“It’s not enough.” Frustrated beyond bearing, she rounded on Zack. “Nothing’s enough until this is dealt with, until it’s over. It’ll be more than a knife to her throat this time, more than a knife already coated with your blood. I won’t lose what I love. I won’t just sit here and wait for it to come after us.”
“On that we can agree.” Mia set down her glass. “We won’t lose. And since arguing is bad for the digestion, why don’t we get to work?”
She rose, began to clear the table. “Nell will feel better,” she said before Ripley could make some snide comment, “if her house is put in order.”
“Fine, great.” She snatched up her plate. “Let’s be tidy.”
She sailed into the kitchen and gave herself points for not simply heaving her plate into the sink. What control. What amazing restraint.
God, she wanted to scream!
It was Mac who came in quietly behind her, alone. He set the dishes on the counter, then just turned her, put his hands on her stiff and rigid shoulders.
“You’re afraid.” He shook his head before she could speak. “We all are. But you feel that the weight of this, what happens next, is on you. It doesn’t have to be.”
“Don’t placate me, Mac. I know when I’m being a bitch.”
“Good. Then I don’t have to point that out, do I? We’re going to get through this.”
“You don’t feel what I feel. You can’t.”
“No, I can’t. But I love you, Ripley, with everything that’s in me. So I know, and that’s the next thing to feeling.”
She let herself give, just for a minute. Let herself go into his arms and be held there. Safe within the circle of him. “It’d be easier if we’d found this after.”
His cheek rubbed her hair. “You think?”
“You could’ve come along when everything was normal again, and we’d’ve gotten mushy on each other and had a regular life. Cookouts, marital spats, great sex, and dental bills.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Right this minute, it sounds aces. I’d rather be mad than scared. I work better that way.”
“Just remember, it all comes down to this.” He tipped back her head, laid his lips on hers. “Right there is more magic than most people ever know.”
“Don’t give up on me. Okay?”
“Not a chance.”
She tried tocurb her impatience as the preparations were made. She refused to lie down on the couch because it made her feel too vulnerable. Instead she sat in a chair in the living room, her hands on the arms, and blocked out the monitors and cameras.
She knew she should have felt comforted by having Mia and Nell standing on either side of her, like sentinels. But she felt foolish.
“Just do it,” she told Mac.
“You need to relax.” He’d pulled a chair up to face hers, and sat there, almost idly holding the pendant. “Breathe slow. In and out.”
He put her under. So effortlessly this time, so swiftly, it brought him a quick ripple of nerves.
“She’s tuned to you,” Mia said, herself surprised at how completely Ripley had given herself over. “And you to her. That, itself, is a kind of strength.”
They would need it, she thought, as she felt something cold shiver along her skin. In response to it, she stretched out her arm and, across Ripley, clasped Nell’s hand.
“We are the Three,” she said clearly. “And two guard the one. While we are joined, no harm can be done.” As warmth seeped back, she nodded to Mac.
“You’re safe here, Ripley. Nothing can harm you here.”
“It’s close,” she said with a shudder. “It’s cold, and tired of waiting.” Her eyes opened, stared blindly into Mac’s. “It knows you. Watched you and waited. You share the blood. You’ll die through me, that’s what it wants. Death to power, and power to destruction. Through my hand.”
Grief ground down to her bones. “Stop me.”
Her head fell back, her eyes rolled back white. “I am Earth.”
She changed, even as they watched, her hair springing into curls, her features subtly rounding. “My sin must be atoned, and the time grows short. Sister to sister, and love to love. The storm is coming, and with it the dark. I am powerless. I am lost.”
Great tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Sister.” Mia laid her free hand on Ripley’s shoulder, and felt the cold again. “What can we do?”
The eyes that focused on Mia weren’t Ripley’s. They seemed ancient, and unbearably sad. “What you will. What you know. What you believe. Trust is one, justice makes two, and love, without boundaries, makes three. You are the Three. Be stronger than what made you or all is for nothing. Should you live, your heart will break again. Will you face that?”
“I’ll live, and guard my heart.”
“She thought the same. I loved her, loved them both. Too much or not enough, I’ve yet to see. May your circle be stronger and hold.”
“Tell us how to hold.”
“I cannot. If the answers live inside you, the questions won’t matter.” She turned to Nell then. “You found yours, so there is hope. Blessed be.”
Ripley gasped again, and came back. “In the storm,” she said as the first flash of lightning burst blue light into the room.
A lamp crashed to the floor. A vase of Nell’s flowers spun into the air to hurl itself against the wall. The sofa upended itself, then shot across the room.
Even as Zack whirled toward Nell, a table tumbled into his path. He leaped it, cursing, and gripping her, used his body to shield hers.
“Stop.” Mia called into the wind that had gushed into the room. “Nell, stay with me.” She tightened her hold on Nell’s hand, used her other to take Ripley’s limp one. “Still the power and quiet the air. Challenge this circle, he who dares. Here we stand, we are the Three. As we will, so mote it be.”
Will pressed against will. Magic thrummed against magic. Then as abruptly as it had begun, the wind died. Books that had been spinning in the air fell to the floor with a thud.
“Ripley.” Mac’s voice remained utterly calm, in direct opposition to his speeding heart. “I’m going to count back from ten. You’re going to wake up when I reach one. Slowly.”
He leaned close to her, brushed his lips over her cheeks, and whispered the magic he’d read in the journal.
“You’ll remember that,” he promised her, hoping it would stay in her mind when she needed it most. “You’ll hear that. You’ll know that.”