“What is real in one world is intangible in another,” he replied. “When we pass through the doorway, remember your feeling of submitting to me. Give over. Don’t fight it.”
Despite the adrenaline pumping through her, it felt easy to relax against him and go into the state of yielding.
“Good,” he murmured. And they passed through. “Remember—whatever happens—you cannot change the fact that the river flows, but you can change its direction.”
“What do you mean?”
“The things you and I have done—it’s like a river of life. You strengthened me and our people.”
“But will it be enough for you to go back to being what you were?”
His face stilled into quiet lines behind the mask, his muscled arms carrying her without effort. “The past is gone. We have only the future.”
She thought about that as he carried her through the maze of tunnels and passages, now on dry land, now wading through hip-deep water. Looking over his shoulder, Christine saw the shadows gather and trail after them, the dark eyes and flowing hair of the people moving in and out of substance as they, too, seemed compelled to follow.
Gradually she recognized the hallways, the ones under the Sanclaro compound that led to the secret room.
“They lost control of some spaces of land,” the Master murmured. “It let me escape some of my prison, to roam my opera house.”
“Angelia,” Christine realized. “When she bequeathed it to my father.”
He nodded. “Her gift to me. Like you, she wanted to do more. But they stopped her.”
With a sick sense of sorrow for the grandmother she’d never known, Christine remembered the article about the car wreck. How she’d died in a freak single-car rollover, leaving behind a son who’d thought she hadn’t cared.
They all crowded into the tiny alcove, spilling back into the branching halls, the hosts of the people who’d lived and died on the land long ago. The Master’s head nearly brushed the ceiling of the chamber, with awe and a tinge of gratifying fear.
The Master set her on her feet, then framed her face with his gloved hands and kissed her, long and deep. Her body throbbed for him and she regretted that they’d had so little time together.
“Thank you, Christine.” He brushed his thumbs over her cheekbones.
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“For wanting to.”
“What do I do?” She surveyed the pillar nervously. She needed Hally.
“Trust yourself. It’s in you. In your true heart.”
Reverently, she opened the box. The scent of dying roses filled the room, full of decay and old bitterness. She hesitated to touch the mummified hand, but the shadow people shuffled, brushing her with whispers of encouragement. It felt like old leather, delicate and dry.
It wasn’t easy, but she held long-dead Seraphina’s hand against the pedestal, then pressed her turned-in ring into the depression on her side.
“Nothing is happening.” Disappointment, metallic and bitter, flooded her.
“Wait. The magic is already in motion. Like a waterfall down the mountain. Remember: you cannot change the fact that the river flows.”
But you can change its direction.
A whisper of melody and the scent of roses and sunshine. The glass dome over the artifacts misted away, the sense of great power humming into the room, like lightning about to strike. It filled her with a viscerally sexual hunger. Over the pedestal, she gazed at the Master. Longing thrummed between them, but he seemed transfixed, unable to move. His black hat, his mask, his cloak, his suit, shifted and became smoke. He stood, powerfully naked and iridescently white, a shining star in the small chamber. His face, still half melted, became a blank canvas for the numinous blue of his eyes.
Golden music filled the room, winding through the stones and artifacts. That so-familiar song. The shadow people were singing. They moved around her, now visible, now blending through the edges of the circle. As they crowded closer, she became aware that they held roses. Lush and full of unearthly beauty, their petals like living flesh, brushing the skin of her exposed arms and legs. The thorns, sharp as blades, caught and dug in, cutting her with small slices.
The pain sharpened her awareness and fed the hunger. Blood—Sanclaro blood, tribal blood—red and hot as the roses flowed down her skin. She nearly pulled away, afraid, but kept her gaze locked on the Master. Obedient to what he’d asked of her, without ever asking it.
She felt the opening of the binding, like letting go of anger, releasing grief. With a collective sigh the people breathed out their relief and, swirling around her in a tornado wind, became a torrent of hair, feathers, and shadows. They swirled out and disappeared into the wider universe.
The Master shimmered, breaking into innumerable shimmering specks, like a pixelated image losing resolution.
“Wait,” she cried out. The magic poured out, rushing away. “I want you to be what you were.”
“That time is gone.” His words wrapped around her like that long-forgotten melody. “Be strong enough to let me go.”
“I can’t.” She was sobbing. Tears filling her vision, flowing away also, like the magic, like her blood.
“Christine.” He sang her name, reaching his powerful arms to the sky far above, his muscled chest cording, his cock standing proud. He radiated joyful sexuality, exultant. Free.
His face shifted and coalesced, into the shining perfection of an old god.
“Free me, Christine.” He smiled, asking her in the same tone of voice that he’d asked her to abandon herself to him.
With a last wrenching sob, she gasped out her agreement.
“Yes, Master.”
7
Everyone treated her carefully after that.
No one quite understood how she’d survived the fall that killed Roman. They’d found them when Domingo sent up the alarm and she woke up in Christus St. Vincent much later, with a concussion and multiple lacerations. The nurses said she looked like she’d gone through a plate-glass window. Shards of crystal lay around them, but no matter how many delicate questions everyone asked, Christine didn’t remember what had happened.
