Divine Night

by Melanie Jackson

  Modern clothes, a shocked face, and an attached head. Ergo, she was seeing a real person and not an apparition from the English Civil War. Which was a good thing, she hoped.

  All that remained to be seen was whether the intruder was carrying a weapon somewhere other than in his rather tight jeans, and if he was some wide-eyed crazy looking for her autograph. Even as she reached for her glasses, in the hopes of bringing the stranger’s face into focus, the man was stepping into the room. Unfortunately, he didn’t step far enough to bring his features out of the shadows.

  “I beg your pardon,” the soft voice said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Gillian shoved her glasses onto her face and peered cautiously at her visitor. He was rather tall and lean, with light brown hair and a definite look of refinement in the nose and mouth.

  That was about all she could see from her perch on the seat of the chair. But, she decided, he also seemed rather diffident, even helpless. These things taken together with his corporeal state convinced Gillian that she didn’t need to start screaming or racing for the phone to summon help.

  As she got over her amazement at the intrusion of a live person into her gothic daydream, a reasonable explanation for the man’s presence presented itself.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Carter isn’t here,” she heard herself say calmly. “He’s let the house for the summer. To me.”

  Her visitor blinked once, and Gillian noticed that his eyes were light in color. The exact shade was impossible to guess in the dim room, but she thought they were probably gray.

  “Um.”

  She waited, but her visitor appeared to be oblivious of the need to make some explanation for his presence in her home. Or perhaps he was simply too fazed by her earlier scream to make his excuses. His gaze was rapt enough to suggest a large degree of shock. Or even simplemindedness. Obviously, the task of conversation had fallen on her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t hear the bell, Mr…”

  After a long moment’s hesitation he repeated: “So sorry to startle you. I—” The light eyes finally focused on her face, and the clear intelligence dawning in them gave the lie to the idea that he was in any way mentally impaired. “I didn’t ring. In fact, I let myself in through a side door.”

  “A side door?” she repeated blankly. Then: “What side door?”

  He waved a vague hand in the direction of the dining room, which did not in fact have any outside doors but only long windows, and said sincerely: “I didn’t know you were in here. I hadn’t heard that…Terry…had let the house. I’m afraid I’ve been coming and going much as I pleased in the last several weeks, and it didn’t occur to me that anyone would be disturbed. Now that I know you’re here, I’ll just take myself off again.”

  The man turned quickly and walked off into the dark hall. The floor beneath him was an oak parquet, but it made not the slightest tap, creak, or groan as he passed over. That was probably because he was wearing sensible rubber-soled shoes. Probably.

  “Wait!” Gillian scrambled off of her chair and started after the retreating figure. “Who are you? How…?”

  But she was talking to air. The man had vanished into the shadows. She didn’t hear any door close in the dining room, but a current of air coming from the front of the house suggested that the front door had been opened.

  “That was very strange.” The inventive half of her brain added another brick or two to the fantastical idea that had been building ever since she realized that the dark-dressed intruder was one of flesh and blood rather than historic ectoplasm.

  “Nonsense,” she scolded herself, dismissing the coincidence that the stranger had scuttled out of sight like a startled spider. Or a cat burglar. “He was just a friend of Mr. Carter’s. Don’t go making a plot out of this.”

  The large clock in the entry hall ticked on complacently.

  “All the same, I wish he’d stuck around long enough for me to get his spare key.”

  Of course, if her inventive brain was correct, her intruder wouldn’t need a key to get into the house.

  “Hyperactive imagination. You have to stop reading the tabloids. Why would The Spider be here?” Gillian started walking toward the front door. The idea was whimsical—too wild for anything except a romantic plot—but night had truly fallen, and it was definitely time to arm the security system, especially if her uninvited guest had left the front door unlocked when he made his precipitous exit.

  Harmony couldn’t stay asleep. And it wasn’t because she had pigged out at dinner. Though she had. What a cook Alex was! That meal would have put the fear of God—or of losing a four-star review—into the heart of any rival chef who tasted it. A few more meals like that and she wouldn’t have to worry about love breaking her heart; cholesterol would do it in first.

