“No. You’re wrong,” she insisted, shaking her head, even as things that Grand had told her—or tried to—about her destiny came to mind. “I didn’t call anyone back from anywhere. I don’t practice magic. And even if I did, I certainly don’t have the kind of power to . . .” She swept her hand in the air. “To do what you said, piercing realms and the rest of it. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“That proves I am right. You don’t need to know; you are. Before I departed this realm, I joined my essence to the talisman with a binding spell. I knew that only the prophesized one, she with the true gift of T’airna blood, would be able to summon the full power of the talisman to release the binding spell and summon me as well. And that’s what you have done. All my praise and gratitude is yours, dear Enchantress.”

Eve struggled to make sense of what he was saying. Could he be right? Could Grand be right? No, this was no time to start wondering about Grand’s predictions. She couldn’t even wrap her brain around what was happening at that moment. Could it be true that she somehow, unknowingly, brought about Pavane’s return by—how had he put it—summoning the talisman’s power and him along with it?

Consequences, there were always consequences. And judging by her experience, they were usually bad. How could she have forgotten that? She hadn’t forgotten, she realized. She’d simply wanted to help Hazard enough to put her convictions aside and hope for the best. And now the lamentable result was standing right in front of her, hands outstretched, and moving closer.

This time she couldn’t help flinching.

“Touch her and die, Pavane.”

Hazard’s voice came from behind her, soft and deadly and at that moment the most heartening sound she’d ever heard. It didn’t matter that he was still trapped behind the shield she’d conjured; she believed, with the same unsubstantiated certainty with which she once believed in Santa Claus, that he wouldn’t allow anything bad to happen to her.

Pavane sneered contemptuously, but he didn’t move any closer to her.

“Yours?” he inquired of Hazard.

“Not really,” Hazard returned in a careless drawl. “I simply enjoy taking women away from you. Not that it’s much of a challenge. Especially now. I didn’t think it was possible for you to look more withered and decrepit than when I saw you last.” He paused just long enough to run his derisive gaze down to Pavane’s feet and back up. “I was wrong.”

Pavane tried to hide his displeasure with a raspy laugh, but it was obvious Hazard had hit a sore spot.

“You lie,” Pavane said to him. “And try to distract me with insults. But I see the truth. You have feelings for the enchantress; that will make the coming days all the sweeter for me.”

“I’ll tell you what’s sweet,” countered Hazard. “Knowing you went to all the trouble of sending yourself on a roundtrip to nowhere just so you could come back here and end up dead at my hands.”

“It’s I who should have killed you, you swine,” retorted Pavane. “Instead, I bowed to pride and vengeance and cursed you, and by doing so I cursed myself. Immortality, that was my curse to you.”

Eve stiffened as if she’d touched a live wire. Immortality? Somewhere in her brain a dam let go and bits and pieces of information that had been getting caught and accumulating there rushed forward. The curious, dated aspects of the tale Hazard told of being cursed . . . and the curious, dated quality of his speech and his manners. The way Pavane was dressed, and his claim that he’d been waiting for her for eight score years and ten, and how quickly Hazard had recognized him.

The only explanation that made sense made no sense: the man who’d appeared before them today wasn’t a descendent of the original Phineas Pavane as she’d first thought; he was the original. The man who stole the talisman from her family was the same man who used it to curse Hazard. And suddenly the notion that it was an immortality curse didn’t only sound less crazy, it sounded like the truth.

Lines spoken by Taggart just moments ago ran through her head . . . red for life, black for death, white for passage safe. And there had also been something about a last desire. She’d wondered what all that had to do with a bad-luck curse, but she’d figured they knew better than she did. Glancing down, she saw the pocket watch Taggart had placed on the mirror with such care. Magic was full of pomp and metaphor, and a watch was the perfect symbol for the passage of time, far better suited to immortality than bad luck.

It all added up to one thing: if Pavane was telling the truth, then Hazard hadn’t.

It was as simple and as devious as that.

He’d lied to her, and used her . . . or tried to. He might well have succeeded if Pavane and his binding spell hadn’t gotten in the way. Eve could feel her face growing hot as the direction of her thoughts made her bristle and fume inwardly. The ritual was meant to block the energy fueling the curse so that natural order would be restored. And it didn’t take a genius or an evil sorcerer to figure out that for a man cursed with immortality two hundred years ago, the natural order was dead.

