To The Bone

Chapter 26

Monks arrived at D'Anton's Marin County house – the event site – just at dusk. He had driven the last few miles on a narrow asphalt road in the coastal mountains, north of Mount Tamalpais. The road followed a ravine, a creek bed that was dry like most this time of year, until it opened into a small secluded valley. He stopped at the top of the rise.

The air had the feel of the sea and the fragrance of the surrounding eucalyptus groves. The Pacific was another two or three miles west, glimmering with the day's last light, a hazy sheen of reflection and mirage streaked by the wakes of passing ships. The gray band of fog on the horizon would probably move in again tonight, then burn off by midday. Like the peninsula to the south, it was sunny here most of the year, and rarely too hot or cold.

The place looked like it originally had been a farm, with a barn and several outbuildings. The house was an ornate Victorian, replete with finely proportioned bay windows and intersecting roof-lines, and a veranda that wrapped around two sides. It was built against a cliff, a natural rock formation, and it was huge. It must have cost a fortune, like the real estate itself.

Lights showed through the windows and around the grounds, with sconces marking a pathway from the parking area. That was filled with cars, thirty or forty, a canopy of expensive burnished metal. A few people were strolling toward the house. It was a picture of affluence, luxury, the leisure of the upper class.

And it was the place where Eden Hale, Katie Bensen, and Roberta Massey had all been guests.

Monks drove down to join the party.

He parked, and was walking toward the house, when someone called, "Hey, how's it going?"

Monks turned and recognized Todd, the maintenance man from the clinic, unlocking the door of an older-looking cinder-block building. Monks glimpsed inside and realized it was a wine cellar, with hundreds of bottles in racks and cases stacked up against the walls.

"This is my third run in the last hour," Todd said. "They're going through it fast." If he was surprised to see Monks here, it didn't show.

"Gwen told me you're the man they can't do without. Are you the bartender, too?"

"Naw, I just help take care of the place. When they have a party, I set up tables, keep the supplies coming, all that."

D'Anton's devoted staff, Monks thought.

"This your first one of these?" Todd asked.

"Yes."

"Knock yourself out. There's a lot going on." Todd stepped into the wine cellar and picked up one of the cases, tucking it under a muscular arm. He was wearing a tight T-shirt and jeans, still in surfer mode. He was handsome, vital, and it occurred to Monks that Todd might attract a fair amount of attention from D'Anton's female clientele. And that he probably knew a lot about what was going on behind the scenes at the clinic.

"You've been with Dr. D'Anton several years now?" Monks asked.

"Going on six. Why?"

"You get to meet the movie stars, all that?"

"I'm not a toy boy." The words came out suddenly and sharply, with a hostile glance.

Monks was taken aback. "I wasn't suggesting anything like that. Just – you know. It must be interesting," he finished lamely.

"I've got my own interests," Todd said. He heaved the case of wine up onto his shoulder and turned his back, heading toward the party.

Monks followed more slowly. Flattery was usually an effective way to start probing for information, but apparently he had hit a nerve.

He nodded sociably to other guests, but no one offered introductions, which was fine with him. There was the sense that they all knew each other. The dress was informal but elegant, Armani jackets and open shirts for the men, summer dresses for the women, with a lot of jewelry on display. He had put on his one decent sport coat, a Harris tweed – hardly in this style range and a little warm for the weather, but serviceable.

He reached the house and stepped to a window, to see if Gwen Bricknell was inside. This was evidently the party's center, a large old-fashioned drawing room. White-clothed tables set with liquor, wine, and hors d'oeuvres lined the walls. The room was crowded with figures who looked posed in a tableau. Those at the periphery stood in pairs or small groups, talking, drinking, eating.

But at the center, a man and a woman presided, like a high priest and his acolyte at the altar. The man was Dr. D'Anton. The woman was the nurse, Phyllis, whom Monks had encountered at the clinic.

He realized that there was a gradient of the sexes in the room – mostly men at the periphery, more women closer to the center. He guessed that many of them were D' Anton's patients. Most were in their forties, or older, but their beauty was almost surreally enhanced. There was a lot of collagen and silicone walking around in that room.

Phyllis was preparing something with her hands. She turned to D'Anton, presenting the glimmering object to him solemnly. He lifted it to the light and inspected it, as if offering a chalice. Now Monks realized what it was – a syringe.

D' Anton leaned over a woman who was sitting in a chair, with her head tilted back. His hands, holding the syringe, moved to her face.

Botox, Monks thought. Party favors.

He stared, thinking about Roberta Massey. I remember those hands, real specifically.

D' Anton finished the injections and returned the syringe to Phyllis. The woman in the chair rose, and another postulant took her place, leaning back to receive D' Anton's blessing.

Monks moved on, looking for Gwen.

He could see another cluster of guests, outside, toward the far end of the house. The area was a large flagstone patio, discreetly lit, with more tables of food and drink. Monks heard splashing and realized that there must be a swimming pool there. He started toward it.

