"I see yer point. Better to have someone else sling it for ye." He wandered over to the window and stared, as he often did, into the hot summer night. "Ye two seem to be having a hell of a time working things out."
"I know," she said sadly, shutting down her computer for the evening. "If it's not one damn thing, it's another."
"Without me ye'd have all the time ye need to give over to this toxic business." He threw his head back slightly and closed his eyes. "Am I right?"
It gave her pleasure to watch him unobserved. It evened things out somehow. Besides, there was something about him that held her in thrall. It was as if she'd pulled aside a veil and was able to see how angels moved.
"It's more complicated than that, Fergus," she said softly, addressing his question at last. "It has to do with priorities. With you it's a matter of life and death, not just of political survival. I love you, Fergus," she said, surprised by how easily the words came flowing out. "I'll always be here for you."
He came over to the desk, splayed the palms of his hands on its surface, and leaned toward her, his green eyes glittering with emotion. "This isn't the way it was supposed to be, dear one. I never meant to mess up yer life this way. I thought I'd be in and out of it, and that would be that."
He reached his hand out to touch her hair. She held her breath, but she could not feel his touch, only a kind of soft and pleasurable charge. He drew his hand away. She knew instinctively that for him to dare caress her would be fatal, yet right now she was willing to take the chance.
"I've got into yer life now," he added hoarsely, "and now I don't want to get out."
"But you can't stay ... I can't let you take that risk ... I have to keep going, or --"
"Or what?" he asked with a bleak smile. "Either way I die."
Chapter 24
Emily had her key in the lock and was sliding the dead bolt into place when she heard the phone ring inside her condo. She swore under her breath and retraced her steps, catching the phone just as the answering machine kicked in. "Wait!" she shouted over the recorded message and Lee's voice. She began madly punching buttons, unsure which one stopped the machine. There was a screech and a howling sound, and the beast came grudgingly to rest at her fingertips.
"Sorry about that," she said, breathless from the effort. "I was on my way out."
"I'm glad I caught you, then," Lee answered in a relieved voice. "Emily, I'm sorry about the other day. I'd given my staff standing orders to turn aside anonymous tips; when you and I spoke, I was acting from reflex. During campaigns we get besieged with 'helpful information.
"Really."
"No kidding. Just today Jim Whitewood told me that the friend of an ex-girlfriend of a second cousin of Boyd Strom's called with what she claimed was the Scout's honor truth about Strom: When he was a kid, he stole crayons from the dime store and sold them to his classmates at a discount. She claimed it was an indication of his character. Maybe he did, and maybe it is," Lee added, "but it's not the way we do business.
"I see," she said, unmollified. "Toxic waste equals stolen crayons."
"Okay, that wasn't a great example. We've heard far worse, but I'm not about to jump into the rumor maelstrom and repeat them. Emily, please, I know your motives are snow-white. But I can't use it," he argued. "Don't you see that?"
"I don't know," she admitted.
"I miss your voice," he murmured with a weary sigh. "You're the champagne in my campaign, and lately I've been living on bread and water. I have half an hour before I leave for a Kiwanis speech. Am I making you late for anything?"
"I'm on my way to Talbot Manor," she said offhandedly. "But I can go anytime." Take that, Senator.
There was an extra beat or two of silence. Then:
"Do you think that's wise? As I recall, you said Fergus had a healthy fear of the place."
"Fergus can't stop me," she said, sounding more reckless than she felt. "No one can," she added, just to be ornery.
"Of course not. You're a grown-up," he said in his beautifully deadpan way. "You don't want to hear this from me, Emily," he said much more seriously, "but I think you're losing your perspective. You've romanticized this whole event and all the people in it, past and present. You're so hell-bent on solving this thing that you're forgetting your justifiable fears about Maria --"
"I can handle Maria," she interrupted.
"-- and whatever it is in there that Fergus refuses to face."
"I can handle that, too," she said defiantly. She was behaving like an absolute witch, and she knew the reason why: because her feelings were still hurting from the day she'd called him about the toxic dump tip.
