Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (35 page)

 
          
There was a reasonable explanation, a
logical one. Fires did not start of themselves, nor objects move
—
nor intangible monsters stalk the living. .
. .

 
          
She
could feel her heart beginning to race as—trapped and frightened by her own
mind—Winter sought for a way out.

           
Breathe.
Grey's voice in her mind was a calm demand.
In
—
out
—
you've been doing it for years, remember?
Breathe.

 
          
Winter
filled her lungs, fighting not to gasp with sheer terror. The sense of threat
receded, but not the feeling that there was something left undone, and little
time to do it in.

 
          
Oh, Grey
—
help me!
But this time there was no answer, and even the certainty
of Grey's presence that Winter had come to expect—self-delusion or not—was
missing.

 
          
This
one she had to do on her own.

 
          
"I
... believe," Winter said. Her voice was a croaking whisper. She held a
hand out in front of her, fingers spread, and was pleased to see how little it
trembled.

 
          
/
believe in the Unseen World. I believe in
the power of the mind to obliterate time and distance, to know what it cannot
possibly know and do what it cannot possibly do. There was a creature at
Nuclear Lake, and in the
Bidney
Institute laboratory.
I saw it, and 1 saw what it could do. It was there, and then it was here.

 
          
And it's won. It killed Cassie.

 
          
Strength
and anger drained out of her together, leaving only weariness and grief. She
tried not to think of Cassie, dead and mutilated like the animal corpses that
haunted all the survivors of
Nuclear
Lake
. If the fire had killed Cassie before the
creature reached her, that death would have been more merciful. Had Cassie set
the fire herself to achieve the only escape she could?

 
          
Had
it been Cassie's death that had been the creature's goal all along?

 
          
//
that's true then I'm free,
Winter
thought. The thought was barely formed before it was drowned in a torrent of
guilt. How could she bear to buy her safety at the price of Cassie's death?

 
          
It wasn't my choice to make,
Winter told
herself desperately. Oh, but once she'd held Life in her hands and been asked
to choose, and then . . .

 
          
Winter
gagged and swallowed hard against the sickness in her throat. She closed her
eyes tightly; she did not understand where the certain knowledge of her
personal guilt had come from, but its crushing weight was enough to drive her
mad. . . .

 
          
Mad. How simple. How convenient. Oh, stop it
—
Stop It
—STOP it! how

 
          
CAN
I MAKE AMENDS WHEN I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'VE DONE —

 
          
"Lady,
are you okay?"

 
          
Winter
opened her eyes and stared at the man with the suit coat flung over one arm and
his keys in an outstretched hand, obviously a businessman returned from his
trip and on his way to claim his car.

 
          
"Lady?
You okay?" he repeated dubiously.

 
          
Why do people keep asking me that when I'm
not?
Winter shook her head and began to laugh helplessly, the sound rising
and falling in the evening air like jagged arpeggios.

 
          
"I
must say, you look perfectly dreadful. When you called from the plane we didn't
know what to think. Of course Father and I knew that you weren't at the spa any
longer, but
San Francisco
—" "It isn't exactly
Ultima
Thule, Mother." "Don't be rude, dear. Now,
where's your luggage?" /
think I
left it in Long-Term Parking.
"I'm traveling light, Mother."
"Well, I can loan you some things, especially now that you've lost a few
pounds. I didn't like to say anything, dear, you know I don't meddle in my
children's lives, but you were getting just a touch portly there for a
while."

 
          
/
weighed a hundred and ten pounds, Mother.

 
          
The
Mercedes was waiting, parking lights flashing, in the drop-off zone at the
entrance to La Guardia Airport. A ticket already fluttered under the windshield
wipers. Mrs. Musgrave snatched it and stuffed it into the pocket of her mink
baseball jacket.

 
          
"Mother—"
Winter said in exasperation.

 
          
"Oh,
they don't mean it," her mother said, fishing for her keys. "And I
suppose I was supposed to park in
Ultima
Thule?
It's
not as if the chauffeur could just circle the block, now, is it?"

 
          
"Let
me drive," Winter said.

 
          
Her
mother's brows rose in well-manicured surprise. "Oh, do you still have
your license? I'd thought, after your accident ..." Mrs. Musgrave
delicately let the sentence drop, and got behind the wheel.

 
          
Winter's
jaw tightened, but after all these years it was reflexive habit rather than a
feeling of true anger. When her mother unlocked the passenger-side door, Winter
slid in across the leather seat, reaching for her seat belt. Mrs. Musgrave took
off before Winter was belted in, sliding the car into traffic with the serene
assurance of one who knows all traffic will stop for her.

           
Winter leaned back against the seat
and glanced at her mother. Cole-
Haan
shoes and
Pendleton slacks, the silly-lavish jacket over a taupe cashmere turtleneck and
Mikamoto
pearls; her mother had not changed a bit. There
might be more gray in the perfect blond hair, but with weekly visits to the
salon in
Manhattan
—an excuse for lunch with "the
girls" and shopping, or maybe a show—no one including Mrs. Musgrave would
ever know.

