Fury

CHAPTER TWELVE

TOM GRABBED JENNIFER WHEN she came up out of the subway at Columbus Circle.

“We’ve got to talk,” he told her, seizing her wrist.

“You’ve heard?” she asked.

“About Margit? Yes. David phoned me yesterday. Where were you? I’ve been calling.”

“At home.”

“You didn’t pick up. I went to Brooklyn; you didn’t answer. “

“I didn’t want to talk to you.”

“Jesus Christ, Jenny, what’s happening? Why did you sneak out of my place?”

They were standing at the top of the subway escalator and morning-rush-hour commuters were pushing past, glancing at the obviously angry couple but keeping their distance.

“You were calling the police when you thought I was asleep.”

“I was not,” he said outraged. “I was calling your office. Talking to What’s-his-name

Handingham.”

“Come on,” Jennifer said, taking his hand. “Let’s get a cup of coffee.”

“Margit and I talked for over five hours,” Jennifer explained to Tom, “and when I called David back, it was almost noon. The police were still there. Margit’s body was on the floor of her bedroom, where she told me she had died, and everyone was waiting for the coroner to come. Tom, I’m telling you: David killed her!”

Tom put down his pastry and stared at her.

“Jennifer, she died of an overdose. The coroner found evidence in her body. David told me. Besides, she died at approximately five o’clock yesterday morning. How could you have seen her? What are you talking about anyway?”

“She had traces of Valium in her stomach. Of course! David got that for her, but he wasn’t stupid enough to poison her with it. He’s a doctor; he’s smarter than that.”

“Well then, how did he kill her? How did Margit say she died?” He was treating her as if she were a child who needed to be humored. She kept her voice slow and steady. “He killed Margit with lidocaine. It’s used in emergency situations to slow down the heartbeat where there’s been a coronary seizure.”

“I know what lidocaine is. But how do you know?”

“I don’t. I don’t know any of this. But Margit does—or did. She was a nurse before she married David. That’s how they met. She told me about the lidocaine.” Jennifer leaned over the restaurant table and continued in a whisper: “It comes in a disposable syringe called a Flex-O-Jet. There’s one gram of lidocaine in twenty-five cc’s of fluid. When a person has a seizure in a hospital, they inject it directly into a bag of sugar and water that the patient is getting intravenously. You never inject lidocaine directly into the vein in a concentrated form. But that’s what David did. She had fallen asleep in bed, and David came into the bedroom, injected the lidocaine, and then pulled her onto the floor, so it would look as if she was trying to reach the door.”

“And Margit told you all this?”

Jennifer nodded. “When we talked, she was in her afterlife—that’s a nonphysical reality we all enter following death. All souls or spirits go there between incarnations.”

The waiter returned to refill their coffee cups, and they both fell silent until he stepped away. Then Tom spoke without looking up. “I think maybe you should talk to someone, Jennifer.”

“I agree.” Jennifer sighed, feeling relieved. “Do you know the detective on the case? What precinct is it, anyway?”

“Jen, I’m not talking about cops. I’m talking about a doctor. A shrink.”

Jennifer stared at him. “Tom, we’re talking about a murderer.”

“Sure—who was also her husband, and your doctor, and a physician on the staff of New York Hospital. Honey, you’ve been under a lot of stress. And I haven’t helped matters with my behavior about getting married. I was thinking that maybe we should fly down to the Caribbean for a few days and let all this blow over. My case against the dealers will go down soon. I’ll have time off. And you can get a long rest.” He spoke as if he had decided to take over her life.

Jennifer stopped listening. Tom didn’t believe her, but how could he? She had been on an immense journey in the last few days, and she had left him far behind. She could barely believe it ail herself—but when she doubted, she remembered Margit and the envelope of light around her, and she believed again.

Tom was watching her. “Jenny, you’re not well,” he said softly. “You have to understand that. It’s not a sign of weakness. I know you. I know how you never want to be caught with your guard down, but all of us have some bad patches. You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m okay!”

“No, Jenny, you’re not,” he answered patiently. “You’re going through something, I don’t know what. I wish to God I did, but, honey, I love you, and I’m going to take care of you, regardless of what you say. Okay?” He smiled, trying to dull the hard edge of his pronouncement.

Jennifer nodded. She had learned in the last few weeks that it was never any good to argue with Tom; it was better to go around him.

“So you’ll come to the Caribbean with me?”

She nodded. “But I have to go back to my office. You go downtown; I’ll come and meet you as soon as I make my arrangements with Handingham.”

“I’ve already talked to him about it,” Tom said.

“You did?” She pulled away, looking surprised.

“Yes, that’s what I called him about the day you thought I was on the phone to the police. I said you’d been under some stress, and he agreed you could have some medical leave. It’s no big deal, honey, your job will be there when you return.”

“Well,” she said, controlling her anger, “then you can also call the coroner and ask him to go over the autopsy results again.”

He shook his head. “Darling, I love you. I think you’re wonderful, but there’s no case there. I can’t do anything. You can’t do anything. I know you’re upset, but I’m telling you, your mind is playing tricks on you. Lidocaine stays in the blood, in the skin tissues. If it was there, they would have picked up traces in the autopsy.”

“Sure, if they were like the doctors on TV. But they’re not. Why is the mayor always firing coroners if they’re so good?”

Tom was being rational, but she no longer trusted his cool logic, his faith in the system, in the rational world. She thought of what Phoebe Fisher had told her, how people were trapped inside their logical world and couldn’t accept the mystical. But she wasn’t. Not any longer. She had seen Margit in her living room, and she realized there was only one person now in New York City who would listen to her story and believe what she had to say.

ECCLESIASTICAL INVESTIGATION

RELATING TO THE VISIONS AND

MIRACULOUS CLAIMS OF VERONICA

BORROMEO MISCELLANEA MEOICEA

THE YEAR 1621 STATE ARCHIVE OF FLORENCE

Account of the visions, miraculous claims, and sins of the flesh as related by the Abbess Veronica Borromeo

to the Papal Nuncio, Giuseppe Bonomo, Bishop of Siena,

on the thirteenth day of September, 1621.

On the First Friday of Lent of the year 1620, while in bed between the fourth and sixth hours of the night, I contemplated the sufferings of Our Lord the Most Holy Jesus Christ, and our Master appeared to me in the flesh, holding in His bleeding hands His most Holy Cross. Our Saviour was alive, and he asked me if I would suffer His own crucifixion and death.

I made the sign of the Cross, thinking that the Devil had come upon me, but our Lord said to me that He was God and he wished me to suffer His death. He instructed me to get out of my cot and lay upon the stones in the form of the cross, as He wished to implant the wounds of the crucifixion upon my body.

When I followed as He had told me, I felt great pains in my limbs and breast and saw that blood was oozing from my flesh, but afterward, I felt only peace and contentment.

During the following week, from day to day, each morning, I studied my limbs and saw nothing, no marks or signs, but on the Friday next, from twelve until three, the hours that our Lord hung upon the cross, I, too, bled from my hands and feet, and from the right side of my breast, and the nuns of the convent came and ministered to me, and I begged them, beseeched them in our Lord’s name not to tell the laity of what had occurred to me here within our monastery walls.

Each Friday I joyfully suffered as our Lord had suffered, and then on Easter Sunday, after our Saviour had risen and ascended into Heaven, I was praying in the cloister garden when suddenly there appeared to me an angel dressed in a blue garment. He had long white and gilded wings, and he said to me, “Our Lord is well pleased by your sufferings, and He wishes you to surrender your body to him again, living on in this world the life of a saint, and suffering, as the saints have, for the greater glory of God.”

Afraid that I was being sorely tempted by the Devil himself, I fell upon my knees and begged for God’s guidance. The white angel took me to our church, to our humble priest, Father Giovannetto, who told me on behalf of Jesus Christ that I was not being deceived by the Devil, and I knelt before him and received the Holy Eucharist. The angel revealed himself to me again and said that his name was Gabriel, the archangel Gabriel, who brought great joy to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and that he would stay with me now in my hours and days of great need.

From that day forth I suffered many travails, as I had wished. I was visited by the Devil in the form of a handsome young man who sought to corrupt my body and soul. In my vigils in our chapel, the stones beneath my bare feet were set ablaze by the Devil and his minions, but still I kept the name of Jesus on my lips and prayed incessantly for the strength to keep my faith.

And then our Lord came upon me another time, and said I was to be His bride.

I opened my arms to him, then, and Jesus raised his golden sword and cut away my simple heart and took it to his own, and said to me, “Lovely lady, I give you my heart, as any bridegroom must,” and slipped his heart into my breast, where it lodged, too large and glorious for my body, and then he took my left hand in his and slipped upon my finger a wedding ring, and in all my life I have never felt such great contentment.

Account of the visions, miraculous claims, and sins of the flesh of the Abbess Veronica Borromeo

as related by Sister Maria Sinistrari to the Papal Nuncio, Giuseppe Bonomo,

Bishop of Siena, on the second day of October, 1621.

I saw her open her arms and then kiss the fourth finger of her right hand and mumble her thanks to God, saying over and over again, “I am not worthy, O Lord. I am not worthy, O Lord.” Then I heard her say, “I want to have her sit on that first chair and to explain her life,” and she quickly went to where our Lord sat. And she told me the candles she had lit symbolized the thirty-three years that Jesus lived in this world, and the three largest ones were the three years closest to his death.

Next she spoke of how Christ had taken her heart and given her the wounds of His crucifixion. Then she said many things which I cannot remember, and I knew she was not herself. Her voice did not sound like her own. Then she prayed for several hours. We knelt together on the cold stones and prayed together.

When she was finished, we shut out the lights and left the choir and retired to our cells. She was in great pain, and would go to her cell at night and sit beside her. She kept telling me that a dagger was striking her body, bleeding her heart, and she would take my hand and press it against her breast so I might feel her great pain.

She would tell me, “Hold me,” and as soon as I touched her heart, it would quiet her. I asked her what was causing the great pain, and she said it was Jesus testing her virtue.

And then she began to call me often to her bed. It was always after my disrobing, and when I came to her, she would force me down into her bed and kiss me, as if she were a man, and then she would stir on top of me, like a man, so that we were both corrupted.

She would do this in the most solemn of hours. She would pretend that she had a need, a great pain, and call me to her cell and then take me by force to sin with her.

And to gain greater sinful pleasure, she would put her face between my breasts and kiss them. And she would put her finger in my genitals and hold it there as she corrupted herself. And she would kiss me by force and then put my finger into her genitals, and I would corrupt her.

She would always seem in a trance when she did such corruption, and call herself the angel Michael, and speak like a man. She would wear a white robe with gold-embroidered sleeves and a gold chain around her neck. She let her hair loose, and it curled at her thin neck, and she crowned her own head with a wreath of flowers taken from the convent’s garden.

And as the angel Michael, she told me not to confess what we did together, for it was no sin in God’s eyes. And when we were corrupted together, she would make the sign of the cross over my naked body and tell me to give myself to her with my whole heart and soul and then let her do as she wished. “If you do this,” she said, speaking in a man’s voice, “I will give you as much pleasure as you would ever want.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

JOAN WAS NOT AT her desk when Jennifer arrived at the foundation. She wanted to give her secretary work to do before she went to see Phoebe Fisher. Jennifer took a stack of telephone messages off Joan’s desk and walked into her office, closing the door behind her. She flipped through the pink memo slips. There were a half-dozen calls concerning foundation matters, and the others were personal. Janet Chan had phoned to cancel their lunch on Thursday. Her dentist, Dr. Weiss, had called to remind her about her appointment. David Engle had called. He wanted her to phone him at home as soon as possible. And there was a long-distance call from Kathy Dart in Minnesota.

Jennifer stared at the slips, her hands trembling. She was too frightened to call David. She didn’t know what to say to him, not now. On impulse, she dialed Kathy Dart in Minnesota.

“Hello, Tenayistilligan,” a man’s voice answered.

“Hello?” Jennifer said.

“Tenayistilligan,” the man said again, “this is the Habasha Commune. Simon speaking.”

