Blue Moon (15 page)

"Actually,” he said, “it seems to me there's also a path with a blast furnace on it."

She knelt and picked up a small shard of rock that had come loose from the surface. She could feel the slumbering beast again, curled up in its egg of stone, dreaming of warmth and blood. She shuddered, for the taste of blood swelled in her mouth, and she felt ravenous for it, like she wanted to drink up the world.

"That's illegal, you know,” Alex said.

She looked up. “What?"

"Damaging state property."

"Oh. It had ... already broken off,” she said, embarrassed.

"I was teasing. Sorry,” he said. “Put it in your pocket and let's get out of here. I feel like talking a walk."

"Okay,” she said, putting the slice of tan stone in her jeans.

They thought about walking to the Henry Clay Furnace, but it was quite a ways, so they decided to explore the trails instead. Eldritch-looking rocks towered over them the farther down they went, until they stood beneath the overlook rock itself.

"Look at all these rhododendrons,” she said. “I wonder what the blooms look like in the spring."

"I've read that the flowers are different from the kind we're used to,” he said, taking her hand. “They're small as a dime, white, with five points and little purple dots. We'll have to come back and find out."

She shivered again, for the taste of blood hadn't left her mouth. She wondered if she'd bitten herself.

"I'd like that."

Zorovin and Sierra sat in the shade of her porch. He had drawn a circle on the floor and placed stones randomly within it. A candle stood in the center.

"Now,” he said to her, “the candle represents the house. The stones represent people. All the stones are the same color except the amber one, which represents my son. As we concentrate, the stones will shift around. If my son is in this area, the amber stone will move to where he is."

He flipped the cover open on the compass again, checking where north was to see if the little arrow he'd added to the floor outside the chalk line was accurate.

"The rest of the stones will either move out of the circle, or will slide into a position occupied by other magical beings."

She looked at the circle. It was about five feet in diameter. “How many miles does this cover?"

"I thought an even hundred would be good,” he said.

She nodded then knelt down. “What makes you think this one'll work better than the seeing pool spell? Or than when you tried to scry by fire?"

He looked at her for a long moment. She could feel his irritation with her like a palpable thing. She smiled sweetly. He took a deep breath, then let it out.

"Magic at the best of times, at least in this world, is volatile. Hard to control. Sometimes, the earth is so hungry for it that it will absorb the magic out of a spell. And sometimes spells just do not work. Period. I am working my way through the least powerful spells I know in an attempt to waste less magic."

She nodded.

"We—our kind—generate a small amount of magic within us. It is why you and I have an affinity for magic, and can use it. Magic calls to magic. When we use it—and it gets used quickly, maintaining a ball of light uses it up in a handful of minutes—rest and sleep will rebuild it."

"I get it,” she said.

He closed his eyes and breathed softly, through his nose and out his mouth. She followed suit. She thought of magic. She called it to her, using the magic inside her soul. She used herself as a beacon, calling like to like, willing the stones to show her where the magic lay.

She heard something clatter across the porch, but she ignored it, concentrating on her calling.

"Open your eyes, and see,” Zorovin said in a surprised voice.

Stones filled the circle. Weirdly shaped stones, stones with dirt from the driveway clinging to them, stones wet from being in the grass. Many, many more stones than Zorovin had collected and washed so carefully.

A white pebble sat next to the amber one.

"Where did that come from?” she said. “I don't recall ever having gravel on my land."

"I don't know,” he said softly. He studied the pattern of the rocks, how they swirled around the amber and white stones. “But I fear for my son now more than ever."

"At least, you know he's alive. And maybe that stone is a friend. They're very close together."

He nodded. “For now, at least.” He fingered a shard of coal sitting at the edge of the circle. “But for how long?"

The phone rang, and Libby picked it up reluctantly. Her hair was dripping wet, and she was still trying to gather it up one-handed into a towel while she spoke.

It was her stepfather.

