"If I can gather together the proper elements, we may have ourselves a weapon."
"Really?" Bill was almost afraid to yield to the hope growing within him. "When do we start this gathering?"
"Tomorrow. Will you drive me out to Long Island? And would you wear your cassock?"
What a strange request. Why did Glaeken want him to look like a priest?
"I don't have one anymore. I…I don't believe in any of that anymore."
"I know. But I must be at my most persuasive. And the presence of a Jesuit at my side might lend some weight to my arguments. We'll fit you for a new cassock."
Bill shrugged. "Anything for the cause. Where on Long Island?"
"The north shore."
A familiar pang stirred within Bill.
"I grew up in that area."
"Yes. In the Village of Monroe."
"How did you know?"
Glaeken shrugged. "That's where we're going."
"Monroe? My home town? Why?"
"Part of the weapon is there."
Bill was baffled. In Monroe?
"It's just a little harbor town. What kind of weapon can you hope to find out there?"
Glaeken turned and walked down the hall to attend to his wife. He cast the reply over his shoulder. "A small boy."
Over in the West Seventies, Bill knocked on an eighth-floor apartment door. A slender woman with ash blond hair, fine features and a pert, upturned nose opened it and stared at him. Carol. Her face was tight, her eyes haunted, her usual high coloring blanched.
"It's begun, hasn't it?" she said.
The afternoon sun filled the room behind her with golden light, giving her an almost ethereal quality. The sight of her disturbed once again the old feelings he tried to keep tucked away.
Bill stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him.
"How did you know?"
"I heard about the late sunrise on the radio." Tears filled her eyes as her lips began to tremble. "I knew right away it was Jimmy's doing."
Bill reached out and folded her in an embrace. She was trembling as she leaned against him. Her arms locked around his back and she clung to him like a tree in a flood. Bill closed his eyes and let the good feelings wash through him. Good feelings were so hard to come by these days.
He'd been moving through a fog of black depression for the last couple of months, ever since the deadly events in February in North Carolina. Three times since 1968 his world had been all but torn apart. First there'd been the violent death of his old friend and Carol's first husband, Jim Stevens, followed by the bizarre murders in the Hanley mansion and Carol's flight to parts unknown; he'd recovered from that. Then five years ago there'd been his parents' deaths in the fire, Danny Gordon's mutilation and all the horrors that followed, capped by his own flight and years of hiding; he'd almost recovered from that when he'd had to face Renny Augustino's brutal murder, Lisl's suicide, and the exhumation of Danny Gordon's living corpse.
Bill wasn't bouncing back this time. He wasn't sure he had any bounce left in him. He'd dragged himself back to New York but it was no longer home. No place was home. In this entire teeming city, Nick Quinn and Carol Treece were the only people left alive from his past that he dared approach.
"You've got to call him Rasalom and stop calling him Jimmy, got to stop thinking of him as your son. He's not. There's nothing of you and Jim in him. He's someone else."
"I know that, Bill," she said, holding him tighter. "In my mind I know that. But in my heart is this feeling that if I'd loved him more, if I'd been a better mother, he'd have turned out differently. It's crazy but I can't get away from it."
"Nothing anyone could have done in his childhood would have made the slightest bit of difference. Except maybe strangling him as an infant."
He felt Carol stiffen against him and was sorry he'd said it. But it was true.
"Don't."
"Okay. But stop calling him Jimmy. He's not Jimmy. Never was. His name is Rasalom and he was already who he was long before he took over the baby in your womb. Long before you were born. He didn't develop under your care. He was already there. You're not responsible."
He stood there in the middle of her tiny living room, holding Carol's thin body against him, breathing the scent of her hair, spying the streaks of gray nestling in the ash blond waves. Trickles of desire ran down his chest and over his abdomen. With a start, he felt himself hardening. He became aroused so easily these days. Sex had been no problem when he'd still considered himself a priest. But now that his lifelong beliefs had been reduced to ashes, buried with the charred remains of Danny Gordon, everything seemed to be inching out of control. Here he was, his arms wrapped around Carol Treece, formerly Carol Stevens, nee Carol Nevins. His high-school sweetheart, his best friend's widow, now another man's wife. Priest or ex-priest, this wasn't right.
Gently, Bill put some space between them. Room for the Holy Ghost, as the nuns used to say when he was a kid.
"Are we straight on that?" he said, gazing into her blue eyes. "You're not responsible."
She nodded. "Right. But how can I stop feeling like his mother, Bill? Tell me how I can do that?"
He saw the pain in her eyes and resisted the urge to pull her into his arms again.
"I don't know, Carol. But you've got to learn. You'll go crazy if you don't." They looked at each other for a moment, then Bill changed the subject. "How's Hank? Does he know yet?"
She shook her head and turned away.
"No. I haven't been able to tell him."
"Don't you think—?"
"You've met Hank. You know what he's like."
Bill nodded silently. He'd met Henry Treece a number of times; he'd even been over for dinner twice, but always as a priest and an old friend of the family. Hank was a straight arrow, a comptroller in a computer software firm. A man who dotted all his is and crossed all his ts. A good man, a decent man, an organized man. The antithesis of spontaneity. Bill doubted whether Hank had ever done anything on impulse in his entire life. So unlike Jim, Carol's first husband. Bill couldn't see Henry Treece and Carol as a loving couple, but maybe that was because he didn't want to. Maybe Hank was just what she needed. After the way chaos had intruded repeatedly on Carol's life, maybe she needed the structure, stability, and predictability a man like Hank offered. If he made her happy and secure, more power to him.
But that didn't make Bill want Carol any less.
"How can I tell him what we know?" Carol said. "He'll never accept it. He'll think I'm crazy. He'll have me going to psychiatrists. I wouldn't blame him. I'd probably be doing the same if positions were reversed."
"But now with the sun playing tricks, we've got an indisputable fact on our side. Carol, he's got to know sooner or later. I mean, if you're going to be involved—"
"Maybe if he met Glaeken. You know how persuasive he is. Maybe he could convince Hank."
"It's worth a try. I'll talk to him about it." Bill glanced at his watch. "When's Hank due in?"
"Any minute."
"I'd better go."
"No, Bill." She took his hand and squeezed it. "Stay. Please."
Her fingers shot a bolus of tingling warmth up his arm.
"I can't. I've got a bunch of errands to run for Glaeken. Now that Rasalom's made his first move, the old guy's getting his countermoves ready. He needs me to be his legs."
Bill gave her a quick hug and fled the apartment. He hated lying to Carol. But how could he tell her that it ripped his heart out to see Henry Treece stroll in the door and give her his usual casual hello kiss? Didn't Hank realize what he had? Did he have any idea what Bill would give—do—to take his place?