So Ramsey's next, but do I really want to go on with this? Ramsey might be— oh, anything. I can call—/ really ought to call today—but that won't tell me what he's going to be like. Janelle sounded all right on the phone yesterday, but then look what happened. What if he and Cassie—and even Grey, if I find him—are the same way? All. . . changed?
It would be a two- or three-day drive to Ramsey's home in Dayton, Ohio—closer to four, Winter told herself with brutal frankness, if she considered how tired she was likely to get and how many stops she'd have to make along the way. She could drive to Newark Airport, though, and be in Ohio within a couple of hours by plane.
And if the plane's electrical system blows on the way? Not that it was really likely—the serpent fed on her emotions, and, at least so far, it had never managed an appearance when she was completely calm. But while the need to reach Ramsey was imperative, now that she'd seen Janelle, Winter felt strangely reluctant to see what cruel tricks Time had played on her other college friends. A few days by car wouldn't make a lot of difference, she told herself, and that way she'd still have her car with her when she arrived in Dayton and wouldn't need to rent one.
As Janelle had said, places were different distances depending on who was going there. Winter thought that for her, the distance between Rappahoag, New Jersey, and Dayton, Ohio, would be short enough to drive.
But going anywhere at all today would be foolish. Winter spent the morning in a hot bath—much to the annoyance of the maids, who wanted to turn out the room—and in the afternoon she called Janelle again. She had to be completely sure that something terrible hadn't happened to her—or to Denny—last night.
"Hello?" Janelle's voice was slurred and slow as she answered the phone, although it was well after one in the afternoon.
"Janelle?" A sudden pang of terror made everything go faint and cold. "Is Denny all right?"
"He's at work," Janelle said dully. "He's fine." There was a ghost of resentment in Janelle's voice, and it was all too easy for Winter to imagine the reason her friend sounded that way. A sudden fierce prayer filled her heart.
Grey Angels, whatever you are, come down from the Hudson and look into Denny's heart. And Janelle's, too. But make something right happen in her life. . . .
"It's Winter, Jannie. How are you?"
"Oh ... hi, Winter. I didn't ... I thought you had to get an early start?" Janelle's voice was leaden, her interest forced.
"My plans changed. Look. We didn't get a lot of chance to talk yesterday, why don't I come out, and—"
"I'm busy." There was life in Janelle's voice now—life, and fear. "I've got a lot of things to do today, and—"
"Jannie!" Winter cried.
"Go away," Janelle whispered. "Just—go away." The line went dead.
Winter stared at the phone in her hand until the strident warble of the off-hook sound dragged her attention back to the present. Slowly she hung up the line.
There were people she could call about what was happening to Janelle, agencies she could notify. She could even call the police. But if Janelle refused to acknowledge what was going on, refused to admit what was happening, there was so little anyone could do for her. The transformation had to come from within. Winter couldn't accomplish it for her.
Winter stared at the Taghkanic yearbook on the bed. It was open now to Janelle's picture. She could still see the ghost of that girl in the woman she'd visited yesterday, but that girl had been fearless.
Or had seemed to be ...
Winter turned the page in the yearbook, and looked at the smiling, dark-haired young man in the turtleneck and dark jacket. Time had not yet written its book on the pages of his face; it was an innocent face, lacking, in 1981 when the yearbook picture had been taken, the ingrained stamp of personality. Her flickering memories of Ramsey were all sunny, with never a cloud.
But how much had changed for him in fourteen years?
"Don't give up now."
The words and the tone were Grey's, dredged up out of some sinkhole of traitorous memory. If she turned the page of the yearbook Winter could see his frozen image—but if she closed her eyes, she could see him leaning against the wall of the hotel room, wearing cowboy boots and blue jeans tighter than sin, arms crossed over a snugly fitting Taghkanic College T-shirt, regarding her mockingly through lowered lashes.
"Don't give up now. Work yourself up to the verge of success and quit then. Be a BIG failure."
