"Well . . . okay," Frodo said with a warm smile. He stood up. "C'mon, Em. And, Winter, come and see us when you can, okay?"
"Sure." /f I can. "Good night, Frodo, Emily. It was a pleasure." When they were gone, Winter put down her American Express card, then signed the slip and left a generous tip. But it was a long time before she could bring herself to slip the envelope into her purse and leave.
The St. Mark Hotel, that gracious relict of what San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen called San Francisco's Silver Age, still stood, in the words of the famous song, "high on a windswept hill." Despite the lateness of the hour when Winter finally reached it and the lack of advance warning, the staff was able to accommodate her. It was true that all that had been free on such short notice was one of the Mark's luxurious suites, but it hardly seemed to matter, and soon she was looking out from the parlor window of her suite over the fog-shrouded Bay. A bottle of wine from Room Service stood on a tray before her, with her briefbag beside it. A corner of the letter poked out from inside the bag, still unopened.
You have to do it sometime, Winter told herself, trying to ignore the clutching ice in her stomach. She reached forward, but instead of the letter, she drew the cork out of the wine bottle and let the scarlet liquid splash into the glass beside it. You're drinking too much, she admonished herself, then gulped at the wine angrily. What could it possibly matter now? What could anything matter? She wasn't going to live long enough to become an alcoholic!
She sat back and stared morosely out the window as the alcohol worked its way into her bloodstream. Her conscience nagged at her. Whatever pain Cassie's letter might give her, it was a pain that she deserved.
Winter poured another glass of wine and reached for the envelope. Her hands shook slightly as she tore off the end, and two things fell out. One was a smaller envelope, business-sized, with her name written on it in Cassie's scrawling script; the other, the information Rhiannon had said she'd given her. Meticulously, Winter read over the name and address and tucked the slip of paper into the appropriate pocket in her Filofax before putting its binder back into her bag.
That left only Cassie's letter. Winter pressed the envelope between her fingers, feeling its thinness. Whatever information the letter contained, it was very brief.
Gritting her teeth and closing her eyes, Winter ripped the envelope open.
The fog slid in off the water, blurring the boundaries between the ocean and the land. The rain had stopped, but the air was still rilled with moisture as the mist claimed the city for its own, sliding over the walls of stark new office buildings, gracious old hotels, and even the sloping sides of the Transamerica Pyramid. In the City by the Bay, the night slid on toward morning.
In the parlor of the suite in the , time had lost all meaning. Winter stared at the brief paragraph written on the sheet of white paper. She sat cold and silent, unmoving, while inside her mind the screaming had only begun.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE WINTER HEART
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
— KING JAMES BIBLE
NORTH OF SAN FRANCISCO, THE COASTLINE RUNS TO small coves floored in silvery gravel, and the remains of the mighty sequoia forests stand along the coast like silent sentinels. Along this wild Pacific headland there are a number of small towns that go on untouched from the days when gold, or timber, or even wine—and not computers— were the principal livelihood of the locals. There are frame houses in the exuberant fashion of the previous century, and gracious buildings in the Mission style, and the inhabitants hope that the freeway sprawl that seems determined to make Sacramento merely a suburb of San Francisco will miss them entirely.
She had not slept.
As soon as it was light, Winter had checked out of the hotel. The Mark's concierge had been helpful, providing driving directions and even a road map. She reached San Gabriel a little before noon.
San Gabriel was a sizable town, larger than Glastonbury, though dwarfed by the metropolises surrounding it. By the time she arrived, the early morning haze had burnt off to leave the coast basking in a brilliant, cloudless day.
Winter did not care.
When she pulled into a gas station to ask directions, her voice was harsh as a crow's, her face a stark mask of sleeplessness and psychic pain. She thanked the attendant as carefully as if such worldly courtesies could still matter to her, and drove slowly toward her final destination.
