Kate parked under the maple tree in the back yard, solid with decades of growth, leaves glowing orange in the streetlights, and stared at Gwen's rambling Victorian. Lights burned in the kitchen, candles glowed in the dining room windows. They were waiting for her.
Lincoln Avenue. If she went back onto Hilltop and followed it east, past St. Bartholomew's orthodox church, past the big old mansion that had been converted into the personal care home, and if she turned from Hilltop onto Minniver, and kept going on Minniver past the half-built house they'd been working on all summer, Minniver would meet up with Lincoln Avenue. She would be able to see the little green house from that corner, see the hydrangea bushes behind the wrought iron gate.
No use in putting this off. Abandoning her briefcase in the back seat, she climbed the gentle grassy slope, and then the off-kilter wooden porch steps. She opened the unlocked back door and went into the utility room. She could smell pasta steam, hot tomato sauce, basil and garlic.
Kate found Gwen in the kitchen, working over the stove. “Hey,” she said quietly.
"Kate!” Gwen turned from the boiling pot. When she saw Kate's face, her expression went from hello to horror. “Oh my God! What happened?"
Paul kissed me on the palm of my hand. Kate burst into tears.
* * * *
"That,” Vanessa said, topping off Kate's glass of wine, “was a bad day at work.” She spilled open a sleeve of Chips Ahoy onto the nicked pine surface of the coffee table. “You should eat something."
Kate huddled more tightly on the sofa and stared at the wine glimmering almost black in the candlelight. They had left the pasta in the kitchen, untasted, and moved to the living room. Her friends had listened as she told them about the yanked plea, the attack, Ellie in the psych ward. They had listened to her and cried with her. But now the crying, and the listening, was over.
"None of it was in your control, Kate.” Gwen moved past the sofa, plucking the wine from the coffee table and replacing it with a steaming tea cup. Kate caught the apple-sweet whiff of chamomile.
"It's my job to keep my clients safe.” The words fell from Kate's mouth like little razor-tipped guillotines, cutting off any support Gwen was trying to give her.
Gwen settled into the high-backed rocker near the window. Her rich brown hair caught the dark red glints in the wine, and she stared calmly into Kate's eyes. “Stop trying to do impossible jobs."
Vanessa, restlessly pacing the floor, let out a short, cynical stab of laughter.
Kate's voice rose to defend herself. “I'm doing the best I can to make the world better and safer."
"Did you make your world better, or safer, today?” Vanessa asked.
"It isn't supposed to be about me."
"When is it supposed to be about you, Kate?” Gwen's stare was relentless. “How much of you is going to get bruised and cut up before it is about you?"
Angry words rushed up Kate's throat and threw themselves against her tightly clenched teeth.
Vanessa stopped pacing and verbally pounced. “Kate, you make next to nothing, you have no time for yourself, you give everything to these ... victims.” She said the word as if it tasted like vinegar and anchovies.
All the time spent and debt dug for a BA and an MA, all the years now I've worked ... She refused to admit that the investment had been a bad one. She lived as she'd been taught. She did good. She helped the weak. Why did it feel so bad?
Kate pitched her voice to sound irrefutably logical and reasonable. “Look, it was one bad day, one crappy situation. Someone has to stand by Ellie for once, and not run for the door when the going gets rough."
Vanessa and Gwen exchanged a long look. Vanessa broke it, and looked down at her bare toes. “It's not that I don't think helping people is a noble idea..."
Kate sighed. She loved Vanessa's vim, her brash hold on life's throat, her daring. She hated Vanessa's fixation on money and status and the mirror.
"...but, honestly, Kate, what is in it for you?"
"And,” Gwen chimed in, “when was the last time you slept in on Saturday morning? Had a pedicure?"
"Had a date?” Vanessa added.
"Exactly.” Gwen pinned her with that intense stare of hers. “What about Breakfast Paul?"
Kate came off the sofa, propelled by guilt and humiliation and the distinct feeling that she was about to go off like a bomb and send Kate-shrapnel through all the windows. “How can you even bring up Breakfast Paul now? Ellie is in the psych ward. I was attacked, and, when this is over, I will probably lose my job! How can you even think about Breakfast Paul now?"
