The Fury and the Terror Page 12

  One side of her tongue throbbed as if from a hornet's sting; she had bitten it at the onset of her seizure. Hours ago. Wardella Tinch had made tea for them on arrival at her beachfront home, but Eden wasn't able to keep anything else on her stomach. Neither fully awake nor sleepwalking, she trudged along beside the great cold weight of the Pacific, yearning for her home. For things as they once were, and (she already understood) never could be again.

  "Oh, shit," Eden said dispiritedly to a couple of sandpipers walking ahead of her. She found it as difficult to talk as if her mouth were stuffed with pebbles. The pipers took wing and coasted a few yards farther up the beach. But it was no weather for flying.

  She had been in a post-seizure stupor as they approached the house on Deep Creek Road, with a terrible headache and no memory of what had happened to her after they'd left the, cemetery in the ratty old pickup truck. At which point the medium, seeing the crowd around the Warings' gate, the TV news vans with their satellite uplinks, pushed Eden down in the seat and held her there, showing the strength of arm gained from decades of playing her Titano free bass accordion. Not an instrument for wimps, Wardella avowed.

  "I felt that it was in your best interests not to have to face inquiries just then. And those news people can be so obnoxious. So I drove right on past your gate and headed for Moby Bay. I do hope you're not angry."

  Eden lacked the energy to be angry. She slept again after their arrival at Wardella's seaside abode, waking up after dark to find that her much-abused graduation dress had been whisked away. Wardella had washed and dried the dress and her bra; but the dress was no longer wearable. A change of clothes had been provided for Eden: dungarees, a fisherman's sweater, and the chunky homemade sandals of saddle leather and brass rivets.

  She hated what she saw in the bathroom mirror. There was a comb on the sink that looked clean and a new, unwrapped toothbrush. Eden did what she could with the comb and passed on brushing her teeth, her tongue hurt too much.

  It was a boxy prairie-style house, catty-corner at the brink of a rocky headland, showing a blank wall to the ocean view and often-violent winds. There were two bedrooms and a parlor downstairs. Kitchen windows overlooked a protected English garden: hedges and lots of trellises for climbing roses and wide-mouthed amapolla. Fog-muted cypress fronted the road.

  In the kitchen Wardella Tinch was hosting her Saturday-night poker group. Four other men and women, all about her age, budding septuagenarians. Wardella had made gingerbread, which was cooling on a sideboard.

  "Oh, that stinks," one of the ladies said, throwing in her hand when confronted with three kings.

  "Mrs. Tinch?"

  Wardella was wearing a green plastic eyeshade. She turned and smiled at Eden, shuffling the cards meanwhile.

  "Hello, dear. Why don't you call me Wardella? Do Chauncey's things fit you?"

  "Pretty much. Thank you. Wardella. Who is Chauncey?"

  "A lovely young friend of mine who lives north along the cove about a mile. She's dying to meet you. Maybe she'll drop by later. And these are some of my other friends."

  Everyone around the table nodded amiably as Mrs. Tinch introduced them. "And the one who's sulking right now because Fred called her bluff is my sister-in-law Daphne Yawl."

  "I am not sulking, Wardella. If I were sulking, I'd have all your pots and pans hanging over the stove banging around like tone-deaf church bells."

  Wardella smiled indulgently. "Hope blooms eternally. But even so, someday you'll learn not to draw to an inside straight, lovely."

  The old gent named Fred winked at Eden as if they were about to share a joke. He looked at the cards Wardella had shuffled. One of them popped out of the deck, circled the table leisurely a couple of times, like a miniature flying carpet, then dropped face up in front of Daphne Yawl. It was the seven of clubs.

  "Oh, there it is," Daphne said, and they all laughed.

  "We don't use our powers when we're playing poker," Wardella reminded them. "Besides, since I'm not witchy, the rest of you have me at a considerable disadvantage." She gave Fred a look that flared slightly, as if she were warning him. "And you won't impress Eden with dopey card tricks."

  Eden had backed up a step in the doorway. Her pulses were pounding away. Wherever she was, she didn't need to be there.

  Wardella looked back at Eden. Her expression was sympathetic.

