by Melanie Rawn
“Both,” he replied promptly, and bowed as he held out her chair.
The waiter arrived, unfurled napkins, presented menus, touted the evening’s specials, and took their orders for drinks. When he had gone, Holly cocked her head to one side and regarded him meditatively.
“You know, there really ought to be a model or actress or somebody staggeringly gorgeous on your arm.”
Evan’s lips compressed for a moment. “Maggie told you about Donna, didn’t she.”
“Which one of all the hundreds was that?” Holly parried.
“Knock it off. Maggie told me later that Donna scared the shit out of her. I’d found somebody exactly like our mother—blonde, beautiful, and the center of the universe,” he went on bitterly. “You worshipped her—or else.”
“I think the way Maggie put it was ‘dancing on a razor.”’
“That about sums it up. She was every kind of wrong for me.”
“Doesn’t make it any less painful that she leftyou,” she murmured, then ventured, “And broke your heart.”
“That was just pride,” he said dismissively.
“You know what? I think I’m starting to like your stupid cowboy boots, even if you won’t tell me the truth about where you got them.” She saw his frown return with puzzlement at the non sequitur. Nice to know she could still throw him for a loop every so often. “They make you something less than absolutely perfect.”
His lips twisted wryly. “Like when we’re at one of your literary parties, with people tellin’ me how brilliant you are—but I just spent an hour listenin’ to you whine about screwin’ up the plot so bad they oughta pay you not to write?”
“Just so. I keep asking myself ‘Why me?’ You think you’re not smart enough for me, and I think I’m not pretty enough for you—but I’m the only one who’s right.”
“Bullshit.” He signaled the hovering waiter. “I have a question for you,” he said to the young man. “Would you say that this lady here is just average, very pretty, or a total knockout?”
“Does his tip depend on his answer?” Holly asked caustically.
“No, and shut up. Well?”
The waiter considered her. “Knockout,” he said, grinning.
“Nice try, kid,” Holly growled.
“It’s the hair,” he explained to Evan. “And the eyes.”
“I think so, too. Bring her the escargot appetizer. I’ll have lobster ravioli.”
“Very good, sir.” He turned, paused, turned around again, and said, “And the legs. Honest, ma’am.”
When he left, she hissed, “That was sohumiliating!”
“Why? Does his opinion matter to you?”
Narrowing her eyes at him, she asked silkily, “Do the opinions of the people at those cocktail parties matter to you?”
“Touché.” He laughed softly, having made his point. “I think you’re gorgeous, and you think I’m brilliant. Isn’t that all that really matters?” When she 4. shrugged, he sighed his exasperation. “Lady love, I’m about to ante up the engagement ring. Isn’t this kind of a weird time to start all this?”
Appetizers, salads, and sourdough bread came and went. Pasta and wine, gelati and biscotti, espresso—knowing what was coming next, she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room to get herself together. Sure enough, her mascara was smudged, and she’d left her repair kit in her other purse. Her hair was hopeless. The Italian freckles had faded back in May, but there were plenty left; she looked like Doris Goddamned Day photographed without Vaseline smeared over the lens. Plus she’d spilled sauce on her skirt.
This was what he wanted to marry?
She scrubbed at the splattering of red dots, and bits of paper towel rolled soggily into the silk. Why her? It wasn’t that she’d taken for granted that he desired her—she’d just avoided thinking about it. Her response to him was so overpowering that even if she had sat down to think it through, it wouldn’t have mattered. She’d been helpless from the instant she set eyes on him. She’d gone along for the ride, loving every minute of it—and only in the last few weeks realized that he had truly become what a chuisle mo chroí meant: the pulse of her heart.