Then his gaze was caught by a figure, a woman, off to his left, moving away from the crowd, toward the shadows at the edge of the lawn. She paused, cupping her hands to light a cigarette. A nearby sconce highlighted her coppery skin and long mane of silky black hair.

She was dressed differently than she had been yesterday – soft sleeveless pullover, skintight flared jeans cut below her navel – but there was no doubt that this was Coffee Trenette.

Another link in that chain that kept leading back to Eden Hale.

The match she was holding flared. But Monks saw that what she was lighting was not a cigarette – it was aluminum foil twisted into a conical pipe. Whatever was on the foil glowed briefly as she inhaled. She shook the match out, then let her head hang back in bliss. Maybe crack, Monks thought. Maybe heroin.

He walked over to her. She was half turned away and didn't see him.

"Small world, Ms. Trenette," he said.

Her hand moved quickly to thrust the pipe into her purse. She turned to him, face cool. Then recognition came to her, and she jerked away as if she had been hit with an electric shock.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed.

"Nice to see you, too."

"Don't you fuck with me, asshole."

"All right, I'll get straight to it," Monks said. "Of all the guys out there, how was it you happened to pick Ray Dreyer on that one particular night? The way he tells it, you wouldn't have spit on his shoes before then."

Her eyes gleamed with the feral look of a threatened animal. Her cultivated air was gone, too.

"You got a problem with that, you better lose it," she said. "I got some people be pleased to deal with you."

"Eden was your friend, Coffee, and now she's dead. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"You don't make friends in that world." She spun away, her shoulders rising and falling rapidly with her quick breaths.

Then, with her back still to him, she said more quietly, "You think I don't feel bad? Eden was nice to me."

"Even though you got a break, and she never did?"

Her head moved, in a nod that might have meant yes. "She was too nice, you know what I'm saying? People walked on her."

"What really happened that night, Coffee?" Monks said. "After your fight with your boyfriend?"

"There ain't no boyfriend, honey," she said scornfully. "Unless you count the ones come around wanting smoke and pussy."

"Then why did you call Ray?"

She stepped away from him, her forearms rising to cross her breasts, hands clasping her slender upper arms. Then she glanced back to him, with her gaze cool again.

"Because I'm a bitch," she said. But it had the feel of bluster this time.

She walked away, toward the crowd around the swimming pool. Monks almost felt sorry for her. Under her hardness and arrogance, there was a girl who had been given too much too fast. It had gone to her head, and she had made bad choices. Like Eden, she was a casualty of a world that glittered on the surface but was lined with broken glass.

But his pity stayed at almost. There were too many real victims who had never had anything but bad choices to make.

So – there hadn't been any boyfriend or fight. Something else had impelled her to sleep with Ray Dreyer that night, and guilt about it was softening her. Monks decided that he and Larrabee would be calling on Coffee again.

"I didn't realize you two knew each other," a sultry voice said.

Monks turned to see another young woman walking toward him. Like Coffee, she was dressed very differently than the older guests, in a thigh-high leather skirt and black tube top under an open white blouse. A wide belt with a big brass buckle encircled her narrow waist. Her dark hair was done up in a tousled ponytail.

He realized, with astonishment, that this was Gwen. He had only seen her before in her professional mode, beautiful, but sedately dressed and clearly almost forty. Now, in this light, she could have been in her twenties.

When she reached him, she leaned forward, offering her cheek to be kissed. Monks obliged, catching the scent of that same perfume she had worn at the clinic, deep and heady, musky rather than sweet.

"You look ravishing," Monks said.

"Tell me how you met Coffee," she said teasingly. "I need to know if I should be jealous."

"No worry there. My partner and I found out that Eden's boyfriend spent the night with her, while Eden was dying."

Gwen stepped back in shock. "My God, that's awful. That's why he wasn't with Eden?"

Monks nodded. "We asked her to confirm it. She did, but she wasn't happy about it."

"No, I don't suppose she would be. Coffee's not doing very well anyway."

"Drugs?"

"Big-time. And money. She's about to lose her house."

Monks remembered the air of neglect around the place. "I heard she had a very promising future."

"There's a million luscious young girls with promising futures out there, darling. Some of them get lucky, for a while. But only a few are good enough and smart enough to stay on top."

It seemed clear that Gwen included herself in that select group.

"Let's have a drink," she said. "I've got a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on ice. I've been saving it for a special occasion."

"I'd better stick with club soda for now," he said.

"Come on, just one glass. You'll be more fun if you relax."

"You mean, I'll have more fun?"

"No, be more fun, for me," she said. "I'm very selfish."

Monks smiled. "All right. Just one."

"It's inside. I'll get it."

She left him, walking to a side door of the house, her long slim legs flexing gracefully with a model's fillylike stalk.

Monks heard another loud splash from the swimming pool.

