She lifted her hands. “Darlings, Beloveds, I have an announcement!” Her voice pierced all the bright conversations and got everyone's attention. Behind Holly stood the only guy at the party in a suit, short, dark-haired, with a chiseled black beard. He directed three of the black-clad wait staff who carried a table across the grass, on which they balanced a heavy, cloth-covered object. Behind them them another flunkey doled out a power cable from the house
“Elaine!” Holly cried, and changed direction toward us, her entourage tacking in her wake. “You came! I’m so glad you came! Darling!” She reached up and grabbed her sister in a fervent embrace. There were tears in her eyes when she released Elaine, but not enough to damage her artful make-up. “It's so good to see you.” She kissed Elaine's cheek once more and turned to me.
I saw her breath stop, and started to grin, but the look in her eyes gave me pause. Desire, hunger, and fear made her shifty and hopeful all at once. I was pretty sure she didn’t see me. She was looking at a whole bunch of plans, made and unmade over the previous weeks, that were now standing before her, offering new possibilities. Well, one of the possibilities she was not taking into account was that I might bite her head off. So I smiled at her. It was the toothy smile. It's not a smile you take in so much with your eyes. Somewhere in the back of their brains, humans remember when a wolf in your face meant that you had been asked to dinner, and you weren’t going to be offered any dessert. Holly's eyes went still all of a sudden, and then she remembered to breathe again.
“Hello!” she cried, her voice high and fake. “And who is this?”
Elaine, her voice heavy with sarcasm, reminded her, “You remember Amber?”
“We met at a party.” My teeth still showed. I did not offer my hand, and she did not try to kiss me.
“Oh. Yes,” she said. She let herself be distracted then by a round man with a round face and thinning hair, wrapped in cotton robes damp with sweat, who told her what had been done about the placing of the table. She turned away gratefully to contradict everything he’d just said, and then turned back to say, “We’ll talk, we have to talk,” and then started to turn away again, but I moved to stand in her way. I was still smiling.
“I came to pick up my wallet,” I told her.
“Oh, not now, darling, can’t you see I’m busy? We’ll talk afterward.” She waved a conciliating hand at me, and turned to give half a dozen more conflicting directions to the guy in the suit, who listened with patient gravity, and then went away to make sense and order out of her spontaneous utterances. Holly gave more orders and suggestions to the round guy, and to any of the flunkies who came into earshot. She and the round guy sent servers off in several directions. Some never returned.
I told Elaine, “I could go search the house,” but she shook her head.
“Everyone!” Holly cried again. No one paid any attention. She clapped her hands. Her voice rose higher. “Everyone!” The guy in the suit offered her a hand mike, and she spoke into it. The suit guy took the mike back, turned it on, and handed it to Holly again. Her voice blasted out from all corners of the garden. “Can you hear me? Namaste!”
That got everyone's attention. Conversations died, people turned her way, and raised their hands to the prayer position. “Namaste!” they said back to her.
“My Beloveds, I’m so glad you came.”
“Where is Cecil?” someone called out. “Is he coming?”
The fixed attention of the guests was suddenly tangible. Holly smiled and waved her hand again. “That is what I have to tell you.”
The sound of disappointment rose from the crowd. Some of the people turned away, and conversations started up.
Holly's amplified voice sounded over them. “Cecil has decided that it is his place to remain in communication with the Great Enemy. But he will join us for his birthday meditation, by ship-to-shore radio!” With a flourish, Holly grabbed the cloth that covered the object on the table, and yanked it off, with some assistance from the guy in the suit when it got snagged, revealing a radio and a set of speakers. “Cecil? Cecil, can you hear me?”
One of the staff finished plugging the radio in, and leaned over and turned on the on button. A green light gleamed. Bearded suit guy picked up the radio's microphone and handed it to Holly, and very firmly took the hand mike away from her.
“Hello? Darling? Hello? Is this on?” she asked the suit guy. He leaned over again and touched the volume. A mellifluous voice blasted over the lawn.
“Beloveds, I hope I am speaking to you—” A voice like dark molten caramel rolled out from the speakers. The crowd leaned into it as though it were food. The round man stepped in, waved off the suit guy and dialed down the volume to a bearable level. “I am on a boat, with only a few friends, but I am thinking of you all the time. Can you hear me? Is anyone there?”
