Heartland

'I wonder what he'd think about this phone call, and what you've asked me to do.'

'You aren't going to call him.'

'No,' I said. 'I'm not.' I wandered back to the window, and looked out at Paris. I looked beyond the frozen lights of the streets and buildings, down the energy layer and the flood of power moving there. The Chorus swirled, and like water clinging to a cobweb, they flung themselves into a mental gridwork of the etheric lines. I still wanted to call it the 'Weave,' but I was starting to see Cristobel's point, that the word failed to properly encapsulate what it really was.

'You're guessing,' I told Husserl. My other hand slipped in my pocket and I felt the warm stones of Cristobel's rosary. I rubbed a bead between my fingers, becoming familiar with its smooth surface. Anchoring myself. 'You haven't Seen whether or not I call Spiertz. You can't be sure.'

'I am,' he said. Was that a note of defiance in his voice?

I concentrated on the grid of lines, and my consciousness felt the scattered droplets of the upper layer, shooting down into the squirming mass of the luminous threads that ran along the surface of each drop. The Chorus hissed with white noise as I found the twisted mass of threads that corresponded to the tower where I stood. My light was a dot of swarming fury, too many lights collapsed into a single point, and around it were several luminous threads. One, more faint than the rest, twisted away at a strange angle from the others. I touched it, felt its tension, and plucked it like a harp string.

On the phone, I heard Husserl make an involuntary noise. It wasn't much more than a sudden intake of air, but it was enough.

'You can't See all of the future,' I whispered. The Chorus plucked the astral thread of his remote viewer. 'This I Know.'

When he spoke, the mechanical precision of his voice was gone. There was nothing left but a guttural bark of anger. 'I See enough.'

The thread broke, vanishing in a mist of light and static. The phone line was dead too. He was no longer there. Gone, just another phantom haunting me.

XVIII

Am I interrupting?'

I turned from the window at the intrusion of Vivienne's voice. I hadn't heard her come in, nor had the Chorus warned me. 'No,' I said, closing the phone and dropping it back into my pocket. I didn't offer any more of an explanation, nor did she ask. She also noticed the scattered cards on the desk as she walked past, but didn't comment on them.

'It's a spectacular view, isn't it?' She was an inch taller than me, her mother's Nordic heritage making up for her father's gastronomic disposition. His face had been rounder, but his humor was clear in the fine lines at the corners of her eyes and in the natural curve of her mouth. All of which only highlighted the fact that she had been crying.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I didn't get much of a chance to know your father, but he seemed both kind and generous. A fortunate man, both in family and in affection.'

'Thank you,' Vivienne said. Her throat worked on more words, and they came out slowly. 'You can never prepare yourself for this hole, can you? You could be with someone constantly, watching every minute twitch of their eyes or mouths, listening to every breath they take in, recording every moment of their lives so as to not forget anything, but. . '

She approached the window with heavy steps, and with some effort, she looked down at the darker patch of ground to our right where there was few lights. Lamps along paths guide the living through the maze of headstones and mausoleums of the cemetery grounds. Much like Pere Lachaise, the cemetery at Montparnasse was a remnant of Old Paris, a plot of cultural heritage made over into a tourist attraction. Pilgrimage sites for lovers and artists and obsessive idolizers.

'It doesn't matter when they're gone,' she continued. Her voice was even softer now, and I had to quiet the Chorus in order to hear her. 'All that remains is memory, and you don't understand how completely inadequate memory is until that is all you have. My father and I had our share of. . differences, but he was still my father, the flesh and spirit that molded me. He-' Her voice faltered for a moment. 'He was like the sun rising in the east-that one inviolate thing in my world-and I would always see him again. I could refresh that inadequate thing that is memory, but now. . '

Lafoutain would be buried in the cemetery at Montparnasse, I thought. Close by where his daughter could keep an eye on him. Close enough to touch. Almost.

I cleared my throat. 'I chased a memory of a woman for ten years. She wasn't dead; she didn't know I was still alive. I tracked her across half the world, and when I did find her, I discovered what I remembered wasn't the truth. I had invented a fiction to sustain me.' I looked at Vivienne. 'It's not the same sort of hole at all, but I think I know what you mean.'

'Is your father still alive?'

'No. He died a few years ago. Cancer. It wasn't terribly-'

No, I pushed the Chorus away, that wasn't the way it had happened. My father had had a heart attack during a lecture. Philippe had the cancer. My father was the university professor, a second career after we had lost the farm in Idaho. His leg had never turned black. I had never-

'I'm sorry.' She misunderstood the sudden violence of my silence. 'Is that better or worse? Did it-' Her throat worked, but nothing came out.

'No,' I ground out, fighting to keep the memories of my father separate from the bleed-through of Philippe's death. Stop confusing my past. I wanted to call a time-out and back the conversation up. Start over, and tell her the truth.

What truth? Philippe asked. That it took your sister a week to find you and tell you? That you went to the funeral and stared at the picture of the man who was being buried and realized you didn't know who he was? That you had been so consumed by the darkness in your soul that you didn't understand the pain your sister was feeling? That you have no idea what it feels like?

'You develop scar tissue,' I said, finding something akin to honesty. Something I understood. 'Which only means you feel the loss less, and in some ways, that means everything else is lessened too. Is it better? I don't know. I wish none of us had to find out. . '

The tiny lines around her eyes deepened as her face tightened. 'Marielle is. . well, let me be blunt: she is a cold-hearted bitch. And while it feels good to know she has lost someone as well, it's a hollow feeling. You know? It doesn't fill the void in my heart. Because I know she feels it less than I do. She knew her father was going to die. She's known ever since she was old enough to understand what it meant to be Hierarch. One day, he would be killed so that another could lead. She's had a long time to grow all the scar tissue she might need.' Her eyes were bright as she fought to keep the tears away. 'Better to feel something than nothing. Right?'

An old memory, poisonous in its clarity and single-mindedness, pushed through the Chorus. That old focus, dripping with pain and anger. Find Katarina; take back what she stole from you. How it had sustained me for so long. It had been something. 'Right,' I said softly. 'Better than nothing.'

Vivienne shivered, and hugged herself, rubbing her upper arms. 'As smart as we are, we are still afraid of the dark. Afraid of what happens when the sun goes away, and the light dies. What do moths do when there is no bulb to gravitate to? Flutter aimlessly in the dark with no purpose-no desire-until they die? Is that better than being burned alive for trying to touch the light?'

'I don't know.'

She wiped at the corner of one eye and offered me a sad smile that nearly broke my heart. Little chicken, Lafoutain cried from an impossible distance, I am so sorry to give you this pain. The rest of the Chorus was a veil of silence, ghosts of ghosts.

While I cleaned up the disarray of tarot cards, Vivienne discovered the pieces of paper I had taken from the