"It's great," a young woman's voice called invitingly. "Like a bath."

He moved quietly closer. The pool was like a grotto, springing out of a rocky cliff, lit by underwater lamps. It had a distinctly Mediterranean feel. Quite a few of the guests were standing around it, drinking and talking.

By now Monks had started to notice that there were two fairly distinct groups – the older and more affluent, and a younger set, dressed casually and even flamboyantly, like Gwen and Coffee Trenette. Tight jeans and tops that accentuated breasts or pectorals seemed to be the prevailing uniform. They were mostly quite attractive – they looked like they were, or could be, actors and models.

One of them, a man, was looking back at him pointedly – glaring, in fact. He had on wraparound sunglasses, and it took Monks a moment to realize that it was Ray Dreyer, Eden's ex-boyfriend.

Dreyer was wearing a black silk jacket over a T-shirt. Monks walked over to him.

'Thoughtful of you to dress in mourning," Monks said quietly.

'Tuck you," Dreyer mouthed. Monks braced himself, thinking that Dreyer might want to pick up their fight where it had left off. But he turned away and went the other direction, farther into the shadows.

Another old friend who was glad to see him, Monks thought.

Then he noticed a slight flare of light, from the other direction. The main front door of the house was opening and closing. A man was coming out.

D'Anton.

Monks walked quickly back that way and intercepted D'Anton as he reached the bottom of the porch steps.

"Good evening, Doctor," Monks said.

D'Anton glanced around impatiently. The glance turned to an icy stare as he recognized Monks.

Monks was very aware that he might be looking into the eyes of a man who was capable of mutilating a living human being.

"How dare you come to my house," D'Anton said.

"Gwen Bricknell invited me."

"And you actually accepted?" D'Anton said, with withering disbelief.

"I was watching you inside there. It must be quite a feeling, being surrounded by your own creations."

Unexpectedly, D' Anton smiled. It was filled with pity for Monks.

"Do you know what they would tell you?" D'Anton said. "What they have told me! That they belong to me. Any fool can give them money, but I can give them what really matters – youth and beauty."

"So you figure you have the right to do anything you want with them?"

D'Anton's smile vanished. "I don't know what you're getting at, but I have had enough of you," he said. "If you come around me again, you'll be hearing from my attorney."

"The same errand boy you sent to scare Roberta Massey?"

D'Anton recoiled, a tiny backward jerk and widening of his eyes. But he recovered instantly. Monks had to hand it to him.

"That name means nothing to me," D'Anton said.

"Oh, right, you're not good with names, are you."

"I remember yours, now." D'Anton held Monks's gaze with his own, steely and unwavering, for a few seconds longer. Then he turned away and continued his brisk walk, fading into the night.

D'Anton had recognized Roberta's name, there was no doubt about that. Monks considered that he might have played that card too early. But it would increase the strain on D' Anton, and strain could lead to mistakes.

Monks moved back toward the pool, but stayed a little apart from the crowd. In another couple of minutes, Gwen came back out, carrying two flutes of pale effervescent champagne.

This time, as she passed the crowd at the pool, she was accosted by a thickset, balding man in his sixties, who leered at her like a satyr.

"Jesus, sweetheart, you look like jailbait tonight," he said in a loud, raspy voice.

Gwen paused, glancing at him in amusement.

"I know you're an expert there, Ivan."

"That thing still as tight as it used to be?" he growled.

"You certainly didn't stretch it any."

A ripple of laughter sounded from nearby guests, watching the two of them like a circle drawn up around teenaged boys getting ready to fight. Monks was touched by an equally adolescent outrage, a schoolboy urge to step in and defend his girl's honor. But she seemed to be enjoying it thoroughly – keeping the loutish attacker at bay, like an exquisite fencer, with quick, sure barbs.

Maybe the preoccupation with youthfulness that he sensed here was catching, Monks thought, although there had been none of it in the brilliant adamantine intensity that emanated from D'Anton.

She moved away from the group, her head turning, looking for Monks. He raised his hand to catch her attention.

'There you are," she called, and came to him. "I thought I'd lost you."

"No chance of that."

She handed him one of the flutes. "What shall we drink to?"

"How about the hostess?"

"Oh, you are good. All right. The hostess decrees that we entwine arms, like in the movies. Gaze into each other's eyes. And drain our glasses dry."

Monks had to stoop forward a little to be able to entwine arms and still drink. The champagne was wonderful, dry and tart, with a sort of muskiness like her perfume. Her eyes were dark, warm, intent, and their faces were close. She brushed his lips with hers. He was bemused. He had not seriously believed that she might be interested in him, no matter what Larrabee had said, and romance did not seem like a good mix with a murder investigation. But he wanted to keep things going and, he admitted, it was highly enjoyable. He felt a touch of guilt about Martine. Then he remembered the black Saab he had seen in her driveway earlier. That helped.

She took the champagne glasses, set them aside, and then came back to his embrace.