Well, she did remember.
Just differently.
Sanchez didn’t much seem to care and mostly questioned her about what had happened before her fall. He seemed totally unsurprised at Carla’s involvement. Turned out he’d suspected her for quite some time. They’d matched her well-known calligraphy to the notes—both the ones Christine finally turned over to the cops and the one found on her body.
Sanchez couldn’t say much until the DA finished compiling evidence, but he’d let drop that Carla had been obsessed with making Christy leave. The final note, it seemed, had been part of a gift intended for Domingo Sanclaro, who returned the favor with the massive beating.
Charlie, apparently, was a remorseful mess, having been both suspicious of his wife’s affair with Domingo and desperate to keep her. Being sorry wasn’t enough for Sanchez, though, and he’d arrested Charlie as an accessory. It looked like his fate would depend on how much he’d really known—and if he would bear witness against his wife.
The actual charges against Matt were relatively minor—especially since Hally said karma would be plenty and she didn’t want to press assault charges. Once the police cut him loose, he took off for some theater group in California. As for Domingo, he appeared to be catatonic with shock and grief over Roman’s death when Sanchez took him into custody. Angie was happy to provide adequate evidence for the state and Feds to take him down for a long time, if he recovered.
It might be small and mean of her, but Christine liked the idea of him tucked away in a mental institution. A bit of Hally’s karmic justice.
Time passed, and Christine healed enough to leave the hospital and resume a normal life.
Even though this had been a hospital for physical healing—not like the other place—she had felt much the same there as she had then. Like her skin was too
permeable for the world.
Hally had talked her into a celebratory lunch, and they were sitting on the porch at El Farol, eating tapas and watching the Saturday tourists flow in and out of the art galleries. A guitarist played acoustic flamenco, bright notes that fit the hot afternoon. Christine hadn’t seen the fiddler again. Nor had she heard that song, anywhere but in her heart.
Absentmindedly, Christine rubbed her ring finger, which was healing well but still ached. They’d had to cut the ring off her hand because it had somehow cut into her skin, creating massive swelling. At one point they had worried that her hand would have to be amputated at the wrist, to stave off the blood poisoning from the infection, which gave her the shivers as she imagined it immortalized with Seraphina’s. Though several people had pointed out that she could have the stones reset because the ring, as a gift, legally belonged to her, Christine gave it to Angie.
It was nothing more than a set of rocks now.
“It’s good to see you out and about again.” Hally made cooing noises over the freshly arrived deep-fried avocado. “You look good.”
“Do I?”
Her voice sounded young and kind of piteous, the question squeezing around the lump in her throat. Hally squeezed her hand and poured more sangria from the pitcher. “Yes. You’re doing great. You know it.”
Christine wasn’t sure about that. The last week—busy as it had been, dealing with the season ramping up, despite serious holes in their staff roster and freaked-out talent, working with her father to uncover the various shortcuts in accounting that had accumulated over many years, and giving testimony to Sanchez and the Feds, all while she was still recovering—had been eerily quiet. The only music came from human throats. No roses appeared in unlikely spots. Things stayed put.
So many life forces that had infused the opera house had vanished, leaving it emptier.
The Master, too, was gone.
She’d looked for him, tried to find his passageways and various places, but they had vanished as if they never were. As if all of them had been part of his dream and, without him, had all wafted away like so much smoke and shadow. She almost thought none of it had been real.
Except that her broken heart stood evidence that it had been.
“Remember how you said that everybody lives on a spectrum of crazy—that some are more than others?”
Hally nodded in reply, her hazel eyes full of sympathy.
“I think I found my spot on the crazy scale. But now it’s too late.”
“I know you’re still grieving,” Hally said, choosing her words carefully. “But you did the right thing, letting him go. Spirits like him aren’t meant to be trapped. He’s gone to a better place. He’s gone to where he should be and you’re still here, where you should be.”.
“I don’t want to be.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I thought you said he’s in a better place,” Christine accused, though she knew it wasn’t fair.
“Better for him.” Hally said it slowly, with great patience. “You belong here.”
“I know.” She took a deep breath. “I know, but it hurts.”
“Have more sangria.”
Christine laughed through her tears. “I think people would frown on you suggesting I use alcohol to salve my emotional wounds.”
“Hey—I’m a bartender and you’re finally off the pain meds. Comes with the territory. And I’m suggesting it more for the tattoo. Belly work can be ouchie.”
“Is that a technical term?”
“Actually, yes. Cheers.”
* * *
Hally stayed with her all afternoon while the tattoo artist did his work. Sometimes holding her hand, sometimes snarking at her when she whined. The artist had suggested she do it in stages, but she wanted it all done at once.
Working with silvery grays and deep blacks, he spun the myriad scars across her abdomen into a spiral. Through the lines, a bear strode, one paw lifted, a skeleton of white rising from his body.
