by Clea Simon
‘Wine?’ Chris sounded taken aback. ‘Maybe. From the other week.’ He watched as she rummaged around, emerging finally with a half-empty bottle. ‘So, did you take a cab?’
‘No, I walked.’ Dulcie poured herself a glass. It tasted a little sour. She drank it anyway. ‘It wasn’t even full dark when I left the Square, Chris.’ She took another sip, then poured the rest of the glass down the sink.
‘I would have met you, you know.’ Chris was hovering behind her as she rinsed the glass and filled it with water. ‘I’d have walked back with you.’
‘I know you would have.’ She turned and willed that smile into place. ‘Because you love me. I know that, and I love you for it. But really, I’m fine.’
He started to speak, and she put her hand over his mouth. ‘Look, Chris, we’re dealing with one of two possibilities here. The first – okay, the most likely – is that this was a domestic issue. Someone, probably Josh Blakely, attacked his girlfriend and then her room-mate for whatever crazy reason abusive guys have. The second is that Martin Thorpe either is or has been convinced that he is a werewolf. If it’s the first, well, I’m not involved with Josh. And if it’s the latter, well, the moon is past full. So we’re all safe for another couple of weeks. And as for Professor Showalter … well, she was probably simply mugged.’
‘Wait, a professor was mugged?’ It wasn’t the question Dulcie had been expecting. That was the problem with their crazy schedule. She and Chris stayed in touch on all the important things, but the day-to-day stuff tended to get lost.
‘Yeah, Professor Showalter. She was supposed to give the Newman lecture.’ Dulcie explained everything – focusing on the fact that the visiting scholar had been walking across the Common at night and had been relieved of her bag. As she was telling Chris about how Thorpe had gone missing, leaving Nancy in charge, Esmé finished her meal and came over to be pet, which Dulcie did. By the time she and Chris finally sat down to eat, she’d caught him up on Thorpe’s hospitalization, too.
‘Poor guy.’ Chris served out the salad. ‘I can’t imagine the search committee will count this in his favor.’
‘The search committee?’ Dulcie grabbed a piece of bread. ‘They can’t hold it against him. Not if they were the reason he got sick. Or whatever.’
Chris didn’t say anything.
‘Can they?’ Dulcie crunched the garlicky toast without even tasting it.
‘Let me put it this way,’ Chris reached for his own slice. ‘By the time this is through, Thorpe might wish he really could turn into a wolf.’
Dulcie mulled this over as she ate her pasta. By the time they had polished off seconds, she was glad she had made peace with her adviser. His actual advice, however, still bothered her.
‘What do you think, Esmé?’ Despite the occasional splash, the little tuxedo cat had remained in the kitchen as Dulcie did the dishes. Clearly, she had been wanting more company. ‘Do you think I should make do with what I’ve already found and get back to writing?’
‘Isn’t that a loaded question?’ Chris was drying. Esmé only looked up at her person, head tilted at a quizzical angle. ‘I mean, if it were a logic chain …’
Dulcie let him go on. He meant well. Besides, as he talked over the mindless occupation of soaping and rinsing, she could think. What if she went back to writing, but kept looking through the Mildon papers in her spare time? Wouldn’t the chance of finding more be worth such risk? Worth such risk … those words brought up an echo of something, if only she could remember …
‘Dulcie!’ Chris reached over and turned the tap off. Only then did Dulcie realize that the sink was nearly full and that Esmé had fled from the spray. ‘Look,’ her boyfriend continued. ‘I can finish up here. You’ve been scrubbing that saucepan for ten minutes now. I’ll just rinse it, set it out to dry, and join you in a few.’
‘Thanks, sweetie.’ She didn’t even try to explain. It wasn’t anything logical anyway. Instead, she took her laptop into the living room and began to type in the few lines she’d managed to decipher before lunch. ‘Ne’er shall I relinquish to him that which equally is of mine,’she read, once she’d typed it in. That was a puzzler, and even when she went back a line, it didn’t become more clear: ‘though Body she may be yet not Spirit of the oppressor.’
She’d gotten it wrong. Misread – or mistranscribed – what had been written. There was no other answer. She’d been working quickly, distracted by Josh’s bored antics even before his brash act had caused her to usher him away from Griddlehaus. Unless … no. It didn’t make sense. It might never make sense. She should give it up, and get back to work.