"Shall we do that some more?" she murmured.

"A lot more," Monks said. "But first, why don't you show me that person you told me about? The one who's so possessive of Dr. D' Anton?"

The wary look that he had seen in her eyes at the clinic came back.

"I've been trying to pretend this is just a party," she said quietly. "But that won't work, will it?"

Monks touched her cheek. "I'll be glad to pretend with you. But I need to do my job, too."

She stayed absolutely still for two or three seconds. Again, he got that eerie sense that whoever lived inside her had left.

Then she gripped his arm conspiratorially. "Come on," she said, and led him toward the house. She pointed in through a window. "There."

The nurse, Phyllis, was still in the center of the room. It looked like she was putting away the Botox materials. She was wearing a dark gray suit, jacket and skirt, that made her square figure look even frumpier in this gala crowd.

"Phyllis?" Monks said.

Gwen nodded emphatically. "She's very sneaky, and very jealous of Welles. She has all these little ways of letting everybody know she owns him. There've been times I've felt her behind me, and I'd have sworn she had a knife in her hand."

Monks added more weight to Gwen's suspicion than he had given it before. He remembered his sense that Phyllis was stealthy. And she certainly had the skills and opportunity to administer poison to Eden Hale.

He decided it was time to push.

"Did Phyllis know about D'Anton's affair with Eden?" he said.

Gwen turned to him swiftly, eyes wide. "How did you know?"

"It's not going to be a secret much longer, Gwen. Is that why you lied to me, about not knowing her?"

There was a pause. It had the feel of being timed for effect. Then she sighed.

"All right, that was stupid of me," she said. "I should have known you'd find out. But no, that's not why. If Welles gets dragged through the mud, he deserves it."

"Why, then?"

"It will make more sense if I show you something," she said. "And then I'll work on making you forgive me."

She took his hand and led him around the house, in the opposite direction from the swimming pool. The original old structure, its windows unlit, jutted out ahead of them like a wing.

"This place has been in our family more than a hundred years," Gwen said. "On Julia's side. I spent a lot of time here, growing up."

"Our family?" he said, startled.

"She and I are cousins. I'm sorry. I guess you couldn't have known that."

Monks wasn't immediately sure how this new factor affected the mix, but it seemed to tighten things another notch.

She pushed open a door and touched a switch that turned on an overhead light. The space was large, two full stories high and taking up most of the wing. Apparently, the interior walls and upper floor had been taken out. The old hardwood floor was strewn with dust and rubble. There were a couple of large wooden workbenches and racks of stone-carving tools.

And the space was crowded with sculptures. All were human figures, and they all seemed to be of women – busts, torsos, a few full-sized. There were some clay models, but most were of stone. The style was classical, the forms lifelike. As best as he could judge, the renderings were competent – no more.

'This is how these parties got started," Gwen said. "Welles and Julia like to entertain. His patients, their social circle. Then Julia started inviting some of her models. It took on a life of its own."

"It does seem like an odd mix."

She shrugged. "The older guests are rich. Some are connected, film, modeling agencies, that sort of thing. They like having young, pretty people around. And they need money and favors. Most of them don't have any real talent."

Monks noted that it was the second time she had disdained them. And yet she, the fortyish hostess, ultra-sophisticated supermodel, was dressed like one of them, and had clearly loved being the center of attention – sparring like a teenaged cock-tease with the satyrlike Ivan. Monks wondered if her costume was a whim, or if there was a deeper element involved.

She walked to a figure that was draped and lifted away the canvas. This one was full-sized, a nude of a woman reclining on her side. It was unfinished, but the stone had an intrinsic quality – a sheen, almost a glow, that seemed to come from within.

"Is that marble?" he asked.

Gwen nodded. "Carrera. Julia got it from Italy. Recognize the model?"

He did not, at first. The delineation of the face had barely been started. But this piece stood out from the rest. The body was graceful, the pose sensuous, with thighs parted slightly in enticement, and Julia D'Anton had managed to capture a taunting element in the tilt of the head.

Then it clicked. "Eden," he said.

"Julia was a little-" Gwen hesitated, then said, "All right, I'll say it. In love with her. Then Eden started up with Welles. It hurt Julia badly."

"In love with, as in having an affair?"

Another hesitation. "Yes."

Monks gazed at the statue, and abruptly he saw the sorrow it contained – the passion the sculptress had invested, shimmering out through the muted glow of the stone. Accomplished or not technically, it was charged with emotion.

"Julia can be cruel," Gwen said. "A lot of people know it. So that's the reason I fibbed. I didn't want anyone to think she might have done something to Eden, for revenge."

"How do you mean, cruel?"

"Emotionally. When she's angry, she'll take it out on people. She was like that when she was young, and she never outgrew it."

"Why are you so sure she didn't do something?"

"I just am. I've known her all my life, for God's sake." Gwen let the drape fall back into place.