Gwen hadn't moved, hadn't even jumped. She rode the calm wave that always seemed to carry her. “How can I not think about him, Kate?"
The question seemed so outrageously stupid that it stopped Kate from running away and bunkering up in her bedroom.
"You gave everything today, Kate.” An edge of anger sharpened Gwen's voice. “Don't you see that you are entitled to take a little something for yourself, too?"
Never for yourself, Kate. The mantra of her family, spoken in unison by the remembered voices of her mother and father, tolled through her mind. She turned away from Gwen and Vanessa. “I'm going to take a shower."
To Kate's surprise, they let her go. She all but ran to the third floor, locked her bathroom door behind her.
Never for myself.
She turned on the spigots in the old stand-up shower, pushed down the toilet seat, and collapsed. The third floor bath had barely enough space to turn around in: just the walled shower, a cracked pedestal sink, and a wobbly commode. Downstairs, Vanessa and Gwen shared a boat-sized slipper tub and acres of well-lit vanity space.
Kate looked at the yellowed plaster and stark white facilities: no adornment, no personal touches. A monk would find it harsh.
In her mind, she heard all the important voices in her life telling her to give to others, make things better, take nothing for herself. Her parent's marriage, conducted in brief spurts when the family's obligations allowed them to be together, had been focused on social activism. There had only been the mission, the duty. There had never been time for anything else. Certainly not love.
Kate peeled away her borrowed clothes, eased herself under the pounding shower spray. She bent her head so the water pummeled the tight muscles in her neck and shoulders, then lathered her hair with bargain-brand shampoo, washed her skin with unscented soap. She dried with a threadbare towel and rubbed in some plain body cream. Retreating to the bedroom, she dried her hair at the carved-wood vanity that Gwen had furnished. Everything in the room, even after a year, was still exactly as Gwen had left it. She laid the drier on the vanity, looked around. The Hudson-Bay blanket, the latch-hook rug: all of it Gwen's. She treated this room like all the other rooms she'd ever slept in: just a temporary stopping place to lay her head, nothing more.
When was the last time I did something for myself?
The answer chilled her. This morning. When Paul had kissed her hand. After that, she'd failed miserably at her work and abandoned Ellie, lost and helpless, in the mental health unit.
Without bothering with a night shirt, Kate crawled under the blankets. She stared at the ceiling as a battle raged inside her. She wanted Paul. More than anything else she'd ever wanted.
As the moonlight crested the windowsill and crept across the floor, Kate wondered if her mother and father had been dead wrong. She only asked the question in the darkest of nights, in the privacy of her own mind. Even so, she always expected the ghosts of her parents to materialize in the night and shake their fingers in shame.
I do want a pedicure. I do want to sleep in. The voice echoing in her mind was thirteen years old, a girl who did not want to go with her parents to another rally or lecture or town meeting. It was the voice of a frustrated girl who wanted to stay home and read Nancy Drew.
I do want a date. That voice was her own, in the present, right now. She looked out the window. The lopsided orb of the almost full moon stared back.
It seemed to whisper in her ear, Lincoln Avenue. Six blocks.
Kate closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears.
Chapter Six
Paul smudged the thick pencil line with his fingertip, blurring the edges of Kate's curls. Watercolors would have allowed him the technique to show the blond shimmer of frizz that surrounded Kate like an aura, but he'd stopped painting in color after the curse. With pen and ink, he'd have to be happy with the smudge.
Sander wants you, and if you play along and let him think he has you, he might tell you the demon's name.
Laurie's words rolled through him, far off thunder that threatened a storm. This was his third portrait of Kate today. He'd drawn frantically through the afternoon, racing against the setting of the sun. The crystal vase of flowers sat accusingly on the kitchen table. Beside it, the black envelope from Sander lay unopened. He'd closed himself off from the threats of the world, lost himself in the smooth sound and rhythmic friction of pencil against clean white paper.
But as sunset approached he couldn't hide the awful knowledge that Laurie might be right. He hadn't told Laurie and Vern about last October, but somehow they'd guessed it.
