Lasher (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 2)

Shock, misery, nightmare. With faces of wax the immediate family had received each grieving relative or friend. And the world outside shone in spring splendor, whenever in the course of things he had stepped out the doors.

Even the simplest things blazed in Michael's eyes, after his long illness, his long housebound depression, as if they'd just been invented--the foolish gold curlicues on the plaster, the moist and perfect flowers beneath the outside fluorescent light. Never had Michael seen so many children cry at a funeral, so many children brought to witness, to pray by the coffin, and to kiss the departed, laid out in Betty Crocker perfection, her peculiarities lost to cliches in this final public gesture, as she slept on her white satin bed.

He'd come home alone at eleven o'clock and gone through his clothes, packed up his suitcase and made his plans. He'd walked through the whole house. It was then that he fully sensed the difference, that it was inhabited again by something he could almost feel and see. No, that was not it. The house itself talked to him; the house itself responded.

Madness, perhaps, to think the house was alive, but he had known it before in mingled happiness and misery, and he knew it again, and it was better than the two wretched months of aloneness, of sickness, and drug fog, of being "half in love with easeful death" and the house in silence and without personality, witnessing nothing, having no use for him at all.

He'd stared a long time at the gramophone and the pearls that lay as carelessly as Mardi Gras beads on the carpet. Priceless pearls. He could still hear Ancient Evelyn's strange voice, both deep and soft, and pretty all at once, talking on and on to Mona.

Nobody else seemed to know or care about these treasures from the compartment beneath the bookcase wall; they lay in the shadowy corner near the heap of books, like so much junk. Nobody touched them or noticed them.

Now was the conference after the funeral. Had to be done.

He would have had it at Ryan's house if that had been easier for him. But Ryan and Pierce said they had to go to the office, they had no choice. They confessed they were tired of visiting now, and they'd come up to First Street on the way, they didn't mind. They were very concerned about Rowan. He must not think they had forgotten about Rowan for one single moment. Poor wretched father and son.

In the sharp glare of attention, they looked no less perfect--Ryan with his tanned skin and smooth white hair and eyes that were so opaque and blue. Pierce, the son whom anyone in the world would want, brilliant, well-mannered, and so obviously shattered by the fact of his mother's death. Didn't seem it ought to happen this way; they should have had insurance against it. What was death to the country club Mayfairs, as Bea had put it? It had been more than kind of them to agree to come.

But Michael could not put this meeting off. He really couldn't. He'd wasted so much time. He'd lived in this house like a spook since he'd come home from the hospital. Was it the death of Gifford, random and terrible and irrelevant, which had wakened him from his stupor? He knew it was not. It was Mona.

Well, they would gather now, and he would explain that he must take action regarding Rowan, he was packed and ready to go.

That is what they had to understand. He had been lying here under a curse, a man in a dream, hurt in his heart that Rowan had left. He had failed.

And then there had been the medal. The Archangel medal. It had been in Gifford's purse in Destin. And when Ryan had put that in his hand, at graveside, no less, as they embraced, he had known. I must find Rowan. I must do what I was sent here to do. I must do what I want to do. I have to move. I have to be strong again.

The medal. Gifford had found it out by the pool some time ago, maybe even Christmas Day, Ryan wasn't sure; she kept meaning to give it to Michael. But she was afraid to upset him with the medal. She'd been sure the medal was his. There had been blood on the medal. And here it was, all cleaned up and shiny. It had fallen out of her purse while Ryan was going through it. Little graveside chat, no more than a few seconds in the cool marble mausoleum with the noonday sun streaming in, and hundreds waiting to shake Ryan's hand. "Gifford would want me to give you this without further delay."

So what time was there to feel appropriately guilty about the little redhead who'd slept in his arms, who'd said, "Throw out those drugs. You don't need them."

He held the door open for them as they entered the library.

"Come in," he said, feeling a little strange as he always did, being the master of this, their house, and gestured for Ryan and Pierce and Aaron Lightner to sit before the desk. He took his customary place behind it. He saw Pierce look at the little phonograph, and those long pearls, but they would get to that later on.

"Now, I know how bad this is," he said to Ryan. Someone had to start things. "You buried your wife today. And my heart goes out to you. I wish I could let this wait. Everything should be made to wait. But I have to talk about Rowan."

"Of course you do," said Ryan immediately. "And we're here to tell you what we know. We don't know much, however."

"I see. I can't get a word out of Randall or Lauren. They say, Talk to Ryan, Ryan knows everything, and so I've asked you to come and tell me what has been going on. I've been like a man in a coma. I have to find Rowan. I'm packed and ready to go."

Ryan looked amazingly composed, as if he'd thrown an inner switch to Business Mode; there was nothing bitter or resentful in his attitude. Pierce on the other hand was still crushed; he wore a look of inconsolable grief. It was doubtful he was hearing Michael's words, or should even be here.

