PART II

---

A dream of flying -- common as dust.

Swirling golden dust and the rushing hollow of the wind. Wrenched into greyness, the blackness of long sleep, then blinked again into existence.

Dizzying, those swells of yellow cloud -- like a Turner sky, unchecked by flat earth or a frame's gilded curls. A monstrous firmament without ending or beginning. Only a warm gritty breath, faintly sulphurous, winding upward from the mouth of hell.

Float in its vapors forever and ever and no limbs to swim against the currents or wings to fly above. No feeling. No thought struggling to take form that wasn't erased, smooth as slate, the dark veil descending once more only to be whisked into tatters by the livid light.

It seemed for a moment that fingers curled into the very weave of the clustered clouds, invisible filaments biting into the illusion of flesh that clutched them.

Aimless floating became a pendulum's swing and then a tugging. The billowing mists beneath lost their softness.

The light lost its battle with the darkness.

* * * * *

The black veil didn't lift again, but after some time it was possible to make out shifting shadows beyond. And once or twice a circle of candlelight.

One shape -- only one that moved quietly and with invisible hands brought pain and warmth and an elusive comfort.

Then there was the unicorn -- snow white and wreathed in flowers. Other figures surrounded it, but they were impossible to make out in the dimness. Only the unicorn was bright enough to catch the meager light.

This time, when it winked into view, she saw it for what it was -- a woven image, part of a tapestry that hung across from the narrow bed. It was not as fine as those that hung in the Great Hall. The colors were brighter. Probably a modern imitation.

A single candle stood on the slender table that hugged one wall. Beside the bed was a cabinet of shallow, metal drawers. Blinking heavily, she tried to identify the room and her reason for being here, but the soft throbbing in her head was drawing her back toward sleep, and despite the sharper pain, she followed it.

When next the room sprang into her vision, the dizziness was gone. There was the tapestry as before, and the candle had become a small oil lamp, so grimed with soot that it gave off only a feeble glow. The walls, she could see now, were stone and the low ceiling, too. That sensation of endless dreaming had dissipated. Everything had the sharpness of reality. The smell permeating the tiny room that did not come from burning oil, the texture of the plain woolen blanket in her fingers, and most of all the aching in her leg.

Pushing her hands against the mattress, she managed to move into a sitting position, and pulled the bedclothes aside. A wide bandage crisscrossed her right ankle, and she frowned at it, trying to remember how it came to be there. Her legs were bare beneath a flannel nightgown that she couldn't recall ever seeing before.

She tried to think back -- past the darkness, past the dream images. The effort only brought a frightening confusion, so she concentrated once more on the surroundings. There was no sound to indicate what might lie beyond the two entrances barely visible in the shadows. Her arms in the unfamiliar gown, white with tiny sprigs of violets, were tired from simply throwing back the covers.

Turning her head, she saw that the pillow was covered in plain muslin, and beside her sat the source of the smell. Steam still rose faintly from the crockery bowl. It felt warm to the touch. Soup, thick with barley. Suddenly she was terribly hungry.

Ignoring the spoon that lay next to it, she cradled the bowl in her hands and took a sip. Delicious. Half the broth was gone before she resorted to the silverware. Finishing every bit made her feel instantly stronger, but at the same time the warmth spreading through her and the effort it had taken to eat coaxed her back down into the covers, and once again she slept.

* * * * *

"Joe, there's a call for you on line four -- a Mr. Krauss. He says it's important."

"Yeah, thanks Charlene." He finished the sentence he was writing and tossed the pencil aside. Krauss... Krauss. The name rang a bell but it wasn't loud enough to cut through the grisly description of murder he was having to put to paper. Hard stuff to shake off in time to figure which case me he ought to pull before answering.

"This is Maxwell."

"Leonard Krauss here. I'm the superintendent at Ms. Chandler's building?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Krauss." The guy in bad need of an ophthalmologist. "What can I do for you?"

"I found something very peculiar, Mr. Maxwell. I don't know what to make of it. I thought maybe you could explain it to me. I was down in the sub-basement under the building here, cleaning out one of the storage bins. There was a bunch of boxes just sitting by the wall, and I thought I better check and see what they were, whether they ought to be put away. I scooted them out, and there was this handbag."

"A handbag?"

"Yeah, a lady's handbag. I opened it up to look for an ID, and it turns out to belong to Ms. Chandler."

"What...? Now wait a minute. Was this maybe an old one she was storing down there?"

"No, no. It still had things in it -- like she was using it. "

"Stolen?" Joe was aware that his fist had tightened on the receiver. "Maybe somebody lifted it and tossed what they didn't want out of sight."

"Oh, no, Mr. Maxwell. Everything's in there -- keys, credit cards. There must be close to a hundred in cash. I don't understand it."

Joe's breath hissed out in a long-held gasp. "Just hold onto it. Don't touch anything. I'm on my way."

He slammed down the receiver and snatched up his coat. Damn it, damn it, damn it, he chanted under his breath, yanking open the door. I knew something wasn't right.

* * * * *

There was someone in the room. She sensed it even before she opened her eyes. Someone moving quietly, very nearby.

If only she could remember how she came to be here. Was there reason to be afraid? It took a supreme effort not to jump when a cool hand pressed lightly against her forehead, but she kept still until certain whoever it was had moved away.

Vague sounds from the vicinity of the table told her the person was as far away as they were likely to get in this cramped space, and cautiously she peeked out from lowered lids. A woman stood with her back to the room. Blonde. As she bent to adjust the lamp, Catherine could see her profile quite clearly. She'd never seen her before in her life.

But was that true? For the first time the inability to think beyond the here and now seemed ominous. Panic began to threaten. Perhaps she'd gasped, because the figure turned toward the bed.

"About time you woke up. I see you liked your dinner well enough."

"Who are you?... What is this place?"

"Not very polite are you?" The voice was faintly amused. Its owner moved with efficiency and took a thick washcloth from one of the narrow drawers, laying it neatly beside a bowl of warm water.

She was slender, middle-aged. There was something haughty in her manner as she reached out her hand. The touch was gentle, but it made Catherine flinch, and she brought her own fingers to the spot beside her right temple. It was undeniably tender.

"Still sore? It's only a bruise -- nowhere near as bad as that scar on the other side. I can give you something for the headache if you want it."

But the throbbing had stopped. Alarm had all but cleared the struggling thoughts from her mind. If only she could pull back the ones she needed, the ones that would explain what she was doing here.

She wished the woman would remove her hand, but it stayed to linger caressingly along the line of her cheekbone. There was an odd, shuttered look to her expression that made Catherine uneasy.

"Who are you?" she repeated, hoarsely.

"I'm the person you should thank for getting you out of a pretty pickle, but you don't remember that, do you?"

"No."

"Just as well. You have a bad sprain. The swelling's gone down quite a bit. Still, I wouldn't think about trying to walk on it if I were you."

"I need... I need to go to the bathroom."

It was true. She did. But a part of her made nervous by the warning not to walk (a simple precaution or was there a more sinister implication?) wanted suddenly to test her strength.

"Yes, I imagine you do. Here." The woman flipped back the covers and slipped her arm around Catherine as she sat up and unsteadily brought bare feet to the cold, stone floor. An unpleasant jolt shrieked up her leg with the attempt to put the slightest weight on it, and she let herself lean against her companion as they made haltingly for the smaller doorway.

The stranger was not much taller than herself, but there seemed an incredible wiry strength in the arm supporting her. Or perhaps it was only the contrast with her own light-headed weakness.

"I can manage," Catherine said, finding herself in an alcove with a crude toilet not unlike some of those in the tunnel community. Her companion waited outside and helped her back to the bed. It annoyed Catherine that the brief activity had left her exhausted.

Yes, she was definitely below, but this woman wore ordinary clothing -- plain shirt and slacks -- not the distinctive tunnel garb. And Catherine was still sure she hadn't seen her before.

"You haven't told me who you are," she said, forcing strength into her voice.

"Who do you think I am? You seemed to know last night. You called me 'mother'." There was that faint sense of amusement again behind the bland expression. "I'm far too young to be your mother. Why don't you just call me Clarissa?"

"Is that your name?"

"All of it should have been mine by rights. I take what I can get. You're my guest here, uninvited, at that, so suppose you tell me who you are."

"I... I'm not sure. I can't seem to remember things."

That wasn't entirely true. Fear of the unknown was sharpening her perceptions by the minute. Obviously this was someplace below, and she had come, of course, to see Vincent, but where was he? Did he know where she was? A muddled dread swam into consciousness with his name. She must try not to think of him, not to call him here until she was sure there was no danger. If only the woman -- Clarissa -- would go away and give her time to try to fill in the disturbing blank in her memory.

But this stranger clearly knew more than she did; she might be able to supply the answers. Yes, it was best to keep her talking, but until she understood what was going on, why she was here, some things would be best kept to herself. Not everything, she decided, remembering the bandage that appeared expertly applied. The woman had a shrewd, watchful look about her. Pleading total loss of memory might only arouse her suspicions.

"My name is Cynthia. I'm a secretary."

"So what were you doing down here?"

"That's what I can't remember. Visiting maybe... delivering something. I don't know."

"A helper." Clarissa nodded as if she'd already guessed as much. "One of those who makes it possible for that bunch under the park to survive."

"You know them?"

"I know about them. So many people living in one small area -- too many, but surely you didn't think they were the only ones with the idea to live down here?"

"I really didn't know."

"Well, believe me, there are others. From what I hear, those people haven't escaped anything. They've brought it all with them -- rules, duties. What's the point? Most of us who've chosen to go underground did it because we're sick of crowds and rules. We value our privacy."

"You live here alone?"

"More or less. Your ankle -- let me see it.''

Catherine had little choice. The cool fingers that unwound the wrappings unleashed shooting stabs of pain, yet the woman's touch spoke of competency. Straightening, Clarissa stuffed the bandage into the pocket of her trousers. "The swellings gone down, but you don't want to move it if you can help it."

She pulled open one of the flat metal drawers -- like the ones you see in doctor's office, Catherine realized suddenly -- and brought out scissors and a length of clean, brown cloth. She began to rewrap the injured leg with swift, sure movements.

"Are you a nurse?"

Clarissa's look was oddly supercilious. "Now why would you ask me that? Why not say 'Are you a doctor?' I should have been a doctor. I was in pre-med for a time."

"Why did you quit?"

"I didn't quit. The money quit. She stopped it -- just like that -- and there was nothing I could do about it. Not then. But it wasn't always like that. I grew up with money. I wore the prettiest dresses of any girl in school -- smocking and lace and eyelet, starched pinafores and Mary Janes every day of the week. Just like you -- a rich girl."

"What makes you say that?" Catherine's heart quickened with the fear that this woman might know all about her, know that she hadn't given her real name.

"I saw the labels in the clothes you were wearing."

The self-satisfied smile, not quite a smirk, had begun to irritate Catherine, but here was a clue that might jog her sluggish memory. "What happened to them? What kind of clothes were they?"

"Dirty. I threw them away -- slacks, a sweater. Pretty expensive for a secretary's salary, wouldn't you say? Yes, I remember what it was like to try and lead a genteel life on too little money, saving to buy one good suit or a cocktail dress. But sportswear? No one spends that much on casual clothes unless they have money to burn."

Catherine didn't answer. Is that what the woman was after -- money? Is that why she was here? She felt a little ashamed of her suspicions as Clarissa took the washcloth and with slow, gentle strokes washed Catherine's face and hands.

She wanted to protest, to say she could do it herself, but could she? Lassitude was stealing over her, stronger even than the curiosity that tugged at her foggy mind. One thing important to say before she gave in to sleep. "Clarissa, I have to get to my friends. I have to let them know I'm all right."

"But you're not all right. Not yet. And a friend will come soon enough." Clarissa's eyes glittered in the darkness. Her secretive smile puzzled Catherine who, nevertheless, had lost the strength to ask more.

* * * * *

When she opened her eyes again, the room was deserted. She had no idea how long she'd slept, and nothing in her surroundings gave any clue to the passage of time.

Were they worried about her -- Vincent and the others? Or did they know she was here? What had happened -- an accident? Could she have somehow taken a wrong turn and become lost in the maze beneath the city? If so, they might not even have known she was coming, but Vincent would have known... That feeling of dread again that refused to explain itself.

Efforts to recall the circumstances leading up to this moment brought only a confusing montage of memories -- most of them from weeks and months ago. Short-term memory -- that's what was missing, something to do with whatever trauma had left her mind woozy and her leg a constant source of dull, throbbing pain.

It would be simple enough to fasten on the thought of Vincent, to let her feelings flow and bring him to her, but something in this situation gave her pause. Her position here was vague. Obviously, she'd been rescued -- from something, cared for with some degree of skill, yet she couldn't shake the sensation of being a prisoner. She couldn't risk drawing him into so uncertain a set of circumstances.

Time to test her resources, to challenge the weakness that, after all, might be the only thing holding her hostage.

Resolutely, she swung her feet to the floor, pleased to feel no dizziness. By putting all her weight on the left foot, it was possible to stand. Walking was another matter. Even using her right foot for balance produced a tingling pain, and she virtually hopped to the table some yards away. By holding to it and then to the wall, she was able to reach the little bathroom, though the effort left her discouraged. The possibility of leaving this place and finding her way unaided to the central tunnels seemed fanciful. Her ankle throbbed. She was already tired.

"Going for a walk?" Clarissa's voice, tinged with unpleasant irony, greeted her as she emerged. "You'll only make it worse."

Silently, Catherine allowed herself to be helped back to bed. There were things she had to know, and she was formulating the best way to ask them when she saw that another bowl of soup had appeared on the cabinet. She ate it all, greedy for the strength it might provide.

Clarissa watched her with the same unfathomable expression.

Maybe she was simply lonely. It wasn't surprising that her social graces might be a little rusty if she'd lived alone for a long time. Catherine wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she wished the woman wouldn't stare like that. She was studying Catherine's face with a predatory fascination that made her decidedly uncomfortable.

"The soup's very good. Thank you, Clarissa. I appreciate everything you've done for me, but I simply have to get a message to my friends. Will you help me do that?"

"What friends are those?"

"Anyone -- everyone who might be wondering where I am. Where I come from you can't simply disappear for two days and not alarm people."

"Two days?" It took a moment for Catherine to realize that the unpleasant croaking sound was meant to be a laugh. "I've been waiting on you a lot longer than that. You should be grateful, my girl. If I hadn't found you when I did, no one would ever know what became of you."

"What did happen?"

"I have no idea." Clarissa's tone implied she didn't care all that much. "You probably got lost. That happens down here -- intruders wandering around where they have no business. You fell and hurt yourself. I told you someone will come any time now -- someone who's familiar with your friends. He'll know the best thing to do."

"Who's that?"

"Nobody you're likely to know. He comes and goes."

"But he lives down here?"

"I told you a lot of people live down here. Some are little more than animals. Their minds are gone -- too long living like moles and rats, but they can come in handy. Some of them are stupid as sheep. They'll do anything for the simplest little rewards."

"Is that how you live? Do these people get you the things you need?"

"Oh, yes. I seldom have to go up into that cesspool of a city. I have my work, you see."

"What kind of work?"

"I don't think that's any of your business."

Catherine was growing increasingly annoyed with her hostess's manner. Game-playing, pure and simple, and there was so much she needed to know, but it wouldn't help to antagonize her, not before she was able to assert herself with any chance of winning. "I'm just curious about how people down here survive -- especially alone. It must be difficult."

"Not if your needs are simple. There's freedom here. The freedom to do whatever you want. I create things -- beautiful things out of ugliness and uselessness. Not everyone could appreciate the subtlety of what I do."

Catherine wondered if she meant the kinds of crafts the tunnel dwellers made. As scavengers, they had learned to waste nothing. With tenderness she thought of Vincent's ability to see the potential in other people's discards, of Mouse's ingenuity at turning odds and ends into practical -- and not so practical -- devices. Some of the women took their handiwork above to sell on consignment. Perhaps Clarissa did too.

"What about your friend -- is he an artist, too?"

A burst of laughter careened sharply off the walls. "I'm sure he thinks so, but no... I guess you could say he's a fisherman." Her mouth twisted with suppressed mirth, and she stared at Catherine expectantly, waiting to see if she grasped the joke.

Catherine didn't. And so far she had gotten no useful information. She prayed that the woman was merely eccentric and not what Joe would call a real "nut case." Joe. What day was this... would he be expecting her into work? "Can you at least tell me how long I've been here?"

"I'm afraid not. Time doesn't mean very much in this place. That's one of its attractions. "

Catherine was suddenly sure she was lying. With what reason except to torment her? None of it made any sense. But at least she didn't have to cooperate in her own frustration.

Without another word, she pushed down into the covers, turning her back on the woman, and, after a moment, heard her leave the room. She thought of rising again, attempting to make her way to the entrance to see what lay beyond. Or perhaps she should try harder to sift through her memories, find the most recent one and hopefully, this time, follow it to an explanation.

But before she could do either, she drifted again into sleep.

* * * * *

"You've got nothing."

"You call that nothing?" Joe was incredulous. After everything he'd said, Moreno could sit there calmly, his fingers steepled, and say that with a straight face.

"You've got no motive, no body, no evidence a crime has been committed. And," Moreno added as Joe opened his mouth to protest, "you've got a chief suspect who walked in here of his own volition and volunteered the information that he was the last person to see the alleged victim. He didn't have to do that. His name might not have come up at all if he hadn't made a point of it."

"Alcott's smart. Maybe he figured someone might have seen him with Cathy that night, so he gets the jump on 'em -- plays the responsible citizen."

"He is a responsible citizen," Moreno reminded him with a touch of irony. "That's a fact."

"Plenty of so-called responsible citizens have turned out to be dirty," Joe argued.

"Granted, but we're paid to deal in facts, Joe. The ones we have say Alcott's an okay guy. If evidence turns up that says otherwise, then we revise the picture. We don't do it out of our imaginations. Besides, if he's so smart, why didn't he get rid of the circumstances that made you suspicious? You say the keys were in her purse, so why doesn't he fix the apartment to look like she's left on a long trip? What possible reason would he have to take her purse down to the basement where somebody could find it? Why not get rid of it?"

"I don't know." Joe shook his head. "I don't know why he did any of it. I'm not even guessing at what he did, but he did something. The whole thing's fishy. You know that."

"So it smells. I give you that, but the Grand Jury doesn't play scratch 'n sniff. They want evidence, and you don't have it. What you have is a highly credible witness, a long-time friend of Cathy's telling you he advised his patient to get some rest. Was she showing signs of strain, Joe?"

"A little... yeah, I guess."

"And she called in sick?"

Joe nodded, frustrated.

"That's what a jury's going to hear. What are you gonna tell 'em that the old family doctor suddenly went berserk and did away with her? On what grounds? Unrequited love? A mention in her will? Maybe she caught him doing Frankenstein numbers in the back room."

"I don't know the reason. I don't even know if he's guilty of a crime, but I do know a woman doesn't take off with no makeup, no luggage and no purse."

"What about her passport?"

"Not there. Alcott says she kept it in her safety deposit box."

"It's where I keep mine," Moreno said. "Look, I agree with you that there are questions that need answering, but we have to be very careful here. I'm not going to start subpoenaing bank records and flirting with invasion of privacy charges until Alcott's had a chance to explain. He comes back -- you bring him in for questioning. Unofficially," Moreno stressed with a warning finger. "When's he due back?"

"Couple of weeks," Joe said glumly.

"All right. You sit tight until then, I mean it. Leave it alone."

"Yeah... okay... sure."

It was a less than gracious departure. He could feel Moreno's eyes on him as he closed the door. So much for hoping to probe a little deeper. He hadn't mentioned his visit to Cathy's bank -- the one he'd found named on her checks. Yeah, it was in spitting distance of Alcott's office. The manager had smiled courteously and confirmed that Ms. Chandler was indeed a valued customer.

"But if you wish access to her records, Mr. Maxwell, you'll have to return with something more than merely your curiosity and a badge."

He wasn't likely to get the "something more" at this juncture. No way to see if Cathy really had made a sizeable withdrawal on the night in question -- not with Moreno playing it so cautious.

And wasn't it just damned convenient that a second call to the hotel in Mexico City -- the connection seemed just fine, thank you -- had produced no Peter Alcott? Gone with some colleagues into the countryside. Yes, he still planned to depart for New York at the previously scheduled time. Unofficial or not, Alcott was going to have a welcoming party of one when he stepped off that plane.

At Milo's that night, Joe poured out his frustrations over a round of draft. "My hands are tied. I can't do anything till this joker gets back to the city -- if he comes back."

"I'd like to help you out," Dan commiserated, "but we got the same boss, you know? I can ask around on the q.t. and see if anybody's heard any dirt on this doctor. That's about it."

"Alcott," Kyle frowned, "tall guy -- face like a hatchet? He plays racquetball where I do. I've never met him, but I can certainly find someone who has."

"Thanks, guys." Joe wasn't enthusiastic. None of this was likely to lead to Cathy.

"That's the trouble with getting too close to the system." Kyle embarked on his favorite thesis. "You've got the power. You've got the connections, but every move you make has to be approved or your butt's on the line. What you need, Joe, is someone who's got the clout but not the baggage, someone who can nose around on his own. Any markers you can call in?"

"Not from anybody in Alcott's circles -- or Cathy's." Unless... the idea went against the grain. It could stir up more trouble than it was worth. Still, if he couldn't think of anything better... No, he was clearly losing it when thoughts like that began to cross his mind. "Hey, guys, enough shoptalk. I gotta twenty here -- how about some darts?"

* * * * *

There was no sound of pipes clanging. She had strained her ears time and again to be sure, but never caught the slightest hint that the communications system reached this area. No rumble of subways either.

Once she had thought she heard voices, not far away, and she had pushed herself out of bed, ignoring the protest in her ankle, but the room had spun so wildly -- for a moment it had seemed that the wall she leaned on for support was itself spinning out of control -- that she had fallen back onto the bed, gasping.

It puzzled her that the dizziness had returned. It hadn't been there those first few times she awakened, and even the bruise on her temple didn't hurt anymore. Only movement stirred it up. As long as she remained still, there was no vertigo at all, and thankfully, no accompanying nausea.

She drank the soup that appeared periodically, as well as the bread and cheese that Clarissa now brought on a regular basis. It was all she could do to help herself get stronger. Sometimes she flinched or gasped when Clarissa examined her ankle, but the truth was the pain had almost disappeared. She'd tried to put her weight on it several times now, and though it was still weak, she thought she'd soon be well enough to escape, if escape was the right word for it.

Clarissa continued her competent care, even helping her to bathe, changing the sheets, giving her a fresh nightgown. She insisted, not without good reason, that Catherine was in no condition to go off in search of her friends. There would be plenty of time for that when her friend arrived; he would know just what to do.

Not being able to remember so many things was frightening. There were times when Catherine wondered if that fear wasn't spilling over into her perceptions of everything -- needlessly. Was it right to suspect Clarissa's motives simply because she was a little odd? Elizabeth was odd. Narcissa was odd. Mouse was... decidedly odd, but it didn't make them sinister; it didn't mean their hearts weren't in the right place.

Still, she decided to err on the side of caution, letting Clarissa think the ankle still caused her pain, pretending a weakness she didn't always feel. Only the persistent dizziness prevented her from choosing her own course, and she prayed that too would soon disappear.

In the meantime, she'd stopped asking questions. She'd stopped offering any conversation at all. What was the use when she never got a straight answer? And she had the idea that Clarissa rather missed the chance to talk. Perhaps if she held out long enough the woman would try to goad her into conversation or reveal something about herself that might clarify the situation.

So far, it wasn't working. Clarissa had shown an icy indifference to her silence, and Catherine had the discomfiting feeling that whole days had passed since their first conversations.

"There's no swelling at all." It sounded like an accusation. "Are you sure you can't stand on it?"

"I'm sure."

"Don't try to deceive me. What I know about the human body might surprise you. "

Catherine raised her head slowly, hoping to minimize the swirling feeling in her brain. Clarissa regarded her with her usual expression of superiority. Maybe it was time to play on that, instead of letting the patronizing attitude irritate her. "You must have been very smart to qualify for pre-med."

"Smarter than they knew. Of course she tried to claim she bought my way in -- but it was a lie. She never understood anything but her money. She tried to buy everything -- lives, beauty, justice, but I have all of those at my disposal, and I never saw a penny of the money."

"Who?" Catherine ventured, wondering if anything the woman said would make sense.

"My grandmother -- my father's mother -- the grande dame of Lyden. She had a huge house on a hill overlooking the lake. A circular drive with gravel pink as roses. No one else in town owned anything like it. She lorded it over all of them, and they took it, because the foundry was practically the only employment for 50 miles. My grandfather worked there himself when he was alive, but after he left it to her I don't believe she ever set foot in the place. She only used it to threaten people. If they didn't behave the way she thought they should, they'd be fired, and in Lyden, there weren't many other options."

