She set the empty bowl on the carpet and Lucy materialized to lick it clean. Hugging back a chill, Tabitha frowned into the deepening darkness. It was one thing to reject her parents' idyllic lifestyle when she knew they were out there somewhere, loving her from a distance. But the possibility of a world without their laughter, their tenderness toward one another and toward her, added a bleak edge to her loneliness. An edge dangerously near panic.
Tabitha slowly turned to face the couch. The envelope lay where she had abandoned it.
As Tabitha picked it up, a thrill of dread coursed through her. She understood Uncle Cop's reluctance to hand it over. His words still haunted her.
Your mother asked me to give this to you in the event of her…
"Stop being so superstitious," Tabitha muttered. "It's an envelope, for God's sake, not Pandora's box." Determined to face her fears, she tore open the clasp and dumped the contents.
A silvery disk skittered across the glass coffee table. Tabitha instantly recognized it as a video disk. She took it to her modular workstation and popped it into the appropriate drive, praying it wouldn't be one of those maudlin presentations favored by funeral directors in which sobbing violins nearly drowned out the dearly departed's last words.
The forty-five-inch wall screen winked to life.
Tabitha found herself gazing up at an image of her mother seated on a stool with the impish grace of an elf perched on a mushroom. She wore a vintage Chanel suit, red to match her lipstick.
Before she'd been forced to so ruthlessly curb her imagination, Tabitha had fancied her mama a fairy princess. Delicate and petite, Arian Lennox possessed an otherworldly quality that even age couldn't tarnish. The wiry threads of silver she stubbornly refused to color only enhanced the lustrous beauty of her dark hair. Shallow laugh lines bracketed her lush mouth and sparkling eyes.
It wasn't her mother's fault that Tabitha had always felt like an ungainly elephant next to her. Or that she secretly wished she'd inherited her mama's looks and her daddy's talents, instead of the other way around.
Suppressing a wistful sigh, Tabitha stabbed the button that would activate the video.
"Hello, my darling Tabby-Cat."
Her mother's husky voice actually seemed to warm the room. Tabitha felt a rush of nostalgia at the sound of that Gallic lilt. Her mother hadn't called her by that particular endearment in years – not since Tabitha pronounced it too undignified for a mature young lady of seven years. Tabitha's eyes stung. Too many hours spent gazing at a video screen, she told herself, blinking hard. Lucy hopped into her lap, demanding to be stroked.
Her mother looked guiltily over her shoulder before placating the camera with a mischievous smile. "Your father would never forgive me if he knew I was doing this."
"That's where you're wrong, Mama," Tabitha murmured. "Daddy would forgive you anything."
But as her mother's dazzling smile faltered to a pensive frown, even Tabitha felt a chill of doubt.
The invisible camera seemed to disappear as her mother fixed her with a penetrating gaze. "Parents have very little control over which traits they pass on to their children, my dear. Sometimes it's gray eyes, or big feet, or an insatiable fondness for ice cream."
Tabitha gave the empty bowl a rueful glance.
"Or, as your father would say" – Arian sat up straighter and adjusted a pair of imaginary reading glasses in a dead-on imitation of Tristan Lennox – "the ability to manipulate the space-time continuum and convert thought energy into matter." A conspiratorial wink. "I prefer to simply call it 'magic.' "
Tabitha's smile faded along with her mother's.
"I'd be lying if I told you it didn't distress me that you've always considered that particular trait more a nuisance than a gift. But I suppose I can't really blame you. You tried so hard to be a good little girl. I'll never forget how hard you cried the day the principal sent you home from school because he believed you'd set off all the sprinklers out of spite. I thought my own heart would break."
Tabitha's cheeks burned with remembered mortification from that incident and a hundred more like it. Like the time she'd innocently admired a dress displayed in a store window only to find herself standing stark naked in the middle of the mall, surrounded by laughing classmates. Or the time the boy she adored had finally asked her out only to be turned into a frog during their very first kiss. He'd taken Viveca Winslow to the senior prom and Tabitha hadn't dared kiss a boy since.
