“Some is dark.” As she said it, her body arched, and the lights flew around the room like bright stars. Instinctively Mac ducked. The lights began to whistle shrilly and pulse bloodred.

“Close the spell.”

“Something’s here. It’s come to hunt. To feed.” Her hair began to twist into wild curls. “It’s come back. One times three.”

“Ripley.” Lights flew past his face as he rushed back to her. “Close the spell. I want you to close the spell and come back. I’m going to count back from ten.”

“She needs you to guide the way.”

“I’m bringing her back.” Mac gripped shoulders he knew were no longer Ripley’s. “You have no right to take her.”

“She is mine and I am hers. Show her the way. Show her her way. She must not take mine, or we are lost.”

“Ripley, focus on my voice. On my voice.” It took all his control to keep his voice soothing. Firm but calm. “Come back now. When I reach one, you’ll wake up.”

“He brings death. He craves it.”

“He won’t get it,” Mac snapped. “Ten, nine, eight. You’re waking up slowly. Seven, six. You’re going to feel relaxed, refreshed. Five, four. You’ll remember everything. You’re safe. Come back now. Wake up, Ripley. Three, two, one.”

As he counted down, he saw her come back, not just to the surface of consciousness but physically. As her eyelids fluttered, the lights vanished, and the room was still.

She breathed out, swallowed. “Holy shit,” she managed, then found herself plucked off the bed into his lap and crushed in his arms.

Seventeen

H e couldn’t let her go, couldn’t stop blaming himself for taking chances with her. Nothing he’d seen, experienced, theorized, had ever terrified him the way watching Ripley change in front of him had done.

“It’s all right.” She stroked his back, patted it. Then realizing they were both trembling, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held tight. “I’m okay.”

He shook his head, buried his face in her hair. “I should be shot.”

Since gentle soothing wasn’t working, she switched tactics into something more natural to her. “Get a grip, Booke,” she ordered and shoved at him. “No harm, no foul.”

“I took you under, left you open.” He pulled back, and she could see it wasn’t fear on his face but fury.

“It hurt you. I could see it. Then you were gone.”

“No, I wasn’t.” His reaction had given her little time for one of her own. Now her stomach quivered. Something had come into her. No, she thought, that wasn’t quite right. Something had come over her.

“I was here,” she said slowly, as she tried to puzzle it out for herself. “It was like being underwater. Not like drowning or sinking, but just . . . floating. It didn’t hurt. More of a quick shock, then the drift.”

Her brows drew together as she thought it through. “Can’t say I cared for it, though. I don’t like the idea of being tucked aside so someone else can have her say.”

“How do you feel now?”

“Fine. Actually, I feel great. Stop taking my pulse, Doc.”

“Let me get these things off you.” But when he started to remove the electrodes, she closed a hand over his wrist.

“Hold on. What did you get out of all that?”

“A reminder.” He bit off the words. “To be more cautious.”

“No, you don’t. Think like a scientist. The way you were when we started this. You’re supposed to be objective, right?”

“Fuck objectivity.”

“Come on, Mac. We can’t just toss the results out the window. Tell me. I’m interested.” When he frowned at her, she sighed. “It’s not just your deal now. I have a pretty personal interest in what went on here.”

She was right. Because she was right, he dug down for calm. “How much do you remember?”

“All of it, I think. For a minute I was eight years old. It was kind of cool.”

“You started to regress, on your own.” He pressed his fingers to his temples. Clear the brain, he ordered himself. Bag the emotion. And give her some answers.

“Maybe the game was the trigger,” he considered. “If you want a quick analysis, I’d say you went back to a time when you weren’t conflicted. Subconsciously you needed to go back to a time when things were simpler and you didn’t question yourself. You used to enjoy your gift.”

“Yeah. And for a while, the Craft—the learning, the refining, I guess you’d say.” Restless now, she moved her shoulders. “And then you get a little older and you start thinking about the weight. The consequences.”

He laid a hand on her cheek. “This, all of this, troubles you.”

“Well, things aren’t simple now, are they? They haven’t been for me for ten years.”

He said nothing, watching her patiently. Words trembled on her tongue, then began to spill out in a flood.

“I could see, in dreams, how it might be if I took a step too far. If I didn’t strap it in, wasn’t careful enough. And sometimes, in those dreams, it felt good. Amazingly good to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Screw the rules.”

“But you never did,” he said quietly. “Instead you just stopped it all.”

“When Sam Logan left Mia, she was a wreck. I kept thinking, why the hell doesn’t she do something about it? Make him pay, the son of a bitch. Make him suffer the way she’s suffering. And I thought of what I’d do. What I could do. Nobody would hurt me that way, because if they tried . . .”

She shuddered. “I imagined it, and almost before I realized, a bolt of light shot out of the sky. A black bolt of light, barbed like an arrow. I sank Zack’s boat,” she said with a weak smile. “Nobody was in it, but they could have been. He could have been, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop it. No control, just anger.”

He laid a hand on her leg, rubbed. “How old were you?”

“Not quite twenty. But that doesn’t matter,” she said fiercely. “You know that doesn’t matter. ‘And it harm none.’ That’s vital, and I couldn’t be sure I could keep that pledge. God, he’d been in that damn boat not twenty minutes before it happened. I wasn’t thinking of him, wasn’t concerned about him or anyone. I was just mad.”