Dulcie almost laughed. Only a few months before, this author’s best-known – and only verified – work, The Ravages of Umbria, had been her favorite piece of fiction. She’d been thrilled to unravel its themes and characters, and she’d been overjoyed when her application to write her thesis on the little known, fragmentary book had been approved. Now here she was, looking back on the nearly complete novel as ‘work.’
Chris had come into the living room by then, with Esmé. But seeing her at her laptop, he’d gone over to switch on the game. The Red Sox, Dulcie had picked up, were not the team that had won the World Series. Not any more, but Chris and Jerry seemed to take pleasure even in their defeat. Male bonding, she thought, as Esmé rubbed against her ankles.
‘Well, we have our own sisterhood, don’t we?’ She pulled the cat onto her lap and massaged the base of her ears. The lines on the screen didn’t turn any less opaque, but the purring warmth of the little creature calmed her.
It also gave her an idea. ‘Is this from you, Esmé?’ She looked down at the cat. Esmé, however, was staring over at the TV. For once, it seemed, the Sox batter had managed to hit something, and the cat’s eyes were following the televised flight of the ball. ‘Go,’ Dulcie placed Esmé back on the floor. Instead of running for the television, though, the little cat jumped onto the couch – and onto Chris. In a moment, they were both lying there transfixed by something Dulcie simply did not understand.
‘Enjoy,’ she said softly, and turned back to the screen. Whether it had come from the little cat or not, the memory of another woman, one who might be able to help, was encouraging. Punching open her email, Dulcie did a quick search. There was no obvious link to Professor Showalter in any of her earlier contacts. That didn’t dissuade her. A few clicks brought her to the McGill site, and from there she found an address.
‘Dear Professor,’ she wrote. ‘I’m the student you spoke with at the bar before your scheduled lecture …’She paused. Could the scholar really think Dulcie had stalked her? Could it have been her response, or something in her manners? Dulcie backspaced over the letters. Better to be safe than sorry. Staring at the blinking cursor, she wondered just how to do that.
‘Dear Professor Showalter,’ she finally typed. ‘I am one of the doctoral candidates with whom you met …’ It was formal, but it was decidedly proper, and with only a minor shiver of trepidation, she finished her brief missive and hit send.
‘Safe!’ Chris yelled from the sofa and pumped his fist. Esmé seemed unconcerned by the violence of his reaction, and soon the two had settled in again: silent watchers of a faraway green.
‘Where are they playing?’ Dulcie asked.
‘Oh, this is a repeat.’ Chris didn’t even look up. ‘September, in Anaheim. There’s no baseball in November, Dulcie.’
Dulcie only shook her head. And Thorpe thought her passion was hopeless.
Staring at her own screen, however, felt just as futile, and Dulcie pondered what to do next. She should go back to writing. She had accepted that, almost. But tomorrow would be soon enough. If only she could access the Mildon online. The idea of all those boxes, with their acid-free, non-reactive folders being scanned was laughable, and would be, she suspected, nearly heretical to Griddlehaus. Well, maybe tomorrow she’d allow herself another hour. Maybe two. And in the meantime, there must be documents she could look at. Her university
account gave her access to a half dozen other archives, as well as webmail. And until the professor got back to her, she could …
Emily. The thought was so simple she couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her until now. Emily might have something for her – something new. The junior had been planning on attending Professor Showalter’s lecture. And when she had realized that she wasn’t going to make it, she had spoken to the professor. Showalter hadn’t known that Emily was collecting info to be used against her, and she’d agreed to meet the girl. Showalter had left before that could happen, but still, maybe the scholar had told Emily something, or even given her a hint about what her lecture was going to contain. Emily had been gathering material to share with Mina, but surely her room-mate wouldn’t begrudge her sharing it with a grad student, would she?