"Did your father work there too?"

"My father -- work?" Clarissa laughed her thick, grunt of a laugh. "He didn't need to. My grandmother gave him an allowance -- a generous allowance. He spent it on every good-looking woman that crossed his path -- waitresses, the wives of his friends at the country club, anyone who caught his fancy. I remember once he took me to my piano lesson. Miss Ayers -- she seemed very old to me, but I suppose she was attractive enough. They left me to practice my scales in the parlor all afternoon long. Each time I stopped, Miss Ayers would call out from somewhere down the hall and tell me to keep playing, and I'd hear my father laugh. I was too young to know what it meant, even when they came back. Miss Ayers looked very untidy. Her hair was mussed, and she'd buttoned her blouse all wrong. They kept laughing -- the two of them like school children."

Catherine didn't comment. Clarissa had perched on the side of the bed, her back very straight. A muscle in her cheek twitched as she talked.

"When I was older, I began to understand. I had a friend in high school -- Celia Graham. I never had many friends. They were jealous of me, of course, because my grandmother sent her car -- a vintage Bugatti, long as a bus -- to take me back and forth to school. The boys were afraid of me too, because of her -- what she might do to them or their families, but I didn't care. They were silly, all of them. My father was much more handsome than any of them. Everyone said he was charming. I didn't understand in the beginning that Celia thought so too. She was the first friend to come to my house. We did our homework together, and sometimes she spent the night. Of course, I saw the way my father flirted with her, the way she looked at him, but then she stopped coming at all. When I spoke to her in the halls, she'd get flustered and walk away. Finally, she just wasn't there anymore. She left school. She left Lyden. They say she was pregnant."

"What about your father?" Catherine asked softly.

"Oh, he took up with the woman who did my mother's hair. She finally couldn't stand it anymore. She changed hairdressers."

"Your mother knew about his affairs?"

"Everyone knew. That's what happens when you have people living too close together. There were no secrets. Not back then anyway. Now... now there is a secret in Lyden, but no one knows. No one will ever know." Clarissa's voice drifted off. She still sat on the bed twisting her long, slender fingers in her lap. An absent smile playing across her mouth.

Catherine felt a chill watching her. She wanted her to go on. She wanted to know what kind of person the friendless little girl in Mary Janes had become. "How did your mother feel about it all?"

"My mother couldn't afford to feel. She had no money of her own, nowhere to go. She was nobody. My father married her while she was still in high school. They had to get married, of course. That's what they called it in those days, and my grandmother was furious. She was mortified that her only son would consider marrying the daughter of a mere foreman in her foundry. She fired the man, but that didn't work. He got roaring drunk and told everyone in both the bars in Lyden that without a job he couldn't afford to support his daughter and her bastard. He was going to get the sheriff to arrest my father for statutory rape.

"Of course, it took no time at all for that threat to reach my grandmother. She probably decided it would be cheaper to buy off an unemployed laborer than to grease the palms of the entire Wilcox County sheriffs department, so she paid him to take his daughter and leave town. I think she even got him a job out of state. I'd love to have seen her face when she found out my father had followed them and brought her back. He married her before they even got back to town."

"He must have loved her very much."

"Who?" Clarissa turned a blank face toward her. "My mother? I don't think love had anything to do with it. He did it to thwart my grandmother. I believe it was the only time he ever blatantly rebelled against her. He humiliated her in front of the whole town. Everyone knew she despised my mother, that she had failed in her manipulations. Oh, I think he enjoyed it very much. It was his single act of independence. Before that and ever after she controlled everything about him. There was the money, of course. He only had what she gave him, and he relied on her to hush up his scandals -- buy off fathers, fire the husbands who objected to their wives taking off with the town Casanova. But he was so charming and he always spent money like water. He never ran out of women."

Catherine wasn't sure which was more appalling -- the distorted relationships Clarissa was describing or the cool, half-amused tone in her voice as she did so. "Your mother must have been very unhappy."

"She was a weak woman. Her family were nobodies," Clarissa reminded her frowning, as if she thought Catherine hadn't been listening. "I didn't want to be like her -- helpless, always whining after my father's affections. I was going to make my own money -- a lot of money. I was going to be a doctor, and then someday there'd be my grandmother's money as well. I was her only grandchild, you see."

"Were you close to her?" Catherine ventured, already dreading the answer.

"She was a monster. I hated her, but then everyone did. As long as I played the good little girl and brought no shame on the family name, she saw that I had everything that no one else in town could afford. I got good grades, and she ordered me expensive clothes from Chicago and New York. There was a party dress one time -- buttercup yellow -- the most beautiful dress I'd ever seen. My grandmother said I could have it, if my next report card was perfect. I was sure it would be, and I'd wear that dress to the Founders' Day tea, and all those girls in school who never talked to me would be jealous.

"Something happened. I don't know what, and I got a B in music, but I told my grandmother I'd had all A's. She smiled at me, and the next day the box arrived from Berry's, the store where I'd seen the dress, and that's what it was all right, only it had been cut to ribbons -- a hundred, bright, ragged ribbons.

"I stayed away from boys -- or they stayed away from me -- and I got a sports car on my 16th birthday. She promised to pay for my education, as long as I toed the line, and I did.

"When I graduated from high school, she couldn't be bothered to make the long trek down the hill -- not that she couldn't take off for a cruise or a health spa when the mood struck her -- but the important thing was there -- a check for my first year of schooling. I remember holding it in my hand and feeling a great sense of freedom. It was like a ticket to the future, away from all of them -- my father with his endless parade of women, my mother with her sorrowful looks, and her -- the monster on the hill, pulling the strings, watching everyone dance." The taut lines in Clarissa's face had softened. She appeared almost happy, as she turned again toward Catherine.

"Of course," she added, "that was before the murders."

* * * * *

Vincent stood at the door of his own chamber, viewing it with a detachment that sent ineffable warmth sputtering through his veins, looking at it -- not as his room, familiar all his life -- but as the enchanted cocoon it had become one April night.

Her presence there seemed unexplainable, the stuff of fantasy. A princess, bound by a spell whose evil belonged to a kingdom beyond comprehension, delivered somehow into his safe keeping. How easily his allegiance had turned from the only world he'd ever known. He hadn't intended to flaunt the rules. He hadn't meant to defy Father. He'd simply given it no thought at all, as if the moment he knelt to touch her in the dewy grass, all purpose changed, and all worlds changed with it.

He thought only to save her, to soothe her, to banish the fear that briefly eclipsed her own bright fire. To do that he would give her pieces of himself, violate secrets without a qualm, bear even the moment when she cringed at the feel of his hand. But he had never expected that she would turn on him with the light of her acceptance, the warmth of her friendship. He had wanted only to free her from her terrible bondage, and suddenly he was soaring beyond the limits of his life, as if it was she who had come to heal him or break a spell that had held him earthbound, body and soul.

The princess freed had touched him and granted the wish he never knew he had.

Leaning against the familiar stone, he saw his chamber as a receptacle of vivid moments, where they had smiled and cried and even shouted at one another, where love had held sway in shy touches, in whispers, and in the long silver silences when they needed no words at all. Perhaps it was fitting that this space, redolent with memories, belonged to him who would not let a single flicker of those images fade, rather than to Catherine who must put them aside, who needed the anonymity of strange places to find another life.

In his reverie, he was unaware that anyone had approached until a hand slid across his shoulders. If Father found it odd that he was standing here, staring into his own chamber, he gave no indication.

"How are you feeling? Is all the soreness gone?"

"You're a fine doctor, Father. I had no choice but to recover."

"I wish that were true. You know, it's strange, but this chamber always strikes me as too quiet, too empty these days." Vincent looked at him, surprised and touched that he would share his own nostalgia for the cherished moments lingering here. "Yes, Devin's been gone far longer than he was actually here, yet I still expect to hear you two laughing and shouting, quarreling over some childish game, every time I approach the entrance."

Vincent turned back to his appraisal of the room.

"I've been thinking. I wonder if I shouldn't write to Devin and ask him to come for a visit. Would that please you?"

"It would please me more if you wished to see him yourself. I'm certain it would please Devin more as well."

"Well, I wasn't actually thinking of what would please Devin --"

"You seldom do."

He felt the slight recoil in the figure beside him, regretting his quick words. Father looked so haunted of late, he certainly didn't need the stirring of old guilts, but how Vincent had longed to stir the memories in this room. If he could inculcate them with his passion, infuse them with his intensity, they might yet take on such scintillating energy as to live again. They might approach a reality powerful enough to ease the agony in his heart.

"That's not fair of you, Vincent."

"You're right, Father. I'm sorry. I know how genuinely you value your reconciliation with Devin. My thoughts were... elsewhere."

"Of course. I only thought that his companionship might do you good. It might help you to forget."

"What is it I should forget?" A dangerous rebellion was rising in his blood again, but he was powerless to stop it.

"Well, you know -- everything that's happened -- your illness, the memories that keep you frozen here in the doorway as if you had no right to enter your own chamber, your own life."

"Those memories, Father, are my most precious possessions. Without them there would be no life. I would not choose to forget them, nor is it companionship that I lack. I wonder that you find it so difficult to name what is missing in my life."

"I simply don't think you should dwell on it....

"Her. Father -- not it -- her. Please don't disturb Devin with all this. In helping Charles he has found a purpose that's eluded him all his life. He's beginning to feel his own worth. Don't jeopardize that by setting him a task at which he can only fail. If you'll excuse me, there are torches that need resetting."

He swept away then, leaving Father wordless in the doorway, followed by a trace of mixed emotions he could not define. The grief so evident in the older man's eyes didn't fit somehow with his obdurate refusal to speak of things that really mattered.

Not since Vincent had first recovered, not since their frank conversation about the past, about his dreams, had Father mentioned Catherine at all. He could have helped to make these memories live. Instead, he seemed bent on ignoring them, or encouraging Vincent to ignore them.

He could do without companionship, the pale imitation of what he'd shared with Catherine. What surprised and disturbed him was that Father could take on the role of adversary, for any enemy of his memories was his enemy as well. He moved through the shadows, fiercely alone, igniting the spent torches, basking in the glow of the images that no darkness could ever hide from his heart.

* * * * *

Catherine sat on the side of the bed trying to feed herself with a minimum of movement. As long as she kept her head perfectly still while she ate the cheese and dry bread, she could hold the woozy feeling at bay.

She had been right in thinking that Clarissa's solitude made her ripe for a willing listener. Once the woman had begun to talk she showed no sign of stopping, though it didn't feel like a confidence shared. More like a monologue. Catherine doubted that her presence was required or even noticed, as the litany of injustices was trotted out in dry, ironic tones.

But she was grateful for it, for the insight it might give into the woman's intentions. Her appetite had diminished as the story progressed and vanished altogether with Clarissa's last chilling words. All the more reason to fortify herself against whatever perils surrounded her here. She forced herself to eat another bite.

Clarissa had risen, her carriage stiff, head erect. Slowly, she circled the tiny room, pausing to look with unseeing eyes at one object or another as she spoke.

"It would have been all right in the end. Everything would have been all right if it hadn't have been for her -- my mother. All those years doing nothing, whimpering in the shadows. They wouldn't let her take a job, you see. My grandmother thought it would look bad for her son's wife to be working side-by-side with people no better than the ones she employed at the foundry. She could go to the club and to church, always dressed very well, but most of the time she just sat at home staring into the garden.

"Once she did take a part-time job at the library, sorting and stacking -- she wasn't good for much else, but my grandmother found out and threatened to cut off funds to the Friends of the Library. Most of the books came from her, not to mention the building itself, so they got rid of my mother. She wasn't permitted to mix with the workers' wives, and she had absolutely nothing in common with the more educated women in town. Even I could see that she wasn't much use to anybody."

The bread stuck in Catherine's throat. She took a drink of the cool spring water Clarissa had provided, glad to have finally succeeded in downing every bite, though she'd tasted none of it. Part of her felt like screaming for the pathetic story to end, but part hung suspended on Clarissa's every word.

Anyone might have thought they had much in common.

Two daughters -- only children -- born into wealth, but there the parallel ended. She thought of her mother, so gentle, so vital and warm despite her sad childhood, her father's jovial, tireless strength, the unconditional love that had glowed brightly among the three of them. Fighting the inevitable vertigo, she lay back down and pulled the covers up to her chin.

"That summer -- the one before I went away to college -- a man came to the house. It wasn't much of a house. There were a dozen just as fine on the older streets of Lyden. My father said it didn't matter. We wouldn't be there much longer. He was always saying that, expecting my grandmother to die. Then, of course, the house on the hill -- the only one worth having -- would be ours. He always said she was much older than she looked, though I don't recall ever hearing her age. She was vain about it -- like she was everything else, and of course, she could afford all the available means for preserving her youth. There were the health spas, and every couple of years she would disappear only to return with her skin a little tighter, the circles under her eyes suddenly gone. After a while, she began to take on a look of perpetual surprise -- all that pulling back of the wrinkled flesh around her eyes, you know." Clarissa smiled vacantly down at her, lost in some reverie of her own.

"You said a man came to the house," Catherine prodded.

"Yes -- a man. He was an architect I believe -- or a decorator -- from Chicago. He said he was studying Victorian houses for a book he was writing. My mother showed him ours, and she gave him iced tea in the garden. I saw him often around town that summer. He went to all the homes. Sometimes he made sketches: sometimes he took photographs, but I never recall seeing him at our house again. Still, there was talk -- the kind that ends abruptly when you enter a room. I was used to that. My father's exploits were a staple of town gossip. I think many of the people there would have died of boredom if they hadn't had his outrageousness to talk about. They were content to live their lives vicariously. He played the rogue for all of them.

"But my mother was acting strangely. She took time with her appearance -- even when she wasn't going to the club. She would disappear for hours at a time and come home looking almost happy. My father didn't notice. He never paid her any attention. She began to say odd things to me -- like had I really been happy there... and wouldn't it be good to have a life of my own when I went away to school? She'd never shown any interest in what I thought before or even in what I planned to do later on. She'd always been a nervous person, but that summer sometimes she would seem terrified. Other times she looked so youthful and lively that I could almost see why my father had been attracted to her. She actually cried when I left for college. She hugged me and told me to be happy, though, of course, she saw to it that I never could be. She ruined it all.

"I didn't know any of it back then. I was away from home for the first time. It was as if those people no longer existed -- I didn't care what they did. Except for my grandmother, of course. She was still controlling the purse strings, but I studied. I studied night and day to keep my grades up, so the money would keep coming, and I could use it to learn a profession that would make me rich -- quite apart from her fortune, but always that was waiting, too. When they were all gone, there would be only me and the money and that house on the hill. But she was plotting and scheming. Oh, she was selfish. What she wanted was all that mattered and she didn't care that her selfishness would destroy us all."

"You mean your grandmother?"

"No... no, my mother, of course. She was having an affair with this man -- this book writer from Chicago. She planned to go with him when he left town that fall. You should have seen the notes he wrote to her. I found them -- right there in the house, after it happened, in the pages of her old high school yearbook. Maudlin sentiments about how delicate she was, how sad -- like a bird, trapped in a cage, that had never been allowed to spread its wings. Trite -- ridiculous garbage about how he would take her away and make it all up to her. He was a fool, and, of course, my father found out.

"I don't know why he reacted the way he did, why he cared. I suppose he was so used to having his way with women -- it was his claim to fame. Maybe he couldn't stand to think that one of them would make him a laughingstock -- especially that one -- his wife. Maybe he hated the idea of my grandmother being right about her -- that she was low-class, acting like a tramp. He'd begun to drink heavily by then, too, so who knows what was in his mind, but he found out about them.

"He -- her lover -- was renting an old farmhouse about two miles from town. One night my father said he wouldn't be home till late. He assumed she'd take advantage of the fact and go whoring off to the country, so about midnight he went out there himself. He drove by the house, but the garage was right in front, and there was only one car in it. My mother's car wasn't in the drive, but he was convinced that she was there, so he doubled back -- there's not much traffic out that way -- and finally he spotted it a hundred yards or so from the house. She thought she was being clever, leaving it there behind the trees, but he saw it, and he pulled farther down the road and waited with the lights out.

"Some time later, sure enough, there she came, walking along the shoulder without even a flashlight. I don't know what she did -- if she recognized the car as it was bearing down on her, but after he hit her, he backed up just to make sure, and then took off. Not a soul saw him. A perfect crime."

Catherine swallowed. It felt like her lunch was still caught halfway to her stomach. "Are you saying no one suspected?"

"Of course, they suspected. That's all those busybodies have to do with their time is to suspect people, and the motive had been the talk of the town for weeks. Officially it was a hit-and-run, but the police couldn't ignore the gossip. They talked to my father, and he denied knowing anything about it."

"But surely, the car…"

"The car wasn't there. It had disappeared. My father claimed it was stolen that same night. He claimed he had gone to my grandmother's, which was true enough, and she backed him up. She said he was there from early evening till the next day when the police called with the news. According to her, he started to leave around 11, but when he went outside the car wasn't in the drive where he'd left it, he ended up staying all night on the hill."

Catherine was acting on professional instinct now. It helped to quell the emotions that had been building within her as Clarissa's tale unfolded. "Didn't they question why he failed to report the car stolen that same night?"

"I don't know what they questioned in the privacy of their own squalid little office. I'm sure they questioned the wisdom of going up against my grandmother. I'm sure they questioned whether they were willing to risk losing their jobs, but they didn't do much. What could they do unless a car turned up with – with evidence of a car vs. pedestrian encounter. That's what they call it, you know, in their police jargon -- car vs. pedestrian. Almost three weeks had passed before the sheriff mustered the courage to get a search warrant and go up that hill. My grandmother had a huge garage, and they finally got in there, but they didn't find anything, and the sheriff lost his badge in the next election."

"I had to come back for the funeral. My father was drinking non-stop by then. He didn't go out much, which was just as well, because he raved constantly, and he didn't care who heard him. That's how I know what happened that night. I had missed the first quarter's exams, so I stayed there through my college break, and I heard enough to know what people in Lyden were saying. Some suspected him all along. They said it was guilt making him drink, and some of them thought he was innocent. They claimed he was grief-stricken over my mother's death, that in spite of his affairs he had loved her so much. Romantic hogwash.

"The truth was he hardly ever mentioned her in his tirades. It was my grandmother he cursed about. He said she thought she was God. He said she'd never let him have a life and now she'd stepped between him and death. He'd get sloppy drunk and laugh incoherently about how he couldn't even get himself arrested. He wasn't charming anymore. He wasn't even handsome.

"One night -- about two months after I'd returned to school -- he ran his car -- the new car -- into a tree. He was killed instantly. I was in my art class. I loved that class because I didn't really have to work to get an A. I had a natural talent, you see, and I was still taking general courses prior to med-school. They came and got me and took me to the dean's office. It was such a shock. There was the news of my father's death, of course, but what rendered me speechless was my grandmother. She was sitting right there in a leather chair with the sun streaming in the tall windows. The dean was murmuring how courageous it was of her to come and be there for me, when she must be so distraught herself.

"I was numb. I barely registered the part about my father. I kept staring at her, sitting there in her powder-blue suit -- she didn't find black flattering -- with pearls at her throat and her hair just so. I seldom saw her anywhere, except where she held court -- in her own house. She never came to any town functions unless she was being honored. Or Founders Day, she came to that every year and gave a speech like she was blessing the multitudes.

"It was a while before I understood what they were saying. She was smiling so graciously, explaining that financial support for my education would be withdrawn effective immediately. The dean said he didn't understand, but she was very patient with him. She said that she had never believed I was truly her granddaughter, that my father was tricked into marriage with a common girl who'd probably slept with every man in town, that I was a 'bad seed,' but out of deference for her late son, who she described as too good-hearted to accept the truth, she had supported me with great generosity. Now that he was gone, and I was no longer a minor, she never wanted to see or hear of me again."

"Clarissa... I'm sorry." Catherine whispered. The feeling was heartfelt. It was hard to imagine how anyone could emerge emotionally intact from the kind of family she described.

"You are, aren't you?" Clarissa regarded her with cold curiosity. Her own manner was devoid of emotion. "The dean looked terribly uncomfortable. He suggested that perhaps she should consider awhile before making a decision in light of the emotional stress of the situation. My grandmother turned to him quite coolly, and said that she was prepared to make a sizable request to the medical department, but only on .the condition that I receive no financial aide that would enable me to remain a student. I thought the old gentleman would have apoplexy."

"Surely, he didn't go along with that?"

"I don't know. I walked out. I do know that later when I received my transcripts, the grades I had made were useless -- too many courses uncompleted. For a while I thought I could work and earn the money to go back to school, but, of course, I never did."

"And your grandmother never had a change of heart?"

"My grandmother never had a heart. She had power, the power to destroy anyone she wished."

"I can see why you think of your parents' deaths as murder."

"My mother's, yes, though he never would have gotten away with it without my grandmother's help. I suppose you could say that my father died because of her, because he never learned how to live his own life, but it's indirect, too complicated to be interesting. No, the best murders are simple and direct. I've saved the best till last."

* * * * *

Pascal was on patrol.

The switchboard -- that's how he thought of this particular stretch where the messages ran thick and clear from every sector. He walked the length of it hearing -- not the cacophony that got on most people's nerves after a few minutes in the pipe chamber -- but the distinct voices, the separate stories.

You must be like the conductor, his father had told him once long ago, laughing when his earnest young son had thought he meant a subway conductor. Subways had been an endless source of fascination when he was a boy. Now he tended to regard them as a nuisance whose meaningless clatter often drowned out the more delicate cadence of the pipes.

An orchestra conductor, his father had explained -- aware of every instrument, every note, able to follow each melody and rhythm without losing the thread of the others. Pascal could still remember the sense of wonder as he realized one day that he was doing that -- that he had been doing it for some time.

He was listening, but he was watching the friend who'd chosen to be with him here all afternoon. Vincent stood, back to the wall, seemingly impervious to the noise around them. Funny, too, because everyone knew his hearing was acutely sensitive. The racket didn't seem to bother him. It took a lot to bother Vincent. Of course, once he got bothered... well, that was another matter.

Pascal had always admired that serenity in his friend. Vincent never fell prey to the kind of petty grievances that set other people off -- people like Cullen and William, even Winslow, God rest his soul. Vincent had a knack for recognizing what things were worth getting upset about and the others rolled off him like rain.

People were always trying to lure Pascal away from his pipes, convinced he was missing something in not often being in the thick of tunnel society. The fact was his quiet nature tired quickly in the high-energy exchanges of the others. Their excitement and exuberance and spirited arguments often made him long for the relative peace of the pipe chamber. Vincent understood that. Vincent was easy to be with. Maybe too easy just now, he thought, sneaking him another glance.

How Vincent could manage to be so "there" and so not there at the same time was a mystery. He was a formidable presence with his cloak swaying dramatically from the broad shoulders, that mass of golden hair. He stood with one knee bent, straining the buttery leather boots that gave him the look of a warrior ready to surge into battle at any moment. Yet Pascal would have bet anything that his mind was a million miles away... or at least a few thousand.

Not that he could catch him at it. Every time he'd said anything in these last couple of hours, Vincent had come right back at him, as if no other thoughts possessed him but the here and now. His expression betrayed no sorrow, no hint of a troubled mind, but Pascal knew a mixed message when he ran across one, and he'd known Vincent all his life. He only wished he understood people as well as he did the language of the pipes.

Subconsciously, he'd been recording a brief, unanswered message that originated topside. Pulling out a narrow notebook, he jotted it down.

"That was Dr. Wong for Mary. He's got some herb he says is good for clearing sinuses. At least I think it was sinuses. It's not a word you hear very often on the pipes."

"Several of the children have colds."

"Well, that must be it then. She didn't answer -- probably knee-deep in stuffy noses. Will you remind me in case I forget to give it to her?"

"Of course."

He would, too, thought Pascal. Vincent never let anybody down. You couldn't fault a thing he was doing, couldn't pinpoint a single instance of his being too absorbed in his own concerns to react. That was the problem -- he reacted. He didn't act. He didn't seem to choose things for himself. Even being here today. Pascal had the uncomfortable feeling that Vincent was here on his behalf, putting in an appearance so Pascal wouldn't worry about him, but what did Vincent really want to do? When was the last time he'd smiled?

A new conversation caught his attention, and he pressed his ear to the slender copper pipe that carried it. "This is great," he said, after a minute, breaking into a grin. "Vincent, come here. You have to hear this."

Obediently, Vincent moved -- for the first time in at least an hour -- coming to stand before him, his head tilted toward the pipe that his friend found so fascinating. "Cullen... " he frowned, "... and Lena?"

