Grim Shadows (Roaring Twenties #2)(65)

Bacall nodded. “Noel Irving.”

“Perhaps it’s time for me to know exactly why you want the amulet so badly and what it has to do with this man.”

“You won’t believe me.”

“Won’t I? I was nearly burned alive by an Egyptian fire goddess. And before that, a griffin tried to peck my eyes out. So maybe you’d better tell me who I’m dealing with so I have a better idea about what kind of magic I’m up against.”

After using one hand to find a side table by touch, Bacall set his tea down with shaky fingers. “Tell me, Mr. Magnusson. Do you believe a woman can be in love with two men at the same time?”

Lowe’s jaw tightened. “No, I don’t.”

“I once shared that sentiment.” Bacall sighed deeply and leaned back in the wheelchair. “But I suppose I should start from the beginning. Back when Noel and I were still friends, in the late eighteen hundreds, he was terribly interested in the occult, and dabbled in magic to mixed success. Little spells to increase our luck in finding treasure, or to create light in a dark tunnel—nothing extraordinary. Though, looking back years later, I often wondered if he used a love spell to coerce my wife into sleeping with him. Or maybe that’s just my pride talking.”

Lowe shifted in his seat, feeling extremely uncomfortable. “I’m sorry.”

“You and me both. But they were lovers for several years. I suspected, but didn’t know for sure until 1898. I left Noel to watch over Vera in Cairo while I traveled for a month. When I came back, I found them both seriously ill with a local infectious disease. They needed Western medicine but were too weak to get out of bed, much less travel. The local doctor said they had days to live, if not hours. Noel begged me to fetch a witch he’d met on our previous trip.”

“And you did?” Lowe asked in a quiet voice.

“I felt I had no choice. Vera was several months pregnant with Hadley. If she died, I’d lose them both.”

“Christ.”

Bacall shifted in his wheelchair. “So I tracked the witch down. She said she could save them from death, but there would be consequences. You don’t upset the natural order of things without paying a price.”

“There’s always a catch,” Lowe murmured.

“Indeed. And this one was eight years,” Dr. Bacall said. “Eight extra years of life, then they’d die. That was the curse. What could I do? Watch them die in front of me? Lose my unborn daughter? I was out of my mind with grief—over their betrayal, over the loss of my innocence and trust in the two people I cared most about in the world.”

Bacall shook his head, remembering, then sighed deeply and continued.

“The witch pulled them both back from death’s grip and saved Hadley in the process. I was elated for a time. It wasn’t until much later that I learned the true nature of that magic and what had gone wrong. Because the spell, you see, was intended to make the recipient deathless.”

“Deathless?”

“Indestructible. For eight years, anyway. And I saw it with my own eyes. Death wouldn’t touch Noel. He would not bleed out from a stabbing, nor die from a bullet. Disease and poison had no effect. I pushed him off a cliff in 1901. He fell several hundred feet, brushed himself off, and walked away.”

Dear God.

“Terribly inconvenient for me, as the more I learned about the length of their affair, and how much my wife still cared for him, I was rather sorry I saved him. The only thing I wanted in those ensuing years was to bury the bastard—and it was the one thing I couldn’t do.”

“And your wife had this same advantage? This deathlessness?”

“No.” The blind man felt around the table for his tea and took a sip. “My wife seemed perfectly normal. Human. And Hadley was born healthy. Nothing was amiss. I began to hope perhaps she got lucky, and that since Noel got the curse’s blessing, he’d also be the one to pay its price after eight years—that Vera would live a normal life.”

The old man shook his head and continued.

“But eight years is a long time when you’re young. And spell or no spell, Vera just would not give Noel up. She insisted she loved us both equally, but would leave both Hadley and me if I forced her to end the affair. I couldn’t risk that. If she wouldn’t leave him, I figured I’d just take him off the playing field. So, two years into the curse, I began searching for a way to kill a man who can’t die.”

“The amulet,” Lowe whispered.

Bacall nodded. “If it were assembled, I could call up a door and Noel would be claimed. Maybe it would be enough to pay the ferryman, so to speak. Or, if nothing else, Vera might borrow Noel’s extra years once he was out of the picture.”

“So you searched for the amulet and found the crossbars, but you couldn’t find the base.”

“Exactly. I sent them home, hoping to keep them hidden from Vera. But she was smart. And she couldn’t bear to lose Noel, which is why she hid the crossbars when she realized what I was planning on using them to do. She couldn’t let me kill him.”

Lowe remembered Vera’s words during the channeling, warning Hadley to keep the amulet out of both men’s hands. “But after she hid the crossbars, the earthquake hit.”

“Exactly eight years to the day that the witch had cast the curse on them,” Bacall said. “I arrived home from England an hour before the earthquake struck.” Unseeing eyes blinked away tears. He shook his head and composed himself. “As you can see, this house survived both the quake and the Great Fire. But Vera was not so lucky.”