(Moon 2) - Edge of the Moon

by Rebecca York

  He closed his eyes, banishing the terrible image. He didn't need it. Not now.

  He took several measured steps down the hall, focusing on the conversation coming from the kitchen. Craig was talking to their housekeeper, Emily Anderson, and he remembered that seven-year-old Lily was at a friend's for dinner. Emily was going to pick her up later.

  Nine-year-old Craig was enthusiastically helping with the cookies.

  "You promised I could lick the bowl. If you keep on scraping like that, there won't be anything left," Craig complained.

  "I think you like cookie dough better than cookies."

  "Yeah. And you got those eggs that come in a carton so I could eat the dough."

  "Mm-hmm." The housekeeper chuckled. "I suppose I liked the dough better, too, when I was your age," she admitted.

  "Not you, Mrs. A."

  "Oh, yes."

  Jack set down his briefcase and leaned his shoulder against the wall, enjoying the domestic eavesdropping. His children had gone through a pretty rough patch, and it was gratifying to hear Craig having a normal good time, thanks to Mrs. Anderson. A plumber's widow, she was the perfect grandmother substitute for two kids who needed as much stability in their lives as they could get. And she ran the house with quiet, unobtrusive efficiency.

  The timer rang. From the hallway, Jack watched the housekeeper bend to open the oven and take out a cookie sheet. Deftly she used a metal spatula to transfer the cookies to wire racks.

  "When can I have one?" Craig asked.

  "Well, we both know it's supposed to be dinner first and then dessert."

  "Aw…"

  Emily lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "You can have a cookie first, if you have it with a glass of milk. Just be sure to eat your dinner—so your dad won't think I'm a bad influence."

  "You're a good influence! I've heard him say that."

  She made a tsking sound as she set the boy up at the table with his before-dinner treat, then popped the last sheet of cookies into the oven.

  Jack was about to join them when Craig stopped him in his tracks with a question. "Does a girl have to be married to have a baby?"

  He saw Mrs. Anderson set down her pot holder and turn slowly, saw his son watching her intently.

  "Uh, why do you want to know?" she asked.

  Craig scuffed his foot against the chrome leg of his chair. "Dad tries to be real cool, but he'd probably get uptight if I asked him."

  "What made you think of the question?" the housekeeper asked carefully.

  "On the playground today, this kid, Billy Patterson, was talking about his sister. He says she's going to have a baby and that her and her boyfriend are probably going to get married."

  "She and her boyfriend," Mrs. Anderson corrected. "Craig, this is the kind of thing you should talk to your dad about."

  "Oh, he got me and Lily this book that explains all about… you know… about how the mom and dad… you know. But I can't imagine anyone doing something that yucky unless they were married and… you know… had to have a baby."

  "Well, some people… uh… try it out before they get married."

  Jack felt a stab of guilt, because he was glad Emily was handling this for him. One of the things he dreaded about single fatherhood was coping with the sensitive stuff.

  "Oh." Craig thought about that. "Do you think my mom and dad did it before they got married?"

  "I don't know."

  "But they did it after. Twice."

  Jack took a step back, his stomach knotting. God, what he wouldn't give to do it with Laura again!

  Closing his eyes, he took a quick emotional inventory. His wife's loss was no longer a raw wound. Maybe he was even ready to think about a relationship with another woman—although he hadn't met anyone that interested him.

  With an inaudible sigh, he returned to the front door, opening it silently, then closing it loudly to announce his arrival before striding down the hall.

  Both occupants of the kitchen looked toward the door, embarrassment painted across their faces. Mrs. Anderson bent and checked the oven again. Craig took a gulp of milk.

  "What a great surprise. Cookies," Jack said, grabbing one and taking a bite.

  HE was slender and of medium height, with pale gray eyes that darkened when he was excited or when he wore his special contact lenses. His hair was fine and blond as corn silk. When he combed it carefully, the medallion-sized bald spot on his crown was invisible.