  Harmony rolled onto her left side.

  It might have been the storm’s fault that she couldn’t sleep. No rain was falling yet, but she could clearly hear the churning of the milk-white sea around them, and the flickering light was nearly strobelike when it snapped against the shutters, making them appear to shiver. This shouldn’t have bothered her. She’d been in bad weather before, and Cornwall’s classic storms were practically expected by someone like her who was a connoisseur of literature dealing with smugglers and the Beast of Bodmin Moor. It might, on some other night, have actually been enjoyable. But tonight was different, and the storm had seemed to be shaping up to be just a little too classic, a little too much like something from a B horror movie, and she’d tried closing the drapes against it before going to bed and pretending she didn’t have a strong suspicion that the weather was actually plotting to kill her. Fabric and wooden shutters didn’t stop the sound, though, nor all the light. And sturdy as the cottage was, she felt every buffet of the hostile wind as it made exploratory attacks, testing the building’s defenses.

  But really her trouble with finding sleep was that she couldn’t get Alex out of her mind. Couldn’t get the phantom memory of his hands off of her restless body. As she lay tossing under the old linen sheets, it was as though he still stroked her, even now when she was awake andclearly alone.

  This wasn’t good. Most kisses didn’t register on her personal Richter scale, but even the memory of Alex’s lips sent the needle straight to nine. And this was something more than mere memory.

  Unless it was Alex’s memory?

  Harmony sat up.

  That might mean he was thinking of her. That he had changed his mind about wanting her? He had seemed pretty definite about refusing her after dinner when she had brought up the subject in a roundabout fashion. Of course, that was before the storm arrived.

  Harmony exhaled slowly. Did she want Alex to be thinking of her? Did she truly want him to be her lover? When she was near him, the answer was clear, but once away…

  The cottage shuddered rhythmically, almost grunting under the repeated pulsations of wind that seemed to be the very heart of this monster storm that had surrounded them but refused to land.

  One thing was for sure: If this was Alex’s restlessness communicating itself to her, she’d never sleep unless he did. Maybe it was time for them to have a nightcap—a stiff brandy, perhaps, with a Valium chaser.

  Throwing back the covers on her cot, she pulled a sweatshirt over her summer-weight nightgown and walked down the hall to his bedroom on catlike feet. As she had suspected, the door to Alex’s room was open. His bed was empty and hadn’t been slept in. So, he wasn’t sleeping either. If he was thinking of her, it was with a conscious mind and not because he was lost in dreams.

  What should she do? Could he be pleasuring himself? The thought made her blush.

  Harmony stood in the dark hall, listening for Alex with her ears but also with her other senses. There was no sound to guide her, but she knew from historic records that the old Alex had often spent his nights in the library, writing. Instinct said that that was the place to begin her search.

  She hesitated, looking around uneasily. Th
e library was on the first floor, down a dark stair. The halls, which had been efficient and gracious—and even alluring—when conveying her through the house earlier in the day, had grown longer, narrower, darker, seemingly less inclined to be helpful to a stranger. It was as though the house was pushing out unwanted guests from parts of the building by shutting down the nighttime passageways, and drawing in on itself as it cowered before the lashing winds and rain.

  Her hand reached for the light switch and then froze. She could have turned on the lights and perhaps pushed back the unfriendly dark, but decided instead to go back to her bedroom for the flashlight Alex had provided and for some slippers. Even standing on rugs, her feet were cold.

  Though the flashes of lightning assaulting the evenly spaced windows showed her the way, Harmony tested her flashlight briefly, keeping her fingers over the glass so that little of the beam escaped as she walked down the hall. Though she was reluctant to admit the thought existed, the fact was that she didn’t want to disturb the expectant gloom of the house or anything outside the cottage by calling attention to her presence. Logic said—well, it said all kinds of things. But she couldn’t quite stand the idea of venturing into the night without some other light. Spirits abided there at nighttime, perhaps not all of them benign. A wise person would go back to bed. But she wasn’t wise. Feeling like a curious cat, light of foot and alert to whatever lurked in the shadows, she slid down the tight hall of what she hoped was still just a house and not some passage into Persephone’s Underworld.