As if anticipating her thoughts, her mother leaned toward the camera. "Your father and I are deeply concerned about the way you've withdrawn from the world. Neither one of us can stand to see you lock yourself away in that penthouse like a princess in a tower."
Tabitha snorted and wiggled her feet, discomfited by the guilt in her mother's big brown eyes. "Yeah, Mom. A princess wearing chipmunk slippers and cold cream. You always were an incurable romantic."
"After much soul-searching, I've concluded that you might not view your talent as such a curse if you could only achieve some small measure of control over it."
It was Tabitha's turn to lean forward in her chair, riveted by that single seductive word.
Control.
"That's why I've decided to share with you the only secret I ever kept from your father."
Her mouth fell open. Good grief! Was she about to learn she'd been sired by the mailman?
The story that followed was even more inexplicable. Lapsing into occasional French, Arian rambled on about magic charms, warlocks, corrupt ministers, microprocessors, and wicked magicians until Tabitha's head began to reel with the effort it took to follow her dizzying flights of logic. Her mother's talent for circumventing a point had always been one of her less endearing traits. By the time Arian paused for breath, Tabitha had decided she was either poking fun at her or in desperate need of psychotherapy.
But the look Arian gave her was so tender, Tabitha could not help but be transfixed by it. "So now you understand why I let your father believe I destroyed the amulet all those years ago."
Tabitha frowned, more clueless than before.
"I trust you will use it wisely, my dear, to focus and restrain your remarkable powers." Her mother touched two fingers to her lips and blew the camera a kiss, bittersweet longing in her eyes. "No matter what your future may hold, you have already made me very proud. Au revoir, ma cherie."
The image froze.
Tabitha sank back in the chair, clutching Lucy without realizing it. The kitten squirmed in protest.
Until we meet again, my darling, her mother had said. Not farewell. Not good-bye. Until we meet again.
Tabitha found scant comfort in the words. Her parents had begged her to accompany them on their Caribbean vacation, but as always, she'd insisted she was too busy, her presence too vital to her department. Had she accepted their invitation, she might have been on that plane with them.
Dear God, what if they were really gone? Her sweet, charming mama? Her beloved daddy – the man she had always regarded with a wistful mix of adoration and hero worship?
Blinded by tears she could no longer blame on eye-strain, Tabitha stretched a hand toward her mother's image. "Oh, Mama," she whispered. "I wish…"
The word died in her throat, smothered by bitterness. She must never wish. It was the one thing denied her. Because neither money nor magic could protect her from the disastrous consequences of her longing.
Tabitha tapped the escape key. She had forgotten to cancel her audio selection, so as her mother's image faded to black, the first haunting strains of Nina Simone's "Wild Is the Wind" drifted through the room.
Chapter 2
Sleep eluded Tabitha. She thrashed in her Laura Ashley sheets for nearly three hours, hoping her parents would get a good laugh out of all her wasted angst when they returned from the Caribbean. She tried to occupy her mind by sorting through her mother's babblings about warlocks and magical talismans. Three words kept emerging from the incoherent tangle.
Control. Restraint. Focu
s. Irresistible concepts to a woman who'd spent her entire life feeling like the butt of some dismal cosmic joke.
The digital clock on her bedside table read 3:02 when she finally groaned her defeat and tossed back the covers. The kitten draped over her feet mewed in protest.
"Don't worry, Lucy," Tabitha whispered as she reached for her glasses. "It's past the witching hour." Fatigue was definitely making her punchy.
She donned her slippers and shuffled into the bathroom, starting when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. With her tousled hair and cold-cream mask, she looked like a wild-eyed mime. She rinsed her face, then surveyed the elegant bathroom, trying to see it through her mother's eyes. Arian had protested vehemently when Tabitha had suggested redecorating it. Maybe she'd had another motivation besides sentimentality – considering the object she claimed to have hidden there over twenty-four years ago?
Feeling more than a little ridiculous, Tabitha got down on her hands and knees to peer under the towel warmer. Nothing. Feeling even sillier, she lifted the porcelain lid and peeked into the commode tank. It would be just her luck to find a family heirloom in the toilet, she thought ruefully. More nothing.