‘Emily,’ she typed. The undergrad’s email had popped up on the first search. ‘I wanted to talk with you about Professor Showalter’s work. I know it’s not what Mina is in to …’ She erased that. Why bring up a painful topic? ‘… about her research,’ she typed instead. ‘It’s important. Please call or email at your earliest convenience.’It was a stretch. Odds were, Showalter hadn’t said anything to the undergrad. But the idea of reaching out – of asking – had seemed a good one, maybe even feline inspired. And now that the possibility of new material presented itself, Dulcie just couldn’t wait.
She didn’t check, therefore, when her phone rang less than thirty seconds after. And when she picked up to hear her mother’s voice, she tried to disguise her disappointment.
‘Lucy.’ It was the best she could do. ‘What’s up?’
‘That’s for you to tell me, dear. After all, it was your summons in the ether that prompted me to reach for more terrestrial means of communication.’ Dulcie closed her eyes. Nine o’clock on the East Coast. That meant six in Oregon. Was her mother drinking? ‘Well, Dulcinea, what is happening with you?’
‘Nothing much, Mom.’ It was easier, somehow, to talk to her mother with her eyes closed. ‘I’m working. Chris is watching a re-run of a baseball game. Esmé is—’
‘Esmé is an old spirit. The heir in spirit if not in body of your great guide – what was his name?’
‘Mr Grey.’ Something her mother said almost spurred a thought, but it was drowned out as Lucy kept talking.
‘That’s right, Mr Grey. You could do a lot worse than to listen to your animal guides, Dulcie. Because if I am getting summoned, I assume you haven’t been. I worried, you know, when you went east that you would lose the connection to your family. To your heritage.’
‘Lucy, we talk a lot.’ She leaned back, wishing suddenly that she were on the sofa and could recline. Her mother often affected her that way. ‘And we don’t have any family. I mean, not besides Dad.’
‘Oh, you’re wrong, Dulcie. You are wrong or you are willfully forgetting your lineage.’ Dulcie knew what was coming next, and almost managed to tune her mother out. ‘A long line of women. Powerful women. Fiery souls. In fact, I was just laying out your cards.’
This brought Dulcie back a bit. She enjoyed the tarot, partly, she admitted, because her card – the Sun – was reliably featured. ‘So my card came up?’ she asked. ‘The “fiery” Sun?’
‘Yes, yes, it did.’ There was something in her mother’s tone that suggested this wasn’t for the best. Dulcie paid it no mind. Her mother enjoyed regular crises, managing to create them as necessary. ‘Not in your house, though. In the house of your ancestors. Your heritage.’
‘Lucy, I don’t know if we’ll be able to come home during the semester break.’ She paused. Her mother really did love her. ‘Even for Saturnalia.’
‘Well, that is the Great Goddess’s holiday, and you, the Sun Child and all.’ Her mother sounded disappointed, but not mollified. Dulcie predicted another month of such calls. ‘But that’s not why I was calling.’
It never was, although Dulcie resisted the urge to say so aloud.
‘What I was calling about was your direction. Your path through this current darkness.’ Dulcie sat up, mildly curious. ‘The cards were quite clear on that. You are to keep on, Dulcie. Through the dark forest. A life – a woman’s life – depends on it.’
‘Okay.’ Dulcie knew she hadn’t told her mother about the attacks. She’d seen no reason to worry her. Then again, maybe the commune had gotten cable since she’d last been home. Would street crime in Cambridge make the national news? That wasn’t the question to ask her mother, though. ‘A woman,’ she asked instead. ‘But
not me?’
‘She is connected to you. Part of you. Family even, but not of you.’ Dulcie tried to phrase the next question – how could someone be ‘of’ her, when they had no known relatives. But Lucy was done. ‘And now I must run, my dear. Samhain got rained out last week, and we crones decided that tonight was auspicious.’
‘Enjoy,’ said Dulcie as she translated silently: the rain had finally stopped, and they could party. ‘Love you.’
‘Love you too, dear.’ Her mother already sounded far away. ‘Blessed be.’
Holding the silent phone, Dulcie mused over her mother’s words. Lucy wasn’t psychic, at least not in the direct way she so craved. But she did tend to connect at times to her only child’s mental state. Had Lucy picked up on Dulcie’s frustration with the fragmentary manuscript? Had she sensed that Dulcie was longing to learn the heroine’s fate – to find out whether the fleeing woman was a murderer or worse? That would make sense: someone who was connected to her – ‘of’ her – and yet not a relative.
