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Damsel in distress again. Damn him.”
“He didn’t tell me to deny you the truth if you asked his whereabouts, but he didn’t want you to worry. Consider this, Jess.” Amara squeezed her shoulders. “If the Council pardons you, the choices you make from that point forward will be based on your own wishes, whatever those choices are.”
Jessica swallowed. “But will I ever know what those wishes are, Amara? Will I ever be able to trust myself?” Amara’s gaze filled with sympathy as she lifted Jessica’s face with a light finger along her cheek. “From what I have seen of you, Jessica Tyson, I say yes. A resounding yes.” The sincerity of her smile flooded Jessica with warmth. “The mind is complex, but it is easily derailed. The heart is very consistent. If you can learn to separate the two, I think you’ll have your answer. At least which path you most want to follow.”
“And if it dead-ends?”
“It is still the choice of the heart.” Amara shrugged and rose, drawing Jessica up. She guided her in several dance steps around the barn, winning a reluctant smile from Jess, while the horses watched quizzically. “We don’t live life by being fainthearted. A long time ago, I left behind the life I had merely because a handsome Frenchman swore that he saw his entire life in my gaze.” At Jessica’s incredulous look, she laughed. “It was definitely a decision of the heart. Believe me, I’d been exposed to beautiful men before, so it wasn’t that. In Enrique’s gaze, I saw truth, destiny, things I couldn’t define with my mind. In fact, my mind was overflowing like a volcano with all the reasons it was totally absurd for me to agree to go anywhere with this virtual stranger.” She spun outward, came back in and guided Jess under her arm. “But my heart told me to go, and I never regretted it, though for quite some time I was fearful of my choice. The mind is a clever impostor. It can imitate the heart, lead you astray. But if you strain to listen to the heart over the machinations of the mind, it will never fail you.” Jessica slowed to a sway, thinking. Amara linked their fingers and they moved together like reeds, back and forth, back and forth.
Then Jess looked up. “Amara, when Robert first came, I had an idea for my design, but it was different. If I wanted to do that instead, could Robert do it today anyway? And will he be angry?”
Amara pressed her palms flat against Jess’s, holding a mirror pose with her. “He’s an artist. They’re all temperamental. But perhaps”—her studied look disappeared, replaced with a sly smile—“given Robert’s preferences, Enrique will convince him for us.
Are you sure?”
“Yes. No. Yes.” Jessica took a deep breath. “Yes. Though I may regret this.”
“Or you may not.”
Right, Jess thought. Which was even more terrifying.
As predicted, Robert expressed his irritation in dramatic French fashion. However, through his tirade, which Jess watched with trepidation, Enrique employed charming remarks and smiles, even some blatant flirting and innuendoes that had her eyes widening.
Regardless, it achieved the desired result. The tattoo artist disappeared, muttering, to cloister himself in one of Mason’s many rooms and work out the new design, indicating he would be back in several hours. Accordingly, Amara thought it prudent to have Jess in place a half hour before that, to avoid delaying the man further.
So now Jess found herself lying on her stomach on a massage table set up by the indoor pool, looking out the glass windows toward the forest and a small sliver of ocean. Robert’s case of inking tools was on a side table, waiting for his use. A small fridge was brought in, which she assumed held drinks to replenish them as needed.
Despite Robert’s preferences, rationality had nothing to do with her memories, so she was glad for Amara’s presence. She was completely nude beneath the light covering, since the scars followed her spine from nape to tailbone. As the woman adjusted the sheet over her shoulder to keep out the draft, Jess couldn’t help the quiver of nerves.
“I’m here,” Amara said, for perhaps the third time.
“I know,” Jess said. Turning her head, she pressed her cheek to the table. Amara sat back in a wicker chair, her bare feet drawn up beneath her, toes unconsciously pointed, like a graceful ballet dancer. “I’m glad.” It was perhaps the first time she’d expressed to Amara something approaching a frail trust, and she was gratified by the woman’s warm look. How long had it been since she’d had a female friend?
Amara pulled the chair closer and enclosed Jess’s willing hand in her slim-fingered one. “Lord Mason called me a little while ago.”
“Oh?” It sent a beam of light through her fears. “What did he say?”
“He asked how we all were, particularly you. He said you must stop overdoing it in the barn, or he will fire Jorge, because he won’t waste three grooms when only two are needed. You will be responsible for turning an old man out onto the street.”
“Ass,” Jess muttered.
