Grey Dawn (11 page)

Silence on the other end of the line. ‘Chris?'

Chris's sigh was audible. ‘Dulcie, do you have to? I mean, I think you did the right thing – urging this girl to come forward. You were right. She should have. But, well, she didn't. And now it really is sounding like it was something personal. Not some stray madman on the streets of Cambridge. I know you want to be a responsible member of the community. But maybe, Dulce, leave this one alone?'

‘Hmm.' Dulcie took another bite of cereal. It was soggy now.

‘Dulcie?' Behind him, the voices had grown louder. Chris must really be worried if he ignored his students for this long.

‘I won't get in the middle of it.' She gave him that. ‘I won't go to the police.' Dulcie meant that as a clarification, not an addition. She had plans.

She also had a question of her own. ‘Chris, when I told you that another woman had been attacked, you said you knew it. What did you mean?'

‘I didn't – I don't remember.' He was stammering. ‘Hey, I should go. I've got students.'

‘Chris Sorensen.' Dulcie used her best teacher voice. ‘You're hiding something, aren't you?'

‘I'm sorry, Dulcie. I didn't mean to.' A pause, and Dulcie knew he was considering how much to tell her.

‘Chris?'

‘It was Mr Grey, Dulcie.' He was speaking softly, his voice muffled as if he had his hand over the phone. ‘At least, I'm pretty sure it was. I heard, well, I thought I heard a cry or a howl, or something, and then I heard his voice.
“Innocence is no protection,”
he said.
“This goes back too far.'''

‘I
nnocence is no protection.' Dulcie mulled that one over. It could, she thought, apply to the kitten. No matter what Raleigh – or Lloyd or Trista – believed, she was determined that the little marmalade tabby was not going to fall into the wrong hands. Maybe Thorpe was blameless – she had a hard time thinking of him as innocent – but she wasn't going to take any chances. And as for the rest of it? That bit about ‘going back too far'? Well, that would fit if the crime was personal – a ‘domestic,' as Rogovoy had put it. Or it could have another meaning as well.

Sitting at the table, Dulcie stroked the closed lid of her laptop. This story, with its mysterious stranger, was drawing her in. Could it be connected, in some way. Could the stranger …?

She laughed at her own fancy. ‘Esmé, I really shouldn't drink sherry,' she called. The cat had disappeared, however, leaving Dulcie to finish her cereal alone. She really should go to bed, she knew. But while she was eating …

Only the Stranger sat unmoved by the fiendish Cries. Only he retained a preternatural calm. Outside, the horses frothed and tossed their manes, eyes wide and frantic in the night, while the Coachman – that dark figure whose Visage lay concealed – whipped and cursed his Fury into the night.

‘You have far to go.' The Voice, as soft as Velvet, reached her ear, as if by one Whisper'd by her side. ‘You bear a burden of Debt to others besides yourself, to those who will follow after. And there are some who would delay you, one in particular who would take from you that which you most treasure.'

That which you most treasure? Dulcie looked up from the keyboard. A woman, pursued in a storm, who is given a lift by a mysterious stranger? This story was taking some strange turns. The first bit of the manuscript, which she had found only a few months ago among some loose papers in the Mildon rare book collection, had dealt with a murder. Someone – a young nobleman – had been found lying dead in a library.

Dulcie shivered, remembering that scene. One too close to it had really happened, in her own undergraduate house library not that long ago. She shook off the memory – what mattered now was the book.

In that first fragment, the heroine – who either had red or dark hair depending on the author's whim – had found a body. It was quite possible, Dulcie had to acknowledge, that she had killed the man described so well, whom the reader first sees lying, still and cold, on the library rug. What Dulcie hadn't known was why.

Now, in this latest bunch of pages, she was getting to a motive. Someone had been pursuing this woman – someone or something. After all, fiendish howls in the night, mysterious pursuers, and even more mysterious rescuers didn't sound like what a present-day detective would call a ‘domestic.' And that, Dulcie thought with satisfaction, was one of the reasons she loved books like this. Gothic novels, and the women who wrote them, weren't bound by the dull reality of deadlines and family squabbles.

