Penny bit her lip, said nothing.
She stared down at the magazine. The pictures and words swam in and out of focus.
The worst thing was that now she knew, beyond a doubt, that the goblins weren't just after her. They wanted Davey, too.
III
Rebecca had not waited for Jack, though he had asked her to. While he'd been with Captain Gresham, working out the details of the protection that would be provided for Penny and Davey, Rebecca had apparently put on her coat and gone home.
When Jack found that she had gone, he sighed and said softly, “You sure aren't easy, baby.”
On his desk were two books about voodoo, which he had checked out of the library yesterday. He stared at them for a long moment, then decided he needed to learn more about Bocors and Houngons before tomorrow morning. He put on his coat and gloves, picked up the books, tucked them under one arm, and went down to the subterranean garage, beneath the building.
Because he and Rebecca were now in charge of the emergency task force, they were entitled to perquisites beyond the reach of ordinary homicide detectives, including the full-time use of an unmarked police sedan for each of them, not just during duty hours but around the clock. The car assigned to Jack was a one-year-old, sour-green Chevrolet that bore a few dents and more than a few scratches. It was the totally stripped-down model, without options or luxuries of any kind, just a get-around car, not a racer-and-chaser. The motor pool mechanics had even put the snow chains on the tires. The heap was ready to roll.
He backed out of the parking space, drove up the ramp to the street exit. He stopped and waited while a city truck, equipped with a big snowplow and a salt spreader and lots of flashing lights, passed by in the storm-thrashed darkness.
In addition to the truck, there were only two other vehicles on the street. The storm virtually had the night to itself. Yet, when the truck was gone and the way was clear, Jack still hesitated.
He switched on the windshield wipers.
To head toward Rebecca's apartment, he would have to turn left.
To go to the Jamisons' place, he ought to turn right.
The wipers flogged back and forth, back and forth, left, right, left, right.
He was eager to be with Penny and Davey, eager to hug them, to see them warm and alive and smiling.
Right, left, right.
Of course, they weren't in any real danger at the moment. Even if Lavelle was serious when he threatened them, he wouldn't make his move this soon, and he wouldn't know where to find them even if he did want to make his move.
Left, right, left.
They were perfectly safe with Faye and Keith. Besides, Jack had told Faye that he probably wouldn't make it for dinner; she was already expecting him to be late.
The wipers beat time to his indecision.
Finally he took his foot off the brake, pulled into the street, and turned left.
He needed to talk to Rebecca about what had happened between them last night. She had avoided the subject all day. He couldn't allow her to continue to dodge it. She would have to face up to the changes that last night had wrought in both their lives, major changes which he welcomed wholeheartedly but about which she seemed, at best, ambivalent.
Along the edges of the car roof, wind whistled hollowly through the metal heading, a cold and mournful sound.
Crouching in deep shadows by the garage exit, the thing watched Jack Dawson drive away in the unmarked sedan.
Its shining silver eyes did not blink even once.
Then, keeping to the shadows, it crept back into the deserted, silent garage.
It hissed. It muttered. It gobbled softly to itself in an eerie, raspy little voice.
Finding the protection of darkness and shadows wherever it wished to go — even where there didn't seem to have been shadows only a moment before — the thing slunk from car to car, beneath and around them, until it came to a drain in the garage floor. It descended into the midnight regions below.
IV
Lavelle was nervous.
Without switching on any lamps, he stalked restlessly through his house, upstairs and down, back and forth, looking for nothing, simply unable to keep still, always moving in deep darkness but never bumping into furniture or doorways, pacing as swiftly and surely as if the rooms were all brightly lighted. He wasn't blind in darkness, never the least disoriented. Indeed, he was at home in shadows. Darkness, after all, was a part of him.
Usually, in either darkness or light, he was supremely confident and self-assured. But now, hour by hour, his self-assurance was steadily crumbling.
His nervousness had bred uneasiness. Uneasiness had given birth to fear. He was unaccustomed to fear. He didn't know quite how to handle it. So the fear made him even more nervous.
He was worried about Jack Dawson. Perhaps it had been a grave mistake to allow Dawson time to consider his options. A man like the detective might put that time to good use.
If he senses that I'm even slightly afraid of him, Lavelle thought, and if he learns more about voodoo, then he might eventually understand why I've got good reason to fear him.
If Dawson discovered the nature of his own special power, and if he learned to use that power, he would find and stop Lavelle. Dawson was one of those rare individuals, that one in ten thousand, who could do battle with even the most masterful Bocor and be reasonably certain of victory. If the detective uncovered the secret of himself, then he would come for Lavelle, well-armored and dangerous.
Lavelle paced through the dark house.