Aaron too had been devastated by Gifford's death. He had taken Bea under his wing, and comforted her throughout the ordeal of the Metairie funeral parlor, and cemetery and mausoleum. He was worn and tired, and fairly miserable, and no amount of British decorum could hide it any longer. Then there had been Alicia, hysterical and hospitalized at last; Aaron had helped with that too, side by side with Ryan as he broke the news to Patrick that Alicia was malnourished and sick and must be cared for. Patrick had tried to hit Ryan. And Bea had made no secret anymore of her developing affection for Aaron; she had found a man she could depend upon, she said quietly to Michael as they drove home.

But now it all fell on this man, Ryan Mayfair, this lawyer who managed every little detail for everyone--and he didn't have Gifford at his side anymore, to argue with him, to believe in him, to help him. And he was already back at work. It was too soon to know how bad it was going to be, Michael reasoned. It was too soon for this man to be really afraid.

"I gotta go," Michael said. "It's that simple. What should I know? Where am I headed? What's the latest info we have on Rowan? What are our best leads?"

A silence fell. Mona came into the room, a white bow drooping appropriately over her locks, and dressed in a simple white cotton frock, the proper thing for children at a time of death. She shut the door to the hall behind her. She did not speak to anyone, and no one looked at her, and no one seemed to notice or care that she took the leather chair against the far wall, and that she looked across the dusty span of the room at Michael. Michael could not stop for this, and really, it didn't matter. There was nothing going on that Mona didn't know, or couldn't hear. And for that matter, there was this secret between them that was a bond. The child fascinated him as much as she made him feel guilty; she was part and parcel of the excitement of his recovery and what he had to do now.

He had not woken up the morning after with the feeling "Who is the strange child in my bed?" Quite to the contrary. He sort of knew who she was, and knew that she knew him.

"You can't go," said Aaron.

The firmness of his voice caught Michael off guard. He realized he'd been drifting, back to Mona, and Mona's caresses and the dreamy appearance of Ancient Evelyn in the street.

"You don't know the full picture," said Aaron.

"What full picture?"

"We didn't feel we should tell you everything," said Ryan, "but before we proceed, let me explain. We don't really know where Rowan is, and we don't know wha

t's happened to her. I'm not saying that anything bad has happened to her. That's what I want you to understand."

"Have you spoken to your doctor?" asked Pierce, suddenly coming alert and joining in, as if he meant to do business. "Does he say your convalescence is over?"

"Gentlemen, it's over. I'm going to find my wife. Now tell me who's heading the investigation to find Rowan. Who has the File on Rowan Mayfair?"

Aaron cleared his throat in eloquent British style, a soft traditional preamble to a speech, and then began.

"The Talamasca and the Mayfair family have been unable to find her," said Aaron. "That is to say, a considerable amount of investigation and expense has resulted in frustration."

"I see."

"This is what we know. Rowan left here with a tall dark-haired man. As we told you, she was seen with him on the plane to New York. She was definitely in Zurich at the end of the year, and from there she went to Paris, and from Paris to Scotland. Later on she was in Geneva. From Geneva, she might have gone back to New York. We are not certain."

"You mean she could be in this country again."

"She could," said Ryan. "We don't know." Ryan paused as though this was all he had to say, or simply to gather his thoughts.

"She and this man," said Aaron, "were seen in Donnelaith, Scotland. There seems no doubt of that. In Geneva, eyewitness testimony isn't as conclusive. We know she was in Zurich only because of the banking transactions she performed; in Paris, because she ran certain medical tests there which she later sent to Dr. Samuel Larkin in California. Geneva, because that is the city from which she called the doctor on the phone and from which she sent him the medical information. She ran tests at a clinic there, and those too were forwarded to Dr. Larkin."

"She called this doctor? He actually spoke to her?"

This should have given him hope; this should have been something other than the sting it was. But he knew that his face was reddening. She called, but she did not call me. She called her old doctor friend in San Francisco. He tried to look tranquil, appreciative, open-minded.

"Yes," said Aaron, "she called Dr. Larkin on February twelfth. She was brief. She told him she was sending a shipment of medical tests, specimens, samples, et cetera, that he was to take them to the Keplinger Institute for analysis. She told him she would contact him. That this was confidential. She indicated she might be interrupted at any time. She sounded as if she was in danger."

Michael sat quiet, trying simply to process this, to realize what it meant. One moment his beloved wife had been making phone calls to another man. Now the picture was entirely different.

"This is what you didn't want to tell me," he said.

"Yes," said Aaron. "And that the people we interviewed in Geneva and in Donnelaith indicated she might have been under coercion. Ryan's detectives drew the same inference from these witnesses, though none of the people themselves actually used the word coercion."

"I see. But she was alive and well when she spoke to Samuel Larkin. And that was February twelfth!" said Michael.

"Yes..."

"OK, what did these people see? What did the people at these medical clinics see?"

"No one at any of the clinics noticed anything. But we are talking about enormous institutions, you must realize. There seems little doubt that Rowan and Lasher slipped in, with Rowan impersonating a staff doctor or a technician as the situation required. She completed various tests and left before anyone in any of these places was the wiser."