As Tabitha studied the room, a wistful pang reminded her why she'd been so desperate to redecorate. The penthouse bathroom with its sunken whirlpool tub and array of plush towels had been designed with sensual pleasure in mind. Its twin pedestal sinks were nothing but a cruel reminder of all the small but significant intimacies she could never allow anyone to share. And she certainly had no need for twin showerheads, especially when one of them was perpetually clogged.
Tabitha stiffened. Acting on a hunch, she swept open the door of the frosted-glass enclosure and unscrewed the offending showerhead. She gasped in astonishment as a length of chain unfurled into her waiting hand. "Well, I'll be damned," she whispered. She cupped the tarnished treasure in her palm. Although moisture had corroded the delicate chain, the emerald nestled in the antique setting showed remarkably little sign of wear. Tabitha recoiled. Was it her imagination or had the brilliant gem winked at her?
"You don't have any imagination," she reminded herself sternly, although the day she was having was enough to make her see pink elephants.
Thinking it might make her feel better to wear something of her mother's next to her heart, she started to slip the necklace over her head. A tingle of apprehension made her hesitate. Hadn't Arian called the necklace an amulet, a talisman, a magical charm?
Should she wish? Tabitha wondered. And if so, what should she wish for? Freedom from the temptation to wish? A shrill giggle escaped her, warning her that she was dangerously near exhaustion.
Determined to start behaving like a sane scientist instead of a mad one, Tabitha marched into the living room and voice-activated her computer and mini-monitor. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, she wouldn't have to wait until tomorrow to prove the emerald was nothing more than a pretty rock. Her modem connected her to the Lennox Enterprises laboratory computer network with a chirp of agreement.
She arranged the necklace on an analysis pad. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, commanding the sophisticated software to analyze the structural composition of the emerald. Lucy hopped up on her lap and began to bat at the white plastic mouse that controlled the blinking cursor. Tabitha doubted the kitten would know what to do with a real mouse.
The necklace's image appeared on the screen, each segment divided into color-coded cross-sections. Tabitha leaned forward until her nose almost touched the screen as she beheld the wondrous secret contained within the emerald.
"Magnify," she croaked.
The computer obeyed, highlighting the gem itself. Tabitha drew off her glasses, rubbed her weary eyes, then slid them back on. The stunning image on the screen was still there.
The emerald encased a tangled maze of microcircuitry, incredibly complex by today's standards, utterly impossible when measured against the crude technology available nearly a quarter of a century ago. Her mother had not exaggerated. This was magic indeed and to Tabitha's methodical mind, it was a magic far more profound than that of blundered wishes or spilled fairy dust. The miraculous web of wires and nodes represented sheer wizardry, conceived and executed by the most ingenious of intellects. During her lifetime, Tabitha had met only one man capable of such incandescent brilliance.
"Daddy?" she whispered.
She touched one fingertip to the screen, almost as if she could absorb her father's invisible presence. But the cold glass only reminded her that she had no idea where her father was, or if he was still alive.
Sighing heavily, she settled back in the chair. Her own brain was nothing to scoff at and she was determined to use it to solve the puzzle of the emerald. The scanning abilities of the Lennox Enterprises virtual reality software rendered physical dissection obsolete. She would simply magnify and magnify again until she could catalogue and study each node of the tiny microprocessor.
She squinted at the screen before tapping out a 1 on the numerical keypad. The emerald's image doubled in size.
An odd rumbling sounded overhead. Tabitha cast a distracted glance toward the window. Thunder? She'd never heard of it thundering in New York in January. Especially during a snowstorm.
She decided to magnify the image again. Her finger punched the 2, quadrupling the original image.
A warm draft poured through the room. Still gazing at the screen, Tabitha made a mental note to call maintenance in the morning. The central heating unit must be malfunctioning.
Perhaps she should enhance the current magnification to the fifth power. Without a heartbeat of hesitation, she chose the 5.