Monks was getting confused. Her words seemed to be leading in too many different directions. But it was not just that. Something was happening in his head that he could not quite grasp.

"How about D'Anton?" he said. "How well do you think you know him?"

"Since I was seventeen, when he and Julia met. He refined my face and gave me these." She touched her breasts. "And I've worked for him for eight years. Why? Do you suspect him?" She seemed amused at the thought.

Monks had been working his way toward something, but it slipped out of his recall. Gwen was watching him, eyes warm and lips parted. He stared at her, struck anew by her beauty, then turned away, trying to concentrate.

Roberta Massey, and the other girl who had gone missing, Katie. That was it.

"Gwen," he said. "Did you know that the police came to the clinic?" His voice sounded thick and slow to his own hearing.

She stepped to him, put her hands on his hips, and very lightly pressed her pelvis against him.

"No. But can't it wait?" she said, arching up to be kissed, lips open this time.

Monks imagined that he could feel the heat rising from her, a shimmer of delicious sensation seeking to enfold him. He held her, entranced by this ritual of human beings exploring each other's mouths with their tongues. It was very strange. But it was good. He remembered feebly that he had been thinking about something that had seemed important. But yes, that could wait.

"I feel like getting wet," she announced.

Feel like getting wet. The words spun disjointedly in his head. That was a strange way to put things. How could a person feel like getting wet?

She led him back the way they had come. Monks inhaled deeply, feeling the scents of the night cut into him in a heady rush, the eucalyptus, her perfume, smoke that he identified as marijuana. Bits of the conversations they passed joined feel like getting wet in his mind, swirling and reverberating with hidden importance.

told her I'd never ever

he came around with

five thousand? bullshit maybe twenty

There were more swimmers now, fluid shapes moving through the water or hanging on the sides. Monks was close enough now to see that the underwater lights revealed bare feet, legs, asses. He looked at Gwen in astonishment.

"No suits in the pool," she said, with a slight smile. 'That's the rule."

pool that's the rule

The marijuana smoke was thicker here, with glowing red dots traveling through the darkness a few feet at a time, pausing, traveling on. He had been catching more whiffs of the deep acrid smoke of harder drugs, too.

"It gives the young people a chance to get looked over," she said. "Arrangements get made."

Monks realized that almost all the swimmers were from the younger set. The older guests stood on the deck with drinks in hand, chatting or just watching.

He remembered what Gwen had said on the phone – like parties, but more focused.

Then he saw that one of the watchers was Julia D' Anton. She was alone, a little way apart from the crowd, wearing a long black dress and heavy dark eye shadow – another mourner for Eden. But she was gazing intently at the swimmers.

The term chickenhawk came into his mind.

As if he had spoken it aloud, Julia raised her gaze and met his. Her eyes seemed as dark and empty as a skull's. He looked away quickly.

He became aware of a couple clinging to the wall in a dark far corner of the pool, face-to-face, their steady underwater motions creating an eddy that rippled out across the water's surface and right through his skin, penetrating him in a whoosh as if his body was gone and only his raw nerves were left to feel.

And he saw, as he had seen the heartbreak glow from the statue of Eden Hale, but with an intensity so heightened it was almost unbearable, that this was a marketplace – that some commodity was being bartered away by the young to the old, in return for money, drugs, the hope of fame. It was not sex, or pleasure – that was only the medium of exchange. It cut far deeper, into the vitality of youth.

Coffee Trenette. Used up.

Focused.

Monks moved onward, lurching a little. Gwen walked patiently beside him. They came around the grotto's rock cornice, and he found himself staring at another tableau. A man was leaning against the wall, relaxed, complacent-looking. Monks recognized the satyrlike older man who had accosted Gwen earlier. He was clothed, but his trousers were open and his chubby member protruding, gripped in the hand of a pretty young woman. She was nude, her skin glistening with water, apparently just out of the pool. One of her knees was slightly bent, as if she was about to kneel.

But when she saw Monks and Gwen, she let go of him and stepped away, head turning aside and gaze going downcast, arms moving automatically across her body. Monks had once read somewhere that a Western woman, if caught unclothed by a strange man, would cover her vulva and breasts, but in other parts of the world, she would cover her face. There was a certain logic to that.

The satyr grinned at Gwen. "I keep telling you, baby, I got the power," he said.

"You got Viagra," Monks suggested distantly.

The grin dissolved into a hostile stare.

"Why don't you go back where you came from?"

"Impossible," Monks pointed out, frowning. "No space-time continuum can ever be repeated."

"You're a fucking wacko, you know that?"

"Not my fault. Schroedinger's."

"Get outta here!"

Monks backed away, shaking his head, trying to clear it. His brain seemed to bounce inside his skull.

Gwen came beside him again, catching his arm, steadying him. "Ivan likes to make sure everyone knows he's still virile."

"Poor girl."

"Don't worry, she's getting hers," Gwen said. "He owns a modeling agency."

