“I don’t know.” Winter drew another deep breath. “I don’t know if I can. Cassie was a—” She waved her hand helplessly. “I don’t know what to call it without being rude. Her friend Rhiannon said she was a witch.”
Truth smiled faintly. “They do call themselves that,” she admitted. “But wasn’t Cassie involved in the Blackburn Work when she was here?”
“With Grey,” Winter agreed, pronouncing the name with only the slightest of hesitations. “Rhiannon said that Cassie—I’m not sure I’m remembering this right—had decided that it was more important to depend on yourself than on any gods at all, so she’d sort of adapted the Blackburn Work? I hope that doesn’t offend you,” Winter added dutifully.
Truth smiled to herself. “It’s more or less what Thorne did with the magickal tradition he was trained in,” she said. “Change is usually a good thing, when it helps people and organizations adapt to new truths. But tell me more about Cassie, if you can. You said she was still involved with the Work. Do you know if she tried to summon or stop the Elemental?”
Winter frowned, trying to remember what Rhiannon had said. At the time she’d been to caught up in her own emotions to listen. “I think it sought her out. I think it sought them all out.” Winter drew another long shuddering breath. “Oh, Truth, everything’s gone so wrong!”
It took nearly an hour for Winter to summarize the events of the last month—of her visits to Janelle, who had trapped herself in an abusive marriage out of fear of success, and Ramsey, whose life was another sort of failure. As Winter spoke, the Elemental’s attacks and the daily lives of her college friends seemed to meld into one vast tapestry, events supernatural and natural blending together into one long tragedy.
“After I found that Cassie was dead I just lost my head—her friend Rhiannon said she left a letter for me, but I didn’t even stop to see if she was telling the truth. I came back East, visited my family, and then went to my apartment.” Winter laughed shakily. “It looked like a bomb had gone off in there, and while I was looking around, that thing came back and paid me another visit, just like at Nuclear Lake.”
“You don’t seem too upset, all things considered,” Truth said, darting a glance at Winter’s bandaged hands.
“You can’t be terrified all the time,” Winter said, a faint note of gallows humor in her voice. “And … it wasn’t the first time it had come back. I made it leave. But, Truth, I don’t think I can do that again—and if I could, it would only mean I was giving it a chance to attack someone else.”
Truth sighed. What Winter said was true. “I think you are the only one who has any chance of stopping it,” Truth said slowly.
“But you don’t think it’s a very good chance.” Winter stood, more to release tension than from a real desire to end the interview. “That’s okay. Nobody lives forever. Ugh. I’m stiff from all that driving. Want to go for a walk?”
“I THINK this is where I was happiest,” Winter said. At Winter’s urging, she and Truth had walked across the campus, past the buildings, to where the tended manicured lawns of Taghkanic College gave way to the orderly ranks of gnarled old apple trees that marched down nearly to the river’s edge. “Not any particular place. Just at college.”
The water lapped at the shore of broken shale with a sharp choppy motion. It was May; the trees were in full leaf now, their branches spotted with hard green spheres that would become apples in the months ahead. The river was wide here, and on the far side the bank rose sharply, its canopy of trees a green vista matching the one on this side, except for a clearing or two that signaled the rolling lawns of a Hudson Valley stately home.
“Many people say that about their college years.” Truth had gone to Harvard, spending six years as a hard-science workaholic. She did not remember her college years as being particularly happy. The best years of her life were now.
“It’s just that everything after that went wrong somehow. You make choices in college that you aren’t ready to make, that nobody tells you how to make. Every choice is built on those, and slowly everything just sort of goes out of control …” Winter fell silent, inspecting some interior landscape.
Truth waited patiently to hear the real reason for Winter’s return. Everything else, frightening as it was, could have been handled with a phone call.
Finally it came.
“Tell me what you think I ought to do about the Elemental. I have the feeling I’m only going to get one chance.”