"I spoke to my agent today,” he said without preamble. “Do you remember that story you wrote, the one that won the Silver Leaf Prize?"

"'Thirty-Nine and Counting?'” Uh-oh blossomed in her mind, and she braced herself.

"Yes. He spoke to an editor at Putman. They would like to publish a novel-length version of it. What do you think?"

With her stepfather, “What do you think?” was a rhetorical question. She chose to answer it anyway.

"Dad, I'm not sure I can do it at this time.” Inside, the part of her that never wanted to say no to any kind of book deal wept silently. “I'm in the middle of a trilogy right now, and I'm late on the second installment."

"What trilogy?” he asked, forcing her to admit, yet again, that she was writing unacceptable trash.

"A historical romance trilogy for Avon."

"Historical romance still? I should have known better than to ask. I suppose I was hoping you had moved up in the world, to fantasy or thrillers. At least a mystery takes some work."

"What I do takes a lot of work. I have to be scrupulous in my research, and try and come up with a unique angle."

"That's not the point. Your mother and I aren't happy to see you writing in genre at all. You could have gotten your PhD if you'd just spent another year in school.

"You've earned more rewards in your six years of college than most people earn in a lifetime! You should be using your gifts to do something good, something meaningful. Everyone—your professors, your fellow students—expected so much from you. To see a woman of your talent wasting herself on fluff is a disgrace."

"Perhaps to the literati what I do is meaningless fluff, but to me, and to my readers, what I write has a lot of merit. I give people an escape, I give people dreams. I put as much—actually, more—into these books as I would into something I wanted to win the Nobel Prize. I think I make a lot of people happy, and I'm proud of that."

"Art isn't about making people happy. Your mother dragged me to a flea market the other day. Do you know how many copies of your books I saw on the tables? They don't keep what you do. My books have never ended up at a flea market."

She bit her tongue, because the proper response, of course, was to say that his books never ended up at flea markets because her books sold thousands more copies than his literary novels ever dreamed of.

"How's Mom?” she asked, as much because she wanted to know as because she wanted to stop the tirade.

She wrote because she loved what she did. She'd seen the worst possible things that life had to offer, things she'd never write about, and it had taught her a great deal. People needed to escape. People needed to dream of a world where beautiful things happened.

It did stop him.

"She's fine,” he hedged.

"That's great! You know, I'm free this weekend. I can come up. We could go out to that seafood place Mom loves so much. My treat.” She started to warm to the idea. “It'd be nice to talk to you both, face to face, catch up a bit."

He thought about it for a long time. Every second that passed, she felt her heart sink just a little more.

"I'm not sure that would be a good idea, Elizabeth."

"Oh, well,” she said, uncomfortable. She tried to think of something to say.

Silence. She couldn't even hear him breathing. She wanted to ask why her mother couldn't at least try to forgive her. Rita's death wasn't her fault.

But she remembered the only other time they had seen each other after the funeral, when she'd driven up for a surprise visit. People who had noticed the change in her eyes tended to compliment her on her contacts, and she didn't think this time would be different. Her mother had welcomed her, at first, unti* * * *ibby had taken off her sunglasses.

Inside the house, her eyes had shown brightly, and sent her mother into hysterics. She could still hear her mother shrieking, her stepfather telling Libby to get out, now.

How dare you upset your mother? Don't you realize how hard this is on her?

The silence dragged on for so long Libby felt she had to speak.

"You know, I truly appreciate what you're trying to do for me. But I'm okay. I make enough money to take care of myself, and we both know that all the prestige in the world's not really going to make everything right between us, is it? So, you know, just don't waste your time."

"I'm sorry you feel that way.” He sounded affronted.

"How else should I feel? My own mother won't even talk to me. How long do I have to pay for something I didn't do?"

"How's your health?"

He didn't want to talk about it, as per usual. She sighed. “Fine. And you?"

"I'm well. Do you need anything?"

