He pushed open the church door and helped her down the steps into the cold afternoon air. “We'll go directly to the constable,” he said. “I'm going to set fire under his apathetic tail.”
CHAPTER 6
She retired early that night, showered, dressed for bed and lay down to sort out the events of the long and complicated day, trying to put them into some reasonable perspective. She was close to exhaustion, but she felt that she had to come to terms with the rather unpleasant developments and decide what she was going to do next — remain in Owlsden as Lydia's secretary and try to weather these strange events, or leave soon and search for another job that might be far less remunerative but easier on the nerves.
One of the first things the constable had done was to call the Bolands and let them know that the Satanists had not only been at work again, but had violated the very church they attended regularly and which Lydia's father had planned and constructed with his own funds. In an hour, thanks to the quick work of the plow that had opened the road that morning and early afternoon, Lydia and Alex were there to look over the damage and assess the insanity of those who had been responsible. Throughout the re-examination of the church, Katherine had noticed a smug look on the constable's face. He was a thin, dark little man named Cartier, and he was not good at disguising an I-told-you-so self-righteousness Lydia had the good taste to ignore but which drew Alex's ire in short order.
The afternoon had been spent in making preliminary plans to catch the Satanists in their work if they dared be so bold about it again. Lydia pledged a substantial sum to the town treasury for the maintenance of a larger parttime deputy force to keep the streets and buildings of the town under constant observation during the night hours.
Michael Harrison, who was sitting beside Katherine in the conference room of the town hall, leaned toward her and whispered, “They made fun of all this until it touched something of theirs.”
Though Michael had been quiet, Alex heard him and challenged him on the point. The disagreement soon became a full-fledged argument — though the greatest part of the shouting and gesticulating was on Alex's side. Michael answered calmly, rationally, though sometimes a bit bitterly, only to further infuriate Alex by his reserved manner. At one point, Alex struck him as a challenge to a fight and had to be restrained by the constable who was clearly enjoying the confrontation.
After that, the meeting broke up, and Katherine rode back to Owlsden with the Bolands. Lydia attempted to relax everyone with gay observations on the weather and the efficiency of the plows but had to give up long before they reached the tall oak doors of the ancestral house. Alex, in a brooding mood, did not say anything at all.
At dinner, Alex had begun a rambling monologue whose subject was almost exclusively Michael Harrison, opening a vein of anger, dislike and bitterness that was unpleasant to behold. Too, he put forth the opinion that Harrison himself might very well be behind these recent Satanic ceremonies and felt — in some way that Katherine could not comprehend — that Harrison was doing this only as a means to get to the Roxburgh-Boland family and embarrass them.
When his mother asked him please to cease that line of conversation, he challenged her on her defense of Harrison and left the table in a huff after upsetting his water glass and breaking the tiny, fragile wine taster beside it.
Lydia apologized for Alex when he was gone and tried to pass off his maniac behavior as nothing more than a case of bad nerves. However, even she did not seem to believe that it was as simple as that, and she excused herself for the remainder of the evening as soon as dessert had been served.
Now, alone in her room, Katherine, considering the drawbacks to life in Roxburgh and Owlsden, began to make a mental list of debits that she had been willing to ignore until the events of the afternoon. First of all, there was this whole cult business, this sacrificing of animals and playing at devil worship. She now saw that it was far more serious than she had at first thought. As Michael said the first time they had talked about it, though Satanism was silly and unbelievable, the adherents of such an odd faith might very well be dangerously mentally unbalanced. And since they held some ceremonies in the forest behind Owlsden, perhaps one was not safe alone, at night, as Yuri had protested — though the danger lay in mortal agents, not in supernatural stalkers. Secondly, she thought she would not be able to abide Alex Boland's increasingly unpleasant temperament for long without telling him exactly what she thought of his childish outbursts. He seemed to get depressed too quickly, to react too suddenly to even the slightest irritant. And what was this obsession with Michael Harrison all about? At times, Alex was downright slanderous when he talked of Mike… Thirdly, there was the townspeople's underlying envy of the Roxburgh-Boland family which she had not noticed until this afternoon when the constable and various other town officials got such a kick out of proving that Lydia and Alex were wrong on the question of the Satanists. Katherine supposed that all wealthy people were subjected to this kind of attitude now and again, but, even so, she felt that it proved the existence of a minor streak of hypocrisy in what was reputedly a happy town. Fourthly, there was Alex's treatment of his mother which, at dinner this evening, had ceased to be exemplary and became inexcusably rude. His use of a few four-letter words at the table had visibly shaken his mother, and his overall temper had thoroughly blighted the evening. If this continued, Katherine could hardly hold her thoughts in, but would be forced to give him a hefty piece of her mind.
Something else that bothered her was the slowly developing relationship between Michael Harrison and herself. In just two days, they had progressed from a casual friendliness to a kiss in the vestibule of the church, a kiss he had seemed to mean whole-heartedly and which she had taken without reserve. She remembered, now, how her heart had beaten more quickly when he had kissed her and how the kiss had instantly calmed the terror generated by the discovery of the two sacrificed animals on the altar… She had never been one for forming such close attachments in so little time, and she was afraid that exterior circumstances were driving her into an affectionate relationship with Michael that she did not actually feel. Among strangers, disconcerted by the gruesome events of the past two days, perhaps she was too eager for companionship to think straight. Yet… yet a curious warmth stole over her even now, when she remembered his arm around her shoulders.
Add one more debit to the list. If she did find herself increasingly attracted to Michael Harrison— and if he became increasingly attracted to her as he already seemed to be — it would be all that much more difficult to listen to Alex and his anti-Harrison tirades.
She was about to begin listing the credits attached to remaining here at Owlsden when someone knocked lightly on her door.
“Yes?”
The knock came again, as softly as before.
She got out of bed, drew on her robe and went to the door. She opened it to find Yuri standing in the dimly-lighted hallway.
“What is it, Yuri?”
“There's something I want you to see, if you haven't already.”
“What's that?”
“May I come in?” he asked. He wiped at his forehead, pulling off a film of perspiration. A great deal of white showed around his eyes, and a nervous tic had begun to distort the left corner of his mouth.
Another debit. She had forgotten that Yuri must have some ulterior motive for trying to convince her that he believed in these superstitions.