'Thanks.' Trace of a smile, trace of warmth. She moved maybe three inches closer. 'That helps.' Half a minute. 'But n.o.body does notice. Even that I'm female.'

How do you tell a woman it isn't her looks, it's her inside? That, nice as she looks, she feels like a black widow spider?

You don't. You fib a little to avoid the cruelty and hate.

Even standing close, with her radiating a need to be wanted, I couldn't find any interest inside me.

I began to worry about me.

'You don't notice me.'

'I notice you plenty.' Only somebody with very skewed standards, like maybe a ratman, would call her hard on the eyes. 'But I'm taken.' That's always an out.

'Oh.' That infinite sorrow again. That's what it was. Sorrow. Sorrow that stretched back to the dawn of her days. An abyss that could gobble the world. 'What's her name?'

'Tinnie. Tinnie Tate.'

'Is she attractive?'

'Yes.' The redhead is in the same cla.s.s as Jennifer. That is, the howl-at-the-moon cla.s.s. But we have our problems, one of which is that we aren't going anywhere. Sort of a can't-live-with-and-can't-live-without arrangement, neither of us with enough confidence to risk commitment.

I might have, with Maya...Or maybe she just said she was going to marry me so often that I accepted the possibility. I wondered what she was doing. Wondered if I was supposed to track her down. Wondered if she'd ever be back.

'You're awful thoughtful, Garrett.'

'Tinnie does that to me. And this place...This house...'

'Don't be apologetic. I live here. I know. It's a sad place. A ghost town all by itself, haunted by might-have-beens. Some of us live in the past and the rest live for a future that'll never come. And Cook, who lives in another world, is the rock that holds us together.'

She wasn't so much talking to me as putting feelings into words.

'There's a road down front, Garrett. Less than half a mile away. Its other end is TunFaire, Karenta, the world. I haven't been past the front gate since I was fourteen.'

'How old are you now?'

'Twenty-two.'

'Who's holding you here?'

'n.o.body but me. I'm afraid. Everything I imagine I want is out there. And I'm afraid to go see it. When I was fourteen, Cook took me to the city for the summer fair. I wanted so badly to go. It's the only time I've ever been off the estate. It terrified me.'

Odd. Most beautiful women don't have much trouble coping because they've had attention all their lives.

'I know my future. And it frightens me, too.'

I looked at her, thinking she meant Wayne. I'd be disturbed, too, if I were the object of such plans.

'I'll stay here, in the heart of my fortress, and turn into a crazy old woman while the house crumbles around me and Cook. I'll never find nerve enough to hire the workmen to put it right. Strangers scare me.'

'It doesn't have to be that way.'

'It has to. My destiny was laid down the week I was born. If my mother had survived...But she probably wouldn't have changed things. She was a strange woman herself, from what I hear. Daughter of a firelord and a stormwarden, raised in an environment almost as cold as mine, betrothed to my father by arrangement between his parents and hers. They never met before their wedding day. My father loved her, though. What happened really hurt him. He never mentions her. He won't talk about her. But he has her picture in his bedroom. Sometimes he just lies there and stares at it for hours.'

What do you say when somebody tells you something like that? You can't kiss it and make it better. Not much you can do. Or say. I said, 'I'm going to take a walk. Why don't you get a wrap and come along?'

'How cold is it?'

'Not too bad.' Winter was just bl.u.s.tering and fussing, bluffing, too cowardly to jump in there and bully the world. Which was fine with me. Winter isn't my favorite season.

'All right.' She pushed away from the rail and walked to the stairs, down, headed for her own suite. I tagged along, which was fine till we neared her door. Then she got nervous. She didn't want me inside.

Fine. For now her fortress would remain inviolate. I retreated halfway down the hall.

If I'd had doubts about her lack of social skills, they disappeared when she returned in less than a minute. I've never known a woman who didn't spend half an hour changing her shoes. She'd done that and had donned a very sensible, military-type winter coat that, surprisingly, was flattering because it centered attention on her face. And that face made me wince because such beauty was shut up here, wasted. Such beauty, like a great painting, should be out for all to appreciate.

