Hayden Mitchell’s house had been built next along the ridge that ran high above the road, and it was hidden from Nona’s by a thick stand of pine and oak. The steep gravel driveway wound up to a cleared parking space in front of the garage. Christy, looking ahead, saw Eve Corey sitting on the low front steps studying a sketch pad propped against her knees. As usual she wore faded denim shorts, a bit tight on her plump legs, and a man’s shirt hanging outside. Thonged leather sandals left her bare toes free.
Eve looked up as they approached from the car, thick eyebrows beneath windblown bangs, raised and faintly derisive.
“Hi,” she greeted them, and then to Hayden, “So you’ve persuaded Christy to do her thing after all?”
Hayden ignored her words coolly. “You have something to show me?”
“Right,” Eve said, unchastened. “You aren’t exactly on top of things lately, and Mrs. Hampton is annoyed. She’s a good client, and we want to keep her happy, so you’d better look at what I’ve suggested for plantings in the front area.”
As Hayden sat down beside Eve on the steps, Christy studied the house he and Deirdre had built a few years before. Like Nona’s, it was gray, with a red deck running its width, but this house was two stories at the front, and built foursquare, with big windows offering a sweep of mountain and valley from a slightly different angle than Nona’s.
Eve looked up from her sketches at Christy. “I hope you got some sleep last night, after all the excitement.”
“I did fine.” Christy resisted the probe.
“Rhododendrons should look well in this corner where the deck jogs.” Eve held out her pad for Hayden to see. “Farther along we can plant gumpo—those Japanese dwarf azaleas. The deck’s low, and Mrs. Hampton doesn’t want anything growing too high in front. Around the oak tree over here on the right we might use spiraea. Gold flame, maybe? But she wants to see you about all this. You really haven’t been on the job as you should be.” Eve sounded both critical and impatient.
“I’ll talk to her,” Hayden said and handed back the pad.
Eve’s curiosity hadn’t lessened and she was still interested in Christy. “That was some get-together last night! Especially with Victor showing up like the spirit of doom after you left. Did Nona tell you? Oliver was pretty upset. When we went out to our cars afterward, I tried to talk to him and calm him down—but he hardly listened. I’m not sure why he was so upset, but the sooner he gets away from all these bad vibes and moves to Charlottesville, the better.”
Hayden said nothing, and neither did Christy. Eve finally took the hint and stood up. “I’d better run along. Good luck, Christy, with that scarf of Deirdre’s.” Clearly she’d guessed why Christy was here and would have liked to stay. But with no encouragement from Hayden, she gave them both a mocking salute and walked toward her car.
As they went through the front door into a long stretch of living room that ran the width of the house, a woman came through from the rear.
“Hello, Leonie,” Hayden said. “This is Miss Loren. Christy, this is Mrs. James, who takes excellent care of us.”
Leonie was a tall, handsome woman with warmly golden skin and black hair that she wore in a coil at the nape of her neck. Her skirt, bright with tropical flowers, was topped by a scoop-necked white blouse. Gold hoops in her ears danced as she moved, and she acknowledged Hayden’s introduction with dignity, though her concern was elsewhere.
“Have you seen Donny, Mr. Mitchell? He went off right after breakfast and didn’t tell me where he was going.”
“It’s okay,” Hayden said. “We have to let him run free for now. But I’ll speak to him about letting you know when he goes out.”
Leonie nodded and returned to whatever task she’d dropped when they came in.
Hayden explained as she went off. “It was Deirdre who found Leonie for us, and we need her more than ever now. Her father was local, but her mother came from Haiti. She’s older than she looks, and has retired as a schoolteacher. Deirdre liked her to dress in island colors and Leonie enjoys a bit of drama after all her staid years. She’s very good with Donny and he talks to her more than he does to me these days.”
Hayden was marking time, Christy knew—perhaps postponing whatever might happen, now that the moment was upon them. He probably dreaded the outcome as much as she did.