"Look, at least promise me you'll wait until the weekend. I'll be free early Saturday; we both can --"
"Oh, right!" she crowed. "What could be more discreet than my showing up with a six-foot-two-inch celebrity senator on one arm, in a house that might be haunted, that rents beds for the night? If your opponent ever found that out, he'd think he'd died and gone to heaven."
"Don't worry about my opponent; worry about yourself. I'm serious about this, Emily. Don't go."
"'Don't go'? Is that an order?"
"Have you ever followed an order in your life? If you have, then it is."
"I think you know the answer to that one, Senator. Gosh! Look at the time; the Kiwanis will be getting restless." She was about to hang up when she added nervously, "Call me again when you get a chance, Lee?" Then she hung up.
Emily drove in deepening twilight to Newarth, her Toyota moaning and groaning all the way. By the time she reached the Bourbon roses that graced the massive iron gates of Talbot Manor, it was dark -- dark and oppressively hot, with the first stirrings of wind. The air was very heavy, very charged. A thunderstorm was imminent. That was fine with her; it'd be a distraction to the people inside Talbot Manor. Still, Emily hoped the storm would hold off until she'd climbed the granite steps carved into the side of the tower; she had no great desire to go hurtling through space into the bushes again. She crept around to the tower, located the foot of the granite escape, and aimed her flashlight at the window at the top of the steps.
It was boarded shut with plywood.
Nuts. Now what? Maybe the tower was so fire-damaged that Maria hadn't bothered moving the papers and diaries back into the desk drawer. Emily hadn't considered that, although Fergus might have. She should've mentioned her plan to him, but no-o-o, she had to decide to spare him any distress.
She went back to the front and hovered in the dark near the huge double doors, trying to figure out which room she should break into on the main floor. As she stood there the doors swung open and two couples, laughing and talking restaurants, stepped out onto the sandstone steps. Acting on impulse Emily said, "Good evening," and walked through the door being held open for her by one of the men.
She ducked into a side receiving room and peeked around the corner. The front desk, thank God, was unattended. Emily knew from Mrs. Gibbs that Frank was out of town; that left only Maria, presumably watching television in her private sitting room. Emily tiptoed past the desk on cat feet, her heart lodged firmly in her throat, and up the stairs leading to the guest rooms. There was no one in sight. If August was considered high season at Talbot Manor, she'd hate to own the place in the off season.
On the third floor the smell of smoke seemed to permeate everything, no doubt including all the beige drapes and all the beige carpets; the fire must have been a bitter blow to poor Frank's plans. Emily paused just long enough in the dimly lit hall to fling back the bolt on the new door into the tower. When she stepped inside she had to switch on the flashlight she carried; there was no moon to light up the room this time. Except for the acrid smell the tower seemed much the same, at least by flashlight. Emily shined her beam on the four-poster and saw different sheets, this time in a rich paisley pattern. So her hunch had been right. Not even the fire had been enough to drive Maria away.
There was a kerosene lamp on the floor next to the bed, and matc
hes. Emily decided to take the risk of lighting the lamp; the room was too pitch-black to move around with any ease. In the dim cast of yellow light she made her way to the desk behind the tall Oriental screen and pulled open the middle drawer. Maria had brought everything back—the diaries, the photos, the letters.
Emily went straight for the diaries. They all were bound in leather with tiny brass locks but were of varying styles and sizes. The first one was locked. That threw Emily for a loop, but the second snapped open nicely. The bookplate inside was inscribed in a neat but childish hand, "Mon Livre. Celeste de la Croix." Emily flipped through the pages. It was in French, every blessed word.
She was able to figure out that "1 janvier 1852" meant that Celeste was about thirteen when she wrote it, but for anything more than that she'd need a French dictionary. She put the diary down and picked up another: also in French, written by Celeste two years later. And another, still in French, three years after that. But by 1863, the date inscribed in the next diary, Celeste had become confident enough to write in her naturalized tongue, English. By 1863 Hessiah had been born and James had drowned; surely Celeste would have had been moved to write about it all. With a prayer of gratitude Emily held the diary close to her breast.
