The Taker (47 page)

Jonathan came back to life on the carriage ride to Adair’s mansion. For this was his first trip to a city as big and varied as Boston, and through his eyes, I got to relive my arrival three years earlier: the masses of people on the dusty streets; the proliferation of shops and
inns; the amazing houses made of brick, towering several stories high; the number of carriages on the street drawn by well-groomed horses; the women in fashions of the day, revealing décolletage and long white throats. After a while, Jonathan had to sit back from the window and close his eyes.

Then, of course, Adair’s mansion was as overwhelming as a castle, though by this point, Jonathan had grown numb to the novelty of grandeur. He allowed me to lead him up the stairs and into the house, through the foyer with the chandelier swaying overhead and the liveried footmen bowing low enough to inspect Jonathan’s crusted shoes. We went through the dining hall with its table set for eighteen to the double-bowed staircase, which led to the bedchambers upstairs.

“Where is Adair?” I demanded of one of the butlers, eager to get this part over.

“Right here.” His voice rose behind me, and I whirled around to see him walking in. He’d dressed carefully, with a studied casualness, his hair tied back with a ribbon like a European gentleman. Like Dona, he eyed my Jonathan as though considering a fair price for him, rubbing together the fingers of his right hand. For his part, Jonathan tried to be indifferent, glancing at Adair and then looking away. But I felt a charge in the air and a recognition pass between them. It could have been what mystics claim as the bond between souls destined to travel throughout time together. Or it might have been the dance of rival males in the wild, wondering who will come out on top and how bloody the battle will be. Or it might have been that he was finally meeting the man who kept me.

“So this is the friend you told us about,” Adair said, pretending it was as simple as having an old friend down for a visit.

“I am pleased to introduce to you Mr. Jonathan St. Andrew.” I did my best impression of a doorman but neither man was amused.

“And you are the …” Jonathan fumbled for the word to describe Adair from my fantastic story, for indeed what would you call him? Monster? Ogre? Demon? “Lanny told me about you.”

Adair raised an eyebrow. “Did she? I hope Lanny did not make too much of a mess of it. She has such a grand imagination. You shall have to tell me what she said, someday.” He snapped his fingers at Dona. “Show our guest up to his room. He must be tired.”

“I can take him,” I began, but Adair cut me off.

“No, Lanore, stay with me. I’d like to speak to you for a moment.” It was then I realized I was in trouble: he simmered with anger, hidden for the sake of our guest. We watched as Dona led a sleepwalking Jonathan up the winding staircase, until they disappeared from view. Then Adair whirled on me, striking me hard across my face.

Knocked to the floor, I held my cheek and glared at him. “What was that for?”

“You
changed
him, didn’t you? You stole my elixir and you took him for yourself. Did you think I wouldn’t find out what you’d done?” Adair stood over me, huffing, shoulders trembling.

“I had no choice! He had been shot … he was dying …”

“Do you think I am stupid? You stole the elixir because you had intended from the beginning to bind him to you.” Adair reached down and grabbed me by the arm, hoisted me to my feet, and shoved me against the wall. In his hands, I felt the terror of the episode in the basement, strapped in the diabolical harness, helpless in the face of his violence and drowning in panic. Then he hit me again, a stinging backhand that dropped me to the floor a second time. I reached up again to my cheek and found it smeared with blood. He’d split the skin open, and pain was radiating through my face even as the wound’s edges began to knit back together.

“If I meant to steal him from you, would I have come back?” Still on the floor, I scrabbled backward like a crab to get out of Adair’s reach, slipping on my own silken hem. “I’d have run away and taken him with me. No, it’s exactly as I told you … I took the vial, yes, but as a precaution. It was a feeling I had, that something bad was going to happen. But of course I came back. I am loyal to you,” I said, even
though there was murder in my heart, fury at being struck, for being helpless to do anything about it.

Adair glared at me, questioning my declaration, but did not strike me again. Instead, he turned and walked away, his warning to me echoing in the hall. “We will see about your professed loyalty. Do not think this is over, Lanore. I will crush the tie between you and this man so completely that your bond to him will be as nothing. Your thievery and your scheming will come to naught. You are mine, and if you believe I cannot undo what you have done, you are mistaken. Jonathan will be mine, too.”

I remained on the floor, holding my cheek, trying not to panic at his words. I couldn’t let him take Jonathan away from me. I couldn’t let him sever the tie to the only person I cared about. Jonathan was all I had and all I wanted. If I lost him, life would be meaningless, and unfortunately, life would be all that was left to me.

THIRTY-NINE

Q
UEBEC
C
ITY, PRESENT DAY

I
t is near midnight when they arrive in Quebec City. Lanny directs Luke to what appears to be the best hotel in the old part of town, a tall fortresslike building with parapets for a crown and flags fluttering in the cold night wind. Grateful to be driving the new SUV instead of his old truck, Luke hands the valet the keys and then he and Lanny walk empty-handed into the lobby.

The hotel room is about the most luxurious place he’s ever stayed; it puts the hotel where he spent his honeymoon to shame. The bed is a plush affair with feather bed, a half dozen pillows, and Frette sheets, and as he settles into its voluptuousness, he levels a remote at the flat-screen television. The local news programs should be on in a few minutes and he’s anxious to see if there is any mention of the disappearance of a murder suspect from a hospital in Maine. Luke hopes that St. Andrew is too far away and inconsequential for the story to be carried in Quebec.

His gaze wanders to Lanny’s laptop, at the foot of the bed. He could see if there’s anything online, but Luke is struck by a sudden irrational fear that if he searches for their story online, he will give
them away somehow, that the authorities will be able to track them down through the combination of an internet connection and the use of suspicious key words. His heart pounds even though he knows this isn’t possible. He has made himself almost dizzy with paranoia when he’s not sure there is any reason for it.

