Heaven and Earth (2 page)

“No, not up.” Maybe it was rude to arrange for alternate living arrangements without saying something first. Ripley wondered if this fell into the area of social skills, a tricky business for her.

“Will I be in your way if I chow down in the kitchen?” she asked Nell. “That way I can talk to you while you work.”

“Sure. Come on back.”

Nell carried the food over to her worktable. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”

“Not a thing,” Ripley assured her. “Bitchy cold out. I bet you and Zack are sorry you didn’t stay south until spring.”

“The honeymoon was perfect.” Even thinking of it brought on a warm, satisfied glow. “But it’s better being home.” Nell opened the refrigerator for the container holding one of the day’s salads. “Everything I want is here. Zack, family, friends, a home of my own. A year ago I’d never have believed I’d be standing here like this, knowing that in an hour or so I’d be going home.”

“You earned it.”

“I did.” Nell’s eyes darkened, and in them Ripley could see the core of strength—a core that everyone, including Nell, had underestimated. “But I didn’t do it alone.” The bright
ding
of the counter bell warned her she had a customer waiting. “Don’t let your soup get cold.”

She slipped out, her voice lifting in greeting.

Ripley spooned up soup and sighed with contentment at the first taste. She would just concentrate on her lunch and think about the rest later.

But she’d barely made a dent in the bowl when she heard Nell call Mia’s name.

“Ripley’s in the kitchen. I think she wanted to see you.”

Shit, shit,
shit
! Ripley scowled into her soup and got busy filling her mouth.

“Well, well, make yourself at home.”

Mia Devlin, her gypsy mane of red hair tumbling over the shoulders of a long dress of forest green, leaned gracefully against the doorjamb. Her face was a miracle formed of high, ice-edged cheekbones, a full, sculpted mouth painted as boldly red as her hair, skin smooth as cream, and eyes gray as witch-smoke.

Those eyes looked Ripley over lazily, one brow lifted in a perfect and derisive arch.

“I am.” Ripley continued to eat. “I figure it’s Nell’s kitchen this time of day. If I thought otherwise, I’d be searching my soup for wool of bat or dragon’s teeth.”

“And it’s so hard to come by dragon’s teeth this time of year. What can I do for you, Deputy?”

“Not a thing. But I did give some passing thought to doing something for you.”

“Now I’m all agog.” Tall and slim, she moved to the table and sat. She was wearing those needle-thin heels she was so fond of, Ripley noticed. She could never figure out why anyone would put her innocent feet in such torture chambers without a gun being held to her head.

She broke off another piece of her roll, munched. “You lost yourself a tenant when Nell and Zack tied the knot. I figured you hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about renting out the yellow cottage, and since I’m thinking about getting my own place, maybe I can help you out.”

“Do tell.” Intrigued, Mia broke off a bite of Ripley’s roll for herself.

“Hey, I’m paying for that.”

Ignoring her, Mia nibbled. “A little too crowded for you at the homestead?”

“It’s a big house.” Ripley gave a careless shrug, then
moved the rest of her roll out of reach. “But you happen to have one going empty. It’s a pretty dinky place, but I don’t need much. I’d be willing to negotiate a lease on it.”

“A lease on what?” Nell swung back in, straight to the fridge to get out the makings for a sandwich order.

“The yellow cottage,” Mia told her. “Ripley’s looking for a place of her own.”

“Oh, but—” Nell turned. “You have a place of your own. With us.”

“Let’s not make this sticky.” It was too late to regret she hadn’t arranged to speak to Mia privately. “I was just thinking it’d be cool to have a little place to myself, and since Mia’s got one going begging—”

“On the contrary,” Mia said smoothly. “Neither I nor my possessions need to beg.”

“You don’t want me to do you a favor?” Ripley lifted a shoulder. “No skin off mine.”

“It’s so considerate of you to think of me.” Mia’s tone was candy-sweet. Always a bad sign. “But as it happens I just signed with a tenant for the cottage not ten minutes ago.”

“Bullshit. You were just up in your office, and Nell didn’t say you were with anyone.”

“On the phone,” Mia continued. “With a gentleman from New York. A doctor. We’ve signed a three-month lease for the cottage via fax. I hope that relieves your mind.”

Ripley wasn’t quite quick enough to mask her annoyance. “Like I said, no skin off mine. What the hell’s a doctor going to do for three months on Three Sisters? We’ve got a doctor on-island.”

“He’s not a medical doctor. He’s a Ph.D.—and as you’re so interested, he’s coming here to work. Dr. Booke
is a paranormal researcher, and he’s eager to spend some time on an island conjured by witches.”

“Fucking A.”

“Always so succinct.” Amused, Mia got to her feet. “Well, my work here is done. I must go see if I can bring joy into someone else’s life now.” She strolled to the door, waited a beat before she turned. “Oh, he’ll be here tomorrow. I’m sure he’d love to meet you, Ripley.”

“Keep your weirdo spook hunters away from me. Damn it.” Ripley bit into her cream puff. “She’s eating this up.”

“Don’t go anywhere.” Nell lifted her order. “Peg comes on in five. I want to talk to you.”

“I’ve got patrol.”

“You just wait.”

“Damn near ruined my appetite,” Ripley complained, but managed to devour the cream puff.

In fifteen minutes
she was stalking outside again, Nell glued to her side.

“We need to talk about this.”

“Look, Nell, it’s no big deal. I was just thinking—”

“Yes, you were thinking.” Nell yanked her wool cap down over her ears. “And you didn’t say anything to me, or to Zack. I want to know why you feel you can’t stay in your own home.”

