by Alex Gordon
He’s wrapped in it. Lauren tried not to stare at Cateman as he grimaced, then shifted from one slippered foot to the other. Like a mummy.
“You must pardon my—appearance.” Cateman hid his hands behind his back. “I suffer an affliction of the skin that tends to flare in times of stress. I assure you—that it is not contagious.” He tried to smile, but winced instead. Swallowed with a gulping sound, as though the action pained him.
No, you didn’t give Jorie that shiner. The man barely had the strength to stand. “Shouldn’t you be in a hospital?” Lauren wondered at Jorie, downstairs, entertaining guests. Didn’t she realize the condition her husband was in? Hell, couldn’t she smell it?
“I cannot leave Gideon in a time of crisis.” Cateman trudged to the wall opposite and rested against it, then took a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe and dabbed his forehead. “Something your father, unfortunately, never understood.” He glanced at the cloth and frowned, then wadded it and stuffed it back in his pocket. “I watched you from my window yesterday morning as you crossed the square. Brave of you, considering.”
“Considering most folks here want to see me dead, you mean?” Lauren watched Cateman stand up straighter, smooth his hand over the front of his robe. I am not as sick as I appear. Who was he trying to convince?
“Amanda regrets her lack of action on your behalf.” Cateman cocked one bushy eyebrow. “But she did feel that Betty Joan was due some satisfaction, given what you did to her.” His look took on a different flavor, appraising rather than judging. “You got the sense of her. A valuable talent, as long as the object doesn’t realize your intention. There are ways to mask it, of course, but not many know them.” A beat of silence. “Three days you walked the wilderness. Quite a feat for someone unschooled.”
Lauren hid a smile. And the trap is baited. The promise of knowledge, of training. How long after his parents’ death had Matthew Mullin been so tempted? Were they even cold in the ground? “It didn’t seem that long.”
“No. Time passes differently there.” Cateman turned so that he could lean with his back to the wall. “I know why you’ve forsaken the pleasures of my table to visit me here.”
Lauren looked toward the stairwell, listened to the silence. Maybe they had expected her to seek out Cateman. Maybe their Master had ordered them not to interfere. Maybe they’re one step ahead of me. In that case, she needed to pick up her pace. “My father built you a wall. I would very much like to see it.”
“How did you learn of it?”
“Mr. Loll.”
“Mr. Loll.” Cateman’s lip twitched. “That is a first.” He eased upright. “It is a pity that you will miss dinner. Millie is a fine cook, and Emlyn an estimable conversationalist.” He turned back toward the darkness at the hallway’s end, one hand resting on the wall to steady himself.
“I don’t mind.” Lauren fell in behind him, alternating between holding her breath and inhaling in quick little bursts. “Just means I’ll miss the second round of threats.”
“Threats?” Cateman stalled in midshuffle. “From Thad, I assume? How common of him.” He resumed walking, slippers shushing over the thick carpet. “They are anxious, of course. All of Gideon is on edge. Still, you are a guest in my home. I will speak with him.” He glanced over his shoulder, shadow obscuring the sores and hair loss so that he looked normal, healthy. Only his voice betrayed his actual condition, that asthmatic rasp. “But you must realize that the situation in which we find ourselves might drive some of us to—acts of desperation.” He stopped before a double-paneled doorway. “Your father truly told you nothing of any of this before he passed?”
Lauren shook her head until she realized that Cateman couldn’t see her. “No, he didn’t.”
Cateman sucked his teeth. “Negligent.” He cranked the handle and pushed open the door.
Lauren followed Cateman inside. The flash as he turned on the lights took them both by surprise—she covered her eyes with her hands, heard Cateman gasp and mutter under his breath.
Then she lowered her hands, gave her eyes time to adjust.
Stared.
Not quite round, the office. More an octagon, the angles gentle, one side flowing into the next. In contrast to the rest of the house, the space was bright, sparsely furnished. A massive desk near the center of the room. A file cabinet. Bookcases and a visitor’s chair. Oak-plank floors visible beneath a scattering of Persian rugs, the wall paneling stained soft cream, the ceiling a smooth white dome topped with a round glass window divided into quarters by trim work.