“This is a beautiful room.” She gestured, looking around. The floor was red-tiled in a herringbone pattern. Woven swivel chairs upholstered in royal blue could face the conversation area of sofa and bookcases or swing around to command the stunning sweep of mountains. Once more, Christy’s eyes were held by the view. Shreds of mist topped trees across the valley, while the rest of the green land, with its patches of red, dreamed in morning sunlight. Nothing appeared to move anywhere.
On the opposite side of the room, more windows looked out upon the same stretch of woods that plunged down the hill behind Nona’s house.
Hayden came to stand beside her. “There’s a stream running through at the bottom of the hill. That’s where the Llama Lady, as Donny calls her, lives. Nona has told you about Floris Fox?”
“She’s mentioned her.”
“Sometimes I think Floris likes animals better than she does people. Deirdre didn’t get along with her too well in the last months.” He turned from the window abruptly. “Let’s go upstairs and I’ll show you the scarf.”
“Not yet,” Christy said quickly. “I mustn’t go too fast. I need to feel my way a little. Did Deirdre have a room of her own—a private space she enjoyed?”
“Yes. Her room’s upstairs. Do you want to see it?”
“Please. It might tell me something about her—something that might help before I touch her scarf.”
As he led the way upstairs she could sense his uneasiness, his distrust. He was clearly doing this against his better judgment—perhaps at Nona’s urging.
“Deirdre chose the room with the balcony at the front of the house for her own,” he said as they reached the upper hallway.
When he opened a door Christy stepped across the threshold and stood very still, waiting for whatever might happen. A single narrow bed had been placed where Deirdre might lie against pillows and look out at the mountains by day, and the stars and moon at night. It was not a bed to share with a husband, and the room itself surprised Christy. Somehow, from what she’d heard about Deirdre, she’d expected frills and fancies. But this might have been the room of a nun. The wood furniture was plain oak, straight and severe. There was no upholstery—one sat on hard boards, and there was little in the way of decoration. A patchwork quilt on the bed offered the only splash of color, except for a single large painting over Deirdre’s small, plain desk.
Recognizing Harmony’s work, Christy went to stand before it. The painting had been done in recent years, since it featured a red road. Trees grew on each side in the foreground, and the road climbed between them, curving out of sight at the top of the picture. Nona had caught the particular blue of a Virginia sky when the haze lifted, with only a trail of mist smoking between the mountain folds. The central theme of the picture was not the road, however, but the tremendous rainbow that arched above it, one end lost in mist, while the other seemed to touch the road itself where it curved to one side of the picture. All the rainbow colors were there in the wide band that held them, yet they blended one into another in the nebulous way of a real rainbow—soft-focused, yet distinct at the same time.
“It’s—magical,” Christy said softly. “One of Nona’s best.”
Hayden glanced at her. “That’s the word Deirdre used. Though for some reason Nona didn’t want me to buy it for her. She said at first that it wasn’t for sale, because the rainbow meant something special and she wanted to keep it herself. But Deirdre coaxed and coaxed, and Nona wound up making it a gift. Deirdre would sit for hours staring at the painting—so that her behavior made me uncomfortable. She said voices spoke to her out of the rainbow. Deirdre had a strong mystical cast to her nature. I knew that was part of her, and I tried to understand her whimsical side. In the end, I failed.”
His voice had dulled, and Christy shrank a little, knowing what she must do. She moved close to the painting, shutting Hayden out of her mind, willing herself into the scene Nona’s brush had caught—as if she might step beneath the arch of the rainbow. Nona had said that she didn’t always understand what she herself had painted.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I think this is where Deirdre wanted to go—out to the rainbow’s end. I wonder why she wanted to—to escape?”
“She always wanted something that was beyond reality. She could never accept the fact that rainbows have no end.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” Christy tried to speak lightly. “I think Nona has seen the end of a rainbow in her imagination—so she could paint it.”
“Imagination is one thing. Believing is another.” Hayden turned his back on the painting. “I don’t like it. Sometimes Donny comes here and sits on that stool staring the way his mother used to do. As if he wants to go to the end of the rainbow—the way he thinks she has done. Sometimes I wonder if I’d better take it down.”
Again Christy could sense darkness in him—something even more troubling than sorrow.
“Show me the scarf,” she said. “I’m ready now.”