Maybe he should strike now. Destroy the Dawson children this evening. Get it over with. Their deaths might send Dawson spiraling down into an emotional collapse. He loved his kids a great deal, and he was already a widower, already laboring under a heavy burden of grief; perhaps the slaughter of Penny and Davey would break him. If the loss of his kids didn't snap his mind, then it would most likely plunge him into a terrible depression that would cloud his thinking and interfere with his work for many weeks. At the very least, Dawson would have to take a few days off from the investigation, in order to arrange the funerals, and those few days would give Lavelle some breathing space.
On the other hand, what if Dawson was the kind of man who drew strength from adversity instead of buckling under the weight of it? What if the murder and mutilation of his children only solidified his determination to find and destroy Lavelle?
To Lavelle, that was an unnerving possibility.
Indecisive, the Bocor rambled through the lightless rooms as if he were a ghost come to haunt.
At last, he knew he must consult the ancient gods and humbly request the benefit of their wisdom.
He went to the kitchen and flicked on the overhead light.
From a cupboard, he withdrew a cannister filled with flour.
A radio stood on the counter. He moved it to the center of the kitchen table.
Using the flour, he drew an elaborate veve on the table, all the way around the radio.
He switched on the radio.
An old Beatles song. Eleanor Rigby.
He turned the dial through a dozen stations that were playing every kind of music from pop to rock to country, classical, and jazz. He set the tuner at an unused frequency, where there was no spill-over whatsoever from the stations on either side.
The soft crackle and hiss of the open airwaves filled the room and sounded like the sighing surf-roar of a far-off sea.
He scooped up one more handful of flour and carefully drew a small, simple veve on top of the radio itself.
At the sink he washed his hands, then went to the refrigerator and got a small bottle full of blood.
It was cat's blood, used in a variety of rituals. Once a week, always at a different pet store or animal pound, he bought or “adopted” a cat, brought it home, killed it, and drained it to maintain a fresh supply of blood.
He returned to the table now, sat down in front of the radio. Dipping his fingers in the cat's blood, he drew certain r
unes on the table and, last of all, on the plastic window over the radio dial.
He chanted for a while, waited, listened, chanted some more, until he heard an unmistakable yet indefinable change in the sound of the unused frequency. It had been dead just a moment ago. Dead air. Dead, random, meaningless sound. Now it was alive. It was still just the crackle-sputter-hiss of static, a silk-soft sound. But somehow different from what it had been a few seconds ago. Something was making use of the open frequency, reaching out from the Beyond.
Staring at the radio but not really seeing it, Lavelle said, “Is someone there?”
No answer.
“Is someone there?”
It was a voice of dust and mummified remains: “I wait.” It was a voice of dry paper, of sand and splinters, a voice of infinite age, as bitterly cold as the night between the stars, jagged and whispery and evil.
It might be any one of a hundred thousand demons, or a full-fledged god of one of the ancient African religions, or the spirit of a dead man long ago condemned to Hell. There was no way of telling for sure which it was, and Lavelle wasn't empowered to make it speak its name. Whatever it might be, it would be able to answer his questions.
“I wait.”
“You know of my business here?”
“Yessss.”
“The business involving the Carramazza family.”
“Yessss.”
If God had given snakes the power of speech, this was what they would have sounded like.
“You know the detective, this man Dawson?”
“Yessss.”
“Will he ask his superiors to remove him from the case?”
“Never.”
“Will he continue to do research into voodoo?”
“Yessss.”
“I've warned him to stop.”
“He will not.”
The kitchen had grown extremely cold in spite of the house's furnace, which was still operating and still spewing hot air out of the wall vents. The air seemed thick and oily, too.
“What can I do to keep Dawson at bay?”
“You know.”
“Tell me.”
“You know.”
Lavelle licked his lips, cleared his throat.
“You know.”
Lavelle said, “Should I have his children murdered now, tonight, without further delay?”
V
Rebecca answered the door. She said, “I sort of figured it would be you.”
He stood on the landing, shivering. “We've got a raging blizzard out there.”
She was wearing a soft blue robe, slippers.
Her hair was honey-yellow. She was gorgeous.
She didn't say anything. She just looked at him.
He said, “Yep, the storm of the century is what it is. Maybe even the start of a new ice age. The end of the world. I asked myself who I'd most like to be with if this actually was the end of the world—”
“And you decided on me.”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh?”
“I just didn't know where to find Jacqueline Bisset.”
“So I was second choice.”
“I didn't know Raquel Welch's address, either.”
“Third.”
“But out of four billion people on earth, third isn't
She almost smiled at him.
He said, “Can I come in? I already took my boots off, see. I won't track up your carpet. And I've got very good manners. I never belch or scratch my ass in public — not intentionally, anyway.”
She stepped back.
He went in.
She closed the door and said, “I was about to make something to eat. Are you hungry?”
“What've you got?”
“Drop-in guests can't afford to be choosy.”
They went into the kitchen, and he draped his coat over the back of a chair.
She said, “Roast beef sandwiches and soup.”
“What flavor soup?”