  He called himself many names. Simon Gwynn was his alias today, although that wasn't his real name, of course. He was careful to keep his real identity hidden, because to have possession of a name was to have power over that thing or person.

  No one had questioned the legitimacy of Simon Gwynn or any of his other names. They gave him protection—from the police, from those few men who still knew and practiced the ancient magic arts. And from other more powerful forces.

  But names weren't his only safeguard. He had many homes, so that he could switch his residence if need be. And there were many disguises that he put on when he ventured forth into the world of ordinary men and women. Not just the clothing—the whole persona, he thought with a self-satisfied laugh. He could look and sound like an old man in a dirty button-down shirt, baggy pants, and a white Albert Einstein wig. He could play a plumber in a visor cap and blue coveralls with the name Jerry embroidered on the breast pocket. A fast-talking salesman in a crisp blue suit, horn-rimmed glasses, and a mustache. He had a wardrobe that filled an enormous closet. And the theater courses he'd taken had taught him the art of makeup. Once or twice, he'd even passed as a woman, although that certainly wasn't his preferred mode of disguise.

  Alone at home, he dressed quite simply and all in black. This afternoon he was clad only in loose-fitting silk trousers that slid sensuously against the skin of his legs as he climbed the stairs from the basement.

  He'd been down there to check on the prisoner in the soundproof cell behind the locked door in the laundry room. She had been spaced out when he'd scooped her up. Spaced out and all too trusting. Stupid, actually. Too caught up in a relationship to pay attention to little warning signs. But most people were like that. You simply had to understand how to manipulate them. How to assert your will over theirs.

  She was still sleeping from the drugs he'd put in her food. If she figured out what he'd done, she wouldn't eat the next time he fed her. But that was okay. If she didn't eat, she'd get weak. And that would only make it easier to handle her when he brought her into the black chamber and used her in the most important ceremony of his career.

  As he ascended the stairs, he stroked his fingers gently over the skin of his narrow chest. It was pale, except where it was crisscrossed with a network of fine, raised red lines. He stroked those faint lines, loving the way they felt under his sensitive fingertips. The scars were the product of the lash he'd taken to his own flesh. The lash that was part of the discipline of his studies.

  The lines that remained were symbols of his acquisition of knowledge, and he was justifiably proud of them.

  When he reached the second floor, he walked with measured paces to the library. The walls were lined with volumes, old and new. The Golden Dawn as revealed by Israel Regardie; The Black Arts, the brilliant biography of Aleister Crowley; The Great Beast, Hopper's Mediaeval Number Symbols; The Kabbalah, Butler's Ritual Magic. Most of the standard works in his field. He was still looking for Portal to Another World on the off chance that it still existed somewhere. But he didn't need it; he'd learned enough on his own from the books he had hunted down in private libraries and dusty shops. Along with the ancient texts and the histories of magic rituals were the other branches of knowledge he had explored. Psychology, pharmacology, economics, social history, anthropology, physics.

  He had studied long and hard, delved into mysteries that few understood. He had practiced the rituals he needed, memorized the words of power. And soon he would be ready to put all his hard work to the test.

  A tingle
of excitement rippled over his skin, and he struggled to regain his composure. There was no room in his life for euphoria. Not yet. Not until he had achieved his goal.

  CHAPTER TWO

  « ^ »

  IN HIS DREAMLESS realm, Ayindral felt a ripple in the current of time, a moment in which he could catch the leading, edge of the wave and change the course of events.

  The woman was the key. The woman who had captured the magician's interest.

  But he needed to be sure of the man as well. Delicately his mind probed the world of humans. Sight and sound were alien to Ayindral. Yet he could simulate the tools that humans used.

  Through the shrouded fog of his own universe, he opened a window into the world of men. It was only a narrow slit in the time-space continuum, and yet there was an immediate rush of mental energy from one state to another, like a rush of wind, a pulling sensation that turned the core of his being cold.