If things had gone as planned, Hazard would be dead. And she would have had a hand in it. The realization infuriated her, but the sharp sudden pain in her chest went deeper than anger. It cut right through to the fear buried beneath all the little bits and pieces of life that make up the days and the weeks and the years, all the things that dull and distract and make it possible to go on living when you’ve lost someone you love, when grief and guilt join forces and threaten to obliterate everything you were before, and everything you could have been.

Refusing to give in to fear, she concentrated on breathing, and to listening to Pavane rant about his reason for cursing Hazard, his twisted desire for Hazard to go on living so he would feel the pain of losing someone he loved over and over again.

“A fitting punishment for your transgression, don’t you think?” Pavane taunted.

Hazard refused to take the bait. He stood with arms folded, his weight resting on one leg, saying nothing. He appeared almost bored save the dark steel blade of his gaze fixed unblinkingly on Pavane’s face.

“That foolish curse cost me dearly,” Pavane went on, his wild-eyed expression turning bitter. “Better I had taken my revenge by ripping your still-beating heart from your chest and been done with you. Cursing you drained the talisman of its power, power I needed, power I had earned, and without it . . .”

His words were choked off; he stared into the distance, rigid with anger and resentment. “Without it I was at the mercy of those who sought to do me great harm. I had no choice but to do what I did. If I wanted to live, I had to seem to die. And bide my time.”

There was a faint rasping sound as he pulled in a deep breath. He looked from Hazard to her with a malicious smile, and then with surprising speed he snatched the talisman off the pedestal and held it in his clenched fist. “Now I’m back and all is well. Or soon will be. I have my talisman, and soon I will have—”

“Your talisman?” Eve blurted before she could stop herself. “That pendant belongs to me. It was stolen from my family over two centuries ago.”

“Not stolen,” he corrected. “Claimed. By me. Foolish Maura. She hoped to win my favor with her tale of the powerful talisman that safeguarded T’airna hearts, and she got her wish. I favored her then as I now favor you, sweet Enchantress.” He pinned Eve with his gaze. “Though I expect you to prove a great deal more useful to me.”

His tongue came snaking over his lips in anticipation.

“Is that why you murdered her?” Eve asked. “Because she wasn’t useful?”

“She was beyond useless,” he replied, not bothering to deny the accusation. “And you have already proven to me you are not. You are the one awaited, the most powerful enchantress in a millennium. Together we will be unstoppable.”

“I stopped you once,” Hazard reminded him. “And I’ll do it again.”

“Silence, blackguard.” With the hand not clutching the talisman Pavane scooped a ball of fire from the candle flames and hurled it at Hazard. It hit the shield and bounced back at Pavane, but just before it struck him, Pavane serenely lifted his hand and the fireball disappeared.

“Parlor tricks,” scoffed Hazard. “Is that the best you can do, old man?”

“Take down your shield and I will show you my best,” Pavane shot back.

“You’re the big bad sorcerer—take it down yourself.”

Hazard wanted the shield down and he was trying to goad Pavane into doing it, Eve realized, not sure how she felt about that. She was wary of what might happen if he and Pavane were both unleashed.

Pavane appeared to consider the challenge and then shook his head. “I think not. I have much to catch up on and much planning to do. And besides, I want to savor the anticipation of your grisly demise as long as possible.”

As he turned toward the door, Eve—driven by something stronger than common sense—blocked his path. She nodded at the talisman in his hand. “That belongs to me,” she said again.

He smiled. “And you want it?”

“Yes, I do.”

He twined the chain around and through his fingers and then held his hand up so that the pendant dangled in front of him.

Eve gasped. His palm and the inside of his fingers were red and smoldering, as if he’d grabbed a handful of hot embers and embedded them in his flesh. She could feel the heat six feet away.

“Come and take it from me, Enchantress.”

“Don’t do it, Eve,” ordered Hazard. He no longer looked or sounded the least bit bored.

She hesitated, itching to snatch the pendant from him but afraid to get close enough to do it.

“No?” Pavane laughed softly and moved his hand just enough to make the pendant swing back and forth. “Don’t fret. You shall see your precious talisman again; you shall see both of us again. And soon. I promise you that.”

