The Medusa Amulet

Chapter 46

Kathryn Van Owen was staring out the windows of her penthouse aerie, watching the moonlight glint off the obsidian black surface of Lake Michigan, and wondering, for the thousandth time, what had become of David Franco. Had he found La Medusa, or had he, like Palliser and so many others before him, fallen into the spider’s web, never to emerge again?

In the next room, she heard the phone ring, and Cyril pick up. She could not make out what was being said, but a few moments later, he rushed in and said, “It was the receptionist at the hospice.”

Kathryn, who had been keeping close tabs on David’s family, had already taken the trouble to bribe her for any news of his return.

“David Franco is there right now.”

Kathryn’s heart leapt in her chest. She knew all about Sarah’s grim prognosis. But had David rushed back to save her, or simply to say good-bye? Kathryn was already moving toward the door, and Cyril, close behind, was grabbing her coat and gloves. And while she usually waited for him to bring the limo up, tonight she went down to the garage with him, opened her own door, and virtually jumped inside.

He pulled the car out of the garage, onto Lake Shore Drive, and into traffic made worse by the weather. Kathryn cursed the winds that gusted the snow across the lanes, slowing the other cars, and she cursed the cars themselves for impeding her progress.

How long had David been back? Why hadn’t he called her the moment he returned? Was it because he could not admit his failure?

Or was it because he was concealing his success?

Oh, she could have warned him not to try his own hand at magic. She had feared that he might. But she also knew her admonitions would have fallen on deaf ears. After all, wasn’t it his sister’s critical state that she had been banking on all along? She knew that any doubts he might have entertained-doubts any rational man would of course have had-would be subsumed in his desperate search to find a cure. He had needed to succeed on this mission as no other searcher for the Medusa ever had.

Could that have made the crucial difference?

On one side of the limo, she saw the twinkling lights of the Chicago skyscrapers and apartment buildings. On the other, the emptiness of the vast and freezing lake.

But one thought alone-had he found the damned thing?-kept coming back to her. Would she finally hold the Medusa in her hand again? Would she be able to undo its sinister power? Over the years, how many times had she cast her mind back to Benvenuto’s studio, and the night when she had removed the iron box from its hideaway… perused its mysterious contents… and awakened on the floor, naked, her hair white, with Benvenuto bending over her and asking in mournful tones, “What have you done? What have you done?”

Even now, centuries later, the words echoed in her head as if they had just been spoken.

Cyril turned the car off the wide, lakeshore highway and onto the less congested city streets. And by the time they pulled into the harsh white lights of the hospice driveway, she was already perched on the edge of her seat like a skydiver about to leap.

Without waiting for Cyril to come around and open the door, she threw it wide and, with her fur coat flapping open around her, flew into the building.

The receptionist took one look at her and instantly said, “Room 3. Down the hall, turn right.”

She marched down the hall, the carpet muffling her steps, trying to compose herself. Vivaldi was playing over the speaker system, the lights were low and recessed.

She saw a burly man in a flannel shirt, urging a cup of hot coffee on an exhausted David Franco, who was slumped in a chair. His head hung down, his shoulders sagged, but only one thing truly startled her. And that was his hair.

It was dead white.

My God. He not only had the glass-he had looked into its depths himself!

When she stood before him, his eyes slowly came up to meet hers. She could not read his expression. It wasn’t triumph, and it wasn’t defeat.

It was uncertainty.

“Give it to me,” was all she said, holding out her empty palm.

“Excuse me,” the burly man said-surely Sarah’s husband-“but who are you?”

“A friend of your wife’s,” she replied, without even looking at him. “The best friend she’s ever had, in fact. Wouldn’t you say so, David?”

Her hand was still out.

“Gary, could you give us a minute?” David asked.

“Sure, sure,” Gary said, moving off warily. “But I’ll be in with Sarah if you need me.”

When he was out of earshot, David said, “How do I know if it’s worked?” and Kathryn brushed his question aside like a gnat.

“Look at you,” she said. “You can’t be serious.”

“But Sarah?”

“Enough of this,” she said. “Another word and I’ll think you’re trying to renege on the deal.”

“I would never do that.”

“Good,” she said, withdrawing a sealed envelope from her pocket. “You know what this is, right?”

David looked at it vacantly.

“Most people would be glad to get a million dollars.”

A lanky man with a badge that identified him as Dr. Alan Ross came out of the room, noting something on a chart and saying, “David, can I have a word with you?”

He acknowledged Kathryn, but didn’t say anything more until David explained that she was a family member and the doctor could speak freely in front of her.