She opened her eyes, but of course there was no one there. There never had been. The wisp of memory remained, however: Hunter Greyson, perverse overachiever. She turned to his page in the yearbook and stared at his portrait. The face that looked back at her was unfinished. So ... young. Innocent in a way, although of course they'd all thought themselves the height of sophistication at the time.
Winter felt a faint smile tug at the corners of her mouth. She could feel the pull on the muscles with the unaccustomed use; she hadn't had any reason to smile in a long time. But Grey had always had the knack for turning disaster inside out like a paper bag; things still were just as important, but somehow they managed not to hurt as much.
She could use a little of that knack now.
Where was Grey, and could she find him? With money and private detectives almost anyone could be unearthed from anywhere, from Elvis to your birth-mother, but private detectives took time—sometimes years— to find a person, and even though Winter had a lot of money and an investment portfolio that brought in a tidy sum each year, if she went on spending like Ivana Trump, there'd be a piper to be paid sometime. She closed the yearbook and slipped it into her suitcase again. Going on as she had been still seemed to be the best choice—at least until something changed.
Or until the creature stalking her lost its patience.
It took Winter the rest of the afternoon to work up the nerve to call Ramsey. She'd dialed the number several times and hung up before the fourth ring, and in between she'd even called Cassie in Berkeley, although Cassie's number just rang and rang until Winter had hung up in disgust. How could Cassie not be there when Winter was actually feeling brave enough to talk to her?
At 8:00—7:00 Ohio time—Ramsey finally picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
For a moment Winter sat paralyzed on the edge of the hotel bed, listening to the half-remembered voice across the miles.
"Hello?" Ramsey said again.
"Ramsey Miller?" Her voice was a dry croak.
"Who is this?" There was a thread of suspicion in the pleasant masculine tenor now, as if he might be about to hang up—and if he did, Winter wasn't sure she had the courage to call him back.
"I don't think you remember me; my name is Winter Musgrave; we went to school together? College?"
"Winter!" The warmth that filled his voice made her giddy with relief. "Of course I remember you—where are you? Are you in town?"
"I'm in New Jersey, Ramsey, but I was thinking of coming out to Dayton and seeing you, if that would be okay?"
She suddenly realized that she and Janelle had done almost no talking yesterday about their shared past and their college days—the one thing you'd expect old friends meeting after a long separation to do. Yesterday had challenged none of the blanks in Winter's memory. She had to make sure things would be different with Ramsey.
"Okay? It'd be great! You're calling at a good time; things are pretty quiet here—"
With a sinking heart she heard the change in Ramsey's voice; the tension that meant there was something he didn't want to say—something bad. Winter resolved to go anyway. At least 1 won't find him being beaten by his husband. I hope.
"—so I can meet your plane. When is it coming in?" Ramsey finished, and Winter realized she'd lost a few sentences out of the conversation.
"I'm going to be driving, Ramsey; I've got a new car and I'm dying to break it in," Winter said with spurious cheer. "Is there a good hotel in the area?"
In OHIO? a part of her mind asked in mocking disbelief.
"Hotel, nothing. You're staying out at my place, and I don't want to hear any arguments. Look, I'll give you directions—"
There was nothing to do but accept gracefully, though Winter privately assured herself that she was more than capable of finding a hotel and checking into it before she met with Ramsey. For some reason it seemed important to have a secure line of retreat available, just as if Ramsey Miller had ever been capable of hurting anyone in his entire life.
But did she really remember what Ramsey had been like, or was this just another layer of smoke and mirrors?
They chatted for a few minutes more, with Ramsey giving her directions to his place from 1-80, the interstate that had replaced old Route 66 as the preferred means of automobile travel from coast to coast. Winter promised to give him a call the day after tomorrow to let him know how far away she was, and after a few more half-empty pleasantries, Winter hung up.
She stared at the telephone pensively. Would meeting Ramsey again be of any more use to her than seeing Janelle had? There was no reason to do it, otherwise.