“Oh, hello.” Jennifer remembered now. Eileen had explained that Kathy Dart’s believers used Amharic expressions and gave themselves Ethiopian names in honor of Habasha. “My name is Jennifer Winters. Kathy Dart telephoned me earlier. I’m returning her call.”

“Just a moment.”

Jennifer waited for a moment. Soon she heard Kathy Dart’s clear and crisp midwestern voice. “Oh, Jennifer, I am so pleased that you’ve called. I telephoned Eileen Gorman earlier to get your phone number. Are you all right?”

“Why, yes, I think so,” Jennifer answered.

“Well, I spoke to Eileen a few days ago and she told me you have been experiencing some difficult feelings

“

“Yes?” Jennifer tensed up.

“This morning when I woke, Habasha was waiting for me, waiting for me to awaken, and he mentioned your name. He said you were in trouble.”

Jennifer took a deep breath.

“Yes. Well, I’m in trouble, that’s for sure.” She laughed, but now she was frightened. How could Kathy Dart know?

“This happens,” Kathy Dart said softly, anticipating Jennifer’s anxiety. “The spirit knows. We have all had premonitions. Habasha, of course, is attuned not only to my life, but to others as well. It is obvious now to me that you and I are somehow related in the same group.”

“I’m not sure what you mean, what sort of group. A spiritual grouping?”

“Spiritual is the right term. You and I—and Habasha, of course—and others are all part of what is called the oversoul. I thought so when I first saw you sitting with Eileen at my introductory seminar in Washington. We have shared some previous life experience, which, naturally, isn’t that unusual, as we are all part of the Mind of God.”

“What did Habasha say? I mean, what’s going to happen to me?”

“You have had some terrifying experiences.”

“Did Habasha tell you?”

“No, but I have experienced several troubled nights, and when I spoke with Eileen, she told me that you were troubled and were also inquiring about New Age beliefs.”

“Yes, I did ask her.” Jennifer grew cold suddenly, and she glanced up to see if her office door had opened. She didn’t want anyone to hear what she was saying to Kathy Dart. “I do have a lot of questions now about all this

stuff. I am trying to understand

you know, channeling and everything.” She was talking very rapidly, realized she was perspiring.

“The channeling experience is normally a cooperative experience,” Kathy Dart went on calmly. “I have accepted Habasha. I had no questions or qualms about acting as his channel, his connection with this life.”

“I remember your talk. I remember how he came to you out of a California morning. But I think something else is happening to me. I have had—” She caught herself then. She could not tell this stranger about the killings. Instead, she said quickly, “I was at the Museum of Natural History the other day, and I had this weird sensation.”

She told Kathy Dart about the Ice Age exhibition and her reactions to the model, how she knew she had been there once herself, had walked down the path, had slept under the bones and tusks and dried skins of the Ice Age mammoth. She knew it all, but of course it was not possible for her to have such knowledge.

“But it does make sense, Jennifer,” Kathy insisted. “This place, these people were once part of your life—in another time, of course, in this prehistoric period.”

“Kathy, excuse me, but I have to say something.” Jennifer walked to the windows and stood there, staring out at the cold day as she went on. “I am having a difficult time, you know, accepting all of this. I have a friend, and he’s—”

“That’s Tom, isn’t it?”

“Yes, you know

?”

“Well, no, but Eileen mentioned you were seeing someone. I have asked Habasha about Tom. I have asked him to see if Tom is the right person for you.”

“And what has Habasha said?”

“Oh, he takes his own sweet time about such requests. Basically he finds them annoyances. He’ll tell me one of these times when I am channeling. But please go on. I’ve interrupted you.”

“Well, none of this makes sense to him, either. Rational sense, do you understand?”

“Of course I understand,” Kathy Dart replied calmly. “I had many of the same questions and apprehensions I know you are experiencing. For all of us it is an uncharted journey, a leap of faith, but also, and this was true for me, we realize that there is something missing—something out of whack, let’s say—with our lives. For me, Habasha has been able to put this life into perspective.”

“Look, Jennifer, this isn’t terribly new or strange or weird, all this reincarnation talk. We were raised on a belief in an afterlife, in heaven and hell, but at the same time we are caught in a cultural reality that says there can’t be any such thing as reincarnation, or premonitions, or ghosts! But nevertheless, man has throughout history known about our connection with the other side, with the voices from beyond.”

“But that still doesn’t explain why I—”

“Why you were selected? Chosen?”

“Yes! Why me?”

“Because, Jennifer, you are ready. It is as simple as that. I wasn’t ready when I was a seventeen-year-old in college, but when I had children of my own, after many life experiences, I was finally prepared to handle the responsibility of channeling Habasha. Someone, some person, is preparing you to channel his or her entity. Why else would you have such sudden strength to run that far in Washington? Jennifer, I know you are being prepared for channeling some spirit.”

“Oh God,” Jennifer whispered, her legs weakening. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against the cold glass. Across Fifty-ninth Street, dozens of floors below her, was the entrance of the park, where a half-dozen men stood loitering, standing out in the cold day. They were selling drugs, she knew, calling out to people as they passed by on their way to the subway.

Kathy Dart broke into her thoughts. “I think it would be good if we could talk in person,” she said.

Jennifer nodded. She was crying again, and finally she managed to say “I would love to talk to you.” She turned away from the window and went to her desk to pull out a handful of tissues. Kathy Dart was still speaking, telling her how difficult it was to have this special gift, to be open to such communication, to be sensitive to altered lives.

“But I’m not that kind of person, Kathy,” Jennifer finally protested. “I never played with an Ouija board or did automatic writing.”

“What kind of person, Jennifer?” Kathy Dart said quietly. “Do you believe in God?”

“Yes, of course. ! guess so. I mean, I did once.”

“And angels? And the devil? And miracles? Of course you do. Or did. And you believed in life after death, too. It’s a tenet of Western culture. We were all raised to believe in a God or some Supreme Being that established order in our universe. Even the Big Bang theory is a stab at trying to explain ourselves, why we are here on earth, the meaning of our lives.” Kathy Dart sighed. They had been talking for over twenty minutes and both were getting tired. “Listen, after all of this, I still haven’t told you why I really called, or what upset Habasha this morning.”

Jennifer waited. She had returned to her leather chair and was sitting behind her wide desk. The telephone console was flashing, and she was sure that Joan had returned to her desk and was in the outer office taking her calls.

“Habasha was disturbed about you. He is painfully vague about much of his information but said you were in danger.”

Jennifer did not answer. She thought of the New York Post headlines and realized again that the police were still searching for her.

“There is a man

I have only a name

a first name.” Kathy Dart was speaking slowly, as if she were still trying to decide how much to tell her.

“Yes?” Jennifer asked quickly, raising her voice.

“David. Do you know a man named David?”

“Of course I do,” Jennifer whispered. She suddenly lost all her strength. “David Engle. He’s the husband of my friend Margit. She just committed suicide.”

“Be careful, Jennifer. I am sorry to have so little to tell you. Usually I do not like to do this—give people bits and pieces of information—but I am taking a chance with you. I feel you are someone special. Special to me, to all of us.”

“Thank you,” Jennifer whispered gratefully. “I’m not afraid,” she added, surprising even herself.

“Good! Remember, you are not alone. You have your guides with you always. Your guardian angels, as we used to call them in Catholic school. And you have me. Please call me. We must keep in touch. I feel—I know—we are important in each other’s lives.”

When Jennifer finally hung up the phone, she sat very still at her desk and watched the lights of her phone flash. Then, impulsively, she pushed down one of the buttons and reached out to pick up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Jenny?”

Jennifer recognized the voice at once. “Yes?”

“Is that you, Jenny? I’m so used to getting that secretary who guards your palace door.”

“Yes, David, it’s me.” Jennifer knew her voice sounded stiff and distant, but she couldn’t bring any warmth to her words.

“I’m calling to ask if you can come by later today for a drink. I have some things I need to talk to you about.”

“I’m sorry, David. I have to meet Tom right after work,” Jennifer said. The last person she wanted to see was David Engle.

“Jenny, please. I really need someone to talk to.”

“I understand, David, but I can’t. I—” Jennifer suddenly stopped talking.

“Jenny? Are you there?”

“Yes, David. All right, I’ll come about four.” Now Jennifer was smiling. There, in the far corner of her office, in front of the wall of bookshelves, Margit Engle sat on the leather sofa and nodded to Jennifer, encouraging her to accept the invitation from her husband.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

JENNIFER LISTENED TO DAVID Engle lie to her. He was telling her about Margit’s death—how she had said good night, gone to her bedroom, closed the door, and swallowed a dozen Valium. And how he had found her later, on the floor at the foot of the bed. He started to cry as he spoke. Jennifer guessed that he had been drinking most of the day.

Jennifer sat on the sofa and sipped her white wine, watching him. Now he was talking about their sons. They were both home from school and handling the funeral details.

“I couldn’t face it,” he confessed to Jennifer, coming back to where she was sitting on the sofa.

Jennifer realized how worn down he was. He couldn’t be more than fifty, but he had aged since she had spent the night at the apartment. His whole body sagged, his face was gray. Gray from beard bristles. Gray from the long winter without sun. He looked like a corpse.

“Margit was a much better parent than I was,” David said. He told her how when the boys had pneumonia, she had slept for a week on the floor in their bedroom. “And I was the goddamn doctor,” he swore, sobbing again.

Jennifer didn’t go to him. She was crying, too, but her tears were for Margit, the mother of his children, his wife for twenty-three years, the woman whom he had murdered in her sleep.

“I made friends with people easily,” he said next, pulling himself together, “but it was Margit whom they came to love.” He leaned forward in the chair, gesturing with one hand and spilling his drink. “Like you! Like you! You were my friend, too, but Margit took you away from me.”

“David, please!”

He waved off her protest. “Don’t you tell me about Margit. I knew her. I knew what she was like.” He was crying, and he kept rambling on, claiming that Margit had stolen all his friends, turned them against him.

Jennifer set her drink down on the coffee table.

“David, I’m going to have to go,” she said softly, reaching for her coat.

David did not respond. He was still leaning forward, staring at the rug.

“Go?” he said finally, looking up, blinking into the light. Jennifer was now standing.

“I’ll telephone the boys later to find out about the service. I would like to say something, if you don’t mind. I’ll speak to Derek about it.” She walked past him but did not bend over to kiss him on the cheek as once she would have. He would turn on her next, she knew. His self-pity was engulfing everyone he knew.

“You were my friend first, Jennifer, or have you forgotten?” The ringing phone startled him, and he stood staring at it. After a moment, Jennifer stepped around him and picked up the receiver. “Hello, the Engle residence,” she said calmly.

“Hello, is

Jenny, is that you?”

“Yes, Tom. Hello.”

“What in God’s name are you doing there? Is David with you?”

Jennifer sighed and closed her eyes. She was tired of men shouting at her.

“Yes. What is it?” She glanced over at David. He was standing in the middle of the foyer, staring at her. His eyes were glassy.

“Get out of there,” Tom whispered, “get out of that apartment and away from him. What in the world possessed you to go see him? Jenny, the son of a bitch is a killer. You were right! I called the coroner’s office when I got back downtown. I was doing it just as a favor, you know, so at least if you asked again, I’d have the facts, and the tests on Margit’s skin had come back. There was lidocaine in the tissue. He did it, Jenny. Like you said.”

Jennifer looked into the small foyer mirror and saw her own startled eyes. Behind her, still standing at the entrance, David clutched his empty glass and watched her. She was right. She wasn’t some crazy person, having dreams and seeing ghosts. It was all true. Margit had come to her after her death.

“Is that Tom?” David asked.

Jennifer nodded into the mirror. She was listening to Tom explain that a warrant had been issued for David’s arrest. “Now get the hell out of there, Jennifer. I don’t want you involved. I don’t want David to get an idea of what’s gone down.”

“There’s no need to worry, Tom,” Jennifer answered coolly. She was angry with him for not believing her at first, and now angry again that he was telling her what to do. “I can take care of myself.”

“Jesus, Jenny, let’s not try and prove anything, okay? I was wrong. I admit it. Now get out of there.”

