Janice Ravenwood was no different.
I remembered what she"d told me, once upon a time: "A wise soul understands the dynamics of mercy."
I wondered if Janice truly believed that, for even mercy has its price.
"I don"t know if you can hear me," she said. "But I want to tell you that I"m sorry. For everything. I didn"t know about Circe until tonight.... When she told me what she was, I thought it was too late for any of us...especially for me. I hope you believe me."
Sirens howled in the distance.
Janice"s fingers brushed my forehead.
"Thank you," she said.
She closed my eyelids with fingers that felt too much. She knew the price of a single touch. She paid it.
I left Circe Whistler"s mansion under a ripe moon.
The storm was clearing. Tattered clouds whipped across the heavens, but there was no power left in them. The wind took the clouds where it wanted to go, bl.u.s.tering through the long night and beyond.
I could not go with the wind.
I looked to the road ahead.
A pair of gates swung open before me.
Not the gates of heaven, and not the gates of h.e.l.l.
Only the gates that shielded the Whistler estate from the outside world.
A car from the sheriff"s department raced down the driveway. Instinctively, I made a grab for my K-bar, and the laughter that spilled across my lips didn"t even amount to a whisper on the wind.
I held the knife before me. Just like the deputy I"d murdered at the side of Circe"s house-the one who"d aimed a ghostly pistol in my direction-I could see the weapon clearly.
But I wouldn"t be fooled by it. I tucked the knife under my belt. The patrol car skidded to a stop beneath the porte-cochere. Two deputies jumped out, and Janice Ravenwood met them at the door, and they entered the mansion together.
I turned my back on the mansion and started toward the open gates.
I didn"t know where I was bound.
Heaven. h.e.l.l. Somewhere in between.
But I knew where I wanted to go.
I started up the road. Another police car came down the drive, followed by a CNN news van.
This time, I didn"t spare them a backward glance.
Car doors opened behind me, then slammed shut.
Radio crosstalk drifted through the night air, along with insistent voices.
The talk was of a killer.
They"d given him a name, the way they always do. They called him Jehovah"s Hammer.
2.
She was waiting, of course.
Sitting on a footbridge that arched across a rushing creek, her little girl legs dangling over the side as she gazed down at the cold water rushing below.
I moved toward her, following a fern-choked path through old redwoods, but Circe Whistler didn"t notice me.
Of course, the sounds I made were hardly sounds at all, and what the little girl would have heard had she been listening was masked by the hollow sigh of clear creek water flowing to the sea.
Silent as an evening breeze, I stepped onto the bridge.
"I always keep my promises," I said.
Circe looked up with startled blue eyes that were as clear as the October sky.
A smile bloomed on her face. "I"m glad you came back," she said.
"So am I."
I sat down next to her, and Circe looked into my eyes. She saw nothing there to make her wary or afraid. But she was afraid of questions, questions she had to ask.
Questions are never good. She said, "Did you find out-"
"The truth?"
She nodded.
"Yes, I did," I said. "Later, I"ll tell you everything."
"Promise?"
"I promise," I said.
We sat in silence, in shadows beneath heavy redwood bowers. Somewhere above the sun was rising, but we could not see it, and we could not feel its warmth.
"Look!" I said.
A steelhead shot through the water like a bullet, fighting the current every inch of the way. A flash of scale like living sunshine, a splash of the steelhead"s dark and powerful tail, and then it was gone.
I stared down at the dark water, rushing so fast, and at the shadows that waited there.
The shadows didn"t move at all.
I drew the K-bar from behind my back.
The knife wasn"t what it had been. I knew that.
Maybe now it was something different.
My fingers parted. The blade started down.
Gleaming like a steelhead swimming upstream to die.
The K-bar sliced through the shadows without the slightest splash, and then it was gone.
The water gleamed like silver.
"Will you stay with me?" Circe asked.
"I"ll stay."
The creek whispered below, the soothing sound of water rushing to the sea.
Circe reached out and took my hand.
THE END.