With that same surprising swiftness, he brushed past her. “Follow him,” Hazard growled at Taggart, who was already on his way. Then he slammed his fists against the shield and shouted, “Stop. First take down this blasted shield.”

“Can’t,” Taggart said with an impatient nod at Eve. “It’s her doing. Only she can take it down.”

He was gone before the words were out, and Hazard shifted his frustrated glare to Eve. “Do it. Now.”

She didn’t care for his tone, but she didn’t think that was the moment to say so. Not sure exactly how she was supposed to do it now, she tried the opposite of what she did the first time. She focused on making the shield disappear and it worked.

As soon as it was gone, Hazard bolted forward and was out of the room in two long strides. By the time Eve reached the hallway, he was standing at the open front door. Though he had his back to her, she could tell he was glaring out at the street—his hands were balled into fists and he seemed to be straining at the end of an invisible leash. After a few seconds, he slammed the door and turned around.

Still glaring.

He looked volatile, and if she had been even a tiny bit less consumed by her own ire, Eve might have reasoned that perhaps it also wasn’t the time to launch an important and quite possibly contentious discussion.

As it was, she didn’t give a damn. She was feeling more than a little volatile herself. In the very pit of her stomach was a churning brew of anger and indignation and blind panic over what might have been.

“Would you mind explaining to me what just happened?” she asked.

He responded to the cool note of demand in her voice by raising one dark brow. “Why? You saw everything I saw.”

“Yes, but apparently I don’t know everything you know. I don’t like being kept in the dark. And I don’t like being used.”

He looked as startled, and hurt, as if she’d struck him. “I didn’t use you. I never would. As for lying . . . I simply told you what you needed to know.”

“You told me it was a bad-luck curse. Was that a lie?”

He shrugged. “It’s an interpretation of the truth. The curse has been nothing but bad luck and misery for me from the day it happened.”

“And exactly what day was that?”

After a slight hesitation, he said, “May 3. 1828.”

So it was true. Stunningly, bizarrely true. And though she’d already pretty much come to that conclusion on her own, it was still jarring, and more than a little strange, to hear him say it.

“So Pavane was telling the truth,” she said. “About everything.”

“It would seem so.” His tone was rueful on the surface, bitter underneath. “Though I need to investigate his claim that he was able to attach himself to the talisman with a binding spell before I can say for sure. I didn’t think he had the skill or the power to pull off something like that.”

“He had the power of the talisman to tap into,” Eve pointed out.

“Did he? I seem to recall him blaming me for draining that power by provoking him into cursing me.”

“But he also said that I summoned the talisman’s full power. How could I do that if cursing you drained it? Can a talisman recharge itself?” she asked.

Hazard gave a slight shrug. “It’s your talisman.”

“But I haven’t spent close to two hundred years obsessing over it the way you have,” Eve retorted.

He shrugged again, but his black brows lowered in concentration. “I know it wouldn’t be possible for it to spontaneously regenerate. Something from nothing. It doesn’t work that way. For all its mystery, magic is governed by a few—a very few—principles, the exchange of energy being one of them.”

Eve nodded. The idea was vaguely familiar to her from long-ago discussions with Grand. “That means the energy from the talisman must have gone somewhere. It couldn’t disappear.”

“Or be destroyed,” he added with a confirming nod.

“So where is it?”

Silence.

After a moment of thought, he said, “There is a law of physics that might apply. Actually, it’s a law of thermodynamics that deals with the creation of an efficient system of energy transfer related to—”

Eve held up a hand. “Stop. You’re making my head ache. If the answer involves learning thermodynamics, I’ll just remain in suspense.”

She turned to walk back into the living room, but before she made it through the doorway he was at her side. She tensed in surprise when he caught her by the arm.

“How the hell do you do that?” she demanded before he had a chance to speak. “Move so quickly. You did the same thing the other night in the garage.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh please,” she snapped, trying to pull free and failing. His hold on her upper arm was gentle but inescapable. “If you don’t want to tell me, don’t. But don’t lie.”

“I’m not lying. Certain . . . enhanced qualities came along with the curse. Speed is one of them. I can also do things without getting hurt that I shouldn’t be able to.”

“Like dropping fifty feet onto concrete and walking away?”

