/ have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:
— WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
CLAIRE MOFFAT SAT BEHIND THE RECEPTIONIST'S DESK IN DR. MARIAN Clinton's office, as band-box perfect as the day she'd graduated from nursing school—which was more years ago than a woman was supposed to like to remember, these days. She fanned herself idly with an empty manila folder; Marian Clinton kept her office uncomfortably warm, although Claire supposed that all the women who undressed in her examining room throughout the day were grateful for the heat.
It was too bad none of them were here to appreciate it—Dr. Clinton had been forced to cancel her morning appointments when one of her patients had gone into labor early, and Claire was alone in the office. She spared a moment's sympathy for the new arrival, afflicted with a December 24 birthday. Oh, well. There were worse fates than to be born happy, healthy, and wanted.
She tried not to wonder what she was doing here. On the surface, the answer was simple enough: the temporary agency she listed with had placed her here when she'd called them yesterday and said she was available to work today. On another level, Claire was here because Colin had called her last night and asked her to find some way to be at this address today. There were times when that RN came in very handy—a nursing degree was almost as good as a passport for getting you into odd places at short notice.
And on the deepest level of all, she was here because for years she had made herself the hands of a Power that moved through the world, and done its bidding without asking why. She did not know what happened to those whose lives she touched, or why she was drawn to them and not to any of the others who suffered daily in the world. She could not believe that some were more deserving of succor than others. In Claire's belief, all who suffered were equally worthy of aid—and the question of why some received it and some did not had troubled her ever since she had committed her heart to this path.
Why should Peter have died and his killer lived on in jail? Why should her Gift not have been able to save the man she'd loved so deeply? What Purpose directed her Gift as it did, and to what end?
There was no answer, nor did she expect one, but Claire was too much a child of her generation to feel that blind submission and unquestioning acceptance could ever be a virtue. She might never receive an answer to her questions, but she certainly wasn't going to beat herself up over the fact that she asked them.
And despite the fact that it had been Colin who had directed her here, Claire had the odd sense that she would have been drawn here anyway, compelled here by the cryptic force that so influenced her reality.
It was early afternoon. Dr. Clinton had come back from the hospital, and Claire had just ushered Dr. Clinton's one o'clock into the examining room when Claire heard what sounded like heartbroken weeping coming from the hallway outside the office. She was already heading for the door—propped open with a brick to afford her some relief from the heat—when she realized that the sound she heard so clearly was not audible to anyone else.
She opened the door and saw a slender woman a few inches shorter than she was standing in the hall, hesitating between the door to Dr. Clinton's office and that of Alexander Wynitch across the way. The woman's dark hair was cut short and topped with a snow-spangled tartan tam. She was wearing a Navy peacoat barely shorter than her skirt and a pair of brown leather boots, and as Claire watched, she took a hesitant step toward Wynitch's door.
Claire wrinkled her nose: Wynitch was one of the pseudo-professionals who infested the field of psychology, and Claire was willing to bet that any certification the man possessed had come out of a box of Cracker Jack.
"Were you looking for Dr. Clinton's office?" Claire asked hopefully.
The woman spun around and stared at Claire with a wild expression on her face, and Claire felt an uprush of instinctive sympathy. She did not know whether this was the woman she had been sent to aid, but this was certainly a woman in need of her help.
Speaking soothingly, she got the stranger to come into Dr. Clinton's waiting room and drink a cup of water from the cooler. It took all her professional composure not to react when the woman introduced herself: Barbara Melford.
And Colin told me that Cannon's editor was named Jamie Melford! This can't be a coincidence.
Because there were no coincidences—Colin had told her that, often enough. Those were words he lived by—no coincidences, only a Pattern too vast for them to see, whose weave they could make or mar of their own will.
Under a little gentle coaxing, Barbara Melford told Claire a confused story of fighting with her mother-in-law, of doing things she could not account for, of feeling that she was losing her mind, that made Claire's heart ache with informed sympathy. Barbara's mother-in-law was set on having her see Mr. Wynitch, and Claire was equally set that she should not.
She did not want to say anything that would make her sound eccentric— by the look of her, Barbara Melford had just about had her fill of strangeness. She did not know precisely what she said, only that she convinced Barbara to see Dr. Clinton before she did anything else.
And then, using all her guile, Claire extracted a promise from Barbara to come with her to see Colin after Dr. Clinton's office closed for the day.
She was glad that she had when Barbara came walking out of Dr. Clinton's consulting room a few minutes later, as stiff-legged and glassy-eyed as if she'd just been given a death sentence. Claire called out to her as she passed, but Barbara didn't really seem to hear her.
Don't push. An inner urging kept Claire seated as Barbara mechanically collected her coat and hat and sleepwalked out of the office. After working so hard to get the job, Claire couldn't simply walk—or run—out in the middle of it.
She's agreed to meet me in front of Lord & Taylor's at three—/ hope she remembers, Claire fretted. But that matter had been taken out of her hands.
Barbara had remembered—or at least, some good angel had brought her to their rendezvous at the appointed time. The sidewalk was choked with tourists come to view Lord & Taylor's famous Christmas windows, but Barbara stood staring out into the street, looking like a lost child.
