Familiar Spirit

Chapter Ten

February 2

I can delay no longer. Tomorrow I must take my children and move into the new house. To think that once I longed for this day . . . It was to have been our home, but now it is merely another trial to bear, a strange place, without warmth or meaning. Walter and I planned that house together, watched it grow as we watched our children. Without him, it means less than nothing to me. Somehow I imagined that when the house was finished he would come back to me, and we would be a family once again in our new home. Foolish of me, I know, but even now, as I write, sitting in this room for the last time, spending the last night in the house where I was once so happy, I still expect a reprieve. I still strain my ears for the sound of his footstep outside, the sound of his voice calling the children as he enters. I tell myself that he is gone forever, but I cannot believe it. I cannot believe that I mean so little to him, that the years we spent together, the love we had, has all been for nothing. To be thrown away as if I meant nothing to him. My pride, I suppose. Aunt Gena said as much, although I was not meant to hear; said that it was my haughty ways, my pride in my good education, my constant talk of books and art that drove Walter to the arms of a simpler, more properly submissive woman. But Walter liked my learning, and my pride, when he met me, and he must have known—surely I proved, in all the years we were together—that I never thought of anything more, any higher calling, than to be his wife and the mother of his children? I would have done anything he asked. I would still do anything. Anything, to have him back.

February 10

Caught up in the chores of moving, I have been remiss in writing. But perhaps it is just as well. This will be a boring legacy to read over in my old age, if ever I should read it again. Only one thing I want to write about or talk about; only one subject on my mind: Walter. I feel dead inside, like a ghost in this house that was to have been ours. How can this be my home, when Walter is gone and has never lived here, will never live here?

How bored my friends are with me, with my silent misery. I try not to weary them with my constant complaints, my eternal longing for Walter, but then I find that I have nothing to say to them beyond a few, mechanical comments on the weather and the rate at which children grow. They say—so obviously eager to offer some positive advice—that the new house will be good for me. In new surroundings, I will find it easier to forget. Forget. They all want me to forget him. That is the sum of their advice, the patent medicine they offer. Face reality, Nancy. Admit he is gone. Forget him.

Such good, sensible, realistic advice, and I can no more follow it than I can fly. I continue to hope and wait for Walter’s return because I know of no other way to live. I cannot give up the only man I have ever loved. Without him, I scarcely exist. Only the children give me a reason to go on living—for what would they do without me?

My stubbornness in clinging to foolish hopes—my stubbornness, too, has been offered as a reason for why Walter left me—makes my friends sigh for me. It can do no good, they say. Refusing to forget will only make life harder for me.

But one person agrees with me. I met someone today who believes that stubbornness can do wonders. Who believes that all is not lost, so long as I truly want Walter back. Someone who thinks that I can accomplish something by refusing to forget and refusing to give up.

Who is this person? Oh—only Yolanda Ferris, Ursula’s strange sister, back from an extended stay in Europe and as out of place in our quiet little community as an eagle in a hen house.

February 13

Yolanda called today.

I find myself fascinated by her, drawn to her where others are repelled or frightened. She is “not our sort,” of course. Poor Ursula is shamed by her, but she is family and can hardly disown her, despite her loose talk, her public smoking, fast ways and bold way of looking. She is rather contemptuous of us all—she finds us slow and provincial and boring. I was flattered that she sought me out, that she found me different enough from the common herd to be worth knowing.

She talked about her life in Europe, and about books and music and art—the sort of conversation I have been starved for. I did worry about keeping up my end of the conversation—my life has been devoted to the children and to Walter for so many years that I have not had much time for literature or music, dearly though I love them—but she did not seem to mind. She seemed as happy to talk as I was to listen—grateful, I suppose, for a sympathetic ear. The things she told me! The things she has done, the places she has been, the famous people she has glimpsed or even spoken to in the great cities of the world! She talked about her life in London and Paris and Berne. I am tempted to set down some of the things she told me here—they were so much more interesting than my poor, dull life. The stuff of an exciting novel. She made me forget my troubles in my interest. My spirits were lifted higher than they have been in six months. She made me remember those exhilarating conversations of my school-days, when everything seemed possible, and the whole world might be attained with a little effort. How my world has shrunk—although I let it go willingly, gladly, for love. Only to lose even that. A depressing note to end on, after those bright hours with Yolanda. And yet I always come round to that in the end.