He crossed the room. “It’s right here in Deirdre’s desk.”
“Then let me go outside first. Take it to a neutral place and leave it. I don’t want anyone nearby when I touch it.”
Every clairvoyant had his or her own way of working, and this was Christy’s. But now she sensed increasing resistance in Hayden. It would take very little to turn him away from what she must do, and perhaps that might be safer for all of them. But it was already too late. She could feel the inner stirrings begin—following a course that could never be stopped.
Hayden gave in. “All right. Go and wait on the deck downstairs, and I’ll come and tell you where I’ve put it.”
She ran down the stairs with an odd sense of flight. Leonie James stood near the bottom step, watching her. Her dark eyes were wide with awareness, and Christy knew she sensed something.
“Be careful, Miss Loren,” she whispered.
Christy nodded understanding and went out onto the red deck. The morning had warmed and a small breeze shivered in the oak tree, sending a crisp brown leaf from last winter skittering across the boards. She breathed deeply of the high, clear air, bracing herself against what might come; feeling, as always, unprepared and defenseless. Down on the road a car, traveling too fast, raised a cloud of dust that drifted upward.
A moment later Hayden joined her. “I’ve put the scarf on the bookcase in the living room. I’ll stay here until you want me.”
She had to offer him—and herself—one last chance. “You’re sure you want me to go ahead?”
“I’m sure.”
“Oliver Vaughn doesn’t believe in any of this,” she added, still delaying. “Even though he was married to Rose, who must have been sensitive to mystical vibes—as she revealed in her writing.”
“I’m not Oliver.” He sounded sharp and disapproving. “And I always thought Eve would have made him a better wife than Rose was able to.”
From Hayden, who had seemed reticent and not given to revealing what he thought, this was unexpected. Christy couldn’t help retorting.
“That’s a man’s viewpoint—which woman would make the best wife.”
His mouth twisted in what seemed to pass for a smile. “I expect Oliver made no more of a husband for Rose than I have for Deirdre.”
This was a new and distracting thought, but she thrust it aside to be dealt with later. The moment had come. She went again into the long red-tiled room and walked directly to the bookcase, where for a moment she stood with her eyes closed. When she had time, it was best to go down inside herself and achieve a mild trance before she touched anything from a missing person. The quivering had stopped, as it always did when she emptied herself and allowed whatever pressed in to come through.
Now a deep inner stillness possessed her. Behind her eyelids colors flashed yellow and green—against deep black. She reached out with both hands and picked up the scarf. The silk seemed to twine about her fingers as though it were alive. Shockingly alive, so that the very touch of it seemed to burn her skin. She wanted to drop it and run from the room, but she made herself stand where she was and let the scarf flow through her hands in a stream of white fire.
The impressions in her mind came thick and fast. A sense of horror that she had never before felt to this degree seemed to surge through her very veins. The intensity was far stronger—and it was different. She received no picture of Deirdre in her consciousness, or of where she had gone, where she might be found. Something else was there—an appalling sense of evil, of wickedness. Anyone who continued this search would be faced with an ultimate terror. Never before had this shattering awareness of a murderer swept her as it did now. In the past she’d seen only the sad, mutilated girl, and there was no wickedness, or evil residue left—but only the vision of a place where men could go to find the body. Never before had her vision reached out to the person behind the crime.
This was different and far more terrifying.
Perhaps she had made some sound without knowing it—perhaps she’d even cried out—for Hayden was suddenly in the doorway, watching her.
“Are you all right?”
The silk was no longer fire and ice, and it slipped from her fingers, floating lightly to the floor.
“I need to go outside,” she told Hayden. She heard the trembling in her own voice, felt the throbbing begin at her temples.
Alarmed, he put an arm about her and she leaned into his strength, seeking support and human reassurance—anything that would wipe away that awful knowledge of human viciousness that existed at the other end of the scale from goodness and love.
Outside, Hayden led her to a porch chair and she dropped into it. “I’m sorry—I need to rest for a moment.” The throbbing would stop—it always did, but right now she felt ill.
He drew over another chair and sat beside her, waiting. She knew he held back the questions that must be brimming in him, and she tried to speak, though her words came haltingly.
