She released Pavane’s hands, and he staggered a few steps away from her. There was an expression of astonishment on his face as he hurriedly glanced around, and again she saw a spark of fear in his eyes. But this time the spark ignited a sudden blaze of rage and hatred as understanding of the situation dawned on him.

Eve held her hands out, palms up, and gazed at the moon overhead. “Within this circle of light I gather what is mine. What I hold fast inside these flames cannot be taken from me; what I cast out from this light is gone forevermore.”

“Words,” Pavane said with contempt. “Speak all the words you want. You have no power over me.”

He attempted to stomp from the circle, but with a quick movement of her hand, Eve stopped him.

“You’re wrong,” she said as he turned back and glared at her. “This is not your place or your time. You’re only here because you stole and murdered and used power that was not yours to use. And all that keeps you here is the bond you managed to forge with this . . .” She lifted the pendant. “And over this I do have power.”

His upper lip curled back. “Power? Ha! You didn’t even have enough power to detect a most rudimentary glamour or to lift your foot when I bid you not to.”

“That was then,” she retorted, smiling. She turned and held her hands out to Grand and Rory. “Join me.”

As they moved to her side and linked hands with her, Hazard backed out of the way.

“No . . . you too,” Eve said to him. “You’re a part of this too. As much a part of it as anyone.”

He hesitated, regarding her uncertainly.

“Trust me,” she said.

He nodded his head once and stepped to stand shoulder to shoulder with Grand.

“It is our will to cast this darkness from our midst.” She stared into Pavane’s eyes. “Phineas Pavane, I cast you from this time and place. With the T’airna power of the past I cast you out. With the T’airna power of the future I cast you out.”

“Think of what you are doing, Enchantress. I could make you a queen,” he declared, stuffing his anger under a flimsy layer of concern. “Join your power with mine and we will be indomitable.”

“I don’t need your power.”

Grand squeezed her hand, and Rory breathed a soft, emphatic yes. Eve felt their pride in her but resisted acknowledging it with a quick glance, not about to underestimate Pavane and take her eyes off him for even that long.

“With all the power and wisdom entrusted to me, be it from blood, the elements or the divine, I cast you out.” Her voice rang out strong and clearly. “Let whatever it is that resists our will and holds you here reveal itself now so it can be severed forever.”

She pulled her hands free and held them in front of her, closing her eyes and calling to mind a detailed image of the athame she used to cut the winter rose, and as she did she felt the cool, solid weight of its silver handle in her left hand. She opened her eyes just as a dark line was taking shape before them, running from the pendant around her neck to the center of Pavane’s chest. The line was grainy and translucent . . . and not real. It was only a mystical manifestation of Pavane’s connection to the pendant. Unlike that grainy line, the link was very real, and the spell that created it powerful and devious. Eve hoped the athame would do the trick. A mystical weapon to break a mystical bond. As soon as the link was broken, nothing would stop the bonds on his wrist from sucking him back where he belonged.

“No,” Pavane cried when he saw the athame that had appeared in her hand. “You bitch. You can’t do this . . . I won’t let you. Who are you to destroy all I have worked for?”

“You know who I am,” she replied, and brought the blade up.

“Bitch,” he growled again.

Eve caught the sudden movement of his arms from the corner of her eye and looked up quickly to see his face a feral mask, with teeth bared and eyes that were no more than faintly glowing orange slits.

She wasted no time planting her feet, her body braced for whatever came. She felt more than saw Hazard straining at the tether of his self-control, and knew that if she didn’t act fast, he would. If there were dragons to be slain, he wanted to be the one to do it, risks and consequences be damned; she knew that and loved him for it. And chivalry aside, he had a reason of his own to slay this dragon. But tonight was about more than rescuing her or evening the score with Pavane. Much more. She needed Hazard there in order to do this, but he couldn’t do it for her.

With one hand, Pavane made a circle in the air above his head and set wind swirling around them, a wind so vicious it felt more like a wave of water than air. Rory lost her balance and crouched down to brace herself with her hands on the ground. Hazard gathered Grand close and used his body to take the brunt of the punishment as they were pelted with crushed stone lifted from the garden path and anything else in the vicinity light enough to be swept up and flung at them: trash cans, rusty garden tools, fence pickets.

Eve focused and struck back, sending her will forth to push against his. They came together with a thud that she felt as pressure inside her head, and then the wind quieted as suddenly as it had come. And Pavane hissed in anger.

