She had a sense of voices close to her and of bodies standing next to her bed. Her damaged brain realized it was a woman. And a man.
Gabriel.
Her mind shrieked. The shock clamped her inner eye shut and she almost lost the connection. She was slipping back into the memory palace. Rooms, corridors, doors. Endless doors. Three doors to the left, cross the drawbridge…
No! Stop! Concentrate!
I'll slip in and download The Key from the computer. No one will know.
Fury gripped her. She had offered the prize to him and he had refused it.
Refused her.
How to stop him?
He now had the password. If he put the password and the portal together-
Two doors down, one up. Second door from the right…
No, no. Oh, God. She felt total despair. Concentrate, Morrighan. Focus. She tried to calm the hurricane inside her mind.
Gabriel and the woman were leaving. She sensed them moving away. Their voices were growing fainter. Then they were gone.
He was probably on his way to Monk House right now.
Stop him!
If she could stop him from downloading The Key, she would have the final victory. Without The Key, Gabriel would be condemned to a life of aimless searching. He would never feel achievement again. Only hunger.
How to stop him downloading The Key?
How?
She still had her inner eye, but maimed as it was, she would not be able to scan him or get into his mind. He was too strong.
But maybe she could use it another way.
And then it came to her. The solution slipped into her mind like the breath of a ghost.
Her inner eye had always been her own private gift, something Minnaloushe could never fully understand. And her skills had evolved. No longer were her powers confined to the inner world of the skull. Objects in the real world could be manipulated as well. Minnaloushe had not really comprehended how much the memory palace had allowed her remote viewing powers to grow. Which meant that when Minnaloushe created the spell, she had left her sister's RV skills out of the equation.
Her viewing powers were no magic bullet. She knew that. For her, there was no escape: the memory palace would always pull her back into its orbit. She would forever tumble back into the labyrinth of endless staircases and chaotic passages and doors. But maybe, just maybe, she could muster all her strength and focus long enough to allow her inner eye to travel briefly.
Maybe for a brief moment… just until she had time to do what she had to do…
The woman in the hospital bed was completely still. Her breathing was quiet. But her inner eye was roaming. She was going home.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The windows of the redbrick house were shut tight and the air inside held the odor of neglect. Dust had accumulated on the surfaces.
The house was empty but traces of its occupation were still visible. The velvet cushion on the seat of the big peacock chair held the imprint of a body. A book was facedown on the coffee table. Next to it was a mug half-filled with cold coffee. On the rim of the mug was a kiss left there by the pressure of a woman's lips. A black coat drooped spread-eagled over the back of another chair, its sleeves dangling down the sides like tired arms. The faintest of fragrances clung to the wool.
But the overwhelming smell in the room was of decaying flowers. The stems of roses rotting in stagnant water. Potted plants dying in cracked soil. Even the fleshy petals of the orchids were wrinkling and turning brown. Not enough time had passed to drain them of all their juices and so the smell hovering over the blighted plants was strong and dank. On the shelf above the worktable was a glass box, and inside it the desiccated body of a dead spider.
The workbench held two computers. Here too the dust had settled, a film of particles clinging to the crystal screens. The computers were switched off. Their faces were blank.
A sudden click. As if touched by a ghostly hand, one of the screens lit up. At the same time, deep within the computer's brain a built-in virus started running. The virus had been created many years before by the owners of this machine-a back door in case something went wrong. A precaution they never thought they'd need. They had crafted the lethal code well but they had never seriously considered they might ever have to pull such a deadly trigger. Because, if set in motion, the virus would destroy the work of a lifetime and lay to waste a magical universe.
As if still powered by the same hand, the pages in the document started to scroll down the screen and as they scrolled by, they disappeared-the contents of these pages erased from the memory and from the hard drive of the mechanical host. Forever out of reach of any thief.
Signs, sigils, sacred numbers. Graceful drawings and plans: divine architecture. Enigmatic spells and incantions. Lines of magicized code. An enchanted palace of the memory scrolling implacably- irrevocably-into forgetfulness.
Seven miles away in one of the private rooms in Wing C, Nurse Kendall was bathing the limp limbs of a patient.
The poor woman. Nurse Kendall rubbed the moist washcloth along her charge's finely muscled arm. She was obviously an athlete, but very soon the honed musculature of her body would start wasting away.
Nurse Kendall placed the unresponsive arm back on the bed. Gently she pushed the black hair away from the patient's forehead and touched the washcloth to her face. What a terrible fate. A fate worse than death if you asked her. The consultants were very negative about this one. No fairy-tale awakening was likely to happen here.
Such a lovely face. But as with the body, the beauty would fade quickly now. Although, this morning the patient looked strangely radiant. Her expression was almost one of satisfaction-as though she had pulled off a great achievement. And for one moment, Nurse Kendall even thought the black-haired woman might have smiled.
EPILOGUE
"I am about to seek a great Perhaps."
– Franjois Rabelais's dying words
"Excuse me? Is that you?"
As the words left her mouth she blushed fiercely, already regretting the impulse that had made her speak to him.
The man sitting on the park bench a few paces away from her looked up, and then glanced over his shoulder. When he realized she was indeed talking to him, he looked at her carefully and lifted an inquiring eyebrow.
Again she blushed, cursing her fair skin. She had always found it difficult to talk to good-looking guys and this man was attractive. Never mind the white in his hair. As her mum was fond of saying: Some guys will always put the fizz in your lemonade, no matter what.
Taking a deep breath, she pointed at the book in his hand. "That's you, isn't it?"
He turned the book around to look at the photograph on the back cover and smiled. "I'm afraid so."
"So you're a writer."
"Among other things."
"I was going to be a writer, you know." As she spoke she suddenly remembered the streak of yellow staining the shoulder of her blouse. She had wondered whether she should change her top before coming to the park. Now she wished she had.
He gestured to the empty space beside him. "Won't you join me?"
"Thank you." She sat down on the very edge of the bench. "I just need to keep an eye on Pippa." She pointed to the sandpit where Pippa was squatting on her fat little legs.
He moved over more fully to his side. "Is that your little girl?"
"Yes. And I have a baby at home. It threw up all over me this morning." What on earth made her say something so stupid, she thought despairingly. Everything about this man was elegant and here she was talking about baby spit.