“I’m going home, Tom. To Brooklyn. Come over later and we’ll have dinner. I have more to tell you. Kathy Dart called me at the office.”

She hung up the receiver and turned around to David, who had stepped closer to her, but only so that he could lean against the wall to steady himself.

“That was Tom,” Jennifer said quietly, pulling on her leather gloves. “He told me that he spoke to the coroner and that the tests came back on Margit’s skin tissue. They found evidence of the lidocaine, David. I guess the police have a warrant for your arrest.” She spoke without raising her voice.

“You knew?” David asked weakly.

“Yes, I knew.”

“How, goddamnit?”

Jennifer went to the apartment door and paused there with her hand on the knob.

“Margit told me on the morning after her death. We talked.”

“She couldn’t!” David protested, stumbling forward.

“She loved you, David. She loved you all her life. She kept your home and raised your sons. She never wanted anything but your love and respect, and what did you do in return? You turned her out for another woman, a younger woman who was—what did you tell Margit—’more interesting’? And then you just didn’t settle for a divorce. No, you had to kill her for her money.”

He threw his glass at her. With the speed and deftness she was only beginning to realize she possessed, Jennifer grabbed the glass out of the air before it hit her, and set it down on the small hallway table. She managed to smile curtly at him, and then she went for him. It suddenly seemed so natural and so right. She would use her powers to settle the score. He had taken her dear friend’s life, and now she would take his.

Jennifer grabbed David by the throat and jerked him off the floor. Holding him at arm’s length, she smiled at him while he gasped for breath and tried to break her grip. Then with one motion, as if she were flicking off a fly, she tossed him away. He flew across the living room and hit the wall, then crashed to the rug.

She moved closer, knowing she had to finish him off, that she couldn’t let him live, when she heard the doorbell. The sharp ring snapped her concentration, broke her desire to kill, and she turned away from him, leaving him choking up blood. She walked toward the front door, and in desperation he lunged at her, tried to grab her leg. Jennifer kicked him in the face, knocking him away, and opened the apartment door.

“You’re looking for David Engle?” she asked the two men at once.

They nodded, startled by her question, and then by the sight of David behind her on the living room floor. He was trying to pull himself up onto his knees.

Jennifer gestured toward David, who had recovered enough to begin to cry. “Well, you’ve found him.”

Then she moved quickly to the elevator doors and caught them before they closed. She looked back and saw the two men reach down to help David Engle off the floor. They were already reading him his rights.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

JENNIFER COULDN’T FOCUS ON her surroundings. She was thinking of Margit, of David, and of herself. She was thinking how she had gone after David and would have killed him if the police hadn’t come. She was trembling, frightened again, as she realized they could have arrested her, too, there in David’s apartment. She was mad, she thought, trying to kill David. She was losing her mind. In her confusion, she found herself walking along Riverside Park.

Plowing through the snow tired her, and she decided to turn left at the next corner, cross over to Broadway, and catch the subway home. Two men were ahead of her. They had come out of a park entrance, turned and walked off. Jennifer felt her heart race. She glanced around to see another man trailing her by fifty yards, and she knew instantly what they were planning. She should have crossed the street in the middle of the block and walked into one of the co-op buildings as if she lived there. The doorman there would call her a cab. Then she spotted another man on the other side of the street, tramping through the snow with his head down, his hands deep in his pockets. She should cross, she knew. Cross immediately, right there in the middle of the block. But she didn’t.

She kept plowing ahead, with her own head down, as if she were consumed with her own thoughts. What was she doing? she asked herself. Why was she behaving this way?

The two men had hesitated at the corner, as if waiting for the light to change, but she knew they were waiting for her. She knew, too, that they would come back toward her as the third man approached, and then they’d surround her and pull her off into the park. A dozen yards and she’d be completely out of sight in the winter afternoon darkness. There were no joggers in this weather, no one walking dogs. She was the perfect prey. They knew it. She knew it. And the thought made her smile. She felt her blood pumping, as her body warmed to the encounter.

The men were turning toward her, and from far behind, she heard the third man pick up his pace and start to run. She watched the men approach. They had spread out on the sidewalk, as if to give her room to pass. Both had long wool scarves wrapped about their necks, and stocking hats pulled down over their eyes.

They were close enough now for her to see that they were Hispanic, teenagers who weren’t more than kids, really. As they passed her, they said something in Spanish and lunged at her, grabbing her between them, lifting her slight body easily, and pulling her off the sidewalk.

Jennifer looked up to see the third one waiting. He had raised his fist and was holding a club in his hand, a short piece of pipe wrapped in electrical tape.

She waited for the surge of strength, her wild power, to consume her, and at that moment, as the small one raised the clumsy club, she thought, It won’t happen, I’m defenseless. Then it hit—the rising rage of her primitive self.

She felt the sudden shudder of cold through her body, felt her heart pump, as if it had a life of its own, then her blood surged through her limbs and, using the two men who held her as posts, she suddenly lifted her body up and swung her legs. The heel of her right cowboy boot caught the short man in the mouth, driving his teeth up into the soft roof of his mouth. He couldn’t even scream when she kicked him away.

The two others swore, furious, and one of them freed his left arm and swung at her head. She ducked the blow, slipping down onto the snowy path and pulling both of the men with her as she fell. She seized their thin necks with both her hands and heard them gasp and gargle for breath as she squeezed the life from them. She realized, holding them both aloft, that she was smiling at her own strength, at her own revenge.

She smelled their breath, the odor of their bodies. She smelled the beer they had drunk that day, the tacos they had eaten somewhere in Spanish Harlem, the women they had slept with. She slapped her hands together, banging their skulls.

The force of the blow, the smashing of flesh and bone and brain, sounded hollow, like pumpkins squashed by a car. There were no other sounds, no cries of pain. Their bodies sagged in her arms. She flipped them away then, into the bushes beyond the footpath, where they fell together in a lump of legs and arms, all bent out of shape.

She went for the third one next, knowing, as no animal would, that she couldn’t let him escape to tell the police. The small man had recovered enough to stumble away from her and was spitting out blood and bits of teeth while he tried to run deeper into the park.

She loped down the hillside as he dashed frantically for the bushes that framed a children’s playground. She grabbed him in full gallop by the scuff of his neck and, without losing speed, threw him like a human javelin into the high iron-mesh fence that surrounded the children’s park.

The force of the impact bent the thick iron webbing. And when his body slipped down, the jagged points caught his clothes so he hung there on the wire like a wet, dirty rag blown up against the fence,

Jennifer stopped to pull her racing heart under control. She could smell herself, her own sweat, and the musky scent pleased her. When she looked up again at the dead man, at what she had done to him, she marveled once more at her speed and strength.

Jennifer took the subway home. She had only stopped at the park fountain to wash their blood off her hands and face. She knew her wild look would keep anyone from sitting beside her.

At home, she started a log fire and burned all her clothes, even her underwear. She got rid of her brown boots, stuffing them in a trash bag to go out with the garbage. Then she took a long hot shower and shampooed her hair, and finally she filled the tub with steaming hot water and scented bath bubbles, opened a bottle of white wine, and took glasses and an ice bucket back to the bathroom. Stretched out in the tub, she listened to WQXR playing Mozart and waited for Tom to arrive.

Tom had his own keys, and though she was drowsy from the hot water and the wine, she heard him closing the front door, dropping his attache case, and calling for her.

She listened to his voice grow louder and nearer. She smiled and moved her arm slowly in the hot water. The bath had made her weak, and she was tired, too, from what she had done. She thought back on the murders as if they were something she’d just seen in a movie or in a late-night news clip. None of it had any connection to her life, to who she really was.

“Jenny, there you are,” he said softly, appearing in the doorway. “Why didn’t you call out, tell me where you were?” He came into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet seat. He had already shed his suit coat and tie, and now he carefully rolled up the sleeves of his blue Oxford shirt.

His body always excited her, and she was absurdly pleased by her own arousal. It was such a simple emotion, and so gratifying. Slowly, gracefully, she stroked her breast with the sudsy water.

“David confessed,” he said. “I spoke to the detective uptown.” He sighed and slumped down on the seat. “Well, why are you smiling?”

She shrugged, and when she did, her pink, flushed nipples broke the surface of the hot water. She watched him focus on her breasts, watched him catch his breath.

“Do you want me?” she asked.

He nodded. His eyes were canvassing the length of her, and she obliged him, arching her back so that the wet web of her sex, foamy with bubbles, surfaced like a pale buoy. Then she settled back in the scented, soapy water.

As Tom shed his clothes, she moved in the tub to make room for him. The water whooshed, and large drops dripped from her arms and breasts as she sat up.

“How do you want me?” she whispered. She could feel her throat tighten, and her fingers, as they always did, trembled with excitement.

“Hurry,” she told him. Tom stepped gingerly into the tub, and she reached out for him, gently nipping his penis with her teeth.

“Easy, honey,” he said, “that hurts.” He couldn’t move. She had total control of his body, holding him by his genitals. “Don’t,” he demanded. He tried to ease himself down into the water, but she wouldn’t release her hold on him. “Jenny!” He was becoming angry.

She kept at him, ignoring his protests. Whenever they made love, he was the one who dictated the terms, and now she wouldn’t give up her advantage. A part of her wanted only to relax, to let him have his way, but right now she couldn’t stop herself from playing with him, from making him do what she wanted.

She grabbed his waist and tugged him down, her teeth still clenched around his penis. As his erection began to fade, Jennifer gently caressed the inside of his thigh with her warm hand and then abruptly shoved her index finger into his rectum.

He came in her mouth.

She gulped, trying to swallow the flood, then choked and pulled away as he showered her face and hair with jetting semen.

When she could breathe again, she laughed at her own foolishness.

“What are you trying to do, kill me?” Tom said, lifting her into his arms. “Trying to bite off my cock, are you?” He grinned. “Well, I know how to shoot back.”

“It feels like sticky molasses in my hair,” Jennifer complained, and immediately turned on the shower, drenching them both in hot water.

“More S and M,” Tom shouted over the water, but his voice was happy and excited. Both of his arms were wrapped about her body, with his fingers grabbing her taut bottom.

Jennifer spread her legs and, hooking her arms around his neck, she clung to him as he slipped inside her, and rode him a moment with her face turned into the hot spray. Then she concentrated on coming, moving against him as he drove up against her. She jabbed her nails into the flesh of his shoulders, wanting to draw blood, and her breath came in a quick series of gasps. They were splashing water all over, soaking the towels, but she didn’t care. All she wanted was to sustain the driving, escalating force which gained and gained, until she was breathless and in wonderful, excruciating pain. She was gasping, trying to consume his life, trying to suck the breath from Tom as she drove her tongue into his mouth, reaching for the very soul of him, and then the orgasm slammed through her, leaving her limp, out of breath, and clinging to him for safety. She ached with pleasure.

“Oh God,” she whispered, and licked the damp hairy mat of his chest.

Tom was not done with her. He seized her buttocks again in both his hands and hoisted her up. She still was impaled, and he turned her to the wall, centering them both under the driving shower. He had her pinned to the wall, and braced his feet against the corner of the tub as he drove into her.

He hit her bottom once, slapped it hard, and she gasped with delight. He slapped her again, and she grabbed his head, slipped her long fingers into his thick black hair, then stuck her tongue in his ear, licked him, and snapped at his right earlobe. He slapped her again, harder and harder.

He had spanked her before when they made love, and she had liked the tingling sensation as she came, the naughty notion of being beaten. He had never hurt her, and always he had been gentle with her later, kissing her flesh, soothing her bottom.

Now he did not stop and she did not want him to stop, and he slapped her harder and she fought back, growling at him, digging her fingers into his shoulders. He swore at her and pumped harder, kept her jammed back into the corner of the tub.

She lashed out at him, hitting him ineffectually on the neck and shoulders with her fists, but her fingers were slippery, wet with water and the blood that she now saw was discoloring the water. She did not want to hurt him, but she did want to resist; she wanted him to ravish her, and she did not know why.

He came. He stopped fighting her. He squeezed her body and shuddered. His face was turned against her; her ear was in his mouth, and her head was pinned to the corner of the shower stall. She was momentarily thrilled at her success, at having made him come with such violence.