  "Just block them all from your mind, dear, if it would make you feel better."

  "H-how?"

  "Try closing your eyes. Take a deep breath to relax yourself. Count back, slowly, from five to one. On one, open your eyes. All there is to it."

  The suggestion seemed benign. Eden tried it. When she opened her eyes again, Wardella Tinch was seated alone at the kitchen table doing needlepoint. She looked subtly different to Eden. Younger. Reminiscent of someone. It was a comforting familiarity to Eden.

  "Is that better?" Wardella, intent on her stitches, asked. "It always has worked for me, and I have nothing like your latent ability."

  "I—I wonder if I could use your telephone to call my folks?"

  "Of course you may, dear. You'll have the most privacy in my parlor. Be careful not to disturb anything. Above all, don't look into the crystal ball. I don't know what you gleaned today from the crystals in my truck that set you off so, but then you haven't been prepared for gazing. And I'm unable to interfere should you be drawn into the mischief."

  Eden tried to swallow, almost choked on dryness, had no voice for questions. What mischief?

  She retreated across a hallway to the parlor, which apparently also was Wardella's place of business. There were astrological and Tarot charts on the walls, a nineteenth-century palmist's guide to the human hand. On a small round table, a draped object that had to be the crystal ball. It glowed through the pale blue tasseled cloth like a lamp of low but pure-white wattage.

  Eden wasn't tempted to peek beneath the cloth. Just being near the ball put a morbid chill in her blood. She turned her back on it and began to retrieve vital phone and pager numbers from a sluggish memory.

  She would have called Geoff first, but she remembered that his car was sitting on a hill in the cemetery. There was no explanation she could think of that would come close to satisfying him. She called home instead.

  All of the phones, with listed and unlisted numbers, rang and rang. If they weren't there, she wondered, why were the answering machines turned off?

  Eden then learned that she couldn't be connected to any of the pager or cell phone numbers in Innisfall. The Coast Range and a lot of trees were in the way. Possibly hostile atmospherics had something to do with it. So here she was, stuck in Moby Bay, a tiny place she couldn't recall having heard of although she had spent all of her life in northern California. She didn't have a penny or an ATM card, and no transportation.

  She left the parlor and again looked in on Wardella Tinch, whose chin was on her chest. She was snoring softly. Wardella looked old again, purple veins embedded in her crimson cheeks like tiny thunderbolts. The needlepoint had fallen from her lap to the floor.

  When Eden opened the door to the walled garden Wardella said, not looking up, "Some air will do you good. But don't you want a piece of my gingerbread before you go?"

  "No, thank you. Maybe later."

  "Take care not to get lost. Walk north, not south."

  "Where do I find Chauncey?"

  "Walk along the shore. She'll find you."

  "Who are you, Wardella? I have the oddest feeling that you and I—"

  "It will come to you. Remember. Always north, not south."

  "What's south?"

  "It's the wrong way out of our world, and the beginning of the many pathways into Theirs. You already know from your Dreamtime what lies along those paths."

  Eden's heartbeat picked up. As if there were ten seconds left to play, the Lady Wolves inbounding. They had to have a three to tie. The outcome of the game, which had become life itself, depending on her stroke.

  "What world are y
ou talking about?"

  "Why, God's good green earth, to be sure. With all of its wonders and illusions. You'll soon learn your way around, metaphysically speaking. You were always faithful about your lessons. Now you will appreciate having the use of them."

  "Lessons? Am I dreaming?" Eden rubbed a hand over the rough wool of her sweater, producing a zap of static electricity. And she never had had a heartbeat, a heartache, quite this size in any of her well-documented dreams.

  "My dear. I'm afraid Dreamtime is over. That part of your education is complete."

  "You're the Good Lady!"

  Wardella smiled comfortingly.

  "But you don't look—"

  "Just give me a moment to freshen up, I won't disappoint you. If you wouldn't mind closing your eyes again, the same routine as before? Deep breath. There you go. Now count backward slowly, that's my girl. Look up now, Eden. May I say what a great pleasure it has been to serve as your guide, all of these years. They went by so quickly. Are those tears? It's all right, darling. Here I am, for the last time."