"No. Not at all."

"Very well, then. I'll call you next month."

"Thank you. Please tell Mom I love her."

He hung up, his duty done. He was an honorable man, she'd give him that much. He'd promised, when he'd married Libby's mother, that Libby would never do without, not as long as he lived.

She put the phone down slowly then sat, very straight, very proper, in the chair. She felt completely drained, but instead of needing to collapse, she felt more like an empty, dried husk left in the field.

She wanted to talk to Alex. Things made sense when she talked to Alex. He had a clear way of seeing things, a way of peering around the corners of thoughts and putting together conclusions. Sometimes, she could almost believe he was looking inside her head, separating fact from self-delusion.

She went to the bed and lay down, welcoming the cool, clean feel of the sheets. She sighed and tried to relax. Her mind was dream country, filled with her characters, actors and images of charming men collected from books and movies, and with private stories and fantasies that would never make paper.

She thought once again of the odd man she'd met on the plane after Rita died, remembering the whole encounter. It was a memory that had threadbare areas, from her replaying it over, and over...?

She remembered walking down the aisle to first class to find the man with the red carnation pinned to his lapel. She was nervous, because he was there to offer her a job.

"I'm Libby,” she said to him. He was forty, but his hair was snow-white. His suit engulfed him like a child playing dress-up. His blue eyes were a million years old, and as changeable as a river.

He nodded to her, and she sat down beside him.

"Why here?” she asked.

"They don't like to fly. Not on planes."

"They?"

"I'll get to that.” His knuckles look scraped, chewed, and he picked at a scab with shaking fingers. “I'll get to that,” he repeated, as though reassuring himself. “I have no writing skills ... but I saw something. It has to be written down, people have to know. When you applied, and mentioned that you were familiar with Dr. Seward's work, and then I read your story...” He smiled.

She nodded and smiled back encouragingly. She was down to her last twenty dollars and would write anything as long as it paid.

"Can I tape this? I like to tape and take notes, to keep myself from missing anything."

He stared at the micro-cassette recorder for a moment. “I think so."

She set up, and he began.

"I was on an archeological dig. I'm an architect, and I specialize in architectural history."

"Where?"

"Canada, strangely enough. We were excavating a site we thought might have possibly been a Norse village, although all documentation points to the contrary.

"In one of the house sites, we found a stone box buried under where we think they had their hearth. It was inscribed in Anglo-Saxon. We opened it."

He was silent for a while, and Libby found herself looking at the tape recorder to see if the voice activation feature was working. At least she hadn't had to pay for the plane ride, she comforted herself.

He took a deep breath, and she could hear awe in his voice.

"It was the Merlin Stone."

Libby heard Dashiel whine, then begin to howl. She grabbed her robe, wrapped herself in it and started checking the house defenses. Her hands were shaking until she realized what she was hearing was Dasheil's fire-siren wail. She calmed him with a touch and no little asperity, listening with concern not fear until the distant alarm died.

Then, she heard the flute, not too far away—not far away enough—and the calm shattered. It was not even eight o'clock, yet he was out there, in the dark, taunting her. She wished she had made Alex stay with her, but they had spent several hours together already and she didn't want him to tire of her.

She grabbed Dasheil's collar and went into her bedroom, shutting and barring the door. She grabbed a shotgun and hid in the corner made by the bed and the wall. She chanted over and over, “The Lord is my shepherd” while the music swam closer and closer.

He knew where she was. She tried to force herself to breathe very slowly and softly as the music stopped and she heard his steps as they came up on the porch. She knew it was him; it couldn't be anyone else.

She counted his steps as he crossed the porch.

There was a tap on the door. He was using the flute, for he would never touch iron. Then he tapped the shutters, and he whispered, “Duck ... (tap) ... duck ... (tap)...” over and over as he circled the cabin. He hit the wall behind her, hard.

"Goose!” he whispered, and Libby knew he was having his idea of a great time.