"Yeah, he told her he enjoyed the talk they had while he was fixing her furniture. He's asking if she'd like to take a picnic down to the falls."

Vincent straightened. "Do you do this often?" he said with an arch look.

"What...? Oh, eavesdrop, you mean?" Something else he admired about Vincent -- his ability to hide a blush. Hard to claim the same talent when your hair kept deserting, leaving more face to turn red. "No, not intentionally, but sometimes it can't be helped." The embarrassment was worth it; that was the closest thing to a twinkle he'd seen in Vincent's eyes for a long time. "Everybody knows half the messages have to be relayed. If it's private, they're better off writing a letter. You know I don't go blabbing everything I hear to the others. Sometimes I'd just as soon I hadn't heard things. It makes me uncomfortable. In fact, I used to wonder about that -- whether Catherine minded you knowing --" He broke off, inwardly cursing himself for his clumsiness. Some new emotion flickered in Vincent's eyes and was gone. "Look, I'm sorry. I should stick to the pipes, I know."

"Why, Pascal?"

"Bringing up Catherine like that. I know it's a painful subject right now."

"Painful?" Vincent seemed to consider the word for a long time. "No. Catherine will always be for me a symbol of great joy. Any pain I feel is my own, my own inability to accept the inevitable. She bears no responsibility for my weakness."

"Come on, Vincent -- you're the strongest person I know. Most people would be devastated by a loss like this." Damn! That was no better. Why couldn't he just keep away from the subject?

"I don't wish any of my friends to feel they cannot speak their minds -- or their hearts... ever." Vincent said. Flipping his cloak out behind him, he sat down on the top step, and Pascal found himself, as he often had, utterly drawn in by that gentle voice, by the clear blue eyes that were filled with concern for him -- for his disquiet. As he joined Vincent on the step, he wondered if anyone had ever had a dearer friend.

"To answer your question," Vincent continued, "Catherine was always able to hide her feelings from me if she chose, just as we may hide our feelings from ourselves."

"But is that such a good thing to do? Isn't it better to let them out?" Pascal ventured tentatively.

"I let them out... sometimes, in some places."

Vincent's voice was very quiet. Pascal felt indeed that he had touched a nerve, and that this oblique reassurance was the most he could expect on the subject. "Can you still feel it, Vincent -- your connection with Catherine?"

"I feel it. It's different now -- fainter. Only once or twice recently it seemed more than that... just for an instant... as if she were still close by, and I could feel a fear in her. It makes no sense. Perhaps the distance... perhaps my... illness changed it in some way. I don't know."

"We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. Maybe it's easier if you just don't think about her."

The deep-set eyes blinked at him. "How should I not think about her? She is everything, Pascal. She is my world -- that hasn't changed. That will not... change."

"Even... even if you never see her again?"

"It makes no difference... How to explain it?" Vincent stared at the dome that soared far over their heads a moment. There was a flash of long, white teeth as he seemed to draw the answer in with his breath. "Wherever you are, Pascal, whatever you're doing, you are conscious of this world around you. Isn't that true? Whether you're listening to the pipes, or reading or even sleeping, a part of you is always aware of this place, that it surrounds you. That is how it is for me -- with Catherine, with her spirit. My feelings for her surround everything else. They are the only boundaries."

Pascal nodded. "I think I understand. I'm just so sorry it didn't work out for you two. I really thought it would."

"No. It wasn't possible. I see that now. You've known me all my life, Pascal. You know there are... things in me, darknesses that I should never have brought so close to another. Father knew that. He always knew."

"You're right. I have known you all your life, and that's crazy, Vincent. Anyone who knows you knows there's no way in the world you would ever hurt Catherine. No disrespect to Father, but I think he's completely wrong."

"Don't blame Father. There were times when I told myself he was wrong, when I dared to hope, but I felt the truth of his warning in the madness. I saw it in my dreams."

"Madness is madness. Dreams are dreams," Pascal shook his head, wishing he had the words to express what he felt so deeply. There was an injustice here, and the two men he admired most, the two who for him personified justice and logic and compassion, were blind to it. "I'm sorry, Vincent. I know it doesn't matter now, but I don't believe you could ever have brought anything but love to Catherine." He could feel himself blushing again. "Would you listen to me -- talking like the voice of experience."

"I do listen to you, Pascal." A wide hand squeezed his shoulder affectionately. "As the voice of friendship. Never doubt that I'm grateful for that."

Pascal watched as his friend rose, towering above him. "Do you have to go?" He hated to see the brief rapport broken. Vincent, he thought, didn't talk nearly enough about himself.

"I must. If I hurry, I can bring the herbs back from Dr. Wong's before you give Mary the message."

"Right -- the message." Pascal watched him go in a flurry of black and gold, feeling suddenly a little lonely, and wondering what horrors of loneliness Vincent carried with him.

* * * * *

Clarissa had grown more animated. She still sat stiffly at the end of the bed, using few gestures as she talked, but there was a fervor in her eyes that Catherine hadn't seen before. She wished she wasn't seeing it now. The more Clarissa told her the more she felt her first instinct had been right, and however she came to be here, it was a place she should leave at the earliest opportunity.

"Of course. I couldn't go back to Lyden. I had no desire to ever see the place again and no chance of ever getting the money that was rightfully mine. I stayed in Chicago near the university, near the hospital. There were people I knew there -- not precisely friends -- but I still hoped I could find a way to continue my education. I had no money. I worked at menial jobs that my grandmother would have found insulting -- if she knew, if she cared.

"Two years passed, maybe three, and I was still no closer to my goals. It began to make me angry, seeing the students, none of them as committed as I would have been, going on, succeeding, while I was left working in a nursing home for minimum wages. There were things to do and buy in the city, but I could afford none of them. I had all the disadvantages of living with the masses, but none of the benefits, so I began to think about moving on.

"One of the students told me about a job some distance away -- in a rural area. The pay was more than I was making, and room and board were included. It might have been distasteful to some people. There was certainly no future in it -- that's why they paid so well, but I wrote to them, and they told me to come along. I had to hitch-hike to get there, and when I did, I thought at first I'd been given the wrong directions. It was just a plain clapboard house -- miles from anywhere. No sign, but there I was standing by the roadside with nothing but corn fields on either side, so I knocked on the door.

"Well, the moment I was inside, I knew it was the right place. It was beautifully furnished with antiques, thick carpeting. In the back, where it couldn't be seen from the road, there was a pool and lovely landscaped gardens, surrounded by trees, all very private and very expensive. The only unattractive thing about it were the residents. They all looked horrible, and that's, of course, why they were there.

The woman who ran it -- Frick was her name -- had found a way to make herself a pretty penny with very little work.

"All of the guests, you see, had recently had cosmetic surgery -- face-lifts, nose jobs, what have you. Once those procedures are done, there's a period -- depending on the extent of the surgery, of course -- when the patient really requires no medical attention, but they look grotesque. For women so driven by vanity, the thought of returning home looking worse than when they left, the risk of being seen by friends they hope to fool with their new, improved faces, is unthinkable. Staying at the clinic or hospital where they had the surgery is often out of the question and besides, it's tremendously expensive. Frick had come up with the idea of a halfway house -- a place where they could hide for a short time until the signs of surgery were gone. She could charge a lot less than the clinics and still make an easy fortune.

"One nurse was employed on a full-time basis, but most of the duties could be seen to by anyone. We helped with the preparation of the food, cleaned the rooms, sat with the patients and talked or played cards, or read to them if they didn't have the use of their eyes. We wrote their letters or devised little amusements. If you made a resident's stay more pleasant, there could be a healthy tip when the time came for her to leave. I saved quite a bit of money in the two years I was there.

Catherine, who'd been hoping against hope for a happy ending, asked, "Enough to go back to school?"

Clarissa bristled, "I will tell the story in my own way, if you please. The money wasn't important. Oh, no, it wasn't the most important part at all, because, you see, for once fortune smiled my way. It was so unexpected, like a gift out of the blue that no one but me could appreciate. I had been into town to get groceries. A new patient had arrived, Frick said, and I should see if she needed anything. Well, of course, she gave me the name, but even then. I couldn't imagine that fate could be so kind. I thought it must be coincidence. Still, I was trembling when I found the door to the room ajar, and slipped right in. It was her, and she was lying there with bandages still on her eyes. She was asleep.

"Oh, it took great strength of will for me to leave her like that, but I knew I had to. I went back to my own room and packed my bag. When they were all at supper, I took it outside and left it behind the shed. She would be taking meals in her room, of course, until the bandages came off, but one of the other girls had already taken the tray up. You can imagine how anxiously I waited. It was one of the longest nights of my life. The time seemed to crawl by with the dishes to be done and the kitchen cleaned, but there were things I needed there. Some of the women were playing Scrabble. Others were watching television. I pretended to turn in early, listening until I heard the last of them go upstairs. It was very quiet. A bit more activity going on, a little more noise, would have been preferable, but what can you do?

"My heart was racing when I went to her door. The patients weren't supposed to lock them, in case of fire -- that was the rule, but what did she ever care about rules? As soon as I felt the knob turn in my hand, I knew it was meant to be, that this was my moment, and then came that arrogant voice from the bed. Oh, it gave me energy, that voice. It gave me courage. She demanded to know who was there, why I hadn't knocked. I would have liked so much to stretch it out, to savor it all a little longer, but there wasn't time, and she was so powerful, I was afraid somehow she would know it was me, even if she couldn't see, even if I never spoke a word.

"But, of course, I did speak. I sat down beside her on the bed, and I, whispered, 'It's time to remove your bandages.' No, she said, it wasn't -- the doctor had left strict orders for her to keep them on till the next day, but by that time I had the things out of my apron pocket -- the scissors, the knife. 'Clarissa,' I whispered, 'You must stay very still,' and I began to cut away the bandages. I think she was quite as incensed that a stranger had dared to call her by her first name as she was by my actions, and she was going to scream or call out any second, so I had to keep her quiet, but I wanted her to see. I wanted her to know in the end who was doing this to her. Her eyes were so swollen she could barely open them at all, but I held her there with my hand over her mouth, until I could see the spark of recognition, of outrage. 'Grandma, what big eyes you have,' I whispered, and oh, it was wonderful seeing the fear come over her, knowing I could joke because I was the one now with the power. I had to finish it then, quickly, but afterwards the joking mood was still on me, and I thought what I would have done if I'd been her surgeon and I took the knife --"

Clarissa stopped and threw Catherine a sharp look. "You're white as a sheet, girl. Well, of course, not everyone's got the stomach for it -- for the skills a doctor has to have, but I assure you it comes naturally to me. Anyhow, I took what I wanted from her and the apron and the instruments, and I locked the door behind me. Nobody saw me when I slipped out and grabbed the suitcase. I took off across the corn fields and hitched a ride with a trucker. I was across the state line by dawn, but I kept on going."

"Down south I sent... what I had of hers in a little box to her house. I don't know whether anyone ever opened it. I suppose they must have -- her attorneys, whoever went through the estate, though I like to think they never did. I like to think of it there in the house still. Do you know I never heard one word about any of it, her death -- any of it? No one knew where I was to call me back to the funeral, as if I would have gone. I hadn't used my real name since leaving home, so there was never really any chance that I'd be connected to it. The perfect crime.

"I came to New York, and yes, I did take classes. I'd had to give up on being a doctor, but there was still the art. For years I got by. Then one day I saw a man I thought I recognized. He had given a lecture once -- a very strange, wonderful lecture in Chicago. I'd never forgotten it, and I was sure it was him, though it was so many years later. I went right up to him and told him how I'd admired his ideas. Well, that was my second great piece of luck. He was quite taken by my work when I showed it to him. He told me about this place.

"So you see, I have it all -- her freedom, her power. It is very true that money's not the important thing, and you realize now that you've gotten expert care here. If you like I could read to you or we could play cards."

Telling her story had obviously left Clarissa in an expansive mood. "No, that's very kind of you, but I'm really tired. I think I'd just like to sleep now."

"Very well. It won't be long now, I'm sure. Then we'll know what's to be done."

Catherine lay wide awake, after she'd gone. Beneath the covers, she was trembling. There was still no guarantee of immediate danger, just because her hostess might -- or might not be -- capable of murder. It was possible the whole story was a fantasy. But if it wasn't, would Clarissa have revealed it if she intended to let Catherine leave? No one in their right mind would do that. Still, she was clearly not in her right mind. Was it possible that she expected Catherine to accept it all as a happy story in which justice prevailed?

There was no way to second guess a mind like Clarissa's. The only possible response was to get away as soon as she could and take her chances in the tunnels. For a moment she considered the alternative of simply relaxing the firm grip she was holding on her fear. She could let it flow and bring Vincent to her, but the thought brought confusion surging back into her brain.

No, she mustn't rely on him. It wasn't right. What about those others Clarissa had mentioned? Were they nearby? She could be luring Vincent into a situation whose dangers she didn't even know. And why... why did the thought of him bring her up against that terrible blankness? It would be foolish to try her escape until there was a chance that Clarissa would be asleep. Her best guess was that the bread and cheese were meant as a noon meal and the soup as dinner. The menu hadn't varied, and the long quiet stretches invariably came after the soup.

Lying in this bed hadn't done a thing to prepare her for action. A tentative effort at sitting brought the dizziness back full force, and she sank back down, furious at her own helplessness. The least she could do was flex her muscles, try to combat the sluggishness that never seemed to leave her limbs. She could turn her ankle now with hardly any pain, and she did so over and over, hoping to restore its use. Concentrating on one area at a time, she contracted the muscles in her arms and legs, systematically. Everything worked, but the effort was discouragingly tiring. Still, .she kept it up for what seemed hours, hours in which her mind remained just as rebellious as her body, refusing to give her the clues that would help her to understand how she got here and why the thought of Vincent rang in her head like a warning.

* * * * *

"Ah, Vincent. We've seen so little of each other lately. Please come in. Sit down."

In his nervousness Jacob's voice sounded a touch too loud. He wondered if his son noticed, as he descended the stairs and circled the desk with panther grace. How mysterious those eyes could seem in moments like this, Jacob thought -- shadowed, glittering. Vincent's silence only intensified the impression that he was sizing up his opponent with some superhuman faculty that went beyond words.

Opponent? Had it come to that? Jacob shook off the melodramatic thought, hiding his chilled fingers in the folds of his shawl. "What do you say to a game of chess? It's been a long time."

"No... No games."

Jacob thought there was an undertone in the complex voice, but Vincent sat down with every appearance of being at ease. "All right, then. Tell me... how have you been getting on?"

"You see me every day, Father."

"Yes, of course, I do, but it's usually with the others. I don't know what you're feeling, what you might be going through."

"Whose fault is that?" Vincent said with a mildness that instantly put the older man on guard. "Whenever we're alone together you seem preoccupied. There's always something that needs your attention."

"Well, I'm sorry, if that's been the case recently. I suppose I've had a great deal on my mind."

"Such as ...? What's been troubling you, Father?"

Jacob was not pleased to see the question turned on himself; there was nothing to do but turn it back. "You have, Vincent. I don't think it's unusual for a parent to be concerned when his child has been through a terrible ordeal, and it has come to my attention that you are displaying a certain -- distraction."

"What sort of distraction?"

"Well, merely that you seem preoccupied at times... brooding perhaps."

Vincent rose from his chair, bristling. "Has this 'distraction' kept me from my duties, Father? Is there a single responsibility that I have not fulfilled? I've worked with the children, with the new family settling below. When the council has met I've been there -- and done my best to contribute." He was pacing now, rattling off a barbed point with every step. "You yourself objected to how quickly I rejoined the work crews. When Jamie thought she had been followed through the 3rd St. entrance, I went there prepared to do whatever -- whatever -- it took, Father, to see that our secret was not compromised --"

'Yes, yes, of course, you did. "Jacob raised a placating hand. "I'm not disputing your actions." How had a simple expression of concern managed to rile him so? "No one does more for the community than you. I was referring to your state of mind. I've seen the signs of melancholy when you thought no one was looking. Someone chanced to... uh... notice you down by the falls one day, and I'm told that you often go to the park entrance, a place which I realize has great significance for you. I'm concerned that you may be dwelling on a subject that can only cause you pain."

"What subject is that, Father? Is it so difficult even to speak her name?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Vincent. Of course not. I --"

"Then why is it, Father, that every time she is mentioned you look as if you wish yourself somewhere else? Someone speaks of Catherine at supper and you change the subject. Yesterday Eric asked if he might write to her and you scolded him about his lessons. What is it? Is her very name to be expunged from our conversation?"

"Vincent, please, sit down. You're reading something into this situation that simply isn't there. If I've discouraged talk about Catherine it's been for your sake. I thought you might find it upsetting. Surely you know I only want what's best for you."

"Oh, yes. I know that. What I don't know is why you're lying to me."

Jacob's denial died in this throat. Eyes of ice were burning into his. Vincent did not sit back down.

"Isn't it enough for you, Father, that you were right -- that Catherine is gone from my life? I've done what you asked. I've become what you wanted. Now you question my right to even grieve for what is lost. Am I to be allowed no flaws at all? If it's perfection you're seeking perhaps you should have concentrated on Devin, because I cannot be a perfect man, Father. I cannot be a man at all. Isn't that what you've taught me?"

"Vincent, if you would simply calm down -- I understand your emotions are raw just now, but I'm trying to help you."

It didn't take a lapse into some primal state to make his son an intimidating figure. If he hadn't dealt with this temper before Jacob might have been cowed by the mercurial anger parading before him. As it was, he jumped when a fist came down on the desk with such force that several books tumbled to the floor.

"Help me what?" Vincent thundered. "Help me to forget her? Would you take even my memories? She's gone from my life, banished from my dreams. Now you would have her ripped from my heart as well. I'm sorry, Father. It's too much to ask -- even for you."

He shot up the steps and was gone before Jacob could find the breath to call him back. Shaken, he lowered his head to his hands wondering how an honest attempt at reconciliation had gone so wrong. Comfort -- that's what he had hoped to offer, and any doubt that it was needed had vanished with Vincent's volatility. Beneath the calm, beneath the resolute acceptance, there flourished a great deal of pain.

After a moment he forced himself to rise and took a few labored steps. With great deliberation he picked up the scattered books, stacking them neatly on the desk.

How could he hope to offer comfort in this dark hour when, even clouded by sorrow, Vincent could see that his staunchest ally was a liar?

* * * * *

At last Clarissa appeared with the evening meal -- the usual bowl of steaming soup. Catherine wondered if the woman's own diet followed this same predictable routine or was there laid out nearby a more interesting meal -- fruit, perhaps, and vegetables, maybe a juicy steak. She thought the lightheadedness might have disappeared by now if only the menu were more substantial.

Still, the soup was delicious as always. She ate it quickly, anxious for Clarissa to be gone. It was unsettling the way the woman just stood there, arms folded, with that habitual expression of haughty amusement.

"You haven't told me what you thought of my story," she said as Catherine handed her the empty bowl.

"Your story? I'm sorry. Clarissa, my mind's in such a muddle. I'm afraid I can't remember anything distinctly." A feeble ploy, but the best she could think of to minimize the damage. Perhaps if Clarissa thought she didn't remember the sordid details, she'd be less likely to try to keep her here -- if that was her intent. Fat chance, Catherine amended inwardly as the sly expression didn't change. Clarissa had an agenda all her own, and it was doubtful that anyone else could change it.

"You're not very curious for someone who wanders around where they're not wanted."

"No, guess not." Catherine shrugged with what she hoped would be a disarming smile. "Good-night."

"Enjoy your beauty sleep." Chortling roughly, Clarissa left the chamber, and then began the endless stretch of time while Catherine waited for the coast to clear. She practiced her kinetic exercises, listening for sounds from the room beyond. Time was hard to judge since she'd awakened here. It seemed to fold in on itself like a telescope, making minutes seem like hours, and then again she would realize that hours had passed in what seemed a few half-dazed moments. It was the persistent churning in her head, she thought, that must be to blame, wondering for the first time whether the accident -- whatever it might have been -- could have damaged her inner ear. For a while, this afternoon, the dizzy feeling had seemed to be fading, but now as she sat up and cautiously prepared to stand, it was back in full force.

She made her way slowly to the foot of the bed, and rested against the wall, waiting for the room to stop swaying. By leaning against it, shuffling sideways, she was able to keep the movement of her head to a minimum. It seemed to help. A surprisingly short passage lead from the doorway to a brighter, much larger chamber beyond. The corner of a table was visible, a chair and little else. Cautiously, she edged her way toward the light, stopping with each breath until the gyroscope in her head had righted itself. One step more and she would be able to see the entire chamber. Too bright for sleeping quarters. With luck it would be empty. With luck there would be a way out into the labyrinth, into obscurity where it would be safe to open her mind and beg him to come.

Afterwards, she wasn't sure whether she'd simply lost her balance or if the shock to an already befuddled mind had sent her reeling to the chamber floor.

The room was filled with people. They lurked everywhere in the shadows. Staring faces swooped down at her like harpies, screaming their silent screams.

* * * * *

Vincent awoke with a start, nearly knocking over the inkstand at his elbow. His heart pounded with a sense of fear and of Catherine. A dream, some nightmare image that he could not recall. Even now it was fading.

Beyond the circle of candlelight, the chamber was in shadow. Late. It must be very late. The pipes were nearly silent. He looked down at the journal at the lines written before he'd drifted off.

Tonight I walked the tunnels -- alone, and it seemed to me the shadows on the walls, the shadows like storm clouds overhead, and those on the path before me -- dark pits waiting to pull me to unimagined depths -- all of them seemed as nothing to the shadows within me. When I let myself examine those dark places inside, I knew that they had changed.

For such a long time -- as long as I can remember -- the darkest places in me sprang from that fury that is mine and yet is not mine. That is what shadows meant to me, the possibility that I would lose myself and become only darkness, but tonight I realized that there are blacker places still, places so chill, so bereft of hope that the human heart can scarcely survive their touch. Those shadows were the truth of a life without her, without Catherine.

However much I try to reach out for the beauties in life, and there are many, I cannot deny that those shadows exist. Friendships, the trust of good people, the world we've built here -- more beautiful to me in its strength, its innocence, than any shining castle. All these things touch me, and I touch them and there is goodness in that. There is comfort. Yet all of them all of the candles lighted in the name of hope, of truth, cannot dispel those places in my soul.

For a moment tonight I thought they would smother me. The shadows without, those within, would come together somehow, until my aloneness was so complete that I could open my eyes and find the world vanished -- this world, the one above, even the boundless reaches of the stars -- they would all be gone. I stood against the wall and fought for long moments simply to remember how it is a man can breathe. It seemed my mind had forgotten to will the beating of my heart.

And then it all came back to me -- in the memory of everything she was and is and will be. In her remembered eyes I saw the courage and the love that give the smallest things their meanings, that give me meaning. And I knew that I would willingly gather all the shadows of the earth, if it would leave her to the sunshine.

I would hold them all. I will hold them all, as fast as friends, and dream of endless sunlight in her hair.

Gently, he closed the book and sat for a minute listening to the far-off maverick trains that cut across the darkest hours of the night, and the sounds of knocking, hissing steam. Yes, it was late. He had walked a long time, after leaving Father, returning to record his thoughts in the journal that had always been a source of comfort, helping him to put into words the emotions that moved so strongly through him. Apparently, it had comforted him straight into sleep, but it couldn't have been for long.

He rose, frustrated with the inability to recall what had waked him so violently. The brief sleep might have been a night's worth for all the inclination he had now to go to bed.

A nameless anxiety was building inside. Every muscle in his body was tensed to move -- toward what? Against what? His hands clenched at his sides. It was dangerous, this tension, and he knew he should work it out in some constructive way, but the truth was he would have loved to strike out at someone, at something. He almost wished there was some valid threat looming over the community that would allow him to let it loose and was immediately ashamed of the thought.

Must go somewhere, do something. There was a time, when restlessness kept sleep at bay, that he would have gone naturally to Father, who never turned him away. He would emerge from his sleeping alcove, denying that he had been doing anything but reading, and sit patiently talking into the night, until Vincent's agitation had passed. There was a time.

No doubt he himself was responsible for much of what had gone wrong in their earlier conversation. He had gone to the study hoping to soothe troubled waters, yet found himself immediately pounding against their currents. He was fearful of the secret sorrow that etched the beloved face, of what it meant, and mystified that Father no longer trusted him enough to confide it. But his attitude, his naive belief that thoughts of Catherine could be set aside, the inexplicable callousness that he should even wish to do so…

Vincent did not know where he was going tonight, but in his present mood he knew where it would be best not to go. His cloak snapped around him as he strode with aimless energy from his chamber.

* * * * *

With empty eyes they swarmed -- faces she thought she knew, others glossy and white as ghosts, some mere fragments, disembodied, grotesque.

