Lady Sativa (9 page)

“Yes, the key fit Carl’s cabinet.” Hannah’s voice was very low.

“I don’t understand.” Hazer sucked at the end of his pipe. “Why would Carl go to so much trouble to contact us for no reason?”

“Souls of the departed have been known to play pranks on the living,” Germaine suggested with a thoughtful smile.

“But we solved the joke. It’s not fair,” Sybelle said.

“It bloody well seems the joke’s on us,” Maxwell reflected. He held up his hand and examined the rings on his fingers in the light. “Absorbing to think that a sense of humor exists beyond life. Perhaps I’ll code that into Albertus, my computer. He’ll blow his main connection.”

Neilson’s bullet head bobbed uncertainly. “Does this conclude the, er, proceedings?”

“I’m afraid there’s not much hope of reaching Carl now,” Germaine told him. He folded his arms. “Unless one of you has a suggestion.”

No one spoke.

“In that case, it appears that our work here is finished.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come back to New York with me, dear?” Sybelle asked Hannah.

“I think it’s best I stay.” She tried to smile. “I’ll settle Carl’s affairs and go away next month or so.”

“Don’t worry,” Neilson assured them. “I’m right next door. I’ll come by every day to help Mrs. Bestman close up the estate. And then I’ll see to it that she goes on that trip.”

“To Italy,” Hazer reminded him.

“Yes,” Hannah said, her voice remote. “Italy.”

For the next hour, they discussed the violence of the séance and its possible causes, but soon the conversation became sluggish. First Hazer, then Maxwell, and shortly afterward Lily, drifted out of the circle around the table and went upstairs. Orient was just about to do the same when Sybelle asked an interesting question.

“Wherever did you meet Lily?” she said casually. “She’s very gifted and so lovely.”

Germaine’s smile was not without pride. “I met her quite accidentally in London. At the time she was suffering a good deal during the moon phase, but I’ve worked with her closely and she’s adjusted well.”

“Perhaps Owen’s technique could be adapted to help Lily control her powers,” Sybelle suggested. “We could all work together.

Germaine’s steely eyes flicked across Orient’s face and for a moment the smile sagged. In that fleeting second, Orient felt a physical intensity emanating from beneath the thick brows that recalled the looming image of his trance. Germaine shrugged and the smile widened. “Completely up to Lily,” he said. “She’s free to decide.”

Orient decided to go to bed as Germaine, Sybelle, Hannah, and Neilson began discussing plans for another séance in a few months. As he went up the stairs he wondered if it wouldn’t be better to leave the dead to their new existence unencumbered by debts from past reality. Germaine had been right. The séance had been disrupted by a psychic attack.

There was something else interesting about the count’s choice of a spell to dismiss the disturbance. He had used the formula of a third-level adept. Germaine was advanced almost to the level of high master.

Apparently, he was a very special man—skilled occult mechanic as well as hypnotist.

Orient stood at the window, smoking a cigarette, still pondering the significance of the disruption. As he stared at the moon he speculated on that dead satellite, circling the earth and reflecting the ebbs and swells of energy pulsing from the universe. He knew that the moon had always affected men’s deepest instincts. As man learned to plant crops by the moon his sense of ritual, then religion, formed. Even though the moon’s glow was just reflection, its unique spatial presence transformed the energy of the sun before it reached Earth. Like the sympathetic function of one vital organ for another. Then he saw something move across the reflection of the bed lamp in the windowpane.

“Come in.”

Lily closed the door behind her. “Hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said softly. She polled the lapel of her brown angora robe tighter around her neck. “Or are you a difficult sleeper?”

“I sleep all right,” Orient turned away from the window. “But it’s nice to see you.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up at him. Her amber pupils were splintered by yellow slivers that glittered in the dim light with a feverish excitement. Her voice, however, was calm and husky. “Thanks for taking care of me tonight,”

“I did very little.” He reached into his pocket and held out his cigarette case. “Smoke?”

She shook her head.

“Where do you go from here?”

“London, maybe Amsterdam. I have a project to complete over the next couple of months. With Count Germaine. After that I could go anywhere. I’ll be free.” Her moist lips parted in a smile. “I will have a puff on your cigarette. It has a wonderful aroma.”

Orient sat down next to her and passed his hand-wrapped cigarette. “Maybe you’d like New York for a few months. It could be interesting to explore your sensitivity to the moon.”

She inhaled and let the smoke drift out slowly through her nostrils.

“Could be interesting,” she mused. She leaned closer, and returned his cigarette. “You drew all of the confusion and the tension out of my body, as if you were inside me.”

He watched the swirls of transparent blue smoke caressing her shimmering bronze hair. “There’s a good chance you can control your powers completely,” he said.

The robe fell away from her throat as she leaned back and the soft golden bulges of her breasts pushed out against the downy edges of her robe. The thin angora clung to the lines of her long supple body. “Think you could teach me?” she said, her voice low and vibrant.

“The telepathic technique could activate dormant functions in your mind.” As he leaned over to put out his cigarette, Orient felt a sudden animal energy radiating from her. He opened his consciousness and a hot rain of sexual electricity spattered against his senses.

“It would be lovely to learn a new technique,” she was saying. She reached up and gently pulled him close to her. The intense warmth of her body saturated his awareness as he slipped the soft fabric of her robe over her smooth shoulders and kissed the jutting nipples of her heaving breasts.

She moaned softly, her fingers searching restlessly across his chest and stomach, leaving glowing pockets of heat where they touched. She tugged his robe open and pressed her body against his skin. His taut muscles tingled as she twisted under him. Husky mews of delight flared like jets of flame against his ear, searing through his nerves and igniting every thread of desire in his spine.