February 15

If only there were something I could do. Something positive. Forgetting is a negation, and I don’t want that. I want to cling to my memories and my love for Walter and make them real again. I don’t want to lose myself in wishes, but to make use of them. I want my love to be so strong that it will compel his return, that it cannot be denied. If I had been strong enough, if I had loved him enough, would he have ever left me? But now that he is gone, why should it be forever? Men do leave their wives and then return to them, just as they take leave of their senses, only to return to them when the liquor wears off. If I could make Walter feel the power of my love, surely he would return?

February 17

God bless Yolanda. She listens to me and understands as no one else does. She may look bold and hard as brass, but when she presses my hand and tells me not to give up hope . . .

February 18

I told Yolanda, a little timidly, my thoughts on love, and my perhaps foolish dream of compelling Walter’s return. She did not think it foolish. She was very interested. She encouraged me to go on thinking of Walter. She said that if I could learn how to will, how to use my will for what I wanted—

And then she broke off, and looked very mysterious. And when I pressed her she hedged and seemed reluctant. At last she said that I had stumbled upon a very important principle without understanding it, out of my own need. But that she knew someone who— Again, she stopped as if she had said too much. Finally she told me that she would bring me some books to read, and that afterwards we could discuss them. I am eaten up with curiosity.

February 22

I have been reading and thinking these past few days; nothing but reading and thinking. At first I was disappointed by the books Yolanda brought to me. They were books about Magic! Superstition, I thought. It was all crazy. Skimming through them did not change my mind. But I believe that Yolanda is too intelligent to be taken in by nonsense, so there must be something to this. So I set myself to reading without preconceptions. And now I wonder . . . it seems mad, but there is something more to it. The things hinted at make my skin prickle with anticipation.

February 23

Yolanda knows Crowley, the one they call The Great Beast. She met him in Paris. And she understands his writings because she has seen what he writes about! Oh, the things Yolanda knows . . . the things she has done . . . are much stranger than anyone in Austin could imagine! It is another world entirely that she belongs to. And yet within my grasp. I reread Crowley with new attention. Much of what he writes is deliberately obscure, as a challenge and a caution.

He proclaims in his writings and his self the power of the directed human will. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” Want something strongly and purely enough, and it will come to pass.

How much more exhilarating that is than the tame, weary advice to forget, to adjust to reality! To take the world, and shape it closer to the heart’s desire!

March 1

A whole new life stretches before me; a whole new world. Yes, it is within my grasp! Yolanda has told me so much, deciding that I can be trusted, now, to understand the truth. She has told me of certain things she has done, rituals she has taken part in with others, how she accomplished things that would normally be considered impossible. She showed me certain proofs which I should not write about, not even here. But it is true, I know. I have glimpsed the Truth.

Yolanda has told me about a man she says is even greater than Crowley, a powerful magician who is her lover; who is here in Austin even now. Crowley has the popular fame, but this man has the real power, she says. He has put into practice things Crowley scarcely dares hint at. He has achieved the ultimate. He can dissociate his soul from his body and send it travelling—in other forms, or disincarnate. He leads more than the one life we are normally allotted. I fell into a kind of a dream as she told me about him. I envisioned him changing bodies like suits of clothes, dispossessing the previous owners and then discarding their husks. He is the Superman Nietzsche dreamed of, beyond questions of Good and Evil. I must meet this man, and I tremble at the thought. He could help me, teach me, as he has Yolanda, or he could as easily destroy me.

March 6

Today I met him, the man Yolanda told me about; the great magus who calls himself “Jade.”

Never before have I been so struck by the sheer force of a personality. It is as if he has a great fire burning inside him, whereas the rest of us are only matches, easily extinguished by any passing breeze, or even by his breath.

Physically, he is rather small, muscular but small-boned. His eyes are strange. They are brown with golden flecks in them, like bits of flame. His hair is short and dark, his hands manicured, his dress quiet but fashionable. I took him for a Yankee by his speech—his voice is soft and easy, but every word is absolutely precise.

Describing him physically does not describe him. I was aware of his power as soon as I entered the room, even before I actually saw him. I felt him, his will, his attention turned towards me, like a great heat, like a force of nature. I concentrated on details, clinging to solid reality, afraid that otherwise I would be swept away.

“Jade is my magical name,” he told me, smiling, when I made the faux pas of addressing him as “Mr. Jade.”

“It is a name with a special meaning for me, the name I chose for myself,” he said. “You must have a magical name, too, now that you have joined us.”