On her hands and knees now, the twirling in her head subsiding, she tried to focus as they flew away, retreating to the far wall. Masks. Only masks, she realized.

Until one of them spoke.

"So, you do have some curiosity after all. Well, what do you think? Do you like my work?" Clarissa eyed her dispassionately from behind a long table littered with jars. She was wiping something with a stained cloth and made no move to help.

Or to hinder. Catherine realized, but then that hardly appeared necessary. There seemed little hope of reaching the doorway that must surely lead to freedom. The few steps leading up to it might have been mountains, and they seemed very far away. The best she could do was maneuver back against the solid wall and sit tucking her gown around her knees, hoping to salvage something useful from the situation.

"You made these things?"

"I created them. Some, I assure you, were easier than others. It helps when I have the proper materials."

"They're... quite remarkable."

"More than you know, my girl. You'll get filthy sitting there on the floor. If you want to be out here, why don't you take a chair?"

"I don't think I can," Catherine said truthfully enough.

Clarissa didn't reply. She finished cleaning the object in her hand -- something that flashed with the gleam of metal as she laid it on the table -- and came around to hook a bony hand under Catherine's arm, helping her with a minimum of ceremony to an ornate armchair.

Eyes closed, Catherine waited for the giddiness to subside. When she opened them, Clarissa was back at the table, one sharp elbow jabbing the air as she ground away with a mortal and pestle. "Were you thinking of leaving here just now?" she asked, though her tone held little interest.

"Why should I want to do that? You've taken good care of me, but I still need to let people know I'm all right. There must be a way you could help me do that."

"I'm not one of their helpers. As you can see I'm a very busy woman, and I expect to be a great deal busier very soon. You would do well to learn a bit of patience. Besides, you haven't been here very long now have you? No one's had time to even notice you were gone."

Was that true? No, of course, it couldn't be. She had been here for days. Hadn't Clarissa said as much before? Not being able to judge the passing of time was only one of the frightening tricks her mind kept playing. Here with those bizarre masks staring from the walls and a possible murderer calmly puttering with her odd paraphernalia. Catherine felt suddenly that even more frightening revelations were just out of reach.

With an effort she turned her attention to the chamber. Just as she'd thought -- no one else. No sign that anyone but Clarissa called this eerie cavern home. If left alone, she could make her way up and out that doorway -- even if she had to crawl. The chances that Clarissa would give her the opportunity seemed remote, but perhaps if she showed no inclination to escape...

"What is all that?" she asked, feigning casual interest.

"The jars? Chemicals, naturally -- solvents, dyes. The vats are for clay and plaster. Would you like me to show you something?" For a minute her eyes gleamed with barely suppressed excitement, but then she shook her head. "No... not yet. There'll be plenty of time, after he gets here. I don't think he'd like it if I went ahead without his approval. You can never be sure what will rouse his anger, you see, and he can be very cruel when he's angered. It's better to wait."

Catherine considered asking again who "he" was, but she was in no mood for another of Clarissa's coy smiles. For all she knew, no one ever came here at all. The visitor might be a figment of the woman's warped imagination. Or maybe she was expecting the devil himself. It wouldn't surprise her in the least, but the thought was hardly comforting.

So far she'd spotted nothing that would help her to get away or even to contact the others. Near the steps lay a curious, dark mound. It gave off sharp, golden glints in the candlelight. "What is that?" she asked.

Clarissa looked up, following her gaze and her face lit with amusement. "Why, it's a net. I told you my friend is a fisherman of sorts. I suppose I should put it back before he arrives, but they so seldom do any good. Still, he's full of ideas like that -- quite mad they seem sometimes, but he loves his tricks and gadgets -- like a child."

The description reminded her of Mouse, yet the image it conjured was not the one she expected -- not the mischievous, laughing face she was used to. In her mind's eye, he looked fearful and unbearably sad. Why? Anxiety was rising with that sense of memories just beyond a veil. She forced it down. The effort just to sit here was alarmingly taxing.

Clarissa had apparently noticed, but her look held more satisfaction than sympathy. "You're going to fall out of that chair, you know. Why don't you go back to bed. Who knows, in the morning you may feel good as new."

Catherine suppressed the urge to scowl at her. It might make her feel better, but it seemed best not to antagonize her hostess, not to court her suspicions. Hating the feeling of helplessness, she accepted Clarissa's support without a word, stumbling back to the dark little chamber and the bed, as the walls wheeled around. Within minutes she was asleep.

It was sometime during the night, perhaps toward morning, that the veil lifted. All the images crowding behind it spilled out -- a chaotic clutter of random scenes that gradually fell into place.

A man with a tape recorder. A golden locket. Father bleeding, warning them that they had to hurry. Elliot's bafflement. Peter -- with a syringe of blood.

And Vincent.

How could she have forgotten -- even for a moment? He was in trouble, terrible trouble. He needed her. With a gasp she awoke, but the dreams didn't fade. As she lay in a cold sweat, they grew clearer, locking into place, until little of the blankness remained.

Not dreams at all – memories, recent memories. He had told her he loved her -- there in the waning glow of the sun, he had said it, both of them hoping the crisis had passed. But it hadn't -- the summons below, the chilling discovery that he had not waited, that he'd gone off deep into the darkness, warning them not to follow. But of course they had, she and Father, Pascal, Mouse -- yes, poor Mouse. She saw again the look on Father's face as she insisted on going ahead. The mingled hope and fear. And then there was only the sound of Vincent's pain drawing her downward, only the need to share with him whatever agony he was suffering.

Had she actually reached the cavern? Or somehow lost her way, ending up here? It wasn't worth spending time trying to remember. What had happened to Vincent? That's what she had to know. How much precious time had been wasted in her half-dazed condition, lying in bed, listening to the ravings of that poor deluded woman?

She sat up, heedless of the pitching and rolling that the movement triggered. Maybe the return of the missing memories signaled a healing, or maybe it was the sheer force of purpose that gripped her now, but the vertigo didn't seem quite as bad as before.

And she was leaving now -- this very minute -- if she had to drag herself to freedom. If Clarissa had to be overpowered, well then, she'd find the strength to do that, too. No wonder something had whispered not to call Vincent to her. Was he still raging alone in that dreadful place? Or had he collapsed again into delirium and fevered sleep? She would find him wherever he was, wherever she was.

Barefoot, she stood and edged around the bed. Reaching the wall, she slid along it as she had before. This morning it stayed more rigidly at her back. Her head still felt as if it were full of water that refused to find its level, sloshing about, making it hard to keep her balance, yet the sensation had abated a little, and she maneuvered down the short passage, straining to hear sounds of activity ahead, praying there would be none.

Taking a deep breath, she peered cautiously into the chamber of masks and at first thought it empty. She steeled herself for the few steps that must be taken unaided into the center of the room. Then there would be the chair to hold onto and a small sturdy table and then only a few daunting yards to the steps and freedom.

There was a smell in the room that hadn't been there before. Before she could place it, Clarissa suddenly rose from behind the work table.

"This must be it," she said, hoisting a metal box onto the littered surface. For a moment Catherine thought she'd been spotted, but Clarissa began to rummage through the box without looking up.

Damn. Was it better to stay here, hoping the woman would leave the room while her tenuous strength played out? And where was she likely to go but this very passage? It must be morning, and mornings Clarissa bent her care-giving skills on helping her bathe. No, she couldn't afford to lose another moment. She touched the crystal beneath her gown and summoning all the forcefulness at her disposal, stepped out into the light.

Clarissa looked up. Her eyes seemed to glow with secret excitement, but her voice was as sardonic as usual. "You've managed to make a more graceful entrance today, I see."

"And exit," Catherine said flatly. "I'm leaving now Clarissa. I have to."

"In your nightgown?"

Catherine ignored her. Adrenaline took her within reach of the chair. She grasped its back, then leaned on the table for a few more faltering steps. Look ahead, she told herself. Keep your eyes on one spot.

Letting go of the support, she weaved uncertainly into the open space before the stairs. Even fixed on the goal of the doorway, she could sense that Clarissa hadn't moved. The realization sped her progress over the vast expanse of the remaining yards. At the first stone step she stumbled and fell, pushing herself immediately to her knees. Freedom was only a short climb away and beyond that -- Vincent. Vincent who needed her.

"Leaving so soon? What a pity. We haven't had a chance to get acquainted." The voice was not Clarissa's. It came from the entrance above. The voice was... Her head jerked upward, an ill-advised move that sent her senses swimming once more, so that it was hard to bring the figure standing above into focus. He seemed to loom gigantic in the doorway -- clothed all in black, and then she saw the gleam of beaten gold that was his mask.

* * * * *

He moved through the hollows with the sureness of a stream, with a stream's grace and with no clearer picture of his goal than a stream held in its sinuous waters. Behind him lay the bright beating heart of the community with its veins of torch lit corridors, ahead the endless tangle that threaded like dark capillaries into the earth.

The air grew pungent with the brassy smell of stagnant water and moldering earth. Disks of fungus winked at him from the crusted walls, emitting a pale, eerie glow. Subtle odors of spring whispered in the moss that he could not see, so delicate was its tracery among the stones.

"Now this is a sewer," Devin had said with disgust on the long ago day they had first ventured here. Vincent had felt mildly disappointed that his brother didn't want to go any farther, because, of course, it was not a sewer. Not at all like those manmade structures, the repellent evidence of advanced civilization that everyone avoided.

This was a place fashioned by the earth itself, filled with strange swampy odors like those he imagined must rise from untamed jungles above. Its inhospitable darkness appealed to him in the way that all things mysterious and undiscovered drew him, but Devin had turned and headed back toward the maze. He had come this way only once since then and found at the journey's end a living, breathing horror of which these fetid passages seemed emblematic.

The lantern swinging at his side tossed coins of yellow light on the path ahead that slipped across the brackish puddles, lending them a strange beauty. The soft slapping sounds of his boots echoed against the rock, sending small things skittering into the shadows.

He bowed his head beneath the lowering, dripping stones and wondered why he'd chosen this singular route. Because it held no memories of her to take him unawares? Or because its solitary blackness made a likely screen on which to cast the blazing images he carried with him?

The passage funneled out into a crude cavern and suddenly the air was alive with a shrill beating of wings. The bats swarmed crazily at his entrance, bursting into frantic, random flight. Birds of the netherworld. What was it he and Devin had decided? A shrieking of bats? A braille of bats? A battle?

Father had shared with them the secret communal names of animals. Herds, of course, and gaggles of geese and the delectable exultation of larks, but he couldn't recall what name to give the bats, and so they had come up with their own. "What's the name for us?" Devin had asked, and Father had said proudly, "We are a community." It was the first time he'd heard the word, and Vincent had found it beautiful, though not quite in a league with exultation.

In these primitive alleyways of the earth there were no torches to light the way, only that gentle light that remained with him always, the cherished images, his constant companions, the fuel that drove the machinery of his body. It must be daylight where she was now, and he wished for her flights of colorful songbirds. For himself, the blandishment of bats. Yes, that had been their most colorful attempt to surround the unbeautiful creatures with poetry.

His destination yawned before him, drenched in Stygian gloom. The walls were blasted, so thick with soot that even the lantern's light was almost swallowed, finding nothing to reflect on. Charred wood, mounds of ash and contortions of dulled metal. The place chilled him with its testimony to a fear that every one of the tunnel dwellers harbored.

A fire below could lay waste to the work of more than 30 years in a matter of a few apocalyptic moments. They seldom spoke of it, so horrific were the implications, but the possibility dictated much of the way they lived -- the ceaseless patrols to check the gas lines, the constant efforts to make water accessible to every part of their world.

Here the fire had been confined to a single cavern, finding the corridors beyond too unrelentingly wet for habitation. Nothing remained. He wondered again what impulse had brought him to this place -- an evil far greater than the inferno had flourished within these walls. Perhaps among the worthless wreckage lay hardened puddles of gold, but there was no one to reclaim them.

He who had sowed the seeds of horror had reaped the whirlwind. In his fanatic quest to destroy his one-time friend Jacob Wells, Paracelsus had grasped any weapon at his disposal -- even his own death. And how deftly he'd tipped the scales toward madness. Vincent could see now how his own vulnerabilities had been exploited with unerring skill.

Catherine had been a more formidable foe for Paracelsus. Catherine he had never broken -- even for a moment.

The knowledge warmed him even in this ghastly sepulcher. Catherine was a survivor, and his own survival would pay tribute to her. Turning to go, he caught a tiny glow in the darkness abandoned by the lantern. Not the shine of gold, but something with a strange, unhealthy gleam of its own. A plant, he realized, one of Paracelsus' deadly hybrids springing up to haunt the desecration. The resiliency of evil.

Scornfully, he turned his back on it, carrying out into the passageway the knowledge of a love that lived forever, feeling the invincibility settle over his shoulders like a bright mantle, like a spell of truth and beauty cast against the armies of the night.

* * * * *

Before she could scramble to her feet, an iron hand clamped on her wrist. That face in its bizarre armor was bending down into hers. Not real. It couldn't be real, yet recognition subtly altered its lines, as he got a clear look at her beneath the tousled hair.

She attempted to pull away from him. "I thought you were --"

"Dead? How can you be certain I'm not?"

"Because you're hurting my arm," Catherine hissed.

"Forgive me. It's not often we have visitors here. Please come sit where you can be more comfortable." With one hand he pulled her to her feet, the other sweeping a formal gesture toward the ornately carved chair. A nightmare unreality settled like a pall over her thoughts. His grip seemed preternaturally strong. Objects in the room shimmered with no more solidity than ghosts. Perhaps he was dead. Perhaps she was still in the narrow bed, dreaming, but she didn't really believe it as he forced her with mock civility to sit.

"Her name is Cynthia... " Clarissa offered smugly.

"Really, Tamara. Is that what she told you? You shouldn't be so trusting."

"Tamara? She told me her name was Clarissa."

"Did she now? It would seem we all have our little deceptions." As he reached beneath the chair, she tried to focus on the table beside her, looking for a weapon, and a wavy line hovering above the surface became a candlestick. As she lunged for it, there was a clicking sound. Paracelsus stepped away from her. Rounding the table he moved the heavy pewter weapon just out of her reach with insolent slowness.

Catherine blinked down at her feet. An iron ring -- attached to what, she couldn't see -- encircled her left ankle.

"A regrettable precaution. Visitors are so rare -- we like to encourage them to stay. Isn't that right, Tamara -- or should I say, Clarissa? Our hostess has a great respect for her ancestors, particularly her grandmother," he confided, settling into a chair on the opposite side of the table. "She enjoys taking certain things that were hers. Perhaps she's told you."

Catherine didn't answer. Sitting still helped quiet the dizziness. She could see clearly now -- that face she'd thought never to see again with its hooded eyes, the neatly cropped beard incongruous beneath the thin plate of gold.

"It was the poignant tale of Tamara's grandmother that first alerted me to her potential. And then, of course, her great artistic abilities. I'm certain she's found new inspiration in you. Isn't that true, Tamara?"

Catherine turned her head gingerly toward the work table where the woman still stood regarding her guests with a twist of a smile as she stirred a beaker of greenish liquid. "I thought you'd never come. I was anxious to get on with my work."

"All in good time. I'm afraid you don't yet appreciate the significance of our catch, Tamara. I've met your guest before. Her name is Catherine -- not Cynthia, and she is as valuable a pawn in my game with Jacob Wells as any denizen of that wretched world. More valuable, actually. I would say we have unwittingly captured their queen."

"I have my own plans." A note of stridency had entered Tamara's voice. "I'm the one who's taken care of her, waiting on her hand and foot. You can't just take her away from me."

Paracelsus eyes were as cold as his voice. "You would presume to tell me what I cannot do? Be very careful, Tamara. At this moment she is far more useful to me than you."

Tamara's chin quivered with indignation, but she dropped her outraged glare. Catherine wished they would continue to concentrate on each other, so she could assess her options. With the candlestick out of reach, there was no other weapon at hand. The surreptitious twisting and kicking of her left leg had convinced her the metal ring must be bolted to the floor. And there was a dead man sitting across the table. All in all not an encouraging scenario for escape.

"How is it you've persuaded our guest to stay so long?" Paracelsus asked in a deceptively unhurried tone. Behind it, Catherine thought his mind was working at high speed, already considering what advantages this stroke of luck had given him.

"She was hurt. I saw to her injuries, but she still has this problem – with equilibrium."

"Ah, yes," he said agreeably. "You've done well, Tamara. Tell me, in which of our little snares did you find this lovely specimen?"

"Deep. Down below their catacombs, that little shaft to the north."

"How very odd." Paracelsus leaned across the table studying her intently. "There's nothing of their so-called civilization in that area. Whatever led you so far from your friends? And where was Vincent?"

The name on his lips sent a chill along every nerve. If Paracelsus was alive, a fact which seemed less and less in dispute with every moment that she sat studying him in the candlelight, it was all the more reason to repress her feelings, to make sure Vincent didn't show up here -- if he was capable of going anywhere. "I don't remember. I don't know where he was then. I don't know where he is now."

"Oh, but he knows where you are." Amusement flared in the hard lines around his mouth, as her heart quickened. "Let me see, I believe it was the Mediterranean. A lovely spot at this time of year."

"What are you talking about?" Hope that he might actually have news of Vincent died. Either he was even less in touch with reality than she thought or her own mind was still playing tricks. Given a choice between the two, she hoped for the former, since finding a way out of this predicament was going to take all the ingenuity she could muster.

"It seems that my dear colleague Jacob -- for reasons known only to himself -- has convinced our mutual friend that you're vacationing in Europe. Poor Jacob -- I really fear his grip on reality is slipping."

"How do you know this?" she whispered.

"Oh, I know a great deal. I know, for instance, that Vincent suffered quite a critical breakdown. The fools almost lost him."

"Almost... he's all right then?" Any attempt to appear cool vanished. Desperation was obvious in her voice, but his expression didn't alter.

"If you mean, has he recovered from his illness, of course he has. He is my son. He has powers that none of them can begin to understand. They marvel at his strength, his resiliency with no comprehension of its source. Jacob, as usual, indoctrinates the boy with his feeble philosophy, inspiring him to go out and do good, but they're blind to the truth. I wonder what Vincent would do if he knew his precious 'Father' was lying to him?"

"He really has recovered?" she persisted.

"I believe that's what I said. He moves among them -- their golden prince -- holding once again to Jacob's trite precepts, his true, glorious nature hidden again beneath the fragile shell of conformity. It amazes me how persistent this folly of Jacob's is, how easily my son embraces it, even after tasting the voluptuousness of his fury. I had begun to despair of winning. I thought perhaps I would simply have to kill him in order to rob Jacob of his victory, but now that you are here, I feel again the possibilities. Yes, I shall have to consider the best use of your presence."

"She's the one. You said he knows what she's thinking. You said he comes for her when she's in trouble." Having made the connection, Tamara sounded for the first time fearful.

Paracelsus smiled dourly. "I doubt that we need worry about that, Tamara. This one is strong and quite as nobly misguided as the others. She won't risk having her precious Vincent confront me again. Isn't that so?"

'Why should I believe anything you're saying? You couldn't possibly know so much about what's going on in their world. You couldn't get that close."

"Have you forgotten the lovely evening we spent together? Such a very long time since I had attended a Winterfest. I quite enjoyed it. You mustn't underestimate Tamara's skills -- or my own. I could blend in among them anytime I choose."

"No," she whispered, fixing him with an appraising stare. "I don't think you could. Not anymore. Not around Vincent. I don't think you'd take that chance."

"How very perceptive of you, but nevertheless, everything I've told you is true. Jacob, Mary, Alcott -- all hovering in his chamber. When he awoke dear 'Father' was there with his lies, with his endless platitudes, reconstructing that pitiful house of cards he calls a philosophy. As if any paltry cage of humanity could ever hold a son of mine."

Catherine gritted her teeth against the urge to protest each time he referred to Vincent as his son, reminding herself that the man was insane. He couldn't possibly know what had transpired between Vincent and Father, but then he couldn't possibly be alive either. Yet here he sat -- a few feet away -- every line and shadow in his down-drawn face familiar to her. What purpose could he have in making this up? The problem was she wanted to believe him. She wanted to think that Vincent had emerged from the madness whole and healed to sit once again in tranquil conversation with Father.

"Jacob, as always, overlooked the obvious, remarking on the boy's miraculous recovery, thinking of it in human terms, but of course, it is precisely his inhuman nature that allowed him to survive. How blindly Jacob looks upon the world. It will be his undoing yet. "

"What makes you so sure of that when all your elaborate plans didn't work? By your own admission Vincent hasn't changed."

"Changed?" Paracelsus leaned across, the table, his eyes opaque and unblinking. "He can never change. He was born to purity -- the purity of instinct, of death. There are no choices in his soul -- no good or evil, no standards by which to judge and fail. He is the judgment. In his heart he knows the truth, yet he tries to please Jacob who knows nothing. It was amusing really, Jacob's effort to reinvent reality, to twist every fact, every symbol to fit the world as he would like it to be. Would it surprise you to hear that you figured prominently in my son's dreaming?"

"It would surprise me to hear you could know what anybody dreamed. In fact, I find it impossible to take seriously."

"You should show more respect," Tamara scolded. She was still busy with her mysterious chores. "He has powers, my girl. All manner of powers. So how did you do it?"

"In a most pedantic way, I'm afraid." Arching his back. Paracelsus dug into his pocket and tossed a small cylinder on the table.

"What is it?" Tamara frowned warily, as if half expecting the object to transform before their eyes, writhing up from the table like protoplasm.

"Our guest knows what it is, don't you?"

"It's a bug," Catherine said flatly. "A surveillance device -- and not a very reliable one."

"Alas, that's so. A rather out-dated model, I'm afraid, but nevertheless, it afforded me some hours of pleasure before its inexplicable demise. The one you see here is a twin to that in Vincent's chamber. Both useless since the failure of the receiving unit."

Catherine considered the possibility that he was telling the truth, that he had real knowledge of Vincent's condition. The impulse to demand, to coax, to plead for every detail was strong, and she clutched the arms of her chair as if the tension could hold back her voice. Paracelsus would only take pleasure in this further proof of his power. Mind games were his specialty. He would enjoy mocking her questions and supplying no answers. Fortunately, Tamara saved her the temptation of rising to his bait.

"You heard what they said -- right in his own chamber?" Chortling her admiration, she stooped to draw a glob of clay from a metal vat, proceeding to knead at it furiously for a moment before glancing up with skeptical interest. "You took quite a chance, going into their world. They all hate you. What did you do -- convince them you were a ghost?"

"Actually, I've had the idea for sometime -- and the equipment -- but not the opportunity. Fate, however, kindly handed me the perfect moment. It seems all the residents were cringing together in Jacob's study, awaiting word of their exiled prince. No great powers were required to place it beneath Vincent's flimsy writing table."

"No, just a shoddy trick." Catherine said.

"But one that provided both entertainment and enlightenment. I was a bit disappointed that my efforts had failed to destroy the veneer of humanity separating my son from his destiny. What I heard, however, only emphasized how delicate that veneer really is. You see, he told Jacob of the dreams he had in his delirium -- filled with savagery and revenge, the perfidy of men who pretend to goodness. He saw the truth -- that all is wickedness beneath the surface. When he grasps the fact that he is different only in his power to wield that wickedness with impunity -- then he will be invincible."

"He's invincible now -- that's why your plans didn't work."

"Such touching loyalty, but quite unnecessary. The boy has reconciled himself to your absence. Jacob has taught him to revere the illusory concept of choice, and he believes that you have made yours, but I was speaking of dreams --"

He likes the sound of his own voice, she thought. He can't resist celebrating his cleverness, a vulnerability common to criminal masterminds and one that could prove useful. Already she had benefited from his self-serving commentary. Vincent was himself again. The crisis was past. The knowledge filled her with a quiet exultant joy despite her own predicament. It baffled her that Father should be spreading tall tales about her own activities, but at least it meant Vincent wouldn't come looking for her only to fall within Paracelsus sphere of influence once more.

"They were quite melodramatic -- these dreams, rife with symbolism and bloody import, full of the righteous vengeance Vincent carries within him, but, of course, Jacob saw it all as an allegory of guilt and redemption. He sat there playing the confessor, practicing the sham religion of psychology, interpreting everything in a pious light designed to absolve the dreamer -- a dreamer who could annihilate his world, drown its citizens in blood, and never look back. I believe Jacob may have missed his true calling as a man of the cloth -- or perhaps pope. Yes, Pope Jacob the Naive. "

"You said I was in the dream." She couldn't help it; she had to ask.

