by Jill Morrow
This made it even harder to understand the sense of dissatisfaction that had recently settled over her.
Get over it, she told herself crossly, glaring at the biscotti in the middle of the table.
But the little finger of discontent poked her again. The beautiful dining room, furnished with a combination of her father’s expensive taste and her mother’s practical eye, suddenly struck her as unbearably bourgeois. Only mediocre lives could emerge from the refined chaos of this house. She could look forward to a prep school graduation and admission to a respected college, followed by years and years of drudgery in a dull career.
Just like her parents.
She eyed them. Her father stood behind her mother, his hands resting on her shoulders. He was talking to Francesca, something about Italian roast coffee beans. Her mother sat curled in her chair, looking as if she might fall asleep at any moment. Well, no wonder, with such scintillating conversation. Julia rolled her eyes. An existence of domestic boredom was obviously acceptable to Stephen Carmichael and Kat Piretti. She couldn’t believe that, between the two of them, they couldn’t pull up one adventurous bone in their bodies. But if day-in, day-out predictability was enough for them, so be it. She, for one, expected far more out of life.
The pressure of a steel gaze forced her to meet Francesca’s eyes. Her great-aunt was studying her. Julia squirmed, feeling as if her thoughts had become visible to everyone in the room.
“Aunt Frannie.” Claire tugged at Francesca’s sleeve.
“Wait, dear.” Francesca covered Claire’s hand with her own. “Julia, did you want to say something?”
Yes! Julia thought. “No,” she said, shrugging as she reached for the biscotti.
A weird shiver raced through her body, making even her teeth and tongue itch. Before her eyes, as if someone had laid one picture atop another, the cluttered dining room table suddenly merged with a different, unfamiliar table. There, next to Claire’s milk glass, stood an unexpected metal goblet filled with deep red wine. A wooden bowl of salt sat in the middle of the table, one edge of it blending into the family’s crystal saltshaker. Hastily averting her eyes, Julia saw a huge, hazy peacock, feathers translucent in the candlelight. It rested on a platter, but looked as if it might instantly rise to its feet, thoroughly alive.
She yanked back her hand.
“Julia?” Francesca peered at her.
“Whoa!” Julia blinked, and the table returned to normal. “Illusion food!”
“What?” Her sister giggled.
“Did you say ’illusion food’?” Francesca asked.
Claire wrinkled her nose. “What’s that?”
“It’s your mother’s cooking,” Stephen said. “It looks edible, but it isn’t.”
Julia ignored the shove her mother gave her father. Her eyes remained locked with Francesca’s.
“Julia,” Francesca said, “do you know what illusion food is?”
Julia searched her memory. For a brief instant, she’d not only known what it was, she’d actually longed for it. All knowledge, however, had disappeared with the image of the table. She weakly shrugged and shook her head.
Francesca’s gaze remained steady. “Illusion food was very popular in the Middle Ages. It was food crafted to look like something other than it was. Golden apples made of veal, pitchers of pastry—”
Julia licked her lips. “Dead peacocks dressed to look alive?”
“Yes.”
Kat jerked to her feet, palms flat on the table. “Julia, you’re studying this in school, right?”
“No.” Julia looked up, startled. A spot of red had appeared in each of her mother’s cheeks. Her eyes glittered as if she had a fever. “It’s no big deal, Mom.”
But apparently it was a big deal, because even her father had taken a step forward. “Have you read about it, then?”
Oh, this was just great. Now they thought she was unbalanced or something. Next they’d be squeezing in visits to a psychologist. They’d do whatever it took to make sure she stayed within the boundaries of their ordinary lives.
She jumped up, slamming the back of her chair into the buffet. “Yes, that’s it. I read about it. Excuse me. I have homework to do.”
Claire reluctantly rose. “Me, too. Can I do my homework in your room with you? Please?”
“If you promise not to talk.”