“Okay, okay.” Ripley put on her sunglasses, hunched her shoulders as they started down High toward the station house. “It just seems to me that when people get married, they need privacy.”

“It’s a big house. We’re not in each other’s way. If you were the domestic type, I could see you feeling displaced
because I have to spend so much of my time in the kitchen.”

“That’s the least of my worries.”

“Exactly. You don’t cook. I hope you don’t think I resent cooking for you.”

“No, I don’t think that. And I appreciate it, Nell, I really do.”

“Is it because I get up so early?”

“No.”

“Because I took one of the spare bedrooms for an office for Sisters Catering?”

“No. Jeez, nobody was using it.” Ripley felt as though she was being systematically pounded with a velvet bat. “Look, look, it’s not about cooking or spare rooms or your baffling habit of getting out of bed before the sun rises. It’s about sex.”

“Excuse me?”

“You and Zack have sex.”

Nell stopped, cocked her head as she studied Ripley’s face. “Yes, we do. I don’t deny it. In fact, we have quite a lot of sex.”

“There you are.”

“Ripley, before I officially moved into the house, Zack and I often had sex there. It never seemed to be a problem for you.”

“That was different. That was regular sex. Now you’re having married sex.”

“I see. Well, I can assure you the process works in almost exactly the same way.”

“Har-har.” Nell had come a long way, Ripley mused. There’d been a time when even the hint of a confrontation would have had her backing down.

Those days were over.

“It’s just weird, okay? You and Zack are into the
mister and missus thing and you’ve got me hanging around. What if you wanted to do the horizontal tango on the living room rug, or just have dinner naked some night?”

“We’ve actually done the first, but now I’ll give some serious consideration to the second. Ripley.” Nell touched Ripley’s arm, rubbed lightly. “I don’t want you to move out.”

“Jesus, Nell, it’s a small island. It’s not like I’d be hard to reach wherever I landed.”

“I don’t want you to move,” she said again. “I’m speaking for myself, not for Zack. You can talk to him separately if you want and get his feelings about it. Ripley . . . I never had a sister before.”

“Oh, man.” She cringed, scanning the area from behind her dark glasses. “Don’t get mushy, not right out on the street like this.”

“I can’t help it. I like knowing you’re there, that I can talk to you whenever. I only had a few days with your parents when they came back for the wedding, but knowing them now and having you, I have a family again. Can’t we just leave things the way they are, for now, anyway?”

“Does Zack ever say no to you once you turn those big blue headlights on him?”

“Not when he knows it’s really important to me. And if you stay, I’ll promise that when Zack and I have sex, we’ll pretend we’re not married.”

“It might help. Anyway, since some jerk from New York snagged the cottage right under my nose, I’ll have to let things ride.” She let out a pained sigh. “Paranormal researcher, my butt. Ph.D.” She sneered and felt marginally cheered. “Mia probably rented the place to him just to piss me off.”

“I doubt it, but I’m sure she’s enjoying that side benefit. I wish the two of you wouldn’t jab at each other so
much. I’d really hoped, after . . . after what happened on Halloween you would be friends again.”

Instantly, Ripley closed in. “Everybody did what had to be done. Now it’s over. Nothing’s changed for me.”

“Only one phase is over,” Nell corrected. “If the legend—”

“The legend is hooey.” Even thinking of it blighted Ripley’s mood.

“What we are isn’t. What’s inside us isn’t.”

“And what I do with what’s inside me is my business. Don’t go there, Nell.”

“All right.” But Nell squeezed Ripley’s hand and even through the gloves that both women wore, there was a spark of energy. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

Ripley balled her hand as Nell walked away. Her skin still hummed from the contact. Sneaky little witch, Ripley thought.

She had to admire that.

Dreams came late
in the night, when her mind was open and her will at rest. She could deny by day, close herself off, stand by the choice she’d made more than a decade before.

But sleep was a power of its own, and seduced the dreaming.

In dreams, she stood on the beach, where the waves rose like terror. They pounded, black and bitter, on the shore, a thousand mad heartbeats, under a blind sky.

The only light was the snake-whips of lightning that slashed each time she raised her arms. And the light that came from her was a furious gold edged with murderous red.

The wind roared.

The violence of it, the sheer, unharnessed
power
of it, thrilled her in some deep and secret place. She was beyond now, beyond right, beyond rules.

Beyond hope.

And part of her, still flickering, wept grievous tears for the loss.

She had done what she had done, and now wrongs were avenged. Death to death to death. A circle formed by hate. One times three.

She cried out in triumph as the dark smoke of black magic streamed inside her, smearing and choking out what she had been, what she had vowed. What she had believed.

This, she thought as her cupped hands trembled at the force and the greed, was better. What had come before was pale and weak, a soft belly, compared to the strength and muscle of what was now.

She could do all and any. She could take and could rule. There was nothing and no one to stop her.

In a mad dance she spun across the sand, above it, her arms spread like wings, her hair falling in coils like snakes. She could taste the death of her sister’s murderer, the bright copper flavor of blood she’d spilled, and knew she had never supped so well.

Her laughter shot out like bolts, cracked the black bowl of the sky. A torrent of dark rain fell and hissed on the sand like acid.

He called her.

Somewhere through the wild night and her own fury she heard his voice. The faint glow of what had been inside her struggled to burn brighter.

She saw him, just a shadow fighting through the wind
and rain to reach her. Love warred and wept in a heart gone cold.