Here was the battle. Dark against light. Pavane wanted to possess her power and her soul. He couldn’t, so he wanted to destroy her instead.

And she wanted the same, to destroy him.

“I cast you out, back to the dark,” she cried, tightening her grip on the athame.

“Do that and what you love will cease to exist,” Pavane warned, and in spite of herself the words made Eve pause. He pointed his finger at Hazard. “Cast me out, and my last act in this realm will be to end the curse and let him die.”

“You can’t end what never was,” she retorted. “Your curse was a joke, a failure.”

“It was not a joke to him. He lives.”

“Not because of you,” she said, certain of that though she couldn’t explain why. “Hazard is alive because of what’s inside him; he lives because he carries what you crave . . . what you cheated and bullied and killed to possess: the magic of the talisman. You meant to curse him, and instead he was given T’airna magic to safeguard. “

“You lie,” he shouted. He lifted his arms and held them bent in front of him, with his hands fisted, and the Bonds of Arricles on his wrists turned the fire red of a blacksmith’s tongs.

“Eve, look . . . what is that?”

It was Rory’s voice, and Eve thought she was asking about the marks on his wrists until she saw the heavy black shadow that seemed to be oozing from the pores of Pavane’s body.

He’d told her the marks represented an open portal to the Void; now the marks were smoldering and something evil was crawling out of him and tainting the air. He was using the portal to draw the darkness here, she realized with a rush of new fear. The shadowy substance hung in the air around them, a strange, sinister presence spreading outward. As it neared the candles, Eve watched, anxious to see if her circle would hold. Whatever it was, she didn’t want it out there roaming free. It reached the edge of the circle and stopped, like water backing up behind a damn. Inside the circle it grew darker, and the air became saturated with the shadows, which felt oily on her skin and her tongue.

She called out to the sorcerer. “Don’t be a fool, Pavane. Whatever this is will end you too.”

“I am willing to chance that it will end you or one of yours first, and your circle will split open. Spare yourself that pointless sacrifice by releasing me now. We can agree to be done with each other and go our own ways.”

She wouldn’t agree to that even if she believed him, which she didn’t.

She couldn’t let him go as long as he had any connection at all to the pendant. He’d proven how resourceful he could be; she didn’t want another T’airna woman to have to fight him centuries from now because she failed to finish the job. She’d thought of magic as a gift, and as a burden, but never before as a responsibility.

Gathering her energy, she released it full force and straight ahead, driving the shadows away enough to see the dark line stretching between Pavane and the pendant. She focused, reared back and brought the athame down with everything she had.

The fact that the line was a magically wrought figment didn’t keep it from feeling real—unyielding, electrified, solid-as-hell real. When the blade struck the line, a high-pitched screech ripped through the night and ten thousand volts of very real pain shot up her arm. The sheer force of it made her stumble; the sheer agony of it made her drop the athame and clutch her shoulder, where the pain had stopped and pooled and gone to work ripping the joint apart, bone by bone, tendon by tendon. That’s how it felt anyway. Hot, paralyzing agony.

She wanted to cry but swore instead.

Still holding her shoulder, she bent to look for the athame. The shadows pouring from the Void were so thick she could no longer see her feet, so she crouched and used one hand to feel around the ground for it.

Eve froze, not sure it if the insidiously assured voice came from somewhere out there or from right inside her head. Either way, the message was unmistakable. But was it true?

Maybe she couldn’t do this.

She had no training. No experience. She didn’t even know all the rules. What the hell had made her think she could pull it off? Maybe the insight and unswerving confidence she was willing to believe were hers simply because she put on the pendant and said she was ready were as illusionary as that dark line . . . only not as impervious. Because now, at the worst possible moment, her confidence had faltered.

She abandoned her search and stood.

Maybe she couldn’t do this.

Before the lump in her throat had finished forming, Hazard was at her side, his body so close to hers there was no room for shadows in-between. He bent his head and put his mouth close to her ear.

“You can do this,” he said, his voice deep and strong. “You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever known. Not because I love you, because you are. You can do this. You were born to do this. And I was always meant to stand by your side when you do.”

He lifted his head and their gazes met, his gray eyes holding nothing back as he pressed the athame into her hand.

“Finish it now,” he urged.

Eve’s fingers curled over the handle as she turned and lifted her arm in a single fluid motion. She thought only of her intention at that moment, and as she started down with the blade, Hazard reached to cover her hand with his so that they were acting as one.