They probably weren't bound by fatigue either, Dulcie admitted when, about an hour later, she found herself face down on the warm keyboard. She'd woken to the soft touch of a paw, patting gently at her mouth.

‘Was I snoring, Esmé?' Dulcie blinked up into the wide green eyes. ‘Or did you think something might crawl out of my mouth?'

The little cat didn't answer, although the off-center star on her face gave her a look that Dulcie could only interpret as concern.

‘Not to worry, kitty. Off to bed.' Dulcie closed the computer and pulled herself up. Tomorrow, she'd go back to the Mildon. There were more pages that she'd recently identified. Deciphering them was laborious work, and Thorpe was pushing her to work on her writing. This book, however, was too thrilling to put down.

Maybe, she thought as she brushed her teeth, she could work up an article over the winter break. ‘Beyond
Umbria
,' she tried on the title. ‘An Anonymous Author's Next Great Work.'

If only she could put a name to the author, she thought to herself as she slid between the sheets. She felt so close to her, as if she knew her. And yet the woman whose work had come to mean so much was still a stranger. A nameless stranger in the night.

T
hey were traveling fast. Too fast for the Road, the Night, or the safety of the Horses, spent as they were and mad with Fear. Too fast for Comfort, for sure, as with every bump and jolt, she gripped the seat. Hers had been no choice – Flight was the only option lest she Surrender again to him. Again – and this time, more than her Safety was at stake. Still, she wished for Peace, for a moment of blessed stillness.

‘Here, this will warm you …' She looked up, having forgotten, for the moment, that she did not ride alone. Indeed, the Stranger – he who had hailed the Coachman and pulled over as she ran, stumbling, down that rocky path – now regarded her with cool eyes. Cool, but with compassion, she sensed, as she reached to accept the flask he offered, held out to her in one gloved hand. Dare she Drink?

‘It will do you good,' came the response, though she did not believe she had spoken her Question aloud. Perhaps, in her fatigue, her thoughts were leaking into the night, much as the wind eked its way into the carriage. ‘Drink,' said the Stranger. ‘Then, perhaps, you can sleep.' The draught indeed was strong and sweet, with a hint of spice, and warmed her well. Mayhap she could sleep now, she mused, her very Eyes growing heavy. Maybe she would be safe. Her lids closed, her mind drifting. The last thoughts she had were of those other Eyes, the Stranger's eyes, cool and green in the deep Shadow of the coach. Watching, and yet so calm.

Dulcie woke with a start, the taste of last night's sherry – or something stronger – warm on her tongue. Chris was snoring gently beside her, and Dulcie grabbed the clock, minutes before it was set to go off. No point waking him. After that dream, she wasn't going back to sleep.

Esmé came into the bathroom as Dulcie was brushing her teeth and rubbed against her bare legs.

‘What is it, kitty?' Dulcie asked as soon as she could. ‘Are you having strange dreams, too?'

The cat didn't respond, at least not verbally, and Dulcie thought about the green eyes in her dream. Clearly, her unconscious had connected the helpful stranger in the book with Mr Grey, but was it all in her mind? Her late, great cat had been reaching out to her last night; she was sure of that. Did he mean to warn her of more than the kitten? Did his message have something to do with Emily Trainor? She had to find out.

As she filled her travel mug, Dulcie considered the possibilities. She trusted Detective Rogovoy. Despite his inability to understand her concerns about Thorpe – he could be a bit concrete in his thinking – he was still a good cop. And even though Emily didn't want to talk to the police, Dulcie still felt they – or Rogovoy, at any rate – should know about the attack. However, she had promised Chris she wouldn't get involved –
more
involved, she corrected herself, and that pretty much precluded another visit to the university police. That didn't mean she couldn't drop in on Emily this morning. Maybe, now that the initial shock had passed, she could talk the young woman into going to the authorities. At the very least, Dulcie decided as she headed out the door, she might get some answers to her own questions.

‘Maybe Emily can take the kitten,' Dulcie said to herself as she locked the apartment behind her. Heading down to the street, she couldn't see her own cat. But Esmé had heard her last words, as did the larger, grey shadow she seemed to cast against the apartment wall. Both of them were staring, as if still listening, at the door their person had just exited. Both had their backs arched, their tails stretched straight, and every hair standing on end.