“In that case,” the doctor said, “I’ll say I’m stumped.”

“Stumped?”

“Your sister says she feels great, and trust me, she shouldn’t.”

“But is she?”

“I’ll know a lot more tomorrow when all the tests can be done. I’m certainly not releasing her tonight. But for now? I don’t know what’s going on, but she’s rallied in a way I’ve never seen before. All her vital signs are back to normal, and I just called down to the lab and the blood test we took is clean as a whistle. They thought I must have mixed up some samples.” He shook his head in wonderment. “She even looks a hundred percent better. Gary said she just called the house and told Emme to get out of bed-and this is a school night, mind you-and come right over. I’ve never seen a remission like this. I wish I could claim I’d performed some miracle here, but I didn’t.”

“Maybe someone else did,” Kathryn said.

“Maybe so,” he admitted. “Maybe so.” Shaking David’s hand happily, he said, “Whatever happened, it’s great news. I’ll be back first thing in the morning.” Then, glancing at David’s shock of white hair, he said, “When did you decide to do that?”

“It was kind of… impulsive.”

Still in a rollicking humor, the doctor said, “Next time you get an impulse like that, talk to Sarah. She was always the sensible one of you two.”

He sauntered off, snapping his fingers at his side, and Kathryn tucked the check into David’s breast pocket. Without another word, he fished La Medusa out from under his collar. It turned slowly on its chain, the Gorgon’s glare catching the light.

But the moment it landed in her palm, she snapped her hand shut like a trap. “A pleasure doing business with you,” she said before turning back down the hall. She was squeezing the amulet so tight her knuckles hurt.

But she had it, she had it at last!

She had just gone through the revolving door and into the cold night air-snow was swirling off the concrete-when a black Mercedes sedan, its headlights casting a bright blue glow, tore up to the driveway, skidding to a stop at the icy curb.

She stepped back, signaling to Cyril to bring her own limo around, when the back door of the car opened and a long, black walking stick descended onto the cement. It was followed a moment later by a man with a coat draped over his shoulders, in the Continental style. He had strong features, with a prominent Italian nose, a thick moustache, black hair dusted at the temples with gray… and a scowl that might have scared a legion.

Kathryn stopped where she stood, so suddenly that he almost collided with her. Apologizing as he passed, he momentarily glanced back.

And that was all it took.

Disbelief gave way to dawning amazement. She saw his eyes searching her face, his lips moving to form the right word.

“Caterina?” he said, as a nimbus of snowflakes whirled above their heads.

It was as if the world had stopped turning. All the strength had left her limbs.

“Benvenuto,” she replied.

Dropping the cane, the coat falling from his shoulders, he snatched her into his arms, so violently that the Medusa, clutched in her hand, slipped through her fingers and landed with a sharp crack on the pavement.

“My God!” she exclaimed, looking down as its glass shattered into a thousand tiny fragments. A thin rivulet of pale green water trickled out, sizzling on the ice like acid. Before she could even consider the consequences, she felt a rush of hot blood pounding in her veins, and a flush filling her cheeks. She gasped in shock and saw that her lover was reeling, too. A light was blazing in his face, and his breathing was labored. Their eyes locked, and though they said nothing, they didn’t have to. Both of them knew what the other was thinking, and feeling. Both of them had imagined this release for centuries.

Still holding her in his arms, he glanced down at his fallen cane. But she could feel his back straightening, his legs growing stronger under him. She could sense an even greater power than before surging through his body, just as it was doing through her own.

“ Il mio gatto,” he said, a wide smile lifting the ends of his moustache and his strong arms buoying her up. “Still causing trouble, I see.”

But she was too overwhelmed to reply.

He kissed her hard on the lips, then threw back his head in exultation. Snowflakes stuck to his eyebrows and moustache. He let out a loud, braying laugh that cut through the night and reverberated off the walls of the hospice before being carried away on the gusting wind.

“You know what it is, don’t you?” he shouted, in joy. “You know what it is?”

But he didn’t have to tell her. She knew. It was the power of time starting afresh, of life beginning anew. The clock that had stopped, nearly five hundred years before, had started again. The hands that had been frozen in place were ticking. He lifted her off her feet and swung her around, laughing. And though he was holding her so tight she could barely catch her breath, she laughed, too. Cyril, and a couple trudging into the hospice, looked on in amazement. Who would have thought that in a place like this, where death and sorrow reigned, mortality itself could have been so celebrated and embraced? And when her feet touched the ground again, Kathryn-no, Caterina now, Caterina for as long as she lived-felt the pieces of the broken mirror crunching under the sole of her shoe.