Winter’s abrupt change of subject did not confuse Truth; it was only an attempt to deal with a subject that, by its very nature, was nearly impossible to deal with. Sacrifice. Self-sacrifice.
“You told me you’d gone looking for the other members of your Circle,” Truth said. “You mentioned the others. Did you find Grey?”
Winter stooped and came up with a small handful of rocks, heedless of the bandages on her hands. Focusing intently on the task, she began to fling them out into the water one by one.
“I never saw him again after I went home from college that spring.” Winter’s voice was strained. “I don’t think I treated him very well after that. I think he thinks so, too. Or else he’s already dead.”
No! her mind screamed silently, and a sick heaviness of grief throbbed in her chest. Never to see him again—never to talk, to touch, to kiss …
“Do you think—?” Truth began.
“No!” Winter’s denial was hot and quick. “He … I don’t know,” she faltered miserably at last. She closed her hands tightly over the last of the stones, and after a moment Truth saw red begin to seep through the layers of gauze.
“Winter!” The exclamation seemed to rouse the other woman; she dropped the stone with a hiss of pain and held out her hands. Rusty flowers of blood bloomed through the tape.
“That was stupid,” she said with only a faint quaver in her voice. Truth saw her bite her lip, but her hands remained steady. “As I was saying,” Winter continued in a tightly controlled voice, “I don’t know where Hunter Greyson is or what he’s been doing. I hope Cassie’s friend Rhiannon can tell me; that’s where I’m going next. After that, I imagine I have to let this occult thing of yours catch up with me.” Her voice went flat on the last sentence. “You’ve said you could offer me some advice.”
“Yes.” Truth did not add to the statement with false words of reassurance. She had too little information—even the warning she had received that this battle was not hers to fight did not mean that Winter would survive it. “But first, let’s go get that hand seen to—it looks as if you’ve reopened a very deep cut.”
“Probably.” Winter’s voice was uninterested. “But the deepest cuts don’t bleed, Truth. They don’t bleed at all.”
A QUICK STOP at the campus infirmary got Winter’s hands rebandaged and gained her a stern admonition from the campus nurse. Afterward, Truth steered them toward the faculty dining hall.
“You look like you could use some lunch, and I want to tell you what I’ve learned while you were gone.”
Like most of the college buildings, the interior of the dining hall was done in the Gothic style of the great European universities, imparting something of an ecclesiastical tone to the long high-ceilinged room. The area reserved for the faculty’s use was on the second floor of Taghkanic’s cafeteria building, and doubled as the faculty lounge. Orders were sent down and meals sent up from the kitchen below by means of the dumbwaiter system that had been new when the college was built.
With the familiarity of long practice, Truth took Winter’s order, and added a bottle of wine—a privilege granted only to senior faculty and those nonfaculty, like Truth, who used the dining room. Once the order had gone down she conducted her guest to a table.
“You’ll feel better once you’ve had something to eat,” Truth said.
“I can’t stay,” Winter burst out “—very long,” she amended under Truth’s level gaze. “Every minute I delay, something could happen …”
“I’ll drive you to the airp
ort myself—tomorrow,” Truth said firmly. “For now—do you remember Dr. Atheling from Fall River?”
Winter frowned. “He was one of the other doctors, not mine. He was … very kind.” She shook her head. “It’s all jumbled; I’m not sure how much of what I remember really happened. I was on so many different drugs; you know, you never realize how far from normal you’ve gotten until you try to go back.” Winter sighed and looked at Truth, willing her to go on.
“I went to Fall River and spoke with him.” As she knew Winter had, Truth left some things unsaid. Winter could not yet have Truth’s own hard-won acceptance of the realities of the Unseen World, and to confront her with things she would have to dispute would be needless cruelty. “He asked how you were; apparently he knew even while you were there that an Elemental had been constructed to stalk you.”
“But he doesn’t know who sent it, or how to stop it, any more than you do,” Winter said with brutal insight. Just then, a chime from the dumbwaiter announced the arrival of the food, and conversation ceased while the plates were brought to the table and the wine was poured.