Julia avoided Francesca’s eyes and hurried from the room, Claire trailing behind like a tail on a kite.
“Illusion food,” Claire was saying. “I’d make stuff that looked like vegetables but was really chocolate.”
Julia nodded absently. She could tell already that her sister planned to chatter away. That was okay. It would give her time to think about all the unusual images that had crossed her thoughts with increased frequency these past weeks. She’d figure them out. She just needed a little time.
And privacy. There was no way her parents would ever understand this stuff.
Julia guided Claire into the bedroom, then firmly closed the door behind them.
“You still haven’t told them anything about it, have you,” Francesca said flatly as the bedroom door closed overhead.
“About what?” Kat studied the tablecloth.
“Spare me, Katerina.”
“It never comes up.”
“What do you mean, ’It never comes up?’ Don’t your children ask how you two met?”
Kat squarely met her gaze. “Of course they do. And we tell them the truth, that we met at Angel Café.”
Francesca’s arm dropped to the table with a thud. “That’s a mighty edited version of the truth.”
Stephen’s eyebrows lowered. “Damn it, Frannie!”
“Shhh!” Kat pointed toward the ceiling.
He sank into a chair beside his wife. “What the hell are we supposed to tell them? That we were introduced by Demon Dating Service?”
“God brought you together.”
“Absolutely. But the rest of the story is—”
“The rest of the story is the truth, Stephen. You can’t deny it simply because it’s unpleasant.”
“Unpleasant?” His mouth twitched. “Try terrifying.”
Kat put a limp hand to her forehead. Her right temple was beginning to throb. She was getting entirely too many migraines these days. This confrontation was not going to help in that department.
“Okay, Aunt Frannie. So we’re weenies. We don’t know how to tell our daughters that, once upon a time, their parents battled evil spirits. Maybe it won’t be so hard to discuss when they’re older. In the meantime, it’s over. What’s the point in dragging it all up again?”
Francesca leaned forward, eyes flashing. “It is not over, Katerina. That’s the point.”
Kat’s stomach did a double flip. She must have looked as ill as she felt, because Stephen was instantly beside her, his arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders.
“Frannie.” A pleading note crept into his voice. “Don’t do this to us. What we went through fifteen years ago was enough weirdness to last a lifetime.”
“What you went through was a reality that few ever see. How the two of you can close the door and walk away is unfathomable.”
“We had to!” Kat said fiercely. “Life goes on. We got married. We had children. Not everyone can afford to check out of physical reality. Not all of us can just take off for Europe when the edges get rough at home. Some of us have to stay behind in the trenches and muddle through daily life as best we can!”
Francesca flinched. Bull’s-eye.
Stephen stood with a sigh. Without a word, he tugged open the buffet cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Frangelico. It was one of Francesca’s favorite cordials, but the grim lines around her mouth did not disappear as the nut-brown liquid splashed into a glass. She accepted the drink stoically, then waited while Stephen poured for Kat and himself.
“Okay, Frannie,” he said wearily, passing his wife a glass. “What is it you’re dying to tell us?”
“Don’t pat
ronize me, Stephen Carmichael. I knew you at your most obnoxious, and I loved you anyway.”
Kat’s nervous laughter broke the tension in the room. Stephen, too, managed a small grin as Francesca raised the liqueur to her lips. She took a small sip of Frangelico, closing her eyes to savor its sweet warmth.
“This conversation is long overdue,” she said, setting down the glass. “You know it is.”
Kat cleared her throat. “Aunt Frannie, listen to me. You raised me, and you did a good job of it. You taught me the same values that Stephen and I have passed on to Julia and Claire. They know right from wrong. We’re raising them with love, teaching them to respect others. What’s wrong with that?”
Her aunt’s face softened. “I raised you with what I knew. We’ve learned so much more since then. Oh, Katerina, I don’t deny the terror of it, but can’t you see that until you teach your children that spiritual evil exists, you leave them defenseless?”
