But she would not have done it—and neither would that girl from the yearbooks and newspapers, the Winter Musgrave-as-was.
What had happened? Oh, God, what had happened to her fourteen years before?
IF WINTER HAD entertained fantasies of suburban domesticity earlier in the day, she got to play them out that night: Ramsey set up a card table in the living room and beat her soundly at Scrabble three games out of four. She enjoyed it far more than she thought she would—or ought. It was such a placid pastime; harmless and conventional.
And don’t forget inexpensive, Winter chided herself. It had not been so very long since she’d measured her enjoyment of things by the amount they cost. Now she was playing board games in a suburban living room with an old college buddy, and thinking of how nice it could be if there could be more times like this in her life; if they could just go on forever.
But not with Ramsey. The automatic amendment was swift. Ramsey Miller was a failure at the game of matrimony in too many times and ways for Winter to believe him capable of being a success now.
What had happened? Winter asked herself again, counting out tiles and trying to figure out if she could spell any words with what she had. The methods Janelle had used to run away from the chance to succeed was plain—but what had happened to Ramsey? He’d even had a job on a newspaper once, heading in the right direction for the career he hoped to have—and now he was here. And while it might be hard for some people to see this as a failure, she’d known Ramsey before, and Winter could not believe that he had freely chosen the life of a used-car salesman over his bright college dreams.
What were the choices that had brought Ramsey to this place in his life? Wrong ones, obviously, but had he known that at the time? Or had they been detours he thought he could get away with, unaware that he, too, had been living out the golden time that set the patterns that would dictate the rest of his life?
As she brooded, Ramsey’s theory about the golden time became muddled in Winter’s thoughts with the Grey Angels of the Hudson Valley, until for a brief bewildered moment she believed that the Grey Angels controlled the golden time; that its light shone from beneath their wings, and what it illuminated had the power to be different, really different, to throw off the chains of karma and—
“‘Qwozle’ is not a word, Winter—though I admit you’d get a lot of points for it,” Ramsey said dryly.
Winter looked down at the board and felt herself flush.
“I guess my mind was wandering,” she said.
“If you see my mind out wandering, be sure to send it back,” Hunter Greyson said, suddenly vivid in her mind. Winter wondered, with adult insight, whether he’d kept up that barrage of Noel Coward bon mots to be clever—or to mask a compassion that he knew could have no outlet. If he were here now, seeing what had become of Ramsey, he’d be just that prickly—because there was no way he could help. There was nothing anyone could do for Ramsey, any more than anyone could help Janelle. In their separate ways, each had given up.
“I’m sorry, Ramsey. I guess I’m tireder than I thought,” Winter said neutrally. Are all of my old friends emotional basket cases? They’re my friends—what does that make me?
“Well, you know what they always say—quit while you’re behind, right? Go to bed, Winter, have a good night’s sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
BUT WHEN she was sitting on the end of the fold-out couch, gazing down at her meager library—Venus Afflicted and Tabitha Whitfield’s manual of psychic hygiene—Winter was far from ready for sleep. She spread her hands out before her and stared at her fingertips. She felt a need to do something, and right now her options were limited. Of course, if she got upset enough about that, she could probably arrange to have a poltergeist fit; now that would really liven up the place … .
Winter’s gaze unfocused as inspiration struck. She was almost certain that she could call up a psychic storm—all it really took was intense emotion and loss of control, and God knew she’d experienced enough of both lately. And after that night in New Jersey, she was also fairly certain she could also stop one from happening, provided she had warning in time.
Was there some middle ground, then? If she could start them and stop them, didn’t that imply that more was possible?
Like what? Winter wondered. She wasn’t all that sure what a poltergeist did: opened doors and windows, threw things … .
So why not see if you can move something through the power of mind alone, as the comic books say? And bring your personal demons under conscious control. Winter wasn’t sure she wanted to believe in controlled psychism any more than in magic, but she knew that she no longer had the right to automatically reject the strange and uncanny. She looked around.
The room contained the fold-out couch she was sitting on, a floor lamp, and a folding tray-table that currently held her half-full wineglass and a litter of oddments. Her car keys. A lipstick. She rummaged through her bags until she had five objects lined up on the tray: her stuffed elephant good-luck charm, her hairbrush, a roll of Life Savers, the car keys, and a lipstick. She tossed off the last of her wine and tucked the glass out of harm’s way on the floor. She wanted nothing breakable in sight.
Now what? Winter felt unbearably silly, staring at her makeshift test subjects. Wonderful. I’ve discovered the psychic equivalent of cutting out paper dolls.
She refused to simply abandon the idea, however. Her sense of fairness demanded that it at least be given an objective test. She arranged herself cross-legged on the foot of the bed and looked fixedly at her collection.
Nothing happened.
How long do I have to wait? Winter wondered, and for that matter, what exactly was she waiting for? If she were a character in a book, she’d feel an absolute certainty, a conviction of rightness, an instant uprushing of power, and …
But she had felt an uprushing of power—just before the ball of lightning had hit Nina Fowler’s car. She’d been half out of her mind with fear, but even then the sensation had been distinct and memorable. Could she re-create it less disastrously now?