With the firm decisiveness learned from years of nursing, Claire took charge of Barbara Melford and got them both into a cab. Barbara sat silent throughout the short cab ride downtown, as if she were hoarding her strength for one last effort soon to come.
When the two women arrived at Colin's apartment, Claire discovered that things stood much as she'd guessed they did. Barbara Melford was the wife of Cannon's editor and suffering persecution of her own to bring pressure on her husband. As Claire brewed tea and sliced the fruitcake she had brought over only a few days ago—Colin had a pernicious sweet tooth, and she was glad to see that there was some of it left—Barbara explained everything that had begun when Cannon had brought the manuscript to Jamie, including the fact that Dr. Clinton had told her that she was being poisoned with ergot—probably by someone very close to her.
Claire felt herself recoil in revulsion. Ever since she'd fallen victim to that cup of spiked punch at Toller Hasloch's party, the thought of someone being drugged against their knowledge or will had held a special terror for her.
Colin, bless him, took everything in his stride, and even managed to work a little old-fashioned charm on Barbara, though the indications that she had been a victim of the black coven for months—even years—were dark indeed.
But that means they can't be after Barbara because she's Jamie Me/ford's wife—or does it? Could they have targeted Barbara for some other reason that has nothing to do with the manuscript? How could they have known that Melford would be the book's publisher—or even that Cannon planned to write it? Either way, it's horrible—horrible! That poor woman . . .
"Jamie!" Barbara gasped, wild-eyed. "Could they be doing anything to Jamie?"
Claire simply stared at her. From what Colin had told her last
night, the fact that Jamie Melford was already the black coven's target was so obvious that Barbara's cry could only have been a rhetorical question.
Colin gestured her toward the phone. Barbara clutched at it as if it were a lifeline, her hands shaking as she dialed. Claire set down her teacup and got to her feet, ready to do what she could to help Barbara. No useful purpose would be served by a fit of hysterics, but frightened, endangered people rarely thought that clearly.
But Barbara Melford did not have hysterics. Whatever she heard at the other end of the line caused the heavy receiver to fall from her nerveless fingers as she simply stood there, numb and white with shock.
The three of them reached the Melfords' apartment less than twenty minutes later—armed, Claire thought to herself, for bear. Jamie Melford was not there—and worse, it was clear that wherever he was, he was in the hands of the black coven.
The malice—no, the evil—that Claire felt radiating from the very walls nearly did her in. It was as though something foul were being forced down her throat, and her stomach revolted spectacularly, leaving her nauseated and shaking.
But the empty rooms yielded nothing—nothing, that was, except proof that Melfords own mother was a member of the black coven, and had been for years.
What a ghastly coincidence, if you could even call it that. No wonder they've seemed to be one step ahead of us all along, with a spy in the house of John Cannon's closest friend.
And now they were moving openly against Jamie Melford—and neither Colin nor Claire had the faintest idea of where their Temple was.
It was nearly eight o'clock when the three of them left the Melfords' Upper West Side apartment. Their only chance to save Jamie Melfords life—and soul—lay in Claire's erratic scrying abilities.
Claire had been fortunate to be taught scrying by Alison Margrave. Alison had worked patiently with her for months under Colin's aegis, guiding Claire to discover the techniques that unlocked her Gift. Every psychic was different, using items as disparate as fire and water, a deck of Tarot cards, or an astrological chart, to unlock clairvoyant powers, but scrying was one of the fundamental disciplines that all psychics stumbled into eventually. Claire had been trained in one of the oldest methods: that of the shewstone. The mineral crystal was a heavy weight in the pocket of her coat as Colin drove down the East River Drive.
It was Christmas Eve and the traffic was heavy. Each time the van became stopped in traffic Claire winced as the tension inside it took a sharp upswing. She could almost hear Colin grinding his teeth in frustration.
But Jamie Melford was not dead. Claire clung to that tottering certainty. She could not sense him at all, and had only the most wavering sense of place, but she clung to the conviction that he lived as desperately as his wife did. She could not bear to think that he had fallen into that Night which was eternal, but the clues revealed by Claire's scrying were so muddled and few: explosions, alarm sirens . . .
Thanks to Martin Becket, they'd been able to restrict their searching to only those areas where blasting was going on tonight—an emergency, indeed, to make men work on Christmas Eve, but the bank that had the advertising slogan "The city never sleeps" certainly had the right of it—New York was a twenty-four-hour town.
The first site they tried was on Second Avenue, over on the East Side. They wasted forty minutes checking out a several-block area—uselessly—before heading downtown once more.
"Hurry. Please . . . hurry," Barbara Melford whispered under her breath.
Colin turned off the East River Drive onto Houston Street, and within moments they were lost in the twisting maze of Greenwich Village streets. When she heard the dull crump of explosions, Claire felt a pang of relief so strong it made her giddy.
"Well, there's the blasting," she said. "Now all we have to find is the fire-house." Or whatever other source there might be for the sirens I heard. . .
"That way!" Barbara said suddenly, pointing off to the left. Colin looked at her strangely, but followed her directions without comment.