Chucking the towel into the wastebasket, she glared at her reflected face in the mirror. Idiot! The man of yoor dreams is about to make the engagemeat official, and all you call do is bitch about the spots on your dress—acting like you’re still eighteen at the fancy college with the rich blue bloods, and you just know they’re gonna smirk at your hillbilly accent and your hick clothes and your freckle-face—
—and suddenly in Chorale practice there’s this scrawny sixteen-year-old next to you who it turns out is just ad scared and nervous as you are, and you wind up eating lunch together and it as if you’d known each other all your lives—
Holly smiled, imagining Susannah’s exasperation. “Will you remember tonight because you spilled sauce on your dress? Or because that sweet gorgeous man is about to give you a ring worn by a woman who called her husband a chuisle? Get a grip, McClure!”
As she returned to their table, Evan smiled and got to his feet. Champagne had been poured. As she sat down, he regarded her with arched brows.
“You want I should do the kneeling part again?”
She shook her head. “Once is enough in any relationship, Lachlan.”
He resumed his chair and lifted his champagne flute. “Drink up. This is the good stuff.”
She raised her glass to him and sipped. “‘Good’? This is bottled sunlight!” As she set the glass down, she heard something rattle. Casting him a suspicious glance, she peered at the bubbles. “You didn’t.”
“Kinda risky, I know. You coulda swallowed it if you’d been thirsty enough.”
She poked a finger into the glass. It was too tall. She had to drink the rest of the champagne and then upend the flute. Onto the tablecloth fell a delicate circle of platinum filigree.
Lacking a diamond.
They stared at the ring. Then, horrified, at each other.
“Oh God—” Holly felt her eyes widen. “You don’t think I—”
“Did you?”
“I don’t think so—” Frantically she turned the glass over again, shaking it. “Evan, I couldn’t have swallowed it—”
“Are you sure?”
The glass finally yielded a small square of white-fire diamond. Holly let loose a tiny whimper of gratitude, and then couldn’t help but giggle. Evan rolled his eyes and gave in to laughter.
“You want to know why?” he demanded. “This is why!”
“Because I make you laugh?”
“Because nothin’s ever normal with you! It’d be just like you to’ve swallowed the goddamn diamond—”
“It’s not my fault the stone came loose!”
“—havin’ doubts practically at the altar—what am I gonna do with you?”
She grinned into his sparkling eyes. “Marry me.” Giddy with relief, she slid off her chair and went down on one knee, primed to pop the question.
She heard silk rip.
“Umm—Is there anything wrong, ma’am?”
Oh, splendid; the waiter. Very carefully she stood up, one hand on the jagged tear where the back seam of her dress used to be.
“Nice ass, too, right?” Evan asked the waiter.
“Very.”
She glared. “This is not funny!”
“Sure it is,” her intended said with infuriating sangfroid.
“If the lady has a wrap …,” the waiter ventured.
“The lady does not have a wrap,” she snarled. “Evan, give me your jacket.” As he made no move to comply: “Give me your goddamned jacket, Marshal, or I’ll shoot you with your own goddamned gun.”
“I think she means it, sir.”
Shrugging out of his suit coat, Evan replied, “I know, she means it.”
IN DUE COURSE EVAN JOINED Holly in the restaurant’s foyer, and in superbly well-mannered silence they waited for her car to be brought around. The merciful quiet lasted eig
hteen blocks—just long enough for Holly to start chuckling and Evan to start brooding. The pessimist in him was positive the diamond couldn’t be reset before she left for Kenya. Being a fundamentally superstitious Irish Catholic, he didn’t like the omen.
“Are you sulking?”
“No.”
“C’mon, lover-man. We had a great dinner and laughed our asses off. I’d say that’s a pretty successful evening. The only thing that got ruined was my dress.”
All at once he swung the BMW in a tight U-turn.
“Where are we going?” Holly asked.
He gave her a sidelong smile. Eventually he stopped the car on Fifth Avenue. After hitting the emergency blinkers, he reached into his jacket pocket for the dashboard card that let him park wherever he damned well pleased.
“What are we doing at St. Patrick’s?” Holly asked.
“We’re goin’ to church.”
