The tray with the coffee was waiting and Aaron gestured for Michael to take the chair to the left of the hearth.
As soon as he sat down, he felt the knot inside him loosen. He felt he was going to bawl. He took a deep breath, eyes moving back and forth over everything and nothing, and then without preamble he began.
“It’s happening,” he said, his voice shaky. He could scarcely believe that it had come to this, that he was talking about her this way, yet he went on. “She’s lying to me. He’s there with her, and she’s lying. She’s been lying to me night and day since I came home.”
“Tell me what’s happened,” said Aaron, his face sober and full of immediate sympathy.
“She didn’t even ask why I came back so quickly from San Francisco, Never even brought it up. It was as if she knew. And I was frantic when I called her from the hotel out there. Goddamn it, I told you on the phone what happened. I thought that thing was trying to kill me. She never even asked me what went down.”
“Describe it to me again, all of it.”
“Christ, Aaron, I know now it was Julien and Deborah that I saw in my vision. I don’t have any doubt anymore. I don’t know what the pact means or the promise. But I know that Julien and Deborah are on my side. I saw Julien. I saw him looking at me through the bus window, and it was the strangest thing, Aaron, it was as if he wanted to speak and to move and he couldn’t. It was as if it was hard for him to come through.”
Aaron didn’t say anything. He was sitting with his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his finger curled beneath his lower lip. He looked cautious, alert, and thoughtful.
“Go on,” he said.
“But the point is that this particular flash was enough to bring it all back. Not that I remembered everything that was said. But I recaptured the feeling. They want me to intervene. They said something to me about ‘the age- old human tools at my command.’ I heard those words again. I heard Deborah speaking to me. It was Deborah. Only she didn’t look like that picture, Aaron. Aaron, I’ll tell you the most convincing piece of evidence.”
“Yes … ”
“What Llewellyn said to you. Remember. He said he saw Julien in a dream, and Julien wasn’t the same as Julien in life. Remember? Well, you see, that’s the key. In the vision Deborah was a different being. And on that damn street corner in San Francisco, I felt both of them, and they were as I remembered them-wise and good, and knowing things, Aaron. Knowing that Rowan was in terrible danger and that I had to intervene. God, when I think of Julien’s expression through that window. It was so … urgent yet tranquil. I don’t have words to describe it. It was concerned and yet so untroubled … ”
“I think I know what you’re trying to say.”
“Go home, they said, go home. That’s where you’re needed. Aaron, why didn’t he look directly at me on the street?”
“There could be a lot of reasons. It revolves around what you said. If they exist somewhere, it’s difficult for them to come through. It isn’t difficult for Lasher. And that is crucial to our understanding of what’s going on. But I’ll come back to that. Go on … ”
“You can guess, can’t you? I come home, private plane, limo, whole number all arranged by Cousin Ryan, as if I’m a goddamned rock star, and she doesn’t even ask me what’s been happening. Because she’s not Rowan. She’s Rowan caught in something, Rowan smiling and pretending and staring at me with those great big sad gray eyes. Aaron, the worst part is … ”
“Tell me, Michael.”
“She loves me, Aaron. And it’s like she’s silently pleading with me not to confront her. She knows I can see through the deception. God, when I touch her I feel it! She knows I can feel it. And silently, she’s pleading with me not to force her into a corner, not to make her lie. It’s like she’s begging me, Aaron. She’s desperate. I could swear she’s even afraid.”
“Yes. She’s in the thick of it. She’s spoken to me about it. Some sort of communication apparently started when you left. Possibly even before you left.”
“You knew this? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Michael, we’re dealing with something that knows what we’re saying to each other even now.”
“Oh, God!”
“There isn’t any place we can hide from this being,” said Aaron. “Except perhaps in the sanctuary of our own minds. Rowan said many things to me. But the crux of it is that this entire battle is now in Rowan’s hands.”
“Aaron, there must be something we can do. We knew it would happen; we knew it would come to this. You knew before you ever laid eyes on me that it would come to this.”
“Michael, that’s just the point. She is the only one who can do anything. And in loving her, and staying close to her, you are using the age-old tools at your command.”
“That can’t be enough!” He could hardly stand this. He stood up, paced for a minute, and then wound up with his hands on the mantel, staring down into the fire. “You should have called me, Aaron. You should have told me.”
“Look, take your anger out on me if it makes you feel better, but the fact is, she forbade my contacting you with a threat. She was full of threats. Some of these threats were made in the guise of warnings-that her invisible companion wanted to kill me and would soon do it-but they were genuine threats.”
“Christ, when did this happen?”
“Doesn’t matter. She told me to go back to England while I still had time.”
“She told you this? What else did she tell you?”
“I chose not to do it. But what more I can do here, I don’t honestly know. I know that she wanted you to remain in California because she felt you were safe there. But you see, this situation has become too complicated for simple or literal interpretation of the things she said.”
“I don’t know what you mean. What is a literal interpretation? What other kind of interpretation is there? I don’t get it.”
“Michael, she talked in riddles. It wasn’t communication so much as a demonstration of a struggle. Again, I have to remind you, this being, if he chooses, can be here with us in this room. We have no safe place in which we can plot aloud against him. Imagine a boxing match if you can, in which the opponents can read each other’s minds. Imagine a war, where every conceivable strategy is known telepathically from the start.”
“It ups the stakes, ups the excitement, but it isn’t impossible.”
“I agree with you, but it serves no purpose for me to tell you everything that Rowan said to me. Suffice it to say, Rowan is the most able opponent this being has ever had.”
“Aaron, you warned her long ago not to let this thing take her away from us. You warned her that it would seek to divide her from those she loved.”
“I did. And I am sure she remembers it, Michael. Rowan is a human being upon whom almost nothing is lost. And believe me, I have argued with her since. I have told her in the plainest language why she must not allow this being to mutate. But the decision is in her hands.”
“You’re saying in effect that we have to just wait and let her fight this alone.”
“I’m saying in effect that you’re doing what you were meant to do. Love her. Stay near her. Remind her by your very presence of what is natural and inherently good. This is a struggle between the natural and the unnatural, Michael. No matter what that being is made of, no matter what he comes from-it’s a struggle between normal life and aberration. Between evolution on the one hand and disastrous intervention on the other. And both have their mysteries and their miracles, and nobody knows that better than Rowan herself.”
He stood up and put his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Sit down and listen to what I’m saying,” he said.
“I have been listening,” said Michael crossly. But he obeyed. He sat on the edge of the chair, and he couldn’t stop himself from making his right hand into a fist and grinding it into his left palm.
“All her life, Rowan has confronted this split between the natural and the aberrant,” said Aaron. “Rowan is essentially a conservative human being. And creatures like Lasher don’t change one’s basic nature. They can only work upon the traits which are already there. No one wanted that lovely white-dress wedding more than Rowan did. No one wants the family more than Rowan. No one wants that child inside her more than she.”
“She doesn’t even talk about the baby, Aaron. She hasn’t even mentioned its existence since I came home. I wanted to tell the family tonight at the party, but she doesn’t want me to do it. She says she’s not ready. And this party, I know it’s an agony for her. She’s just going through the motions. Beatrice put her up to it.”
“Yes, I know.”