I was flattered and frightened by that. So I had joined them. He had accepted me. He stared at me—he stared at my bosom, at my legs, at my face, and at my middle, frankly inspecting me. I was afraid of failing some test. I felt my cheeks heating and I struggled with my embarrassment, but I was afraid to meet his eyes. I felt—I knew—that if he concentrated his will upon me I would do anything, no matter how out of character or morally repugnant. I was almost paralyzed by his presence. I saw that even Yolanda, normally so bold and sure of herself, faded away to a quiet grey mouse, eager to please her master and afraid of failing him. Someday, I thought, he will break her and cast her aside. Can I expect anything better?

“We will call you Lilith,” Jade said. “It is a good name, and a powerful one.”

I wanted to ask why I should not choose my own name, as he had done; to ask why Yolanda did not have a magical name; to protest against the name. I did not want to be called after Adam’s first, disobedient wife, cast aside for Eve, changed into a demon. But I said nothing, afraid to challenge him. Perhaps I should have; perhaps he was testing me and would have had more respect for me if I had spoken up and asserted my own will.

March 7

Jade came to see me today. In my own house. He stood very close to me, touching me now and again as if accidentally, but always looking at me to show me it was deliberate. Always testing me. I did not move away. I let him test me.

“The love spells are the easiest,” he said. “To compel desire in a woman or a man, to bring back a straying lover, to wrap the web of passion tightly. Even those who lack the strength of will to succeed in other aspects of the Art often manage to work such love spells. It is a very ancient and widely used magic, the way of a man with a maid, or a woman with her lover.”

Was he telling me that it will not be hard to win back Walter? Telling me I could do it myself if I had any willpower at all? Or teasing me, letting me know that he could make me fall in love with him if he cared to? But I could never love Jade. I will do whatever he tells me—I will give myself to him, if necessary—but all that I do is for the love of Walter. Because my life is unimportant without him. I will do whatever I must, whatever I can, to win Walter back.

So I did not flinch when Jade put his hand flat on my breast. I looked at him as coolly as I could, thinking he was more like a man judging horseflesh than a man wanting a woman, but his hard, bright eyes were too much for me and I dropped my gaze. He laughed, scoring a point, and then walked around the parlor, assessing it. The windows were open, the day was warm and windy. From the fields outside rose my son’s voice as he ran and played.

“I could make you want me,” he said. “No matter how you think of your lost Walter, if I cared to, I could make you shiver with desire for me.”

It startled me, that he knew my husband’s name when I had not told him. I wondered if Yolanda had told him, or if he had picked it out of my mind, lying unspoken on my lips.

“You are an attractive woman,” he went on. “If you were taught how to dress and do your hair and wore a bit of paint, you would draw many compliments.”

“I do not care to,” I said, wondering what he meant to do with me.

“I could make you care to, if I willed it.”

“And if I did not will it?”

“Would you care to test yourself against me?” He sounded amused, as well he might. During our talk he had been backing me across the room by subtle inches. I could feel myself perspiring. I did not dare meet his eyes. I was terrified that he would make me do something humiliating, to degrade me, to teach me a lesson. I did not doubt that he could break me, but I sought some way out.

“Crowley said that ‘Do as thou wilt’ did not include the license to overwhelm others,” I said. “Even the weak have wills which should not be violated, even though it is possible.”

“You’ve been reading Crowley, have you?” Suddenly he released me, and flung himself down in the easy chair. “Crowley’s a coward and an ass. If it can be done, it should be done. He tries to have it both ways—the law of the strong mixed with some kind of golden rule for the benefit of the weak. Crowley has seen the truth, and he is afraid of it, for all his posturing. Weak wills demand to be destroyed. That is their nature. The weak beg for mastery. Like you, my Lilith. You’re waiting for a master.”

“I’m waiting for my husband.”

“No. He didn’t want you. He left you. If you had really wanted him, really loved him with all your soul, he could not have done that. If you were stronger—” He watched me closely. He ran his tongue over his lips. “What do you think of Crowley’s attitude about the sexual nature of magic? Do you believe that? That results are obtained only when the magician lets himself go in a kind of cosmic orgasm?”

I did not flinch at his language. Talking with Yolanda has made me less shockable. “You would know better than I,” I said.

He laughed. “Such humility! You have no interest in it, I suppose? It was not that aspect which attracted you, I suppose? I tell you, my Lilith, the spiritual ecstasy, the shooting forth of the unstoppable Will, is the greatest experience of all. Sex is a dim reflection, but not a poor analogy. For lesser mortals, the sexual coupling releases the greatest force they shall ever know, this side of death. But they all stop there, unaware of how to harness this energy so as to reach even greater heights of pleasure and power.