  Where had that thought come from? Was it Alex again? What on earth was he doing?

  Lightning flared, followed by an immediate clap of thunder. Nerves breaking, Harmony scampered for the library. She ran to open the door but found the room empty and dim. Like a vampire, she paused at the threshold, afraid to go on without an invitation from her host.

  No Alex; however, she could see an untidy pile of papers on the floor near the wing chair, evidence that Alex had been at work. Steeling herself, she forced a foot over the threshold.

  The fire in the hearth was nearly dead, but she turned off her flashlight as she entered the room. Her fear abated as she progressed, but she remained respectfully wary. She clearly sensed that Alex was nearby, and that his mind was not on things of the twenty-first century. Wherever his thoughts were, she didn’t want to see them too clearly. Or that was how she explained the decision to turn off the flashlight and move stealthily.

  Harmony walked slowly to the windows that opened onto the balcony and was not even half surprised when she saw Alex perched on the narrow stone balustrade. He was propped against a large lidded urn, one knee bent in what should have looked like a relaxed pose but clearly was not. His head was turned away as he looked over the ocean and the turmoil in the sky that seemed to be drawing ever closer but never quite reaching them. The wind seemed to ignore him. For a long moment he was as still, as frozen as any statue, his hair as motionless as carved obsidian, his bare hands and feet made of alabaster.

  Yet she knew he was alive—sensed it with every fiber of her being. Subconsciously—or perhaps deliberately—he had called her out of her dreams and brought her here. Alex was thinking of her, and his thoughts had gotten him as stirred up as the wind and sea around them. She should just open the door and go out to him. He was vulnerable, lonely. He could be hers this night.

  That was what she should do. If she still wanted him.

  But she didn’t open the door. The library threshold she could cross, but not this one.

  Harmony couldn’t logically explain her sudden indecision and nervousness. It wasn’t that she thought Alex would hurt her, especially when he was lost in the storm’s wildness, and she wasn’t taken aback by his physical oddness anymore. But the longer she thought about it, the more his being outside keeping a vigil in the storm seemed in some way a bad omen. For one thing, the weather was still bitter, and worsening all the time. No rain fell, but the temperature was plummeting in a death spiral, and the almost painful smell of ozone was thick in the air. Alex’s occasional breath was actually turning to frost and falling down on his lap where a tiny pile of crystals already lay, so perhaps there would not be just rain but also hail. His hands were naked and silver white. So were his feet. It wasn’t a fit night out for man or beast, yet he remained outside. This had to be Alex’s version of an extremely cold shower.

  Why didn’t he just give in and come to her?

  Lightning hit again—this time almost striking the cottage itself. Still, Alex did not move.

  Harmony exhaled harshly, making her eyes focus and her brain work. A lap full of crystals? Bare feet? Alex was outside in the freezing cold and he wasn’t wearing a coat or shoes. Also, when she looked again, she could see that he wasn’t so much leaning against that giant funereal urn as clinging to it, a clawed hand anchoring him to the rim as he leaned over slightly and peered at the sea. With his eerily white skin, he looked more than a little bit like a vigilant angel of death waiting to swoop down on the souls of whatever sailors were about to die in the stormy coastal waters.

  Was he ill?

  Harmony reached for the door slowly. As she watched, Alex’s flesh began to glow and steam started to rise from his body. The steam froze almost at once, forming an icy cloud, and swirled about him in a slow, counterclockwise motion. These crystals did not fall but were borne off into the night. It was like watching his spirit being stolen away by the darkness.

  Harmony shivered, in spite of the room’s warmth and her nightgown, thick sweatshirt, and slippers.