“Please.” Kat’s voice cracked. “Can’t they stay innocent just a little longer?”
Francesca leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Asteroth is back.”
The name fell like acid rain. Kat heard Stephen’s sharp intake of breath and felt a fine layer of sweat bead her forehead. For years that name had haunted her thoughts and disturbed her sleep. It had taken nearly superhuman effort to safely sequester it from the normal flow of her life. Now it intruded again, catapulting her back to that horrible day fifteen years ago when she had battled Asteroth, ancient demon of darkness.
She’d known even then, as the battlefield had erupted in flames around them, that Asteroth would somehow emerge unscathed. He was not physical. Flames could never stop him. That battle, played out in an ordinary house on a sunny summer day, had been merely representative of an unseen, smoldering undercurrent that Kat knew in her heart still thrived. If she hadn’t wanted to explore it then, she certainly harbored no desire to revisit it now.
Asteroth. She’d actually stood before him. She’d felt his foul breath blow across her face. She’d nearly succumbed to the empty suction of darkness that awaited those who chose to accept his favors.
“He can’t be back,” she whispered.
“Where is he?” Stephen asked. Kat glanced at her husband’s drawn face and thought for the first time that he’d begun to look old.
“I don’t know,” Francesca said. “I felt him while I was in England. That’s why I returned.”
“England?” Stephen poured himself another drink. “I don’t understand.”
Francesca sighed. “I don’t understand, either. I was in Lincoln, you know, visiting an old friend. I spent a good deal of time in the cathedral. It’s centuries old, mind you, and it’s pure heaven to meditate there. The community of saints feels so strong! Still, it was in the cathedral that I felt the truth: Asteroth has once again pierced the veil of physical reality. He is incarnate.”
“But not here in Baltimore.” Kat groped for clarification.
“I don’t feel him here, no. But something has changed, and I don’t know what it is.”
“You mean a general change, right?” Stephen asked hopefully.
“No, Stephen. I mean a specific change. One that centers within your household.”
Kat turned the color of alabaster. “Excuse me,” she said, leaving her seat.
Stephen rose to follow as she rushed from the room, but Francesca held him back with an iron grip.
“Attack this at its root, Stephen. Standing by her once she’s sick isn’t half as effective as strengthening her before she reaches this point. Any fool can see that she’s utterly exhausted.”
“Oh, yeah?” He glared at her. “Well, your cheery news certainly isn’t helping matters.”
They listened in silence as the toilet flushed. Then Kat returned, white but composed.
“Let’s get this over with, Aunt Frannie,” she said.
Francesca nodded. “Do you remember the vision I had shortly after the battle?”
“The baby?”
“Yes. The baby whose birth Asteroth tried to prevent. The child of light, he called it.” She paused. “Your baby, Katerina.”
Stephen swallowed. “So?”
“Must I spell this out? The child in the vision had green eyes. You have two green-eyed children.”
“No.” Kat shook her head. “It can’t be. It’s impossible.”
“Frannie, you were under a lot of pressure when you experienced your…vision. We’d just been through a major ordeal. You were stressed out. I’m sure that what you saw was clear, but—”
“It was more than clear, Stephen. It was truth. You and Kat were destined to conceive a child of light. Asteroth knew it as well as I did. He was determined to stop you then, so it makes sense that he’d return to finish what he’d begun.”
“But we have daughters!” Kat protested.
Francesca’s eyebrows rose. “Your point?”
“I guess…I guess I always thought the child of light would be a boy. I assumed we were safe because we had no sons.”
“Why, Katerina, my sexist little lawyer, what an assumption.”
Stephen suddenly dropped his cordial glass, not even noticing the golden stain of Frangelico seeping through the damask tablecloth. “You think that Asteroth is at the bottom of whatever happened to Julia tonight.”
“I think it’s possible,” Francesca said. “I can’t see how it could be true, though. Fifteen years ago he had a human channel. He can only operate in physical reality if a human allows him access to a physical body. That hasn’t happened here. But I feel an urgency, as if something is brewing.”