Then don't do it, the inner serpent-voice suggested. Janelle's a loser, Ramsey's a loser—you're the only one who played it smart, who got into the game. And you won big, too—don't forget that. One look at you and good old Ramsey's probably going to hit you up for a loan. He probably just wants to see you to ask you for money, anyway. Who needs the aggravation? Don't go.
Winter rose to her feet and crossed the carpet. She'd drawn the curtains earlier, but now she pulled back both the printed room-darkening shade and the sheer liner to look out.
There wasn't much to see; just New Jersey and a scrap of the New York skyline in the distance beckoning like the towers of Camelot. Winter spread her fingers against the glass, pushing gently at the cold slick-ness with her palms. The bridges connecting the two states, lit for night, looked like expensive diamond necklaces, so tiny that Winter could imagine lifting one up and clasping it about her throat, there to burn like captive stars.
She could be home in her apartment in an hour. Chuck it all, get back to her life—maybe two weeks in Saint Barts to round things off, and then see if Arkham Miskatonic King was interested in hiring her back. Not this . . . shadowboxing.
The serpent-coils shifted beneath her skin, the serpent wondering if it had won.
No. Even if she surrendered to the serpent and let it take over her life once more, there would still be the other thing—the creature that Truth had summoned into her magic circle at the Bidney Institute, the thing that killed squirrels and rabbits and deer and left their bloodless corpses for Winter to find. The thing that Truth said was a magician's servant, an artificial Elemental sent to seek Winter out.
Why?
It always came back to "why," and the answer was hidden in the place Winter could not reach—her past. She could not stop now. She had to go on. If Ramsey kept in touch with Janelle, he might be in touch with Cassie—and Grey.
When it was that Winter had developed the notion that Grey could help her—never mind "would"—she wasn't sure. Dr. Luty would have pegged it as wishful thinking, one more defense against personal responsibility. Make someone else a talisman, and you absolved yourself of all need to do anything yourself. In Dr. Luty's cosmology, everyone was completely and personally responsible for everything that happened to them.
A comforting idea, but what if it's wrong? Winter watched the cars crawl by like glowing insects on the streets below. What about all the times that it IS wrong?
Still, the notion that she was only searching until she found somebody who could fix her life grated on Winter's sense of fitness. She wasn't doing that—was she? The poltergeist was her problem, and she was handling it herself, as was right.
But the other ... to think she could handle the other alone was true madness.
Either the door and windows of the Marriott were exceptionally poltergeist-proof, or whichever of the entities tormenting her was responsible for unlocking doors and opening windows had taken the night off. Winter awoke to a hotel room that was no messier than it had been when she'd gone to sleep the night before, packed her bags and settled her bill, and was on her way by 9:00.
By noon she had reached the Delaware Water Gap, once the gateway to the West, and now the gateway to Pennsylvania. Despite the sprawling urban blight—and it really was a blight, Winter decided, studying the eight lanes of highway flanked by expanding shopping malls critically—the region was genuinely pretty, and there were some places along the road that looked just as they must have thirty or even fifty years before, when America was a slumbering giant, just awakened from sleep by two world wars. Winter stopped for lunch at a diner that looked as if it had been dropped down on the roadside fresh from a time machine, and decided that no matter how early it was she ought to find someplace to spend the night. Pennsylvania was something like 700 miles of signs saying BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE ROAD SURFACE, and she was going to have to drive past every single one to reach Dayton, Ohio.
"Do you know of any place around here I can spend the night?" Winter asked the fresh-faced waitress in jeans and a polo shirt who brought her pie and coffee. Winter had never had a sweet tooth before, but now it seemed as if her metabolism ran on sugar—the quick burst of energy and the equally quick slide into insulin-induced weariness. Either state was preferable to the jittery overstimulated panic that presaged one of her poltergeist attacks, though Winter didn't worry about them so much now that she knew there was some hope of controlling them.
"Some place to stay? Well, there's the Hilton back up the road," the waitress said.
Winter had passed it on her way here, and felt a pang of distaste at the thought of its hundreds of sterile identical rooms. "I was hoping for something a little friendlier," she said hopefully.