"Briefly, I'm afraid." Paracelsus appeared almost animated, an aberration that told her she wasn't likely to enjoy hearing this. "It would seem my son heeded the call of his carnal nature with the happy result that you, Catherine, brought forth a child. For this sin you were punished by death with the angel Gabriel personally descending to see to your demise. Jacob took this to mean such a thoughtless act would have tragic ramifications. It may have been the only point on which he was entirely correct. Now... suppose you tell me why you are here and not basking on the Costa del Sol as those fools believe."

"I told you I don't know how I got here. It should be obvious -- even to you -- that I wouldn't choose a vacation in this dungeon over a trip to Europe."

"Dungeon, is it?" Tamara bristled. "After I've nursed you and fed you and kept you company? You're not in any position to complain about your accommodations."

"I appreciate your help, Clar -- Tamara," Catherine said, thinking it prudent to hedge her bets, "but any place where the 'guests' find themselves chained to the floor qualifies as a dungeon in my book."

Tamara gave the clay she was molding a resounding smack. "Rich girls should have better manners. You've forgotten that I saved your life. You'd still be swinging like a butterfly in a web, if I hadn't come along and pulled you in, and it wasn't that easy, let me tell you."

"What does that mean?" she said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the irritation out of her voice. "Where did you find me?"

"It's none of your business."

"Come now, Tamara," Paracelsus, who had been listening to this exchange with detached amusement, adapted a conciliatory tone so false that it set Catherine's teeth on edge. "Catherine is our guest. We must do what we can to make her stay -- brief as it may be -- as pleasant as possible. If she has questions she'd care to ask, there is no reason we should not answer them."

"No reason, huh?" Tamara looked reassured. A manic gleam flared in her eyes; the smug smile crept back into place.

"Okay, suppose we start with the minor detail of how you happen to be alive, when I saw your body myself." Catherine glared at him with the most formidable expression she could muster for a disheveled woman in a borrowed nightgown whose leg was chained to the floor.

As she expected, the subject brought a chill smile to Paracelsus' thin lips. What good were acts of unspeakable cunning if there was no one to appreciate their genius? "Did you now? You really must tell me the tragic details. I regret I was unable to attend my own untimely end. Tell me, did I suffer long or was it a swift and merciful death?"

"It was an ugly death," she said, fighting to keep the steadiness in her voice. "Evisceration is not very elegant, but it's efficient."

"No damage, I hope, to the face?"

"Which face?" she said scornfully.

"Ah, which indeed. You see, Tamara?" He looked inordinately pleased with himself, and Tamara's snicker seemed to indicate some form of pleasure as well.

"So much work," he said, still directing his comments toward the work bench. "And the ultimate test of your incomparable skills. What was it? More than a year and a half, our little project? How gratifying to know it went so well."

"You accomplished nothing," Catherine reminded him. "Nothing at all."

"Oh, but you're wrong. I accomplished precisely what I set out to do -- to rend our friend's fragile psyche into tatters, to allow his true magnificence a chance to shine through. No, it went exactly as planned. Had it not been for you, dear Catherine, your persistence in putting the pieces back together, I would have won the game. As it is, I must be satisfied with the match, but what's done cannot be undone. Each time he lets go and becomes truly himself, he is one step closer to the future I envision for him. He carries with him now forever the knowledge that he sought to kill his own dear 'Father.' Do you think that will sit easily on his conscience?"

"Do you really want to know what I think? I think you'd driven him to a state that no court in the land would consider culpable. I think on some level he knew perfectly well who he was attacking."

Palms upward, in a gesture of bewildered innocence, Paracelsus replied, "But you can see for yourself that isn't true. I've told you I was regrettably elsewhere during this little ceremony, but I would so like to know where my body is interred, so that I might pay my proper respects."

Catherine was determined not to let the confusion overwhelm her. It was too frightening, trying to make sense of the impossible, and she couldn't afford to be frightened. "The body was placed in the catacombs -- next to Anna."

Paracelsus squelched Tamara's hoot of laughter with a reptilian glance. "Anna was the first. I loved her, you know, and she betrayed me. It was the beginning of everything, the beginning of Jacob's move to take all that I held dear. He'll pay for it yet."

"Thirty years is a long time to hold a grudge," Catherine said, as much for the sake of keeping this conversation going as any hope of a logical response. If she kept talking, she could override the emotions that accompanied being the prisoner of a man who had killed countless times without remorse, a man determined to destroy Vincent.

"For 30 years I accepted my fate. I did nothing to interfere with their precious community. It was Jacob -- and Vincent -- who drove me from exile, who made it necessary for me to defend myself to the best of my poor abilities."

"You were killing innocent people."

"There are no innocent people. Tamara knows that, don't you, Tamara? She was fortunate enough to be brought up in the bosom of a family who made that essential truth evident from the day she was born. So, tell me," he said with a wave toward the mask-strewn wall, "what do you think of her artistry?"

"They... they're very lifelike."

"Just so," he smiled, "and do you want to know why? Because the best of them were modeled on the very heads whose likeness they bear. Not all of them, of course. It took quite a long time to produce an exacting copy of dear Jacob's face, since his head was -- to my infinite regret -- still attached to his shoulders. I believe it was that quality of bland self-righteousness that was so difficult to capture adequately. Tamara must have begun again a hundred times before she had it quite right. Now, the venerable barber who proved so charming at Winterfest -- the late, lamented Lou -- his duplication was far easier, as he was kind enough to part with his head in a timely fashion. That was perhaps her quickest work and quite sufficient for the purpose."

He's trying to scare you, Catherine told herself, clenching her hands in the folds of her gown. Never mind that what he's saying has the awful ring of truth. What other explanation could there be? But you can't let him get to you.

"Now perhaps you can appreciate how very difficult it has been for your hostess to have such lovely raw material so close at hand." Bending forward, he touched a long, pale finger to her cheek. She was still trying to unclench her hands to slap him away when he withdrew. "The temptation to your artistic sensibilities must have been strong, Tamara, the temptation not to share your treasure with me."

"She's alive, isn't she?" Tamara said with ill-concealed resentment.

"So she is. A quality that may serve me well before she makes the supreme sacrifice for art."

There was one advantage in the disorientation that kept everything spinning in her head -- emotions found it difficult to gain a firm purchase, and for that she was glad. A good case could be made for feeling terrified, but it wouldn't help the situation.

With a perception she wouldn't have expected, Tamara suddenly whined. "You're going to scare her and make her wish for him to come. You promised me they'd never find this place... my work -- my work is too important."

"Do be still, Tamara," Paracelsus said sharply, but his gaze narrowed, as if he might be trying to read what lay behind Catherine's passive expression. "If you'll excuse me, I must see to a small chore, and you, Tamara, are forgetting your duties as our hostess. Bring something to eat and a decent wine. I'll be back shortly."

He rose moving up the stairway like an upright viper, and Tamara slammed a tool down on the table with an eloquent thud before disappearing through a narrow slit behind the work area.

Alone, Catherine hurried to take advantage of the situation. A long stretch across the table allowed her to finger the candlestick back to within reach – not too far and maybe he wouldn't notice. She tried tipping the table itself with no luck at all. Too bad. The image of suddenly toppling it on a surprised Paracelsus and wielding the heavy candle holder toward Tamara's maddening smile was pleasant in the extreme.

The chair itself was the only other potential weapon within reach, but when she stood and attempted to lift it, the swarming dizziness would only let her lean on its arms. She eased back down and bent forward to examine the iron ring on her ankle. It was attached to a sturdy chain threaded through a second ring at its halfway point. The mechanism was familiar to her -- the kind used in handcuffs -- no key required to lock them, but it was hopeless to spring them without one.

Frustrated, she noted that even hanging her head lower than her knees did not quell the lightheadedness. She was still trying to focus again when Paracelsus returned.

"Still here?" he greeted her. "How flattering that you didn't decide to leave before our meal is served."

Catherine allowed herself the luxury of glowering at him and immediately regretted it when his eyes betrayed a sardonic satisfaction. Tamara was back, lowering a silver tray to the middle of the table with a minimum of grace. Bread, sausage, a wheel of cheese and an apple. So there was fruit on hand. She was suddenly famished.

"Would you care to do the honors?" Paracelsus picked up a gleaming butcher knife, extending it toward her, handle first. "Oh, but how foolish of me -- I forgot you're feeling a bit clumsy just now. We wouldn't want any unfortunate accidents, now would we? I dare say the wine might prove disagreeable in your condition. Tamara -- please, some water for our friend."

Catherine watched the sparkling spring water splash into the glass -- Baccarat, no less -- considering the wisdom of tossing the contents in Paracelsus' self-satisfied face and breaking the glass as a weapon.

"Do think carefully before displaying any uncivilized behavior," he recommended. "I've prepared a welcome should anyone arrive here unannounced that will prove just as effective if you try to leave."

"Why do you want me here? Vincent isn't looking for me. Father thinks I'm on vacation. What possible good can it do you?"

Paracelsus was slicing the food with a deftness that she tried not to notice. She wouldn't have put it past him to eat everything on the tray without offering her a bite, but he pushed a plate toward her. "Young people don't appreciate what it can mean to an old man -- having someone to talk to, someone to share his humble hospitality." He gave her a moist-eyed look, voice trembling with mock pathos. All in all she thought she preferred his arrogance.

The food tasted wonderful, and she ate it hurriedly, afraid he might change his mind at any moment and take it away from her. Maybe having something in her stomach would help the whirling in her brain. She thought it had always been at its least debilitating after solid food.

"Tamara, too, feels quite rejuvenated by the presence of such youth and beauty," he continued. "Isn't that right, Tamara?" He got only a sour look in return. "You have a commendable appetite for someone in peril," he observed, as Catherine continued to eat everything he pushed toward her.

How many ways could he find to remind her of her position? But his intimidating tactics merely fired her determination. Even a helpless person could be stubborn. "Why should I be frightened of a dead man," she said.

"You don't believe that. You ceased to believe it the moment you saw me here today. It's a failing of you and people like you -- believing only what you can see -- the cult of reason."

"I saw you dead."

"You saw illusion and took it for truth. So much for rationality. I must say I never expected that particular slight of hand to remain undetected. It was designed for Vincent's benefit and after that, it had served its purpose. Jacob has become an even bigger fool than I suspected."

"Jacob was concerned about his son," she flared, fixing him with a fearless look. "He ordered the body covered immediately and taken below."

"What, no funeral rites? No plundering of the personal effects? Pity -- I had hoped to astound him with the genius of my charade. I had imagined the look on his face when he realized what lay beneath that poor, ravaged facade. Still, there is some advantage in being presumed dead."

"Then who was it... or what was it that Vincent destroyed?"

"Oh, the correct terminology is definitely 'who'," he assured her. "Someone we'd become quite fond of over the long period of his indoctrination. A most malleable sort under the surface. I wonder if you will prove as valuable."

"Do you honestly think I would ever help you?"

"I know you would -- with the proper orientation. Anyone can exploit a man's weaknesses, but to find his strengths and turn those against him -- or her -- takes a certain.…"

"Genius?"

"Just so. You see, long after I was exiled I decided to cast my nets into that sea that bounds their world, those treacherous depths always waiting to swallow the careless, the unaccepted. Tell me, Catherine, which were you? How did you come to visit the abyss?"

"The abyss?" She blinked at him, frowning. "No... I've seen the abyss. I wasn't anywhere near it, I'm sure."

"You know the place where it looms closest to their world -- the place they call the Whispering Gallery, but there are others. Its tentacles reach far and wide beyond their provincial little realm. How fortunate that your plunge delivered you into one of the snares I'd set to collect the refuse of Jacob's folly."

"Why would you want the rejects of a world you so obviously despise?"

"Oh, come now." He eyed her shrewdly from beneath drooping lids. She wished her confusion didn't show. She wished she could remember what had happened in that remaining blank part. "What is abhorrent to their way of life is of supreme interest to me. Surely, you've guessed that. Still, it was a random enterprise at best. There are so few points of access, fewer still where the shaft narrows sufficiently for my purposes. Over the years I've garnered a variety of amusing objects, including yourself, dear Catherine -- the first really useful item since 'our friend."

"You call him a friend when you purposely set him up to be killed?"

"Greater love hath no man... " he quoted with honeyed cynicism. "And he was willing, magnificently and foolishly willing -- the culmination of an experiment that reaffirmed my faith in human nature." Catherine's disgust must have showed, as he leaned toward her with a fanatic ardor. "You cannot grasp how complete was my victory, how totally he was mine at the end. He was a zealot, you see, when he came to us, and zealotry is an instrument easily played. With the right combination of potions and spells, a dragon may be fashioned from a mere croaking toad. Even perhaps a Scylla from a lamb."

Potions and spells? "You're talking about drugs and coercion," Catherine said heatedly. "There's nothing magic in that. It's just sordid."

"A rose by any other name," he drawled, unoffended.

"Besides, I don't believe you can make someone act against his own basic instincts -- even with drugs or hypnosis or whatever kind of games you play. I can't see anyone willing to be ripped to shreds just to please you."

"No, of course not," he smiled. It wasn't a real smile. More as if invisible strings lifted the corners of his mouth into a parody of pleasure. If this was one of his prized illusions, she thought it needed a lot of work. "Not at first. He came to us with a rather tedious obsession -- justice, heroic fervor -- but it proved quite easy to channel. Within months he was more than willing to do my bidding."

"You're saying you kept a man prisoner here for months?" She hoped her voice didn't betray the coldness that crept over her at the thought.

"Prisoner? By no means. Nor was it a matter of months -- closer to two years. After those first few unpleasant weeks, he earned his keep admirably. I could trust him to go above on small errands, but then you know something about that."

"No... no I don't."

"Oh, but surely you recall the unpleasantness some time back, when Vincent and Jacob chose to invade my home, to interfere with my activities. Surely, you haven't forgotten your old friend -- what was his name? – ah, yes... Jimmy. Such a waste and all the fault of Jacob and Vincent... and you."

His voice had grown lower, more threatening as he spoke, but it was not Paracelsus that brought the trembling back to her hands. It was the image of Jimmy -- bright, confident, a man in love -- that threatened the tight hold she was keeping on her feelings.

"How did you think I was able to embark on such an enterprise in the streets above? How did you think I knew whom to contact, where to find the sort of greedy fools who would buy and sell my poison?"

"A natural instinct for spotting your own kind?"

The cockiness was wasted. He was too intent on chronicling his own ingenuity. "My streets are these humble tunnels you see around you. To find the alleyways of the most damned above, I needed someone familiar with those who rule them."

"A drug dealer?"

"There, you see, once again the assumption is made that only weakness can be exploited. No, it was strength I put to good use, the conviction of a man who thought himself superior to those he challenged."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You should. You had the pleasure of his acquaintance before Tamara and I, but it was Vincent's influence that made the difference. Oh, yes, Vincent knew him as well. It was his very ambivalence toward Vincent that made him so easy to sway in the end, that planted the idea for his final useful act. My son was both hero and nemesis to Jason. Under my ministrations his obsession became all encompassing, until the thought of unleashing that monstrous power, seeing Vincent attain the cold, seamless stature of a god, was as seductive as his own will to live."

"Jason?" Catherine repeated. "You don't mean... Jason Walker?"

"Do you find that so difficult to believe?"

"Impossible."

"Oh, but you see he came to us in precisely the same way that you did -- the fortunate flotsam of that gaseous sea, to be reeled in like a helpless flounder. His brush with death seemed to shake his beliefs far more I'd say than yours has -- or perhaps it was the encounter with my son that unhinged his identity, but then that's never been a problem for you, has it?"

"Jason Walker was demented before he ever met Vincent."

"But he found the noble death he so devoutly sought, thanks to me."

"Jason Walker was also a black man. The man in Father's study was white."

"The man in Father's study was me -- Isn't that what you believed until today?"

Catherine was suffering a confusion that had nothing to do with her physical affliction. What he said couldn't be, but it was hard to stay ahead of the man when his thought patterns followed nothing of the logic she was used to. Whether or not she was following his diatribe didn't seem of much concern to him, as he continued.

"I was never idle in those years of exile. Many of the projects that consumed me during that dark time proved fruitful after Jacob threw down his shabby gauntlet. Jason was -- how do gamblers say it? -- my ace in the hole, nurtured until his ultimate purpose became clear to me. It is a fertile delta -- this dark world of ours -- kind to the infinite variety of nightshades that wither in the sun. My experiments rendered a fascinating range of formulas, far more interesting than the hallucinogen the fools of your world embraced so readily. The arts of alchemy have long lapsed in this modern world, but I paid homage to them, I distilled their magic, their power. Did you know," he said, leaning toward her like a gargoyle, "that with the correct potion it is possible to strip away all the layers of behavior society has inflicted on a man and lay open the true gist of his being, the impulses that make him who he is?"

"Then I'm surprised you didn't use it on Vincent," she said evenly.

"One does not use man's weapons against the gods." He straightened again, and she thought she detected a trace of disappointment. That he hadn't reduced her to a quivering wreck? Or that his insidious drugs wouldn't work on Vincent? "My son's reactions to such things are too unpredictable, but you -- you could be a worthy subject, Catherine."

He was trying his best to intimidate her with his predatory stare. Returning it helped her avoid the implications of what he'd said, and she resolved not to blink first. She had almost forgotten Tamara's presence, when an aggrieved voice broke the silence.

"Are you going to take all the credit for Jason? I'd like to hear how you could have managed without me." The resounding slap she gave the clay in front of her hinted that she wouldn't care to hear anything of the kind.

"But, of course," Paracelsus shifted his gaze to Tamara, and Catherine scored one small but satisfying victory in her own mind. "It was no doubt your finest hour, Tamara. A mask within a mask -- ingenious really, and the hands... the hands took many months to perfect, but of course that was the extent of it. I assumed when the body was examined the deception would be obvious, but it's clear I gave too much credit to my old friend's perceptions."

"What about the voice?" Catherine said, fascinated despite herself. "Jason Walker didn't sound anything like Jacob Wells."

"You're quite wrong. He did sound 'something like.' I possess a certain facility with voices. After months of coaching, he was able to give a passable imitation. You see the art of illusion lies in deflecting the attention of the audience. The dull-witted denizens of that place saw Father before their eyes, so if he sounded a bit strange, they thought nothing of it. Nor did we give them time to think with the fear that we planted in their midst. A call to arms, to violence -- in the very citadel of pacifism."

"You took quite a chance, expecting Vincent not to notice."

"Less than you think," he replied, his self-satisfied manner still securely in place. "I doubt that it would have mattered much whether he detected trickery or not. Vincent was already teetering on the edge of madness when he entered that room. He was by that time obsessed with the horror of the things he had seen and heard. It's his greatest vulnerability -- the mystery of who he is, how he came to be. He was already lost, wandering in a maze of my divining."

"He was horrified at the thought that you might actually be his father," Catherine clarified.

"Who else could nurture him in those abilities he tries to deny? It is I who know his true potential, not Jacob who persists in discounting his greatest gifts. Once I thought we could have been gods together -- Jacob and I -- but he had no stomach for my experiments, no vision of the power that could have been ours."

Disgust wouldn't let her sit quietly listening to this. "What kind of power is it that preys on people you don't even know? What sort of god sets fire to a poor old woman who can't even see?"

"Ah, Narcissa," he said blandly, but his eyes shifted, and she realized suddenly that the memory was unsettling to him. It couldn't be pity that moved him, of that she was sure. Could it be that in her belief in spirits and black magic Narcissa came closer than anyone to that image he held of himself as sorcerer? Paracelsus scoffed at the ideals of the tunnel world, at their laws and reliance on reason. Perhaps he feared Narcissa more than all of them. Maybe that was why he had tried to destroy her. "She was in my way," he continued. "I merely gave her a light to guide her to her death on the rocks below."

Catherine didn't respond. It gave her confidence a small boost to realize he didn't know everything after all. He didn't know Narcissa had survived. "Look, this is all very interesting, but I'm tired. I'd like to lie down."

The truth was she didn't know how much longer she could sit here, listening to Paracelsus' one-note view of things. She hadn't sat up for so long since she'd come here, and her energy was fading fast. The more tired she became, the less certain it was that she could hold off emotions that wanted desperately to be felt. Plus the possibility of toppling over in the presence of these two was galling.

"You're a guest here," Paracelsus crooned. "Of course, you may retire if you wish. Tamara, come here and take these things."

He stood, drawing a key from his pocket, and came around to unfasten the chain. She noticed he waited until the table was cleared of anything lethal. Unless she could wield the single crust of bread remaining with enough impact to stun him, escape looked like a dead issue for the moment.

Paracelsus wrapped the length of chain around his arm, following close behind her. Kicking out with enough strength to pull him off balance was an interesting if futile thought; she couldn't even manage to shrug his grip from her shoulder. On wobbly legs she wove her way back through the short passage, noting that the walls didn't circle as wildly as they had when she'd come through before. Her condition was improving; it had to be.

At the bedside he bent and threaded the chain through the metal frame, fastening it once more. "Regrettably, I have other business to attend to," he said formally. "I did not anticipate your arrival. Still, you will see me again -- very soon, I promise, and then we will discuss the interesting subject of what's to be done with you."

Catherine sank down on the bed without answering. Before leaving, Paracelsus opened each of the drawers in the cabinet, and removed several items. The lone candlestick, too, was confiscated; he left a trail of darkness in his wake.

There was so much she needed to think about, so much to plan, but exhaustion was like a shroud, pushing her down and down into a dreamless sleep.

* * * * *

"Yeah, Kyle, how's it going?"

"I'm sending you my chiropractor's bill, Maxwell. Do you know how many games of racquetball I've played this week?"

"Any winners?"

"Well, I managed to connect with several of Alcott's regular partners. A couple go way back with him. You're not gonna like it, Joe, but nobody had a bad word to say about him. Not a breath of scandal. By all accounts he's a hard worker, keeps his word -- the kind of guy you can count on when you're in a pinch."

"I'm not surprised," Joe said, glumly, "but I appreciate the thought."

"There was one thing, though, that struck me as a little odd. It's probably nothing, but I took a look at the appointment book at the club. Alcott's got a standing schedule -- plays three times a week like clockwork, but there was a period a while back when he didn't show up -- two different times, three days apart."

"Yeah, like I told you, he's in Mexico."

"No, there were cancellations marked by the dates he was down for vacation. This was before that and the appointments weren't cancelled. He was marked as a 'no show'."

"He's a doctor, Kyle -- probably medical emergencies."

"Maybe. Maybe not. I took the liberty of phoning his office under the pretext of confirming some dates -- said I was with a medical insurance firm. His office told me there was some mistake, that Alcott had been out of town during that period."

"Out of town where?"

"Well, that would have been a suspicious question for an insurance man to ask, wouldn't it? But it was the three days just prior to Alcott's coming to see you. Might mean something."

"You're right, it might. Look, can you do one more thing for me?"

"Is it going to put me in traction?"

"Not unless your racquet arm's too sore to pick up a phone. I'd do it myself but Moreno's watching me like a hawk. He wants this thing played by the book. Alcott arranged his Mexican trip through Miller Travel on Lex. Chances are he used the same agency if he went somewhere else. See what you can find out."

"Will do. I'll get back to you soon as I can."

"Hey, the next round's on me, buddy, thanks."

A half an hour later, Joe was about to leave for the Tombs when Kyle called back. Nothing on the travel plans, which didn't mean a thing; Alcott could have bought his own tickets -- plane, train -- or driven any number of places.

Grasping at straws, that's what he was doing. Joe felt half foolish for dragging his friends into this, when he had no clear idea what they were looking for. What he did have was a gut feeling that had seldom steered him wrong and a debt to Cathy Chandler -- of friendship, of loyalty.

So he'd act like a fool, if that's what it took. He wouldn't stop pushing until he knew exactly what had happened to her, and God help Dr. Peter Alcott if it wasn't something good.

* * * * *

Catherine didn't wake up until Tamara brought the ritual bowl of soup. Raising herself to a sitting position failed to stir the usual lurching in her head. Better -- yes, she was getting better, and though she wasn't particularly hungry, she forced herself to pick up the heavy bowl.

Arms folded. Tamara continued to stand there watching her in unnerving silence as she ate. Finally, Catherine said, "You told me you lived here alone."

"I do, but there are others -- I told you that, too. Him -- he comes and goes as he pleases. He doesn't like anybody to know where he spends his time."

"Still, it must be annoying, having him show up here, telling you what you can and can't do. Why do you listen to him?"

"What do you think happens to people who don't listen to him? Try it, my girl, and see where it gets you."

"What's the alternative?" Catherine eyed her coldly. "To end up on that wall like a hunting trophy?"

"Finish the soup."

"I have -- here." She thrust the empty bowl toward Tamara who took it and started for the door.

"He can make you do whatever he wants -- things you thought you'd never do. I've seen it many times. He turns people into puppets."

"Like you, Tamara?"

The woman's eyes narrowed, but she didn't reply and soon disappeared down the passage.

