We sat there. We sat there a good long time.
Until the fly crawled across Janice Ravenwood’s fingers, into her open palm.
Just that fast, her hand became a fist.
She rolled down her window and released the fly.
“Your good deed for the day?” I asked.
She said, “A wise soul understands the dynamics of mercy.”
For a few seconds we sat there, listening to the waves and the music, smelling the salt air. I guess she thought I needed a little downtime for processing.
Finally, Janice Ravenwood rolled up her window.
She glared at my backpack.
“We really should have put that thing in the back,” she said. “It stinks.”
The beach gave way to a dirt road that snaked through the redwood forest. We followed that road awhile, past the clearing where I’d parked my truck, and then the dirt road intersected with a two-lane highway that clung to the ragged coastline the same way the bottle house did, as if it might tumble into the sea at any moment.
Janice was right about the backpack. It did stink. I cracked my window and breathed the scent of redwood and fern and sea and earth.
Occasionally, another road led inland through the trees. Occasionally, I glimpsed a house set back among the redwoods, but more often than not there was only the forest itself, as impenetrable as the walls of a fortress.
Maybe it was the presence of Janice Ravenwood, girl medium, but I suddenly considered the possibility that anything could happen in a place like this.
Anything, in the dark shadows cast by trees that were centuries old. Anything, in the black places where no one could see.
Anything. It was quite a concept for a guy like me.
A guy like me didn’t do too well with anything. I did better with nothing. That was a concept I could sink my teeth into.
Nothing in the shadows but blackness.
Nothing in the light but what you could see.
Yeah. I could get a hold of that one. After all, I could see more than most. And what I saw didn’t stretch halfway to the boundless possibilities of anything.
Janice pulled off the highway. Tires shushed along a cobbled drive that wound toward the sea. We descended into the trees, and the shadows. As we left the light, Janice flicked on her headlights.
And we saw what there was to see.
A hundred yards of security fencing flashed by on the left. A spiked iron gate. A guard dog.
The dog had three heads, and three open mouths filled with gleaming fangs.
But the dog was bronze. It didn’t move.
“There’s a security box to the left of the gate,” Janice said. “The code is*666*. Circe said to trust you with it, but I can’t imagine why.”
“Thanks.”
“One other thing.”
“What’s that?”
She smiled. “Watch out for dogs.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, shooting a glance at the bronze statue. “But to tell the truth, I don’t have much of an imagination.”
“Hang around a while,” Janice said. “We’ll make a believer of you yet.”
I closed the door and watched the medium drive away. Then I punched in the security code and waited for the gate to open.
A fly buzzed by me.
Another one, or the same one.
It flew between spiked iron bars, and into the darkness. And beyond.
3
The security gate swung closed behind me.
A narrow brick path curved to the right, leading to another gate and another keypad. Janice hadn’t mentioned the added security, but it didn’t surprise me. After all, this was Circe Whistler’s home. I imagined she’d made some pretty formidable enemies in her time. To be sure, there was a fine line between careful and paranoid. But if I were Circe Whistler, I probably would have jumped across it a long time ago.
I reached for the keypad and a Doberman sprang from the shadows on the other side of the gate, raking its teeth across the bars and barking up a storm.
Three other dogs joined it in the time it took me to draw a breath. Squinting into the shadows, I saw that the gate led to a large enclosed pen. I shook my head-right about now, Janice Ravenwood was probably having a good laugh at my expense.
I looked for another way to go, and that was when I noticed a brick staircase half-hidden by braided vines. Brushing them to one side like tattered draperies, I descended through a lush jungle of ferns and orchids and hanging fuchsias to a swimming pool with a black bottom.
Black, to trap the heat of the sun and warm the water. But the sun was weak here. A ring of ancient redwoods snared the pool, transforming the day to muted twilight, and the water was as dark as the mythic Styx.
Something flashed beneath the water’s surface and caught my eye. Silver ripples broke at the opposite end of the pool, parting the water in a sculpted wake behind armored ridges of blue scale, sharp teeth parted over hellish smiles, and bright red gouts of blood that never flowed. All of it there on the surface for just a moment, and then came the slightest splash and the silver water closed around the thing as it submerged, moving as swift and strong as the steelhead in the little girl’s creek.
Whatever it was, it was coming in my direction. Coming very fast.
The water parted at the edge of the pool. White hands with painted black nails slapped the coping and a woman thrust palm down and carried her weight up and out of the water in one smooth motion, her arms straight now, silver water rolling down tattooed tapestries on her bare shoulders-armored ridges of blue scale, sharp teeth parted over hellish smiles, and bright red gouts of blood that never flowed.
The tattoos must have cost a lot. I figured that was the reason Circe Whistler didn’t want to cover them with a swimming suit.
Circe’s lips pulled back in a smile as she noticed me. She slicked long, too-black hair against her skull and twisted a final splash of water from it.
Like the payoff scare in a monster movie, another splash chopped the silence. Another pair of black-nailed hands on the coping, but but this time it was a man who came out of the water. At least I thought Circe’s companion was a man. I had my doubts-I’d never seen another like him. With a shaved bullet-head and long muscled arms he rose from the depths…with crude brands burned on his pale skin like souvenirs of hell…and it seemed he just kept coming, naked and grub white and breathing like a bellows.
Circe teased the tall freak. “You need to work on your stamina.”
“Try me on land next time.” He panted. “Exclusively-no more of this amphibian shit.”
Circe moved in and kissed the Egyptian ankh branded on his chest. Then she strained high on tiptoes and he bent down, and at last her lips found his. They embraced, and when they came apart I found myself thinking of the steelhead swimming upstream to spawn in the little girl’s creek.
But that was ridiculous. Circe Whistler was a beauty scaled with tattoos, but her companion didn’t much
