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hissed, fisting his hands to stop the ssating heat in his fingertips faded.
Poor Edith looked as if she might retch, Doctor. I stumbled ... I didn't mean ... spun in a rustling twirl of heavy fabric and the
door, slamming it shut behind her.
Ian closed his eyes and sagged forward. A dull, thudding pain beat at the base of his skull, deepening with each shallow breath he took.
How long could he go on? he wondered for the millionth time. How long could a man exist, closeted away in a murky darkness, touching no one, never being touched?
That first year after the "accident," he thought he'd go mad with it, thought the damned psychic ability would simply swallow him whole and he would fade away.
Nothing so dramatic had happened, however, and after a while he'd stopped expecting it to, stopped expecting anything at all. He'd simply gone on, living, breathing, sleeping, eating.
Pretending .. .
He had died on a Sunday. The Sabbath.
When Ian looked back on it now?which he did with morbid regularity?he remembered that it had been such an ordinary day. So damned ordinary. Sunny and bright, the air crisp with the coming of winter.
It had started like every other day back then, with a blinding sense of purpose and an overwhelming optimism. He'd performed an appendectomy, which even his colleagues advised against.
As always, the doubt spurred Ian on, challenged him. That day he'd gone even further, causing an outbreak of dissension among the other doctors at New York Hospital. He'd done the unheard-of?he'd worn gloves and demanded the same of his assistant, and even worse,
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he'd forced Dr. Jones, his superior, to put out his cigar during the operation.
It had caused quite a scandal, of course, but the surgery was a brilliant success. There was no sign of the postoperative infection that would kill the man in less than a week.
Not then. Then, there was only the adoration of his peers. It rang loud and long in his ears, filling his soul, making him think that he could do anything, that he could conquer worlds.
Or, at least, one very alluring woman.
He sighed, feeling the familiar pang of regret. How was it that a whole life could spiral down to one moment, one wrong decision?
He'd gone over it a thousand times in his mind, asking himself endless, useless questions that had no answers. Why had he gone to see Charlotte? Why not any of the too willing women who held vigil at his front door?
But no, in his self-centered, blind arrogance, he'd gone to Charlotte, the one woman who'd rejected him. The one truly innocent human being he'd ever known.
He'd knocked on her door in the middle of the night, carrying an icy bottle of champagne and a dozen roses. Her husband had been gone?as Ian had known he would be.
She tried to resist him, tried valiantly, but the quiet country miss, made beautiful only by unattainability, was no match for Ian. He smiled and cajoled and seduced with an ease born of practice, making the young woman forget the vows she'd made with her sixty-year-old husband.
You 're so lovely, Charlotte. . . . Does he tell you that? Does he kiss your luscious lips and breathe in your perfumed scent and lick the sensitive flesh of your breasts? Does he worship your body, Charlotte, as I do? Does he really see you . . . or are you simply the mother of his
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children, the keeper of his house? Ah, Charlotte, come to my bed, let me love you.... You are so beautiful....
The moment he got her into bed, he'd stopped caring about her. Nothing about Charlotte touched him, or filled the void that had been in his soul since childhood.
He'd wakened after a brief and fitful sleep, unable to recall how it had felt to kiss her. Wincing, desperate to sneak away without a word, he'd rolled onto his side, reached slowly for his clothes.
He'd dressed quietly and turned to leave.
Then he'd seen the shadow in the doorway, the flash of silver from the gun. After that, the memory took on the shimmering, inconstant feel of a dream. Images, one after another.