In some cruel incongruity, the place she sought was almost on the water itself, just as if beauty still had the power to affect those within. The Pacific reflected the sun and the sky as if it were poured of blue enamel, and gulls wheeled and cried above the cove. Winter slewed her car into the parking lot and stopped.
"I have to see Hunter Greyson," Winter said to the woman behind the desk. Inside the building it was as if the postcard-perfect day outside did not exist. Tired fluorescents illuminated walls that had been painted a grubby gas-chamber green thirty years before, and the shabby linoleum looked as though it could never really be clean.
"Is he a patient here?" the nurse said. Winter could see her nameplate:
CAROL TAYLOR.
Do you think I'd be here if he wasn't? "Yes," Winter said. The contrast between this place and Fall River gave her a sudden unwelcome pang. If Fall River had been horrible, how much more horrible could this place be?
"Are you a relative?" the nurse asked.
Winter's head drooped. Yes. I'm the woman who should have married him. "I'm Winter Musgrave."
A simple trick that Winter had learned years before was that any answer, no matter how meaningless, would be taken for the proper answer if only it was uttered in a confident tone of voice. Though she had provided no explanation and no proof, the nurse pressed a button, and an aide in a bright-flowered smock popped out of one of the rooms down the hall.
"Ashley will show you to Mr. Greyson's room," the nurse said.
* * *
"And how are we today, Hunter?" Ashley chirped brightly. She walked past the bed by the door, opened the curtain, checked the air conditioner to see that it was running, and then turned back.
Winter stood looking down at the bed by the window. "Hello, Grey," she said. Her lips moved, but no sound came.
The man on the bed was thin and frail. His long blond hair was pulled back in a limp braid. His eyes were closed as if he were asleep.
But he wasn't.
In the space between the two beds a respiratory ventilator worked, its sound an awful parody of human breathing. A blue-tinted hose led from the machine to a bubbling humidifier to a hole in the throat of Hunter Greyson. Through the tube's translucent plastic Winter could see the pale flash of the tracheostomy fittings, and a nauseated wave of denial rose up behind her clenched teeth.
"Is this your first visit?" Ashley asked, her voice low with professional compassion. She moved closer to the bedside, lifting Grey's slack hand and taking his pulse with automatic efficiency. "Come on, Hunter, wake up, guy. You've got visitors."
"Don't," Winter begged. Grey. His name is Grey.
Ashley looked at her pityingly. "You've got to talk to them," she said, still holding Grey's hand. "Maybe they know you're here. And sometimes they wake up, even from the machine."
Winter stared at her. She could not have spoken if her life depended on it. After a moment Ashley shrugged almost imperceptibly and moved toward the other bed.
"Hiya, Bobby. How're we doing today? Ready for a little Softball on the beach?" she said with bright enthusiasm.
"What happened to him?" Winter asked. Ashley pulled the covers up around "Bobby's" neck and turned to face her.
"Hunter? It was a motorcycle accident, the admitting report said. We got him—I mean, he was transferred here after about six weeks at Sacto; we had the only available bed in the area. He was
riding in the rain . . . they found his bike at the bottom of the cliff near Antonia Beach and they're lucky they found him at all. Hit and run, maybe. If he wakes up, maybe he can tell us. Right, Hunter?"
The dark, the rain—hadn't looked like rain when I left; got to get the bike under cover—Headlights in the wrong lane, sliding around the curve—drunk driver; which way's he going to swerve?—No! Oh, God, it's so cold—
Winter jerked back to reality with Ashley's hands clamped around her arms.
"Come on over here; we're going to sit down now."
Winter felt the edge of a chair at the back of her legs and lowered herself gratefully into it, sweating and sick with the sudden flashback to the recurring nightmare that had haunted her for weeks before her admission to Fall River. Only it wasn't a nightmare. She knew that now. It was the truth.