“I think Yolanda has told you that our rituals involve sexual congress. The coupling builds up energy which the properly disciplined Will can feed upon and grow strong. There is nothing else to match the power inherent in sexual intercourse, save violent death. And death has its drawbacks. Sexuality is endlessly renewing, while the blood sacrifice . . .” He shrugged, smiling like a devil at me.

“The spurting of blood or the spurting of semen—one or the other is necessary for a ritual to succeed, for the magic to work. Sex or death, to focus the power of the Will.”

He talked on and on and I sat numb and entranced, both repelled and fascinated. He may be the most powerful man on earth, and I want, I need, some part of that power for myself. I am weak, I know how weak I am, but I have my love to give me strength. I love Walter, and for that love I will do anything. I will do whatever I must to learn how to win my husband back.

And before he left—again, seeming to read my thoughts—Jade promised me: “I shall give you what you truly want, my Lilith. Your heart’s desire. Blessed art thou among women.”

The devil quoting scripture. His words should have pleased me, but they made me shiver with a sudden dread.

March 12

I am in it now, well and truly in it. I could not escape if I wanted to.

They need me for something, although I do not know what. I am to help them and, in return, I shall have what I most want. I know they can teach me how to get Walter back, and I will do anything for that.

Although I am afraid of what is to come, I am impatient for it to begin. I think about the days after, when Jade and Yolanda will have gone away and left me to resume my life with Walter.

I have already begun, on my own, to will his return.

At night, every night, I place his picture beneath my pillow and dream of him. During the day I carry a photograph with me, in my apron pocket while I do my chores, and I stare at it and kiss it and touch it many times. Walter is never out of my thoughts. Thoughts, properly directed, can compel. Unskilled as I am, I can concentrate. The force of my thoughts must reach Walter, wherever he is. Eventually they will draw him to me, like a magnet pulling steel.

March 15

Today Ursula came by to warn me against Yolanda. I nearly laughed out loud.

“She means you no good. She’s a dangerous, untrustworthy creature—I say it even though she is my own sister. You do not understand her, and she will harm you. She has dangerous friends and vicious habits. She means you harm, I fear.” Etc. etc.

I scarcely remember what she said. During her visit I was thinking about Walter, as I always do. I saw Walter sitting in the chair where Ursula perched; saw Walter walking in through the door as she walked out. Walter, filling my vision like the sight of God.

March 20

At night I can feel him beside me in our bed. When I open my eyes, the illusion vanishes, but for just a few moments it is so real. Only a matter of time, now. My will is almost too strong to deny. While Walter sleeps, my soul flies to him and takes stitches in his skin. I pull the threads, and his astral body flies to me, to nestle in my arms. His physical body will not be long in following.

Soon he will return. Soon he will be here beside me. And then Jade will tell me how to keep him, how to bind his soul to mine with bonds he cannot break in this world or any other.

March 27

I gather hints and try to guess what they want of me, for they won’t tell me what I must do or what they need me for. I know that the date set for the ritual is in April; that is all I know. I think of Walter and try not to worry.

March 29

Yolanda took me to Jade’s lodgings today—a suite in the Driskill Hotel. I don’t think Jade was expecting us—although he showed no surprise—and I don’t know what Yolanda intended by the visit. Jade had coffee sent up and we sat around sipping it and making small talk, as if we were in society. It was very peculiar.

Eventually, almost as if he were at a loss for anything else to do, Jade took something out of a case. He unwrapped a piece of silk from it and put it into my hands. “What do you make of her?”

I held a dark green carved stone—jade, I think—about six or seven inches high and no more than three across. It was in the likeness of a naked woman.

Oddly, it felt warm, almost hot, to my touch. And as I looked at it I felt the most powerful sensation. It was a blast of pure evil, as if the thing had been a poisonous snake, uncoiling in my hand. I was so frightened I nearly dropped it. But Jade must have anticipated such a response because his hands had closed around it before it could fall.

He set it down on a small table. I looked at it out of the corner of my eye, not liking to look at it but not feeling safe leaving it unwatched, either. I was too shaken to speak. Yolanda, too, was staring at it. She was very pale, although with fear or simply excitement I could not tell. Jade was watching both of us with his usual calm amusement.

I felt he was challenging me. Frightened but determined to prove my courage, I rose and walked to the table. I heard Yolanda gasp. I reached out and touched the figure for only a moment. It was enough. I knew I had not imagined it—the thing was alive. No, that’s not true. The stone was merely stone; the woman merely a carved representation. But there was life within it, like electricity glowing in a glass bulb, like lightning caught in a jar. Some spirit, some living spirit, had been put into the figure. It did not belong there; it was trapped there, unnaturally preserved within the solid stone.