The Eye of the Lady. Lauren traced an X-centered circle on her skirt as she walked to the middle of the office and looked up through the window to the night sky beyond. Sensed Cateman at her back, close enough that his stink surrounded her like a wall and she could hear the breath rale in his lungs.
“‘And the Lady gave to her followers a round blue stone, and said to them: “Take this gift which I present to thee, this Eye with which I see all.”’” Cateman circled Lauren, pointed toward the window. Ill though he was, the wonder in his voice showed in his face, so that he resembled an old prophet caught up in some divine ecstasy. “‘With it thou shalt control all those who live in the wilderness, and with their help thou shalt build up a shining city.’”
And no one knows this except you and your followers. The passage had been missing from her father’s Book of Endor, but Lauren had found it in the ghost book. Your grandfather didn’t want just anyone to know. That with the help of the right words, the right magic, the Lady’s power could be acquired by anyone. No, we couldn’t let that happen. She browsed one of the bookshelves, filled with volumes as old as her ghost book, if not older. So much knowledge, bottled up by one family.
“It had been my grandfather’s dream, then my father’s, to make Gideon great again.” Cateman sighed, his shoulders slumped, the sick old man returned. “Now the task has fallen to me.” He looked down at Lauren, and anything in his gaze that might have been called kind had vanished. “You know why you were called here?” He circled her once, then walked to the wall, and placed his hand upon the panel. “Come here, and look upon the injustice that has damned this place for generations.”
Lauren approached the wall at an angle so that she could stay as far away from Cateman as possible and still see the painted scene. It had been composed in a flat, primitive style, and lacked the rich detail, the coloring, of the drawings in her father’s book.
But the sequence of events showed clear enough. A scene from a trial, a woman standing in the witness box and pointing to a black-haired man seated in the middle of the room. The same man being led down a street toward a platform, then tied to a stake. The lighting of the fire and the burning, the man holding up a pleading hand to the crowd, which laughed and jeered.
Then came the tumble of storm clouds, which left the dead scattered through the streets.
“Eliza Mullin bore false witness against a poor traveler named Nicholas Blaine.” Catemen pointed to the woman in the witness box, a dark-haired beauty rendered in haughty profile. “She was Eliza Blaylock then. The Freeze left her a widow, free to entrap another poor soul.”
“And that’s Blaine.” Lauren pointed to the man at the stake. “What did she accuse him of?”
“Embezzlement. Theft.” Cateman sighed, a sound made worse by the rattle in his chest. “Murder.”
“And he was innocent.”
“Without a doubt.”
“Why did she do it?”
“She had gone over to the darkness, and required innocent blood to seal her unholy bargain.”
Lauren kept her face turned toward the wall so that Cateman couldn’t see her expression. Innocent blood. Nicholas Blaine. As if.
Then she looked closer. The stain let the grain of the wood show through, the dark knots and variations in color. But some of the boards looked as though they hadn’t been cleaned, leaving large patches of gray and streaks of black visible through the milklike coating.
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nbsp; She touched one of the dark smears, flinched her hand away. The same sensations she had felt in the gazebo, the fear and the pain and the heat of the flame. She glanced at Cateman to see if he had noticed, but he seemed lost in reverie.
“I will never forget the day that Matthew told me that he had found old boards stacked in the shed. Blackened in places, he said. As though they’d been burned. ‘Salvaged from the Great Fire,” I told him. ‘If they’re in decent shape, use them anywhere.’ So he paneled my office. ‘Gideon history, Master,’ he said to me. ‘I know how much you enjoy it.’” He pressed his hand to the wood, this time more gently. “Such a good boy, in the beginning.”
Until he slept with your wife. Lauren touched one of the Gideon dead, a dark-haired man sprawled next to a horse trough. Again, the sense of pain, of loss. “Who drew the figures?”
“I don’t recall.” Cateman rapped a board with his knuckle. “Matthew composed a few. He possessed a distinct talent.”
