He picked open the drawstring top with surprisingly delicate fingernails and shook the contents onto the palm of his hand, turning them over curiously with one thick finger. The bead, tufts of fur from the dogs, stones, and bee pollen he funneled back into the pouch, but he took the silver crescent that she had bought in Sedona between two fingers and turned it back and forth, watching the light play across the low indentations of its beaten surface.
"The moon revels in the reflected glory of the sun," he mused. "In alchemical allegory, Luna reaches the height of her existence in her conjoining with the sun." He turned the pendant around again, and said, "Come."
She followed him reluctantly past the stairs that led to open air and back into his study. He went over to the strange collection of bones and objects at the third window, detached one item from the rest, and brought it back to her, displayed on his palm, its leather cord dangling down the back of his hand. It was the rough moon-shaped object she had noticed earlier, an elongated, worn silver nugget threaded onto a thong. He smiled to himself, the same private smile she had seen as he caressed the altarstone in the abbey ruins with his fingertips, and then he curled the thong around the moon shape and pushed it into the buckskin pouch and drew the bag shut.
"I'd like you to take that," he said. "It is… appropriate that you should have it."
Anne studied him, and asked slowly, "Why? Whose necklace is that?"
"It belonged to Samantha Dooley, who is no longer with us," he told her. "She did not, shall we say, live up to expectations."
Still smiling to himself, he tied the pouch snugly shut and dropped the cord back around her neck. He tucked the medicine bag inside her shirt and then tugged her collar up to hide it, a gesture that was somehow even more intimate than the kiss he had given her. "You may wear it," he said.
And then he walked out of his study and disappeared through the door to the laboratory.
Anne stood rubbing her hands across her mouth and scalp, trying to wipe away the tingle, to scrub away the taste of Aaron that Jonas had left behind, shocking, unexpected, and just too damn much, on top of everything else. She felt punch-drunk, and not only because of the painkillers she had swallowed. The past few days had been one long, deep plunge into the terror of her past ending with the abrupt euphoria of anticlimax, sleepless nights thinking she was balanced precariously over a bottomless abyss, only to discover that it was all a fake, constructed by tricksters and fed by her own dark imagination. All in all, it was more than she could deal with. She felt like a jigsaw-puzzle person scattered across the landscape, and she craved only to have Maria Makepeace standing over her, gathering up the pieces one by one and putting her together again. She wanted to go after Jonas and draw his mouth down onto hers. She wanted to vomit at the idea. She thought about dashing her head against the stone wall until she lost consciousness. She felt as if she would never be rational again. She felt as if she had just faced death and walked away again. She felt… she felt monstrously hungry, and would have killed for a cup of English tea.
She raided the refrigerator and gulped down a bowl of cold red stuff that looked like spaghetti sauce and tasted like Swedish meatballs, and followed it with a cup of scalding, strong tea. In the dim kitchen of the silent house, life seeped back. She palmed a couple more of the painkillers from the bottle in her pocket and swallowed them gratefully. She might even manage to sleep tonight.
She went upstairs, aware of the silence and of the simple well-being that food brought, conscious of the blessed goodness of life in spite of everything. The urge to walk away from it all was powerful, but she held the two children before her like a talisman, her still center in a maelstrom of threat and desire and confusion. Jason and Dulcie would be asleep, but she decided to take the long way around and lay the palm of her hand on their door in passing, a silent goodnight. Snores came from a few of the rooms, most were still, but when she got to the children's door, to her surprise she heard low voices coming from within. She tapped very lightly, and the room went instantly silent. She tapped again, and heard movement inside, and then the door cracked a couple of inches.
She started to put her mouth to the opening and say that she just wanted to wish them a good night, when the door flew back and Jason—taciturn, undemonstrative, cool and aloof Jason Delgado—lunged out and flung his arms around her. She grunted at the pain and he immediately let her go, but Dulcie squeaked "Ana!" and they hushed her and scurried inside the room, closing the door behind them.
In the end all three of them huddled together on one of the beds, Dulcie tucked in between them and fading fast.
"Are your shoulders as sore as mine are?" Anne asked him when Dulcie was limp.
"It's my back that kills me, when I bend over."
"Here, take one of these," she said, and tapped out a couple of the pills from the bottle. "If it doesn't help in an hour or so, take the other."
"Thanks." He reached for the half-glass of water next to Dulcie's bed, and winced at the movement. She put a third tablet down next to the one she had left on the table, just in case.
"So what did you think of all that?" she asked, very casually.
"I don't know. I mean, they're good people, but I've got to say, I don't understand half of what they're saying. And that alchemy stuff—it's weird shit."
Her heart sang even as he apologized for his language, and she reached over and squeezed his hand. "It's okay, Jason. We'll figure it out. Just give me a couple of days. Now, you get some sleep."
She stood up and moved to the door, where she paused for a moment to look down at Dulcie nestled in her bed and at Jason sitting on the edge of the other bed, bending stiffly to take off his socks. This might be the last time she was alone with them for days, weeks even. If she brought in the authorities (as she intended to do) and if they broke Change up (which they would), the truth of who she was and what she was doing here would be revealed to these two, and the trust of their relationship with her would be shattered.
Jason looked up, and frowned at the expression on her face.
"What is it?"
"Nothing," she told him. "My dear Jason, it's nothing at all. Sleep well. We'll talk tomorrow." She left the room and closed the door on the two children, blessedly unaware that there would be no tomorrow.
Chapter Thirty-one
page 2 of 2
Change: Are you sure you're okay, Jonas?
Seraph: I told you I was fine. Stop harassing me, Steven.
Change: Okay, okay. You just sound troubled, is all. Are you sure the Social Services thing is off your neck? I could come over and-
Seraph [shouting]: Steven! Enough!
[a silence]
Change: I'm sorry, Jonas. You know best, of course.
Seraph: And before you ask me, no the work has not progressed. But I think it shall, very soon. I think I've seen the problem. Your friend Ana showed me it, in fact.
Change: Oh, that's really great news, Jonas. I don't suppose you want a hand with keeping the fire hot? Like the old days?
Seraph [laughing]: No, Steven, I don't think that will be a problem.
Change: She'll be helping you, I suppose. Ana. The boy can't be that far along yet.