When he stopped gasping for breath and kissed her gently on her neck, they slid down together into the deep water and forced another tide of it onto the bathroom floor. Tom reached to shut off the shower, and Jennifer was briefly stunned by the silence. She shook her head to clear the water from her ears, then she lay resting against Tom’s wet chest.

“Well,” he said, laughing, “that’s one for the record books.”

“Are you still bleeding?”

“I don’t think so.” He strained his head to look at his shoulders. “I hope I don’t have to explain this to some doctor.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered and sat up. “I don’t know why I tried to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me, darling.” Tom pulled her again into his arms. “That was fun. You surprised me, that’s all. Where are you learning all these new tricks?”

“I don’t know any new tricks! What do you mean?” She turned to him. She was wedged between his raised legs in the tub, which now seemed too small for both of them.

“Honey, you came on to me like some goddamn animal.”

“Don’t say that!”

“Well, it’s true!”

“Don’t say that! Don’t ever say that!” She pulled herself out of the tub, wrapped her terry-cloth robe around her, and went at once to the sink, where she wiped the palm of her hand across the foggy mirror. Seeing herself reflected there made her feel immediately better. She had begun to have a terrifying premonition that she’d look into a mirror one morning and see some sort of she-ape grinning back.

Behind her, Tom splashed out of the water and grabbed a towel to dry off his hair.

“I’m sorry I upset you,” he said, his voice muffled by the thick blue bath towel. “What’s the matter?”

She watched his face in the bathroom mirror.

“You make me feel like I’m weird, the way I make love.”

“I love the way you make love.” He kissed her earlobes.

“I don’t do tricks.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. What’s the matter? Why are you so edgy?” His face darkened, as it always did when he was upset.

“Oh, great. You insult me, then call me ‘edgy’ because I don’t just sit back and take it.”

“You’ve been edgy for weeks, since Washington, really.” He stepped up behind her and began to dry her wet hair. “I think that thirteen-mile run drove too much blood into your brain.”

“Damnit, Tom, stop making comments like that.” Jennifer took the towel from him, threw it on the floor and walked out of the bathroom, making large wet footprints on the hall rag.

He caught up with her in the kitchen. She had taken out a carton of milk and a packet of gingersnaps and was dipping each cookie into the milk before she took a bite.

“What do you want me to do, Jennifer?” he asked, standing in the doorway and tucking the large blue bath towel around his waist. “Tell me, what in the world do you want?”

“I want you to take my kitchen knife and plunge it into your heart,” she answered back, biting a gingersnap cookie in half.

“Jenny, please.” He stepped into the narrow kitchen.

“Don’t touch me!”

“I’m not going to touch you. I just want a gingersnap before you devour them all.” He grabbed one and stepped away, then chanted plaintively, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” Jennifer reached up into the overhead cabinet and took down another large tumbler. “Would you like a glass of milk?”

“Yes, please.” He grinned and stepped closer.

“Don’t touch me,” she ordered again.

“I’m not!” His hands shot into the air. “I’m just trying to get along here, you know. Get through the next few minutes, that’s all.”

“It’s not something to joke about. I don’t want to be jollied out of my mood. Okay?” She turned around and looked at him. “I want you to take me seriously, that’s all.”

“I do.”

“This morning over coffee you told me I needed to see a shrink—but wasn’t I right about David?”

Tom nodded, munching on the cookie.

“Look, I don’t understand what’s going on with me any more than you, but I need your help. I need you to support me. Is that too much to ask?” She looked up at him, tears beginning to form in her eyes.

“Of course not, darling. Of course not,” he whispered, and wrapped his arms around her.

Jennifer let herself be held by Tom, taking comfort in being held and cuddled. For the moment neither one of them spoke. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed, then used his hairy chest to wipe away her tears.

“Stop it! No!” Tom laughed, edging away. “That tickles.”

“Good!” She nibbled his right nipple, then licked his breast.

“See!” he said at once, “you’re doing it again. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s wonderful, but you’re much more—”

“Careful, Tom,” she said, stepping away and opening the refrigerator door to put away the milk.

“I’m just telling you how much I like it, that’s all.” He tried to recapture her in his arms, but she moved his hands away and walked back to the bedroom, where she stripped out of the bathrobe and stood naked for a moment in the shadowy light of the room.

Tom came to the bedroom door and watched her while he finished his glass of milk. Jennifer crossed to her bed and pulled back the quilt.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he said from the doorway.

“Thank you.” She knew she was. She felt beautiful. Having sex always made her feel beautiful, and she was aware, too, that the shadowy light on her body aroused Tom. She turned toward him, and beckoned him toward her. He was right; she was behaving out of character. She felt as if she were watching herself on film.

“Jenny?” Tom whispered, approaching her. He sounded slightly nervous.

She smiled, inviting him closer with the coy downward slant of her lips, enjoying her control over the pace of their lovemaking.

“It’s all right,” she whispered, and she reached for him, slipped her arms around his shoulders and brought his face close to her breasts. “Here,” she told him, “they want you,” and then she slowly, softly tumbled him over onto the bed and made love to Tom again.

O boy with the slim limbs,

I seek you but you do not listen, For you see not me,

Nor know you are the charioteer of my soul.

Anakreon set down his split-reed pen and his papyrus, then leaned back against the cool wall of the palestra. The boys had come into the center of the gymnasium and were stripping off their clothes and lathering their young bodies with olive oil, and his eromenos was among them. His heart tugged at his throat, spotting the lean youth. He could not take his eyes off Phidias, who now, among the other boys, was laughing at some remark, enjoying himself. Anakreon smiled with pleasure, simply enjoying the sight of him. He had waited there in the shade of the colonnade for just the chance of seeing him.

“Ah, there you are, Anakreon,” a voice said from down the hallway.

Anakreon reached out and rolled up his piece of papyrus, hiding his poem from his friend Xenophanes, another of Athens’ aristocrats.

“Writing to the Gods, huh, Anakreon?” the man asked, folding his cloak beneath him and sitting down next to Anakreon on the bench. He was a large, fleshy man who was already sweating beneath his white cloak in the hot Athenian morning. “And which of these lads has your fancy this season, my friend?” He watched the pupils as he spoke, squinting his eyes against the bright sun.

“The finest of fair,” mumbled Anakreon, pulling himself up on the bench.

“They’re all fair at the age of puberty,” whispered Xenophanes, still keeping his eyes on the courtyard.

“True, Xenophanes, but my soul sings for young Phidias, the son of Ptolemy, there!” He nodded toward the courtyard where a red-cloaked instructor had divided the boys into wrestling teams, setting an older pupil to instruct the younger ones.

“Do you remember our days here, Anakreon?” Xenophanes asked, glancing at his friend, who still watched the courtyard and his young eromenos. When Anakreon did not respond, Xenophanes asked, “Have you coupled with the boy?”

Anakreon shook his head and sighed. “I have showered him with gifts, told him of my love. His family knows, of course.” He redraped his blue cloak and glanced at Xenophanes, adding, “Life was simpler, my friend, when we were the loved objects, not the lovers. The boy drives me mad with his cleverness.”

“His coyness, you mean,” Xenophanes answered, laughing.

“True. True. I would not have him be a prostitute, but by Zeus, his passivity drives me mad. He’d rather be with his friends, at his games, instead of walking about the city with me. There is much I could teach the boy.”

“I’m sure there is, Anakreon,” Xenophanes commented, glancing at his friend, “but your time will come, it always does, doesn’t it?” Xenophanes whispered, leaning closer. “You have had your way with many of these palestra boys.”

“It is my poetry, I confess, Xenophanes, and not my gross flesh that keeps their interest. And yes, I have had my way with some. I know. Yet the wait is always maddening.” Anakreon sighed. “And my loins ache.”

“So meanwhile, you have your poems to keep you company, to sing your song: ‘For my words the boys will all love me: I sing of grace, I know how to talk with grace.’”

Anakreon smiled, pleased by his friend’s acclaim, then said in verse,” ‘Again I am in love and not in love, I am mad and not mad.’ ” He nodded toward the boys. “So goes my life. I’d rather have one moment with his flesh than a room full of papyrus poems or an olive wreath at the Olympic games.”

“The games! Come, come, your days of sports are over.”

“I am not yet thirty, my dear Xenophanes.”

“And they are not yet fifteen,” Xenophanes commented, with a gesture toward the young sportsmen.

Flute music began and at once the athletes threw themselves into their wrestling matches. A chorus of shouts came from the courtyard, and the dust from their trampling feet rose in clouds, obscuring the men’s view.

“We’d do better in the Agora, buying hares from Boeotia, than standing in this dust storm. Let us go to the baths. My skin is filthy. I spent the morning with a Sophist at the foot of the Acropolis, and even there, the dirt and dust from the Agora were awful.”

“My loins sing for the boy,” Anakreon answered, “that boy is my muse.”

He glanced back at the courtyard. The instructor had called a halt to the wrestling matches and the dust had settled. Anakreon could see his young eromenos, wet with sweat and oil. He stood with his hands on his bare hips, panting in the bright sun. The fine gray dust of the courtyard clung to his lean frame, glistened in the daylight. Then the boy looked up, saw Anakreon standing there beyond the colonnade, and smiled. His white teeth flashed in his face, his bright blue eyes gleamed.

Anakreon’s heart soared. Tentatively he waved back and then went gladly with Xenophanes, swelling now with joy, for he had been noticed. In time he would plan to visit the family again, shower the lad with gifts, and someday soon, soon

His heart ached with anticipation and he said to Xenophanes, buoyant with his good fortune, “Come, my friend, let us go drink some wine at the baths, and I’ll write a poem about you, sing of your long-gone days of glory at the games.”

“It was only for you, Anakreon, that I wanted to win,” Xenophanes said, pausing to look at the poet.

Anakreon stopped walking. The two men were in the narrow street outside of the gymnasium. Below them lay the wide expanse of the Agora, the Athenian market square, above them was the Scambonidai, where all the wealthy of Athens lived in two-story stone houses with wide porticos and courtyards, and gynaecea, rooms for the women.

“I never knew,” he said seriously.

Xenophanes nodded. “Ah, my dear friend, we, too, suffer who do not have Apollo’s gift for poetry.” He tightened his cloak on his shoulder, smiling sadly at Anakreon. His round, fat face was losing its shiny glow. He seemed suddenly older in the fierce Aegean sun.

His abrupt confession had stunned and silenced Anakreon, and the poet reached out and touched Xenophane’s arm, whispering, “I will go to Delphi and sacrifice a goat to Apollo, so that he will send me the muse to write a poem in your honor, Xenophanes. Soon, you will be known throughout the world, the great Xenophanes. Schoolboys and students at the academy will recite my poem of your heroic deeds.”

“I have no heroic deeds, Anakreon, except for the number of kraters I can consume at a banquet.” He was smiling, trying to shake the moment of melancholy, and the two men turned again to walk to the baths.

Together on the narrow street, jockeyed as they were by the press of people and animals going also toward the center of the city, Anakreon reached over and gently touched his old friend, saying, “We have had more than one moment of bliss, my dear Xenophanes. We have had a lifetime of shared brotherly pleasures. We heard Aeschylus together at the theater and saw Alkaios win the stadion at the Olympics.”

“I’d give it all up to have had you once look at me the way you gazed on young Phidias.”

“I didn’t know, Xenophanes. I did not know.”

“Ah, the pity of it, as you poets would say.” Anakreon looked up, and in the distance he could see the sea, blue and calm to the edge of the horizon. He thought of his current quest, the young Phidias, and recalled the look of his lean limbs, his bright eyes, that wonderful innocent smile, and Anakreon’s heart tugged in his chest. Then the lumbering Xenophanes brushed against him on the rocky street, and Anakreon felt the weight of the big man, felt his sweat and gross flesh, and he, too, whispered, “Ah, the pity of it.” Then he fell silent and the two aristocrats walked in silence down the steep Athens hill to their drinking club.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“I THINK IT’S TIME for us to try to discover who you really are,” Phoebe Fisher said, after she had listened to Jennifer’s account of her recent behavior. It was the first time that Jennifer had seen the channeler since she killed her attackers. It was early in the afternoon and the midwinter sun filled the rooms and reflected off the waxed hardwood floor. Again Jennifer thought how lovely and charming the apartment looked. She wished that she could bring this kind of warmth to her own Brooklyn Heights place. It was all the wall hangings, the fabrics and the exotic plants, she decided, that gave the living room its special quality.