Though her father had offered to pay for it, she used the money she’d earned working at the opera. It seemed fitting.
Besides, it hadn’t been her father’s fault. She needed to accept responsibility for who she’d been then, as well as who she was now—and who she’d become.
Alone.
She hadn’t wanted to say it to Hally, because her friend would be hurt by it. But she felt unutterably lonely, as if a piece of herself had been cleaved away. Worse, it had been a part she’d never known was there before. And now it was gone.
Without the shadows, the sunshine felt glaring and empty.
“I have a present for you.” Hally broke into her thoughts. She was driving Christine home after the tattoo was done, as if she were still a patient emerging from surgery who couldn’t take care of herself.
“Why do I get a present?”
Hally wiggled her shoulders, parking in front of Christine’s apartment building. “New tattoo present? A you-didn’t-die-or-get-locked-away-for-a-murder-you-didn’t-commit present?”
“Not your standard gift-giving occasions.”
“That’s what makes this one all the more significant.”
She used her key to open Christine’s door, making her keep her eyes closed. Then a purring ball of fur was deposited in her arms.
Christine opened her eyes to find huge yellow ones, bright as a harvest moon, staring back at her from a black-and-white face. “A cat?” she squeaked.
“Your dad brought him over while you were getting the tattoo. He said you’d be pleased. And you know me—I’m all about world domination for kittehs everywhere.”
“I am. I am pleased.” The purring hummed through her, filling a little bit of the ache inside. “Thank you, Hally. For everything, really.”
* * *
The kitten slept beside her, a warm comfort in the night. And she dreamed. Sweet, peaceful dreams. Waltzing with the Master while rose petals rained around them. In her dreams he wasn’t dead. They danced and he held her.
She awoke to warm light on her face, the cathedral bells tolling for Mass. She wondered if Angie would go, as sole representative of what remained of the core Sanclaro family. Her mother’s “migraine” had taken on permanent status. Nobody seemed to know how much Reina Sanclaro had or had not known, but the woman had been hospitalized and remained unresponsive.
Angie herself was doing surprisingly well, applying herself with grim determination to the Sanclaro books. She had appealed to Christine’s father for advice, and the two made an unlikely but somehow apt pair, discussing disposition of stocks and how to keep the Feds from taking damn near everything.
It made her smile to think of them, and Christine rolled over, her new tattoo stinging as she moved, reaching for the kitten.
Her hand met warm flesh instead.
Her eyes flew open, her heart thudding in recognition.
The Master.
Blindingly real, he lay sleeping next to her. At her touch, he blinked his eyes open, a familiar ice blue. And he smiled at her. He was whole and beautiful. Where once his leg had been wilted, it was now a fully formed pillar of muscle. Behind him, the kitten sat on the bedside table, observing with bright eyes.
She had no breath to speak. He raised a hand and caressed her cheek.
“Christine.”
A laugh escaped her. A bubble of sheer joy suffusing her entire being. “How? How are you here?”
“I promised I would always be with you.”
“I know, but . . . but you were gone.”
He shook his head and leaned up on one elbow, the muscles of his arms and chest flexing. Blond hair spilled over his shoulder, still white but no longer ethereally so. He drew down the sheet and stroked his hand over the bandages.
“Blood and symbols—you invoked me. I’m in your blood. Where once I was anchored to rock, now I’m bound to my totem in your flesh. To you.”
“Oh.” She chewed her lip, thinking over the ramifications. “That could suck if
we ever broke up.”
He laughed, then sobered. “On the other hand, should you ever wish to be rid of me, it would be easy enough to do.”
“I don’t. I will never want that.”
“You don’t have to promise me that—for now it’s enough. To touch your skin, to feel the sun.”
He cupped her breast and lowered his head to kiss her nipple. Good thing she’d gone to bed naked. Much more romantic than the purple unicorn pjs.
She ran her fingers through his hair, letting her body warm to his touch. His hair, his skin, even his scent, all seemed slightly different. The same in essence, new in manifestation. Hally would probably understand it all.
“If you’re anchored to me, what happens when I die?”
The Master lifted his head. “Is there time for me to make love to you first?”
She thumped his strong shoulder. “You know what I mean. Someday.”
“Then I will die with you.”
“But I thought gods are immortal.”
He rolled onto his back, bringing her with him. “Right now I’m mortal, as you are. Once we shed this flesh, we’ll move on to being other things again.”
“We? I’ll go with you?”
He lifted her and let her sink onto his rigid cock. She groaned, her morning-wet tissues stretching to accommodate him.
“All humans have divinity in them, and you more than most now. We’ll walk the earth together for a while, and after that, other worlds. My home is always your home.”
Her heart melted like a baking freezer cookie. “We’ll have to come up with papers for you. You’ll need a birth certificate and—” She broke off on a gasp as he thrust up inside her, shattering her thoughts.
“Later,” he demanded. “Or I’ll tie you up and make you pay attention.”
“Oh.” She bent over and kissed him, long and deep. “Yes, Master.”
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