Taylor stood there watching them in speculation; then, after a moment, he walked about the guest house. When he saw that the clothes of both of them were hanging in one closet and that they were obviously sleeping in the same room together, he picked up the phone, called the desk, and told them to repack his luggage and move his bags into the Cardinal House. With Taylor’s voice and his air of authority, the young man who answered the phone didn’t say that repacking and moving was not a normal service of the hotel. All the young man said was, “Yes, sir. I’ll see that it’s done.”
Thirty minutes later, Taylor answered the knock on the door and admitted what looked to be every staff member at the Grove into the guest house. Each person was carrying a suitcase or a cardboard box or an odd-shaped case.
“What in the world—” Adam began as he watched the parade.
“I decided to stay here—in this house,” Taylor said pointedly, looking hard at Adam. “The staff will need to be tipped, and I’m sure you can afford it better than I can.”
Adam started to speak, but, instead, he opened his wallet and passed out several bills to the waiting staff. “Like father, like daughter,” he said under his breath. The staff left smiling. “You want to tell me what this is about?” Adam asked as he turned back to Taylor.
Taylor sat down on a chair across from the sofa. “I didn’t have much time to plan so I brought everything that I thought we’d need. Tonight we have to try to get the mirror. Tomorrow is the thirty-first, so—”
“Hallowe’en,” Darci said. She was sitting on one end of the sofa, Adam at the other end. She realized that she’d paid no attention to the date.
“Yes, exactly,” Taylor said. “If we wait until tomorrow, it will be too late, if she keeps her power past tonight, her power will double. She will use children in the ritual,” he said softly. “But I don’t know where she keeps the mirror. She—”
“The boss?” Darci asked, trying not to think about what her father had just said. “That’s what we’ve heard her called.”
“And when was that?” Taylor asked, then put up his hand. “No, don’t tell me. There’s no time. She won’t be expecting us tonight. I’m sure she’s seen Darci in the mirror, so she—”
“Me?” Darci asked. “Why me?”
“You can read it,” Taylor said before Adam could speak.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot,” Darci said bitterly. “I was hired because I’m a ...a....Wait a minute! If this witch is reading the mirror, then does that mean that she’s never ...?”
“That puzzles me,” Taylor said softly. “Has she made herself a nun to the mirror? Or is it just a legend that only a virgin can read it?”
“This doesn’t make sense. Nostradamus was certainly no virgin. He had a couple of wives and children,” Darci said. “So why does the reader have to be . . . chaste?” She swallowed, too well remembering all the times she’d talked to Adam about sex. Yet he’d known all along that she knew nothing. How he must have been laughing at her!
“But then maybe the mirror was made for him,” Adam said softly, and the way he said it made Darci turn to him sharply.
“What else are you hiding?” she asked. “Besides hideous scars and knowledge of a person’s most intimate secrets?”
Adam took a deep breath. “There’s a possibility that my sister is the one reading the mirror,” he said. “My mother was pregnant when she ...when she disappeared. I’ve been told that three people were on the plane that my parents disappeared in and that one of them is still alive. My sister would be about thirty-two now.”
At this revelation, all Darci could do was stare at Adam. No wonder he was so fierce about finding this mirror. If he found the mirror, maybe he’d find his sister. Maybe he’d find a woman who had been held captive her entire life.
“Ah,” Taylor said. “This makes things even more imperative.” He was looking from Darci to Adam and saw the way they were gazing at each other. Taylor’s mind was moving quickly. Because of his ancestresses, he had dedicated his life to the study of some of the ugliness that was going on in the world. Twice he’d been able to infiltrate covens and bring them down. But each time, the things that he had seen had sickened him.
When Adam Montgomery had called early this morning, Taylor hadn’t given himself time to feel the joy of finding out that he had a daughter—a daughter who had the power that had been in his family throughout remembered time. Instead, he’d flown into a frenzy of activity. He’d grabbed his case files on Camwell—boxes of them—all while dictating to his longtime assistant, Mrs. Wilson.
It was she who remembered the rumor about the mirror. Taylor had heard about the mirror years before from a student of his whose sister had joined the cult. In an attempt to get her sibling to join the coven, stupidly, the girl had told her of the mirror. “It’s going to let us conquer the world,” the sister had said. “She has an old-maid virgin—she has to be a virgin—who can see the past and the future in the thing.”
These few sentences had been told to Taylor, and he’d spent as much time as he could finding out what the girl had meant, but he could find out little.
He had been on his way here to Camwell when Mrs. Wilson had called to tell him what she’d found out about Adam Montgomery and what had happened to him when he was a child.
Mrs. Wilson said, “And here’s an interesting fact: This man’s mother was pregnant when she disappeared.” It had taken Taylor several moments to put two and two together. “Old-maid virgin,” the girl had said. “How old would her child be now?” Taylor said into the speaker phone. Mrs. Wilson was prepared for the question; they had worked together for many years. “The child would be about thirty-two now.”
Taylor’d had to take a few moments to calm himself. No matter how much he heard about the evil on earth, he was never quite prepared when he heard more. Had the girl been raised in captivity? Been raised so she could read a magic mirror?