Well, that was an exercise in futility. Catherine sighed. There was no time to waste. It was plain that the dizziness had receded as she swung her feet to the floor. She stood, surprised that the chain played out longer than expected. It was possible to circle the entire room, even reach the lavatory, which she supposed was the idea, but that meant no one would be freeing her for that purpose, and there went an option for escape.

A trickle of icy water ran down one wall in the little cubicle, and she used it to wash as well as she could, splashing her face into an alertness that had eluded her since first awakening here.

Back in the bed chamber she checked the refectory table for a compartment that might yield some kind of weapon, but there was none. A thorough search of the cabinet turned up nothing of interest. She was just searching the bottommost drawer when it hit, so debilitating this time that she slipped to her knees.

The entire room was spinning out of control. Gasping, she clutched at the bedclothes, pressing her forehead against the mattress. Worse -- worse even than before. It took all her strength to push to her feet and stagger back to the latrine before nausea overtook her.

Once empty, her stomach kept heaving, and several minutes passed before she was able to make it back to the bed. Head pounding, she welcomed the sleep that washed over everything in a cooling wave.

* * * * *

How long he had been walking, he didn't know -- or care.

Time had become a vacuum impossible to fill of late. How was it that a life once measured in brief, incandescent moments -- moments as full, as rich as some enchanted fruit -- could stretch out now before him as if he looked through the wrong end of a telescope? Forbidden fruit, he reminded himself, and stopped to fill his lungs with the cool, sharp air peculiar to the Chamber of the Falls.

Tonight there was no wish to roar out his anguish beneath the crashing waters, no inclination to linger here awash in fragrant memories. Tonight there seemed no place vast enough to contain his restlessness or the massive burden of loneliness he bore.

Not the world above. Earlier at the park he had watched the moonlight slide along the grass, gilding the great forked tree that stood guard over the entrance to his world. Beyond, the city hummed its night song, once so intoxicating that it had drawn him time after time into its heart. Scaling the battlements of its fantastic towers, he had looked down on the teeming streets, the countless lighted windows with a sense of awe for all the separate lives entwining there. Now it seemed notable only for her absence.

He stood in the circle of the culvert's mouth that might have been a pale reflection of the moon's round face, as he seemed a reflection of himself. Far away, where Catherine was, it would be morning: there was no tender thrill of knowing that this same moon shone on her, and after a while, he turned and plunged back into the earth on an aimless odyssey that led everywhere and nowhere.

Even the Chamber of the Winds seemed too small, too tranquil, to hold the energy that kept him moving, wishing for exhaustion and the solace of sleep. The exercise only served to make him stronger, almost tireless. Several times he had risen in the night, unable to relax, and gone alone to one of the work sites, there to challenge his body, digging into impervious stone, heaving a sagging lintel into place, till the sweat came, and his heart pounded with something besides sorrow.

Father wouldn't approve. He was adamant about everyone working in pairs in case of accidents, but Father didn't know. The estrangement between them, subtle though it might be, was troubling in many ways. Conversations ended in anger, and part of that was his fault, he knew. Father's attitude was like a spark to his brittle emotions, and in the ensuing flare, Vincent could not see his way to help.

Yet help was needed. He sensed it. A secret lurked in those eyes he knew so well. Could Father be ill -- perhaps seriously -- reluctant to alarm his friends? Peter. Yes, Peter might be able to get to the truth. He would make it a point to talk to him as soon as he returned to New York.

Up again to the highest level, so high that in passing a small offshoot of tunnel, he stopped, feeling himself drawn into it, as if the vines protruding from above had twined about his limbs. Leaves glossy with moonlight cascaded through the grate. It was memory that drew him and at last bade him rest against the gentle curvature of the wall.

Here they had listened to music: there was no music now. Here he had held her close: his arms were empty now.

But not his heart. Not his heart. And he sat for a long time remembering those moments, when she nestled against him, and all was right with the world. After a while, the silent music lifted his thoughts further to a balcony where the moon danced, and stars swung, twinkling, in cadence with their hearts, and he held her endlessly safe in his embrace.

* * * * *

Catherine awoke with a start and lay willing her heartbeat to slow. Instinct said she had been sleeping for hours, but there was no way to tell for sure. And the dream that had wakened her -- not a nightmare. Oh no, not a nightmare at all. Some part of her, vigilant even in sleep, must have recognized the danger and forced her to wake up.

She clutched the crystal, pushing its faceted point into the fleshy part of her hand, trying to let go of the feelings that she wanted so much to hold.

Such a simple dream to stir so much intensity.

They had been standing on her balcony in each other's arms. But how real it had seemed. Her head was nestled against his chest. She could hear the slow, solid beating of his heart. She could see the strands of bright hair that dipped towards her as he pressed his lips to her head and the way the soft grey fabric puckered along the quilting of his vest. His hair smelled wild and sweet. His hands, spread wide on her back, held her close against him. So strong, so warm. So safe. His low, textured whisper played along her nerve endings. She wished she knew what he was saying. She did know what it meant. A melting warmth, a scintillating arousal and happiness too deep for words.

It wasn't safe to have such a dream, to loose her feelings in a way that might travel along their bond. For the first time, she wanted to weep -- for all he'd suffered, for the longing to hold him. But that wasn't safe either. Paracelsus had almost destroyed him once. She would not be responsible for giving him the chance to do it again.

You have to get out of this one yourself, she whispered, as the crystal glowed warm in her hand.

Little light made its way into her prison since the candle had been taken away. She could barely make out the familiar pattern of the jagged rock in the low roof overhead. Frowning into the darkness, it took her a few minutes to notice that the pattern didn't waver. Dim as it was, it didn't shift and blur. Cautiously she pushed herself up on her elbows. No giddiness at all. Even the headache was gone, and suddenly she thought she knew why.

* * * * *

Jacob found it difficult to sleep this night.

Never mind that he was beginning to feel his age. These last weeks the energy seemed to have drained from him with the secret tears. Weary, he would try to sleep only to find -- in the moments when his conscious mind began to let go -- those ghastly memories returning over and over again. The image of Vincent, his powerful body sheened with sweat and blood, would flash across his mind. And before he could stop it, he would see again the arcing of that lethal arm as it connected and the brief flight of a doomed angel.

Better the sight of the raw rock ceiling, the familiar furnishings of his bed chamber than those hideous tableaus. He would lie awake staring until exhaustion swept him into sleep with no intervening images.

Tonight it had seemed hopeless. A walk, he thought, might tire him sufficiently to avoid the ordeal. His hip protested mightily. His walking stick dug deeper into the hard-packed floor with every step, and when he came to a narrow ledge suitable for sitting, he sank down on it, gratefully.

Someone was coming.

It saddened him to realize that his first impulse was to hope it wasn't Vincent.

He dreaded his son's hostility and almost as much his apology, which would leave only one guilty party in their relationship.

How soothing it was to his aching bones, his battered soul, that the figure moving into the torchlight seemed softness personified. Her hair was loose, falling in gentle waves across her shoulders. She wore a full woolen dressing gown and an expression of tender solicitude.

"Father, what on earth are you doing up so late?"

"I might ask the same of you. Nothing wrong, I hope."

"Oh, no. Geoffrey has been prone to nightmares lately. I thought I'd check on him one more time, but he was sleeping quietly."

"Ah, yes... nightmares. Please, join me for a minute. It's remarkably peaceful here."

"As well it should be at this hour." Mary's voice was faintly scolding, as she gathered the folds of the gown in her lap and sat down beside him. "You look so tired, Jacob. I suppose you're worrying still about Vincent."

"Am I that transparent?"

"No, of course you're not -- just very dependable. You couldn't help but worry, after what he's suffered, and now trying to deal with life -- without Catherine. We're all concerned, but he's trying very hard. Anyone can see that. Is there something we could do to make it easier for him?"

"Oh lord, Mary, I'm probably the last person you should ask. My efforts to comfort him fell woefully short of the mark. He misread my intentions completely. I'm afraid I only succeeded in making him angry."

"I doubt that it was you, Jacob. He's so hurt right now. He's liable to lash out at any of us. We all behave like that -- like children -- sometimes, when life's been unfair and there's no one to blame. He'll come around."

"Yes, I suppose." Bleakly, he wished that it might be true, but there seemed no real hope of regaining their former closeness. Not so long as he held this terrible secret and Vincent held the ability to recognize deceit when he saw it. "There are moments when I think it might have been better had Vincent and Catherine never met." In his weariness, he'd spoken without thinking. Mary didn't know the true cost of that fateful meeting, and he wasn't surprised when she looked at him askance.

"You don't really mean that, Jacob. They brought each other so much happiness. Many people never have that. Think of how much richer their lives have been for knowing each other. And all the people they've helped... why, in our world alone, the two of them have done so much. You can't seriously wish none of it had ever happened?"

"No... no, of course not. Forgive me, Mary. I suppose I'm tilting at windmills, wishing things had turned out differently, but then it was always clear that there could be only one ending."

"Do you really think so?" Her searching look only increased his discomfort. "Why, Jacob? It seemed to me that they were well on their way to a more permanent arrangement. I always thought it was a question of Catherine's responsibilities above. When she worked that out, things would change for the two of them."

"Did you?" He stared for a moment at the cryptic pattern worn by his walking stick in the dusty ground. "Mary, you know Vincent as well as anyone. You know the burden he bears. You know his nature is far too unpredictable, far too complex to risk the kind of relationship you imply."

"What's complex about love?" she asked, and her puzzled sincerity left him momentarily struggling for an answer. Mary was not a stupid woman. If she saw in Vincent's uniqueness no obstacle to a normal life, perhaps others shared her blind spot. Thank goodness Vincent understood the truth of the matter. "Love itself may be simple, but its ramifications in someone like Vincent -- as if there were anyone else like Vincent -- could be dangerous, even deadly. Surely, you haven't forgotten what happened with Lisa?"

"Lisa." Mary's mouth set in a prim line, quite uncharacteristic of her. "I feel sorry for that girl. In spite of her beauty and her wonderful talent, she always seemed a little sad to me, and as a grown woman, she hasn't changed. She doesn't live in the real world, Jacob. She doesn't feel things that the rest of us feel. I think she isn't strong enough. I think she's afraid."

"Yes, I believe you may be right about that. Perhaps there was an element of what you're describing in her approach to Vincent. Who better to fit into her own private fairy tale? But when it became real, when he reacted as a living, breathing person, she wanted no part of the consequences. I'm not excusing her behavior, nor can I forget the inappropriateness of Vincent's response."

"Inappropriate," Mary mused, sadly. "It's not really a very sinful word, Jacob. Surely not terrible enough to condemn someone as loving as Vincent to a life alone?"

"Well, naturally there's a great deal more to it." Jacob felt inexplicably irritated -- with Mary of all people. He almost regretted ever leaving his chamber this evening. "In any case, what's done is done. We must do the best we can with what remains."

"Of course, we will." She patted his knee. "You should get some rest. And Vincent will come around before you know it. He could never stay angry with you."

"Yes, I hope you're right." Jacob rose. "Good-night. Mary," he said, kissing her cheek before they moved off in opposite directions.

All the way back to his chamber, he played with the odd notion that others might not share his lifelong view of Vincent as destined for solitude. It was the final irony that the one person he could be sure agreed with him on that issue seemed to want nothing more to do with him.

* * * * *

Catherine rubbed at her temple where there had been a distinct tenderness when she first regained consciousness -- days or was it weeks ago? It hadn't hurt at all since those first waking hours, and why hadn't she noticed the peculiar ebb and flow of the crippling dizziness that had made thoughts of escape futile? The soup. It had to be the soup. It was a constant in the bare routine here and always afterward….

Damn! She should have grasped the connection long before this -- Tamara's sly means of keeping her here -- more insidious somehow than the crude chain. And she had accepted it eagerly, thinking she was improving her chances for escape with every nourishing sip.

Dumb, she chastised herself in the darkness, but, of course, whatever was in it had kept her from thinking clearly all along. Tonight Tamara must have overdone it. If she hadn't thrown up so quickly, she might never have caught on at all.

She eased out of bed and the chain clanged on the stone floor, but it was wonderful just to stand on her own two feet and find all the shadows in the room remaining blessedly still. The sprain, she could tell now, was completely healed. There was no weakness when she paced around the room. What was she going to do tomorrow night when Tamara brought her dinner again? Probably have to play it by ear.

Too many hours stretched out before that would become a problem, and it was foolish to waste any of them. Alert now, she needed to come up with a plan. That her options were still severely limited was all too apparent. A second search of the room yielded nothing of interest. No sounds came from the chamber beyond, but she picked up the chain to silence it and went as far as she could down the narrow passageway. It wasn't far enough to see the room beyond, but she was certain she would have been able to hear if anyone was there.

Where was Paracelsus? Tamara had said he came and went. She felt fairly confident that he wasn't off posing a serious threat to Vincent or the others -- not when he was so obviously intrigued with her own potential as a weapon against them. He could have used cruder methods long before now to destroy those he hated, but he clearly had a preference for more devious means of attack -- ones that fed his self-concept as magician.

And that may be your fatal flaw, John, she thought with a grim smile.

There seemed little to be gained by lingering in the silent passage, and after a while she made her way back to the little room where she attempted a few exercises in earnest, stretching muscles too long unused, bending -- with no disorienting results. She longed to practice some of the surprise moves Isaac had taught her, but became too quickly tired. Maybe tomorrow.

Slipping back under the covers, a wary optimism claimed her. I'll find a way out of this, Vincent, she whispered to the darkness. I will. How tough could Paracelsus be if he feared a poor old woman like Narcissa? There was so much more she wanted to say, so many feelings begging to be acknowledged, but she clutched the crystal to her heart and imagined them all safely locked within its prism.

There were obstacles yet to overcome before she could set them free.

* * * * *

Vincent's meanderings had at last fastened on a goal. One that Father would approve of only in that it would confirm the well-being of a person they still thought of as one of their own. Beyond that, he would have shaken his head that a rational, thinking man might waste his time listening to foolish superstitions.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Father, Vincent mused, as he made his way through the honeycombed darkness. No one knew what obscure impulses drew Narcissa from one inner sanctum to another. It could at times be almost impossible to find her and few even tried, although Vincent had never found it particularly difficult.

At the base of a deep well, he detected a wan light coming from somewhere to the left. He followed it to a low opening that gave onto a short flight of stairs. A modest shrine had been erected in the small round cavern below, where she sat still as stone, her all but sightless eyes fixed on the unadorned wall before her.

"Narcissa," he greeted her softly.

She turned slightly at the sound of his voice but didn't appear startled. Even her smile spread slowly. "Vincent. Come in... join me. Are you alone?"

"Yes," he said, descending the steps. "I'm alone."

"Come sit, child. See what I see -- there on the wall." Crouching beside her, he dutifully scanned the rough rock where the light from a dozen candles behind them played. "There -- do you see it?"

"Only shadows."

"But see how the light moves among them? The dark ones -- dancing, bowing. They cannot rise up. They cannot stand against it."

"Yes, Narcissa. I see it."

"Good." She patted his knee, chortling her pleasure. "So, Vincent, what brings you so far from Father's kingdom?"

"Restlessness," he answered. "I'm glad that I came upon you. How are you, Narcissa? Your wounds -- have they healed?"

She shivered, lifting an arm whose skin was puckered with scar tissue. "He is powerful, Vincent -- the evil one. His mark is on me."

"He's dead, Narcissa, gone. He cannot harm you again."

"Don't be so sure. The strong ones have no respect for death. They defy its powers with their own."

"As you did," he reminded, gently taking her hand. "We feared we'd lost you, but you proved stronger than Paracelsus."

"Devils may rise, child. The dark spirits fly from the flames of hell. They move unseen among us, spreading the poison spells in our ears."

Narcissa's world was terrifying, he thought, but simple. A battleground of spirits. The medical skills Father and Peter had used to save her were incidental in her concept of the struggle. "If devils rise," he said, seeking to calm her fears, "then perhaps angels fall to earth and whisper to us of the good."

"That is so," she nodded, brightening. "I have seen it on the wall, but what is this restlessness that will not let you sleep? What troubles you so?"

"I worry about Father. He is not himself, Narcissa. Something weighs heavily on his mind, but he won't speak of it."

"Ah, the father," she said dismissively. "He believes only what he sees, child. His mind is closed to possibilities and so he must always think in a circle. He moves in it like an old tiger in a cage."

Vincent almost smiled. "Still, I don't know how to help him."

"Here -- give me the basket." She indicated a wicker plate scattered with shells. Taking it, she closed her eyes, her lips moving in unintelligible verse as she gathered the glassy shells into her fist and tossed them like so many scalloped dice. Opening her eyes, she placed the basket reverently on the floor between them. Vincent waited in patient silence as emotions flitted in close succession over her face. It was puzzlement that shone there when at last she turned toward him.

"What else troubles you, Vincent... besides the father?" He didn't answer immediately. How he wished it didn't trouble him, that he could rejoice without reservation in Catherine's bid for happiness. If he could pluck out that part of him, that selfishness, that kept the longing burning in him night and day, he would have done so by now. "It is the woman -- yes, Vincent? It is your Catherine who brings such unhappiness."

"She never meant to make me unhappy, Narcissa," he said with soft conviction. "It's merely that her destiny lies along a different path than mine."

"Where do you say this path has led her?"

"Far away. She is where she needs to be."

Cloudy eyes stared into his a moment longer and then returned to the shell-strewn basket. Perhaps their message was muddled for she still appeared confused, thoughtful. "The father's fears are of his own making. They have no real power," she said at last. "Remember what you have seen on the wall, Vincent. Remember your own powers. But go carefully. The spirits dance too close, too far -- their struggle is great. The living and dead walk in each other's footsteps. It is impossible to say who will win."

"Death shall have no dominion," he whispered. "I'll be careful. Thank you for your advice." He rose and managed a slight smile as he caressed her shoulder. "Take care, Narcissa, and if you need anything -- anything at all -- please, come to us. You are welcome in our world -- always."

A brilliant smile flashed in the dimness. "Perhaps Father would like to read the message of the shells? No, child. My place is in the shadows. From here, I can see the path of the light -- your path, Vincent. Do not forget."

Vincent acknowledged the words, enigmatic as always, with the barest nod. As he withdrew, Narcissa turned back to her basket.

Striding back through the darkness, to the familiar ways, it was impossible to shake the aura that she wove -- the uncanny impression that angels and devils whispered their secrets just beneath the silence.

* * * * *

"You planning to sleep all day?"

No answer.

"Come on, girl. I've got better things to do than to wait on you."

Catherine lay still as stone, even when a hand grasped her shoulder and shook it roughly. "Catherine? Catherine, wake up!"

With a groan she rolled away from Tamara's desperate grip.

"I mean it, girl. Open your eyes."

Slowly, she obeyed, taking a grim pleasure in the sight of that smug face gone pallid with fear. It confirmed her suspicions about the drug. Tamara must have known she'd overdone it last night and was now considering what the consequences could be if she destroyed Paracelsus' new toy.

"Sit up. Come on -- sit up, now." She hurried to plump the pillow beneath Catherine's head.

"I... I can't. I'm so dizzy," Catherine murmured drowsily. "I feel worse, Tamara."

She slumped against the woman's arm, doing nothing to help her frantic attempts to maneuver her into a sitting position. "Get a hold of yourself. Look, I've brought your lunch. That's all you need -- a little nourishment." She placed a dish on the bed -- bread and cheese, an orange. "I don't know when he's coming back, but he's not going to be happy if he can't talk to you. Here." She pushed a glass of water into Catherine's limp hand and proceeded to peel the orange.

The water was fine -- of that Catherine was reasonably sure. The clear, sweet product of the cold springs below. Nothing up top tasted quite as pure. The cheese was probably safe as well and the orange that now lay in tempting crescents on the plate. She ate slowly, clumsily, aware of Tamara's apprehensive gaze.

"You're right, Tamara. It helps a little. Is there any more?"

At any other time she could have expected a rebuff, but Tamara had suffered a fright: relief made her almost gracious. "I'm not running a restaurant here," she grumbled. "I'll see what there is."

As soon as she was gone, Catherine snatched up the remaining food and stuffed it into the pillow case. She had a sneaking suspicion she was going to be awfully hungry later on. Tamara returned with another hunk of bread and an apple and watched as Catherine ate them both.

"You feel better now?"

"Not much. Could you help me to the bathroom?"

Tamara was more than willing to get her on her feet. Catherine leaned heavily against her, gasping as if every step was a challenge. On the way back she nearly fell, but Tamara held her firmly, delivering her back to the bed where she moaned, hiding her face in the pillow.

"It will pass," Tamara said with a reassurance meant more, for herself than Catherine, who thought she could still feel her nervous gaze as she gathered up the plate and glass and finally left the room.

Her satisfaction at seeing Tamara frightened, at convincing her that the drug had worked, was short-lived. The hours stretched out before her in a way she hadn't noticed before. Hours in which she should be doing something to escape. But what?

And exactly how was she going to handle the inevitable moment when dinner was served?

* * * * *

The crease between Jenny Aronson's brows looked as though it might become permanent.

Midday traffic whizzed around the little triangle of green, where they'd taken their hot dogs. Thankfully, they had the one bench all to themselves and enough noise to ensure that even God himself couldn't overhear them. Chances were good Moreno couldn't either.

"Called a lot of people, huh?" Joe said, trying to look more interested than anxious.

"A lot. Nobody could think of anyone it might be, and nobody's heard from Cathy in weeks."

"You didn't... like get 'em all riled up, did you? I mean, Moreno's not going to start fielding demands for an investigation from half the social registry?"

"No, of course not. I just said Cathy had taken off to Europe and I was wondering who she might have gone with. I tried to make it sound like gossip, so I'm pretty sure if anyone had known something, they would have loved to tell or, at least, hint that they knew."

"Still doesn't mean much, Jen. You said yourself it might be somebody you didn't know." Would you listen to the devil's advocate? he thought ruefully. The voice of reason. If she knew what he did -- about that handbag -- she'd blow higher than a kite. No sense in upsetting her when his hands were tied. Alcott was due back soon -- plenty of time then for all hell to break loose.

A gust of wind blew Jenny's hair across her mouth. Not a real wind. Not in this stifling heat. Just exhaust fumes kicked up by the passing traffic. She wiped away the mustard, bending toward him. "A friend of ours said something kind of interesting, Joe. This is someone Cathy and I have known for eons, and she was surprised, too, that Cath would take off so suddenly. Not that she hadn't known her to do things like that before. We both had. Cathy was a lot different, Joe, before you met her, but Nancy had the same impression I did -- that Cath was very serious about some guy here in the city, and she didn't buy it at all when I said maybe he was the one who took her to Europe."

"Did she say who he was?"

"I don't think she knows. She said Cath was very mysterious about him, but whatever Cathy told her, it convinced Nance that he wouldn't be likely to just up and go on a cruise. It reminded me of something, though. Last year we were all at Nancy's place in Westport -- for the weekend, but Cathy didn't stay. She just suddenly took off back to the city in the middle of the night. It was bizarre, but I guess it shows she can still be impulsive when the mood hits her. Nancy said Cath kind of came unglued that time, too. I'm scared she's not really as strong as she likes to pretend."

"Believe me, Jen. She's strong. Nothing ever keeps her down for long -- you know -- like a cat."

Jenny gave him a reproachful look. "Maybe so, but I think she passed the nine-lives mark in the first six months she worked for you."

"So she called timeout. That's smart. That's fair -- right?"

"Right," she sighed with a look that said she wanted to believe him. "But why would she do it wearing someone else's clothes?"

* * * * *

Catherine frowned at the long flannel nightgown, wishing she had something more practical to wear. This one was peach with small blue flowers that had faded so much the garment looked mildewed. It wasn't conducive to running or climbing or kicking. It only reinforced the illusion that she was an invalid, a concept she had no patience for at the moment. Now that her head had cleared, she was itching to do something constructive, dismayed at the hours, days (weeks?) lost in limbo.

You don't waste your energy on nothing, Isaac had said. You don't blow it where it can't do any good. You wait till you've got the advantage. You find the other guy's weakness and throw everything you've got at him.

It was easy to think of Isaac, of Joe, of almost anybody except the one person she ached to think about. Thinking of him brought her too close to fear, to longing, and a thousand other emotions too powerful on their own to be trusted.

She examined the bed, hoping to find a spring, a screw -- something that might be used to prod at the chain's mechanism, but, as she suspected, it didn't have a spring to its name. For an hour or more she scraped the chain against the rock floor, quietly under a smothering wad of blanket, but only succeeded in scoring the granite. She searched the drawers again for inspiration. They were empty except for linens and bandages.

Now that it was possible again to judge the passing of time, she was almost sorry. Impatience made her conscious of every minute, all the long hours before there were sounds again in the little passage, and Tamara appeared with supper. She looked relieved to find Catherine blinking groggily at her.