Sander Wald had arrived in town early, while the moon had been nothing but a pale sickle in the sky. Dawn had brought Paul back from the curse in the studio, on his knees before a slashed canvas. The scent of coffee brewed with cardamom and cinnamon drew him into the kitchen, where he found Sander waiting with a new robe made of silk, black as the black linen bond envelope now lying on his table.
"Hello, Paul.” The hated voice echoed through Paul's memories. “I brought you a robe."
Sander pointed; Paul unquestioningly covered his nakedness. The obedience made Sander Wald smile.
"Did you like the car?"
I wanted to set it on fire. The words had echoed in his head, but he'd only nodded, unable to speak.
"The latest technology.” Paul remembered the smug tone. “I had to order it this time last year to have it ready for you."
Paul said nothing. He had said nothing but good morning and good bye to Dee for three weeks.
Sander's eyes were like the tinted windows in the Mercedes: smooth and untroubled on the surface, but Paul couldn't tell what was going on inside. “Come now, Paul. Talk to me. We have only each other."
The words made Paul feel like a huge church bell without a clapper. Remembered, they crawled under his skin like worms.
"Take lunch with me,” Sander said, the smile fixed back in place.
"Thank you.” He meant to say, Thank you, no. But he didn't.
They drove the new Mercedes out of Bonaventure and into the city. They lunched at an old converted train station. Chandeliers and crystal goblets. Crisp napkins and sharp-creased waiters. Endless courses. Hours of eating. At first Paul tasted nothing, just sensed the weight of the food in his mouth.
"Do you remember that hotel in Paris, after the second war?” Sander said suddenly, and laughed. “The chef there, what was his name..."
"Jacques LeTour.” Paul's memory supplied the name, and he obediently recited it.
The steward refilled their glasses with a gold-glinted chardonnay. The waiter brought them a plate of cheeses. Paul hadn't had a cheese course since fleeing Europe in the sixties and returning to Bonaventure.
"LeTour, yes, that was it.” Sander steepled his hands and looked past Paul into their unnatural, shared history. “Do you remember...” Sander smiled, and the smile warmed his iced-over voice, “...do you remember the little tarts he used to make, with the hazelnuts and the mocha ganache?"
The words and the gentle, friendly tone hit Paul like bolt of lightning, stealing his breath, squeezing his heart, and sending him tumbling back through years he should not have lived. In his mind, he saw the ballroom of the hotel and heard the laughter of men and women reunited after the war, dancing and touching hands and hair and eyes, their loneliness over and nothing but peace and prosperity in front of them. The taste of LeTour's hazelnut mocha tarts rolled over his tongue: the creamy texture of the ganache, the buttery flakes of the pastry.
From across the table, Sander laid two fingers on Paul's wrist. “You are the only other person who remembers that, Paul. We are the only two."
Paul felt himself crack like an egg, tears running down his face.
Sander merely smiled.
For eleven more days, until the moon was full, Sander Wald took him to lunch. Eleven lunches. Eleven afternoons of memories, gently spoken, and soft, warm touches on his hand.
Paul had been so thirsty, he gladly drank the poison.
The morning after the ceremony, the dark sedan pulled up to collect Sander. Paul sat in the kitchen, wearing the robe that Sander had given him. Sander paused in the hallway, all sharp creases and leather gloves.
"Until next year, Paul."
Paul counted his steps to the door. He heard the knob twist, the hinges squeak.
"Sander, wait!"
After a moment, Sander reappeared in the kitchen doorway. “Yes, Paul?"
Don't go. Don't leave me. He'd almost said it. Almost begged.
"Paul?” Sander prompted.
"Nothing,” Paul said.
Sander's eyes narrowed briefly, then he smiled that poisonously nourishing smile. “Next year, perhaps,” he said, and closed the door.
Paul hadn't reached the sink. He'd thrown up all over the kitchen floor
Three days after Sander left, he'd dragged himself to Café Foy. Kate had swept in with her preposterous hair and her mocha soy lattes and saved him.
Paul had spent the afternoon capturing Kate's likeness again and again, to remind himself why he was going to go along with Laurie's plan. To remind himself he had a reason to risk. And to reassure himself that he would have the strength to pretend to give in to Sander's attentions.