Monks was starting to hyperventilate. Waves of pure sensation were washing through him. They were not unpleasant, but they were frightening.

Then he was aware that Julia D'Anton was standing in front of him. Her arms were folded imperiously.

"I see you found a date," she said coolly to Gwen, but her gaze stayed on Monks.

"I see you're looking for one," Gwen retorted.

Julia ignored her. "So you think someone murdered Eden, Dr. Monks? And that they might be here tonight?"

Things had gotten far more complicated than that, Monks thought, but the right words would not come.

"If thou hast blood on thy hands and shed more blood, wherewith shall ye cleanse it?" he asked, trying earnestly to explain. "For how shall ye wash off blood with blood?"

Both women looked startled.

Gwen murmured, "You'd better excuse us," to Julia, and helped Monks to a chair. He sat heavily.

"Something – is happening to me," he said.

"What kind of something?" Her fingers massaged his neck and shoulders.

"In my brain," he tried to explain. "The universe is getting scrambled."

She inhaled sharply. "Oh, my god. It sounds like ecstasy."

"Like what?"

"Ecstasy," Gwen said. "XTC."

Monks raised his head and stared at her.

"I wonder if someone slipped some in your drink," she said. "Sometimes they do that, to newcomers. It's supposed to be a joke, but this is awful." Her fists went to her hips in outrage. "If I find out who did it, they'll never come here again."

The import hit him with numbing impact. "I can't believe," he said. "Can't believe – I need to get someplace." He tried to heave himself to his feet. Her hand held him down with surprising strength.

"But darling, you are someplace," she said. "Just sit still a minute. You'll calm down." She crouched beside him, her face close. Her eyes were luminous with passion. "I'll predict the future. A beautiful woman wearing black will fulfill all your desires. Soon."

"Black?" he said stupidly. Her blouse was white. The only thing black she was wearing, that he could see, at least, was the top underneath it.

"Come on. We'll go where we can be safe and alone."

"My car," he objected.

"Don't be silly, you can't drive. Let yourself go, Carroll. I'll take care of you."

This time, she helped him get to his feet. He stumbled along, holding her hand like a child.

She led him away from the pool and party, around the base of the cliff that abutted the house, and up a stairway of flat stones that had been set into the earth. It was quiet here, and dark except for the gibbous moon, topping the coastal mountains to throw its cold fire across the land.

Monks became aware of the musical sound of trickling water, growing louder as they climbed. They came to a plateau, a hundred yards behind the house and a bit higher than its roof. The water was running down a rock face in a little fall, into a natural pool, about twenty feet across.

'This is the spring that feeds the swimming pool," she said. "Julia and I used to play here. Sit."

She eased him down onto a flat rock. Monks started to get his wind back. The dizzying surges were leveling off, leaving him bristling with unimagined perceptions. He turned his head slowly, seeing the swelling hillsides split into deep, secretive crevasses, watered by streams that emptied into the great sea. Trees burst from the earth with their fierce erect trunks, then gentled out into feminine branches that lifted long-tipped fingers in supplication to the sky. All of nature was fueled by this huge engine, the generator of life.

And everywhere within it, death was waiting – hidden, seething with menace, razor talons ready to strike.

"Are you ready for the lady in black?" she said.

He turned toward her voice. The blouse was gone and she was stepping out of her skirt, tossing it aside. Her fingers worked at a knot between her breasts. She unwound the garment sensuously, then tossed it around her neck. Monks realized that it was not a tube top. It was a black scarf.

Except for that, she was all flesh, shining ivory in the moonlight like a pagan goddess. Her splendor filled him with worshipful awe.

She walked to him boldly, high full breasts shimmying with her steps, nipples taut in the crisp air. She was shaved bare as marble. He stared, entranced by the miracle of skin, its color that no image could ever quite capture, its smooth sheen so warm to the touch.

"How old am I?" she demanded.

Monks was confused. How could she not know?

"Thirty… nine?" he hazarded.

"No! I'm eighteen. And very naughty." Her hand moved to the back of his neck and urged him toward her. "Taste me."

Monks parted the delicate slick flesh with his tongue, finding the tiny bud within. Jewel in the lotus, he thought. Man in the boat. He felt her shiver, her fingers tightening in his hair. She shivered again, and again, and then tensed, thrusting hard against him.

Far away above him, he heard three soft cries, oh, oh, oh.

For half a minute longer, they stayed still, with his cheek pressed against her warm belly while her fingers stroked his hair. Then she sank to her knees.

"Now you," she said. Together, they tugged off his clothes. She pushed him back down onto the rock and fastened her mouth on him, liquid fire, quickly sucking him rigid. Then she slipped her arms around his neck and straddled his thighs. Monks slid slowly into delicious softness that went on and on, and oh, man, holy angels, this was it, this was what being born was all about-

"Can you feel my womb?" she whispered.