Winter drank thirstily, as if it were water—or as if she were trying to get drunk. “So now what?” she said, with a faint aggressive note in her voice.
“Now you confront it anyway, with Hunter Greyson’s help or without,” Truth said. “It’s the only thing I can think of that might work. You have some sort of connection with it; you’re the one it’s trying to reach. Magicians don’t exactly list in the telephone book, you know—and while I’m not a very good one, I have the feeling that Dr. Atheling is, and he said he couldn’t control it.”
But had he? Truth wondered. Or had he said he wouldn’t?
“You said you’ve controlled it before; that’s a start,” she finished.
Winter looked down at her newly rebandaged hand with a rueful expression. “In a roomful of broken glass I had a lot of incentive. But all I could do was push it away—and that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” She drank again, emptying the glass, and held it out for a refill. “It isn’t gone for good. And it’s going to come back.”
In her situation, I’d drink, too. Truth refilled the glass without comment. Alcohol was well known for its depressive effects on the psychic centers; Winter’s perceptions of the Unseen World must be spilling over into every facet of her daily life by now, and this was a last-ditch attempt to curb them.
“I just don’t see that you have a lot of choice,” Truth told her after a moment’s silence. “You’ve said yourself that running away doesn’t seem to work; it only finds other targets for a while and then comes back to you. You may have more of a chance against the creature than you realize, though: Elementals are surprisingly vulnerable under certain conditions. What you’re going to have to do is choose your ground carefully.”
“No moveable objects,” Winter interjected mockingly.
“No moveable objects,” Truth agreed. “And I’d stay away from power lines or other electrical sources, if I were you. But the Elemental should come fairly readily if you try to bring it—it wants something from you, remember.”
“What if all it wants is to kill me?” Winter asked.
Truth met her gaze unflinchingly. There was a long moment’s silence.
“Then killing you should make it leave,” she said at last.
“Fair enough,” Winter said, and drank again.
“WHEN YOU CALL it, I don’t know how fast it will come, but when it does you can expect the same sort of disturbance that followed you before. You’ll probably feel cold and weak—It’s linked to you; it draws its energy from you, at least in part.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” Winter asked. She shifted irritably in her seat as the Taconic Parkway scenery scrolled by. The day was cloudy and overcast, sullen and uninviting despite the thick spring foliage landscaping one of the most scenic roadways in the United States.
True to her word, after a long night spent giving advice and discussion, Truth was driving Winter down to JFK to catch her flight to San Francisco.
“Okay. I’ll try to make this as simple as possible. Occultists believe in the existence of what is called the subtle body; what it means, in essence, is that every person has what amounts to two bodies; one here on the Plane of Manifestation, and one on the Astral Plane.”
“It sounds like science fiction,” Winter said tightly. Truth sighed.
“I assure you, it’s entirely real. I’m not even saying you have to believe in it, but you asked me a question, and this is the only answer I have. And what it amounts to, in your case, is that a magician has somehow linked this Elemental—which has much of its existence on the Astral—with your subtle body. It’s as attached to you as if you were at two ends of an extension cord.”
“What about my soul?” Winter said, almost at random. “Isn’t that really what you’re talking about here?”
Truth grimaced. She knew Winter was only trying to change the subject. She’d spent hours last night explaining to Winter how best to confront the artificial Elemental’s threat, but one night’s lecture could not take the place of years of study.
“No; the soul is—occultists believe that the soul is something different entirely. Look. We don’t have enough time for this explanation as it is,” Truth said, striving for a light tone, “and if we start talking about the soul we’ll never get through it all. Let’s get back to the construct. Do you have any questions about what to do once you’ve summoned it?”
Winter shrugged. “It seems fairly basic; say ‘Here monster-monster-monster,’ and see what happens. And then—” She fell silent, grimacing. “It all seems so ridiculous, except when that thing’s actually in front of me.”
“I know,” Truth said gently. “But Winter, you have to try to concentrate.”