Immediately she felt the heat. Her thumb, which had been resting on the brass plate of the locking mechanism, might just as well have been resting on a hot iron. Shocked and in pain, she dropped her flashlight and the diary at the same time. In the dark she could see the diary's brass plate, glowing red.
"Oh, God." She snatched up the diary and stumbled with it across the room to one of the casements, opened it, and dropped the diary onto the lawn thirty-five feet below her. She watched in horror as the little brass plate continued to glow, a small and evil eye staring back up at her.
This was not Fergus.
For a small eternity she stood at the casement, paralyzed with fear and indecision. Whatever it was, whoever it was, understood completely that she was an enemy force come to do battle over the diaries. Whatever was in those books, they were meant to stay in the manor. And now without thinking, Emily had violated that territorial imperative. She could still retrieve the book, throw it back through an open window, and flee, leaving the evil in the house to reign freely, with the beautiful and bizarre descendant of Celeste de la Croix Talbot in devoted attendance.
But what about Fergus?
Emily closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then blew it out and went back to the desk. There were six diaries in the drawer: the locked one, the three in French, the one she had thrown out the window, and one other. Calmly, deliberately, she picked up the first and jimmied open the lock with her Swiss army knife. It was in French and dated 1849, when Celeste was ten. Emily tested it by holding it to her breast, laying it over the crystal just as she had done before. Nothing happened.
She put it back and repeated the gesture with each of the others she'd looked at. The diaries remained cool and inert. That left the sixth one. She picked it up and flashed her light over the first page. It was in English, dated 1867, the year Celeste was thrown from her horse. The last entry was in July.
Every day it becomes more apparent to me, though no one else seems to see it. Yesterday he flew into a rage after Hessiah went up to Chef and presented him with her "dear 'ittle kittycat" in exchange for a piece of marzipan. Everyone else was amused -- the girl is charming in an outrageous way -- but now this evening the gardener has found the kitten in back with its neck twisted. The presumption is that a vagrant with a grievance against Chef was to blame. But I do not believe it.
Emily flipped through the pages feverishly, scanning for other telling passages, but it was hard to read by flashlight, and she was too much in a hurry. She found nothing specific, nothing incriminating. Her eye fell on several expressions of unhappiness with John Talbot -- Celeste thought her husband was "relentless" and "sharp" and "intolerant" -- but there was nothing about the mayor, nothing that jumped out anyway. Still, she'd been right about the Talbots' marriage being loveless. If that was true, then anything was possible.
Slowly, fearfully, she brought the diary up to her breast and tested it against the necklace. The heat came at once, of such burning ferocity that she felt the crystal searing her flesh. She let out a yelp of pain and hurled the diary across the room. The leather cover, dry and brittle with years, glowed red hot in the dim room, then erupted spontaneously into flame. Horrified, Emily stumbled toward the bed and yanked the coverlet from it, then ran to throw it over the burning book, knocking down chairs and small tables in her panic. She grabbed a broom and stomped the coverlet repeatedly, fiercely, as if a deadly snake were writhing underneath it.
Now the coverlet was on fire, smoking at first, and then bursting with small, wicked spikes of flame. Too late she remembered the fire extinguisher in the third-floor hall. She ran through the door she'd left open, ripped the heavy red cylinder from its bracket, and ran back to the coverlet, pulling the pin and spraying the coverlet with almost maniacal zeal. When the flames were quelled she kept on spraying anyway, until the cylinder was emptied. Exhausted and dripping with sweat, she let the extinguisher fall to the floor and cautiously, gingerly crouched down and lifted the coverlet to see if there was anything to salvage.