Almost out of habit Winter had fallen into the slow measured breathing of the exercise she used every night; the one out of Tabitha Whitfield’s pamphlet. With each breath she pushed envisioned power through her body until she felt both energized and supremely relaxed. Because she was sitting up, this time she didn’t fall asleep; instead, as she gazed at the tray full of objects she felt the illogical clarity of dreams—in which there are no limits, and everything seems possible.
The hand is the extension of the mind; now make the mind become the extension of the hand … .
It was almost as if some familiar presence stood beside her, guiding her. Winter became aware of a subtle tingling sensation in her chest, almost a heaviness, as though she had suddenly discovered the existence of a new internal organ whose presence she had never before suspected. This was the source of the strange painless flexing that was the somatic cue for one of her psychic storms.
There. That’s it. That’s your center.
The discovery pleased her—everyone always talked about how important it was to find your center and now she’d found hers. Holding her awareness of this feeling firmly in her mind in the way she had held the practice images, Winter concentrated on the objects on the tray. She would move the key ring … .
Now!
The ring of keys on its silver Tiffany tag jumped as if falling upward, and slewed sideways off the end of the table. The bang it made as it hit the bare wood floor made Winter jump, shattering her state of dreamlike alertness.
But unlike a dream, the sensation did not end with waking. Winter’s sense of triumphant success was submerged in the dawning realization that it was much easier to uncork the genie than it was to put it back into the bottle. Her skin tingled and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up; she could feel the intensifying potential pressing outward through her skin, seeking release in violence.
I’ve got to get rid of it somehow�
��ground the charge—
But it was too late. She felt the power gather itself; slip free of her control. She felt something deep inside her flex—
The bulb in the lamp did not so much shatter as dissolve, imploding with a clap and a fat blue spark that left the darkened room reeking of ozone.
Winter felt the residue of power drain from her body, carrying her energy with it—as though the effort she had just made was not merely psychic, but physical as well. Every muscle in her body ached, a familiar—if unwelcome—sensation. It was just like all those times at Fall River—and before.
“Happy now?” Grey said to her inside her mind. “Or just scared? Once you take responsibility for things, they belong to you—and you belong to them.”
But the exhaustion was swirling through Winter’s veins like a drug, and it was so much easier to let it carry her into sleep than to answer.
10
The Hunting of the Wren
Summers pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on.
—JOHN CLARE
THE COLD AIR on her skin roused her. Winter awoke early that morning with the virtuous sense of well-being she usually associated with an intense workout at her health club, and for a moment after she opened her eyes that sense of satisfaction was so compelling that she could not imagine what she was doing in this stark unfamiliar room. Then the memory of recent events returned, and with them, the sense of guilt and uncertainty—and the nagging sense of blame.
But for what? Winter could not think of anything she had done—other than end up in Fall River—for which she had to apologize. She shivered in the chill, pulling the blanket haphazardly around her. To be fair, there might be a number of sins in her past that she just couldn’t remember right now, but this feeling of omission seemed much more immediate than something like that could account for.
But she was feeling too restless to chase this particular puzzle for long. Winter swung her legs over the edge of the bed, wincing at the chill, and barely missed stepping on her keys. They were lying in the middle of the floor.
So I did do it! That discovery made her check the lamp as well, huddling the blanket around her as she stood. It confirmed her recollection; while the shade was untouched, the remains of the bulb were fused into the socket. There was no sign of broken glass anywhere.
Still a little room for improvement, Winter thought ruefully. She ran her finger gingerly around the welt of melted glass. I guess I owe Ramsey a new lamp.
The flutter of the curtain caught her eye. No wonder it was so cold in here—the window was open. She went over to it and pulled it slowly shut.
But did I open it last night before I went to bed?
Suddenly it was important to know. With a haste that left no time for shoes, Winter pulled on slacks and a sweater and hurried out of the room.
“RAMSEY?”
Her voice was so low he could not possibly have heard it. Winter swallowed hard, and pushed the front door shut, locking the spring lock and dead bolt and security chain.
All the living room windows were open. The heavy drapes were drawn back and the thin white curtains underneath billowed in the morning breeze. She closed the windows and pulled the drapes and then went back through the house. Every window in every room was open, as well as closet doors, cabinet doors, everything that could be opened. The dull resentful anger was a physical ache. And escape was only an illusion.
It’s here.
SHE’D SAVED the kitchen for last, out of an unconscious expectation that the worst demonstration of the wrongness that stalked her would be there. But when she arrived, all she found was Ramsey, incongruous in T-shirt and jeans, scrubbing his hands in the sink.
Scrubbing them to the elbows.
Scrubbing them hard.
“Is everything all right?” Winter asked. She’d hoped for bright neutrality, but what came out was fear.
“You’re up early.” Ramsey’s voice rang as hollowly false as her own.
Winter glanced up at the clock. 6:30.
“Careful where you step, it’s—” Ramsey stopped.
