Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (26 page)

 
          
"Four
generations in the same house," Mrs. Douglas said. "That's what
putting down roots means, but with things the way they are these days, who'll
want this place when I'm gone? I don't have anyone to leave it to unless one of
my daughters comes to her senses, but I suppose nobody wants to live in the
middle of nowhere any more."

 
          
As
she spoke, Mrs. Douglas conducted Winter up the stairs and down a brightly lit
hall. Each of the closed white doors had an oval brass plaque screwed into the
wood.

 
          
"You're
in Lilac; I have to keep track of the rentals for the tax-man somehow, so I
thought I'd name all the rooms after the flowers I did them up in. There's Rose
and Violet down the hall, and Daisy across the way, that's the other
double." She unlocked the door—the interior lock was the first indication
Winter had been given that she was not in a private home—and ushered Winter
inside.

 
          
Winter
looked around at a large spacious room with an Oriental carpet on the floor
and wallpaper covered with sprigs of lilacs. A vase of lilacs—silk at this time
of year, but pretty nonetheless—stood on the dressing-table, and through the
half-open door at the other end of the room, Winter could see the promised
bathroom. Dominating the room was a massive four-poster canopy bed, with a
crisp white bedspread and masses of lilac-printed pillows mounded on it.

 
          
"I'll
take it," Winter said instantly.

 
          
Mrs.
Douglas explained that the room came with a Continental breakfast, and that
she could only have it for two nights at most, as the couple who had reserved
it would be arriving after that. The price she quoted was, of course, higher
than Winter would have paid to stay in a Hilton, but it was worth it, Winter
felt, to stay in a place that did not have the cold institutional feel of a
chain hotel.

 
          
"Probably
arriving, I should say, but I did promise to have it for them," Mrs.
Douglas said. "And I like to keep my word to folks—or why give it?"

 
          
"I
won't be any trouble, Mrs. Douglas. I'm planning to leave tomorrow morning,
anyway," Winter said.

 
          
"Virtue in the defense of extremism is
no vice,"
Grey said,
punningly
, out of the
depths of Winter's memory.

 
          
More
riddles.

 
          
Winter
unlocked the trunk of her car and let
Gary
carry the bags into the house before he
returned to what must presumably be the ongoing renovation of
Justamere
. Gary hefted the two large suitcases and the
carry-on bag as if they weighed nothing at all, and Winter thought he could
probably have carried her as well without any particular problem. He brought
the bags up the stairs and into the room—two on the floor, one on the pretty
embroidered suitcase stand—before leaving to resume the painting of the
third-floor back.

 
          
"If
you need anything, Ms. Musgrave, you just ask Mrs. Douglas. She's usually
downstairs in the parlor."

 
          
"Thank
you, Gary. I will." You didn't tip-as-you-went in a Bed-and-Breakfast, but
Winter made a mental note that Gary
Crowther
deserved
a generous remembrance when she left. Those bags weren't light—and besides, he
hadn't leered at her legs once.

 
          
He
closed the door behind him as he left and Winter was alone in the room. It was
only
midafternoon
, and a guilty part of Winter's mind
reminded her that she could have gotten in four or five more hours of driving
before dark.

 
          
But 1 don't want to get so tired that I
can't keep the poltergeist under control
—
and what if the
magickal
child
finds out where I’ve gone?
Winter told
herself. She opened her suitcase but didn't feel any impulse to unpack—and
she'd be leaving tomorrow morning, anyway.

 
          
If
nothing more went wrong.

 
          
Winter
sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled Tabitha Whit-field's pamphlet out of
her purse.
Besides, I can get in a couple
of hours of psychic aerobics before it's time for bed.

           
With Mrs. Douglas's guidance, Winter
located a local restaurant where, if the food wasn't quite up to
Manhattan
standards, she was able to make a tolerable
meal. Driving into the driveway at
Justamere
afterward, she looked up at the floodlit exterior and the warm light coming
from the expansive windows.
I'd like to
have a house like that,
was her automatic thought. But not to live in
alone, nor to run as an inn. A house like that was for children, a family; a
place to share with the right man.

 
          
The
direction her thoughts were taking pulled her up short, even as the car coasted
to a halt. Husband? Family? Winter had always dismissed marriage out of hand
before, and now, in her thirties, she suspected she was getting too set in her
ways to compromise enough, even for love, to be able to make a home with
someone else. And certainly no "right man" had ever presented
himself.

 
          
Maybe you're looking in the wrong place.
The
image of Hunter
Greyson
flitted across her mind again
and Winter sighed. If—when—she found Grey, he'd probably introduce her to his
wife and their two adorable children. He was her age, after all; they'd been
in college together. By the time they reached their thirties, most people knew
the direction they wanted their lives to go in and were settled somewhere.
They'd become what they wanted to be.

 
          
The way that Janelle did?

 
          
Automatically
Winter rejected the thought. Janelle hadn't become what she'd wanted to be;
she'd opted for safety instead, and even if it was a poisonous sort of refuge,
at least Janelle had known what she was running away from.

 
          
It
was only Winter who still didn't know what to run from ... or to. Or scratch
that—who'd known once but discovered she was wrong.