He popped the trunk and got out of the car. Sorting through the mess of jumper cables, CDs, coat, first aid kit, bottled water, snacks, and other effluvia, he located the plastic bag she kept a change of clothes in. The reason for this, she’d told him when asked, was that while at UCLA she’d stocked her car in case The Big One hit. When he pointed out that she lived in New York now and didn’t have to worry about earthquakes, she informed him that hurricanes and blizzards weren’t much fun to get stuck in, either. Slamming the trunk, he went to the passenger’s side and waited for her to roll down the window. She did, giving him a sour look.
“Just get dressed,” he said, shoving the clothes at her. “Can’t go to church with your butt to the breeze.”
She struggled into the jeans, with only a brief glimpse of bare breasts as she rid herself of the silk in favor of a workshirt. She got out of the car, he keyed the alarm system, and they went up the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
“I’m not confessing,” she warned as he opened the great doors.
“Neither am I.”
“What are we here for?”
He didn’t really have an answer.
Cool, soaring, beautiful—he tried to feel God’s presence, but something was getting in the way. A few elderly women knelt in prayer; a middle-aged man emerged from a confessional; a priest was polishing the altar candlesticks. Lachlan bypassed the font, but halfway up the nave he paused to genuflect and cross himself. Holly didn’t do likewise. He sat in the front pew, eyes on the Presence Lamp. She sat beside him, fidgeting. When he took her hand, she stilled.
“I wanted to give you the ring before you leave for Kenya,” he began quietly. “I just wanted there to be something that means you’re mine.”
“Nothing could make me any more yours than I already am.”
“I’d marry you right now, this minute, if I could.”
The priest was limping toward them. “Something I can help you with?”
Another omen? After what he’d just said, to have a priest approach as if—
Holly was smiling slightly, shaking her head. “No, but thank you, Father.”
“Go in peace.” A gnarled hand sketched a cross over them, and he departed.
Holly said very softly, “I won’t go to Kenya if you don’t want me to. Ask me to stay and I will.”
“You can’t not go. And like I said, I want you to be sure about me. About us. I want you to have some time away.”
“But you also want your ring on my finger.” She slipped away from him and padded barefoot to a rank of votive candles flickering in red glass holders. He rose slowly to follow her, watching as she knelt and chose a candle from the box.
“Salve, Regina, mater misericordiae, vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve, salve Regina,” she sang softly, lighting the candle—not bothering with the thin, lit taper provided for the purpose—and placing it with the others. Rising, she turned to him. Her expression was slightly defensive, slightly defiant. “I’ve offered Fire to Her in every church I’ve ever been in.”
He stroked stray curls from her cheeks, smiling a little. “Holly Elizabeth McClure, you really are a pagan.”
“Especially on Sundays.” She relaxed and winked. “And now, Marshal, I’m about to do something very medieval—cathedrals have that effect on me. Your hand, please.” She took his fingers in her own, and—perfectly serious now—said, “Here, on holy ground, I plight thee my troth in true faith and honor—because you are the only man I’ve ever known who truly understands what faith and honor mean. Now kiss me, a chuisle. God won’t mind.”
Fourteen
“I DON’T BELIEVE THIS!”
Evan looked up from his computer screen. With Holly in Mombassa as of yesterday, the engagement party was his to organize. On his lunch hours. She’d done this to him with malice aforethought, he was sure of it. Susannah’s presence—even breathing fire and waving a blue-backed writ—was a welcome reprieve.
“What damnfool jackass of a prosecutor got a bunch of shit-wits together for a grand jury that could return this?”
“I applaud your faith in the legal system. Hand it over.”
She slapped it onto his desk, fuming. The high-flown legalese meant that one Denise Claudine Josèphe, along with several as yet unidentified coconspirators, was hereby indicted on Federal racketeering charges. The name was familiar—he hadn’t read her books, but he and Holly had run into her once or twice at parties.
“RICO?” he said. “That’s creative.”
“That’s just the sauce to cover the stink. Read on.”
The main course, it seemed, included drugs, sex with minors, kidnapping, and human sacrifice. Lachlan stared wordlessly up at Susannah.