“On communicating with it,” Winter said bleakly. “On asking it what it wants. On sucking it in through this astral garden hose that connects us. Frankly, I’d rather drink industrial waste.”
“Your choice,” Truth reminded her, and Winter snorted. “I wish you weren’t making this trip back to California. It makes you so vulnerable. There’s a place near here where you could try to call it; I’d be right there,” Truth added.
“No. I’ll do this alone. It isn’t fair to make you face it again,” Winter said.
Truth didn’t remind Winter that, if Winter died and the creature were still at large, Truth would be doing exactly that. She suspected that Winter already knew.
“Well, after all, I can hardly sit in your office calling everyone in San Francisco and asking them if their name’s Rhiannon, and if they used to know a friend of mine, and if the letter they say they have is real, a forgery, or even exists at all,” Winter drawled defensively. “If I go back to where I saw her before, she may still be haunting Cassie’s bookstore.”
With a belated pang of guilt, Winter remembered that her car was still sitting in Long-Term Parking at SFO … at least she hoped it was. Her current rental car was sitting parked safely in Truth’s driveway; returning it was Truth’s problem now.
“And if you do find her, but the message is lost—or has nothing to do with Grey?” Truth asked gently.
“Then I’ll come back here,” Winter said with bright falseness.
And though Truth knew she lied, there was nothing she could do to stop her. Because finding Grey was still their last, best—only—hope.
SHE’D RELIED on the comfort of Truth’s mere presence more than she’d known, Winter realized. From the moment she stepped away from the car at the drop-off zone at JFK, Winter had felt lost and alone. It was easier to pretend bravery when there was someone else there to be fooled by the act. Now there was only Winter, all alone, who had even less faith than Truth seemed to in her ability to do anything but die at the bidding of some Otherworld creature. A creature whose nature and desires she didn’t understand, sent for a purpose she had never known.
Winter picked up her boarding pass and proceeded to the F
irst Class lounge. She wouldn’t reach San Francisco until this evening, though because of the three-hour time difference she would arrive only three hours after she’d left instead of six. Rummaging through her purse, she pulled out the card that Paul Frederick had given her on her last ill-starred visit. Handmade Music. That was the place to start.
It began to rain. Small showers of droplets clung to the boarding-lounge window, obscuring the view of tarmac and the waiting planes. The inhospitable vista was the perfect counterpoint to her mood.
THE RAIN SEEMED to be lying in wait for her; Winter stepped out of the terminal into the dusk to be greeted by a blowy drizzle that was either a very light rain or a very heavy fog. In either event, the weather was cold, damp, and unwelcoming. She shivered inside her cashmere barn coat. The weather wouldn’t make driving any easier, either.
She’d tried Handmade Music’s number from the airport and gotten no answer. She tried not to let that discourage her; it was a setback, not a defeat. She could always drive to the neighborhood and see what she could find on her own. Without too much difficulty she located her car and paid the exorbitant fee for losing her ticket without a murmur, as if money no longer had any meaning. In a perverse way, Winter found the probability of her death wonderfully liberating. There were no more appearances to keep up.
As if what was left of her life was truly charmed, she reached the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets as quickly and easily as if she were a long-time resident of the city. There was even a parking space, and Winter slid her car into it, shutting down the lights and engine before it occurred to her that perhaps she ought not to be here at all. The streetlight reflected a thousand points of light off the raindrops that starred her windshield now that the wipers were stilled, and all the light was gone from the sky.
Winter looked around. The street that had looked merely shabby and down-at-heels by daylight looked positively sinister now. Though she would have walked unhesitatingly through rougher-looking neighborhoods back home, Winter was off her own turf here and she knew it. Hundreds of tourists were killed every year simply through not being able to read the warning signs of urban violence in an unfamiliar city. The sensible thing to do would be to drive away, find a hotel, and wait for morning and the chance to try Paul Frederick’s number again.
Witchlight Page 30