Whoa, she was at it again, picking his brain, but could he ever feel it, a sweet soft rub right where it counted, rubadubdub-

"It can feel you"

Well, that was just wonderful, that was how it was supposed to be, yep, the way it was all engineered, he understood that now like he never had. He was leaning back on his hands, sharp bits of gravel biting into his palms and buttocks like the teeth of unseen watchers, goading him on, gleefully whispering unintelligible words. She settled into a slow swaying of her hips, coaxing pleasure from him until there was no longer a point where he stopped and she started, with those wonderful breasts bouncing against his chest, oh my god I am heartily sorry for anything bad I ever said about silicone. The black scarf was looped around her throat, tumbling down her back, and abruptly, a razor-edged vision flashed into his mind of the night he had almost strangled Alison Chapley with a black scarf just like it. And he remembered that Gwen had picked that out of his head.

"The scarf," he said thickly.

"Yes?" she panted.

"It's – how could you know-?"

"That it's special to you?"

"Not special," he managed. "Scary."

She quickened her movements, fingernails digging into his back. Her eyes were aglow, her mouth open, laughing, joining her voice to the invisible chortling chorus-

"Come in me!" she cried, and he did, in shuddering waves, roaring with the unendurable raw sensation.

Monks fell back onto the rock, pulse hammering, arms sprawled at his sides. He was drained, his soul as empty as his loins, nothing left of him but a sensory apparatus. She rose and stood over him, majestic, imperious, the insides of her thighs glistening with her conquest.

"Now I can heal you," she said. "What you're afraid of – I'll make it go away."

He wanted to point out that he did not really mind being afraid, that in some ways he much preferred it to being brave. But before he could find the words, she loosened the scarf from her neck and dangled it over him, as if teasing a cat.

"Take hold," she said.

He reached up and gripped it. It was silk, sending little electric shocks through his fingertips. She tugged, stepping backward, urging him upright, then to his feet. When she got to the pool, she stepped in, disappearing with barely a splash. She was still holding her end of the scarf, and its tension jerked him to the pool's edge. A few seconds later, the white column of her body appeared again, her head breaking the surface. The scarf was stretched taut between them.

She tugged. Monks resisted, listening to the voices in the night's gentle wind. They seemed to be promising that this was what every instant of his life had been leading to.

She pulled again, harder. Whether she forced him or he yielded, he was not sure. The water was cool, a harsh shock to his skin, and it was deep. His feet did not touch bottom, and his motions to swim were awkward, his body not reacting with its usual coordination. It was alarming, a sudden forceful reminder of how out of control he was. He let the scarf go, struggled to the pool's rocky edge, and clung there. He spent a few seconds catching his breath, then started hauling his torso onto dry land.

Gwen breaststroked easily over to him. Her movements were graceful, and she shimmered with strength, her body all lissome toned muscle.

"Not yet," she said. "You haven't given it a chance." She gripped his ankle and tugged playfully, pulling him back in. He was not prepared for it, and he sank below the surface again, thrashing, gulping water. He came up hacking, groping for the rim.

"I can't" – he coughed – "do this."

"Oh, yes. It's what you've always wanted."

She disappeared in a smooth swift surface dive. He felt her hands at his right ankle again. This time, when she came back up, something was looped around it.

The something tugged, pulling him toward the pool's center.

She moved backward, treading water, holding the scarf's other end, towing him. She was smiling.

"Give in to the embryonic fluid that surrounds you," she whispered. "You're being reborn."

"I'm drowning," Monks gasped.

He tried to eggbeater kick, but the scarf held his right leg useless, and the left just flailed. He paddled furiously with his arms, but they barely kept him afloat, and were tiring fast. The voices cawed in triumph now, like ravenous prisoners finally about to tear into a meal.

He understood, with terrible clarity, that the scarf linking him to Alison Chapley had returned now like a vengeful snake to strike back at him.

He thrashed toward Gwen, but she eluded him easily. She dove again, becoming a silvery shape flitting in the water's blackness. The scarf yanked at his ankle, hard this time, pulling him under. Monks fought his way back up, sucking air in shrieking gulps – understanding that this was the last time.

"Now ask yourself, was Eden really worth it?" he heard her say behind him.

Monks inhaled one more lungful of air, then plunged his face down into the water, doubling over to grip his ankle. The scarf was wet, tightened into a knot his fingers could not undo.

She yanked again, pulling his ankle from his hands. He found it once more, hooked his thumbs inside the loop, and pushed down with everything he had. The loop caught for a second on his heel, but then slipped free.

He broke the surface, clawing for the pool's rim, kicking back to keep her away. He felt her hands on his leg again, felt the tightening loop of the scarf. He lashed out savagely, a hard thrust with his heel. It connected, with a shocking impact, with her flesh. Then he was free.