As it was, Dulcie felt almost jolly as she walked toward the Square. Maybe Chris was right, she mused: the two victims were so closely related that the attacks had to be personal. While that didn't help them, it did mean that her concerns about her adviser – and the visiting scholar – were less credible. It also meant the student body at large was less at risk. And because the violence wasn't random, she reasoned, it was more likely that the police would be able to find the perpetrator. If – Dulcie picked up her pace – she could convince Emily to come forward.

What if it was Josh? Dulcie didn't know the red-faced young man and, unlike Lucy, she didn't believe she had any special powers of discernment. But she had liked him. He'd seemed guileless in his big, goofy way, and she didn't want to believe that his overlarge exterior hid some nasty violent side. Surely there was someone else in the girls' life, someone less open and friendly. For a moment, Dulcie flashed on the stranger – a dark mystery who kept himself in shadow. No, that was a book, a book that had made its way into her dreams. What was happening here on campus was something human and all too real.

Later, she promised herself, she'd pursue that particular secret as well. With the help of Griddlehaus, the head of the Mildon special collection, she'd identified several more pages of promising material from a box of uncatalogued material. If any of them advanced the story, maybe even linked that first fragment – the bit about the body in the library – to these more recent pages, she'd be in luck. What she was finding was pure gold, academically speaking.

As she made her way to the Quad, she found herself summarizing what she knew: a woman, the heroine – whom Dulcie identified for better or worse with the author – is in the grasp of someone evil. It might be the nobleman we later find dead, but it might be someone else entirely. She manages to get away and flees into the night, a wild and stormy night, only to be picked up by a coach that just happens to be driving past on the lonely mountain road. The coach belongs to – or, at least, is occupied by – the shadowy stranger, who has green eyes and some kind of reviving drink.

No, she stopped herself, the drink was part of her dream, probably the result of last night's sherry. Still, that dream had seemed so real, as if it were another part of the story. It didn't advance it enough to bring Dulcie up to that first scene in the library, however. As she thought of the fragments she had read, Dulcie found herself wondering. She had assumed, for various reasons, that the man in the library had been murdered. She had also assumed that the heroine had killed him, perhaps in self-defense. Now, with the appearance of the stranger, another possibility presented itself. The stranger seemed to be an ally. Could he have done the killing? Was he, perhaps, the victim?

As an academic, Dulcie knew the dangers of jumping to conclusion. Even Thorpe, in one of his more lucid moments, had seen fit to warn her. Without proof, without direct ties, all she had was speculation. And speculation was fiction, not defensible fact. For all she knew, Thorpe had pointed out, she might be reading fragments of two different tales. From an academic viewpoint, that would have been wonderful: not just one, but a whole trove of previously undiscovered work! As a fan of the author, however, Dulcie found the idea disheartening. It was bad enough that her subject's best-known work,
The Ravages of Umbria
, only survived in fragments and that she would probably never get to read all of it. To find another set of partial novels was just too frustrating. Almost as bad as if she found out that the stranger was, in fact, a villain. For some reason, Dulcie found that concept disturbing. It must, she realized, have something to do with those deep green eyes.

She would have to shelve that question for later. She'd reached Winthrop House, where Emily and Mina roomed, and turned her thoughts to the room-mates as she showed her university ID and climbed to the third-floor suite marked ‘Love/Trainor.'

‘Hello?' She knocked. ‘Emily? It's me, Dulcie Schwartz.'

Silence. For a moment, Dulcie worried. Perhaps the girl's injuries had been more severe than anyone had known. Perhaps she had lapsed into unconsciousness. Perhaps … the sound of movement behind the door pushed that thought aside.

‘Emily?' Dulcie still felt strangely worried. ‘Are you okay? May I come in?' More shuffling and a strange thudding sound. ‘Emily.'

‘Coming!' The sound of a voice should have reassured Dulcie, but she found she was holding her breath. Finally the lock turned and the door opened, revealing a rather bedraggled version of the student she had last seen only twelve hours before. The delay, Dulcie could see, was due to the cane on which Emily leaned.