Grey Zone (33 page)

Dulcie looked for a street sign. This place was as desolate as anything in
The Ravages
, but not half so picturesque. Where was Hermetria's castle when she needed it? Where was Chris's, for that matter? She reached for her phone. She felt a little foolish, but he'd be awake by now. At least he'd be able to talk her back to his place.

But before she could flip the phone on, she heard it. ‘
Run, Dulcie! Go left!
' The voice was so sudden, so clear, she jumped.

‘Mr Grey?' Here in Cambridgeport? But no, the voice had been different. Lighter. ‘Esmé?'

She spun around. The street to the left looked like more of the same. To the right, something seemed to stir. ‘
Left!
'

‘Are you sure where you are getting these messages from?' Chris's voice came back to her, and she pictured his worried face.
Vengeful spirits
: the phrase seemed to echo in the empty street.

‘Yes, Chris. I am.' She turned. If she couldn't trust the ghost of Mr Grey – or whatever spiritual help he was sending, then . . . But wait, there was something moving. She turned to her right. About a half a block down, behind a hedge, she'd seen someone.

‘Hello? Excuse me?' Grateful for simple human contact, Dulcie shed all embarrassment and ran, waving her hands. ‘Hello there!'

Whoever was there must not have heard her, because even as Dulcie trotted down the sidewalk, she saw the figure retreat further. ‘Hello?' Dulcie was almost at the hedge and a little out of breath. ‘Excuse me?'

She peeked around a tall evergreen. There was a reason she hadn't seen the figure. In a green cape, hood up, the person before her blended into the shrubbery. Then the woman stepped out, and Dulcie saw a pale face, with wide-set eyes. Dark tendrils escaped from the hood.

‘Carrie?' So this was where the sophomore had been hanging out. She moved to greet her. ‘I've been trying to reach—' Before she could finish her thought, Dulcie tripped, her feet caught by something low and dense, like an animal twining about her ankles. The other woman reached, as if to grab her, but Dulcie caught herself on the bush and pulled herself upright. ‘Ouch.' She looked at her hands, scraped by the needles she had grabbed. But her arm hurt, too, and as she turned to see why, the woman in front of her lunged again.

‘No, wait!' By instinct, she grabbed the younger woman's hands and heard something clatter to the ground. ‘Carrie?'

At her feet, something glittered: a silver blade, its point dark and wet. Still holding Carrie's hand, Dulcie looked down at her arm, to where the blood was welling through a slash in the heavy wool.

‘Carrie, what's going on?' Dulcie didn't understand, but she knew enough not to let go. The fights with Dimitri, with Corkie. They had tried to reason with this girl, and failed. Those wide eyes, she could now see, were staring and mad. The hands she held were ice cold. ‘Why are you doing this? I only wanted to—'

‘To brag, you liar! He didn't love you.' Carrie was shivering, though whether with rage or cold, Dulcie couldn't tell.

‘Carrie, no.'
You weren't the only one
, she had typed.
We need to talk.
‘I didn't mean we were rivals. I—'

‘He didn't love her, either, that fat pig. He loved
me
.' Her entire body was shaking, and Dulcie had the distinct impression that only her strong grip was holding the girl up. ‘He loved me, Fritz did. And she killed him.'

‘No, Carrie.' Dulcie shook her head. A scenario was falling into place, flooding her with understanding and with sadness. Hermetria and her companion. Rivalry. Jealousy.
The storm that floods o'er all.
In the back of her mind, she could hear Corkie's voice:
she's fragile
. ‘No, she didn't, Carrie.'

‘Yes, she did. Because she was jealous.' Her voice was quavering now, too. ‘You tried to frame Dimitri. He must have told you about us. I saw you with the cops. You were trying to get all my friends in trouble. Trying to protect
her
.'

She's fragile. I'm not.

‘No, Carrie. You've got it wrong. Corkie was worried about you. Because she sympathized. Because she'd been there.'

‘She didn't believe he loved me. She wouldn't let it be. He would have realized. He would have come back to me. Everyone was saying it was suicide, but it wasn't. She killed him.'

She's fragile
. Yes, it was true, but all the other lessons Dulcie had learned – from Mr Grey, from Esmé, and even, she had to admit, from Lucy, came home: you can't protect people forever. You have to help them, but they must face the truth.