By the time Taylor reached Camwell, he had several pieces of information, but he wasn’t sure how they all fit together. He wouldn’t reveal the information under torture, but he was often consulted by the FBI when there was a possibility of so-called witchcraft in a case. Because of this connection, Mrs. Wilson had been able to find out about the shape of the brand the doctors had seen on the chest of a small boy found wandering in the woods years ago. Taylor even knew that the FBI—with the approval of Adam’s guardians—had ordered the doctor to repair the wound in a way that scar tissue would cover the brand. Adam’s guardians didn’t want him to have a visual reminder of what he’d been through.
And Taylor had been called into the case when the first young woman had disappeared near Camwell years before. He was the one who’d figured out about the moles when the second woman disappeared.
But it was only while driving in the car today that Taylor had made a guess—a guess based on years of research and experience—about the shape on Darci’s hand and the brand that had been put on Adam’s chest when he was a child.
So now Taylor knew more than he wanted to. This “boss,” this evil woman who had kidnaped an unborn baby and held the child for thirty-two years, was now after Taylor’s beautiful—and very precious—daughter.
Taylor had heard an abbreviated version of what this Adam Montgomery had been through, but was Adam truly prepared for what might be ahead for him?
Was Adam ready for what he might find? Was Darci, who seemed to be the personification of innocence, ready for what she might see?
Part of Taylor wanted to spend time talking to them, warning these two innocents. He wanted to talk to Adam about that young woman who had been held prisoner all her life. Would she be worth saving?
But Taylor didn’t have time to give a lecture on philosophy, or to recount the horror he’d seen in his lifetime of fighting these evil people. And he didn’t have time for squeamishness. If they were going to do it, then it had to be done now. If they didn’t try, or if they tried and failed, then, tomorrow, yet another person—or persons
—would be killed.
Taylor took a deep breath. “First Darci has to find where the mirror is; then we have to go there and, somehow, try to get inside and get the thing. I’m sure that wherever it is, it’s heavily guarded, so I brought night-vision goggles. I don’t think there’s a spell yet that can stop those things,” he added, because Adam and Darci were looking at him in disbelief.
Taylor sobered. “Adam, I think you have to be prepared for the fact that if it is your sister who’s reading the mirror, she may have turned . . . the other way.”
“Evil, you mean?” he asked.
“Yes.” Taylor was looking hard at Adam, trying to read his thoughts, and Adam was looking back just as hard, as though something was passing between them.
“I hate to interrupt this lovely male-bonding session,” Darci said, “but could we go back to the part where you said, ‘Darci has to find the mirror’? ‘Darci’ as in me? Or maybe you have someone else named Darci in mind?”
Adam looked at Taylor, and Taylor looked at his daughter. “You don’t know that you can find things?”
“When I met her, she believed that anyone could do what she does if the person would just put his mind to it,” Adam said.
“Are you making fun of me?” Darci asked, narrowing her eyes at Adam. “Because if you are, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Adam asked.
“Children!” Taylor said, but he was smiling. “Darci darling—”
“Don’t you love the way that sounds?” she asked, clasping her hands and holding them to her heart, her eyes closed in ecstasy. “Darci darling.”
“Too bad the word doesn’t begin with the letter t,” Adam said as once again that feeling had flashed through him. “If it did, you could say it was your middle name. And, no, she doesn’t know she can find things. I spent an entire day trying to find out what she can do, but, obviously, I didn’t ask the right questions.”
Taylor smiled lovingly at his daughter. “I think that when one has a talent, it’s difficult to imagine that others don’t have that extraordinary ability. I only know what she can do because I’ve spent so much of my life researching my ancestors and learning what they could do. Each generation of our family—and considering that a generation could be only thirty years, there have been a lot of them— produced a girl who had Darci’s gift. But the gift didn’t descend in a straight line. Sometimes a woman who had it could have multiple daughters who didn’t inherit the gift. Or she could produce a daughter who had it, but the child died an infant so it would seem that the talent skipped a generation.
“What I’m saying is that while some women grew up with a mother who could teach them what they could do, many of them were like Darci and grew up without having any idea what power they had. And the intensity of the gift differed from one woman to another. Only some of the women could project their thoughts to another person, as Darci does to you.”
“She can do that, all right,” Adam said with a frown, then rubbed his temple.
I told you I was sorry! What else do you want? she said to him in her mind.
“How about begging my forgiveness?” Adam answered, and Darci smiled, knowing he was referring to the time he’d gone on his knees and acted like a begging dog.
Not in this lifetime, she said, but she was smiling.
“I see,” Taylor said, leaning back against his chair and watching the two of them. “She can talk to you very clearly, not just in visions or ideas, but in words. I must say that I’m jealous. It’s always only one person my relative can talk to. She can make people feel things and think things, but she can only talk, in words, to one person—and most of them couldn’t do that.”
In spite of himself, Adam was pleased at this. “Have any of these women ever used their power for good on a large scale? Or for bad, for that matter? And how have they kept it a secret all these centuries?”