Savagely Winter forced the tears back, wishing she could disown as well the memories of the pain and broken bones, of lying in the rain not knowing how bad the injuries were but knowing they were bad, of feeling life and consciousness ebb like the ocean on the rocks below and praying that someone, anyone, would come.
Winter drew a deep breath.
"Are you all right? Shall I get the nurse?" Ashley said.
"No. Yes. I mean— It was just a shock, seeing him. I'm all right now," Winter lied glibly.
"When did you find out?" Ashley said. "About him?"
Winter glanced up at her in surprise.
"You aren't really family, are you?" Ashley said. "A friend?"
There was no point in denying it now. What could they do, other than throw her out? "Yes," Winter said.
Ashley sighed, and for a moment all the vitality seemed to drain out of her. "Oh. I'm sorry to hear it. I was kind of hoping you could sign the papers," she said softly. "We haven't been able to find any family. Do you know where they are?"
Grey had never spoken of his family, not that Winter ever remembered. "No. What papers?"
"To pull the— To turn off his respirator. He came in on one from Sacramento, and by state law we can't disconnect it without the family's consent. But he's been here more than a year, and I don't really think he's going to wake up," Ashley said sadly. "He's only thirty-five. He could be like this for the next thirty years. And sometimes, when I work midnights I come in here and sit with him. I think he wants us to let him go ... but we can't." Ashley hesitated. "Do you want me to leave you alone with him for a while?"
"Thank you," Winter said.
"I'll be down at the other end of the hall," Ashley said. "It's just me and Mrs. Taylor on today—that's the nurse down at the station. Marcie called in sick. Just press the button if you need anything." Her white orthopedic shoes whispered over the battered linoleum as Ashley whisked out, closing the door behind her.
Winter walked back over to the body in the bed. The thump and sigh of the ventilator was loud inside the room, and the sunny day outside seemed only a mockery painted on the glass.
"Hello, Grey," she said again. She reached out and took his hand.
And vanished.
Or, rather, the world around her vanished, as suddenly as if someone had put a bag over her head. There was a confusing maelstrom of images: the gulls crying, and rain; a roaring sound like a powerful engine running flat-out; and the taste of copper. It was as if some playful god were pawing through some toybox of the senses.
And then, so fast that Winter, scrabbling for her sanity, was sure this was only one more layer of hallucination, she found herself standing in the spring orchard below Greyangels Farm. She had barely grasped where she was—against all possibility—when the apple-blossom petals began to spill from the trees, and the grass to turn to dust. For an instant the branches of the orchard were silvery bare, before the trees themselves withered away to ash, and a cold, cold wind swirled the remains of the orchard away. I'm going to scream now, Winter thought, though she knew that once she began to scream she would never stop.
"Hello, Winter."
Dr. Luty was right. Everybody was right. I've been crazy all along.
Winter Musgrave turned around and looked into Hunter Greyson's eyes.
He was dressed as she'd seen him in her dreams, in the white buckskin jacket and jeans he'd worn in that springtime orchard so many years ago.
As she watched, the jacket darkened, became rain-spotted motorcycle leathers, and the lines of age flickered across his face like summer lightning.
She was not seeing Grey, Winter realized with a horrified pang. She was seeing the idea of Grey—and she had not seen him in so many years that her mental picture of his appearance was only confusing things.
She was terrified, exhausted, and sick with grief. But more than that, Winter was a woman who refused ever to fail. Deliberately she forced herself to relax, to let go.
Grey's blurred image steadied; a vigorous man of her own age, in his thirties, and not the wasted ghost in the hospital bed. His pale blond hair, still long, was pulled back into a silky ponytail. Instead of anything resembling street clothes, he wore a long white robe with an open-fronted red robe over it. The inner robe was belted in with what looked like a jeweled serpent, and resting on his hair was a laurel-leaf crown made of gold. On his right wrist he wore an iron bracelet set with red stones, and there was a signet ring on his finger. He looked . . .
He looked like the picture of Thorne Blackburn from the front of Truth's book.