Even now, you won’t say Emma’s name. Lauren tugged at her blouse. The office felt hotter than the rest of the house, and the combination of the heat and the stink made her stomach roil.
“You were called. To make things right.” Cateman took a step, then stopped. Shook his head as though dazed. His face had paled, the sores bright as paint against his skin. “You will move into this house, and receive instruction by those who know the true ways of the Lady.”
Lauren stopped in front of a panel that showed the crows departing Gideon after the burning of Nicholas Blaine. “You don’t want Blaine here.”
Cateman’s lips curved, more rictus than smile. “And what has led you to this conclusion?”
“I’ve met him.”
Cateman’s friendliness, such as it was, vanished. “That is not possible.” His voice, low and measured, like a knell.
“In Seattle. Those were silent visits. We didn’t exchange words. I’ve spoken with him here twice. The second time, he roughed me up a bit.” Lauren touched one of her facial cuts, then turned to find Cateman regarding her with curled lip.
“Why do you lie?” He shook his head, then raised his hand to his throat. It all showed in the bright office light, the stained bandages, the yellowed whites of his eyes and deathbed pallor. “Why do Mullins always lie, and betray, and wallow in the dark?”
“And yet you keep calling us back.” Lauren turned and braced herself against the wall, struggled to ignore the heat that seeped through her clothes. “You offer us what you think we want most and you threaten us when we refuse.” She fought to keep her voice down. “What did you offer my father? What bait? A home? A job?”
Cateman drew himself up as straight as he could, an effort that made him appear even more enfeebled. “I offered him all I had to give.”
Lauren stared into rheumy eyes, caught the flicker of that last remaining bit of flint. You bastard—you handed him Emma on a plate. No magic needed to figure that out. Only the realization of how desperate Cateman was, and had been for a very long time. “What went wrong?”
Cateman started to speak. Stopped. Then he staggered to a chair set against the wall, and sank into it.
Lauren looked toward the desk, then the door, for any sign of an intercom or house phone. Cateman appeared on the point of collapse. Two hundred pounds of deadweight, at least. Impossible for her to handle by herself.
“Ingratitude—betrayed—” Cateman’s voice cracked and he coughed, a ragged hack that grew louder and more intense until he stood doubled over, his hands on his knees.
First came the spatters of saliva. Phlegm.
Then came the blood.
Lauren ran to the office door and flung it open. “I need some help here.” She stood in the doorway, waited until she heard voices, the pound of footsteps on the stairs. Then she hurried to Cateman, grabbed his arm to keep him from toppling off the chair, and felt the wet slide of gauze, the dampness through his sleeve.
“Get away from him.”
Lauren turned just as Amanda Petrie elbowed her aside. “He needs to be in a hospital.”
Petrie ignored her, beckoning to two men in work clothes and directing them as they took hold of Cateman’s arms and legs and hoisted him in a sitting position. “Take him to his room, yes, and get him into bed—I’ll be there directly.” She herded them to the door, a bustling haystack in a shapeless yellow bathrobe, her hair still wet from the shower.
Lauren followed close behind. “Did you hear what I said?”
Petrie turned on her. “Get out of this office.”
“He’s coughing up blood.”
“I said, get out and stay out.” Petrie grabbed Lauren’s arm and dragged her into the hallway. “Or you will wish you had died in the woods.” She closed the office door, then hurried down the hallway after the men and their stricken burden.
“Are you going to use more of your miracle ointment?” Lauren rubbed her arm where Petrie had squeezed. “I’d think twice about that if I were you.”
Petrie’s step slowed. “You’re all alike. He offers you everything, and you spit in his face.” Then she quickened her pace and vanished into the dark, leaving Lauren alone.
Lauren expected to find an irate wife and a phalanx of faithful companions waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, all ready to berate her for her mistreatment of Leaf Cateman. But the entryway proved dark and empty, the only sound the occasional clatter of dishes coming from the rear of the house.
Lauren circled around the staircase and followed a narrow hallway that led past a walk-in pantry, a storeroom scented with dried herbs, a large kitchen in which a quartet of older women wrestled with large pots and arranged plates on trays. It looked as though the dinner had been going on without her.