“I—can’t help you, Hayden. I’m sorry—but I can’t tell you what you want to know.”
“But you felt something—you’re frightened. At least you can tell me why.”
“I don’t know how to tell you, because this has never happened to me before. I only know that someone truly evil has held Deirdre’s scarf. Perhaps so evil that all that remains of Deirdre in the silk has been burned away.”
“I don’t believe in an abstraction called evil.”
She could sense his disapproval, his withdrawal, and there was nothing she could offer. “Lili—my mother—doesn’t believe in it either, but I’m afraid I do.”
“You mean angels and devils and hell?” He sounded scornful, and the antagonism she felt in him from the first, had grown stronger.
“No, I don’t mean evil in the old biblical sense,” she told him. “I can’t explain. But I’d like to talk to Nona about this—talk to her right away. I’m really sorry I can’t help you, Hayden.”
“I never really thought you could,” he said. “I’ll drive you back to your aunt’s now, if you like.”
Christy shook her head. Her need to be alone was too urgent, the danger she’d felt too great.
Hayden paid no attention, but came with her when she left her chair. He kept a wary eye on her progress as they followed the path to Nona’s, though he didn’t touch her, even when she stumbled.
An empty field of red earth and rough grass separated the two houses, and it took only moments to reach Nona’s. Victor Birdcall had come down from the roof to work at the near corner of the house, running a cable from one lightning rod into the ground. He looked at neither Christy nor Hayden as they went by, returning Hayden’s greeting with only a nod.
In the single moment when she came near Victor, Christy tried to sense any current that might emanate from him, but she knew instinctively that the evil that had woven itself into the scarf in some moment of fury couldn’t be discerned now in its human beginnings. The intensity would have long since been dissipated—perhaps even wiped out at its source by the act of murder?
Nona was in the kitchen fixing lunch when they came in. She looked at Christy and Hayden with sharp understanding.
“You’ve touched Deirdre’s scarf, haven’t you?” she said to Christy.
“I wasn’t able to help,” Christy told her. “I need to talk to you—please. And I need to see that painting again—the one of Deirdre going off into the mist.”
“I’ll come too,” Hayden said. “What painting is this?”
“I haven’t shown it to anyone, Hayden,” Nona explained. “This morning Donny knocked it over and discovered it. I’d hidden it from view because I didn’t want to show it to anyone after Deirdre disappeared.”
“Is Donny here?” Hayden asked as Nona started ahead down the long hallway to her studio.
“Not now. He came back and stayed with the painting for a while. I had the feeling that he recognized something in it—something physical.” She paused in the doorway of her studio. “He even asked me about the pile of rocks I’d painted beside the road. I could only tell him it was out of my imagination and didn’t represent any real place. After a time he decided to go down to visit the llamas, so I made up a bag of sandwiches and fruit for him and let him go. He enjoys those animals and he and Floris Fox hit it off very well.”
Nona moved to where the painting stood on its easel, uncovered now. This was a very different painting from that of the rainbow that hung in Deirdre’s room. Even the pigment in the earlier painting had seemed filled with light and hope and promise. This one of Deirdre was a darker scene—dark in its implications, somehow, even though the haze that wreathed her was light in tone. The great pile of granite that formed an outcropping at one side of the path rose somberly, and beyond it Deirdre’s figure flitted into misty air. Her very dress seemed like vapor, and only her face was clear—laughing as she looked back over one shoulder. Viewing the painting for the second time, Christy could fancy the eerie laughter that might be coming from her open lips. At least the throbbing torment of Christy’s headache had lessened.
Hayden studied the painting for a moment. “You knew, didn’t you, Nona? I mean that she’d disappear into the mist. Something in you knew, so that you were seeing the future.”
Nona flung out her hands in denial. “If that’s what I was doing, I certainly didn’t know it at the time.”
“What if you painted her now?” Hayden persisted. “Would anything more come to you?”
Nona shook her head impatiently. “I can’t work coldly and deliberately. I need to be prompted by some vision in my mind. Or by the insistence of something that wants to be painted. As that picture did. There’s nothing right now to make me try.”
