The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

“All the immortal races?”

“You and Stuart. If we answered every single question, we’d overwhelm you. Let it come gradually, please. And that way we can postpone the inevitable revelation that we don’t know all the answers.”

Reuben smiled. But he wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip through his fingers, not feeling the pain he was feeling now.

“Is there a science of spirits?” asked Reuben. He felt the tears welling again. He picked up one of the cookies, which was still warm, and ate it easily in one mouthful. Delicious oatmeal cookie, his favorite kind, very thick and chewy. He drank the rest of the coffee, and Margon poured another cup.

“No, not really,” said Margon. “Though people will tell you there is. I’ve told you what I know—that spirits can and do move on. Unless, of course, they don’t want to move on. Unless, of course, they’ve made a career of remaining here.”

“But what you mean is they disappear from your sight, don’t you?” Reuben sighed. “I mean, what you’re saying is they leave you, yes, but you can’t know that they’ve gone on.”

“There’s evidence they go on. They change, they disappear. Some people can see them more clearly than others. You can see them. You get the power from your father’s side of the family. You get it from the Celtic blood.” It seemed he had more to say, and then he added, “Please listen to me. Don’t seek to communicate with her. Let her go, for her sake.”

Reuben couldn’t answer.

Margon rose to go.

“Wait, Margon, please,” Reuben said.

Margon stood there, eyes lowered, bracing himself for something unpleasant.

“Margon, who are the Forest Gentry?” Reuben asked. Margon’s face changed. He was suddenly exasperated.

“You mean Felix hasn’t told you?” he asked. “I should think he would have.”

“No, he hasn’t told me. I know you’re fighting over them, Margon. I saw you. I heard you.”

“Well, you let Felix explain to you who they are, and while he’s at it, he might explain to you his entire philosophy of life, his insistence that all sentient beings can live in harmony.”

“You don’t believe they can?” Reuben asked. He was struggling to keep Margon there, keep Margon talking.

Margon sighed. “Well, let’s put it this way. I’d rather live in harmony in this world without the Forest Gentry, without spirits in general. I’d rather people my world with those creatures who are flesh and blood, no matter how mutant, unpredictable, or misbegotten they may be. I have a deep abiding respect for matter.” He repeated the word, “Matter!”

“Like Teilhard de Chardin,” said Reuben. He thought of the little book he’d found before he’d met either Margon or Felix, the little book of Teilhard’s theological reflections inscribed to Felix by Margon. Teilhard had said he was in love with matter.

“Well, yes,” Margon said with faint smile. “Rather like Teilhard. But Teilhard was a priest, like your brother. Teilhard believed things I have never believed. I don’t have an orthodoxy, remember.”

“I think you do,” said Reuben. “But it’s your own godless orthodoxy.”

“Oh, you’re right, of course,” said Margon. “And perhaps I’m wrong to argue for the superiority of it. Let’s just say I believe in the superiority of the biological over the spiritual. I look for the spiritual in the biological and no place else.”

And he left without another word.

Reuben sat back in the chair, gazing dully at the distant window. The panes were wet and clear and made up the many lead-framed squares of a perfect mirror.

After a long time and gazing at the distant reflection of the fire in a glass—a tiny blaze that seemed to float in nothingness—he whispered: “Are you here, Marchent?”

Slowly against the mirror, her shape took form, and as he stared fixedly at it, the shape was colored in, became solid, plastic and three-dimensional. She sat in the window seat again, but she did not look the same. She wore the brown dress she’d worn that day he’d met her. Her face was vividly moist and flushed as if with life, but sad, so sad. Her soft bobbed hair appeared combed. Her tears were glistening on her cheeks.

“Tell me what you want,” he said, trying desperately to stifle his fear. He started to get up, to go to her.

But the image was already dissolving. There seemed a flurry of movement, the fleeting shape of her reaching out, but it thinned, vanished—as if made of pixels and color and light. She was gone. And he was standing there, shaken as badly as before, his heart in his throat, staring at his own reflection in the window.

11

REUBEN SLEPT TILL AFTERNOON, when a phone call from Grace awakened him. He had best come down now, she said, to sign the marriage documents and get the ceremony done tomorrow morning. He agreed with her.

He stopped on his way out only to look for Felix, but Felix was nowhere around, and Lisa thought he had perhaps gone down to Nideck to supervise plans for the Christmas festival.

“We are all so busy,” said Lisa, her eyes glowing, but she insisted Reuben have some lunch. She and Heddy and Jean Pierre had the long dining room table covered in sterling-silver chafing dishes, bowls, and platters. Pantry doors stood open, and a stack of flatware chests stood on the floor by the table. “Now listen to me, you must eat,” she said, quickly heading for the kitchen.

He told her no, he’d dine with his family in San Francisco. “But it’s fun to see all these preparations.”

And it was. He realized that the big party was only seven days away.

The oak forest outside was swarming with workmen, who were covering the thick gray branches of the oaks with tiny Christmas lights. And tents were already being erected on the terrace in front of the house. Galton and his carpenter cousins were coming and going. The magnificent marble statues for the crèche had been carted to the end of the terrace and stood in a wet confused grouping, waiting to be appropriately housed, and there was a flock of workmen building something, in spite of the light rain, that just might have been a Christmas stable.

He hated to leave but felt he had little choice in the matter. As for the journey ahead, well, he wouldn’t be stopping for Laura, but she would meet the wedding party at City Hall tomorrow.

As it turned out, things went worse than he’d ever expected.

Caught in a downpour before he reached the Golden Gate Bridge, he took more than two hours to reach the Russian Hill house, and the storm showed no signs of letting up. It was the kind of rain that drenches one just running from the car to the front door, and he arrived disheveled and having to change immediately.