"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 First 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.
Yet, even while Winter was trying to convince herself to follow this sensible course, a gleam of light in her rearview mirror caught her attention. Turning around in her seat, she saw the warm yellow glow of a lighted storefront. Before she had time for second thoughts, Winter was out of her car. Locking it swiftly, she turned up the sidewalk in the direction of the light, half-running through the spring rain.
The Green Man was still a welcoming oasis; Winter did not even stop to remember that this was where she'd had her disastrous interview with Rhiannon as she lunged up the steps and pushed open the door.
It was warm and dry inside the cafe, in sharp contrast to the rainy darkness outside, and the air was filled with the smell of baking bread. The stained-glass panels hanging in the windows were dark and glittering now, but the polished wood of the spool tables and oak counters glowed brightly, and the plants hanging everywhere filled the place with life. Winter stopped, blinking a little at the brightness. She brushed her hair back from her face, feeling raindrops spatter beneath her hand.
Do something. Don't just stand here like a mooncalf.
Despite the location, the cafe had a good following; most of the tables were full, and the murmur of conversation and the clink of tableware formed a lulling cushion of sound. Winter looked around. Rhiannon had seemed to know this place when they had been here before; perhaps they knew her?
There was a booth free; Winter moved toward it and sat down, grateful to be shielded from the illusion of
prying eyes. Nobody had noticed her and nobody cared.
But in that much, she was wrong.
The waitress—a young woman with straight blond hair, dressed in tie-dye and a rainbow-colored crochet vest—had barely brought her coffee when a stranger approached the booth.
"Hello," he said. "Do you remember me? I'm Paul Frederick; we met the last time you were here."
The coincidence did not surprise her; it was as if on some level Winter had been expecting him to be here. She smiled invitingly and gestured.
"Yes, I remember you. I don't know if we were ever properly introduced. I'm Winter Musgrave. Won't you sit down?"
Frederick smiled. "Actually, I'm here with my wife. Won't you join us?"
When Winter collected her coffee and moved to the Fredericks' table she received another surprise. The petite brunette seated with him was someone she knew.
"You're Emily Barnes, aren't you? The pianist?"
Husband and wife looked at each other, and Emily laughed. "I suppose you're right, Frodo, and I should stop pretending that nobody knows." She rose gracefully to her feet and held out her hand to Winter. "Yes, I am. If you've heard of me, I hope you've enjoyed my work."
Winter took the hand and clasped it gently, out of respect for the talent in those strong fingers. "Very much. I saw you a few years ago in Japan, when you were on tour with the symphony. You opened with Anstey's Variations on a Theme for Harpsichord."
Emily's smile broadened. "Dear Simon! I always love his work—even though I think he writes some of those transitions just to torment me. He was my teacher, you know."
Winter smiled, and the three of them sat down. There was no one who loved music, either classical or modern, who didn't know the modern-day fable of Simon Anstey and Emily Barnes. At first his protegee, Emily was now coming to be considered the foremost interpreter of his work.
The fairy-tale symmetry of the story was marred only by the fact that the legendary musician-turned-composer had married not Emily, but her older sister Leslie, several years before Emily herself had married. But when Winter had imagined the poised, professional Emily's husband, someone like the elfish Paul Frederick had been the farthest thing from her mind.
"And this is Winter Musgrave, Em. She was a friend of Cassie's," Paul Frederick—Frodo?—said.
"Oh, I'm so sorry." Emily Barnes's eyes filled with genuine sympathy. "I know that saying it was a dreadful tragedy seems so inadequate, but Cassie's death is such a great loss to so many people. Everyone loved her."
And it's my fault. Mine! Winter felt her own grief as if it were still raw and fresh. "Yes," she said briefly, lowering her head.
"It may be more of a tragedy than you realize," Paul Frederick said soberly. Winter's head snapped up, and she locked eyes with him challengingly.
"No," she said evenly, "I don't think so." The warning in her voice was plain.
"Paul!" Emily's voice broke into the clash of wills. "If this is business of yours, can't it at least wait until after dinner?"
Paul Frederick looked sheepish, and smiled apologetically at Winter. "I'm sorry; I was rude. Have you eaten? The Green Man is table d'hote in the evening unless you just want a snack, but the food here is very good."
"Thanks," Winter said. "I just flew in, and the food on the plane was pretty ghastly."
Paul gestured, and the waitress who'd brought Winter's coffee came over to the table.
As they waited for the food, Emily determinedly kept the talk general. Winter learned that Emily considered herself too impatient to teach, though Simon said she would come to it someday.
"He said if he could become a teacher, then there was hope for anyone!" Emily said, with such an infectious merriment at her private joke that Winter could not help but smile, too. For a moment her own problems seemed very far away.
Emily seemed profoundly incurious about Winter's business in San Francisco, but it seemed to Winter that Emily did not share all her husband's interests, and wisely kept herself separate from them. The food, when it came, was a poached whitefish with exotic mushrooms in wine sauce—as unexpected in this atmosphere as was the marriage of neat, disciplined Emily Barnes to the exotic, anachronistic Frodo.
When they had finished dinner and the coffee had been brought, Emily rose to her feet.
"I am going to go powder my nose for about ten minutes," she said determinedly. She strode toward the back of the cafe with the same queen-like carriage with which Winter had seen her cross the concert stage.