She turned to tell Chris, when something happened on screen. ‘He’s out!’ Chris called, sitting up. Even Esmé seemed engaged, running to the foot of the sofa to be closer to the screen.
Shaking her head, Dulcie turned back to her computer. It was hopeless. Or, no, it was the goddess’s way of telling her she had a little while left to work. Lucy would like that, she thought, touching her computer to wake it. And as she did, she saw the blinking light of a message. Not, as she’d hoped, from Renée Showalter. But from Emily Trainor.
‘The professor isn’t who you think she is,’ the email read. ‘Can’t wait to tell Mina. It was all faked.’
THIRTY-NINE
Dire Deeds awaited along one path. If she could flee, if this carriage could carry her beyond His reach, she would be safe. She would be freed of the Burden. Those nefarious Acts which she feared she must do, she most dreaded. And yet, still she hoped, for she could no longer pray. She leaned back in the carriage, hoping to lose herself in the Shadowed dark as had the Stranger opposite. And yet she sensed his eyes, those green and piercing orbs, following her. Could he indeed grasp that which she most feared, that Evil Act which drew her on – the final resort of a desperate Soul? Could he conceive a choice – a Risk – such as hers? Indeed, those Eyes which bored so deep, seemed to plumb her soul. Perhaps, e’en, she dared to hope, such emerald Orbs could perceive another option, another route—
Dulcie woke, the question so fresh in her mind, she almost woke Chris to ask if she did indeed dare. ‘Wait, no,’ she stopped herself. ‘That wasn’t me – that was …’ Who? Esmé stirred as Dulcie sat up, and the cat’s green eyes brought back the dream.
‘Good morning, stranger,’ Dulcie murmured as she rose and headed toward the kitchen. Esmé followed, tail high.
‘Breakfast?’ Esmé sat up, obligingly, and waited while Dulcie opened a can. She was a darling cat, especially after a night when she’d received sufficient attention from both her humans, but too familiar to be the mysterious stranger. No, Dulcie thought, as she placed the food dish on Esmé’s mat, her dreams were becoming obvious. Clearly, she wanted to find out more about this woman, the protagonist of the manuscript. Pursuing that – her – in the face of Thorpe’s disapproval was one risk. Just as clearly, she now had doubts about Professor Showalter, too, doubts that were growing. It wasn’t just Emily’s email; in retrospect, the red-haired professor had promised much more than she’d delivered. After a
ll, not only had the scholar not singled her out for a private meeting, as Dulcie had originally thought, she hadn’t even remembered their appointment. And if Emily was right, the material the scholar had hinted at wasn’t to be trusted either.
The dream had an emotional component, too. It showed Dulcie how confused she was – how lost. Clearly, she was hoping Mr Grey would come to her aid. The reality, however, was that she needed to do what she could, by herself and – she thought of her feline guardian’s veiled message – with her friends. She might never know what was going on with this book, and she really should get back to more solidly researched ground.
Dulcie set the coffee up to brew and retrieved her laptop from the living room. If Professor Showalter had responded, she might know what she and Emily had been talking about. There was nothing, though, and although Dulcie told herself that it was still early, she couldn’t help but read it as a sign of something worse. The professor had forgotten her. Or, worse, remembered her as some kind of stalker. The professor had nothing to share. It was all, in Emily’s words, faked.
As the coffee dripped, Dulcie let her cursor move down to the junior’s enigmatic email. She’d put off responding last night, uncertain even what to ask and not wanting to hound the poor girl. This morning, though, she wished she had. She looked at the clock. Not yet nine, too early to call an undergrad. Maybe she’d give her till ten, and then try her.
In the meantime, she reread the short missive, trying to make sense of what it said. What had been faked? Could such a respected scholar have gotten away with a full-fledged forgery?
Unless Emily was referring to something else. Could she mean the professor had faked the attack? Dulcie thought back to the day before. Emily had seemed all eagerness as they had entered the hotel. By the time Dulcie had met her, the junior had been in an entirely different mood. Dulcie had attributed the change to fatigue and disappointment. However, it was possible that the junior had discovered something. Had, maybe, wanted to think it through before sharing it.