He scrabbled out of the water on his belly, suddenly aware of a raging presence around him that wanted furiously to hold him back. The rocks' sharp teeth tore at his flesh as he rolled to his feet. He crashed into the woods and ran headlong, branches and twigs underfoot stabbing and slashing him, voices howling in his head. He missed a step on the steep hillside, stumbled, missed another, and fell rolling downward, the hard earth beating the breath from his lungs and clawing more skin from his flesh. He kept himself rolling, over and over, tumbling down until he crashed against a rotted fallen log. He dragged himself over it, into its lee, and huddled there, fighting to get his breath back.

After a minute or so, he heard her.

"Carroll," she called. "What's the matter, darling? I was only playing!" Her voice was sweet, anxious, concerned.

Monks raised his face just enough to glimpse over the log. She was standing on the hilltop at the edge of the woods, a silvery magnificent vision. Her hair was loose now, a wild, wet stream down her back and shoulders, shimmering as her head turned slowly to overlook the moonlit landscape.

"Are you hurt? Tell me, I'll come help you." She took a few tentative steps forward, brush crackling under her feet. Monks tensed, ready to flee again. But she hissed in pain and bent suddenly to grip her foot, then backed away, limping a little. He closed his eyes in thanks. The same sharp branches and stones that had fought him were his protectors now.

But the sense of menace was still thick around him.

"You can't stay out till morning – you'll freeze! Come to me, love. I want you again."

Monks waited.

Suddenly, in screeching fury: "You kicked me, you bastard!"

He bowed his head again and hugged himself, shivering. He had never heard a voice like that – it was the furious presence he felt, speaking through her.

"Do I scare you because I'm not a cripple, is that it?"

He closed his eyes. She had found that in him too, not just Alison now, but Martine. Vengeance was descending for all that he had and had not done.

"I know you hear me," she called, voice low with wrath. "I can feel you. Go ahead and hide, but I've got you in me now. You're miner

He opened his eyes in time to see her stalking away, her white shape fading into darkness.

Monks lay there trembling in his cold rebirth. Around him, the night creatures moved with tiny rustlings, stealthy, timid with fear or fierce with readiness to pounce. In the distance, an owl hooted, whuh oo-ooo. The presence hovered around him, electric with menace: Hecate, queen of the night, mistress of spellcasters. They had powered their magic with effluvia from the victim's body, believed to contain the vital essence – hair, nail clippings, menstrual blood. Semen.

Monks forced himself to rise. Getting out of here was what mattered most in the world. He could see the lights of the house downhill and steered himself by them, crashing naked through the brush, barking in pain from his tormented bare feet. The invisible fury fought him like a headwind, while the voices chittered in his brain.

The parking area was deserted. He trotted in a crouch to the Bronco, pausing to peer in the windows, to make sure it was empty, then dropped to the ground and pulled himself under the rear end. His fingers found the set of spare keys he kept wired there, hidden by a carefully applied clump of mud. He got in and shuddered with relief when the big engine caught.

He found the narrow road and piloted the vehicle like a grandmother, hardly faster than a crawl, hands clenching the wheel at ten and three, staring wide-eyed through the windshield in the desperate effort to keep that winding line of pavement between the front tires. The overwhelming sense was that he and the Bronco were staying still. Everything else was moving, in a fluid shifting tapestry that obeyed no rules of physical order.

It got quickly unendurable. His panicked gaze searched for a place to hide, and spotted the moonlit tall tops of a eucalyptus grove across a field. He aimed for it, jarring his bones over ruts and hummocks, and finally pulled in behind the trees.

Little by little, the fury around him eased and the voices in his head receded. Awareness of cold seeped back in, and his body responded to meet its need, rummaging in the Bronco's rear for jeans and a sweatshirt. He went teary-eyed at their delicious warmth. He was feeling pain again now, too, from his cuts and bruises. Dark blood seeped from his flesh where the branches had slashed. But he knew that the healing had already begun – that invisible forces, like brownies in a fairy tale, were gathering to rebuild the torn tissue and replace the lost fluids. It was a marvel, this fleshly system that carried him around. As a physician, he was only a clumsy mechanic, able to guide the process a little. But the real work was taken care of on a molecular level, by some mysterious organic instinct that knew exactly what it was doing.

For a time he could not measure, he huddled in the front seat, drifting off into fantastic inner landscapes, getting hints of insights that seemed to have stupendous importance, then snapping back into watchful fear.

At last, he could feel that the drug was wearing off. The moon was near the horizon now. He guessed that four or five hours had passed since he had first arrived at the house. He got out and walked around for a minute to clear his head, then started the engine again. This time, things around him stayed put. He drove carefully, still a little shaky, but all right on the predawn back country roads.

Monks's mind was already filling with doubt. Had any of it really happened? Had she actually tried to drown him – or was that only a drug-induced fantasy, generated by a compounding of his fear, suspicions, and long-buried guilt about Alison? Had he imagined the words he thought she had screamed?

Or was he only being allowed to escape because of a deeper and far more fearsome truth?

It had not only happened, but she was right.

He was hers now.