We went downstairs and through that hall between the Stantnor forebears, all of whom noted our pa.s.sing with grave disapproval. So did Wayne, who maybe thought I was trying to beat his time.

It wasn't as mild as I'd promised. The wind had picked up since Saucerhead's departure. It had a good bite but Jennifer didn't notice. We descended the steps. I set course along the path that Chain, Peters, Tyler and I had taken last night.

I asked, 'Would you like to see the city? If you could do it without too much discomfort?' I had in mind turning Saucerhead loose on her. He has a knack for making women comfortable-though his taste runs to gals about five feet short.

'It's too late. If you're trying to save me.'

I didn't say anything to that. My attention was on last night's trail.

'I saw something strange today,' Jennifer said, s.h.i.+fting subject radically. 'A man I don't know. I went up where you found me looking for him, but he wasn't there anymore.'

Morley. Had to be. 'Maybe my blonde's boyfriend.'

She glanced at me sharply, the first time she'd looked up since we'd left the house. 'Are you making fun of me?'

'No. Of a situation, maybe. I see a woman, over and over. n.o.body else sees her. At least, n.o.body admits she's there. But now you're seeing ghosts, too.'

'I saw him, Garrett.'

'I didn't say you didn't.'

'But you don't believe me.'

'I don't believe or disbelieve. The first rule of my business is keep an open mind.' The second is remember that everybody lies to you.

That seemed to satisfy her. She didn't speak again for a while.

We came to the place where Tyler died. Tyler wasn't there. Neither was the draug. I walked around trying to discover what had happened. I couldn't. I hoped Peters and the others had collected them. I'd have to find out.

The wind was biting, the gra.s.s was brown, the sky was gray, and the brooding Stantnor place loomed like a thunderhead of despair. I glanced at the orchard, all those bare arms reaching for the sky. Spring would come for the trees but not for the Stantnors.

'Do you dance?' I asked. Maybe we could force gaiety into the place at swords' points.

She managed a joke. 'I don't know. I've never tried.'

'Hey! We're making headway. Next thing you'll be smiling.'

She didn't respond for half a minute, then bushwhacked me again. 'I'm a virgin, Garrett.'

Not exactly a surprise. It figured. But why tell me?

'The other day when you caught me in your stuff, I thought you were the man who would change that. But you aren't, are you?'

'I don't think so.'

'Peters warned me-'

'That I have a reputation? Maybe. But the way this is, it wouldn't be right. It has to be right, Jennifer.' Carefully, carefully, Garrett. h.e.l.l hath no fury, and all that. 'You shouldn't want to do it just because you don't want to be a virgin. You should do it because that's what you want to do. Because you're with someone special and you want to share something special.'

'I can get preached at by Cook.'

'Sorry. Just trying to tell you how I think. You're a lovely woman. One of the most beautiful I've ever met. The kind men like me only dream about. I'd take you up on it in a second, if I was a guy who could just use a woman and discard her like a gnawed bone, and not care how much she hurts.'

That seemed to help.

Believe me, all that a.n.a.lysis and nimble-footing had me real nervous, prancing around a lot of mixed feelings.

'I think I understand. It's actually kind of nice.'

'That's me. Mr. Nice Guy. Talk myself out of the winner's circle every time.'

She gave me a look.

'Sorry. You're not used to my brand of wit.'

I was following the backtrails of the draugs slowly now, climbing a gentle slope toward the family cemetery. Jennifer seemed too preoccupied to notice. After we'd walked another fifty yards, she stopped. 'Would you do one thing for me?'

'Sure. Even what we were talking about, if it ever becomes right.'

Strained little smile. 'Touch me.'

'Huh?' I was back into my trick bag of brilliant repartee.

'Touch me.'

What the h.e.l.l? I reached out, touched her shoulder. She raised her hand, grabbed mine, moved it to her cheek. I rested my fingers there gently. She had the silkiest skin I'd ever touched.

She started shaking. I mean shaking bad. Tears filled her eyes. She turned away, embarra.s.sed or frightened. After a while she turned back and we started walking again. As we reached the low rail fence around the cemetery, she said, 'That was almost as much.'