"Grey," Winter said wonderingly, and then, with the inanity that was sanity's only possible defense: "What do you do for a living?"
Grey—or his image—laughed. "I'm an unemployed actor, what did you think?" He came forward and took her hands in his, and possibly the greatest shock since her arrival was that his skin seemed warm and living against her own.
"You came. I thought you'd forgotten me," Hunter Greyson said.
/ did for a while. But not any more. "Grey, what is this place? Where am I? How did I get here?" Winter babbled.
"You aren't here; not really. Your body is right where you left it. This is only a dream. Do you remember, Winter? We built our stronghold here, a long time ago."
Winter looked over his shoulder. The flat featureless light that allowed her to see came from nowhere and everywhere, illuminating a universe as unnatural as a movie sound-stage. In the middle distance she could see twelve cairns of stone, half crumbling and seemingly very old, set in a circle.
"Yes, Grey. I remember." And as she said it, the words were true.
"Help me, Winter. You're my last hope," Grey said. "No one else came."
Once more there came that sick flutter of uncertainty: the night, the road, the glare of the oncoming headlights, and then the cold. . . . She shuddered, pulling closer to him, and Grey embraced her as if her presence could warm him.
"It took me a long time to realize I wasn't dead," Grey said against her cheek. "If I'd been dead, I would have known what to do; after all, I'd been preparing for it all my life. Death isn't the end. It's only a way-station on the journey."
"You're in a coma," Winter said pulling back to look into his face. "Hooked up to a respirator." She felt like Alice having a conversation with the Red Queen—no matter what she said, it would sound totally surreal. As long as she didn't think about where she was or who she was talking to, she was okay, but nothing in the bizarre manifestations of the last several months had come even close to preparing her for this.
"A coma." Grey nodded. "I thought it might be something like that. I can't go on, I can't go back. I'm just . . . here. Not even as real as a ghost. I tried to reach some of the people I knew, but the way I am now, things don't work the way they should. The only way I could reach the physical world at all was to call back the magickal child that Nuclear Circle created, and—"
"You sent it? It was you all along? You killed Cassie?" Winter interrupted. She jerked away from him and stepped back, putting as much space between them as she could. Anger called to her; a fury that here, in this world, would be as tangible as their two bod
ies. Cassie was dead and Grey had killed her. He'd sent the magickal child that had started the fire. He'd said so.
Betrayal fed her anger—only now did Winter realize how much she had been counting on Grey to live up to her dreams of him.
"Killed—?" Grey's face went pale with shock. He threw up his hands, sketching a figure in the aethyr—
—and Winter was back in the hospital room, staring down at Grey's body across their clasped hands, her heart hammering with fury and shock.
"Grey!" she cried. The body in the bed did not stir. "Grey, answer me!" She took him by the shoulders, shaking him. His head lolled limply on the pillow.
"Is everything all right in here?" Ms. Taylor came into the room, starched and efficient in her nursing whites, and looked down at Grey. "Is there anything I can do for you?"
Leave my patient alone. Winter heard that unspoken rebuke as clearly as if it had been uttered aloud.
"No," she said, summoning a smile with an effort. "Everything's fine. Could I be alone with my—with Grey, please?"
She didn't dare claim a relationship she couldn't prove, dearly as she wished to. The moment she did there'd be papers to sign and questions she didn't dare face—not someone whose recent treatment in a "sanatorium" could too easily come to light. She had to stay calm, or she could help no one.
"We've always called him Hunter," Ms. Taylor said, seeming to accept the explanation that was no explanation. She smoothed the hair back from Grey's brow. Winter felt a flare of jealousy before realizing that this woman had as much right as she did to touch him—and maybe more.
"The family always called him Grey," Winter said, skating perilously close to a lie. "He hated—hates—to be called Hunter." With reflexive pragmatism, she wondered who was paying the bills to keep Grey here, if he really had no family.
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