Even then. He’d wanted her even then. He’d said, even then, that he would never let her go.
“Ma’am?” a brisk voice interrupted. “My apologies for disturbing you, but they just informed me that you’d arrived. Is Mr. MacKeltar with you?”
Chloe opened her eyes slowly. The bank manager was standing in the doorway. She wasn’t ready to talk to anyone yet, so she shook her head.
“Well, then, he asked me to give you this, should you come to collect the contents of the box without him.” He handed her a set of keys. “He said he wanted you to have”—he shrugged, regarding her with open curiosity—“whatever it is these keys open. He said it was paid for, and if you didn’t wish to retain ownership, you could sell it. He expressed his conviction that it would keep you quite comfortably for the rest of your life.” He scrutinized her intently. “Mr. MacKeltar has fairly sizeable accounts in our bank. Might I inquire as to his intentions about those?”
Chloe took the keys with a trembling hand. They were the keys to his penthouse. She shrugged, to indicate that she had no idea.
“Are you all right, ma’am? You look pale. Are you feeling sick? Could I get you a glass of water or a soft drink or something?”
Chloe shook her head again. She tucked the letter in her pocket and slipped the carefully wrapped skean dhu in her purse. The rest of the artifacts she would leave in the bank until she had what she felt was a safe place to keep them.
They would never be sold. She would not part with so much as one precious memory.
She eyed the keys, feeling strangely numb. How carefully he’d planned, how far ahead he’d been looking, even then. Leaving her his penthouse, as if she could ever bear to live there. Or sell it. Or even think about it.
“Ma’am, I’ve noticed that we have no next of kin listed in Mr. MacKeltar’s files—”
“Oh, hush, just hush, would you?” Chloe finally managed, pushing past him. She was dying inside, and all he cared about was whether his bank might lose Dageus’s money. It was more than she could stand. She left both box and bank manager without a backward glance.
She wandered the city for a time, pushing blindly through the masses of people, with no concept of where she was walking. Head down, she walked while the sun passed the noon hour, descended behind the skyscrapers, and slipped to the horizon.
She walked until she was too exhausted to take another step, then she slumped down on a bench. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to her apartment, she couldn’t bear the thought of going to Dageus’s penthouse. She couldn’t bear the thought of being anywhere, or even being for that matter.
Yet … she mused, perhaps it would help. Perhaps merely being surrounded by his things, smelling him on his pillows again, touching his clothes—
Would be agonizing.
At complete odds with herself, she got up and began walking aimlessly again.
Night had fallen and a full moon graced the sky by the time Chloe found herself entering the elegant foyer of Dageus’s building. She hadn’t exactly made the decision to go there, she’d simply walked until her feet had taken her someplace.
So, she thought dismally, here I am. Ready or not.
She trudged past the security desk, numbly waving the keys at them. They shrugged—they really should be fired—she thought as she keyed the elevator to the forty-third floor.
When she stepped into the anteroom, her legs got shaky and, in her mind, she was reliving it all over again. The first day she’d stood at his door, clutching the third Book of Manannán, calling the man she was to deliver it to every nasty name she could think of. Worrying that some bimbo might damage the tome. Scoffing over the gold hinges. Entering his home and seeing the claymore hanging above the fireplace—the artifact that had lured her to her destiny.
Getting caught beneath his bed. Pretending to be a French maid.
Being kissed by him that first time.
Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be able to go back in time and live it all over again! She’d settle for any one of those days. And if she had it to do all over again, she’d never resist his seduction. She’d drink greedily of each moment.
But such a wish was futile. Neither she nor anyone else was ever going back in time again.
Drustan had told her that the night Dageus had disappeared, he’d felt the bridge in the circle of stones go dead. He’d said it was as if an energy he’d sensed all his life was simply gone. The next day, he and Christopher had discovered that the tablets that held the sacred formulas were also gone, as was their recall of the ones they’d committed to memory as part of their training.