A soft, tentative rapping came at his door. Paul put down his pencil. It wouldn't be Sander—he never knocked.
Kate?
Paul stepped out of the studio and toward the front door. More shadows than light slanted through the kitchen window and into the hallway. His internal clock put sunset less than a half-hour away.
More knocking, stronger this time. How would he drive her away before? If he didn't answer...
He watched the knob turn and the door swing inward an inch or two.
I've got to start locking that...
"Paul?” A ratty Nike toe edged through the door. “Paul?"
Disappointment and relief tugged Paul's heart in different directions. He reached out and opened the door all the way. Vern jerked his foot back onto the porch, stared at Paul through his thick lenses.
"I ... Can I...?"
Paul waved him inside. He closed the door, but didn't move from the hallway. None of the coven had ever approached him like this; it was Sander's magical turf.
"What's up, Vern?"
"Nothing. Nothing new, really. Umm...” Vern looked down at his Nikes, pushed up his glasses as they slid down his nose.
"Did Laurie send you?” Paul asked. “To tell me again that there's no other way?"
Vern shook his head, shifted his feet, put his hands in his pockets. “It's not that. We had an argument, me and Laurie. I don't...” He peered at Paul, his brown eyes flickering behind the thick lenses. “She's wrong, I think. Her plan. It's wrong."
Paul sighed. One moment he liked this kid, the next he wanted to slap him. “She's not wrong.” Paul sat down on the bottom step of the staircase.
After a moment, Vern sat down on the staircase, too. He sat on the third step, so that when Paul turned his head, he was talking to Vern's denim-covered kneecap.
"Laurie's right about Sander, how he ... feels.” So strange to talk about Sander having emotions, like loneliness and fear. For a century he'd been a monolith to Paul—no personality, just power. “Last October, before the ritual, he...” Paul swallowed at a sudden acid bite in the back of his throat. “Last October he almost broke me.” He told Vern the whole story, endin
g with how he'd almost betrayed himself.
Vern said nothing for a while, his silence conveying shock. Then Paul felt him pat his shoulder awkwardly. “She can't expect you to do this."
Paul stood up to escape the pity. “It's not too much to ask if it will break the curse this time."
"But that's just it.” Vern stood up, too. “Sander is not going to trust you enough to tell you the name of the demon this year, not before Laurie dies."
Paul didn't much care if the curse broke before Laurie died. He did care how he could keep Kate close enough to love but far enough from the truth.
Paul turned to give Vern a shrug and a small, defeated smile. “She's right, Vern. It's the only way."
"It's not.” Vern's hands clenched into fists. “It's not the only way."
Paul crossed his arms over his suddenly thumping heart. “You have a better idea?"
A grin broke open Vern's face. He started pacing, gesturing, rambling. “Last time, Laurie almost had it right. She made one huge mistake. She tried to use someone else's power against Sander, when we all know Sander's had all those years to get better and stronger at magic than we could ever hope to be."
Paul stared as Vern went on, waving his arms like some mad scientist.
"The key is to use Sander's own power against him. I've figured out how. I know I can do it. Gloria..."
A tidal wave of guilt crashed down over Paul at the mention of the innocent witch, dead because of his original crime and Laurie's selfish desires. “Gloria died,” he said flatly.
"She didn't have to,” Vern said excitedly.
"She died for me. Nobody else is going to do that."
"It's not your choice to make, Paul.” Vern drew himself up to the top of his six feet. “It's mine, and I choose..."
Paul smashed his fist into Vern's chin. He had no other outlet for the anger and fear that ignited his blood. His choice, my ass.
Vern rocked backwards and sagged against the closed front door. Paul caught him under the arms and held him up. He pushed his face into Vern's, staring down through Vern's crooked glasses and into his wide brown eyes.
"It's my choice, you arrogant little prick, because if you mess up you get to die! Do you understand?” Paul shook him. “I don't get to die. I don't have a way out of this, and I am not going on with someone else's blood on my hands.” Vern's head knocked against the door. “Do you understand? Do you?"
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