  Alex wasn’t human—not all human. Not anymore. He kept saying he wasn’t—that his human life had died—but she hadn’t believed him. Was this truly what she wanted? To take some divine but clearly unhuman being to her bed?

  Her eyes looked past Alex and out at the storm that fascinated him. As she watched, she saw that it, too, was moving in a counterclockwise direction. The storm was circling them like a cyclone, drawing closer but never actually touching the island. Was that normal?

  Or was it Alex? Could he be controlling the weather?

  The thought shook her. He had said there were other side effects to his treatment. If he had some sort of energy field around him that shorted out computers and phones, could he also control the weather?

  She stared harder at the night and the man she wanted for a lover. Out at sea she could see smoke frost forming on the water, but traveling too quickly and against the wind. Smoke frost was not a phenomenon common to Cornwall. It happened in the North Sea sometimes when a warm wind—

  —like from Mexico—

  —passed over an arctic ocean. It made an instant ice storm on the water.

  Desire didn’t go away, but it curled back a bit, recoiling from this idea, and Harmony thought of what Alex was thinking instead. Was he desiring her—the woman of medium blond hair, medium psychic ability, and medium writing talent—or just riding the power of the storm and finding it extremely sensual? Was this like Mexico? Was it worse? If she went out to him and then changed her mind, would he stop? Could he stop? Or would his wild high override both of their wills and judgment?

  Torn between the lure of opening the door and asking Alex why he was out in the night, and of sneaking away before he noticed her and knew that she had answered his probably unconscious summons, Harmony hesitated in the shadows, gripping her flashlight and shivering.

  She talked quickly and sternly to herself. Alex liked storms, got high on them. He’d told her that. But he was as aware of their last close call as she was. He wouldn’t call her downstairs on a whim. And surely if something was wrong, he would wake her in some conventional way and warn her of the danger. He wouldn’t just give in to the storm and let something bad happen while he went with the high. There was no reason for her to be suddenly afraid of the night, or of him. At least, no more afraid than she had been before.

  Harmony swallowed hard. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t.

  But if she didn’t want to make love
to him, she should just go back upstairs and try to sleep.

  Sleep? Who was she kidding? But at least she should go to bed and leave Alex to his troubled feelings. If he still wanted her in the morning, she would reconsider.

  Another thought occurred to her, making her frown. He was probably just trying to fight his way through his writer’s block on his current story. It could be fictional sex on his mind, or a memory of Thomasina—in other words, general sex thoughts and not desire for her specifically. After all, it was more than possible that he had been thinking of his book, working by the light of the fire, and his mind got caught up in the past. His subconscious probably began reading outdated messages, desperate notes of longing from the wounded psyche of a man who really no longer existed but didn’t know how to let go of his past—the ghost of his last love living on in his subconscious. He might still be lusting after a dead woman who’d been called to new life by this storm, and by his forced remembrance of ancient events dictated by the creative process.

  He might not want her at all, Harmony sensed. That could make any advances from her very embarrassing.

  Yes, he was striking, as beautiful as any midnight that had ever been. And it was not just his body that was pleasing to her but also his ready wit and compassion. That didn’t mean that the feeling of…longing or whatever she felt was returned. She was getting confused because of their shared mental connection, mistaking one emotion for another.

  After all, what had changed in the last few hours? Just because she had found her fear of intimacy dying out as they dined in comfortable familiarity on the splendid meal he had prepared didn’t mean he felt the same comfort and trust with her. She tried to think back, to judge his reactions to their conversation, but she found herself unable to be clear and unbiased.

  There had been a lot of wine flowing at the table. Harmony had barely noticed when the first small truth about her past fell out of her mouth. She was used to fabrication—had meticulously worked out the highly fictionalized and witty story of her ideal youth—but she hadn’t bothered to repeat it tonight. And what might have been only small truths exchanged simply to be polite had soon turned out to be large truths about her goals and plans and desires for the future. She was coming to trust him—to speak her mind to him without reservation or fear. And he had listened intently.