Jennifer had not told Phoebe about the killings but did allude to the change in her behavior with Tom, how she was becoming increasingly more aggressive in her lovemaking.

“And was he upset?”

“No, I guess not,” Jennifer answered, laughing. “But I was! I mean, it makes me nervous to be that

way.”

“There’s no need not to enjoy your new intenseness. You are just experiencing what is truly you. Your essence.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to frighten him away,” she told Phoebe, as if to make a joke of her fierceness in bed.

“Do you want to talk to Dance?” Phoebe asked next.

“Oh God, I don’t know. That’s scary.” She sat back in the oversized mission rocker.

“Good!” Phoebe said, smiling. “Being frightened is good. It clears out the pores, makes us more aware of our surroundings.” She lifted up her teacup and took a sip.

Jennifer looked again toward the flames of the fire. Phoebe was giving her time to decide. She wasn’t rushing her, but that only made her more nervous.

“How do I talk to him? I’ve never done anything like this.”

“Well, when I go into a trance,” Phoebe explained, “and he comes through, he usually says something that shows he understands your problem, and then he’ll say something like, ‘How may I help you?’ That’s his signal. Then you may ask anything, talk about anything, whatever. There is no such thing as a stupid question. Out of the most mundane questions have come answers and information for all of us. To him nothing is boring, everything is for the first time. This is what he has been sent to do for our society. If he feels a reluctance on your part to talk about something, he will not volunteer information. If he feels you want to get the ball rolling, he will go as far and as fast as you want to take it. He reflects whatever energy you put out.”

“But can he help me understand what is happening?”

“Jennifer, I don’t know. I think he might be able to point you in the right direction. He might even have some specific answers. He might be able to look into your spirit life and see where you have been, in what ways you have been reincarnated. “

“How will I know that Dance is here? Do you tell me or what?”

“Well, when the connection is made you’ll see my body go through a few little reactions. Nothing about this is painful to me, you should know. The experience is very energizing and very valuable. For me it is like a very deep dream. I really don’t hear the words because consciousness is not focused in that way. I am aware that there is an interaction going on, and I feel the emotions, I feel the energy, but that’s all. I don’t listen to your conversation. Dance and I are having our own conversation.”

“Does he speak English?”

“They don’t use language at all in his world. His mind sends thought, and because my consciousness is diffused, it allows his mind to sort of imprint its vibration on mine. So basically my energy is being used as a translator box for him. Whatever language I’m programmed in, that is the language in which his thoughts will emerge from my mouth. That’s what you hear. He is not actually speaking at all.”

She paused a moment. “Are you ready?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I guess.” Jennifer laughed nervously.

“All right, then, help me prepare myself to be receptive. Let’s meditate for a few minutes.” Phoebe drew herself up and crossed her legs. “Let’s close our eyes. After the meditation, when I’m in my trance, you can drink tea, whatever, but at the beginning let us be quiet and keep our eyes closed. Get comfortable yourself and try to breathe as fluidly as you can.”

Jennifer did not close her eyes. She was afraid of the darkness, afraid of not knowing what Phoebe Fisher was doing.

The small woman linked her legs together and laid her arms loosely in her lap. Her eyes were closed and her head was bent forward as she softly spoke.

“I ask the salamanders to put a ring of fire around us tonight, to protect us during this session, and Dance, I ask you that you only bring the spirits for our highest good to us.”

For a moment Phoebe was silent, meditating. She had lit small candles in the room, and in the gathering darkness and the dying fire, they glowed like distant vigil lights.

“I want you to see yourself surrounded by a big ball of blue,” Phoebe said, whispering now. “A very bright, vibrant blue color. All around you. It covers you from head to foot like a big cocoon. It goes through you, permeating you. This beautiful blue brings peace and serenity and spiritual awareness. In front of you, behind you, over your head, through you. Now clothe and purify us. I want to bring down on white light through both of us. See it entering through the top of your head, gently coming into every part of your body. Don’t block it, Jennifer. Let it gently wash through you from head to foot. See it entering every cell and every pore. This beautiful beam of white light.”

Jennifer closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the beam of light.

“Now, Jennifer, I am going to say a few words. Let your mind freely associate with these words in a positive way. This is an exercise in raising your vibrations so we invoke only the higher entities.”

“Love.”

Jennifer thought of Tom, of the first time she had seen him striding into a courtroom, and how he seemed to overwhelm everyone else with his presence and authority.

“Joy,” Phoebe whispered.

She thought of running across the meadows of the nature center at Planting Fields. She had been with Kathy Handley and Eileen. It was a wonderful warm spring day, and they were all skipping school.

“Peace.”

She had made love to Tom and was lying in his sleeping arms. It was a quiet afternoon in the city, and she did not want to be anywhere else in the world, ever. And she had thought then that that was real peace.

“O Master of Creation,” Phoebe went on, “Thou art the sky full of happiness that displays all the stars of the universe. I humbly ask to be a channel today to Jennifer, that I be out of the way, that I give up control of my body to the spirits so that they may come and speak to her. We want to thank all of you who are with us today for coming and giving us your time and your energies. God bless you all.”

“Let us now return to the silence. Be very still and quiet in guiding the spirits to come and to speak.”

Jennifer opened her eyes again. They had adjusted to the darkness, and she could see clearly. Phoebe was before her, still sitting in her yoga position. Her head was still bowed, but her body moved, as if she were unsettled and disturbed by a nightmare. Her small shoulders drew tight, and like a reflex, her arms jerked, then settled down again into her lap. She took several quick, deep breaths.

Jennifer’s eyes widened. But then Phoebe settled down again, and from deep within her came a man’s voice.

“I come in love and fellowship, to clear the blocks that are in your way so that you will become more enlightened about where you are going and how to get there. Now how may I help you?”

Jennifer, mesmerized, could see Phoebe’s small body react, see her shake and jerk, as if the voice were tearing her apart with the force of its power.

“I see that you do not consider your feelings valid. When you were a child, your parents did not treat your feelings with respect.”

“Yes,” Jennifer whispered. She had never put the feeling into words for herself before, but she knew he spoke the truth.

“Your feelings, your emotions, were discarded, and now in your adulthood it is difficult for you to feel valued. You are questioning something. There is doubt. There is mistrust of yourself, and this reflects directly onto others. There is anger.”

“I’m not angry,” Jennifer whispered.

“Support yourself,” Dance continued, not responding to Jennifer. “Begin to know yourself and your reactions. You are human just like everyone else, and your feelings are natural.”

Dance stopped speaking, and Phoebe took several deep breaths. Her eyes were still closed, and her face was calm, showing no emotion.

Jennifer leaned forward in the dying light of the fireplace and peered closer, trying to see if Phoebe were truly in a trance. Then Dance spoke up again, his voice loud and hard in the silence of the room.

“You have come with questions?” he asked. Phoebe lifted her head and her eyelids fluttered.

“Yes, I have some,” Jennifer responded, surprised by her own courage. “I am told my body is carried forward. What part is carried forward?”

“Just your spirit, that is all.”

Jennifer thought a moment. “Like if I see someone I think I know from before, but there is no way I could know him or her?.”

“That is an energy recognition. Everyone vibrates a certain way. Other spirits will recognize your energy. That is what soul mates are all about. The flesh body is just what you have chosen. Some people choose to be crippled in this lifetime to balance a karma from a previous lifetime, perhaps one in which they were abusing their flesh.”

“How far back do I go? I mean, how far back do my lives go?”

“To the very beginning, where everyone was created equal. All souls are the same age. Now, some people are called ‘old souls’ because they have been through many reincarnations. Other souls have chosen to return only once or twice. Some have never been reincarnated.”

“We ourselves choose to be reincarnated?”

“Yes, but only a part of you is reincarnated each time. There is a highly evolved part of yourself—part of your total soul group—that is called the higher self. Only the parts of your soul that needed to experience this incarnation are here today. Part of you has already gone through a more highly evolved development and is now above you, guiding you.”

“What about my other incarnations?” Jennifer asked. “What was I in past lives?”

Dance stopped speaking for a moment, and Phoebe’s head jerked back.

“I see one lifetime. You were a nun in Italy, and a sinner.”

“Was I evil?” Jennifer thought of her murders. Maybe she had always been evil; maybe that was her destiny.

“All souls—or spirits, as you call them-—are given the opportunity to be the creator as well as the created. Some spirits create bad in their lifetimes, and some, good. There was an upheaval at the source of the universe—all our universes—and that was the beginning of karma.”

“When did that happen, in time?”

“Time is not relevant. There is no real time; we don’t measure. There are none of your words to explain it. Some of the karma lessons are painful, but they are always for the good of the soul. I wish you could see—with my mind—how far you have come.”

“What will happen to me in this life?”

Phoebe Fisher shook her head. “I know, but I wish not to tell you, Jennifer,” Dance replied. “This life you must live. Yet do not fear. You are not alone. You have spirits around you, parts of your soul group, your teachers and mentors, and they will guide you, as they always have. Listen to them.”

“Are they always with me?”

“Yes and no. Spirits come and go. We don’t own each other. If you seek them, if you enlighten yourself, they will come to you and aid you.”

Jennifer watched Phoebe Fisher, wondering if it all was a game, playacting. And as soon as she had the thought, she dismissed it. The happiness she felt in Phoebe’s presence was not something that could be faked.

“Do you have any more questions?” Dance asked.

“Yes, I do. Do you know what has been happening to me, what I’ve been doing to other people?”

“Tell me,” Dance said, and Phoebe’s body leaned forward to listen.

Jennifer told her story, told of the incidents and her violent reactions, and when she finished, she asked only, “How do I keep myself from doing this again? From hurting people?”

“I cannot help you,” said Dance, as Phoebe rocked back and forth. “Someone from your past life—not your future lives—is trying to gain hold of your spirit. In the past, in the deep and hidden past of your soul, lies a secret and a tragedy. You must discover yourself what this secret is. And to discover this truth, you must return to your first breath of life. And there lies the mystery of your life.”

“And now I must leave you. My dear Phoebe is tiring. I leave you with one warning. Do not fight this spirit who wishes to speak.”

Jennifer nodded, then realized that Dance was slipping away, but before she could speak, Phoebe’s shoulders shook. Her head rocked back, and her small body trembled. Then she looked up and smiled at Jennifer. “Well, he came, didn’t he?” she asked in her own voice.

“Yes,” Jennifer said. She had become so accustomed to Dance, she was shocked that Phoebe was herself again.

“And was he helpful?”

“You didn’t hear?”

Phoebe shook her head, smiling apologetically. “Dance was helping me with some of my own questions.”

“He told me I was once an Italian nun.”

“Oh, how lovely! I was once a maid in the royal household of King James, as well as—briefly—his mistress. It’s exciting, isn’t it?” She smiled at Jennifer, looking more alert than she had seemed earlier.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe,” Jennifer said, sighing. “But at least he told me what I had to do. Learn to meditate.” Jennifer smiled and stood up. “I must go. I’m exhausted.” She began to collect her belongings.

“What else? Do you want to share with me what else he said?” Phoebe asked.

“You don’t know, do you?” Jennifer said, staring at the smaller woman.

Phoebe shook her head. “No, really, I don’t. I mean, it must seem silly, my talking to you, but I wasn’t consciously there. I had turned over my body to Dance.”

“Well, it seems there’s someone struggling to get into my body. One of my past lives.”

“Yes,” said Phoebe, nodding. “As I said when we first met, I had this feeling, this emotion, that there was someone else—a trapped soul—who wanted to speak.”

“Well, he’s not speaking,” Jennifer replied, then kept herself from saying more.