“Yes to both,” Taylor said. “Some of my ancestors have been horrible creatures. One woman terrorized a whole town with her power, until someone dropped some poison in her soup and that was the end of her. And I believe that there have been some positive things on a grand scale done by my ancestors, but I can’t prove it. I truly believe that an aunt of mine was heavily involved in the halting of the Vietnam War, but, as I said, I can’t prove it. Others have used their power to soothe people, and to change things for the good.”
“Darci’s done that to me,” Adam said softly. “And she sorts out that town of hers, that Putnam.”
“As for keeping secrets, it has depended on the town where the woman was living. Sometimes her neighbors knew; sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes only one or two aspects of her talents were known and used. One ances-tress found sheep. She lived in Scotland and all she did was find lost sheep.”
“Which brings us back full circle,” Adam said. “You said that Darci could find things, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that.”
“No? Didn’t she find you? Isn’t that how you two met?”
Darci was smiling. Me. I found you. Not you found me.
“She found me the first night,” Adam said quietly.”I was looking about the town, in the dark, without even a flashlight, but she found me.”
“Yes,” Taylor said as he got up. “Come with me. I want you to look at something.”
Taylor led them into the bedroom that was to be his, but as he looked at it, he wondered if he’d ever sleep there. If they made this invasion tonight, they wouldn’t be able to return here. He tossed a couple of cases about until he came to a small black one. He pulled it onto the end of the bed, then twirled the dials on the combination lock until it popped open, then unzipped the case. Slowly, as though what was inside was precious—or perhaps horrifying—he withdrew a small red leather box. Turning, he held it out to Darci.
But Darci wouldn’t touch the box. Instead, she backed out of the room, backed all the way into the brightly lit living room, Taylor and Adam following her.
“I don’t like that thing,” Darci said, still backing up. “Whatever you have in there is bad. Putnam has a collection of guns from famous murderers, and I won’t touch them either. Whatever you have in there is the same as those guns.”
“No,” Taylor said. “What’s in here is much worse. It belonged to her. It took me years to find something that belonged to her, but I did it. Darci, if we’re to stop this, if we’re to find Adam’s sister, you must help us.”
Slowly, Taylor opened the red leather box, and Adam held his breath, preparing himself for what he was about to see. Would it be some evil amulet? Or “just” something old and hideous? Would it be a body part?
But when Taylor opened the box, all Adam saw inside was an old-fashioned pin, a simple, childish thing, with a little enameled picture of a pretty girl in a gold frame, surrounded by seed pearls.
“Is that the witch?” Adam asked, for the girl didn’t look to be evil. She had lots of dark brown hair, big brown eyes, and a small, full-lipped mouth. Even in the picture she looked as though she were about to start laughing. All in all, Adam had never seen a less evil-looking object than that little pin.
But Darci wouldn’t get near the box. And after one glance at the pin, she looked away.
“Tell me what you see, Darci,” Taylor said softly.
“I don’t want to see anything,” Darci said. “I didn’t ask to be able to see or do things that other people can’t.” There were tears in her voice.
“I know,” Taylor said in a quiet, soothing voice. Over the years he’d worked with many clairvoyants, and all the good ones had voiced these same words. It was the ones who were the self-declared “most powerful,” those who could see too little to be frightened by what they saw, who were glad of their small gift. “I know that you don’t want to see things, and that’s why you’ve stamped your powers down all these years. But, Darci, baby, you’re not a freak, not a mutant. You’re talented. What you have is a gift from God, and—”
Embarrassed, Darci put her head up and looked a
t Adam. “No, that girl in the picture isn’t a witch. The girl in that picture was killed by a very evil person. And. . . .”Breaking off, she blinked at Adam. “I’ve met her murderer.”
“Who?!” Adam and Taylor said in unison.
“The woman who runs the clothing store is my guess,” Darci said quickly. “A nasty piece of work, she was.”
Neither Adam or Taylor could figure out whether Darci was joking or not, and judging from the look on Darci’s face, neither did she. And when Darci said no more, both Taylor and Adam saw that they were going to get no more out of her.
In answer to Taylor’s questioning eyes, Darci said, “Yes, I’m joking. I don’t know who murdered her, but I feel that I’ve met her.” She put her hands to her temples. “That makes no sense. If I can feel evil from a pin, how could I meet an evil person and not recognize her?”
“She can block things, disguise herself,” Taylor said, then turned away so his face couldn’t be seen. If he’d known he’d had a daughter who had the power of the women in his family, he could have trained her. He could have explained to her about what she could do. She would never have felt that she was a freak.
But he’d not known about a daughter, never in his life thought that a quickie with a stunningly beautiful girl inside the men’s rest room of a service station had produced a child. At the time, Taylor couldn’t get away fast enough. He had been disgusted with himself for having done such an out-of-character thing. And his major concern had been that he might have contracted a disease from the woman who’d begged him to take her away with him.
What if I had taken her with me? Taylor thought now. Darci would have been his all these years. His to love and to—
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.”