“We are here, Cecil! We can hear you!” Holly cried into the mike, but Cecil's voice kept right on talking over her.
“I hope I have not mistaken the day, or the time,” he gave a little laugh. “The days are so much alike out here, and Beloveds, I am working very hard, meditating night and day.”
The suit guy took the microphone from Holly's hand, and showed her how to depress the button before she spoke into it. She took it back from him. “Cecil! Beloved! I am here! We are all here, gathered in your honor. Speak to us, Master!”
“Holly!” the voice boomed back. “How wonderful. And who else is there?”
And Holly proceeded to introduce every guest at her party. After the first few, one of the guests came up and seized the mike from Holly's hand, and spoke back to Cecil directly. After that, everyone had to speak to Cecil. I looked over at the house. How big was it? How long would it take to search it? The suit guy had gone to the patio, and was giving low-voiced instructions to a group of waiters. Black-clothed flunkies stood in bunches by the pool, on the deck, by the glass doors into the house from either side of the patio. I wondered if part of their job description was to keep certain people from wandering around the house.
The introductions, the scrimmages to seize the mike and talk to Cecil, continued. It looked like this was going to take a long time. Among all the canopies one large, heavy tent sheltered the refreshments, and except for the waiters, right now it was empty. I made my way over there. A little fountain burbled on the table that held stacks of glasses. You were supposed to drop a piece of cut fruit, strawberry or peach, into the bottom of a glass and hold it under the fountain to have it filled with chilled white wine. The waiter demonstrated for me, but I declined. I let him give me a glass of orange juice, and then four more.
I cruised the food tables, while Cecil's voice still boomed in the background, like a roar of surf, rising and receding. Tiers of platters of hors d’oeuvres, laid out artistically by color and shape, filled up again by the numberless waiters as soon as they were depleted, covered three tables. I hadn’t had lunch yet, and fighting makes you really hungry. I grabbed a big plate, and went hunting and gathering. But no little sausages did I find. No cheese, no deviled eggs, no crab or caviar. No animal protein of any kind. “Don’t tell me,” I smiled back at the smiling waiter. “Vegetarian?”
“No,” he smiled back again at me. “Vegan.”
I had hummus. And bread. Four kinds of hummus. Three kinds of bread. I chewed quickly, and promised myself a whole lot of meat for dinner. The sound of a gong, and the shifting of people, brought my attention back to the lawn.
“My Beloveds,” Cecil's voice intoned, “let us take this chance to meditate all together.”
“Grab your mats and pillows, everyone!” Holly directed. “Mats are over there. Pillows if you need them. You’ll find incense sticks ready in each pavilion…”
“For the length of one joss stick,” Cecil continued, oblivious of the people hurrying to grab what they needed and take their places, “let us join together in the face of the coming disaster, on what may be our last day of this joyous life, and think of love, and what the power of love can do for us. Let us embrace the World Snake with the power of our love, in colors of blue and gold and white. For we know, Beloveds, that love will always win. Always. Namaste.”
“Namaste!” they all murmured in response, with their hands palm to palm at their hearts, and bowed their heads.
The smell of incense drifted over the lawn. I stood chowing down on another piece of flat bread smeared with hummus and thinly sliced cucumber, and watched all the lovely people fold themselves onto thick round pillows, or wooden benches, or prayer mats, or combinations thereof, hands clasped at their bellies, facing toward the sea. I felt the power of their attention rise, gently. This was not a powerful bunch. The energy wasn’t shaped or organized, it just rose because they were all doing the same thing together, more or less. But no one here knew how to do anything with it, so it just rose up and floated away.
I wandered among them as though I just hadn’t found my pillow yet. I identified seventeen of the people who had been at the private beach party, who had joined in deceiving me, and who had stood by while I was shot.
And Holly had arranged for the party, the deception, and the trap. She took her place now on a kind of platform, decked with colored cloths, in a three-sided tent hung with more of those banners. Three other people took their places on a rug at her feet. The round guy was one, Sally, the big woman I’d met outside, was another. A tall guy who wore an orange ceremonial robe hanging open over regular clothes was the third.
