in this cottage, counting the solitary years until it was a wonder he hadn’t gone mad.

“You’re one hundred and two,” she breathed. “How is that possible?”

Booke explained, “Time passes at a one for two ratio here. I suspect that’s part of the curse, ensuring I live long enough to despise my own company.”

I considered. “So one day here is two out there?”

“Did Macleish send you to fairyland or something? This is like what happened to that Thomas the Rhymer guy.”

He mustered a smile for Shan’s wit. “It wouldn’t surprise me if a similar spell inspired the original tale.”

“So the curse is crumbling, which means you’ll die when you rejoin the normal time stream. All the years will catch up to you at once.” I thought I understood what he wanted of us now.

Booke shrugged. “It may not be instantaneous, but certainly my days are numbered once the magick fails.”

“You want us to fix the spell?” Shannon asked.

He shook his head, fingers lacing tightly around the bone handle of his teacup. His knuckles burned white. “I want you to crack it. I’ve had enough waiting. I’m beyond tired, and I’m ready for it to end. I am selfish enough, however, that I do not wish to die alone. I don’t want to be an undiscovered skeleton in an abandoned house. I want a proper burial . . . and I trust you to see to it.”

The request hit me like a brick upside the head. His timing couldn’t have been worse; I’d just lost Chance. I wasn’t strong enough to do this for him. My first instinct was to run for the door, but I couldn’t get out, unless I cracked the spell. He didn’t seem strong enough to tweak the parameters just yet, even if I thought he would be inclined to do so.

Shannon set a hand on my arm, soothing. “This sucks,” she said to him. “You’ve hardly lived at all, unless you count those thirty-odd years as a pleasure-seeking asshat.”

“My son died,” he said quietly. “He was only eighteen. His mother wasn’t strong after his birth, and she wasted away. Macleish was alone within a few years of wreaking his vengeance.”

I guessed he’d found out via Internet searches. At this point, I just had to ask. “How do you—”

“Acquire food and modern conveniences?”

Shan looked like she wanted to know too.

“I made a deal with a minor devil. He can’t cross the spell barrier, but he can deliver items inside the house itself. It is easier for me to tweak the spell in order to permit inanimate objects to cross over.”

That was rather elegant, actually.

Shan asked, “You couldn’t summon anything strong enough to break the curse?”

“I have no Solomon blood. Without that surety, it’s dangerous to deal with demonkind. Anything strong enough to smash the magick would also be powerful enough to destroy me or compel me to a situation more dire than this.”

Her face darkened as she remembered her experiences in Sheol; then she gave a jerky nod. Things could always get worse. I respected Booke’s forbearance, since I might well have summoned something just to see an end to the interminable waiting.

I wondered aloud, “Did Macleish think you would starve to death?”

“The magick is sufficient to keep me alive, but I was weak and emaciated when I stumbled over a tome that offered me the name of a bargaining devil.”

“The Birsael,” I supplied. “There are castes of demons.”

Interesting to realize he owed his relative health and safety to a demon like Maury. But my knowledge surprised him. Booke studied me, alert for the first time since our arrival.

“You went to Sheol.” Certainty rang in his plummy voice, no less beautiful for his age. “That’s why I couldn’t raise you in any fashion.”

I nodded. My eyes burned with tears, just from that reference. For a few precious moments, I’d forgotten, absorbed in his troubles, but mine came tumbling down on me like an avalanche. The fact that he wanted me to stand his death watch and handle the funeral arrangements? Inexpressibly painful.

“She went to save me,” Shan said soberly.

Booke’s astute gaze flickered between us, making educated deductions about why our faces already held a funereal cast. “Chance was with you in Mexico, last I heard. Where is he now?”

My throat hurt so badly; I sipped my tea, but it didn’t help. Still, anything to delay saying the words. In the end, Shan said them for me.

“Chance didn’t make it.”

No. He promised me. He said, Even death can’t keep me from you. It was madness to believe those words, but they were all I had.

“It’s late,” Booke said, seeming to recognize my inability to function. “Perhaps we can continue in the morning?”

That would be four days in the real world. I couldn’t bring myself to care.

He went on, “Things will look brighter then, I’m sure.”