I looked at Jade and saw him watching me.

“I must leave now,” I said. I was terrified, so frightened that I felt ill. The life in that stone was so wrong, so unnatural, that I could not stay in the same room with it. I did not know if it was evil or dangerous, but it horrified me.

When we were away, I questioned Yolanda about the little figure. But she was evasive, claiming to know nothing.

“You had seen it before,” I said. “It didn’t surprise you.”

She admitted that Jade had shown it to her, had her hold it, some time past. But I suspected that she knew more and I was determined to have it out of her. So all the way home I persisted in talking about it—even though I would rather have forgotten it—speculating on what the thing in the stone was. At last I hit upon something.

“It wants to get out,” I said. “I could feel that. It is trapped in the stone and wants out. Do you suppose Jade can keep it trapped?”

“Oh, yes! He—” She stopped short but my imagination finished the sentence for her. “He put it there.” Was that right? As casually as if I knew what I was talking about, I said, “Of course, he will call it out again, with our help.”

She turned her head to look at me, making me fear for our safety as she was driving a poorly paved road. “What has he been telling you?” she demanded.

I smiled, smug as a cat. “What hasn’t he told you?”

A silly trick, but it made her uneasy. “Why should he tell you anything?” she wondered aloud.

“I know how powerful Jade is,” I said. “But I wonder if he’s powerful enough. The spirit in that stone—I could sense the strength of it. It must be awfully powerful. Once we set it free, will Jade be able to control it?”

Yolanda laughed, and I knew I had said something wrong, revealed my ignorance.

“You don’t know anything,” she said, pleased. “You’re only fishing.” After that, I couldn’t get anything out of her.

I have been trying to puzzle it out with the clues I have. Jade’s name—that must be a clue, since the figure is made of jade. Or is that just one of Jade’s jokes? I wish I knew more. I would be stronger if I knew what was to happen.

March 30

Jade has sent a small black dog to watch me.

It isn’t a dog.

Its eyes are not a dog’s eyes. When it looks at me, I see a flicker of that yellow-brown gleam and a suggestion of the heat that glows out of Jade’s eyes, and I know that it is not a dog but Jade who is looking at me.

Superficially, it is a small, shaggy mongrel, one ear torn from a fight, friendly and hungry. The children beg to keep it and are enamored of it. It doesn’t matter what I do—it will stay.

According to Crowley, “You can always use the body inhabited by an elemental, such as an eagle, hare, wolf or any convenient animal, by making a very simple compact.”

April 1

I wait like a dumb animal, knowing that Jade will not let me escape. I am afraid he means to kill me, not merely to use me sexually as I had thought. I am to be the victim, the lure, the bait.

I reread Crowley and think of Walter. I pray to Walter, not to God. I pray that Walter will come before it is too late, come and take me away from here. I am frightened, and my fear makes my will waver. But I must do it. I must call Walter to me.

The dog keeps getting into the house, no matter what I do. I have forbidden the children to let it in, but time and again I turn to find it behind me, watching. I put it outside again, and it does not protest or fight. It only looks at me, and we know each other.

April 2

I dreamed of Walter last night. He had come home. I heard his voice in the parlor, heard his footsteps on the floorboards. He called my name, but when I woke and rushed from my bed to find him there was no one there but the little black dog, curled up in Walter’s favorite chair, watching me.

April 3

I told Yolanda about the dog. She was not surprised. She told me that Jade had had other “familiar spirits” in the past—chiefly, a lizard and a cat, which he sent out to spy for him.

I asked her if these “familiar spirits” were not rather animals who had been taken over by Jade, possessed by him; creatures which housed some fragment of his will and personality and were extensions of himself. She seemed surprised, and somewhat suspicious, that I should know this, but she did not deny it. When I asked her how many such beings Jade could control at one time, she seemed agitated. She asked me how I knew such things, and I quoted Crowley to her.

“I thought you didn’t understand his books,” she said, rather peevishly. Could it be that I am smarter and stronger than Yolanda—and Jade—expected? I think I make Yolanda uneasy now, and I wonder if it is because she realizes that I am not the simple, unwitting victim she must have thought I would be. I don’t know enough, but I know too much—more than I was expected to know.

“Has Jade ever managed to possess another human being without losing consciousness in his own body?” I asked. “Can he split his soul and be in two places at once?”