  A soundless scream rose within him. Soundless because he had no mouth, no vocal cords. He was a being of pure energy, and pain was alien to him. Yet he felt it.

  Ruthlessly, he ignored the frightening sensation. The danger would come, yet the time of greatest risk had not arrived.

  Now he entered the mind of Police Captain James Granger and sent the man a new idea—reinforcing it with a clenching cramp in the gut.

  JACK looked up to see Captain Granger standing beside the blotter. "What are you working on?" his supervisor asked.

  Jack gestured toward the papers spread across his desk. "I'm doing a background check on Harold Westborn, the guy whose wife says he slit his throat."

  "Yeah. I think we can turn that one over to the medical examiner."

  Jack blinked. "We're not going to investigate it as a possible murder?"

  "Let's see what the M.E. says. If he confirms suicide, then we can cross it off our caseload."

  "Okay." That wasn't the way Granger usually worked. Usually he assumed a suspicious death was murder, until the facts showed otherwise. But he figured the captain must have his reasons this time.

  Granger's next words confirmed the speculation. "I've got something more important for you. Come into my office."

  Jack pushed back his chair, then followed his supervisor to the private enclosure in the corner of the squad room.

  When they were both seated, Granger said, "I'd like you to interview a woman named Kathryn Reynolds." He consulted a file on his desk. "She turned in a missing person report two days ago on her tenant, Heather DeYoung. One of the uniforms at the Rockville station, Chris Kendall, took the initial report."

  "Uh-huh."

  "We have several other missing person reports in the county. Another woman named Brenda Quinlin. A young man named Stewart Talber. And an eight-year-old boy, Kip Bradley."

  Jack felt his chest tighten. A kid. About the age of his own children. He remembered reading about it. There was some evidence that the boy had been abducted by his noncustodial father, but neither the man nor the boy had turned up in a month of beating the bushes for them. Jack was still hoping it was the father, because the alternative hit too close to home.

  "The missing guy is a mentally-ill man," Granger was saying. "On the surface these incidents don't seem related to each other—or to Heather DeYoung. But you're good at digging information out of witnesses and making correlations. DeYoung was just reported missing. I want your impressions, and then I want you to see if you can find any patterns."

  Basically, there was nothing strange about Granger's request. Jack knew he was good at connecting the dots on crimes that might not seem related. Still, Granger's manner put him on the alert. There was something else in play here. Had a bigwig with an interest in one of the cases leaned on the captain?

  Jack knew he might never find out. So he simply said, "Okay," took the offered case files, and went back to his own desk to study them.

  AN hour later, he pulled up in front of Kathryn Reynold's nicely preserved Victorian on Davenport Street. Out of habit, his appraising eye took in details. It was early in the season, but the flower beds were dressed with a fresh layer of mulch. Pink and red azaleas and a variety of daffodils were in bloom, along with white dogwoods.

  The plantings were mature, like the house. They might say nothing about Reynold's tastes. On the other hand, she hadn't ripped out the bushes and paved the yard with antique brick, the way he'd seen with home-owners who didn't want to be bothered with the great outdoors.

  His gaze flicked back to the structure. The white siding looked like it had been painted recently. And the paving in the driveway was fresh, which suggested that the owner was doing well financially. The house and garden definitely looked better than some of the other properties in this older Rockville neighborhood of mature trees and wide lawns.

  Rockville had once been a sleepy rural community about forty minutes north of D.C. Years ago, its chief claim to fame was that F. Scott Fitzgerald was buried on the outskirts of town. Now the country church and its graveyard were surrounded by a tangle of highways—a symbol that suburban sprawl had moved out to envelop the area. But there were still neighborhoods, like this one, that looked pretty much the way they had seventy-five years ago.

  He sat for several more minutes, still grappling with the odd, disquieting feeling that had settled over him in Granger's office. He might have ignored it, but long ago he'd learned to trust his spider senses.