The diary was a charred, misshapen lump. Emily unfolded her knife and poked it into its edge, to see if any of the text had survived. Suddenly the lump exploded into flames again, one of them licking Emily's hair with a kind of evil deliberation. With a horrified cry she threw the coverlet down and jumped back, her nostrils filling with the sickening stench of burning hair and skin. Tendrils of black smoke began to crawl out from under the sodden coverlet, snaking toward her.
She took one step back, then two. "Don't you dare," she whispered faintly. "Don't you dare . . ."
She didn't know what was there anymore; she knew only that it lay writhing and curling between her and the door. There wasn't a doubt in her mind that she'd never make it past the incinerated diary. The exit window was boarded up, and the original door led to nowhere. This was it, then. She was going to die. She looked down and saw a sharply defined, very black needle of smoke encircling her blue jeans.
"No!" she cried, outraged. "I'm not finished yet!"
But her knees had turned to jelly. She collapsed to the floor, overcome by a hideous, indescribable pain, as if the oxygen were being sucked from her chest. She wanted desperately to black out and be done with it, but she was being tortured with continuing consciousness. She tried to think of what she'd done to deserve this, but she could not, and that made her think of Fergus, hanging from a rope that should never have been looped around his neck. "Fergus ... oh, Fergus." It came out in a dizzying whimper.
When the room began flooding with light her first thought was that Fergus should not have come, that the house was empowered. But her second thought was one of almost sublime elation. He had come; he would prevail. Even now the pain inside her seemed to subside to something bearable. But she couldn't possibly stand, much less run from the tower. She was caught between two equal and opposing forces of heat and light, and there was nothing she could do but watch and pray.
Yet there was little to see, because she was blinded by the light, and little to do, because she was powerless. She felt a great pulsing and shifting of energy back and forth through her, as if the cosmos were expanding and contracting. Even in her brutalized, victimized state she felt a sense of awe for the sheer power of the forces involved. Wave after wave advanced through her, then retreated, until finally she felt that she had been broken down into the smallest possible particles, like sand on a beach. Then, gradually, the fury began to subside. It was over.
And she knew that Fergus had won, because she was able to breathe again, and stand up again, and swallow without pain. But at what cost to him? "Fergus," she said in a frightened, tentative voice. "Fergus?"
But he did not answer. When Emily turned around she realized that although Fergus had destroyed something terrible
, he'd left intact the handmaiden to that terror: Marie Grissette. She was standing in the open doorway, tall and thin and poised, surveying the destruction that had gone before. Behind her -- unless he was an apparition -- stood Lee Alden, alert, watchful, calm.
The three of them stood frozen in an eerie, silent tableau for what seemed like a small eternity. To break the spell, Emily suddenly lifted the blanket and flipped it aside, revealing the burned lump that was all that remained of the last year of Celeste Talbot's life.
Maria understood instantly what had happened. Emily was prepared for just about anything, but not for the speed of the horrifying transformation in the woman. Maria let out a scream that was not of this world and charged at Emily, her arms outstretched before her, her fingers curled into talons. Her face was stripped free of its serenity, twisted with rage and pain.
She clawed at Emily and began pulling her down, but Lee jumped between them, using all his considerable strength to drag the madwoman away. Emily had all the fight of a rag doll left in her; when Maria let her go she fell hard into the corner of a nearby dresser. And then everything went much blacker than it had ever gone before.
****
When she regained consciousness, she was being loaded into an ambulance, and Lee was alongside, getting directions from the driver to the hospital.
"Wait ... wait," she said rather stupidly, trying to sit up. "I'm fine. And I left my bag." She was thinking of the diary, lying in the wet grass somewhere next to the knapsack she'd left there. "Let me up. Right now, please. I must insist."
"Easy does it, Emily," Lee said with a shaky laugh. "These guys are bigger than you are; don't give 'em any trouble. I'll get your bag for you and bring it along. Where'd you leave it?"
"In the grass, by the tower." She grabbed the lapel of Lee's suit and pulled him close. "There's a diary somewhere around it," she whispered loudly in his ear. "Bring it. I don't think it can hurt you. It should be cool by now. If it's not, leave it. I know who it was anyway."
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