"Made quite a pig of yourself at lunch, didn't you, but you better eat your dinner. You won't get anything else till tomorrow afternoon."

"Haven't you ever heard of breakfast?" Catherine mumbled.

"I eat breakfast every morning," Tamara bridled, as if her credentials as a health care professional had been called into doubt. "Can I help it if you never wake up till noon?"

Yes, Catherine thought, you damned well can help it, with your witch's brew, but she pushed herself upward with a show of unsteadiness and accepted the bowl. "It smells good."

"It should. I've cooked for some picky eaters in my time. Now, see that you eat it all. I've got things to do."

With a little leap of triumph, Catherine watched her turn and leave the room. She waited only a minute before hurrying to the lavatory and dumping the soup down the latrine. When Tamara came back some 20 minutes later, she was lying back against the pillow, still clutching the empty bowl.

After about an hour, she drew the food from the pillowcase. The cheese had taken on a most peculiar shape, but she ate it eagerly, and then came the frustration of inaction. If something didn't change soon, she thought she really would lose her mind. Not that anyone around here was likely to notice. She'd fit right in. After a while, sheer boredom lulled her to sleep.

Some faculty must have kept a critical watch, because the voices that woke her were not very loud -- only a low murmur from the next room. She sat up quickly, encouraged that the movement brought no lightheaded feeling. Picking up the chain, she crept as far as it would allow down the dark passage. She sat down, and when the voices began again, she could hear every word.

Paracelsus and Tamara. No one else. She'd never seen anyone else here. Were those others Tamara had mentioned really around? Maybe conversation was not their forte. Remembering the giant Erlik, who had kidnapped her -- so long ago -- that was easy to believe.

The discussion was -- of all things -- about wine. Tamara was complaining that she couldn't be expected to have every little thing he wished on hand, since she never knew when he might show up. Paracelsus did not accept the excuse. A gracious hostess always kept a variety of the best vintages to welcome surprise guests.

A gracious hostess? That's where you made your mistake, John, Catherine mused in the shadows. She couldn't recall a single socialite who'd made the A list by drugging her guests and chaining them to a bed.

There was the distinct sound of a cork popping that implied a compromise had been reached and then silence. She guessed that Tamara had returned to her work bench. Catherine couldn't imagine her idly sipping wine. She wondered why Paracelsus bothered to come here at all, unless he simply craved an audience for his vain rhetoric, an audience likely to be less critical than most.

"Has she given you any trouble?" he said at last, and goose bumps played across her arms.

"How could she? You know what that stuff does. It's your formula."

"So it is. I know, too, what it could do in the wrong dosage. Take care, Tamara, that in your eagerness to be rid of a nuisance, you don't rob me of my little mermaid. I would not hesitate to exact from you the full price."

Tamara snorted in response, but Catherine couldn't resist a smile, knowing how close to home that must have struck.

"Tomorrow we switch to the potion that our friend Jason found so agreeable, and then Catherine and I shall enjoy more fruitful conversation."

"What will you make her do?" Tamara's eagerness indicated an appetite for the macabre that Catherine didn't share. She hugged her knees against the pounding of her heart.

"Nothing she does not wish to do," he intoned solemnly. "It is she, Tamara, who is closest to my son, she who makes him most vulnerable. It would be a pity to ignore that."

"I don't trust her," Tamara said in an injured tone. "She lied to me about her name."

Catherine almost gasped. These two really deserved each other -- and she really needed to be out of here.

"You need only trust the drug, Tamara, and the subject's own latent desires. Did you learn nothing from Jason's happy sacrifice?"

"Jason was confused," she scoffed, as if her own clear-sighted view of things left her little tolerance for the less well-adjusted. "From what you've told me, she's not confused about Vincent. Obsessively loyal, you called it."

'Why do you suppose that is?"

"Because he saved her life. He protects her."

"If that was his only use to her, Tamara, she would not have hesitated to summon him when she was in danger. Yet she didn't do it then, and she's not doing it now. No, the young woman clearly suffers from the same shortsightedness that plagues Jacob Wells -- an inability to see anything but the most human attributes in my son. She looks upon him as a man. I'm certain of it and just as certain that she fancies herself in love with him."

"Isn't that the last thing you want? You went to a lot of trouble to make him forget he was human. If she makes him feel like a man, then it would be in your own best interests to make sure they never lay eyes on each other again."

"My own best interests?" Paracelsus said drolly. "Or yours? I'm well aware that you covet this woman for your own purposes, Tamara. Artistic inspiration is admittedly limited when one lives so far from his fellow man, but I assure you her potential is much greater than you envision. I've thought this over carefully. Oh, yes, I've thought of little else since your fortunate discovery."

"I'm not following you," came the disgruntled reply. To Catherine it sounded more like a jibe than a request for enlightenment, but Paracelsus was undeterred.

"She can get close to him -- and he like a lovesick fool will drop his guard. She holds the key to his true nature. We must only convince her to use it, a pathetically easy task I should imagine, and death will open the gates to my triumphant return. Their world will be shattered, their beliefs, their heroes, will disintegrate before their eyes, and I will be there to give them something new to believe in."

Tamara's voice sounded almost timid in the wake of Paracelsus' declaration. "I still don't see how you can do that. You say they're in love with each other."

"I believe it was Wilde who said 'each man kills the thing he loves.' Oh. yes, I can do it and I venture to say within the week."

"I don't care if he is off guard, from the way you've described him I have a hard time seeing a little thing like her killing him."

"I sometimes despair of letting you in on my little schemes, Tamara. Have you learned nothing from our past experiments; have you heard nothing I've said? Of course she won't kill him. It is Vincent who will destroy her."

Catherine shivered beneath the flannel gown. The cold stone seemed to rise through her bare feet and surround her heart. It was nonsense, what he was saying, yet she couldn't help feel a chill at the way he said it. She bent her forehead to her raised knees and concentrated hard on putting the fear away from her -- making it abstract, something to be considered carefully, but not to be felt. No, not that. So great was her focus on accomplishing what was a difficult feat in her vulnerable position that she almost missed the next crucial words.

"She looks upon him as a lover. There is no other explanation for her tenacity in protecting him. You, of course, know nothing of the turbulent passions that hide beneath the lilting lies of poets. Yours is a selfish heart, Tamara, unvisited by love, but I -- I have known the treacherous truth behind all the fine sentiments. I have known the bitter pain of loss. It was love that required me to sacrifice my beautiful Anna."

"Oh, please," Catherine all but groaned her disgust, remembering the pretty face in the locket. Anger stepped in to balance her fear. Anger for Anna who had loved Vincent enough to risk her own life on his behalf. Oh, yes, Vincent, you were loved long before I came into your life, she thought with gratitude toward that tragic young woman.

"I need only to remind her of the desires she already harbors in her heart. She wishes him to be a man and so it is natural that she would entice him to behave as one, to accept the favors that in her blindness she sees as the ordinary course of love. And he -- he is flesh and blood, after all. I doubt that he could withstand a direct assault on those passions he has kept in check all these many years. He will respond, and when he does, the future will be mine."

Tamara's brittle laughter flitted down the passageway like an insect. "You're going to use sex to try and win back your precious community?"

"Don't scoff," he answered agreeably enough. "Sex is a commodity used to buy and sell almost everything in that world up there. We shall set our little moth on a course for the flame, and what a conflagration there will follow."

"So it's Cupid you're playing now, is it?"

Paracelsus seemed in too good a mood to mind her sarcasm. "The same, Tamara. Cupid with a poisoned arrow. You know, I actually must credit Jacob with part of this idea. When even he recognized the truth, I realized its enormous potential. You see, my son has managed to operate all these years by a singular act of repression. Oh, he's perfected it to an art, repressing his true self, his true hungers, in order to be accepted in their polite society, but I've loosened that mechanism. I've seen how fragile it really is. Imagine what would happen if the woman he cherishes above all else were to offer herself to him, to plead for his attentions. Do you think he could deny her? Do you think he would wish to? But to give her what he wants, what he must suddenly acknowledge as his own most agonizing desire, he must let down that crucial guard. He must give vent to passion, and that, Tamara, will be tantamount to a crack in a dam, to Pandora lifting the lid only the slightest bit to see what lovely things might reside inside.

"I wonder that I failed to see it before. He reacts to violence with violence, and once the threat is past, he has learned to cage the beast. He reacted to my attempts on his sanity by shutting down completely, rejecting the madness by rejecting life. But carnal passion, Tamara -- he doesn't know its power, and he will have no will to reject it. Once he has tasted lust, he will be powerless to stop its course and all those other primitive forces, so long denied, will pour forth. Already the boy has them hopelessly confused in his mind. To him they are much the same -- the passion to kill, the passion to create life -- his dream made that very clear to me, that and the fact that he finds those desires ever more difficult to control."

"Couldn't he let them loose on somebody else?" Tamara almost whined. "Where am I going to find a face like that again down here?"

"Your selfishness appalls me," Paracelsus said piously. "She is not merely the unique stimulus required to trigger this most critical response. No, once Vincent has lost himself in that maze of hungers, I have no doubt that she will be dead, and whatever sensibilities might remain in him will die with her. When he sees what he's done, if he still has the wit to understand it, he will be utterly beyond reason from that moment forward, a creature of pure instinct and no mercy. A god. Take heart, Tamara, there may be something left for you to work with when the carnage is done. You may be the first scavenger on the scene, if you wish."

A "hrumph" followed this generous offer, and Paracelsus continued, "We shall begin tomorrow, after supper. See that you delete your current ingredient from the soup and substitute what I give you. It might be dangerous to mix them, and in any case our prize potion will render her quite docile."

There was the sound of a chair being scooted back on the stone floor, and Catherine scrambled to her feet, hurrying back to the dark chamber and the narrow bed.

The thought of Paracelsus coming in to check on her filled her with dread. She really didn't know how she could stand it if he touched her or how she could keep her loathing from becoming an attack, no matter how doomed to failure, but he didn't come, and she lay awake for a long time thinking about the things she had heard.

* * * * *

Joe was relieved to hear a friendly voice when he picked up the phone. "Dan, how's it going? You looking to drop another twenty at the ol' dartboard?"

"Nah. Word's out on the street, Joe. You guys in the ivory towers got nothin' to do but practice all day."

In the privacy of his sun-splashed office, Joe grinned. It hadn't been 10 minutes since he'd lobbed a beaut into the triple ring, compliments of his frustration on learning the Lewis prosecution had hit another snag. "So what's up?"

"It's about this doctor thing -- your friend Alcott. You said you had nothing to hang on him, so I started thinking about what kind of trouble a guy like that's most likely to run into. With doctors, like as not, it's drugs -- using them, selling them -- so I put in a call to a buddy of mine in narcotics."

"Whoa -- wait a minute." Joe shot a look toward his office door, almost expecting to find Moreno hovering there. "You know I told you this investigation isn't happening. I can't afford to have Moreno get wind of it, and I don't want to do a smear job on Alcott when he may be clean."

"Relax, Joe. This is all between friends. I made it clear that in our book Alcott's a saint, and we're just making sure we don't get any nasty surprises to the contrary. It's all off the record. Anyhow -- one of the routines they run there is keeping tabs on the legitimate pharmaceutical houses -- in case there's any unusual activity, and it turns out your guy Alcott made a real strange buy a few months back."

"Like what?" Joe was already trying -- without much success -- to picture Peter Alcott as a drug kingpin. "Are we talking barbiturates, narcotics?"

"A few, but the bulk of the transaction was antibiotics. Enough to clear out all the v.d. on the Bowery. And he was so anxious to get ahold of it, he made the run himself, drove over to Jersey to pick it up personally."

"You mean penicillin, that kind of thing?"

"Yeah, nothing a guy with his kind of practice wouldn't keep on hand, but it was the quantity and his all-fired hurry to get the stuff that got it flagged. So it's not the kind of thing they push in the school yards -- it still has a black market value. Maybe he's got gambling debts he can't pay. Anyhow that's all I've turned up, for what it's worth."

Joe thanked him and hung up the phone, the Lewis case far from his mind. No way to tell what it was worth without a check of Alcott's tax records. Maybe it was a legitimate transaction. For all he knew Alcott might support some third world clinic. Just one more question the good doctor was going to have to answer before he even got near the baggage carousel, but that was still days away, and in the meantime, what was happening to Cathy? How was he going to live with himself, if it turned out she was in danger, and he'd just sat here doing nothing until that plane arrived from Mexico?

Once again the impulse he'd rejected earlier came buzzing back to haunt him. It went against the grain. In fact, it damned near set his teeth on edge, but it was an unturned stone, and he owed it to Cathy to do everything he could to make sure she was really all right.

He picked up the phone again. "Charlene," he said, feeling like he was stepping off a ledge, "Get me Elliot Burch's office."

* * * * *

She couldn't complain that there hadn't been time to think about this. With no drugs in her system, long hours of wakefulness made the waiting intolerable, and now that Tamara was standing here with that cursed bowl of soup, she was still going to have to improvise.

"I want you to make quick work of this tonight. You're going to get to join us later for another talk."

"You mean another lecture, don't you? He's a megalomaniac, Tamara. Surely you realize he won't hesitate to kill you, too, if the mood strikes him."

"Not as long as I'm useful to him," she said with an odd sense of pride.

"Is that what you want -- to be used?"

"I want to survive, and if you'd like to do the same, you better cooperate. Here -- eat up now."

Catherine took the lethal offering, dismayed that last night's luck hadn't held. Tamara had no intention of leaving the room. Often Catherine had been so famished that she'd dispensed with formality, drinking the stuff straight from the bowl. Now she took the spoon and carefully raked it across the broth.

'What's the matter -- aren't you hungry?" The woman was growing taut with impatience.

"I'm starving. I just can't eat with you staring at me like that."

"It never stopped you before."

True. Swiftly, she weighed the options. It wouldn't do to arouse suspicions. If Tamara realized she'd caught on to their plan, it wouldn't put a stop to it. They might simply resort to a more violent method of administering the drug, and the advantage of pretending she didn't know what they were up to would be lost.

Stomach knotting, she put the spoon down and lifted the bowl to her lips. With a silent prayer, she took a swallow, noting with detachment that the taste hadn't changed. It was still delicious. Tamara's gaze didn't waver. Catherine drained the bowl.

"You're a good cook," she said calmly, handing over the empty bowl.

It was accepted with a sly smile and a noticeable relaxing in her captor's posture. "I'm a brilliant cook. Mind you don't go anywhere now." Relief had apparently stimulated her sense of humor -- also brilliant -- Catherine thought dourly. "He'll be here before long." Looking pleased with herself, Tamara left the room.

Catherine allowed a few precious seconds to pass on the off chance that she might turn back to deliver a second witticism, but there was no sound from the passage, and leaping up, she raced to the lavatory. There was no time to dwell on the repugnance of what had to be done. Bending over the latrine, she stuck her finger down her throat.

When it seemed there could be nothing left in her stomach, she moved to the wall where the water trickled, washing the bitterness from her mouth and hurried unsteadily back to the bed.

Well, that was certainly disgusting, she mused, but hopefully effective. At least the hunger was gone, but what was she supposed to feel? What kind of signs would Paracelsus be looking for to tell him the drug had taken effect?

This was territory she'd explored a dozen times today. She had sat with witnesses under hypnosis, seen the effects of Sodium Pentothal, but for all she knew Paracelsus' concoction might have its own idiosyncrasies. Maybe it was supposed to make you twitch or cough or have an uncontrollable urge to whistle "Dixie. "

Turning from the discouraging train of thought, she fell back on what she'd gauged as her strongest weapon: John Pater's enormous arrogance. He expected to be right. He expected his brilliant plans to succeed. What was it he'd said about exploiting people's strengths as well as their weaknesses? Well, his biggest strength as far as she could tell was his inflated ego, though no doubt he'd disagree. It brought a smile to her lips to think of using his own tactics against him, beating him at his own game.

The smile faltered as she caught the first footstep in the corridor. The crucial test was about to begin.

* * * * *

Vincent gritted his teeth, wrenching at the massive valve with his bare hands. Knees bent, back hunched over the rusted metal, he felt the strain from fingertips to booted feet. He grunted with the effort, and at last there was the grating sound of steel against steel, as the huge apparatus gave up the fight and ground a quarter turn.

There. It was closed, and he welcomed the burning in the muscles of his arms, the increased heart rate that told him he was in the here and now. He breathed deeply and fell back against the tunnel wall. Always there to catch you. Always there was a wall at your back, at your side. So many walls.

He flexed his reddened hands. The flesh was intact. There would probably be no blisters. It would have been easy to call a couple of men to the spot or return with the usual tools himself, but he liked the immediacy of solving the problem, the exertion that focused mind and body.

Something was happening to him. It had been happening for days now, and he did not know what it meant. Only two explanations had come to him, and neither gave him peace. Both threatened the careful perimeters of his life, laid out in these last mournful weeks.

Feelings.

Odd disjointed feelings, swooping at him unannounced from some place beyond his own consciousness. Awake or asleep -- it made no difference. He would suddenly find flashing within some emotion that had no connection to the circumstances, and just as suddenly, it would be gone. Gone before he could hope to examine it or identify its origins.

Fear. Anger. Even love -- sheer as an insect's wing, as delicate to the touch, and as swiftly fled. These things visited him at the oddest times, apropos of nothing he was saying, doing, thinking -- like ghosts.

He lifted his hand again and held it out before him. Steady. No trembling. Not like before. Truly, nothing of these phantom impulses bore any resemblance to the symptoms that had felled him in the spring, yet they were not in his control, and so much depended on his control -- survival, the careful give and take of his everyday existence.

Where once he had carried out duties for their own sake, he found himself relishing the cause and effect they represented. The valve was loose: he tightened it, and in doing so felt the natural responses of the action.

Last night, he had been passing the chambers where the children slept, when Geoffrey had cried out with a nightmare. Sympathy had moved him to go into the room and whisper softly to the sleeping child, who had wakened, unafraid to see him there, and in the darkness had allowed himself to be soothed with whispered words and the touch of a gentle hand on his forehead. And Vincent had been gratified to watch him sink finally into a peaceful slumber.

That was how it should be -- problems and solutions, acts and consequences with all the attendant emotions that one might expect. Not like this morning, when listening to the children's interpretations of Wordsworth, he had suddenly felt a twinge of what could only be called disgust. Where did it come from? Certainly not from the fresh and sometimes funny comments of those eager young minds.

Or two days ago, when he had been carrying the basket for Rebecca, the two of them in easy conversation as they strolled through the heart of their world, distributing fine, fat candles to every chamber, when fear had stabbed at him out of nowhere. Fear of what? For whom?

The implications disturbed him. He hadn't spoken of them to anyone, nor had he come closer to any understanding of them. That there could be a danger in this had not escaped him. Perhaps it was unwise to keep them to himself, yet there was only one person to whom it seemed natural to turn at a time of such uncertainty, one person accustomed to the odd manifestations of his differentness.

Father.

Vincent had been doing his best to avoid any further confrontation between them, reluctant to make matters worse, yet there was no one else capable of considering the problem with quite the same combination of compassion and objectivity. Or had that changed as well?

He began to move again, down the trail of pipe, looking for problems that lent themselves to pat solutions, telling himself that perhaps the aberrant feelings would not come again, and there would be no need to test the suddenly troubled waters of Father's understanding.

* * * * *

I'm going to go blind, she thought, staring into the candle flame that Paracelsus had pushed up close to her. She couldn't see him at all where he paced languidly behind the light. Tamara, she knew, was across the room, unwilling to pause in her artistic pursuits even for her mentor's latest circus act.

So far there hadn't been any hitches, as far as she could tell. She had thought "docile" all the way from her chamber to this table, answered his questions with halting candor. Now as he asked how she was feeling, she blinked heavily through a tangle of hair, looking in his general direction. "I'm... not sure."

"Well, then, I shall tell you," he said agreeably. "You are feeling relaxed, safe. You are with friends -- Tamara who rescued you, cared for you, saved your life, and me. I have never harmed you, Catherine. Remember that. When the dreadful Erlik brought you below, I gave you water. I made sure that your beloved Vincent would find you there, but more importantly, it is I who will see that you get your heart's desire."

Not if you knew what my heart's desire was, she mused, staring dumbly at the yellow flame. At the moment it began with a particularly lethal choke hold Isaac had taught her and went on to the pleasure of watching John Pater consume this damned candle, flame and all.

"Are you comfortable? Perhaps you would like something to drink -- to eat?"

Fantasizing helped her maintain an illusion of power and hold down the fear, but she abandoned it quickly. The question could be a trick. The truth was her stomach was already protesting the loss of its dinner. She would have loved something to eat. Maybe this was one of those drugs that gave you a fit of the "munchies." On the other hand, it might be expected to produce nausea. When in doubt, think "docile," she reminded herself, opting to mumble, "I... don't know."

"Well, then, let's have a little talk about your favorite subject -- and mine. Tell me, how do you feel about my son?"

"About... who?" Catherine blinked and frowned -- the picture of bafflement.

"Vincent," he snapped.

"Vincent…" she repeated, smiling. "Wha... what was the question?"

"How do you feel about him?" Irritation hummed in his voice. She could feel his eyes boring down at her. So much for the indulgence of baiting him. He was too chronically suspicious to make that a good idea. "I love him."

"Is that so?" Gratefully, she felt herself released from his scrutiny, as he warmed to the subject. "How remarkable. Isn't it true that he is a monster, that he has committed unspeakable acts?"

"No... not a monster. No."

"You see him then as a man?"

"A man... yes."

"And how does Vincent feel about you?"

"The same... he feels the same way."

"How delightful for you both. Tell me, Catherine, in what way does he express this love he feels for you?"

"In every way."

"Such as?"

"In... everything he does... everything he says. I just... feel it."

"Does he hold you, kiss you, make love to you?"

"He... holds me."

"But nothing more? How extraordinary. You say you are lovers. He has been exposed to all the romance of literature, raised to express the most tender sensibilities. It cannot have escaped your notice that he displays a rather startling degree of virility, so tell me how is it he is content to merely 'hold' the woman he loves?"

"I... don't know. He never talks about it." Deep in the dancing candle flame, she saw again the anguish in that heavenly face, felt the wrenching sorrow as she brought his hands to her lips -- that night on her balcony. It seemed another lifetime. She'd wanted never to let go of him. She wished she never had.

"Oh, but surely you have some idea of why he should show such reluctance?"

"I suppose he's... afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of releasing his inhibitions, of giving certain impulses a way to come through." There. He couldn't ask for a more cooperative answer than that, one that fit perfectly into his own preconceptions, and she was willing to give it to him, but not the details, not one moment of anything that had really passed between the two of them. Those memories were precious. They were hers.

Paracelsus seemed pleased with her response. He sounded almost jovial as he said. "But you don't believe that, do you. Catherine? You don't believe there would be any danger in his making love to you."

"No."

"Because, after all, he is just a man, isn't that what you said -- the man you love?"

"Yes."

"And you would like that, wouldn't you? You would like him to act as a man should act. You would enjoy seeing that love fulfilled. Isn't that true?"

"Yes."

"You know, I've often thought what a shame it was that Jacob's attitude is so repressive. How terrible it must have been for the boy growing up, being told that he had no right to his feelings, to a man's expectations. Yes, I sadly fear Vincent has been raised to believe that he is less than human. Rather cruel on Jacob's part, don't you think?"

"I suppose."

"No, Catherine. You know it to be true. You know that Vincent has suffered an injustice -- all these years. It is a tragedy, a terrible tragedy. Denied the full realization of his manhood, simply to suit Jacob's narrow viewpoint. It's a wonder that the boy hasn't rebelled against such stricture.

"Vincent loves him... he respects him."

"He was given no choice," Paracelsus said bitterly. "He was taken from his rightful father who understood him, and forced to win affection by acting the part of something he is not. It was inevitable that he would develop a misplaced loyalty for the only parent he has ever known. Even a beast responds to kindness."

With the possible exception of yourself, Catherine corrected silently.

"What Vincent needs is someone who loves him more than his precious father does, someone who cares enough to break through those inhibitions and release him from this undeserved prison. Think how grateful he would be to the one who accomplished that."

Gratitude was the last thing Paracelsus envisioned in Vincent's response, of that she was well aware. She wondered at the distortion in a mind that could devise such arguments and still not see the truth in them. "He would be grateful," she repeated dutifully.

"Wouldn't you like to be the one to do that, Catherine?" Suddenly, he was leaning on the table, pulling her eyes from the candle with his piercing gaze. "Wouldn't it give you great happiness to bring such joy to him?"

However dangerous the situation, however convinced she was of the man's real menace, it was still unnerving to see the obsessive hatred in those eyes. She forced herself to nod.

"And so you shall," he said with canny emphasis. "So you shall."

