But this was older than the Christians, older than Merlin, and it led to the center of Power just in front of the menhir. A starburst of white quartz filled the spot; he couldn't tell if it was natural or set into the stone by a master craftsman. He settled back on his haunches and stared at it. He'd never seen, or felt, anything like this before. When he ran his fingers over the quartz, it hummed at him, low and soothing.
Meditation. Comfortable. Inviting.
Almost the opposite of Maureen.
And the opposite of the menhir. Now that he could sort out the conflicting Powers in this room, he knew that the menhir held the anger. It remembered ancient injury and hated anything on two legs. It held the malice that darkened Castle Perilous.
Meanwhile, Brian decided he could use some soothing. He stood up and found the entry to the labyrinth. He set his right foot on the narrow line and then his left, letting the room fall away from him as he concentrated on each step, each twist, each shift in the feel of the Power warm and electric against his body as he approached the quartz focus and receded and circled it from right to left and back again.
Maureen just needed time. The land would heal her. The forest would heal her. But could he last that long? He knew, from the inside, the deep dark secret of the drunk. A drunk won't give up the bottle unless he has no other choice. He'd been there. He'd managed to come out the other side, to the rare balance where he could take that demon rum or leave it -- and actually could stop at just one drink. But he didn't dare take a second.
Maureen wouldn't stop until the cost of drink stood up and punched her in the nose. Until she hit bottom, as they called it in the programs. And she needed him. He grimaced. She needed him, in a way that went far beyond sex and into magic. She'd bound her heart to him with the same seduction spell that broke Fiona's hold on his mind and body. With Buddy Johnson lurking in her memory, that was the only way she could force herself into sex. Brian shook his head. What would she do if he left her?
Tell her. One more week. Quit the drinking, or I'm gone. I'll stand by her while she fights it, but she has to fight.
With that decision, Brian felt tension flow out of his shoulders as he walked the pattern, eyes on the buff stone set against the yellow.
The path straightened out in front of him and broadened, until he walked easily. It felt like the way a Zen archer finds the target growing in his mind until it is so large and clear and close that missing is impossible. He loosed himself as an arrow and found the quartz starburst as his target.
Brian opened his eyes, blinking, amazed that he had walked the last steps blind. The pattern had drawn him in and taken his will. But he was left . . . hungry? Left with a sense of powerful magic somehow incomplete. A sense that something should have happened.
He stared at the menhir right in front of him and the crude flat chiseled on one face. Now it radiated pain as well as simmering rage.
Chapter Six
A gust of wind and cold rain chased Jo under a portico. She stood there, dripping and shaking wet hair out of her eyes and swearing under her breath, biting her tongue out of ingrained deference to the funeral home behind her and the long solemn black cars waiting for their next load.
A funeral home, for crissakes, with the hospital only a block away and in plain sight. It seemed a little tacky. At least the florist's shop on the next corner held out the promise of birth and spring and "Get Well" cards in their display window, keeping the funeral wreaths tucked discreetly away in the back cooler.
She'd never noticed those things before, but then she was noticing a lot that had just been common background to her life. Part of it was contrast with the magical forest she'd just left, part almost reached into paranoia as she kept an eye out for the perennial cop cruiser. They were following her around, a constant reminder that Sergeant Getchell didn't believe her story.
Oh, she could make them go away. Just like she could make Sergeant Getchell wrinkle his nose in irritation and let them walk out past the buzzing electronic locks of the police station every time they went in to tell their muddled and inconsistent stories about where two months of their lives had vanished and what had happened to Brian and Maureen.
But then she'd look over her shoulder and see a cruiser again, just like she'd pick up the phone to hear the sergeant's gravelly voice "suggesting" that he'd like to talk to them again. She'd always been . . . ambivalent . . . about policemen, but she had to admire their tenacity. Bulldogs, never letting go once they sank teeth into their prey. Sort of like a Maine winter. If only they'd been like that with Daddy . . . .
Jo shuddered away from her memories and returned to the current problem. Sooner or later, she was going to have to step across into Maureen's world. Ask her and Brian to come back to this mess and prove that they were still alive.
Cars splashed past, throwing up muddy spray from the gutters as