Not such an unusual question, I thought. We used to discuss such things, back when she confided in me, before I was truly drawn into the web. That Jade could leave his body and take on other forms was something she had boasted of to me.

“I don’t know,” she said nervously. “What a strange idea.”

“Not so strange,” I said. “When Jade is watching me through the eyes of that dog, he is not fully here. He is also somewhere else, in his own body, doing something else. You told me once he could take on other forms. Did you mean only animals? Or can he possess other human bodies—perhaps survive his own bodily death that way?”

My questioning shook her badly, and she soon made an excuse and left, telling me nothing except what I might deduce from her nervousness.

April 6

Walter is in town, so I have heard. He has not tried to contact me, but he will come to me soon, I am certain. I know why he is here. He has come in response to my will. I have drawn him back to town, and soon I will draw him back to my arms.

April 9

They came for me in the middle of the night. Jade and Yolanda both wore long black gowns, and had me dress in one. Jade would not let me wake my children, nor even leave them a note of explanation.

We drove through the blackness in Jade’s saloon car, heading south out of the city, then west on the Bee Caves road. Yolanda was tense and silent. Jade was as relaxed and powerful as ever. I fancied that he gave off a kind of glow, there in the coolness and dark of the closed car.

“Don’t worry and don’t think,” he said to me. “Simply feel. I will tell you what to do. You must trust me.”

But I knew that was the last thing I could do. I would not trust him, even though I might obey him. I would do what I had to do. I reminded myself that although no man but Walter had ever held me in his arms, although I loved only Walter, I was no virgin. I have borne children and known suffering and pain, and I could bear what Jade would do. I would not be his blood sacrifice, but I would be his altar, his ritual tool, the focus of his will, his sexual receptacle. I would survive, and return home, and Walter would respond to my will.

Outside the city we travelled narrow, rutted farm roads. At last, Jade pulled the car to the side and announced that we would walk. Branches whipped my face and high weeds slowed my progress, and as I stumbled through the darkness I prayed I would not tread on a snake or twist my ankle. Out here, away from the city, anything might happen. I did not want to be made any more helpless than I already was. The sky had lightened to grey by the time we reached our destination, and the approaching dawn was some relief. In the pale morning light I saw that Jade had led us to the mouth of a small cave.

I knew there were many caves in the region, most of them unexplored and likely to remain that way. The entrance to one had been boarded up after two children met their deaths playing there.

To my relief, Jade showed no interest in entering the cave. He set Yolanda and myself to work clearing away brush and sweeping at the ground to clear a limestone arena. On the stone surface of the ground he drew a figure in colored chalk—a star within a circle.

Yolanda had been carrying a small, wooden chest which Jade now took from her. He took out three things: something I could not see, which he put in his mouth and chewed; a small leather bag; and a small, silk-wrapped package which I knew must be the stone figure. Then Jade looked at me. “Come,” he said.

The very possibility of resistance seemed to drain out of me, and I went to him and followed him into the center of the chalk circle. I knew then that I had been fooling myself. I was his victim; he would do whatever he chose to me and I could not stop him. My previous experience of his power was as nothing. I realized then that he had never before concentrated more than the smallest fraction of his will upon me. I had been intimidated by his surface; now I was perceiving the power that lay within his depths.

“Disrobe, and cast your gown outside the circle,” he said, and I did so, standing naked in the dawn.

His eyes left mine for a moment as he removed his own gown, and I had time to feel afraid and cold. I shivered, and he caught me, fixed me with his gaze again, stilling me.

He put the jade figure—although it was wrapped in silk, I could feel the living heat of the thing—into my hand. “Unwrap her and gaze upon her,” he said.

I did not want to, but I could not stop my hands from fumbling at the cloth, or stop my eyes from turning down to look. Only in a tiny part of my mind was I screaming and struggling and imagining escape.

The tiny figure throbbed with an evil, unnatural life.

“There is my immortality,” said Jade. “That is what you hold in your hands.”

I stroked it, as if it were a part of him and I his lover.

Jade laughed, a low sound like a purr. “And yours, too, my dear,” he said. “As long as that stone survives, we both shall live. Imagine being stone, my Lilith. Immortal, unfeeling stone.”

Although I struggled to end the repetitive motion, my hands went on caressing the thing. The little green face leered up at me, and the tiny, slanting eyes seemed to sparkle with a hint of the fire I knew from Jade’s. I stared at it, feeling that I was turning to stone while the stone in my hand turned to flesh.