There was the same loud piercing sound when the blade made contact, but this time it was met by Pavane’s enraged howl as they destroyed his only tie to their world.

Eve’s blood sang with a surge of power purer and stronger than any that had gone before. She threw her head back, turning her hand to lace her fingers with Hazard’s around the athame, gathering that boundless power, using it to turn all the evil and darkness that was in Pavane, and all the evil and darkness he had drawn there, back on him.

His departure was a reversal of his arrival, and just as rapid. He began to fade, his form softening to a column of jelly, then dust, then nothing. He and the dark shadows that oozed from him were gone in a small burst of smoke and sparks that sizzled and lingered a few seconds longer and disappeared too.

There was a half a second of silence, and then Rory whooped and there was a resounding “Saints be praised” from Grand. But Eve turned first to Hazard.

He was winded, his face drawn and pale. He still managed a look that made her feel as though it was the sun shining down on her instead of a silver-white moon. “You did it.”

“We did it,” she corrected, shaking her head in amazement as she tried to absorb what had just happened. More than two hundred years of evil had just bitten the dust, and it couldn’t have happened in a more fitting place as far as she was concerned.

“All I did was hold your hand,” he said.

“It was more than that . . . you made it happen. I felt it and so did you. What I told Pavane about the magic of the talisman being in you was right. I’m sure of that.” She shoved the athame in the waist of her jeans and laid her hand on his cheek, feeling stubble and heat. “Thank you.”

His smile was no more than a slight twist of his bottom lip, and even that seemed an effort as he bent his head and brushed her mouth with his. “My pleasure, Enchantress.”

As soon as the words were out, he went down on one knee, and for one crazy, careening heartbeat Eve thought he was about to propose. Then he was flat on his back, not speaking, not moving, his skin chalk white except for his lips, which were too red.

Eve dropped to her knees beside him. “Hazard? Gabriel, are you all right?”

“He doesn’t look right.” Rory had come to kneel next to her. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Eve replied, shaking off a suspicion too scary to think about. She touched his face, her brain tripping over the fact that he looked like ice but felt like scorching coals, as though an inferno were blazing just beneath his skin, burning him alive from the inside out. That wasn’t normal.

Of course it wasn’t normal. They’d left normal a long way back.

“I don’t know,” she said again, shoving her hands into her hair, not sure whether to shake him or slap him or scream at him. “Oh God, I don’t know.”

“Eve, listen to me.” Grand’s voice was calm.

Eve looked up at her anxiously. Gratefully. Of course Grand would know what had happened to him and how to fix it. The vise squeezing her heart loosened a notch.

“Do you know what’s wrong with him?” she asked.

“Yes. And somewhere inside, so do you,” her grandmother said, her expression soft over steel.

Shaking her head, Eve turned back to Hazard. “No. I don’t.”

“What neither of us knows is exactly why,” her grandmother went on in her unflappable way. “But there’s no time now to look for reasons and explanations. This man is mortal, and his body was never intended to be subjected to the power of magic.”

“Except that, if I’m right, he’s been subjected to it for a couple of centuries and handled it just fine.”

“In a dormant state,” Grand said gently. “Eve, I believe you are right. I believe that for whatever reason, Gabriel Hazard was chosen to carry and safeguard the T’airna magic belonging to the talisman. As long as that magic was inactive, he was safe. But tonight you called on the power inside him, and by doing that you loosed fire and fury that no mortal could endure.”

“All right, but that’s over now,” she said, stroking his arm as if to soothe him even though he lay absolutely still. Too still . . . beyond soothing. She tried not to think about how much hotter he felt than he had just a moment ago. “Maybe whatever this is will pass. We could move him inside so he’ll be more comfortable. He might just need to sleep it off. Or an ice pack. It could pass. It could,” she insisted in the face of her grandmother’s discouraging silence.

“It won’t,” Grand said quietly.

“Then I’m calling 911.” Resolved, Eve started to get up but stopped when she felt Grand’s hand on her shoulder.

“That would be a waste of time, dear. He’ll die while doctors try to find a cure that doesn’t exist. Science can’t fix this,” she said to Eve in a voice of finality. “Only you can.”

Eve quickly looked up. “How?”

“By restoring the talisman to its original state.”

“And if I do, he’ll be all right?”

“I can’t promise you that. I have no way of knowing for sure,” Grand admitted. “But if you don’t do it, I fear he won’t survive.”