'What?'

'n.o.body ever touched me before. Ever. Not since I was old enough to remember. Cook did, I guess, when I had to be changed and burped and all those things you do with babies.'

I stopped dead, faced that grim old mansion. No wonder it was so G.o.dd.a.m.ned bleak. I faced her. 'Come here.'

'What?'

'Just come here.' When she stepped closer, I pulled her into a hug. She went as rigid as an iron post. I held her a moment, then turned loose. 'Maybe it's not too late to start. Everybody's got to touch sometime. You're not human if you don't.' I understand what she wanted when she wanted to stop being a virgin. s.e.x had nothing to do with it. She might not realize it consciously but she thought s.e.x was the price she had to pay for what she needed.

How many times has Morley told me I'm a sucker for cripples and strays? More than I like to remember. And he's right-if you call wanting to ease pain being a sucker.

I stepped over the cemetery fence, held her hand as she followed. She caught the hem of her dress, which wasn't exactly designed for a stroll in the country. She cursed softly. I helped her keep her balance while she worked it loose, looking around as she did so. My gaze fell on a tombstone less aged than most, as simple a marker as there was there. Just a small slab of granite with a name: Eleanor Stantnor. Not even a date.

Jennifer stepped over to it. 'My mother.'

That was all? That was the resting place of the woman whose death had warped so many lives and turned the Stantnor place into the house of graydom? I would've thought he'd built her a temple...Of course. The house had become her mausoleum, her memorial. The house of broken dreams.

Jennifer shuddered and moved closer. I put my arm around her. We had a biting cold wind, a gray day, and a graveyard. I needed to be close to somebody, too.

I said, 'I've reconsidered. Somewhat. Spend the night with me tonight.' I didn't explain. I didn't say anything more. She didn't say anything, either, neither in protest, shock, or accusation. She stiffened just the slightest, the only sign she'd heard me.

It was an impulse, almost, kicked up by that part of me that hates to see people hurting.

Maybe there's such a thing as karma. Our good deeds get their reward. A small thing, but if I'd overcome that impulse, I'd probably be dead.

24.

We stood looking at the tombstone. I asked, 'Do you know much about your mother?'

'Only what I told you, which is all Cook ever told me. Father won't say anything. He fired everybody after she died, except Cook. There wasn't anyone else to tell me.'

'What about your grandparents?'

'I don't know anything about them. My grandfather Stantnor died when I was a baby. My grandmother Stantnor went when my father was a boy. I don't know who they were on my mother's side except that they were a stormwarden and a firelord. Cook won't tell me who they were. I think something bad happened to them and she doesn't want me to know.'

Ting! A little bell rang inside my head. A little bell rang inside my head.

A favorite pastime of our ruling cla.s.s is plotting to s.n.a.t.c.h the throne. Though we haven't lately, sometimes we go through periods when we change kings like underwear. We had three in one year, once.

There'd been a big brouhaha when I was eight, maybe seven. About the time Jennifer had been born. An a.s.sa.s.sination attempt had gone awry and had been so blackhearted at its core that the would-be victim had gotten so righteously p.i.s.sed off, he'd made a clean sweep. Not a bit of forgive-and-forget. Necks got stretched. Heads and bodies went their separate ways. Arms and legs got hauled around the kingdom and buried individually beneath crossroads. Great estates got confiscated. It hadn't been a good time to be related to the conspirators, however remotely.

From my neighborhood it had been great fun, watching the ruling cla.s.s chase its tail and get it caught in a door. Or some such mixed metaphor. When those things come up, everybody on the outside hopes that crowd will wipe themselves out. But they never do. They just select out the least competent schemers.

Shouldn't be hard to find out who her grandparents had been. 'Would you want to know?' I asked. 'Is it important to you?'

'It's not important. It wouldn't change my life. I don't know if I care anymore.' After some silence, 'I used to dream about them when I was little. They were going to come take me home to their palace. I was really a princess. They'd sent me and my mother here to hide us from their enemies, only something happened. Maybe they'd forgotten where they'd hidden us. I don't know. I never figured out why they never came. I just pretended that they would, someday.'