Incubi

hers. “This stuff tastes awful,” she remarked of her carrot juice. Veronica agreed.

“But you know,” Ginny commented, “we’ve only been here a few days, and I feel a thousand times more creative. Don’t you?”

“Not really,” Veronica said.

“I’m always creative,” Amy Vandersteen asserted.

Ginny ignored her. “It’s the environment, I think. Good food, clean air, serenity. It purifies the soul.”

“Where were you all day yesterday?” Veronica asked.

“That’s what I mean. Creativity. I was just making some notes for my story, but all of a sudden I felt — don’t know — elevated, I guess. I just started writing. Next thing I know it’s midnight. I’d wound up writing the entire first draft.”

“I did some sketches,” Veronica said lamely. Two nights in a row she’d dreamed of the fire-figure, and she was determined to paint the mood it evoked, the emotion that the figure courted. Passion — pure, unadulterated. It was this same figure of flame, in fact, that had saved her from the nightmare of Jack. She hadn’t been able to tell Ginny and Amy that those final screams, just as the figure had touched her, were not screams of horror but of ecstasy. She felt driven now, as an artist, to translate that ecstasy onto the canvas. But how?

The Ecstasy of the Flames, she thought. The project enthralled her. So why couldn’t she get started?

She decided she’d talk to Khoronos about it.

“I’m not hungry,” Amy Vandersteen complained. Abruptly she stood and slipped out of her terry robe. The white bikini against her white flesh made her look nude. Immediately she dove into the pool. The tiny splash swallowed her.

“Asshole,” Ginny muttered.

“Last night she was freebasing coke,” Veronica recalled.

“I did it a few times several years ago until a med student I was dating showed me all these research articles on it. Long-term use deregulates your sex drive, sometimes permanently. If there’s one thing I can’t live without, it’s my sex drive.”

“She said Khoronos doesn’t own the house; it’s some friend’s of his. Oh, and she said he’s from Yugoslavia.”

Ginny grinned. “I wonder if he’s hung.”

“I’m serious. Isn’t this whole thing a little funny to you?”

“Funny like how?”

“I don’t know. He invites us to this retreat, but we barely ever see him. Yesterday he and his two sidekicks were out on ‘business.’ They didn’t get back till past midnight. Business, till midnight? Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“No. He’s an eccentric.”

“And where does he sleep?” Veronica kept on. “I only counted five bedrooms. Me, you, Amy, Marzen, and Gilles.”

“Oooo, what intrigue,“ Ginny mocked. “Five bedrooms, six people. I could write a best-seller. Hasn’t it occurred to you that this is a very big house and that there are probably other bedrooms in it? Or do you suppose Khoronos sleeps in a coffin?”

“Shut up, Ginny,” Veronica suggested.

“You’re just frustrated ’cause you’re not getting any work done. It happens to me all the time. I’ll get a block and my mind wanders. But the best way to cure a creative block is to work your way out of it. Forget about things that don’t matter. Forget about the bedrooms, for God’s sake. Just get to work.”

Veronica didn’t know whether to be mad or concessive. Ginny was probably right.

“And now that I’ve said that,” Ginny added, wiping her mouth with a napkin, “I must get back to my typewriter.”

“How are things going with you and Gilles?”

Ginny shrugged. “I haven’t seen him. And that’s good, because I’m too busy with my work right now.”

“Too busy?” Now Veronica could’ve laughed. “Yesterday you said you might be in love with the guy. Today you’re too busy?”

“Art is the ultimate conceit, Vern. When people become more important to you than what you create, you’re a phony.”

Veronica glared.

“Later, kid,” Ginny said, and walked away.

The impression left her steaming. More guilt? More jealousy? Ginny was in control of her creative life. Veronica, suddenly, was not. Why? she questioned herself. Was it true that selfishness was prerequisite to true art?

“Hey, Amy,” she abruptly called out. “Can I ask you something?”

Amy Vandersteen’s wet, white head bobbed in the water. She swam enfeebled, dog-paddling. That’s what she looked like just then, a skinny wet dog in the water. “Sure, sweetheart.”

“Is selfishness prerequisite to true art?”

Amy stood up in the low end. Her wet bikini top clung to her small breasts like tissue, showing dark, puckered nipples. “Honey, let me tell you something. True art is selfishness.”

“That’s the most egotistical shit I’ve ever heard,” Veronica countered.

“Of course it is.” Amy Vandersteen grinned like a cat, hip-deep in the water. “And that’s my point. You’re either a real artist with real creative focus, or you’re a fake.”

Veronica’s fuddled stare fought to stray but couldn’t. Her eyes stayed fixed on the slim, sneering figure in the water.

“Which are you, Veronica? Real or fake?”

Veronica stomped off. The worst question of all followed her like a buzzard: Was she more infuriated with Amy Vandersteen or herself? Behind her, the snide woman began to clutzily backstroke across the pool, laughing.

Passion, the word popped oddly into Veronica’s head. The heart. Khoronos’ words. Real creativity is rooted in the heart.

She jogged back to the house, to look for Khoronos.

* * *

The alarm clock clattered in Jack’s head. He turned, groped about the covers. Faye was gone, but her scent lingered on the pillow.

He got up, showered, and dressed, amazed as well as baffled that he had no hangover. Hangovers had gotten to be something he could count on — not having one nearly made him feel estranged. And now that he thought of it, he hadn’t had a drink in over a day.

Downstairs, he chugged orange juice, grimacing. A fruit magnet pinned a note to the fridge door. Gone to LOC, call you later at your office. Faye. Short and sweet. He wondered how she felt about things now. I slept with her last night, he fully realized. They’d kept their promise, they’d just slept. Did she regret it now, post fact? Jack hoped not. It had been nice sleeping with her, it had been soothing and unstrained and very nice. He’d wakened several times to find themselves entwined in one another. She’d murmured things in her sleep, nuzzling him.

He drove the unmarked to the station, whelmed in thought. Yes, he liked Faye Rowland a lot, and he was attracted to her. Yet the idea of sex with her almost terrified him. He thought of the proverbial bull in the china shop: having sex with Faye would shatter whatever strange bond existed between them. Jack liked the bond.

Besides, sex would remind him of Veronica.

The substation’s clean, tiled floors led him to his unclean, cluttered office. But before he could enter, the black mammoth bulk of Deputy Police Commissioner Larrel Olsher rounded the corner. “How you coming on the Triangle case, Jack?”

“Making some progress,” Jack said.

“Well, make more progress. You ever heard that shit runs downhill?”

“The axiom rings a bell, Larrel.”

“Let me just say that the people upstairs eat a lot. Pretty soon I’m gonna have to