 
          
She
got out of the car slowly and locked it, then turned toward the steps. There
was one thing this wild Grey-chase was doing for her, and that was postponing
the moment when she would have to try to reenter the current of her normal life
and make a success of it once more.

 
          
Whatever
it turned out to be.

 
          
And
assuming she lived to do it.

 
          
That
night, lying in her canopied bed in the Lilac Room, Winter dreamed of Grey.

 
          
She
stood in a dream-landscape, knowing she wouldn't remember the dream once she
awoke. It was a place she'd been many times before, though she knew she
wouldn't remember that either. The light was ghostly; Winter stood in the
middle of a plain so vast it seemed to have no end, a
horizonless
place where the sky met the ground without any
demarkation
line. In the distance stood the remains of a ruined watchtower, alone in the
emptiness, and, having no other goal, Winter headed for it.

 
          
A
spectral wind plucked at her clothing, making a low irritating keening in her
ears. Where was Grey? He was supposed to be here already, waiting for her.

 
          
As
if her thoughts had invoked him, the scene changed: a dream within a dream. She
sat at her desk in the
Taghkanic
dorm, working on a
paper for her music class while Grey lay on the bed, her guitar across his
stomach, plunking idly at the strings.

 
          
She
looked over toward him, to where his blond hair spilled over her pillow,
gleaming in the lamplight. His eyes were half shut, and lashes like dark honey
nearly brushed his cheeks.

 
          
"What
are you going to do after you graduate?" she asked him, and realized that
this was a memory, not a dream. This had happened, once upon a time.

 
          
"Get
rich, get famous, do whatever I want." Grey's answer was flip. "Be a
singer in a rock 'n' roll band. What about you?"

 
          
/
want to stay with you,
Winter thought
to herself, and Grey, as if reading her mind, set the guitar aside and held
out his arms to her, his smile mocking and welcoming at the same time.

 
          
"Too
much study makes you go blind," he said huskily.

 
          
She
reached for him, but instead of flesh her hands touched jagged rock. She was
back in the gray place again, and she cried out at the unfairness of it, at
being snatched out of that lovely dream, away from Grey.

 
          
"Help me, Winter. Help me, my
love."

 
          
Beneath
her hands was the ruined stone of the watchtower, and half erupting from it was
Grey's body, face and hands yearning toward the light, as if he had been
trapped in the stone like an insect in amber, trapped forever—

 
          
"Leave me alone!"

 
          
And
suddenly it was spring; the apple trees were in bloom, and petals were
showering everywhere. . . .

           
Winter sat up in bed with a gasp,
heart pounding. It was nearly two in the morning, the wolf hour, the hour when
suicides and premeditated murders happen. The room was dark, with only a faint
glow from the security lights outside the house penetrating the translucent
curtains.

 
          
The
images in her dream scattered, until all that was left was the memory of Grey
and the feeling of panic—and the cloying scent of apple blossoms out of season.
Winter took a deep breath. She couldn't remember having nightmares before,
even at Fall River; only meaningless jumbled dreams that left her more tired
than before when she finally awakened from them. Dr.
Luty
had tried to get her to tell him her dreams, as if knowing the trash her
unconscious mind threw onto the beach of sleep would let him know
her.

 
          
But
this dream was different—both a true nightmare, and something worse. Winter got
herself under control enough to switch on the bedside light, and the bright
glow through the hobnail milk glass made the pretty Victorian room bright and
defined. Any shadows left would be merely a trick of the light, and not
messengers from the unseen world.

 
          
She
rubbed her forehead. What had the dream been about? Something about Grey, and
trouble. But not trouble that could still be averted. Trouble that had already
happened.
But if it's already too late
then why do I have to hurry . . . ?

 
          
What utter nonsense.
The thought was
sharp and bracing, lending her strength. /
suppose
that poltergeists have to be real, and maybe even the thing that chased you out
ofGlastonbury
,
the brisk internal censor went on.
But just because those two things
happened you don't have to embrace every half-baked idea from Spiritualism to
UFOs! Prophetic dreams and poltergeists don't exactly go together. There's got
to be a limit somewhere. You're upset, you're worried, you want to find Hunter
Grey son
—
it doesn't take a rocket
scientist to realize that this means you're probably going to dream about him.
Like Freud said, sometimes a bad dream is just a bad dream.

 
          
Winter
drew a deep breath, uncertain of whether the thoughts were good common sense or
hysterical denial.
A dream is just a
dream,
she repeated, feeling her body relax. Every bad dream didn't have
to be a message—if she started thinking that way, she'd be wearing crystals
and looking for omens in tea-leaves next.

 
          
That's right. Just a dream. Not an omen.

 
          
The
dream had left her too keyed-up to sleep, however, and she didn't want to run a
bath at this hour for fear of disturbing Mrs. Douglas's other guests. With a
sigh, Winter swung her legs over the edge of the bed and went looking for the
pamphlet from
Inquire Within.
The way
things stood, she wasn't going to get any sleep for a couple of more hours at
least. Thank heavens she'd managed to be sensible about the whole thing, or
she'd probably be in the middle of hysterics right now. And over a bad dream,
no less!