Then he felt the satiny smoothness of her thighs embrace his hips and he lifted against her.

She slowly melted as he entered her, becoming honey-thick and warm around him. Her rising cries were muffled against his throat as a lush, liquid swell rippled through his groin and he sucked in his breath, letting it pass, stroking through the luxurious waters toward further surf. She arched up and ground her belly against his as a delicious billow swept them up and spun them through a churning whirlpool of sensation. She dug her nails deep into his shoulders and her cries rose above the roar of the surging wave, ringing against his pleasure-drenched brain like the echoes of an endless scream.

For a while, they floated in each others arms, talking quietly, until another flood of desire washed them away to the edge of a profound, caressing silence.

Lily stirred and opened her eyes after a long doze. “It would be luscious to just fall asleep against your chest like this,” she murmured.

He nuzzled her ear. “Still early.”’

She shook her head, her silky hair brushing across his arms. “Not this time,” she sighed. “This house is in mourning. It wouldn’t do for anyone to see me coming out of here. She sat up and stretched, pulling the, long muscles tight under her skin and lifting her dark-nippled breasts. “But I’ll be in New York in two months.” She leaned over and put her lips against his ear. “And then we can stay in bed for weeks.” She kissed him, then rolled off the bed and stood up, her movements as fluid as those of a playful cat.

Orient rested his head in his palms and watched her. “No chance of your showing up sooner?”

She moistened her pale lips with her tongue. “I’m committed. Count Germaine needs me at this stage and the project is imperative.”

“Hypnotism?”

She frowned slightly. “I’ll tell you about it when I see you again. In New York.” “Just send a telegram.”

“I’ll do better than that,” Lily said, grinning as she began pulling the light angora robe around her shoulders, “I’ll send you roses.” She blew him a kiss.

After she was gone, Orient lay awake for some time, thinking about her. He wanted to see Lily again. It occurred to him that the experiment Germaine was conducting could be an occult rite. He felt a pang of anxiety and suppressed it. She was free to explore what she saw fit. His mind drifted back to the warmth of her soft body. Their minds had touched as they made love. As he eased into sleep he remembered the smoothness of her golden skin….

He was on an immense plain. He was running... urging his weary legs toward a distant shadow on the horizon... they were just behind him... the pursuers... the hunters... he stumbled and cried out, but no sound came out of his mouth... he broke his stride again and fell. He could hear muffled footsteps coming louder... he scrambled to his feet and started running

toward the shadow… the footsteps were closer... a dazzling glare exploded in front of him...
 
he leaped into the light....

Orient opened his eyes and was blinded by the beams of flashlights pointed directly into his face.

“What’s the matter?” he grunted, lifting his hands in front of his face. “What is it?”

“Talk Swedish?” a man’s tenor voice inquired.

“A little,” Orient answered in Swedish. “Who are you?”

“Police,” a gruff basso informed him. “Please get dressed.”

“Been here all night?” the tenor asked.

Orient rubbed his eyes and reached for his robe. “Yes.”

“Alone?”

Orient tried to see past the glare of the flashlights. “Yes. Why?”

“A man has been killed,” the tenor replied calmly. “I believe you know him.”

6

Orient’s mind was numb from confusion, shock, and lack of sleep. He moved through the events of the morning like a dazed survivor of a car wreck.

The two policemen waited impatiently while he dressed, then took him downstairs to identify the body.

The dawn sun cast a dull, metallic sheen across the gray-blanketed sky. It had rained during the early morning and there were dirty crusts of frost on the muddy ground.

The body was sprawled in the wet dirt, face up, a few feet from the open door of a car. His shirt had been torn from his body and long black scratches ran from the top of his bald head to what was left of his throat. Part of his hand was missing and yellowing splinters of bone pierced through the ragged chunks of surrounding flesh.

Orient took a step nearer.

“Please, no closer,” the tenor voice said. It belonged to a lanky, grim-faced man dressed in a tweed overcoat.

“You know him?” the other detective rumbled. He was short and powerfully built. The small eyes in his doughy face were hard as they stared at Orient.

“It’s Nels Neilson,” his voice was almost inaudible. “What... happened?”

“Could have been a wild animal,” the thin detective said. “But there aren’t many in this district. And all the’ tracks in the ground are human.”

The other man went to the car. The door on the driver’s side was open. “There was a struggle here,” he said.

Orient walked over next to him. The spongy, rain-soaked dirt near the car was gouged and pitted. “He must have resisted,” the tenor voice behind Orient observed. “Didn’t you hear anything?”

Orient jammed his hands into the pockets of his blazer. He remembered Lily’s moans of pleasure against his ear. “No,” he said, “nothing.”

“Will you tell us, please, what you did last night?” the fat-faced detective said sharply.

Orient went through a brief explanation of the meeting and then the séance. The two plainclothesmen listened without comment, but the expressions on their faces were identical: glum and disbelieving.

“And you went to bed and heard nothing,” the tall man said.

“That’s correct.”

“Are you sure you were alone all night?”

Orient hesitated. If he lied to them, it could put Lily in jeopardy. “Lady Sativa and I talked for a few hours after the séance,” he admitted.

“You told us you were alone,” the lanky man said pleasantly.

“I was not alone. But I heard nothing.”

“All right,” the short detective grunted. “Let’s go back to the house.”

As Orient turned to go, he noticed some small, reddish-brown splotches on the driver’s seat, as if the white leather upholstery had suddenly begun to rust. He leaned closer and saw that they were streaks of dark talcum powder.

“Come along,” the lanky man said, “the others are waiting.”