Kat propped her head in her hands. Once before she’d been called to spiritual battle, and in the face of all disbelief, she’d answered the call. Why did it have to happen again?
How could anyone ask this of her twice in one lifetime?
3
LINCOLN, ENGLAND, 1360
ALYS ’S RED HAIR CASCADED ABOUT HER CREAMY SHOULDERS, falling in the path of Gregory’s lips as they traveled down her long, smooth neck.
“Ah,” he said as she shivered. “Am I the cause of this?”
“Who else would be?” She lifted his chin to peer into his eyes. They were dark brown, like burnished walnut. If she looked closely, she could catch a glimpse of her own eyes, narrow and slightly tilted, reflected within their depths.
Gregory sank into the soft goose down of the pillows. Alys’s bed was small, but her linens were always clean and fragrant. They smelled faintly of lavender, as did Alys herself. There were never any fleas in her bed. He smiled. There wouldn’t be. They wouldn’t dare.
Alys’s finger traced his lower lip. “What is the meaning of this smile?”
“I remember when I first saw you. You were running to the manor hall from the meadow. You carried an armful of daisies. Sunshine clung to your hair.”
She bent to kiss him, her curtain of hair filtering the light from his view. “Such an old story, Gregory. I was twelve years old.”
“The image is etched on my heart. It could have been eighteen days ago instead of eighteen years.”
“Eighteen years. Truly that long?”
“Yes.”
Alys reached out to smooth the dark curls from his forehead. Her fingers played briefly over the shaved tonsure at the crown of his head, then returned to lift his chin again. “We have been fortunate for a very long time, my friend.”
He caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “Not fortunate. Blessed.”
With a sigh, Alys rose from the bed. Gregory tucked his palms beneath his head and gave himself over to the pleasure of watching her. Her high forehead and slanted gray eyes set off hair that erupted into the colors of a summer sunset. A wiser man would perhaps heed popular warning. Even the peasants knew that red hair bespoke a petty nature clouded by a lack of passion in love. Gregory knew better, though. Alys was too practical for pettiness. And as for passion…She was more than a match for any man, though he was the only
man who would know that.
His eyes drank in her ivory body. How lovely she was! She was thirty now, but her breasts were still as small and high as a young girl’s. Her narrow waist curved into generous, white hips, and her slightly rounded stomach…
He swallowed hard.
“Forgive me, Alys, but I cannot look upon you without wanting you.”
“Then you must close your eyes, for it is nearly time for Vespers.” Her chemise fluttered down about her body.
Gregory did close his eyes. For one gracious moment he was again a young priest come calling at the manor of Lord Richard de Clairmont. He watched once more as Alys, Sir Richard’s fourth and youngest daughter, skipped out of the meadow and into his soul.
He was forty now. The lines around his mouth no longer faded when his smile did, and his knees often creaked when he rose from prayer. The untried notions of his youth had come and gone as surely as had the seasons. His perceptions of the world altered with each day he had breath in his body. He was sure of only one thing in this wheel of life: Alys de Clairmont was God’s most precious gift to him.
Soft fingertips brushed his forehead.
“Will you stay?” Alys’s husky voice caressed him. “There is wine in the cupboard, if you like, and half a loaf of bread.”
He shook his head, then opened his eyes.
She stood fully clothed before him, Alys, prioress of Saint Etheldreda, and mother to the twenty-eight nuns cloistered there.
He pulled himself from her bed and reached for his clothes. “I must go. But I will return to celebrate Mass two days hence.”
She coaxed a few errant strands of hair beneath her wimple. Her forehead, suddenly vulnerable, invited kisses. Gregory regretfully harnessed the urge.
His worsted robe itched as he knotted the cord at his waist. It called him back to business.
“Alys, my love, the bishop bids me ask whether your accounts are in order.”