“Perhaps it is a she,” Phoebe answered. “Gender isn’t an issue in the spirit world.” She hugged Jennifer as they said good night. “Good luck to you,” she whispered. “And remember, I’m always here for you.”

“Thank you,” Jennifer said, with tears in her eyes. It had been a long time since she had felt this close to another woman. “Thank you for everything. For your understanding most of all.”

“Yeah, that’s my job.” Phoebe laughed, then looked up into Jennifer’s eyes. The smile was gone from her face.

“What’s the matter?” Jennifer asked.

Phoebe shook her head. “I’m not sure. I felt something, that’s all. I felt danger, I think. I mean, it was a new emotion for me. Be careful.”

“I’m going right home.”

“Good! I want you to promise you’ll call if you want to have me channel Dance again.”

“Thank you.”

“And I think you need a crystal.”

“Oh, I have one!” Jennifer answered. She produced the small piece of quartz from the pocket of her coat.

Phoebe frowned at it a moment. “Did you buy it for yourself?” she asked.

“No. A good friend who knows Kathy Dart gave it to me.”

Phoebe shook her head and plucked the small crystal from Jennifer’s palm.

“I think it is best,” she said carefully, “if you have your own crystal.” She slipped Jennifer’s quartz into the deep pocket of her own wool skirt, then drew a pencil and pad from the same pocket. “Here is a name of a crystal store downtown,” she said. “I know the owner. Please go see him as soon as you can. This afternoon if possible.” She handed the slip of paper to Jennifer, and patted the pocket where she had hidden the quartz. “I’ll see about ‘deprogramming’ this one. For the moment, I think you’re safer without a charged-up crystal that doesn’t have your best interest in mind.”

“What?” Jennifer stared at Phoebe, completely baffled.

“I’ll explain everything in time.” She gently pushed Jennifer out the door.

Jennifer nodded, too confused to respond. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said, reaching for her purse. “You have been so helpful to me. What is your fee?”

“Well, I usually charge fifty dollars for a thirty-minute session, but

” She was looking away, as if embarrassed to be talking about money, “But yours is such an unusual case, and you are clearly a sympathetic soul. Let’s say twenty-five dollars, shall we?” She looked up at Jennifer with a smile.

Jennifer pressed the twenty-five dollars into Phoebe’s hand and pushed open the heavy iron gate. It had started to snow again, and she realized she wasn’t going home to Brooklyn Heights until she had a crystal to protect her.

“I’ll call you,” she said, turning to Phoebe.

“Yes,” Phoebe replied, “I know you will.” Smiling still, the channeler closed the iron gate of her basement apartment and stepped back into the dark interior of her home.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

JENNIFER TOOK THE SUBWAY to the Village. It was not rush hour, so the train was half deserted. Instead of burying her head in a book as she usually did on the subway, she glanced around, checking for transit police. When she saw one, she slipped down into her fur coat and hid her face.

The store was located off Fourteenth Street. It was a tiny sliver of a place, with steel bars drawn across the showcase window. Not open, she thought, disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to buy a crystal. But then, behind the counter, she saw a man, and she stepped up the snowy front steps and opened the door.

“I thought you were closed,” she said.

The man smiled. “We keep the bars around the windows all the time because of the location. You never know what people will do.”

“I’d like to buy a crystal,” Jennifer said, embarrassed to be saying it out loud.

“Well, let’s hope so!” The man smiled. He held a quartz crystal in his hands and wiped it lovingly with a piece of soft cloth. “Is it for you, or are you buying someone a gift?”

“Does it matter?”

“Oh, yes.” The man slipped the crystal back into the case, then gave Jennifer his full attention. “If you’re buying one for yourself, then I’d want you to hold it in your hands. To see if you feel anything.” He gestured at the hundreds of crystals on display. “One of these is right for you. You’ll see. The crystal will choose you, not the other way around.”

Jennifer liked the man, liked his soft blue eyes. “Well,” she confessed, “I want to buy a crystal for myself.”

“Fine. Take your time, look around.”

“I want a small one,” Jennifer said quickly. “One I can carry around with me. In my pocket.” Jennifer stepped closer to the small glass case. Dozens of clear quartz crystals were displayed on blue velvet trays.

“This is your first crystal?”

“Yes, I guess. I mean, a friend did give me one, but

“

“Do you know why you want a crystal?” he asked next, reaching into the case and pulling out two trays.

“Do I have to have a reason?” Jennifer realized she sounded defensive. “I mean, a friend suggested it. And I thought it might be fun.” Her voice had risen.

The salesman looked over at her questioningly. His blue eyes were even softer and kinder up close. Jennifer felt foolish for having raised her voice.

“Well, what I meant is that people buy crystals for different reasons. Besides, the crystals are themselves different. Now this is a lovely single-terminal quartz crystal. As you see, it has just this single point. And this smokey quartz here is helpful if you’re seeking to calm yourself down, gain control of your feelings. Or this amethyst. Amethysts are very protective crystals; they’re used by many people to raise spiritual powers.” He paused to look at Jennifer for a moment. “You don’t know much about crystals, do you?” he asked. “I mean, the power of crystals and why we use them?”

Jennifer shook her head, feeling foolish.

The salesman lifted a small crystal off the tray and held it out to her. “Hold this in your hand, why don’t you, while we talk. My name, by the way, is Jeff.”

Jennifer nodded. “Hello. I’m Jennifer.”

“Okay, Jennifer, here comes Crystals 101.” He, too, was holding a crystal in his fingers as he talked. “Crystals hold the four elements of our world within their very being. Earth, fire, water, and air. They are also beautiful, as you can see, in their pure, clear symmetry. So when you hold your crystal, you are holding the world within your fingers. You are holding creation itself.”

“Some crystals are meant for you, others are not, which is why I wanted to know if you were buying the crystal for yourself. It’s important to be in tune with the crystal from the first. Here, why don’t you hold another.” He gave her a second crystal, and as soon as Jennifer slipped her right hand around it, she felt a charge of warmth through her fingers.

“This one feels better,” she said.

“Good! We’re getting closer. Now you have to program your little friend.”

“Program?”

Jeff smiled. “Yes, you need to tell a crystal what you want. Crystals contain energy; you have to direct it.”

“How?”

“Hold it in your hands. Think of what you want to have happen or what you wish to do. Visualize. Say it’s a health problem. Someone you love is suffering from cancer. You visualize that person active again and place the image of this healthy person in the crystal.” He leaned back from the counter. “You don’t believe in the power of crystals?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Jennifer said slowly. “I’m afraid that, you know, it’s all so faddish. It’s so much the yuppie thing to believe in.”

“It’s not really, you know,” Jeff said. He returned one tray of crystals to the display case and took out two large pieces of smokey quartz. “Some people, I guess, think that crystals are just part of the New Age movement, but primitive societies all over the world have used them throughout time to heal, and to predict the future. There’s nothing new about crystals or crystal lore.”

“Well, yes, I know,” Jennifer said quickly. “It’s just that I know it’s all tied up with channeling and everything.”

The salesman seemed at the moment not to be listening to her. He had picked up the smoky quartz and was turning it in his hands, and then she noticed that he had focused the point at her. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Smoky quartz has the power to calm. To soothe nerves.”

“Please,” Jennifer said, “don’t point it at me.” She backed away from the display case.

“You have nothing to fear,” Jeff said, watching her. “Crystals are harmless. You bring to them your own energy, and they expand it, energize it, that’s all.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Jennifer answered, trying to make a joke of her concern, but she was thinking, too, of what she had already done.

The man carefully returned the quartz to the blue pad.

“Why are you here?” he asked, frowning. “Why do you want to purchase a crystal? I’m not sure you’re ready for one.”

“Please,” she said, stepping toward the counter. “I was told

that a crystal would help.”

“It will help,” he answered, “but you have to be ready to accept that help. I’d be more comfortable with myself if I didn’t sell you one at this time. You can try elsewhere, of course.”

“Oh, come on. Are you in business or not? What’s the owner going to say?”

“I am the owner,” he replied softly. He walked around to the other counter, as if he had already dismissed her from his store.

“I was told to come here. To buy a crystal from you.”

“By whom?” He looked directly at Jennifer.

“By a channeler,” Jennifer said carefully, not sure if she should give out the name.

“Who?”

“Kathy Dart,” she lied.

The store owner flinched at the mention of Dart’s name. “I must ask you to leave,” he said.

“Why?”

“I don’t want anything to do with that woman.”

“She’s a nationally known channeler. She has made video tapes and records.”

“Please leave.” The owner came out from behind his counter.

Jennifer began to back away from him. “Please,” she said quickly, “I really need my own crystal.”

“Out!” He was angry. “Kathy Dart is a charlatan, not a shaman.”

“You may be right,” Jennifer answered, noting the antique words he used.

“I am right.”

He opened the front door. Snow was blowing into the store, but he stood there, grimly, waiting for her to leave. What has Kathy Dart done to this man? Jennifer wondered.

She stepped outside, thankful at least that she hadn’t turned her rage on him.

“Would you tell me something else?” Jennifer asked, standing on the snowy sidewalk. “Do you know Phoebe Fisher?” He nodded. “Is she who she says she is?”

The question seemed to surprise him. He stared at her for a moment, as if deciding how to respond, and then he said simply, “Yes,” and closed the door.

Jennifer turned and walked toward the subway. She had gone nearly a whole block before she realized her right hand was still clutched around the small, clear, single-terminated quartz crystal. It was small and warm in her hand, as if it were a tiny bird, lovely and alive. With her fingers nestled around it gently, she tucked it into the safety of her deep coat pocket. She should return it, she knew. She should walk back and give the man money for it, but she didn’t. She continued on her way toward the subway. Later, she would send a check to the Crystal Connection. Now the crystal belonged to her. It felt warm and snug in her pocket, and for the first time in days, she felt secure.

As she walked the several snowy blocks to the station, lost in her own thoughts, she never saw the solitary hunter limping along behind her, never heard the steel-tipped cane digging deep into the snow as she was followed from the Crystal Connection.

This hunter had spotted her first in front of the Ice Age hut built of mammoth bones and tusks twenty thousand years ago.

The hunter rode the subway out to Brooklyn Heights, got off with Jennifer, and moving ahead when she stopped to buy a small bouquet of flowers, limped off into the gathering darkness of early evening to await her arrival home.

Jennifer never bought flowers at the small subway shop, but seeing the cluster of fresh bright bouquets near the newspaper stand, she had acted on impulse and paid an exorbitant five dollars and forty cents for a half-dozen carnations. It was something, she thought, to brighten up her spirits on a dreary day.

Out on the street, she thought briefly about buying some groceries before going home, but she was suddenly afraid again of being spotted, of somehow being recognized as the “ape killer,” so instead, she buried her head in the deep collar of her fur coat and hurried home.

Also, Tom was coming over later, and she had so much to think about. He had come to accept her knowledge of David Engle’s guilt as an instinct on her part; while he still didn’t buy her story of seeing Margit, he was willing to believe that in some vaguely spiritual way, her close friendship with Margit had given her some special insight. But Jennifer wondered what he would do if she told him about Dance.

She was too tired to think about it. The fresh air was making her feel better, though. She was glad to be back in Brooklyn, and the thought of being safely inside her apartment made her smile in anticipation. She was away from the busy streets, going downhill toward the water, where the streets were darker and less congested.

She stepped between two parked cars and dug deep into her pockets, hunting with her fingers for her apartment keys, and then she stopped and stared ahead at the empty sidewalk. There was no one approaching. The dark sidewalk was shadowy but deserted. She heard nothing but the cold wind. A car passed, its tires crunching in the new snow.

Something was wrong, but she did not know what. The feeling she had was vague and unfocused, like a tiny nag at her subconscious. She was being paranoid, she told herself.

She stepped ahead, forced herself to continue down the street, still wary from her premonitions.

She walked slowly, edging away from the buildings, keeping some distance between herself and the dark front steps of the brownstones, with their small gated stoops. She kept away from the garbage cans, glanced to see that no one was crouched behind them, hiding until she got within reach.