“But, while stone is very useful, and very strong, human bodies were made for pleasure,” Jade said. I realized then that he had moved closer to me and that he was touching me, stroking my body even as I stroked the tiny figure. My body was responding to his touch, and I knew that I was not turning to stone at all. I was flesh, I was alive, and the pleasure I felt beneath his hands frightened me. I felt his breath on my face, and then his tongue in my mouth, flickering like a snake’s. But the venom was so sweet. I was willing to die for it. I closed my eyes.

“No. Look at me. Know me,” he commanded.

I had to obey. I didn’t want to see him, but I had to look. I did not want to feel his mouth or his hands upon my naked body, but at the same time my body cried out in desire. I was torn in two: my body hovering on the brink of ecstasy while my mind was in torment. I stood accepting all his caresses and hardly knew if I obeyed his will or my own.

Then he pulled me to the ground. His hard, naked body pressed the length of mine, and the small stone figure was trapped between us. I could not free my hands. I held the statue and could neither embrace Jade nor try to push him away. Only a small discomfort, feeling the stone pressed against my ribs, but that tiny discomfort was enough to keep me from drowning in his arms. I turned my head slightly and saw Yolanda. She was standing outside the circle watching us, her face a study in mixed passion: desire, fear, hope, jealousy.

Then Jade’s eyes caught mine again. I looked into those brown and golden depths and I could not look away again. I felt as if they were burning into my soul.

“You are my bride, Lilith,” he said. “I have chosen you as my mate. We will be bound together forever, insep­arable.” His tongue moved into my mouth, exploring it lazily. I could no longer differentiate his body from my own, we were so tangled together. I felt that he knew my thoughts as well as his own, as well as he knew my body. And still I wanted to escape.

He answered that thought as I had it, pulling his lips away and murmuring, “No, Lilith. You cannot escape your fate. You cannot escape yourself. They are not your thoughts, not any longer. They are mine. We shall be one mind in two bodies. Soon you will be a part of me, and I a part of you, and there will be no more talk of ‘me’ and ‘you,’ and no more thoughts of escape.”

I was scarcely certain that I had heard his words —they seemed to flow directly into my mind. I felt half-asleep, drugged. Only my body was still alive, demanding, set on fire by the light in his eyes. I didn’t care for thoughts or words. I pressed my lips against his.

His arms tightened around me and with his knee he parted my too-willing legs. I could feel him laughing into my open mouth: a weird, triumphant laughter that filled me up and rattled loose all thoughts. Who was I? I felt breasts soft against my hard chest, knew the feeling of a woman’s body crushed against me, felt her legs part beneath me and then clasp me—

He thrust himself into me, and fire blazed all along my spine. But his sudden movement jarred the stone figure, pressing it sharply, bruisingly into my ribs. I cried out, abruptly back in my own body, and terrified. “Walter!” I cried.

“No.” Jade raised himself on his arms above me, panting, and thrust again. At the sudden lifting of his weight, the small jade statue fell off my middle and to the ground beside me. Jade, pounding viciously into me, neither noticed nor cared. “Look at me. Feel me. No one else but me!”

I clung to the thought of Walter, knowing that he could save me. But his beloved face wavered in my mind. I could see no face but Jade’s, blazing above me like a sign from Hell.

My body responded distantly to Jade’s assault. I knew what had nearly happened, and my fear diluted the passion my body still felt. Realizing that he was losing me, Jade became more careful. He slowed his rhythm and began to kiss me again. “Let go,” he said, between kisses. His hands worked on me, insinuating, arousing my flesh. “Enjoy it. Don’t think; just feel. Let yourself feel this pleasure fully. You’ll have such ecstasy, now and forever. Relax. Let me take you, Lilith. Give yourself to me.”

As I struggled to hold on to my own awareness, to think of anything but Jade, Yolanda helped me by moving within my range of vision. Jade saw her, too, and he turned his blazing eyes on her for a moment.

“The statue,” she whispered, pointing at the ground.

The relaxing of Jade’s attention let me find my voice. “Take her,” I said, meaning Yolanda. “Take her instead. She wants you. She would give in to you. I only want Walter. She loves you.”

“It isn’t love I want,” he said. But his blazing eyes went from me to Yolanda and back again, and then he said, “Yolanda. Fetch the bag and come into the circle.”

Still joined to me, supporting himself above me on his arms, Jade gestured Yolanda to his side. From my helpless position I stared up at them, knowing that Jade was not done with me and wondering what new indignities he had in mind for us. Yolanda looked dazed.