It’s wet. Winter mentally completed the sentence. She looked down at her bare feet, at the gleaming, freshly scrubbed, recently scrubbed kitchen floor.
Who mopped a floor at 6 in the morning?
“Ramsey, what happened here?” Winter asked him, voice low.
“Nothing,” he said with gallant dishonesty. But he could not meet her gaze.
Scrubbing and scrubbing … was it only in her imagination that Winter could smell that faint sweet stench; stale and organic like swamp water on a hot morning, or spoiled meat … .
“I have to go,” Winter Musgrave said.
HE DID NOT argue. Ramsey’s curse was that he could not tell comforting lies to himself or to others, no matter how unwilling he might be to face the truth. Huddled together forlornly in the kitchen’s breakfast nook, they shared one last meal, and Winter wondered if she would ever see him again. On the counter in front of her a cup of tea stewed and cooled, and scrambled eggs neither of them had the appetite for turned rubbery and dry.
“You’ll be okay, won’t you? I guess you’re going back to New York now?” Ramsey said hopefully. There was an undercurrent in his voice Winter didn’t quite understand.
“I need to find Grey,” Winter said stubbornly. Lately it seemed as if everything she tried to hold onto slipped through her fingers like grains of sand, until she existed alone, without anyone to reach out for or to touch. There was no time left to be patient with Ramsey’s evasions. “Do you know where he is? Have you kept in touch with him?”
Ramsey shook his head, but it wasn’t an answer. “It wasn’t the same at Taghkanic after you left, Winter.” But that was not an answer either.
“Where is he?” she said urgently.
“I … don’t know. Cassie would,” Ramsey said, relief obvious in his voice at having even this much answer for her. “Cassie kept in touch with him. I’m sure she did.”
“I’ve got an address for her in Berkeley …” Winter began doubtfully.
“No. That’s old. She moved to SF about four years ago, when she got the job managing that bookshop.” Ramsey spoke with decision, just as if Winter should know what bookshop and why Cassie should be managing it. “I’ll get it for you.” He left the kitchen quickly.
Winter pushed her nearly untouched breakfast away from her. Ramsey was as helpful as if he were anxious for her to be gone, and after what she suspected had happened this morning she did not blame him. But he didn’t act outraged or puzzled about it, or try to blame someone. As if he expected it … or as if it had happened before.
“Ramsey?” Winter called, suddenly apprehensive.
“Here it is,” Ramsey said, coming back into the kitchen. He set a three-by-five card on the table in front of her, an address copied out on it in Ramsey’s neat penmanship.
Ancient Mysteries Bookstore, Winter read, and an address on Haight Street in San Francisco. She felt a faint surge of discomfort; with a name like that it almost had to be a place like Inquire Within; one of those whole-hearted surges into the irrational. How could Cassie do this to her? Of the lot of them, Cassie had always been the sensible one, the one with both feet firmly planted in reality … .
A reality, anyway.
“Are you going to go see Cassie?” Ramsey asked.
“If I can.” Winter wasn’t sure what impulse made her qualify her promise. “Ramsey, about this morning … it wasn’t you; it was—”
“If you do, will you do something for me?” Ramsey interrupted her as if he hadn’t heard. “I’m—oh, God, I’m no good at this.”
He sat down across from her. The harsh illumination of the alcove light made him look suddenly old, harsh downward lines pulling his face into a frozen mask of age. “If you’re going, you have to understand, I … When you were asking about Nuclear Lake …” His voice drifted to a stop.
&nbs
p; “All my life I never took anything seriously I couldn’t see or touch. Used cars; there isn’t much more rock-bottom real than that, is there? I didn’t want to be blindsided by things I didn’t have any chance of beating—you know me, Winter; I always liked a fight, but only if it was a fair one. Up at Nuclear Lake …” His voice trailed off in a sigh.
So he does remember! Winter felt a primal flash of triumph.
“I didn’t like it, but what we did, what happened there, if it didn’t come from outside—from objective reality—then it came from me, do you see? I had two choices and I didn’t like either one. Jannie was just the opposite; she loved it and I think when she couldn’t find that magic any more something in her just … broke. A long time before Denny.” He picked up his mug and fiddled with it, not meeting her eyes. “Anyway, I didn’t forgive reality for being different than I expected. And lately …”
Winter could feel him gathering the determination to go on, to say what was obviously so hard for him to say.
“There was something Cassie wanted to tell me, Winter. Something that worried her. She wrote to me—pages of stuff. I wouldn’t even read it. She even called, and you know, we didn’t stay close, at least not that way. But she called me, and I wouldn’t even let her talk to me about it. She was looking for help, I think—and I wouldn’t let her ask for it. Because I knew that she hadn’t run away; she’d stuck with, you know, this stuff—”
And then she was in trouble—or you thought she was—and you couldn’t bear to think about it, because of what it might be. “Oh, Ramsey,” Winter said with soft compassion. She put her hand over his.
“So when you see Cassie, help her, would you? Find out what she needs?” Ramsey said.
“I will,” Winter promised.
A half an hour later she was on her way.
Witchlight Page 20