"What's that all about?" Winter said.
"Oh, Em isn't really interested in what she calls 'my other life.' She comes to the big Festivals, but music is the most important thing in her life, and we both respect that," Frodo said.
Winter felt a pang of wistfulness, wondering if Grey would be— would have been—as intelligent and caring a husband as Frodo obviously was. She had made no time in her life for anyone with whom she could form that level of closeness, and knowing her reasons didn't make the loneliness any less.
"And what is 'your other life?" she asked deliberately.
Frodo met her eyes. "I was a member of Cassie's working group. Her coven," he said quietly.
It took a moment for all the ramifications of that simple statement to sink in, and when they did, Winter found herself blushing with shame. If Frodo talked about the circumstances surrounding Cassie's death Winter did not know if she could bear it. She'd lived her life as if everyone had been put into the world to play a part subordinate to hers, and was only now coming to realize how selfish that had been.
"So you probably know Rhiannon," she said evenly.
"Yeah." Frodo grimaced. "I guess I really got on her case about the way she treated you—just jumping in with what must have sounded like a bunch of messages from the spirit world delivered by a gypsy con artist, when you'd barely found out Cassie was dead."
"Oh, no!" Winter protested automatically. "I suppose I could at least have listened to her," she added after a moment.
She regarded Frodo warily. The aloofness she had always cultivated as a defense against the world made her rebel against the very idea of this stranger knowing anything about her personal life—let alone about the monster that had stalked and killed Cassie.
"It's hard to know what to do sometimes," Frodo said diplomatically.
Winter set her jaw, choking back the words of self-justification before they were uttered. To have to live with what Truth Jourdemayne called the Unseen World was bad enough, but to talk with someone she hardly knew about things that her mind still rejected even as her mouth formed the words . . .
But to her relief, Frodo seemed to be willing to let her lead the conversation, and there was only one thing Winter really wanted to talk about.
"I need the letter Cassie left for me," she said. "Unless you know what it said?"
Frodo shook his head. "No. But Rhiannon can meet us here in about fifteen minutes and bring it with her. If that's okay with you?"
"Yes," Winter said, not trusting herself to say more. It's going to have to be, isn't it?
Frodo got up to make the phone call.
Emily had returned to the table, and the three of them had finished with dessert, by the time Rhiannon actually arrived. Winter had no idea what Frodo had said to her in the phone call, but Rhiannon looked almost painfully subdued. She wore a light raincoat beaded with moisture over a pink cotton Shaker sweater, tan corduroy slacks, and oxblood loafers. Her frizzy riot of copper-red hair was stifled in a severe braid that could not quite control the rain-sequined halo of frizz. She carried a manila envelope under one arm inside her coat.
"Hello," she said unsmilingly, looking at Winter.
Oh, just give me the damned letter! Winter felt like shouting. Instead, she rose to her feet and held out her hand. "Hello, Rhiannon. I'm pleased to see you again."
The other woman's mouth twisted, preparing a sarcastic retort, then she caught Frodo's eye and stopped. She took Winter's hand and shook it briefly, and Winter
was sharply glad that her particular psychic kink was psychokinesis, not clairvoyance. It was bad enough suspecting the truth about people's inner feelings without knowing them for sure.
With the determination gained through years of practice at keeping emotion at bay, Winter smiled and took charge of the conversation.
"Thank you for coming. I didn't have the opportunity before to tell you how sorry I am for your loss; I know Cassie must have meant a great deal to you." The words were artificial and contrived, but on some level they were true: If Winter had been a better person, she knew, she would have sympathized with Rhiannon's loss instead of being obsessed solely with her own.
Surprisingly, Rhiannon accepted the inner truth of Winter's words, not their calculated motivation.
"She was your friend first," Rhiannon said gruffly. "I'm sorry I startled you before. I'm glad you came back."
"We so rarely get a second chance in life," Winter said. "Would you care to sit down?"
"No," Rhiannon said. "I mean, I'm on my way to work. I'm working at Capwell's now, Frodo—it's just temporary, but it's better than nothing," she said in an aside. "Anyway, Cassie's letter is in the envelope. So's my address. If you need any help from us—anything—we owe it to Cassie."
Honest if not gracious, Winter thought.
Rhiannon held out the envelope and Winter took it. She stood as Rhiannon crossed the dining room and went out the door into the rain.
Winter sat down again. The waiter had cleared the table while Rhiannon had been there, and Winter set the envelope on the cleared space in front of her. When it became obvious that Winter was not going to open it, Frodo cleared his throat.
"I hope you'll give me a call when you've had a chance to read that," he said. "I'd like to know what I can do to help. Do you have a place to stay?"
In what she now thought of as her other life, Winter had always stayed at the . She wondered if they'd let her in without a reservation. "I'll find something."
"Will you call me?" Frodo said.
Probably worried that I'm just going to burn Cassie's letter. "Don't worry," she said obliquely. "I've gone through too much to get this." She forced herself to go on. "I'll call you." The waiter came back with the check; Winter grabbed it automatically. "And, please. I hope you'll be my guests for dinner. I owe you a great deal," she added reluctantly. It was time to get used to being beholden to people, no matter how much her pride rebelled against it.
Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 Page 30