“But if magic is what’s kept him alive all this time, much longer than he ever would have lived without it, and I take that magic from him—assuming I can even do it—then . . . then . . .”

“Then he could die,” Grand said for her. “Yes. But if you don’t do it, and quickly, it’s my belief that he will die.”

“And mine.”

Eve glanced past Grand and saw Taggart standing just outside the circle.

“I only saw the end of what happened here,” he said, “but that’s enough for me to know that what your grandmother says makes sense. You have to help him.” He was pleading with her, and impatient at the same time.

“I want to help him,” Eve retorted. “But I don’t want to kill him doing it. I can’t do that . . . I can’t take that chance. And that’s what I’d be doing, taking a chance with his life. Do no harm. Isn’t that the golden rule? If I call for that magic I’d be . . .” She waved her hand as she struggled for words. “I’d be stirring it up all over again, and that could kill him. But if I wait, he might be able to . . .” She sighed, uneasy in the face of Taggart’s open disapproval. “I could be doing him harm. Can’t you see that?”

“What I see is a good man dying because he stuck his neck out to help you, and you not having the gumption to do the same for him.”

Eve flinched, but he wasn’t done.

“Maybe it is a chance you’ll be taking, Enchantress,” he said. “But you’re acting as though you have a choice and you don’t. So just do what you need to do and hope that luck is with you.”

Who was it who told her that? Madame Lavina. It felt like weeks had passed since then.

What the hell could she rely on? Grand’s opinion? Taggart’s?

She gazed down at Hazard, watched the painfully slow rise and fall of his chest and remembered resting her head there, right over his heart, right over the mark they shared. That felt like weeks or months or lifetimes ago too. But it wasn’t. She’d known him only a handful of days and he had changed her forever. He’d given her back herself.

It was as if a veil had lifted inside her, and thanks to him she had the courage to face what was hidden behind it.

Now the very magic that had brought them together threatened to rip them apart. Did she have the courage to face that?

No. The answer erupted inside her, burning her throat. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t bear to lose him now that she’d finally found herself . . . he was part of that self.

She leaned forward to lay her head on his chest and listen to his heart beat. It sounded very far away.

“I love you,” she breathed into his shirt. “Everything I am is yours. Please come back to me.”

As she lifted her head, a passing breeze made the candle flames flicker and wave so that the light seemed to dance around them, and when she looked at his face in that dancing light, the memory of seeing that face lit by another circle of candlelight, on another night, came sweeping back to her. It was the night she cast the Winter Rose Spell. She did have the promised vision that night in the turret, and the face she had seen was Hazard’s.

Hazard was her one true love. Her soul mate. Her destiny.

And clearly she was his. A destiny two hundred years in the making was not to be taken lightly, or surrendered easily.

That was the rest of Madame Lavina’s advice to her. And her heart was willing . . . willing to risk everything for their shared destiny.

She just hoped it wasn’t too late.

It couldn’t be. Reality bends to desire. And no one had ever desired or wanted anything as much as she wanted to hear Hazard’s voice, and feel his fingers on her skin and that silly little thrill she felt every blessed time the man looked at her and smiled.

Slipping the pendant off, she placed it carefully on his chest, not at all surprised to see the crystals in the hourglass turn red. Then she took a deep breath and did what she needed to do. Right away a shimmering mist appeared around the two of them, mist like the one that had saved them from the warlocks that first night, and had stopped Hazard from tangling with Pavane before the time was right. She understood now that the mist appeared only when she and Hazard and the talisman connected in a certain way, and she wondered if it had been there tonight when they came together to battle Pavane for the last time.

Quietly, she said words to invoke the Goddess Danu and ask her help in restoring the magic of the talisman. She finished with gratitude and a plea that it be done with harm to none.

She felt movement in the air above where Hazard lay, and miniscule specks of light swirled around the hourglass, its crystals now dazzlingly bright.

Something was happening, and the effect of it rippled outward, like rings of current from a stone tossed in a lake. The butterfly effect, Eve thought, aware of the ruffling of the grass and rustling of leaves. Soon there was the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance, and overhead the sky was ablaze with shooting stars.

When the swirl of light around the talisman dimmed, and the last star had shot across the sky and disappeared, Eve released the breathe she was holding, not surprised that her chest went on aching.

It was done, she thought, and she waited for Hazard to open his eyes.