She felt her fear. It pumped through her body, making her sweat under her layers of clothes. She loosened her fur collar and took a deep breath. She was damp under her arms, between her legs.

Then she smelled the hunter. She caught a scent in the swirling wind, and she raised her head and sniffed the air. Someone was here, somewhere in the darkness, behind a car perhaps, hidden in the shadows next to a building.

She spun around. Her primal rage swept through her, pumped rage and fear into her veins. In the gathering darkness, she dropped her fresh flowers and crouched down, growling and baring her teeth. She backed away from where she sensed the hunter was, hiding behind a cluster of metal garbage cans. She would not attack unless she was attacked. She kept moving backward, watching the dark corners of the buildings, the hidden doorways of basement apartments, the shadowy hedges. There were now, she knew by instinct, dozens of places where a person might hide from sight until ready to strike.

Snow blew against her face and blurred her vision, but she could see better now in the darkness, and she cocked her head, listening for sounds, the deep steady breathing of some animal waiting to pounce, the sudden motion of a hunter as he got her within range.

She heard the cane before it struck. She heard the thin walnut stick slice the winter air, caught a glimpse of the silver knob, and she tried to duck, but the hunter had surprised her, leaped down from the low branches of a sidewalk sycamore, and struck her in the back of the head. Jennifer was dead before her knees buckled and hit the ground.

When Amenhotep returned from Abu Simbel, Roudidit had already crossed to the other side. Amenhotep went immediately into mourning for his wife, spending the long days as custom required, in idleness, waiting for her body to be prepared for the tomb. He kept himself from thinking what the embalmers were doing to her beautiful body, how they were cutting out her brains and organs, wrapping them up in jars for burial, then filling the body with spices. It took all of three months before Roudidit was properly wrapped in bandages for burial and the funerary furniture was ready.

Amenhotep insisted on adorning her, though the first sight of her terrified him as nothing had ever frightened him in battle. Her beautiful face had shriveled and sunk, and her lips were wizened.

He stood looking down at his dear wife, wrapped in linen, with beeswax covering her eyes and ears, and whispered his farewell.

“I was a young man when I married you, and I spent my life with you. I rose to the highest rank but I never deserted you. I never caused you unhappiness. I never deserted you, from my youth to the time when I was holding all manner of important posts for Pharaoh. Nay, rather, I always said to myself, ‘She has always been my companion.’ Tell me now, what do I do?”

Amenhotep stood a moment longer, and then slowly, gently, he adorned the mummy. He covered the incision where they had removed her organs with a thick gold sheet inlaid with the oudja, the sacred eye with the power to heal wounds. Then he placed a copy of the Book of

the Dead, the guide to the underworld, between her legs, and dressed her with necklaces and amulets, as well as finger stalls for each finger and toe, rings and sandals, all for her long journey to the other bank of life. All of this was new jewelry that he had had made after her death. He had a winged scarab with the goddesses Isis and Nephthys carved as the supporters, and then engraved the back with the words, “O my heart, heart of my mother, heart of my forms, set not thyself up to bear witness against me, speak not against me in the presence of the judges, cast not thy weight against me before the Lord of the Scales. Thou are my ka in my breast, the Khnoum which gives wholeness to my limb. Speak no falsehood against me in the presence of the god!” He added other engraved scarabs, not mounted, but with hearts of lapis lazuli, and all carrying his dead wife’s name.

He had amulets and statuettes of the gods Anubis and Thoth, which he hung around her neck and attached to the pectoral. Besides the ornaments, he placed tiny reproductions of walking sticks, scepters, weapons, for he left nothing to chance in his wife’s house of eternity. The next world, he knew, was no place of peace and quiet. It was full of hidden traps and dangers, and Roudidit must be prepared for her journey.

When he was done, he stepped back and let the embalmers wrap her again in linen bands and place a gold mask over her face. Then, turning to him, they nodded. She was ready for the cortege.

His servants went first, carrying cakes and flowers, pottery and stone vases. Behind them came the furniture: beds and chests, cupboards, and the chariot, everything that Roudidit would need in the other world. Behind them came his wife’s jewelry, all Roudidit’s necklaces and jewels, carved human-headed birds and other valuables, displayed on dishes so the crowds would see her wealth, the wealth he had given Roudidit and which would travel now with her to the other side.

The idlers watching the procession could not see Roudidit herself. The stone sarcophagus containing her body was hidden beneath a catafalque drawn by cows and men, all of it mounted on a boat and flanked by statues of Isis and Nephthys.

The women followed, his sisters and relatives, and all the hired mourners, who had smeared their faces with mud and bared their breasts as they wailed and rent their garments, lamenting Roudidit’s departure.

At the Nile they were met by a priest with a panther’s skin draped over his shoulders. He carried with him burning incense, and the bare-breasted mourners bowed and stood back, letting the boat bearing the catafalque be lowered into the water.

Amenhotep, too, stood aside, and watched in silence as the catafalque was launched into the Nile River. He stood thinking of his wife, of when they were young and first in love. She had been promised to an Ethiopian monarch, and he to Tamit, the daughter of Nenoferkaptak. He had beseeched Pharaoh, and the gods had said he could marry Roudidit if he won her in battle, if he defeated the Ethiopian and brought the kingdom of Kush as ransom. He had gone off to do battle with an army of Nubians fully armed with coats of mail, swords, and chariots. And when he reached Egypt again, he drafted the Nubians into his army, gave them command of the archers and leaders of their people, and branded them all slaves under the seal of his name. And Pharaoh, seeing the wealth he had gathered, gave him Roudidit to wed.

He had never loved another woman in his life, and he knew now he would never love another, though already he had been offered the young sister of his brother’s wife. He was too old, Amenhotep knew, to let another come into his heart.

As the boat bearing the catafalque slipped away from shore, he and the mourners stepped into a second vessel to follow close behind, accompanied by two boats full of Roudidit’s possessions. The women went at once to the roof of the cabin and continued to cry, sobbing in the direction of the catafalque. Their dirge carried across the wide river:

Let Roudidit go swiftly to the west, to the land of truth.

The women of the Byblite boat weep sorely, sorely.

In peace, in peace, O praised one, fare westward in peace.

If it please the god, when the day changes to

eternity,

we shall see thee that goest now to the land where

all men are one.

From the eastern shore came the reply from others, wishing their farewells, their voices carrying clearly over the calm Nile:

To the west, to the west, the land of the just.

The place thou didst love groans and laments.

Amenhotep stepped to the bow of the boat, into the hot Nile sun, and shouted in the direction of the catafalque, to where his lost wife lay wrapped in her scented linens:

O my sister, o my wife, o my friend!

Stay, rest in thy place, leave not the place where thou dost abide.

Alas, thou goest hence to cross the Nile.

O you sailors, hasten not, let her be:

Ye shall return to your houses,

but Roudidit is going to the land of eternity.

When he had sung the dirge, he moved again into the shade of the cabin and out of the blazing sun. The cries and laments of the female mourners rose up, filling the air, but he turned toward the western shore and saw that a group had already gathered on the sand bank. A number of little stalls had been set up to sell goods, food, and devotional objects.

Everyone profits from the crossing over, Amenhotep thought, everyone but myself. I am the one who has lost his world.

She had almost died once, in childbearing when they were first married, and he had prayed to the goddess Hathor, the Lady of Imaou and of the Sycamore, to save Roudidit’s life and that of his newborn son. And then the baby had cried “Mbi” and turned his face to the earth, and Amenhotep knew then that nothing but evil would prevail. And he had taken his son out then, and without naming the boy, without entering it in the House of Life, killed the infant, before more harm could come to his family.

She had never given birth to another child.

The four boats were docked and unloaded, and the procession was gradually reformed. They moved up the bank and away from the booths, following behind the catafalque, which, across the flat, cultivated land, was being hauled on a sledge by two cows. Ahead of them all was the priest, sprinkling water from a ewer.

There was only the funeral procession now, all the elders had fallen away, left behind at the bank. Amenhotep moved ahead to greet the goddess Hathor, who, in the shape of a cow, emerged from a clump of papyrus at the entrance of the tomb.

The catafalque was brought to the entrance and the sarcophagus removed. He stepped to the sarcophagus and placed a scented cone on its head, as if greeting a guest in his own home. Behind him, the female mourners began again to weep and beat their heads in anguish. There were more priests now, coming forward with bread and jugs of beer, as well as an adze, the curved knife shaped like an ostrich feather, and a palette ending in two scrolls.

All these, he knew, were objects to empower the priests to counteract the effects of the embalming, to restore his dead wife on the other side so she could use her limbs and her missing organs, so she could see, could open her mouth and speak, could eat and move once again.

The long months of mourning, of suffering his losses, were over.

Amenhotep cried out, “O my sister, it is thy husband, Amenhotep, that speaks. Leave me not! Dost thou wish that I should be parted from thee? If I depart thou wilt be alone, and none will be left to follow thee. Though thou wast wont to be merry with me, now thou art silent and speakest not.”

He turned away from the women and stepped down into the tomb, down to the square stone receptacle that had been carved out, and watched as his servants carried his wife and lowered her into place. He placed Roudidit’s amulets beside her, then moved away so that the heavy stone lid could be set in place. The jars containing her organs had been put in a chest, and this chest was set down in the tomb by the priests; the funeral furniture had been arranged, and then boxes of oushebtiou, the small statuettes of all her loved ones, were placed in the vault.

He moved out of the tomb, back into the brilliant sunlight of midday. The priests came out, still sprinkling water, and the masons moved to wall up the entrance of the tomb.

Before him, in the sunlight, Amenhotep could see that food for the mourners had been placed out in the courtyard of the building that he had constructed, years before, above the tomb.

He walked through a small garden of sycamores and palm trees and sat in one of the newly decorated rooms of the building. He had always thought that Roudidit would be the one to sit there when he crossed over to the other world. He had never thought that he would be the one left behind on earth.

A harpist came forward from the entrance and thanked all of the mourners for coming, singing that Roudidit was happy in the world beyond. Another harpist picked up the melancholy strain, and sang:

The song was not meant for Roudidit, Amenhotep knew, but for him. The gods were telling him that he must go on with his life, that his lovely wife was safe and happy in the land of the west, and that he must turn to human concerns.

He smiled and motioned his servant to pour him wine, to bring him food, and he noticed that his sisters smiled at his sudden enthusiasm. Then he stood and raised his cup to his lips, and over the cool rim, he studied one woman, a maidservant, who had come to beat her breast, rend her garments, and mourn the passing over of his wife to the other side.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

JENNIFER SAW HERSELF FLOATING above her body. She was dead, she realized, but the thought caused her no pain or fear. She felt only free and oddly happy. All her guilt was gone. She regretted nothing. She missed no one. Not Tom. She would have liked to have said good-bye, but that was all.

How wonderful death was. Why did people fear it? She watched the team of doctors hovering over her body, inserting tubes and needles. She felt nothing. She had always been so afraid of injections, but now she smiled, and her smile bubbled up into a laugh. It was as if she had drunk too much and was losing control. But now there was no control to lose.

The doctors were blocking the view of her face, and she moved into a different position. It seemed as if she were hang gliding, surrounded by the silence of the wind. Doctors and nurses were shouting to each other. She was aware of their urgency, but she didn’t listen. The details they were discussing no longer mattered to her. It was so much easier to have died this way, without any pain, without any long illness, without having to see her life slip away year after year as she grew older. She had died young, that’s all. It was no big deal.

And then she felt pain. A wedge of excruciating pain took her breath away. She saw her face on the table reflect it.

“It’s not time, Jennifer,” a voice said, a voice that she recognized although it had been years since she heard it.

“Danny! Danny! Where are you?” She looked around, but the world she floated in was gray with clouds.

“I’m here. I’m here.”

She understood him, but there was no one speaking to her. Somehow, she just knew what he wanted to tell her.

“Let me see you, Danny,” she begged, still scanning the grayness for a sign of life.

“You would not know me, Jennifer. I’m not as you knew me. That was another life, another time for me.”

“Oh, Danny, I don’t understand. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Please

” She sounded like a little girl, as desolate as the day Danny had disappeared from her life, gone off to die in Vietnam.