Looking down on me as if from a very great height, Jade said, “If you won’t give yourself to me, I shall have to take you.”

It all happened so quickly after that—so smoothly.

From the soft leather bag Yolanda had brought him, Jade drew a knife. With his other hand, he grasped her hair and yanked her head back to expose the neck. Then, with one hard, brutal stroke, Jade cut open Yolanda’s throat.

There was not even time for her face to register fear. The blood spurted out, more than I would have imagined there would be, spattering Jade’s face, spattering me. All this time, Jade was still, obscenely, inside me. His eyes looked down at me, twin fires blazing through the carnage.

I opened my mouth to scream, but I had no breath. Jade was on me, full-length, his weight pressing me into the ground, his mouth sucking greedily at mine as if he could draw the life out of me.

The whole world was his. There was nothing that was not Jade, nothing happened that Jade did not will. My body rocked back and forth under his control. I felt his heart pumping mine, breathed his breath in through my lungs, moved to his command. My own thoughts were snuffed out one by one. Every individualistic impulse was suffocated. I was his.

And still, something that might be called Nancy Owens, some dim part that remained of me, fought on. I clung to the idea of myself, refused to become a part of Jade. I was not-Jade, in Jade’s world.

Yolanda’s blood greased our bodies and mingled with our sweat. Blood and semen—I remembered Jade’s words. The act of destruction and the act of creation. How could I fight against those twin powers? When he climaxed, I knew, his will would be a tidal wave, sweeping mine out of existence.

Why not? Did it really matter? Did my survival really matter to anyone?

Yes, it did. It mattered to me, even if I could not have said why. And so I went on struggling. I have been trying to find physical analogies for the battle, but there is no point. It was a war of souls, more painful, more bitter and more difficult than anything I have ever endured. Physically he raped me; mentally I continued to resist. And as I went on resisting, holding out against all the odds, Jade had to shift more and more power to our spiritual struggle, leaving our bodies to sweat and grapple as they would, leaving them as unimportant.

And so it was that I could act. So it was that my hand, moving helplessly on the ground, flopped like a beached fish, grazed the knife that Jade had used to kill Yolanda. It was a very sharp knife. I scarcely felt it cut me, although from the corner of my eye I saw the fresh red bead the surface of skin already stained with another’s blood.

I didn’t think. I was too occupied with holding my own against Jade to be able to plan. My hand grasped the knife almost of its own volition. My arm rose languidly into the air and came down on Jade’s back as if I wished to pull him closer to me. But the hand held a knife, and the knife plunged deep into Jade’s naked, laboring back.

The shock of it made him pull out of my mind, although not my body.

We stared at each other. His eyes were only a man’s eyes now. No fire, no strength, only pain and bewilderment at the approach of death. I felt new strength. He pulled away from me and tried to rise. I stabbed him again.

I don’t remember much about going away from that place.

I remember the two bodies lying in the chalked circle, their blood eating away at the boundaries of it and seeping into the porous rock. I remember bending over Jade, feeling for breath or pulse, needing to know for certain that he was dead.

It is nearly night, now. I sent the children to Hannah’s house. This is my confession: I killed the man called Jade. It was self-defense, although I do not expect anyone to understand that. I suppose I shall pay for my actions.

It is hard to direct my thoughts, and yet I know I must plan. There are so many things I must think of now. But I am weary unto death from my struggle with Jade, a weariness sleep cannot help.

I find myself thinking of Walter, almost as if nothing happened. It is easy to think of him, to let my mind slip back into old patterns. It is such a habit to think of him and to want him back. I want him still but, ironically, I hope he does not come back. I am not fit for any man now. I thought once that Walter could save me, but it is far too late for that, now. I can’t remember why I wanted Walter. I don’t know what I would say to him if he came tonight.

Who am I? I am not who I once was. I have been changed. I am not Jade, although he tried to take me, to make me another part of himself, to fill me with his own spirit. I fought him off. I survived. But having survived, where do I go now?

I kept the small jade figure and took it away with me, back to town. It lives, still, warm to the touch and tingling with the same energy. I have it wrapped in silk on the table before me as I write. What is it that lives within the stone? Can I make use of it? If I could turn that power to my own use . . . Some instinct warns me not to try. Perhaps I should destroy it, and end this whole affair. But I am afraid to—and I don’t want to. I want to know more. What life is it that heats the smooth stone? Would it give me Jade’s powers if I knew how to use it?

Why shouldn’t I use it, as Jade tried? Why shouldn’t I be more successful? If Walter comes