“Minestrone.”
“Homemade? “
“Canned.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I hate homemade stuff.”
“Is that so?”
“Too many vitamins in homemade stuff.”
“Can there be too many?”
“Sure. Makes me all jumpy with excess energy.”
“Ah.”
“And there's too much taste in homemade,” he said.
“Overwhelms the palate.”
“You do understand! Give me canned any day.”
“Never too much taste in canned.”
“Nice and bland, easy to digest.”
“I'll set the table and get the soup started.”
“Good idea.”
“You slice the roast beef.”
“Sure.”
“It's in the refrigerator, in Saran Wrap. Second shelf, I think. Be careful.”
“Why, is it alive?”
“The refrigerator's packed pretty full. If you're not careful taking something out, you can start an avalanche.”
He opened the refrigerator. On each shelf, there were two or three layers of food, one atop the other. The storage spaces on the doors were crammed full of bottles, cans, and jars.
“You afraid the government's going to outlaw food?” he asked.
“I like to keep a lot of stuff on hand.”
“I noticed.”
“Just in case.”
“In case the entire New York Philharmonic drops in for a nosh?”
She didn't say anything.
He said, “Most supermarkets don't have this much stock.”
She seemed embarrassed, and he dropped the subject.
But it was odd. Chaos reigned in the refrigerator, while every other inch of her apartment was neat, orderly, and even Spartan in its decor.
He found the roast beef behind a dish of pickled eggs, atop an apple pie in a bakery box, beneath a package of Swiss cheese, wedged in between two leftover casseroles on one side and a jar of pickles and a leftover chicken breast on the other side, in front of three jars of jelly.
For a while they worked in silence.
Once he had finally cornered her, he had thought it would be easy to talk about what had happened between them last night. But now he felt awkward. He couldn't decide how to begin, what to say first. The direct approach was best, of course. He ought to say, Rebecca, where do we go from here? Or maybe, Rebecca, didn't it mean as much to you as it did to me? Or maybe even, Rebecca, I love you. But everything he might have said sounded, in his own mind, either trite or too abrupt or just plain dumb.
The silence stretched.
She put placemats, dishes, and silverware on the table.
He sliced the beef, then a large tomato.
She opened two cans of soup.
From the refrigerator, he got pickles, mustard, mayonnaise, and two kinds of cheese. The bread was in the breadbox.
He turned to Rebecca to ask how she wanted her sandwich.
She was standing at the stove with her back to him, stirring the soup in the pot. Her hair shimmered softly against her dark blue robe.
Jack felt a tremor of desire. He marveled at how very different she was now from the way she had been when he'd last seen her at the office, only an hour ago. No longer the ice maiden. No longer the Viking woman. She looked smaller, not particularly shorter but narrower of shoulder, slimmer of wrist, overall more slender, more fragile, more girlish than she had seemed earlier.
Before he realized what he was doing, he moved toward her, stepped up behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders.
She wasn't startled. She had sensed him coming. Perhaps she had even willed him to come to her.
At first her shoulders were stiff beneath his hands, her entire body rigid.
He pulled her hair aside and kissed her neck, made a chain of kisses along the smooth, sweet skin.
She relaxed, softened, leaned back against him.
He slid his hands dow
n her sides, to the swell of her hips.
She sighed but said nothing.
He kissed her ear.
He slid one hand up, cupped her breast.
She switched off the gas burner on which the pot of minestrone was heating.
His arms were around her now, both hands on her flat belly.
He leaned over her shoulder, kissed the side of her throat. Through his lips, pressed to her supple flesh, he felt one of her arteries throb with her strong pulse; a rapid pulse; faster now and faster still.
She seemed to melt back into him.
No woman, except his lost wife, had ever felt this warm to him.
She pressed her bottom against him.
He was so hard he ached.
She murmured wordlessly, a feline sound.
His hands would not remain still but moved over her in gentle, lazy exploration.
She turned to him.
They kissed.
Her hot tongue was quick, but the kiss was long and slow.
When they broke, drawing back only inches, to take a much-needed breath, their eyes met, and hers were such a fiercely bright shade of green that they didn't seem real, yet he saw a very real longing in them.
Another kiss. This one was harder than the first, hungrier.
Then she pulled back from him. Took his hand in hers.
They walked out of the kitchen. Into the living room.
The bedroom.
She switched on a small lamp with an amber glass shade. It wasn't bright. The shadows retreated slightly but didn't go away.
She took off her robe. She wasn't wearing anything else.
She looked as if she were made of honey and butter and cream.
She undressed him.
Many minutes later, on the bed, when he finally entered her, he said her name with a small gasp of wonder, and she said his. Those were the first words they had spoken since he had put his hands on her shoulders, out in the kitchen.
They found a soft, silken, satisfying rhythm and gave pleasure to each other on the cool, crisp sheets.
VI
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