When Hayden turned away, Christy had the feeling that he avoided looking at her again—as though the very sight of her added to his unhappiness. “Anyway, thanks,” he told them both, and walked out of the room.
“Hayden has lost a daughter as well as a wife,” Nona said.
“What do you mean?”
“Here—let’s sit down,” Nona pulled a stool for Christy before the easel and drew up a chair for herself. “You need to understand what Deirdre was like, if you’re to help him.”
“I can’t help him at all—I know that now.”
Nona went right on. “Deirdre was woman enough for him, I suspect—passionate and high-spirited. Men were always drawn to her—perhaps because she eluded them, slipped out of reach. She was also a child who never quite grew up—and so was at the mercy of those who didn’t respect her innocence.”
Once more Christy studied the gracefully turned head in the painting—the bright look of that face peering from the mist, the parted, laughing mouth. Somehow there seemed little of innocence in that face. Perhaps the portrait—though only a glimpse—was more true than Nona realized. More and more, Deirdre seemed to be composed of a confusion of qualities that made her enticingly mysterious. Christy thought of what Hayden had said about not being a good husband for Deirdre, and wondered if any man ever could have been.
“I wonder if she was all that innocent?” Christy spoke aloud. “You didn’t catch innocence in what you painted here. I’d say you revealed a woman with secrets.”
“Sometimes my brush makes judgments I’m not aware of,” Nona admitted.
“Did you like Deirdre Mitchell?”
“I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.” Nona sounded wry. “I don’t think I succeed as well as Lili does. Perhaps some deeper feeling that I don’t even recognize got into that painting. Perhaps what I felt about her wasn’t altogether fair. I don’t think she was always good for Donny, because he wanted so much more from her than she could ever give as a mother. That wasn’t her fault, any more than it was his. It’s a wonder she could ever bear a child, when she was so much like one herself.”
“Do you know of anyone who hated her enough to kill her?”
“Of course not! This is a peaceful place.”
“The place is peaceful, yes, but I wonder if the people who live here really are!”
Nona let that pass. “You held her scarf, Christy—what did you feel? Tell me.”
Christy swung about on the stool, her back to the painting. “I felt something more terrible than I’ve ever experienced before. Even when I was working with the police, I never felt anything exactly like this. But I don’t believe it was Deirdre I felt. There was no quick vision of where she might be found. Only a sensation, as though whoever had held the scarf was driven by some vicious intent. Something almost inhumanly evil that made the silk feel as though it scorched my hands. I don’t think Donny found it where Deirdre dropped it originally. But I have no clue as to who might have put it there.”
“What about the velvet slipper that Victor picked up near the same place? Is there a connection?”
“I can’t tell. I received the strong impression that whoever had worn the slipper was dead. There was a superimposed male impression that could have meant Victor Birdcall, since he found it. What do you really know about Victor, Nona? Your friend Eve seems to disapprove of him.”
“She’s that way toward a lot of people, and he’s never made any effort to make friends with her. I’m afraid he has a way, sometimes, of dismissing with indifference those who don’t interest him. I know where he comes from and what he’s running from. All that’s in the past and doesn’t matter any more. It has nothing to do with what’s happening now, so you needn’t look in Victor’s direction. He claims that he found the slipper by chance, and I believe him. Will you try again with it, Christy, and see if it might tell you anything more?”
There was no point in refusing. The escape she’d intended when she got up this morning seemed further away than ever. It was as though the dreadful experience with Deirdre’s scarf tied her here with its silken strands.
Turning the slipper about, touching the frayed embroidery, slipping her fingers into the toe, Christy tried to let the male impression go. She wanted something else to come through. She sat very still, letting everything but the slipper fade away. And suddenly the sense of evil was there again. With it came the conviction that the same person who had left Deirdre’s scarf in the woods had put this slipper there as well. To confuse? To set down false trails? This time the feeling was far less intense than when she’d picked up the scarf, and no burning sensation came with it. As she continued to hold the slipper, the second layer of personality faded and left a sad truth behind.
“I’m sure this slipper belonged to Rose Vaughn,” she told Nona. “I knew Rose through her writing—and there’s some essence of hers that I can recognize. But last night no one claimed the slipper. What do you know about Rose’s husband?”