“He was concerned for you,” Amara added, chuckling. “I told him you were fine. He also wanted me to tell you . . . your family is safe.”
Jessica’s eyes popped open and she jerked up from the massage table, heedless of her nudity. As she scrambled to a sitting position, she grabbed Amara’s hand again. “What?”
One-handed, Amara helped her guide the sheet back around her upper body, retaining her modesty, then stroked Jess’s hair back with an understanding, gentle touch. “He knew you were worried about them. So he checked and found they’re all alive and well, and quite oblivious to the existence of vampires. They still believe they lost one of their daughters to a car wreck in Rome five years ago.”
“So the Council didn’t go after them to find me. I was so afraid . . .”
“No.” Amara shook her head. “The Council is very careful about their interactions with the human world, Jess. When they hunted you, they did check out your family. They have been monitored throughout your disappearance, but you were smart enough to give the Council no reason to involve them. It was quite obvious they believed you were dead.” Her relief at hearing her family was alive was shadowed by the meaning behind that statement. A family in grief . . . Her mother.
“They had your sister and brother.” Amara, ever intuitive, held her grip on Jessica’s hand. “While I imagine that cannot replace a lost child, I’m certain it has helped.”
“Oh, God . . .” Jessica crumpled back down to the table, her cheek against the cool surface again. She drew her hands tight against her breast, her erratically pounding chest, as Amara ran a soothing hand over her back. “I stopped hoping or wondering, because there was nothing I could do to save them. At certain times, I was sure he’d done it, merely because he could, but he wouldn’t have been able to keep that to himself. He would have enjoyed telling me too much. Then, after I killed him, I worried—if they were still alive—that they would be tortured to find me, or killed by Raithe’s fledglings in retribution. I couldn’t do anything to protect them. All I could do was to stay away and hope like hell they were left alone. All those years, I knew, if they were harmed, it would be my fault. Like Jack. I almost didn’t want to know. How cowardly is that?”
“Jessica.” Amara touched her face. Jessica realized more of the endless tears were leaking out of her eyes. “You may very well get to see your family again.”
“I can’t hope for that. God, Amara—I couldn’t even think about whether they were alive or dead. I can’t . . . I mean, it would be beyond my dreams.” To be in her mother’s arms, feel her father’s awkward touch on her hair, hug her younger sister and brother.
They’d both be in college now. “I wanted so much to call them, so many times. Just to hear my mom’s voice on the answering machine . . . I—I . . . j-just couldn’t bear it . . .”
“Shhh . . .” Amara was blotting her eyes with a tissue, but Jess couldn’t hold in the painful ache in her chest.
“I’ve got to sit up again.” When she did, Amara was there, enclosing her in her arms, letting her cry it out. It had been so hard to bury those fears, accept the helplessness, blocking out what someone like Raithe could do to her family. More than once, he’d threatened to torture her until she offered him her mother’s life to get him to stop. They’d never reached that point, but it had been another fear he’d cultivated in her, in a garden of terrors.
As she tried to get her emotions under control, another thought brought a renewed flood. Mason had asked about her family. He’d done it without her knowledge, preventing an agony of suspense and terror. Even the way Amara had approached it now, soothing and quietly inserting it in the conversation, had kept her emotional response limited to regret and relief.
Despite the confusion of her thoughts about Lord Mason and vampires, she was ready to hope, more than ever before, that she was lucky to have him on her side. If nothing else, she no longer harbored any doubts about the design change.
“I think we are at last ready. Unless she’s changed her mind again.” As if on cue, Robert’s long-suffering tone reached her. He came into the pool area, shuffling his drawings. His expression transformed as he took in her tears, how she was held in Amara’s embrace. “What has happened? Amara, you didn’t tell her I refused, did you? Look, ma cherie, I have done your beautiful design.
Look here.”
Jessica was taken aback, though not in a bad way, as Robert rushed to her side, tossed the design to the table and took out a handkerchief to pat at her eyes. “There will be none of this. Whatever you want, cherie, it’s yours. You want the Sistine Chapel on your back, it will be so. I am Michelangelo reborn.”
That made her laugh, and as she saw the crinkle around his sapphire eyes, she knew that had been his plan. “I’m all right,” she said.
And she was. She was all right. Raithe had tortured her, broken her mind, again and again, but he hadn’t broken her spirit. He hadn’t broken her. Maybe Amara was right. Maybe the heart safeguarded truth like hidden treasure when the mind was broken, and all the mind had to do was find it again.