At the end of the hall, Lauren came to a door. She opened it, and found herself outside, overlooking the same backyard she had reconnoitered the previous day.
She pulled in the damp, cold night air, one lungful after the other. Tugged at her blouse, gathered the folds of her skirt, and shook, scrubbed her hands through her hair. Smelled her sleeve, caught a whiff of rotten meat, and wondered if she would ever be rid of the stench of Cateman’s illness.
She sat down on the top step, pulled her knees to her chest, tucked her skirt around her legs. Low clouds hid the moon and stars, leaving the yard as dark as a cellar, shadows twitching each time a light breeze drifted through the trees.
Then one of the shadows took the shape of a man, who crept along the rear fence, then close to the shed.
Lauren watched the shoulder-hunched shambling, now all too familiar. “You again.”
“Me again?” Barton limped to the center of the yard. “Who were you expecting—somebody else?” Different clothes this time, stained khakis and a dark shirt topped with an ancient barn coat. A battered baseball cap, the insignia long since lost.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone.” Lauren rubbed her arms to warm them, taking care to avoid the sore spot where Petrie had grabbed her. “Were you born here?”
Barton shrugged. “What’s it to you?”
“Just asking. No need to get riled.” Lauren stopped, took a deep breath. The man’s peevishness rubbed off. The way he spoke. “I wondered if you knew my father. Matthew Mullin. He left Gideon almost forty years ago. He would have been about eighteen, nineteen. Tall, thin, curly hair.”
Barton kicked the ground. “I knowed him,” he said, nodding. “We used to talk sometimes, about the crows. That we hadn’t seed any in years and that meant that the Lady didn’t favor us no more. He used to ask a lot of questions about the crows.” His expression brightened. He even smiled. “Then one day I goes home, and I finds this picture shoved in under the door. It was a crow, all colored like a photograph, and underneath it said ‘To tide you over until the real ones come back.’ He drew it. Signed it and all, like a real artist.”
Lauren thought back to the lovely crows in her father’s book, how much it might have meant to someone like Barton to receive such a drawing as a gift. �
�I’d love to see it.”
Barton shook his head. “Ain’t got it no more. I used to carry it with me”—he patted the breast pocket of his jacket—“and I would fold it and unfold it to look at it and it got old, and one day ’bout three years, four years ago I was out working in Master Cateman’s orchard and got caught in the rain. It got all wet and fell apart.” He made a straightening motion with his hands. “I tried to put it back together, but the tape wouldn’t hold. It wouldn’t hold.” He sniffled, wiped his nose on his sleeve. “So I buried it, like it was a real crow.”
“I’m sorry.” Lauren glanced down, brushed away yet another cat hair from her skirt. “I have some other drawings of his—maybe you’d like—” She looked up, and stared at the spot where Barton had stood. Checked the yard, standing so she could see past stacks of firewood. “Where the hell did you go?” Here, and then vanished. Like a ghost.
Lauren leaned on the railing, then straightened. Paced. Tried to gird herself to go inside and face Jorie Cateman and the others. Checked her watch. Ten minutes had passed since she had left Leaf Cateman in the care of Amanda Petrie, at least a half hour since she had left to search for Cateman’s office. Either Corey had made up one hell of a good excuse, or Jorie and her little helpers had moved on to Plan B.
Which would be what? Kidnapping? Some sort of mind-control spell? Maybe it’s already started. She held out her hands and concentrated, tried to sense if she felt any different, but felt nothing but the light breeze through her fingers.
The batter of raised voices reached her through an open window. The kitchen women, arguing about the timing for a soufflé. A normal argument about a normal, everyday thing. Lauren let the sounds wash over her, cleanse her mind the way the night air cleansed her clothes. Let her thoughts drift.
After a time, her gaze settled on the shed, the single small window boarded, paint peeling, the eaves pocked with rot. So unkempt compared to the rest of the property, a blemish on perfect skin.
Lauren descended the steps, walking on her toes to avoid the hard click of boot heels on cement. Trotted across the lawn to the shed, searched until she found the door.