Lucy's fur crackled beneath her hand, charged with a burst of static electricity. If Tabitha had glanced over at the emerald at that moment, she would have seen that it was lit from within by a fierce glow.
Ignoring the kitten's alarmed meow, Tabitha yawned. Perhaps she should steal a few hours sleep and resume her investigation in the morning. She was due in the lab at seven, but it wouldn't matter if she was late. That was one of the perks of being a department head. And the boss's daughter.
Unable to resist one last peek at the workings of her newfound treasure, she studied the keypad. Her finger hovered indecisively over the numbers, wavering between the 1 and the 2.
A mischievous smile curved Tabitha's lips. "And to think you've always accused me of having no sense of adventure," she murmured to her absent mother before gleefully stabbing the 4.
The screen exploded in a burst of white-hot light. Tabitha recoiled, but her finger remained riveted to the keypad, galvanized by the dazzling arc of electricity that darted between computer and amulet and back again. Lucy yowled her fright and crawled up Tabitha's pajama sleeve.
Tabitha felt her entire body start to vibrate like the overtuned strings of a Stradivarius. Her scalp tingled as each individual hair began a quivering ascent. A scream built in her throat. Thinking only to break the arc, she stretched her other hand toward the necklace, forcing her fingers through the crackling veil of resistance.
At the moment her hand closed on the emerald, the artificial lightning cracked like a whip, sending her flying backward into the arms of darkness.
Chapter 3
"That was one hell of a power surge," Tabitha murmured, still too numb to move more than her lips.
Her eyelids refused to budge and an ineffectual twitch was all she could coax from her fingers. Her mouth tasted as if someone had been soldering inside of it. She sincerely hoped the singed smell in her nostrils wasn't coming from her hair. Or her eyelashes.
A strange radiance bathed her in warmth. The heating unit must have been in worse shape than she realized. Its malfunction must have caused the surge protector on her computer to fail, leaving her vulnerable to a dangerous influx of electricity. But it wasn't until the peculiar light flickered against her eyelids that she began to wonder if the penthouse was on fire.
Refusing to panic, Tabitha pried open her eyes and blin
ked up at the ceiling. Or where the ceiling should have been. In its place was a vault of dazzling blue, unsullied by even a trace of smog. She shaded her eyes against the ball of sunlight dangling directly over her head.
There must have been a fire, she thought dazedly. The penthouse had burned, but some hunky fireman had carried her down ninety-five flights of stairs and laid her on the sidewalk in front of Lennox Tower.
But where were the piles of grimy snow? The sirens? The rude gawkers who always materialized at the first sign of any disaster? Tabitha sat up, gingerly rotating her neck to see if it would support the weight of her aching head.
The surrounding landscape slowly came into focus. She was sitting in the middle of a meadow carpeted in minty green grass and springy clover. Its vast expanse was broken only by a sparse scattering of oaks. An array of colorful wildflowers sprinkled the field, dancing in the sultry embrace of the breeze. Tabitha ducked as a fat brown grasshopper whirred past her nose. The musical chirps of a nearby songbird drifted to her ears.
After months of bitingly cold temperatures and snow-laden skies, Tabitha's senses were overwhelmed. It was like being dropped smack-dab in the middle of some eternal summer.
Her breath caught. What if this wasn't eternal summer, but eternity? With a capital E. Perhaps there really had been a fire, but no hunky fireman.
"Don't be silly," Tabitha muttered. "God wouldn't be spiteful enough to let you die a virgin. You're simply in a coma. Or having an out-of-body experience."
She spotted her glasses lying in a nearby patch of clover. She reached for them, but was distracted by the sight of Lucy hopping through the grass in pursuit of a bright yellow butterfly.
Kittens in heaven? It was a darling concept, but as Tabitha surveyed the pastoral paradise, a far less charming suspicion was beginning to dawn in her mind. What if this was nothing more than her parents' elaborate little scheme to get her to take that vacation they'd been nagging her about for years? What if they'd arranged the entire thing – the faux plane crash, Uncle Cop's doleful performance, her mother's poignant video? That would explain why the mysterious "amulet" appeared to contain technology far beyond anything that should have been possible.