Holly lit a stick of incense and stuck it upright in a holder on a table to her right. Next to the incense stood a gong. On her left, a round meditation pillow had been decked with flowers, I guessed for the absent birthday boy. Over the amplifier, we could hear him breathing into the microphone. His followers breathed slowly and audibly too, all making the same sound together.
“How long… ?” I mouthed at one of the servers. He shrugged and shook his head that he didn’t know.
I snagged a couple more pieces of bread. If I stood around much longer, my bruises were going to seize up, and then they would really hurt. Just standing there doing nothing, so I had a moment to think about them, made my arms start throbbing again. And besides, I didn’t want to be part of the breath-fest, and I wasn’t one of their flunkeys.
Down below the cliff was one of the sovereign remedies for aching muscles. I walked around the edge of the lawn, stepping past peoples’ prayer mats, until I reached the steps that led down the steep slope to the terraced garden below. I trotted down, though not at my usual speed. I crossed the garden, short-cutting across the winding paths, and found the next set of steps that led right down to the sea.
The private beach was fairly narrow at this time, since the tide was almost at its height. A couple of the black-clad staff walked along the shore near the surf, probably taking a break. They weren’t looking my way. I changed with relief onto four feet, trotted to the water and waded out into the tide. The salt water eased my bruises that were just beginning to stiffen up. I paddled out into the surf and then back again, remembering running down a beach with Richard, not too long ago. A wave smacked me down, and I hauled myself out of the water and shook myself hard. I looked up and down the beach, glanced up at the garden and the top of the cliff, and then trotted to the steps and ran up them on four legs. Running on four legs is so much faster, and I thought the exercise would keep me from stiffening up again. The pain in my wounded wrist and ankle was nearly gone. My hip was stiff, and the dart wound still hurt, but the pain of it now blended together with all my new aches and bruises. Salt water would diminish the swelling. Now I just needed rest and sleep.
I poked around the garden, stopping here and there when something interested me particularly. I found a bench in an alcove shielded from the wind and looking out to sea. I changed and sat down.
I was pleased to see that my new boots were still with me. The white scarf and the flowers were gone, but the silver and turquoise necklace had made the change this time. I rubbed my arms, working out the lumps so they would heal faster.
I’d grown up near the ocean. The sound of the surf, the smell of salt, the fog sitting far out on the horizon, reminded me of home. But it isn’t home anymore when you are abused. The home I was sick for only existed in memory. This was my home now; this was my territory. On the cliff above were people who had done me harm. How should I deal justice to them all?
Elaine had hurt me the most, and I’d taken it out on her car. Come to think of it, I’d taken Curt's transgressions out on his car as well, and given them both a ducking. Serious dents or window cracks? Sand in the engine? Slashed tires? But would that teach them anything? And what did that make of me, except a vandal?
Every power wielder must deal justice, because she can
, the sorceress had said. But what I chose to do to those who had hurt me must leave me stronger, not weaker. And it must disincline any of them from ever challenging me again.
On that resolve I drifted into sleep, shielded from the wind by a corner of the bench. I woke up just a few minutes later to the sound of voices. The two staff members had come back from the beach and were climbing the stairs. I followed after them, still on two feet. At the top of the cliff, the heavy breathers were still entranced in their meditation. I got past the staff at the door by asking for the bathroom, and went inside to explore the house.
T
he house had four different roofs because it was built in different sections. I guessed it had once been a small house, and the sections with the bigger rooms and the bigger windows were added on later, as the succeeding owners got wealthier. The middle right-hand section had a ground floor recreation room with two glass walls, one looking out at the sea, one opening on to the pool. It held a maze of weight lifting machines, stationary bikes, stair machines, rowing machines, a punching bag, a pool table, and a ping-pong table. And a full bar, for when the recreaters got thirsty. One door led to a big bathroom with a whirlpool, and one led to a sauna, and that was the whole ground floor. A winding circular staircase led up to the second floor, and here I found Holly's bedroom, wreathed in flowing hangings, flowing curtains, tapestries of angels, and a really thick violet carpet. She had the biggest bed I’d ever seen, flooded with purple, white, and red silk cushions. This room was probably off-limits to guests, but there was no one around to ask. I thought my wallet might be in there, but I couldn’t catch a whiff of it.