This was one of the oldest sections of New York, and many of the streets retained their original cobblestones. Claire rolled down the passenger-side window as the van drove slowly through the streets, straining her senses to search for the black coven's hideout. The night air was sharp, with the minti-ness of fresh snow on the air. She breathed deeply, trying to banish the nauseated faintness that had dogged her ever since the apartment, but she felt as if there was a tide of liquid garbage rising around her, and waves of sickness seemed to steal the oxygen from her lungs.
As if from a great distance, she could hear Colin asking her to take the wheel. Barely conscious, Claire slid across the seat, but changing position seemed to make the sickness worse. It was horrible—like drowning, like dying—watching the faint clean light of life and air dim out far above.
Suddenly, Colin placed a hand on her shoulder, speaking to her sharply. She tried to rally, but she could feel herself greying out. . . .
"Barbara, can you drive?"
The intent that coiled around them was like nothing he had felt in many, many years—Colin could well understand why a Sensitive was swooning just from exposure to it. There was a peculiar immediacy to the Evil that manifested through human intervention; something far more frightening than the sheer inhumanity of the Shadow. All men were born with a spark of the Light, and the deliberate destruction of that part of themselves was what gave their actions this extraordinary taint of ghastliness.
He blessed the foresight that had caused Claire to place so many vital items into the emergency kit that she'd packed in Colin's apartment, and he blessed his own prudence, that had made him store his ritual dress here in the back of the van—they'd be needing the biggest of big guns here tonight. He opened the door and got out of the van, walking around to the back and climbing in again.
Barbara crawled over Claire across the bench seat and managed to navigate the van into a parking space along the curb. All up and down Houston Street, faceless warehouses presented indistinguishable unblinking facades. Any of them might be the hiding place they sought, and time was running out.
Carefully, using a box of wooden matches that had never been used for any other purpose, Colin lit two tapers which had been blessed by a cooperative priest. As soon as the flames began to burn steadily, the crushing weight of the evil all around them lifted slightly in the presence of the holy light. He placed one of the candles in Barbara's hand, and kept the other for himself.
As the consecrated light shone down on her, Claire began to revive. By the time Colin had settled his heavy jeweled breastplate into place and began to tie on the complicated folds of his cap, Claire was sitting up again, bent forward and breathing deeply.
"Good girl," Colin said encouragingly. He pulled the hood of his plain outer robe up, allowing it to hide most of the ornate ritual finery beneath, and picked up the long wrapped bundle that would be his most formidable weapon in the struggle here tonight. "Let's go."
Colin strode up the block, holding his consecrated flame high, as if it were a torch. All around him, the air vibrated to silent shouting, and the icy wind off the Hudson River dragged at his clothes, making the long bundle he carried awkward and unwieldy. He was uncomfortably aware that the two tiny flames were all that stood between the three of them and suffocation in the sea of Darkness that surrounded them. While the force being raised here tonight by the black coven might not have the potency to actually kill them, Colin had enough experience of the world to know that there were many things worse than death.
Claire was reeling along beside him almost as if she were drunk, moaning to herself painfully with each breath. Barbara was following behind, sheer nerves making her babble like a standup comic. She held the candle low against her body and sheltered from the wind with her free hand.
"Quiet!" Colin barked at last. "Let her concentrate!"
Barbara fell silent in midword, and Colin spared a moment of sympathy for her, but he could hardly afford
more, as beleaguered as they were.
"This one," Claire whispered, lurching to a stop in front of one door that could not be differentiated from any of the others that lined the midnight street. "No . . . I'm not. I don't—"
"No, it's this one," Barbara said definitively, sounding a little puzzled that neither of them realized what was obvious to her. With the fearlessness of ignorance, she walked up to a door a few feet away and grabbed the handle, only to release it with a startled cry. She tore off her mitten, staring at the hand beneath as though she expected to see something horrible.
"It must have been just ... a shock. But it felt as if it were . . . hot?" she said, bewildered.
So Barbara Melford is a Sensitive, too, Colin thought to himself.
It would explain much about this whole affair, including why Barbara had fought so stubbornly for so many years to hold onto Jamie, even with all the forces of Hell arrayed against her. Many people fought and died for the Light without ever understanding that they were in a war at all; if not for this encounter, Barbara Melford would have been such a person. Colin vowed that if they all survived this night, Barbara would strive in ignorance no longer.
"Get back, Barbara," Colin said gently. He handed Claire the bundle that he carried. "Let me handle this. You take care of her." He thrust the reeling Claire at Barbara, and turned to the door.
He felt nothing when he reached for the handle—for once he blessed his lack of the Gift—but on the other hand, the door didn't move, either. It was locked.
He supposed it had been too much to hope for that the door would have been open, but Colin had brought his skeleton keys with him for just such a circumstance, and fortunately the lock was an old one that one of his blanks was likely to fit. He found the right master for it at just the moment when his ungloved fingers seemed about to go completely numb in the cutting river wind.
He kicked open the unlocked door and took his candle back from Claire.
"In normal circumstances, I'd say ladies first, but I think this is a special case." He strode into the filthy building, and heard Claire and Barbara hurrying after him.
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