 
          
"You
ought to take better care of yourself, darling. You really have let yourself
go." Mrs. Musgrave tapped manicured fingernails on the steering wheel and
watched the traffic as if she suspected it of cheating her.

 
          
In that case, I wonder where I went. And if
I had fun there.
"How have you been, Mother?" Winter said aloud.

 
          
"Oh,
life goes on. Kenneth is very pleased about, oh, something-or-other at work—you
know I haven't any head for business—we had to cancel the trip to
Bermuda
last winter because he wanted to stay on top
of things, and of course it was impossible to get a refund at the last minute,
so what could we do? We sent Kenny Junior and Patricia down, and then of course
I had to hear your brother
Wycherly
hinting around
about 'special' treatment—"

 
          
Winter
smiled a little bitterly at the mention of her brothers. Their names brought
them to mind with almost painful clarity. Kenny was Kenneth Junior, the oldest,
whose wife Patricia sold real estate for a
Long Island
broker.
Wycherly
was her younger brother, named, as Winter was, for the well-researched
ancestors of the formidable Musgrave lineage.

 
          
"You
spoil Kenny, Mother." And
Wycherly
resented the
obvious favoritism shown to his golden and glorified elder sibling. "And
you know that
Wych
—"

 
          
"I
suppose you think I ought to have sent
Wycherly
and
Patricia?" her mother said with a silvery laugh. "Well, never mind. I
know you're tired and aren't feeling well; we'll be home soon, and then you can
rest. I hope you'll be planning to stay for a while; you've been quite the
stranger these past few years, and though Father would never dream of
mentioning it I know you've hurt him terribly. You really ought to think more
of others, Winter, dear; but then you never did think of anyone but
yourself." Satisfied with the placement of her last barb, Mrs. Musgrave
changed to another subject.

 
          
Why did 1 come here?
Winter wondered,
half-despairing. Her mother's voice purled on, like a quiet stream deep enough
to drown in, but Winter tuned it out, watching the cars slide past them on the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

 
          
She'd
gone home because she had no place else to go, because she'd owed this visit
ever since she'd left Fall River, because they were her parents and deserved
to know how things were with her.

 
          
But
nothing here had changed. Kenneth still got all the attention and the lavish
marks of parental favor—and drank too much, as far as Winter remembered, though
certainly that wasn't something the family ever spoke of.
Wycherly
still drifted from this to that, looking for some position that would engage
his talents and ending up living back at home more often than not—and at thirty
it was becoming obvious that the youngest Musgrave sibling was what previous
generations had not hesitated to label a wastrel.

 
          
Mother
tended her house, her wardrobe, and her friendships, serving on this committee
or that, all indistinguishable from one another except for the names of the
benefiting charity and the committee members she was fighting with.

 
          
Father
worked, eighty-hour weeks at the brokerage on Wall Street, barely home enough
to interfere in the lives of his family.

 
          
Nothing
had changed.

 
          
"Are
you listening?"

 
          
"Yes,
Mother," Winter answered dutifully.

 
          
"I
said, you ought to see my doctor while you're here. He's very good, you know;
keeps up with all the latest literature on depression and nerves. I don't know
if you really ought to even consider going back to work for a year or so at
least. Your health has never been terribly good, you know, and work isn't all
there is in the world."

 
          
What alternative are you offering me?
Winter
wondered, knowing there was none. She reached for the comforting illusion of
Grey's presence, but it wasn't there. All she had was the sick heavy outliers
of a headache that owed nothing to poltergeists or the paranormal, and
everything to coming home again.

 
          
When
it had been built in 1916,
Wychwood
had been
considered a tiny jewel-box of a house—only twenty-six rooms, built as a
wedding present by Great-Grandfather
Wycherly
for his
daughter and her husband.

 
          
With
the Great Depression, the family fortunes had declined to such an extent that
when a fire had destroyed the stables and one wing of the house they had not
been rebuilt, and time had taken the tennis courts, the boxwood maze, and the
formal gardens that Winter knew only from her study of old photo albums. But
what remained of
Wychwood
was, by today's standards,
a stately home indeed, and as the Mercedes pulled in through the high iron
gates—now rusted permanently half-open—and slid up the long graveled drive,
Winter could feel privilege and expectation wrap her in bonds as unyielding as
the grave.

 
          
Who's the coward now?

 
          
Winter
stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at the archway that led into the
dining room. Her encounter with Rhiannon in
San Francisco
was only a jumbled collection of
impressions now, but the irony of that taunt remained: Winter couldn't remember
the last time she'd been this scared. The headache she had expected had never
quite fulfilled its promise: The worst of the pain remained in the future, and
its potential made everything in the house seem to be taking place under water.
With damp palms Winter smoothed the thin silk
voile
of the borrowed
Hannae
Mori dress
against her thighs and reminded herself that what waited at the foot of the
stairs could not be so very bad. It was only her family, after all. What harm
could they wish her?