  CHAPTER 13

  INNISFALL, CALIFORNIA • MAY 28 • 8:34 P.M. PDT

  When he got home Geoff McTyer took a quick shower and changed clothes. His cell phone hadn't rung. No messages from Eden. He sat down with take-out KFC extra-crispy and mashed potatoes to eat while he listened to the surveillance tapes he had brought from the house on Deep Creek Road.

  A lot of chatter flying in and out of that house, particularly on weekends. He had routinely changed all of the tapes at least once a week. No problem finding a time. On weekdays Betts, Riley, and Eden were away from home, usually from eight A.M. until late afternoon. He could visit the covered well on the walled patio in daylight hours without being observed from the road. Riley had occasionally talked about demolishing the well and using the stones for an outdoor oven and barbecue, which gave Geoff some bad moments. But Betts wouldn't let her husband touch it. She said the well was picturesque, hornets and all.

  The first tape he listened to was Eden's cell phone frequency, and the tape was blank. Not a word. But he'd been there at breakfast this morning, eating waffles and talking to Betts while Eden had spent at least ten minutes in conversation with Megan Pardo.

  He checked his equipment. No malfunctions.

  The voice-activated tape monitoring Betts' cell phone frequency also yielded nothing. It was the same for the third, Riley's, tape.

  All of the tapes were blank. He considered accidental erasure, a demagnetizing mishap. That had happened once before, during a major thunderstorm. Today the weather had been fine. Geoff bleakly came to another conclusion: someone else, familiar with the Special Operations Group's microelectronics and possibly knowledgeable about Geoff's hiding place, had dropped by the Waring house, a little before dark, say, removed the tapes Geoff had left there four days ago and installed new ones.

  Geoff tried to take this intrusion, the imagined usurper, as a fact of the life he led, the people he worked for. But if he was right about what had happened he felt he deserved better and to hell with the circumstances. At the least, a phone call. Some indication of support and appreciation for the time he'd put in, his two and a half years in California. But that was like the Old Man, wasn't it? Not a word from him. Maybe, a few months from now, the Old Man might refer to Innisfall in Geoff's presence, with a slight nod of appreciation.

  But Geoff couldn't stay focused on this apparent slight. When he closed his eyes all he saw was Eden, and there was a cold draft around his heart. His emotions were icebound. He wasn't going to see her again. Icebound emotions, freezing blood. Never. Never again.

  A little later, the doorbell rang.

  Geoff's head jerked up. Thinking of Eden's sure fate, a desperate need for sleep and surcease had blocked his panic as efficiently as a pre-op anesthetic and he had nodded off at the table, a half-eaten chicken wing in his fingers.

  The panic returned instantly. He put down the chicken bones, wiped his fingers, picked up his Glock 19, and slipped it into the leather holster on his belt.

  Half hoping that it would be Eden after all, he opened the door.

  The man standing outside had a face the color of rare roast beef, small white scars like stitchings of sinew. His blatantly artificial hair, jet-black, was slicked down sideways across the rear half of his otherwise bald head. His ears looked as if they were chew toys for young pit bulls. His eyes, like his hair, were a peculiarly lifeless shade of black. Only his theatrically lush false eyelashes had any luster in the light of the hall.

  "You Geoff?"

  "Yes."

  "Haman." His hands were in the pockets of a lightweight tan windbreaker, which along with baggy cargo khakis filled out what appeared to be a slender frame. "It seems we're working together." He looked past Geoff into the apartment, as if expecting to see someone else, then looked back at Geoff.

  "Haman? I've never heard of you."

  "Well, gee whiz."

  "You have a first name?"

  "Phil. It says on my brand-new driver's license and American Express Gold Card. Just call me Haman." He looked into the apartment again.

  "Verify," Geoff said.

  "Route G. Zorro. Impact Sector. Today's special at Tony's on the Wharf is, if I remember correctly, blackened bluefin."

  Impact Sector. Geoff had hoped for a little while that the Old Man might have had a change of heart about Eden. It wasn't to be.

  Geoff closed the door in the assassin's face, went to his computer, which was up and running. He entered Route G and his own ID, then Zorro, and waited for the menu from Impact Sector. After he confirmed the day's special he went back to Haman, stood aside while the man walked in.