  He'd worked with Chris Kendall, the officer who had taken Reynold's report, back when they were both at the Bethesda station, and he would have liked to talk to him before coming out here. But the patrolman had left the building for a doctor's appointment before Jack had gotten the assignment. Too bad, because the initial police contact was a good source of additional information. The uniforms put down what was required in writing. But there was usually a whole lot they didn't get onto paper. Jack liked to do a little probing into their casual observations, stuff they didn't think was important enough to go in the report, or stuff they didn't even know they'd noticed, until he asked about it. He also paid attention to their opinions, which gave them a chance to express "gut feelings" that were often useful later.

  Of course, Jack suspected Granger was probably planning to do the same thing with him. More than once, the captain had sent him out on an interview that hardly seemed top priority, then quizzed him on his impressions.

  After climbing out of the unmarked and locking the door, he glanced toward the second floor of the house and caught a flash of red. Red hair, he realized—as fiery as flames flickering behind the windowpanes.

  Was that Reynolds? Or someone else? Whoever it was had pulled back the moment he'd looked up. So she was nervous about getting caught peering out or curious about who had pulled up in front of her house?

  He hadn't called ahead. She'd said she worked at home, so he'd taken a chance on catching her in—catching her off-balance if there was something going on that she hadn't shared with Officer Kendall.

  He tucked the folder unobtrusively under one arm and started toward the front door. According to the initial report, Ms. Reynolds owned the house and lived on the upper story. The missing woman had an apartment on the ground floor.

  Jack rang the bell and listened to footsteps coming down an inner stairway. He prepared to confirm the name of the female who opened the door; but the moment the door opened, the breath froze in his lungs so that it was impossible to speak.

  He was caught and held by a pair of emerald green eyes, a sweep of wild red hair, and skin like rich dairy cream.

  His muscles went rigid. His arm clamped on the folder tucked against his body.

  Time seemed to stop, like a scene from a videotape frozen on a TV screen. Unable to move forward or back away, he stared into her eyes, seeing her pupils dilate and then contract.

  Everything around him was out of focus, with the exception of the slender young woman standing in the doorway. She remained sharp and clear. Details came to him: the way her breasts filled out the front of her wildflower
-printed tee shirt. The smell of strawberries wafting toward him. The startled look in those green eyes.

  Along with the physical awareness came a jolt of pure sexual energy, like nothing he had ever experienced in his life. Lust at first sight. It was almost palpable—arching between them like electricity between two contact points. Dangerous and at the same time so compelling that he would have leaped through a wall of fire to reach this woman if she had been on the other side.

  The whole out-of-kilter experience lasted only seconds. Then the world as he knew it clicked back into real time. The moment had passed so quickly that it was easy to tell himself that it had all been in his imagination.

  He clung to that theory, because if it wasn't imagination, he was hardly equipped to deal with what had happened.

  The woman in the doorway took a quick step back, as if trying to escape from the same emotions bolting through him.

  For several heartbeats, neither of them spoke.

  Finally, Jack dragged air into his lungs and let it out before asking, "Kathryn Reynolds?" He was surprised that his voice sounded normal.

  "Yes. And you are?"

  "Detective Jack Thornton, Montgomery County P.D."

  Reynold's hands clenched in front of her. "The police? Have you come to tell me something about Heather? Is it bad news?"

  "Are you expecting bad news?" he asked, slipping back into his professional mode, carefully watching her reaction.

  "No… I mean, I don't know. I hope not. I don't know what to expect."

  "Can I come in? Then you can tell me what brought you to the station house."

  "Can I see some identification?" she countered, as if she'd just realized she should have asked.

  "Of course." While he pulled out his I.D. and shield, he was still mentally shaking his head at his out-of-character reaction in those first few seconds after she'd opened the door.

  She studied his I.D, then said, "I already filed a report with Officer…" She stopped and fumbled for the name. "Officer Kendall."