‘No, Carrie. She went to his office to get your letter back, to give you something to defend yourself when you came to your senses. To make a case against him that would keep him from ever teaching again.' The scene unfolded before her. It all made too much sense. ‘That's when she found him. What happened, Carrie? Did he laugh at you? Was he cold? Is that what happened?'

‘No.' Carrie's voice had dropped to a whisper, a frail denial. ‘No.'

‘He must have made you so angry, to make you lash out like that. You stabbed him, didn't you? Maybe you didn't mean to, but you cut him. Cut something vital so that he started bleeding inside. By the time Corkie got there, it was too late, Carrie. By the time she got there, he was already dead. Corkie didn't kill Fritz Herschoft. You did.'

At that, Carrie wailed and, with a desperate strength Dulcie didn't know she had, pulled away. Dulcie jumped back, bracing for another attack, but it didn't come. Instead, Carrie collapsed, falling to her knees. Automatically, Dulcie stepped toward her as she keened, the cry of a breaking heart. And stopped – this woman had killed a man. Had probably, Dulcie now realized, set fire to her apartment out of misguided jealousy.

Had she been the Harvard Harasser, too? The victims had all been young women. Potential rivals, to the disturbed young mind. Dulcie thought of
The Ravages
, the book she had spent so many hours with. For all its ghosts, it had been Demetria – the human companion – who had been the true
vengeful spirit
. Carrie wasn't like Demetria exactly. She hadn't ingratiated herself into anyone's life; she hadn't deceived. But she was damaged. Dangerous. It was all too likely.

The rasp of indrawn breath broke into Dulcie's thoughts, and she turned as the woman began to wail again, more softly. A small blade – a letter opener, it looked like – was lying on the ground, near where Carrie knelt, her face in her hands. Dulcie kicked the blade away and reached for the woman before her. Whether it was her own calm insistence on the truth or hearing what had happened, spelled out for her, something had broken through Carrie's crazy denial. Now she rocked back and forth, crying like a lost child. Or like a young woman who had been betrayed and then destroyed.

‘I didn't,' she sobbed. Dulcie held her, not sure what to do. ‘I didn't mean anything. But when he said . . .' Another bout of sobs took over, but Dulcie didn't need to hear any more. Detective Rogovoy would have to sort it out, and the university would be dragged through it all. But Dulcie knew the truth. Carrie had killed Professor Herschoft. And Corkie – wanting desperately to protect her, but way too late to do so – had tried to cover it all up by throwing the professor's dead body out the window. There would be no happy ending.

FORTY-NINE

T
hree days later, Dulcie was still numb. Rogovoy had, as she'd expected, taken charge when she'd called, and Carrie had been taken away in restraints. Charges were pending. Worse, Corkie would be meeting with the disciplinary committee soon, and Dulcie was going to testify. It would be close, but Dulcie had hopes that the junior would be allowed to stay. For all her errors in judgment, she had meant well – and she had been a victim, too.

And although she was still living at Chris's place, Dulcie had figured out how to get to Central Square. The fire marshal had finally let both her and Suze back into their former apartment, but even having more of her own possessions didn't help lift Dulcie from her funk. Stained by soot and water, the apartment no longer looked like a home. Although they had only been gone for a few days, the rooms felt empty, deserted, and Dulcie was hit by the feeling that nothing could live in such a place. Not even a ghost.

The landlord had met the friends there, bringing with him the key to the big lock that held the temporary door in place. As Dulcie had stepped inside, she'd heard him talking. Promising to replace the wall-to-wall carpet and to renovate, but then he'd added something about ‘provisions in the lease' that had made Suze bristle. Dulcie had gone up to the third floor then, unwilling to hear the rest. She knew that they would not be moving back in anytime soon.

‘Mr Grey, are you here still?' She looked around her room. Untouched, except for a pervasive scorched smell, it felt empty. ‘Esmé and I are living with Chris now. Jerry and Trista have made up, so we pretty much have the place to ourselves. You could come.' She felt her eyes tearing up. The smoke. ‘You could visit.'