He nodded. “Like that. I still feel pain, and I can still be injured, but never seriously, and not often. And when it does happen, I heal quickly.”

“So, invincible and faster than a speeding bullet . . . that’s your idea of bad luck?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” he insisted, his voice troubled, his eyes grim.

Eve resisted the thread of sympathy that tugged on her heart when she looked into those eyes.

“Yeah, I’m sure immortality’s a real bitch,” she said. “That must be why people have been searching for the key to it since, oh, the dawn of time.”

He dragged his free hand through his hair impatiently. “Those people are idiots; they don’t appreciate what they have. I didn’t when I had it.”

“You still have what they have. You just have lots more of it.”

“Exactly. Too much of anything lessens its value. It can even make some things unbearable.”

“An astute insight,” she told him. “But then you’ve had a lot of time to work on it. And just for the record, if you’re trying to make me feel sorry for you, it’s not working.”

“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I don’t want you to feel anything for me. That’s the reason I didn’t tell you the truth about the curse in the first place.”

“Really?” she challenged. “I figured it was because you knew if you were honest with me about what you were planning to do, I wouldn’t help you.”

“I never wanted you to help. That was all Taggart’s doing,” he reminded her, disgusted. “Deciding at the last minute that he didn’t have enough power to do it on his own. And it was you who insisted on being here. If it had been left up to me, you wouldn’t have been anywhere near here when . . .”

“When you died?” Eve interjected when he hesitated for a split second. “That is what was supposed to happen, right? If the ritual went according to plan, you would have ended up dead.”

“That was one possibility,” he allowed.

“Name another.”

“My research showed it was possible that if the curse was ended, my life could pick up where it left off and I would resume aging naturally.”

“Possible. But not likely.” She said it serenely, as if she didn’t feel a silly little puff of hope at the prospect of a happier ending.

He lifted his shoulder in an uneasy shrug. “There’s not a great deal of verifiable information on the subject of immortality curses. In fact, there’s none.”

“How convenient.” She glanced pointedly at his hand on her arm. “Please let me go.”

With obvious reluctance, he let his hand drop and then followed her into the living room, where she paced around, too wound up to sit.

“I need a drink,” she said when her gaze landed on the bar.

Hazard immediately went to there and returned with a glass holding more whiskey than she’d had to drink in her entire life. She hated whiskey.

She lifted the glass and downed a third of it, paused, and swallowed another mouthful. It burned all the way to her belly, but after a minute or so it began to smooth the jagged edges of her nerves. She put the glass down and paced some more.

“You may not have wanted or needed my active participation,” she conceded, “but you wanted the pendant.”

“And I had it,” he reminded her. “That night at the park, you gave it to me to hold and then forgot about it. I didn’t have to give it back.”

“Why did you?”

“Damned if I know,” he muttered. “It’s not like me to be noble and self-sacrificing.”

Eve wasn’t so certain of that; every time she thought she was seeing Hazard’s true colors, they changed right before her eyes.

“I didn’t want to steal it from you,” he told her. “Or trick you out of it. I don’t know why other than that your good opinion mattered to me . . . more than anything has mattered in a long time.”

“You didn’t think lying to me—especially about something like this—would affect my opinion of you?”

His expression turned stubborn. “I lied because I had to . . . to protect you. And I hoped you’d never find out the truth.”

“How did you plan to pull that off? Death is a little hard to slip by someone.”

“I made arrangements,” he replied. “Everything would have been fine if Taggart had just stuck to the plan instead of dragging you into it and opening the door for Pavane. Then when it was over he would have come down and returned the pendant to you as promised. He would explain to you that the ritual was a success, but that I was in no condition to talk to anyone and would be in touch soon. After a day or two he would mail a note I’d written ahead of time, thanking you and telling you I’d been called away and wasn’t sure how long I’d be gone.”

“And then I’d never hear from you again.”

His perfect mouth curved into a small, jaded smile. “Not the most chivalrous approach, but the best I could do under the circumstances.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” he asked, drawing nearer until he was standing dangerously close, so close she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes. He gazed down at her, studying her face as if it mattered very much to him that she understood what he was trying to tell her. “I didn’t want you involved in this because I didn’t want you to feel responsible for what happened. I didn’t want you to suffer any guilt or regrets after I was gone. I didn’t want you hurt.”

“Too late,” she said softly.