Lanny comes out of the bathroom on a cloud of warm, damp air. She’s swimming in the hotel bathrobe, which is huge on her, and has a towel over her shoulders, her wet hair falling in tendrils over her eyes. She fishes a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket. Before lighting up, she offers one to Luke, but he shakes his head.

“The water pressure is heavenly,” she says, sending a stream of smoke toward the sprinkler heads embedded discreetly in the ceiling. “You should take a nice long, hot shower.”

“In a minute,” he says.

“What’s on television? Are you looking for something about us?”

He nods, twitching his stockinged feet at the plasma screen. A flashy logo for the news program flits across, then a serious-looking middle-aged man begins reading headlines while his coanchor nods attentively. Lanny continues to sit with her back to the screen, toweling her hair. Seven minutes into the program, a head shot of Luke flashes behind the anchor. It’s the posed personnel photo they took at the hospital that appears every time his name is mentioned in the hospital newsletter.

“… is missing after treating a murder suspect for the police at Aroostook General Hospital yesterday evening, and the authorities fear that something may have happened to him. The police are asking anyone with information on the doctor’s whereabouts to call the crime hotline …”

The entire story lasts less than sixty seconds, but it is so alarming to see his face on the television screen that Luke can’t absorb what the anchor is saying. Lanny takes the remote out of his hand and turns it off.

“So, they’re looking for you,” she says, her voice breaking his paralysis.

“Don’t they have to wait forty-eight hours before they can consider you a missing person?” he asks, weakly indignant, as though an injustice has been done to him.

“They’re not going to wait; they think you’re in danger.”

Am I?
he wonders.
Does Joe Duchesne know something I don’t know?
“They read my name on the air. The hotel …”

“No reason to worry. We registered in my name, remember? The police back in St. Andrew don’t know who I am. No one is going to put two and two together.” The girl turns away and blows another long stream of smoke. “It’ll be okay. Trust me. I’m an expert at escaping.”

It feels as though Luke’s brain squeezes against his skull, as if in a panic it is trying to get out. The enormity of what he has done hits him: Duchesne will be waiting to talk to him. Peter undoubtedly has told the police about the SUV and the email, so there’s no way they can continue to use it. In order to go back to his home, he will have to lie convincingly to the sheriff and repeat that lie to everyone back in St. Andrew, maybe for the rest of his life. He closes his eyes and fights for breath. His subconscious led him to help Lanny. If he can only fight through the alarm clamoring in his head, his subconscious should tell him what it is he really wants, why he walked out on his life and went tearing down the road with this woman, bridges aflame behind him. “Does that mean I can’t go back?” he asks.

“If that’s what you want,” she says carefully. “They’ll have questions, but nothing you wouldn’t be able to handle. Do you want to go back to St. Andrew? To your parents’ farm, the house full of their belongings, the absence of your kids? Back to the hospital to take care of your ungrateful neighbors?”

Luke’s uneasiness grows stronger. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Listen to me, Luke. I know what you’re thinking.” She slides across the bed to sit next to him, close, so he can’t turn away from her. He smells the faint perfume of soap, warmed by her skin, rise from under the bathrobe. “You only want to go back because it’s what you know. It’s what you have left. The man I saw walk into the ER looked overwhelmed
and tired. You’ve been through a lot with your parents and your former wife, losing your children … There’s nothing there for you anymore. It’s a trap. You go back to St. Andrew and you’ll never leave. You’ll just grow older, surrounded by people who don’t give a damn about you. I know what you’re feeling. You’re alone and you’re afraid you’re going to be alone for the rest of your life, rattling around in a big house, no one to talk to. No one to help with the burdens of living—no one to eat dinner with, no one to listen to stories about your day. You’re afraid of old age—who will be there for you? Who will take care of you the way you took care of your parents, who will hold your hand when it’s your turn to die?” What she’s said is brutally true and he can barely stand to listen to it. She puts one arm around Luke’s shoulder and when he doesn’t push her away, she pulls him closer.

“You’re right to be afraid of dying. Death has taken everyone I’ve known. I’ve held them in my arms up to their last moment, comforted them, cried when they’ve gone. Loneliness is a terrible thing.” The words are incongruous coming from this young woman, but her sadness is palpable. “I can be here for you always, Luke. I won’t go away. I’ll be with you for the rest of your life, if you want me to be.”

Luke doesn’t pull away, but he thinks about her words. She’s not proposing love—is she?—no, Luke knows that, he’s no fool. Though it’s not exactly friendship, either. He doesn’t flatter himself into thinking that they have taken to each other like kindred souls: they’ve known each other for less than thirty-six hours. He thinks he understands what this pretty young woman is offering. She needs a companion. Luke has followed an instinct he didn’t know he had and has done well by her. She sees it can work. And in exchange, he can walk away from his old, complicated life without having to do so much as cancel his account with the electric company. And, Luke won’t ever be alone again.

He remains in Lanny’s arms, letting her stroke his back, enjoying the feel of her hand. It clears his mind and brings Luke peace for the first time since the sheriff escorted her into the emergency room.

He knows that if he thinks too hard, the fog will roll back in. He feels like a character in the middle of a fairy tale, but if he stops to think about what is happening, if he resists the gentle tug of her story, confusion will set in. He’s tempted not to question Lanny’s unseen world. If he accepts what she says as true, then what he believes about death is a lie. But, as a doctor, Luke has witnessed the end of life, stood by as life dribbled out of a patient. He accepted death as one of his world’s absolutes and now he’s being told that it’s not. Exigencies have been written into the coda of life in invisible ink. If death isn’t an absolute, then of the thousands of facts and faiths he’s been fed in his life, which
other
ones might be a lie?