"You mean like a Bed-and-Breakfast? Well, there's Lily Douglas's place. There's one of her cards over there on the wall; you could call her and see if she's got a bed free tonight," the waitress said dubiously. It was clear that she could not imagine anyone passing up the chance to stay in a Hilton's luxurious accommodations.
Oh, but there are better things than perfection. . . .
"Perfection is so deadly dull. No wonder Eve kicked the serpent out of Paradise, " Grey said.
The voice was so real that Winter, rising off the counter stool to go in search of Lily Douglas's number, actually looked around to see who was speaking. But it was only Grey, popping up out of memory and imagination once more to offer up his opinions.
This time her mind presented him to her as he'd been his sophomore year at Taghkanic. They'd done Camelot, and he'd been Mordred. She saw him now, in dusty Danskin tights and black ballet flats, wearing a shabby moth-nibbled green doublet that would look glorious from across the footlights, gilded by theatrical magic. In her mind, Grey swung back his cloak and rested his black-gloved fingers on the hilt of his dagger.
"As Mordred says, virtue can be deadly. And as Blackburn teaches, every virtue, carried to its extreme, becomes a vice—usually when it starts dictating the behavior of someone else."
The memory dissolved. Was this something Grey had said to her, or was it her wistful mind manipulating his image like a puppet to give her good advice? It didn't matter; whether the words came from Grey or from her own mind, they were worth heeding.
They just don't seem particularly applicable right now, Winter thought, staring at the bulletin board. Why should I be worrying about virtue—or perfection?
The Water Gap Diner was the sort of place that had a cork board where the locals could pin up business cards and notices. Most of them were for snowplowing, game butchering, or taxidermy, but eventually Winter found the one she was looking for. It was on pearlized pink stock printed with raised lavender ink and said Justamere Bed-and-Breakfast, with the name—Lily Douglas—a phone number, and a street address that was meaningless to Winter. She carried it over to the pay phone.
Two weeks ago you'd have cut your throat rather than telephone a stranger and g
o to a strange house. True, but those hadn't been the actions of her real self, but the actions of a Winter Musgrave who was sick, frightened, and all but beaten. And two years ago you'd have cut your throat rather than be seen in such a tacky, unfashionable place as this, her malicious other self added.
But that woman—that sleek Wall Street shark—wasn't the real Winter either, was she? Winter could not go back to living that stranger's rapacious, self-centered life—but if she didn't step back into that life, where was she going to go?
The phone was answered on the third ring.
"Hello?" A kindly voice, far from young but without the fragile breathiness of true old age. "Justamere Bed-and-Breakfast. Lily Douglas."
It was only then that Winter understood the play on words in the name—-Just a Mere Bed-and-Breakfast—and amusement colored her voice as she replied.
"I need a room for tonight; I know it's short notice, but the lady at the Water Gap Diner said you were local and might have something."
"Well bless her heart! You tell Amy that good angels must be watching over her—I just had a cancellation—well, a postponement—this morning. Only it's a double," Lily Douglas went on conscientiously, "and you might not want to take it because it's so large; it's my best room with a bath and all. ..."
"Why don't I come out and see it," Winter said. And if it wasn't to her taste, there was always the Hilton back up the road.
Justamere Bed-and-Breakfast was only five miles from the diner. This part of the Delaware—New Jersey border was farm country; on both sides of the road the trees were rich with new leaf and in the fields tiny spears of green were poking up through last winter's dead stubble. Winter was almost certain she had gone too far when she rounded a curve in the road and saw it.
How in the world did something like that get all the way out here? she wondered.
The old Victorian house had been built in the style known as Queen Anne Gothic, with garlanded turrets, bay windows, and gingerbread lace and jigsaw ornamentation everywhere. It was painted a pale custard yellow with the detailing picked out in white, and looked pretty enough to eat. The gravel driveway was wide enough to accommodate half a dozen cars at once, and Winter felt no qualms about pulling her Saturn in beside what looked like a battered old farm truck.
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