  "I take it she's not here," Haman said, casting a disparaging eye on the rental furniture.

  "I don't know where Eden is. Are you the one who lifted my tapes at the Warings'?"

  Haman nodded. "You from Boston?" he asked.

  "In the vicinity. What was on the tapes?"

  Haman took all three tapes from his windbreaker pocket and laid them on the dining-nook table.

  "KFC, huh? I had pizza on the way over. But I could use a cup of coffee."

  "Haman, are you gonna tell me, or do I have to listen to those tapes myself?"

  Haman looked around at him again, swiftly, said in mock admiration, "Damn if you're not too tough to chew." He raised a hand, palm up. "The folks have gone to Greenwood Lake. Not to their own place. They borrowed someone else's house. People named Hassler. The girl's not with them. That's all I've got. She hasn't tried to contact you?"

  "No."

  "Think she will?"

  Geoff shrugged.

  "She's stuck on you, isn't she?" Geoff didn't reply. Haman nodded as if it were a given and looked away, saw the French press coffeemaker on the counter in the kitchenette, an unopened bag of Gold Coast from Starbucks. "You like yours Italian style? I can drink Starbucks. Usually I roast my own beans. Kenyan double A, Costa Rican Tarrazu. Have you ever tried Kopi Luwak? Sumatran, the beans cost upward of three hundred bucks a pound. There's a reason for the high price. Each bean is fed to a civet cat, which is called a luwak in Indonesia. The beasties can't digest the beans, so they're excreted whole. Gives the coffee a real, shall we say, earthy flavor. Acquired taste for the connoisseur. You don't mind if I brew some of your Starbucks for myself, do you?"

  "No."

  Haman went into the kitchenette. "When was the last time you saw the girl?"

  "About noon, after the plane crashed. I left her in my car in the east parking lot of the stadium."

  "Hell of a mess, huh? I drove by there around six, after I got in."

  "From where?"

  "Can't seem to locate your coffee filters."

  "Drawer next to the fridge. You must already have been on the West Coast, to get here so fast."

  "Vegas," Haman volunteered. "I spend most of my free time in Vegas."

  "You like to gamble?"

  "Not much. Vegas is Showtown. I've got an Act
."

  "Yeah?"

  Haman was silent for a time, measuring coffee into the filter. "Have any bottled water? Tap water ruins coffee."

  "Some Crystal Geyser under the sink."

  "Thanks."

  Geoff's cell phone rang, startling him. He didn't want it to be Eden. On the other hand, he couldn't not answer with Haman listening from the kitchenette.

  "Hello."

  "Geoff, God, finally. It's Megan Pardo."

  "Hi, Megan."

  "Is Eden with you?"

  "No. I thought she might be with you."

  "I haven't heard a word. I went out there. You should see the mob in front of their place. What is going on?"

  "I wish I could tell you."

  "I'm like, God, my best friend, where did this stuff come from? Did you know she was like, what do you call it, clairvoyant?"

  "Never a clue. I'm baffled, Megan."

  "I don't blame Eden if she's gone off somewhere. I just pray she calls one of us soon. If you hear from her first, tell Eden I love her and I'm here when she needs me."

  "I will, Megan. Thanks for calling. Good night."

  Geoff closed the cell phone and dropped it in his pocket. Haman had come out of the kitchen and opened the door to the hall closet.

  "Golf clubs," he said. "Calloways. Nice. You play a lot, Geoff?"

  "Too busy, usually."

  "Water skis. Snow skis. A fucking sportsman, no less."

  "She's not hiding in a closet, Haman."

  Haman shut the door. "I wouldn't have thought so. But she's gone. You say you don't know where she is. In Hollywood as we speak, hiring Mike Ovitz to map out her movie career?"

  "That is so far from who Eden Waring really is."

  Haman picked up a framed portrait of Eden from atop the TV in the small living room.

  "The voice of experience. A man who knows his woman. Fuck her yet, or am I being naive?"

  "Get out of my apartment, Haman."

  "Coffee's not hot yet. Besides, we're going to be a twosome. Where is that written in the stars, you ask? Granted, this is not the method Impact Sector traditionally employs."