“Want me to slug you so you know you’re awake?” she asked. “I’d just love to hit something right now.”
“I’ll pass. What is all this crap, anyhow?” He read a little further.
At the above-named residence, on May 1st, 2002, the body of Scott
William Fleming, aged nineteen, was discovered—
“Fleming?” The penny dropped. “As in the Reverend—”
“Yeah, the Reverend. He’s got Congressman Parkhurst in his back pocket and they’re both out to get their version of God into the White House. Looks like they plan to do it over the corpse of a nineteen-year-old boy.”
He sank back into his chair, shaking his head. Not just another penny but a great big shiny silver dollar dropped while Susannah spoke. May first equaled Beltane. He’d read enough to know how some people celebrated it. He also knew he’d be doing a whole lot more reading and researching and requesting personal files before he asked Judge-Magistrate Elias Bradshaw what the hell was going on.
WHEN BRADSHAW READ THE POLICE report and the judicial memo assigning him the case, he wished his ethics permitted him the use of a few esoteric curses.
Denise, Beltane, and the Reverend Fleming’s son. Shit.
He had to recuse himself. How the hell could he recuse himself without giving a reason why? Worthless mental gymnastics were interrupted by Susannah’s arrival in his office. She was holding a videotape.
“I have a present for you—a tape of Reverend Fleming’s latest talk-show appearance. You’re gonna love it, guaranteed.”
“Can’t wait,” he replied, in a voice that meant just the opposite. Bradshaw sprawled back in his leather chair and waited while she stuffed the cassette into the VCR, turned on the television, and came to stand behind him with one hand on his shoulder and the other holding the remote control.
“Welcome back to God Forum,” said the program’s host. “My guest this evening—”
“Pause it,” Elias said. When Susannah complied, he craned his neck to look up at her. “What’s ‘God Forum’?”
“Local cable show in Jersey. This is from a week or so ago. It got picked up by most of the New York news outlets. I’m told the Reverend might be on 60 Minutes next Sunday.”
“Oh, that’s just exquisite. Okay, roll it. I might as well get a preview of what I’m going to hear in court.”
“—received
his Doctorate of Divinity from Yale University, and has ministered to congregations all over the world. Some will remember his appearance here a year ago, after his return from a mission to India. Today he is visiting with us despite his terrible grief—for his nineteen-year-old son, Scott, was killed in May by a Satanic cult. Reverend Fleming, I want to tell you how sorry I am for your loss.”
The camera switched to the Reverend—tall, silver-haired, a wedding ring gleaming from his left hand and a gold class ring with a large diamond sparkling from his right. He wore a black suit, somber tie, and a small American flag lapel pin. The perfect dream of a televangelist, he scorned the airwaves and stuck to his pulpit. Bradshaw had to give him credit for that; he probably drove his handlers crazy by not agreeing to a TV show of his own.
“Yale Divinity, huh?” Elias murmured. “Presumably, then, he has a brain. Why is he using it to annoy me?”
“Hush up and listen,” Susannah admonished.
“—here tonight to beg anyone who has ever thought of looking into such cults to consider the consequences of such action,” the Reverend was saying in a deep, velvety voice. “To those already involved, I say to them that with Divine Guidance, they can renounce all involvement with Satan, Satanism, and demon worship, with Witchcraft, White Magic, Black Magic, voodoo, and the Black Mass. For the sake of their immortal souls they must repudiate all kinds of fortune-telling, tea-leaf reading, palm-reading, crystal balls, tarot cards, astrology, spirit guides, pendulum swinging, levitation, and automatic handwriting.”
“‘Automatic handwriting’?” Elias snorted.
“Oh, he’s just getting started.”
“—abandon all psychometry, geomancy, cleidomancy, aeromancy, amniomancy, ceromancy, crystallomancy, lithomancy—”
There was a hypnotic rhythm to it, like the relentless clatter of a train as it bore down on where you were tied to the tracks.