She heard nothing but Suze stomping up the stairs, furious, and the sound of drawers slamming. The friends spent most of that evening at the Laundromat, each lost in her own thoughts. But even though her clothes were more or less clean by the end of the night, all her books smelled of smoke, reminding her of what had been. Of who had been in her old home, with her.

Perversely, Dulcie's research had taken off. Once she had a chance to get into the library, it all had seemed so obvious. Everything had been before her, if only she'd had the sense to see it. The letters, the essays – even her dreams – had all come together.

Chris had been proud of her. He'd tried to cheer her on, pointing out how much new material she'd managed to link up. How quickly she could dive into the real writing part of her thesis now. But even that had a dampening effect on Dulcie's mood. Yes, she could finish her thesis now. The end was in sight. But so, too, was that crucial moment when she and Chris would leave the cozy confines of academia. The moment when they would have to decide what compromises were possible, and whether they had a future worth sharing.

Such thoughts dampened Dulcie's satisfaction, and she knew her mixed feelings showed on her face when she went to meet with Chelowski.

‘I was right about the scandal, wasn't I?' He started right in. ‘That department, that whole building . . . I just knew something was wrong.'

She looked up at Chelowski, unable to believe that he was smiling. ‘Great.'

‘I'm sorry.' Her adviser had the grace to look abashed, at least temporarily, before he tried to change the subject. ‘So, your message said that you had some kind of a breakthrough?'

Dulcie laid out her evidence. ‘It's all there in the text,' she said. She could leave the dreams out. ‘The author of
The Ravages of Umbria
did stop publishing in London.' She smiled up at her adviser now. This close to it, her breakthrough gave her some pleasure. ‘But she didn't stop
writing
. Look at the history: a period of peace between wars. The reactionary temperament of the times. If you put her writing in context, it all becomes clear.'

She paused, unable to resist a bit of showmanship. ‘The author of
The Ravages of Umbria
didn't disappear. She emigrated, though whether because of political pressure or some other reason, we may never know.' She smiled a bit as she said that. Her dreams, she was sure, would make it all clear in time. ‘And then, two years later, we find her publishing in the New World. In Philadelphia, as a matter of fact.'

‘Isn't your mom from Philly?' Trista got straight to the point that night at the People's Republik. ‘Maybe you're related.'

‘That would be cool,' added Jerry, nodding and grinning. Dulcie smiled at them both, but didn't respond. Trista's observation had touched on a hunch she had, but Dulcie would need a few more dreams and a lot more legwork before she was willing to comment. Besides, Jerry's approval was pretty much rote. Since those two had ironed out their differences, Jerry agreed with everything his petite blonde girlfriend said.

‘Chris coming?' Trista and Dulcie hadn't talked much, but clearly Dulcie's friend assumed that they had reached a similar agreement. After all, everyone knew that Dulcie and Chris were living together.

‘Working.' Dulcie shrugged. Her fears of the rival redhead had disappeared. In fact, the recent events had made her swear off jealousy forever. That didn't mean everything was perfect. However, her thesis was progressing, and she was out with friends. And before she had to explain any further, she heard a chorus of greetings. Dimitri had arrived, with a short, plump brunette.

‘My friends.' Courtly as ever, Dimitri pulled out a chair for his companion. ‘May I introduce Lylah?'

The next afternoon Dulcie came home to find Chris awake and going through the want ads again. This was the time to look. If they could save some money, maybe they could go on a real vacation that summer.

‘Would you want to head west and see Lucy again?' He put the paper down, and Dulcie saw that several listings had been circled. ‘Or maybe go someplace fun, like Cape Cod?'

‘The Cape could be fun.' Dulcie tried to put more heart in her voice than she felt. ‘We could take the ferry. Lucy did say she had a vision of me going on a sea voyage. Something about “leaping waves.”'

Chris smiled, but refrained from comment, and Dulcie found herself smiling back. Maybe it was time for her to dive in. Suze was moving on. Her friend sounded less and less inclined to keep after their former landlord. Truth was, she had all but moved in with Ariano months before. That left Dulcie with Chris. She was committed. And it was right, wasn't it? She looked at Chris, once again bent over the paper. She had loved Mr Grey and he had loved her, but he was gone. She should choose her living boyfriend over her late cat. It was time.