Lost Souls

chapter 22

When she learned Deucalion had stepped into the study without ringing the bell or using the front door, when she understood that Mary Margaret Dolan did not know he was present, Carson closed the door to the hallway. In spite of the Dolan daughter who had been ticketed for driving alone in a carpool lane, Carson didn’t want to lose Mary Margaret. Although she suspected that the indomitable nanny would not be flustered even by Dr. Frankenstein’s first creation, she preferred to avoid risking the woman’s resignation.

Without hesitation, Michael had handed Scout to Deucalion, who stood now and cradled the baby in the crook of his right arm. He was holding one of her feet between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, marveling at how tiny it was and complimenting her on her pink booties.

Carson wondered that she worried not at all about this huge and formidable man-a self-admitted murderous creature in his earliest days-holding her precious daughter. In New Orleans, allied against Victor, they went through a kind of hell together, and he always proved steadfast. More to the point, Deucalion possessed a quality of otherworldliness, the aura of a man purified by suffering, who lived now in a hallowed condition.

For her part, Scout was neither awed by Deucalion’s size nor daunted by the ruined and tattooed half of his face. When he puckered his lips and made a sound like a motorboat-putt-putt-putt-putt-putt-she giggled. When he teased her chin with his finger, she seized it in one hand and tried to bring it to her mouth to test her new tooth on it.

Still sitting at the table, Arnie said, “I’ve got him on the run, Carson. He’s fussing over Scout just so he won’t have to go on with the game and lose it.”

Until the age of twelve, Arnie was autistic, so profoundly turned inward that Carson never had a normal conversation with him, only moments of connection that, while piercing, were inadequate and frustrating. After the defeat of Victor in New Orleans and the fiery destruction of his laboratories and body farms, Deucalion cured the boy by some means that Carson could not understand and that the healer could not-or would not-explain. These two years later, she still sometimes found herself surprised that Arnie was a normal boy, with boyish enthusiasms and ambitions.

As far as she could see, however, Arnie lacked those boyish illusions that tested other children, that made them potential victims, and that sometimes led them astray. He had a sense of his natural dignity but not an adolescent ego that allowed him to imagine himself as exceptional in either his abilities or his destiny. He seemed to know the world and the people in it for what they were, and had a quiet, unshakable confidence.

Carson found her brother’s assurance remarkable, considering that when he’d been in the grip of autism, he’d been able to tolerate only a narrow range of experience. He had lived by a daily routine from which the smallest deviation might plunge him into terror or into total withdrawal. Not anymore.

Accepting Arnie’s challenge, Deucalion sat at the table again, with Scout still cradled in his arm. With his free hand, he moved a game piece without appearing to consider the consequences.

Frowning, Arnie said, “You’ve done the wrong thing. Your knight was crying out for action.”

“Oh, yes, I heard him,” Deucalion said. “But the bishop gains me more. You’ll see it in a moment.”

Sitting in a third chair at the table, Michael said, “So how is life at the abbey?”

“Like life everywhere,” Deucalion replied. “Meaningful from top to bottom, but mysterious in every direction.”

Carson occupied the fourth chair. “Why am I suddenly… uneasy?”

“I have that effect on people.”

“No. It’s not you. It’s why you’re here.”

“Why am I here?”

“I can’t imagine. But I know it’s not an impulsive, casual visit. Nothing about you is impulsive or casual.”

Now through his eyes throbbed the subtle luminosity that from time to time appeared. He could not explain this glow, this fleeting tracery of light, though he said it might somehow be the residual radiance of the strange lightning that had brought him alive in a laboratory two hundred years earlier.

Staring at the chessboard, Arnie said, “I see it now. I thought I had it won maybe in five moves.”

“I think you still might, but not in five.”

“It looks lost to me,” Arnie said.

“There are always options-until there aren’t.”

Michael said, “Whatever brought you here… we’ve got more to lose now, and taking risks is getting harder.”

Looking down at the babbling baby in his arm, Deucalion said, “She’s got more to lose than any of us. She hasn’t even had a life yet, and if he gets his way, she never will. Victor is alive.”