“Oliver’s a bit too opinionated for my taste, and he’s totally scornful of anything that touches on the mystical or psychic.”
“Yes, I got that impression.”
“But I can’t think he’s the one you’re looking for. I can’t imagine Oliver committing a violent crime. Physically, he might, but not emotionally.”
“How could anyone else get the slipper?”
“It wouldn’t be hard. Around here we don’t lock our doors. I suppose anyone could have slipped into Oliver’s house and taken it. Since he teaches at the university in Charlottesville, he’s away a good part of the day. Sometimes he seemed to dislike Deirdre—they were really at opposite poles—and I think sometimes she liked to tease him, just to see him squirm. She could be almost cruel—in the way a child is cruel, with no real recognition of what she was doing.”
“Nona, do you believe that evil actually exists? Lili doesn’t.”
“Of course I believe. There are evil men and women—evil nations, since they can be led by evil human beings. You don’t question that, do you?”
“I don’t know how we can ever judge. Maybe there are only those who are weak and mistaken and programmed in the wrong direction in childhood. So that evil is only a result.”
“Perhaps. But then do we go on forgiving terrible acts? I suspect that the most dangerous aspect of evil is that it never recognizes itself. The blame must always be put on someone else, or on outside circumstances, so the guilty can believe themselves innocent.”
“That’s pretty frightening.”
“We all have a dark side, Christy. Only rainbows are made of light. Wait until you see a rainbow out there against the mountains—it will lift you and wash away all that’s wrong in the space around you.”
“But only for as long as it lasts—seconds? Minutes?”
“That can be enough if we carry the effect with us afterward.”
“I saw your rainbow painting that Deirdre hung in her room. Hayden seemed to think it had special significance for you.”
“He’s right. The rainbow is becoming a symbol all over the world. Something that brings together people of good will from different religions and races—perhaps a vast coming together in time to save the planet. Though I’m not sure Deirdre was ready for such harmony. Perhaps I should never have given her the painting. She set too much importance upon it—as though it were real and she could find the rainbow right there within its frame.”
Christy turned to the painting to study Deirdre’s laughing face, its expression somehow all-knowing—the very opposite of innocence. Who had Deirdre so tormented that some punishment had been dealt her?
Nona left her chair abruptly. “We’ll talk about all this again. Right now we’d better get lunch. Victor’s joining us—remember?”
Christy hadn’t remembered. For one thing, she hadn’t expected to be here, and she still wanted to get away. She had done what she could for Hayden Mitchell—which was very little—and she had glimpsed something threatening and terrible.
Nona was watching her. “Honey, stay a few days longer. We need you more than you know.”
But she didn’t need any of this, Christy thought as she followed her aunt to the kitchen that was Nona’s family room. When salads were set out, cold chicken forked onto a platter, and rolls put in the oven, Nona went outside to call Victor. He washed in the laundry room and joined them in a few moments.
“Seeing how you have company, I could have brought my lunch and eaten outside the way I always do,” he said.
“Don’t be grumpy, Victor,” Nona told him. “Sit down and turn on your charm.”
This was apparently a joke between them and Victor smiled grudgingly. Because she felt uncomfortable with this man, Christy made an extra effort to be pleasant.
“Birdcall’s an interesting name. What tribe were your ancestors?”
“One of them danced the Highland fling under the name of MacLeod,” Victor told her, and then relented. “It’s not a real Indian name. The family name was Man-Who-Calls-Birds, but my grandfather thought that was a mouthful in the translation. So he shortened it to Birdcall.”
“It’s good that you can carry the name on.” Christy was still trying.
“I haven’t. It’s my grandmother’s name. I just took it for myself.”
Because his own birth name had become known in some unpleasant way? Christy thought with that intuition that could come in a flash, and was often to be trusted.
“Some of Victor’s ancestors were Plains Indians—Sioux,” Nona said.
Victor corrected her. “Sioux is the language. They called themselves Dakota, or Lakota.” After that bit of information he addressed himself to eating his lunch, the subject obviously closed.