* * * * *

Joe checked his reflection in the vast expanse of glass over the bar.

He looked fine, he decided. There was nothing in his neatly groomed appearance to indicate how uncomfortable he felt, like a fish out of water.

The mirror was etched with writhing vines and lilies and some kind of bird -- looked like a swan. The same design marked frosted glass panels set -- in the interest of privacy -- at odd angles around the thickly carpeted room. Only a few bottles were indiscreetly visible behind the sweep of gleaming bar, and they winked in the subtle lighting like crystals.

A far cry from Milo's with its row after row of dusty bottles, including one of Japanese plum wine that he could swear hadn't budged from its position since he'd been in law school. All things considered, he would have preferred to be in the shabby comfort of Milo's, chewing the fat with Dan and Kyle.

When Burch had suggested this place, it had crossed his mind that it might be an intimidation tactic, but now as he watched him make his way across the room, barmaids twittering up to greet him like hummingbirds, he figured there was a good chance he'd chosen it without thought. Burch probably felt as comfortable here as Joe did at Milo's. Go figure.

He was wearing a soft grey suit that made his eyes look silver. Even with the beard, the hair brushing his collar, he looked like he'd stepped off the cover of GQ. His manner was subdued, and he didn't say much till they'd collected their drinks and taken them to a lacquered table, safely ensconced behind a slice of leaves and swans.

"Look, Burch, I appreciate you meeting me like this."

"'Elliot... please. I take it this is personal and not business?"

"I'm glad you understand that. It's real personal -- off the record and unofficial. Did you mean what you said about wanting to help Cathy Chandler?"

"Obviously, you know I did or you wouldn't have called me. What is it? She's in trouble, isn't she?" He leaned across the table with an intensity that probably served him well in the dog-eat-dog world of business, which Joe imagined as one step less civilized than his own line of work.

"I don't know. I honestly don't know, but some things have come to light that tell me she might be. If I'm wrong, and it gets out that I've been poking my nose in the wrong places, I'm telling you up front my ass is gonna be in a sling, so whatever we discuss here today has got to be kept quiet. Is that understood?"

"You can trust me completely."

"Don't push it, Elliot. Give me something I can believe, okay? Just tell me you're with me on the Cathy thing."

Joe saw the insult flicker in the shrewd eyes. The impulse to respond in kind followed fast behind it and was gone. "I'm with you, Joe. What have you found out?"

"I can't tell you that, but let's just say I have reason to believe she might not have left the country. What I want to know from you is whether you've got any idea at all where she could have gone or what she could be messed up in."

"I'm the one that came to you with that question, remember?"

"Yeah, and you told me you'd seen her recently. You said you'd helped her with a problem. Would you mind telling me what it was?"

Burch smiled slightly into his glass. Beer, he'd actually ordered a beer, much to Joe's surprise. "Can't do it, Joe. I... promised Cathy, but believe me when I say she kept me in the dark, too." There was a pause that threatened to become permanent, but Joe was used to waiting out witnesses who thought they had nothing more to say. At last Burch took a deep breath. "The gist of it is she thought I was involved in... something. I wasn't, and in trying to prove it to her I more or less stumbled on a clue that told her who was really behind it. Told her, Joe -- not me. I got a smile. I got a thank you. I got no explanation." Burch took a long drink from the frosted glass. His usual air of confidence had evaporated. "I don't know the players. I don't even know what it was all about."

Disappointment settled heavily in Joe's stomach. "So I got nothing to tell you, and you got nothing to tell me. Looks like we both just wasted our time. Trouble is we're the only two people worried about Cathy, and she may be in danger, and we're doing squat about it."

"Okay, Joe... you're right. I don't see how any of the little bits and pieces I know about Cathy lead anywhere, but I'm willing to see where they go. I've got people on my payroll who will follow a wild goose if I tell them to. I gather you don't have that luxury."

"Bingo."

"Then, I'll do it. I'll get them to look into any and everything connected with her. I wish you'd brought me in on this earlier."

You don't know how close I came to not doing it now, Joe thought. "Maybe I should have and maybe I'm making a big mistake talking to you at all. This has got to be done discreetly. Elliot, and on the level -- no strong-arm stuff."

"Discretion is my middle name, Joe. I thought you knew that by now." A trace of the old cockiness gave him a devilish look.

Sure he knew, but underhanded would have been a better word for it, the way Burch slid along the limits of the law, always managing to avoid direct involvement in the shady schemes that kept making him richer. It was about time he paid for some of the headaches he'd caused, but damned if Joe wasn't beginning to think that there was already a punishment at work in Burch's gut, and it had to do with loving Cathy Chandler.

* * * * *

Jacob observed his entrance from the library gallery, where his annotated edition of Utopia had finally been unearthed. The wonder was that Vincent didn't see him.

He swept into the study as if borne there by some troubled wind, his cloak flaring out behind him as he turned, scanning the corners of the room. And then, having failed to rake the shadows of the gallery with those laser eyes, he grew still.

He didn't move at all for several minutes, and Jacob wondered if he was having second thoughts about coming here. It wouldn't have surprised him to see Vincent leave as suddenly as he'd come, and he wanted to speak up, bid him to stay, but the words would not leave his mouth. Jacob stood there like a guilty thing, afraid to begin yet another exchange that might end in more pain, more distancing between them.

It was only when Vincent sank into a chair and, thinking himself unobserved, bowed his head in his hand, that Jacob felt the thawing of the terrible inertia that froze him here.

He might have been deep in contemplation. He might have been weeping. Jacob couldn't tell, but there was something so vulnerable in the sight of that bright circle of gold beneath him. The power, the presence, the sometimes fearful intensity so familiar in the man were gone. Below him he saw only the tormented child whom he loved above all things, all people, all ideas, and he moved with sudden swiftness down the spiral stairs.

It touched -- and alarmed -- him all the more that Vincent didn't even sense his approach until he laid a hand on his shoulder.

He snapped erect, glancing at him with cloudy eyes. "Father... I didn't hear you come in."

"Something's wrong, isn't it? What's happened?" His hand still remained in a gentle caress on the impossibly brawny frame, but he let it fall when he saw the discomfort in the soft eyes, the acknowledgement of the awkwardness that had grown up between them.

"I didn't want to trouble you... but I... I don't know where else to turn."

"Of course, you should come to me, Vincent -- whatever it is." Jacob pulled his own chair up close, leaning forward with the air of a confessor. "What is it?"

"Feelings, Father -- strange, disjointed feelings."

"What kind of feelings?" Jacob felt the coldness seeping into his pores.

"Many kinds. Fear, anger, a kind of disdain -- even joy. It is not the feelings themselves. Each comes so quickly and disappears... but they have nothing to do with what I'm thinking or feeling at the time. That is what I find so disturbing."

"They merely come over you -- with no provocation. Is that what you're saying?"

Vincent nodded. "They are not mine, Father, and yet I experience them as if they were. I have known that sensation before -- with Catherine, and I'm afraid that -- somehow -- those feelings might be hers."

"I see." Unconsciously, Jacob drew back in his chair.

"Most of the time it's almost as if she were lost to me. I told you that I can feel her presence as only the faintest ember in my heart, and yet these sensations are powerful, as sharply felt as any I knew when she was still in this city. Father, it troubles me that as far away as Catherine is, I can still sense such things. If it's truly her emotions that stir me, then they must be intense, desperate. I fear that she could be in terrible danger, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing I can do."

"Oh, Vincent, I'm sure that's not the case." Jacob was glad to be able to speak with perfect truthfulness. He hoped his conviction would soothe the stricken look from his son's face. "You say her... presence within you is very faint, which is inevitable with her so far away. If she was actually experiencing these emotions, no doubt they would be faint as well, and certainly they would not be abruptly cut off in the way you describe. Remember, she's with friends -- on a pleasant holiday, not pursuing cutthroats and thieves through the streets of Europe. No, I'm certain you need not worry about Catherine."

"I tell myself the same thing, and I know it must be true, but if the feelings do not come from her -- then from where, Father?" His voice had taken on an ominous edge. There was a fear in his eyes that hadn't been there for some time. "If they are not mine and not hers, then from what force do they emanate?"

Jacob felt suddenly the close of a trap around him. It would be unbearable to watch Vincent becoming frantic for the safety of a woman who was forever beyond harm's reach. But what was the alternative explanation? That the madness was returning? That the dark spirit lurking in the depths of his son's soul was once again exerting itself, demanding to be heard? Only he knew that, of the two, it was the only possible answer and valiantly he searched his mind for a third.

"Vincent, the things you've experienced in the past... before the darkness closed in, they were not like these little snippets of feelings, some of them benign. You've suffered none of the other symptoms that occurred on those occasions, have you? Disorientation, fever, sweats, the shaking?"

"No, Father. None."

"Well, you see. As your physician, I can assure you that what you describe is not at all indicative of a breakdown. What it is, I can't be sure -- perhaps merely little short-circuits in the thinking process, a residue of your illness, or have you considered that your empathic sense may simply be picking up signals from others around you?"

Vincent looked unconvinced. "There's no way to be sure."

"No, I'm afraid there isn't, but I shouldn't waste time worrying that this is any sort of precursor to madness. Put that out of your mind, please." He wondered, even as he said it, if he would be able to put it out of his own so easily.

"If only I could be certain, Father." Vincent rose, signaling the agitation that so often accompanied his deepest fears. "I cannot simply dismiss the possibility that Catherine may be in trouble. If I were to ignore that... If we were to learn that, in fact, something has happened to her in Europe... If only we had some word. I understand why she should not wish to contact us, but there are others above, friends who might hear from her -- Devin. Laura. Michael --"

Jacob saw clearly his opportunity to quell this useless obsession. So simple really -- where was the harm? "As a matter of fact," he interrupted, "I wasn't going to mention it, but as you're so intent, Vincent, on torturing yourself uselessly, I might as well tell you. I did receive a letter recently... from Laura. She mentioned hearing from Catherine -- that all was well."

Vincent turned, staring at him. There was such trust, such undisguised hunger in his eyes, that Jacob felt at once ashamed and happier than he had been in weeks. "Yes, apparently they toured the coasts of Italy and Yugoslavia -- even Greece. All very... restful, very enjoyable. Catherine has decided to stay on indefinitely with old friends... in the South of France. She's quite well, and, of course, she asked after all of us, after you, and sent her best. "

"Father, why didn't you tell me this before?"

"I thought it might make you melancholy, but as you can see the trip has gone quite smoothly, and she's with people who care for her. It's nonsense to think she could be in any trouble. "

He watched the tension drain from his son's broad shoulders. His son -- a tower of strength that only love could bring crashing down. It did not escape his notice that Vincent would rather embrace the specter of incipient madness than imagine Catherine to be in danger.

"Thank you, Father." For the first time in what seemed ages, Vincent put his arms around him. He felt the brief whiskery brush of a kiss on his forehead. "I am sorry for being so difficult these last weeks. You have my apologies."

"None needed," Jacob answered gruffly.

So this is how it was that men became pathological liars. One deception following on the heels of another. And wasn't it ironic that he seemed to be getting better at it? This time he had sold the truth for a kiss, for that look of release on Vincent's face.

A devil's bargain, if ever there was one.

* * * * *

"What do you mean 'tunnels', Elliot? You talking sewers?"

"Storm drains, abandoned water mains, cable and electrical conduits, old subway routes. There's a whole network of them under this city. Probably one for every street. Think about that, Cleon. Like a mirror of Manhattan, only hidden and forgotten."

"Not by everybody. Transients have been ducking into those places for years. Why the interest -- urban renewal goes underground? I didn't think you were done filling up the top part yet."

Burch only shook his head, smiling and turned to the view of the city sliding by in fits and starts.

High noon and hotter than Hades. Pedestrians out there looked sweaty and generally angry, but inside the limo, the air was cool. Even the traffic noises were muted. There was a faint perfume of fine leather. Like gliding through the mess inside a bubble.

They left the avenue, winding through the park with Burch not saying a word until he suddenly signaled the driver to pull to the curb. "Look over there, Cleon. At the end of the ravine."

Beside them the lawn fell away in a gentle slope. On the far side of a little hollow it rose again into a thicket of trees. He could just make out the shadowed contours of a culvert nestled into the hill. "What... the drain pipe?"

"Would you believe I found myself inside that place one morning, and I don't even know how the hell I got there?"

"You saying you woke up inside a storm drain?"

"Actually, it feels more like I was dreaming in there," Burch said cryptically, but then his manner turned direct. "I'm going to tell you something, Cleon, that I don't ever want repeated to anyone else -- not any of your people -- nobody. Is that clear?"

"It's clear. You've got my word."

"Last winter -- the night my father died -- Cathy Chandler and I were attacked. Good men were killed -- my men, and these guys weren't going to quit till they got us, too. Gorronistas, Cleon -- only according to the CIA they never existed. Cathy and I were just down at the docks for a midnight swim."

"Which is why you don't want me talking about it."

"No, that's not the reason. It's not even the important part. They got us cornered in a blind alley. I thought it was all over and suddenly Cathy runs into the middle of the street and starts tugging at the manhole cover." He paused with a wistful smile. "Do you know the first time I ever saw her she looked like royalty -- cool, elegant, sophisticated. I'd been working all my life to cultivate that image for myself and there it was -- the real thing in the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. "

"But you're saying, there's another side to her?"

Burch laughed outright. "That, my friend, is an understatement. I think it might take a lifetime to discover all the things she is." That he longed to be the one to do that was becoming painfully apparent. "I'd seen her as a desirable woman, a savvy lawyer, but that night she was a fighter, Cleon, with a fighter's cunning. What she did wouldn't have occurred to me. A manhole is just an invisible part of the landscape, but down we went, and she started leading me through a maze of underground passages. She seemed to be working on instinct, but without any fear or doubt, and after a while I could have sworn she knew exactly where we were -- no more guessing about which way to turn. We wound up right here, but Cathy didn't leave with me. She told me to forget what I'd seen... and heard... and she went right back into that maze."

Manning didn't say anything for a minute. What was there to say? They both knew the story didn't lend itself to logical analysis. "It's pretty weird all right."

"Not as weird as the part I'm not telling you," Burch said with another veiled smile, "but it's the part that matters. Joe Maxwell is damned scared that something's happened to her. I know he doubts that she's in Europe. And I know that for some crazy reason Cathy feels at home in those tunnels."

"You want to get in there," Manning guessed flatly.

"Yeah, Cleon, I want to get in there."

"And since this is just our little secret, I assume it's me you want to accompany you."

"Right again. I'll make it worth your while."

"You always do, Elliot. It's never been boring working for you, but now I've heard everything."

"Not quite." Burch folded his arms, settling back into the corner of the limo with an arch smile. "Tell me something, Cleon. What do you know about bloodhounds?"

* * * * *

It was on the third day of her indoctrination that Catherine found the chance to escape.

For three nights running, they had followed the same routine. An hour or two after the customary supper, she would be brought to the outer chamber and made to sit and listen to Paracelsus' spiel.

It varied little since that first night -- a mixture of Vincent's tragic deprivation and her own unanswered needs. About the latter she suspected Paracelsus knew very little. It was impossible to imagine any woman finding his cold conceit anything but repellent.

For all his colorful rhetoric, all his zeal, she thought he had no real capacity for passion and that, as much as immorality, placed him outside the circle of those who lived below. It was Father's passionate commitment to creating a better world that had allowed the society to survive for so long. Pascal felt passion for his pipes, William for his cooking. Mouse took a passionate interest in every newfound object, every wild invention.

She thought she could go on, but if she did, sooner or later she would be left to enumerate the passions of the one person who stirred her own, and that was something to be avoided at all costs.

Paracelsus had traded obsession for passion somewhere along the line, but he must have been different once -- to have shared the trust and friendship of Jacob Wells, the love of a tender-hearted woman like Anna. What had gone wrong?

She had puzzled over that one a lot in the long hours when she was left alone, chained in the smaller chamber. She had puzzled over a lot of things to keep from going stark raving mad. The one saving grace was that as long as she remained Paracelsus' pet project, Vincent and the others should be safe -- and she was safe from Tamara's itchy fingers.

Much as she tried to avoid thinking about it, she couldn't pretend not to know what lay behind the woman's predatory stare. Those masks -- the best, she'd said, were made from the "proper materials," and Catherine felt she was little more than a lump of clay to Tamara. Death masks, that's what they were at the very least, and who knew what lengths the artist might go to for the sake of realism? If Tamara's life story was to be believed, and unfortunately it was becoming easier to believe it all the time, she was capable of anything.

Once Catherine had almost pointed out that life masks gave credible likenesses and were a lot less messy to obtain, but she was very much afraid the artist would disagree -- and give her a list of grisly arguments to the contrary. She didn't need that. It was hard enough riding herd on her own feelings day and night, trying to keep them bottled up until the opportunity for action arose.

Now it had.

Incredibly, Paracelsus had left her in the outer chamber to go in search of Tamara, and when she quickly examined the chain, she saw that the ring at her feet had jammed in the jaws of the lock. It hadn't gone through.

Swiftly, she checked the smaller door through which he'd disappeared. How far away was Tamara likely to be? Probably not far; she seldom seemed to stray for long from her precious work bench, but Catherine was confident that even if they reappeared momentarily, she could make it up the stairs and out the entrance before Paracelsus could reach her.

That first day, he'd mentioned preparing a welcome for uninvited guests. Was that just a ruse? Had he set up some kind of booby trap? He couldn't very well lay a land mine in the tunnel floor. Whatever it was ought to be avoidable by someone who knew enough to look for it.

The chain wouldn't allow her to move very fast, but she reasoned that she wouldn't have to get all that far -- just far enough to hide in the shadows, far enough away that it would be safe to open her feelings and draw Vincent to her.

The thought process had taken only seconds, but seconds were vital -- why hadn't she moved? Why was she still tensed on the edge of her chair? It came to her suddenly.

Incredible.

Yes, it was incredible that Paracelsus would be so careless. Crazy, yes. Evil, certainly. But not careless. He had to be testing her -- to see if the drug had really worked. Why else would he seek out Tamara when he only treated her infrequent comments with contempt? Catherine was sure she was right, and yet the temptation toward flight -- toward Vincent -- was so intense that for a moment she feared her own body would ignore what she was telling it and just take off at a dead run.

No. There was too much to lose. If she failed to get away, and she was almost certain now that he'd made sure she would, everything that had been gained would be lost. All the groundwork so unpleasantly laid to make him believe she was in his power would be swept away, and then his methods might turn more crude; then she might have lost any chance to influence the outcome.

Too close. She was too close to convincing him that his ingenious plan would work, and once he was convinced, and he sent her off in search of Vincent, it would be all over. She could warn the tunnel community that their mortal enemy was still alive and still very much bent on destruction.

She let out a shaky sigh and found the crystal at her breast. Courage seemed to glow in its heart, courage and love, and she clutched at them both, just as a voice greeted her from the other side of the work table.

"Why, Catherine, I thought perhaps you would take this opportunity to step outside. How disappointing for our colleague."

Paracelsus stood at the narrow opening. Next to him Tamara was smiling her secret pleasure, though at whose expense Catherine wouldn't hazard a guess. With a bleary look she swiveled slowly toward the main entrance where Paracelsus' own attention was fixed.

A hulking figure stood in the doorway. In the shadows it was impossible to see him clearly, but that beard -- those ragged clothes -- he looked very much like the man who'd kidnapped her from her own balcony and brought her to Paracelsus long ago. Could there be more at home like him -- those animal-people Tamara had mentioned? Surely, that one -- Erlik was his name -- surely, he was dead.

But then Paracelsus wasn't dead. Jason Walker hadn't been dead. Even Mme. Tussaud over there. What is it with these people, she thought wildly -- isn't anybody dead who's supposed to be?

"You could have enjoyed such sparkling companionship had you decided on a stroll," Paracelsus was saying as he came toward her. "Still I'm flattered that you chose to continue our little conversation. Let me see now -- what was it we were discussing? Ah, yes. your love for my son, the way you feel when he puts his arms around you .…"

* * * * *

This was the only chamber in which something was always moving, Vincent mused, by springs or pendulums or electricity or even tiny feet in the person of Arthur who was even now sniffing at his outstretched hand.

Mouse himself was seldom still. Too many things here begged to be examined or transformed by his nimble fingers into some new invention of his own. Treasure troves of whole and scattered objects overran the tables and gathered in haphazard piles beneath the furniture. It looked, Vincent thought, as if the world above had exploded and rained all its disparate pieces down into this single room.

At the moment Mouse was studying his latest acquisition, a carved wooden clock rescued from the now abandoned storeroom.

"Can you fix it?" Vincent asked, though he had little doubt that if it were salvageable at all, Mouse would find a way.

"Think so. Needs another swingy thing. Easy to make." His eyes narrowed as he peered up into the bottom of the little house. "Trouble is, birdy's stuck. Won't come out the door."

Vincent acknowledged the gravity of the problem with a nod.

"Want to fix it for Mary. Mary had one when she was little."

"Then it would make a wonderful present."

Mouse picked up a screwdriver and prodded at the mechanism. "Hands come together and bang -- doors open," he theorized eagerly.

Vincent wasn't certain Mouse had grasped the exact concept. Mary could find it disconcerting, living with a cuckoo who kept such an erratic schedule, but there would be time to diplomatically suggest a few adjustments once Mouse had worked his magic.

The boy was intent on the task at hand, but Vincent knew his presence pleased him and unlike some of the others, he had never found Mouse's company unnerving. Vincent enjoyed his honest simplicity and marveled at the intricacies it hid. And there was something soothing about the things he brought here to study. Finite answers. Cause and effect. That was what Mouse gleaned from his eclectic finds. Those were comforting concepts when his own mind was fraught with answer less questions, unfulfilled longings and emotions that seemed to have no definable origin.

He moved quietly around the room, examining its contents with interest, fascinated with thoughts of where these objects might have been, who might have created them and what their lives were like.

Curiosity drew his attention to a squat black box. He couldn't recall seeing anything like it before. He studied its dials and knobs a few moments before abandoning his attempt to identify it. "What is this, Mouse?"

The boy swiveled around. "Not sure. Doesn't work. Has these though." He tugged at the cord behind the box, drawing out a pair of headphones, settling them into his haystack of hair. "Neat, huh? Like earmuffs for sounds."

"For music?"

"Maybe or maybe a doctor gizmo -- for listening to hearts and stuff."

"Perhaps there's a clue in where you found it." Mouse was always on the lookout for items that might be useful to Father, much to the poor man's consternation. Once his gift had been a battery-powered knife. "Do operations faster" he had explained hopefully, until Father pointed out that its origins in a restaurant dumpster deemed it a gift more appropriate for William.

"Didn't find it in the trash," Mouse said, resuming his work on the clock. Apparently, sticking out his tongue improved the screwdriver's efficiency.

"No?" Vincent flicked at a miniature globe. Its stand was bent; it stuck on Madagascar.

"Found it below."

"In the tunnels?" Surprise pulled his attention back to the enigmatic box. Who, but Mouse, would be likely to bring such an odd thing below? "Where?"

"Show you." Mouse jumped up, happy as always to make use of one of his inspirations.

On the wall he had hung his own detailed map of the central tunnels, an idea borrowed from Pascal who had a schematic of the busiest pipes posted at his headquarters. But Pascal's was mounted on a cork board. He used it to record trouble spots which he identified by pushing pins into the paper.

Mouse's plan was stuck on solid rock, so he relied on stickers to mark the places that struck his fancy. Where he had found these stickers or what they were meant to represent Vincent wasn't sure. They smiled at him with perfect uniformity, yellow circles with dots for eyes and semi-circle mouths, fascinating, if vaguely appalling.

"Right here," Mouse said, pointing to one of the faces.

"Below my chamber?"

"Right below. In the shadows. Watched for days. Nobody took it, so Mouse did." Uneasiness stirred as Mouse returned to his work on the clock. Perhaps it was only the unknown purpose of the machine that made its discovery seem ominous. Why would it be left in a tunnel? He was about to suggest that they go to the location in hopes that an explanation would present itself when suddenly the thought was pushed from his mind.

From nowhere a rush of longing came over him, tender and intense, like a blossom-scented breeze, and like a breeze it passed away from him, leaving him briefly disoriented. The feeling was pleasurable in the extreme, but its unforeseen assault troubled him. He could not even think in the grip of it. What would it mean if his emotions -- all his emotions -- were to rise of their own accord with no connection to his thoughts?

"Got it," Mouse announced and with a loud ping a small yellow missile shot from the clock's door and landed somewhere among the rubble. "No, Arthur! Not the birdy," he shouted, hurrying to rescue the cuckoo from its furry assailant.

Vincent looked down at the clock. The hands stood at 10 minutes after 2.

* * * * *

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;

The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs;

The deep moans round with many voices.

-- Alfred Lord Tennyson