“You will, honey. You will. And I’ll be there to help you.”

“I love you, Danny. I love you, and I’m sorry you were killed.”

“It had to happen, sweetie, and it’s all right. You know that now. You know it means nothing to die.”

“I don’t want to live, not anymore. Let me stay with you.”

“You can’t, Jennifer. It’s not your time. But we’ll be together again in another time. Go and fulfill your destiny, what your soul chose for you.”

“I thought I understood

” Jennifer was weeping again. She had a piercing headache centered between her eyes.

“You will in time.”

“I’m sorry you were killed. I didn’t want you to die. I loved you, Danny. You’re the only one I’ve really loved.” She reached out for him, although she couldn’t see him, then realized she was moving, falling, slipping away from the safe place of her death, down and down into her very own body.

She struggled, she fought it, but the battle was over; she was slipping back again, into life.

“Okay, we’ve got her,” one of the doctors shouted, eyeing the gauges of the life-support system, seeing that the flickering needle was responding. “We’ve got life here.”

“Thank God,” one of the nurses was whispering. “She was really gone.”

“I know. I know,” the doctor said, unsnapping a rubber cord from around Jennifer’s right arm, “but we got lucky this time. Clean her up and take her upstairs.” As he turned away, Jennifer fell asleep, feeling no more exhausted than if she had had a tough day at work; but she had been on the emergency-room table for over an hour.

When she woke, Tom was with her, dozing in the chair near the hospital window. She watched him while he slept. The sunlight was on his face, and he had not shaved. He had on his old blue Oxford button-down and gray cords. He had kicked off his Adirondack moccasin shoes and was wearing the pair of thick red wool socks she had bought him for Valentine’s Day. She realized she wanted to hold him, but when she tried to sit up, she was too weak to move. Her wrist was taped and she was being fed intravenously.

“Tom,” she whispered, and at the soft sound of her voice, he stirred and blinked his eyes open and quickly came to her, lifting her hand to press her soft palm against his cheek. She could feel the stubble of his dark whiskers. “Tom, I’m sorry,” she told him.

“It’s okay. Hey, you were mugged.” He was smiling at her, his gray eyes cloudy with sleep, but soft, too, and tender. “You’re going to be fine. Just fine.” He kept smiling.

“I’m sorry for everything I’ve done to you.” She began to choke on her tears, and he stood quickly and pressed the buzzer for the nurse.

“I spoke to the cops. I’m having this room guarded.”

“Honey, it wasn’t your drug dealers.”

“Don’t try to talk, sweetheart. Don’t say anything,” Tom said urgently. He glanced at the doorway, then called out “Nurse! Nurse!” in a loud, panicky voice.

“It’s okay. I’m okay,” she told him. “Come and sit by me.” She wanted him close.

“You’re fine, darling. Everything is going to be fine now. I love you. I do!” He leaned closer still to kiss her eyelids.

“I want you to listen. Please,” she pleaded. “I saw Danny. I mean, I talked to Danny. And he’s all right. He’s happy.”

Tom nodded, but his eyes were clouding over again.

“I’m okay, Tom, I’m not crazy.”

“Of course you’re not.”

“I died. I left my body. I saw the doctors, everything. I wanted to stay dead. It was so wonderful, Tom. Then I saw Danny and he spoke to me, told me that it wasn’t time yet, not yet the end of my lifetime.”

Tom nodded. “Jennifer, you’ve got to sleep. Why don’t you try to sleep.”

Jennifer smiled. He didn’t understand what she was talking about. Of course not. He hadn’t died and come back to life. She closed her eyes. Yes, she should sleep. She needed to rest and regain her strength. She had so much more to do. It was time.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

TOM WATCHED JENNIFER PACK. He had made himself another drink and now stood in the doorway of her bedroom as she went back and forth from the closet to her suitcase on the bed.

“Are you going to say anything at all, Thomas? Or are you just going to stare at me all evening?” Jennifer asked. She was holding up a white cotton blouse by the shoulders and deciding whether she should pack it for Minnesota.

“You know what I think,” he answered back. The two double scotches he’d downed had put an edge on his voice. “You’ve just got out of the hospital. You need to rest, not take a goddamn trip out to the middle of nowhere!”

“I have to do this my way,” she said.

Tom nodded and sipped the scotch. “It’s going to be fucking cold out there,” he said softly, as if to make amends. “Why does she live in Minnesota, anyway?”

“It’s where she is from.”

“She knows you’re coming?”

“Yes, of course.” Jennifer decided against the blouse. “Eileen telephoned her at the farm—that’s what the center is called.” She hung up the blouse and reached to the top shelf to pull down her heavy wool sweater, while she waited for his next question. It was as if they were playing tennis, lobbing responses at each other. Then she stepped away from the closet, turned, and faced him.

“Tom, I told you. I’m being driven nuts by this, too. I don’t want to have ‘out-of-body’ experiences. I don’t want to know that I can suddenly turn into some sort of caveman who can kill people with a blow of his fist. I don’t want to think that every time I’m threatened, I’m going to turn into a freak.”

“Jenny, you don’t—”

“Yes, I do. Let’s not gloss over it, okay? Maybe those people deserved to be killed. Maybe they were scum, or whatever you called them, but then so am I. I killed them. Maybe not me, but some part of me. A past-life person.”

“Oh, for chrissake!”

“Give me a chance, Tom.” She stared up at him. “Let me go find out what’s wrong with me, okay?” Her eyes had swelled up with tears, and to keep herself from crying, she turned to the bed and continued to pack.

“I talked to a couple of shrinks,” Tom said slowly, coming into the room.

“Of course,” Jennifer replied.

“Of course, what?”

“Of course you would talk to someone. That’s you.” She glanced up to show she wasn’t upset with him. “What did they say?” she asked, softening her voice.

“I spoke to Dr. Senese, the one I saw for a while after I broke up with Helen. I told him about this woman, Phoebe Fisher.”

“And Kathy Dart.”

“Yeah, about all this goddamn channeling shit.”

“Tom, please!” She felt a wave of anger and immediately tried the exercise Phoebe had taught her, focusing her attention on the word love. Gradually she felt her body ease and the tension diminish. She glanced at Tom. He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, his drink still in his hand. She noticed that he had put on weight, that there was a new roll of fat around his middle, and that his shirt had grown tight at the neck. He was like an animal, she thought, who stored up fat for winter. Perhaps he had stopped jogging. She had not run since her Washington trip. She was afraid to run, afraid of what might happen to her body.

“Senese says that these channelers are suffering from personality dysfunctions. According to him, a fractionalized piece of their personality gains control. You’ve read about these multiple personality cases.”

“Multiple personalities, Tom, happen within the same person. Habasha was a living person from another time period. Dance is from another galaxy. It’s not the same thing.”

“Oh, for chrissake.”

“Tom, I’m not asking you to understand any of this, either. I just want you to have some faith in me, that’s all. I want you to be at least as supportive as Eileen Gorman.”

“That loony! I talked to her at the hospital when she came to see you. She’s out of her fucking mind!”

“Tom! How dare you!” Jennifer threw down one of the sweaters and turned on him. “Eileen has been absolutely wonderful, coming to me when I need her, listening, understanding. How can you sit there and

and

” Jennifer felt a surge of rage sweep through her body. There was a pattern to her primitive urges. They sprang from the base of her neck, shot down across her chest, and poured strength through her body; the result was an overwhelming urge to attack. It was becoming worse, she knew. Each time the rage returned, it came in stronger waves, and sometimes she realized she wanted to sink her teeth into someone. She could feel the desire to satisfy that pleasure. It was like having sex—once she spun off into an orgasm, she never wanted it to stop. She wanted only to ride the waves. She took several deep breaths and brought herself under control.

“If you hadn’t met her in Washington, then none of this nonsense would have started in the first place,” Tom shouted back.

He was drunk, Jennifer realized, drunk and angry and threatened.

“It would have happened anyway, Tom,” she answered. “It was meant to. These events aren’t coincidences or happenstance.” She looked across the bed at her lover. “Let me work this out my way,” she told him.

Tom stood staring at her in the dumb way drunks do when trying to comprehend. She went back to packing but watched him out of the corner of her eye. She was leaving first thing in the morning; Eileen was coming in from Long Island to pick her up, and they were going to drive together to Minnesota.

She could send him home in a taxi, Jennifer thought, or let him sleep there tonight. He’d be sick in the morning.

“Tom, why don’t you go into the living room and lie down on the sofa?” She encouraged him with a smile, but his eyes had glassed over, and he kept swaying against the bed. She went to him and took away his drink. “Come on into the living room, honey,” she whispered.

“You’re leaving me, I know,” he mumbled, but let himself be led away. “You’re leaving me because I didn’t do anything about Helen.”

“Darling, I’m not leaving you. I’m going to see Kathy Dart and talk to her about what is happening to me. I’ll be coming home to you soon. And I’ll be okay again.” She spoke brightly as she eased him from her bedroom. Now his full weight was against her, and she had to struggle to keep him from toppling them both over. Where was her strength when she needed it, she thought, gasping for breath as she slid him down onto the sofa. When Tom dropped onto the cushions, Jennifer sank to her knees.

At least he would sleep until early morning. And he wouldn’t hurt himself. She slipped off his shoes and pushed his legs up onto the sofa, then loosened his shirt and his belt. She peeled off his black socks and dropped them into his shoes, then went back into her room, took the extra quilt from the cedar closet, and tucked it around him.

He was already sleeping soundly. Jennifer knelt beside him and gently caressed his face. The deep sleep had swept away all the tension; he looked like a teenager, with nothing more on his mind than the pleasure of a wet dream. She leaned forward, kissed his cheek, and whispered, “I love you.”

It was after midnight when she woke and sat up in bed. She was suddenly wide awake and quite clearly she heard the front door of the apartment being unlocked, heard the two tumblers turn. She jumped from the bed and rushed to the bedroom door. Tom was up and off the sofa. He had grabbed his pistol from his briefcase, and when he spotted her, he put his finger to his lips, motioned for her to be silent.

She watched as he carefully stepped around the sofa, moving silently in his bare feet. Then she heard the dog, heard his paws on the bare hardwood floors of the front entrance.

She started to move out of the bedroom, and frantically Tom signaled, waved her back into the room, motioning that she should close the door.

“What is it?” she whispered, and then she caught a glimpse of the dog in the dim light of the living room. It had run in from the front hall, and spotting Tom, it immediately growled and bared its teeth. It was a pit bull, Jennifer saw, watching the small blunt-faced beast.

“Get away, Jenny!” Tom ordered, raising his pistol. He fired as the dog leaped at him. The bullet missed the animal and shattered the glass in her breakfront beside the bedroom door.

Jennifer screamed.

The pit bull landed on the back of the sofa and then jumped at Tom. Backing off, Tom tripped over the coffee table and shot again. This time the bullet dug into the high ceiling.

The dog was on top of him now, had seized his forearm in his teeth. Tom swung the pistol around and shoved it against the pit bull’s face and pulled the trigger. The automatic pistol jammed, and before he could get off the next shot, the dog ripped the flesh off his forearm. Now Tom screamed.

Jennifer went for the beast. She dove at the animal, grabbed his white slavering muzzle with her own bare hands and wrenched open his jaw with one smooth strong motion, as if she had been killing animals in the wild all of her life.

Then with her arms outstretched, she let the heavy beast twist and turn under her strong grip, let him struggle to get loose. She saw the anguish in the dog’s yellow eyes as he gasped for breath, and then with a sudden jerk, she ripped open the beast’s mouth and broke his jaw. The fresh blood from the soft white insides of his mouth sprayed her face and splattered the pale yellow rug of her living room. She dropped the prey.

Tom crawled away from the pit bull. Crawled away in pain. His arm was bleeding and his flesh hung loose from the muscle.

“Jenny!” he gasped, seeing what she had done to the dog.

He was frightened, she saw. Frightened now of her. But Tom wasn’t her enemy. He did not want to harm her.

Jennifer smiled at her lover, and slowly, carefully, as any animal would, she wiped her lips clean with the tip of her tongue.