Nona passed him the basket of rolls. “We think that the slipper you found in the woods, Victor, might belong to Rose Vaughn. Christy had the feeling that whoever had worn it was dead.”
Victor gave Christy the same blank stare with which he’d regarded her when she arrived yesterday. Perhaps it was a look more searching than antagonistic. As though he tested people in some way.
“If that’s true,” he said, “why didn’t Oliver claim it when I brought it over here last night?”
Nona shook her head doubtfully. “It seems strange, but perhaps it was too painful for him to talk about. I know he’s trying to put all reminders of Rose away from him. I feel that it’s a good idea—his moving to Charlottesville.”
“What about Donny?” Victor shifted his searching look to Nona.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I saw him running through the woods a little while ago, and he didn’t answer when I called him.”
“He was off to see the llamas,” Nona said. “They’re Donny’s road to Oz. Victor, have you any idea what’s going on in Donny’s head? Sometimes he talks to you.”
Victor went on eating silently for a moment. Then he seemed to make up his mind. “The kid thinks he’s seen his mother. He thinks she’s come back to tell him something.”
Nona put down her fork, dismayed. “That will be hard for Hayden to handle: Of course Donny’s head is full of what he imagines. He wants so much to believe that Deirdre’s alive that he’s brought her out of my painting.”
“Except,” Victor said quietly, “that I’ve seen her too. I’ve seen her drifting in the woods in her white dress—just like Donny says. I had to tell him so, just to let him know he wasn’t making it all up.”
“Go on, Victor,” Nona urged, but now he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“That’s all about that,” he said flatly. And then, to Nona, “Did you know Sinh has come back?”
“Deirdre’s cat? It’s been gone ever since she disappeared.”
“Right. But she turned up at Floris’s early this morning—half starved and scrawny. Sometimes I go down there to help with the llamas. I was there when the cat crawled to the bottom of those steps up to Floris’s house and began to yowl. I went down and brought her up to the kitchen. Usually she won’t let anyone but Deirdre and Donny touch her, but she was too weak to claw me. Of course Floris talked to her in the way she talks to her llamas, so maybe Sinh will tell her something.”
He looked a bit sly and mocking, but Nona paid no attention. “That’s Sinh with an h,” she told Christy. “Do you know the story, Victor?”
“Something about a sacred cat?”
“Yes. Deirdre loved all sorts of exotic lore. The Burmese and Siamese kept temple cats—they still do to this day. They believed that when some holy human being—usually a priest—died his soul was temporarily housed in the body of his favorite cat. It might live there for years, until the cat itself died. I remember Deirdre’s excitement when she talked about this. She said such cats were often put in gilded cages and given special offerings of food. In the beginning, legend has it, they had golden eyes. But then one was portrayed in a statue with eyes of sapphire, and all the eyes of the temple cats were miraculously turned to blue. Sinh was the name of one of the first cats of legend, and Deirdre thought it perfect when Hayden brought her a Siamese kitten.”
It was a strange and entrancing story, and added a bit more to the growing “legend” of Deirdre herself.
Nona wondered aloud. “Where can Sinh have been all this time? Christy, I think we’d better go down and see Floris and the cat. Then we can talk to Donny too. I’ll get my jacket.”
Victor, at home in Nona’s kitchen, rose to clear the table, and Christy helped.
“Did you really see Deirdre?” she asked.
He piled dishes onto one long arm expertly and gave her his strangely searching look. She was aware of the contrast of blue eyes (like Sinh’s?) in his dark face.
“Maybe I only thought it was Deirdre,” he said. “Sometimes the mists out there can fool you.”
Rose is gone and Deirdre’s gone, so I should be safe enough. I can have what I want, and there is no one to oppose me. Except Dukas’s daughter. She hasn’t gone away yet, and she’s held the scarf. But I can’t be everywhere and hear everything, so I still don’t know exactly what happened.
At least there’s a way to find out. An open channel. Not the kind of channel Dukas talks about! I must push a little harder now—make a real move.
It was fun meeting Donny in the woods. I’m not sure if Victor saw me, but at least the white dress gave the right illusion. And misdirection. I’ve been laughing ever since.