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And Wish and I popped up straight in our respective chairs,
pulled our lips into similar grins and said brightly, almost
simultaneously: "Nothing!"

Michael and I do not spend every night together. There are good
reasons for our not living precisely as man and wife. I admit most
of them are mine. Such as: I do not wish to be regarded as chattel,
which is how many men view their wives. Indeed the history of the
Western world, at least-I cannot answer for the history of the
Eastern half of it, as not much of that was taught at Wellesley-is
full of examples. For illustration one need go no further than the
Bible itself, to the Ten Commandments, where one finds written:
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his ox, nor his
ass, nor anything else that is his.

Oh really
¹
. I swear it makes my teeth
curl.

Generally speaking, even leaving aside the more outrageous of my
ideas, I believe it is a good thing for a couple not to become
entirely dependent on one another's company. So it was that this
particular night I told Michael I preferred to be alone. I fixed
myself a simple supper of omelet, bread, and fruit in the office
kitchen and took it upstairs to my apartment. When I was done
eating I called Wish Stephenson on the telephone, praying that
he-not his mother-would answer. His mother loves to talk on the
telephone above all things, and she will keep you at it for so long
you'll forget why you called him in the first place.

The instrument rang hollowly, over and over, in my ear. "Oh,
botheration!" I said. No one was home. And I had so wanted to find
out more about those empty graves
¹
.

I felt all at loose ends. I sucked on a lemon pastille. I walked
from room to room, looking out the windows but paying no attention
to the view. I tried calling again, and still there was no answer.
Good son that he was, Wish had probably taken his mother out for
the evening. If they'd merely gone out for supper, I fancied
they would have returned by now. If they did not come home soon, it
would be too late to call, for politeness' sake. And what I was
really doing with all this aimless activity was trying to push
Frances McFadden out of my mind.

I leaned against the window frame and looked east toward Russian
Hill, where I used to live in Mrs. O'Leary's house. She has a fine,
wealthy husband now and lives in Los Angeles. She has not seen the
new houses that are springing up like mushrooms there, where we
used to live-in that part of the City where everything burned after
the earthquake not so long ago. I watched the contours of houses
and buildings go fuzzy and gray with twilight, no fog tonight;
watched the gray grow a blue tinge, like spreading ink; and then
the electric lights started to come on. Pop! pop! pop! they came on
one by one, or a whole handful at a time, like diamonds scattered
over a dark counterpane by the Hand of Night. I shoved the window
open an inch, drew in a deep breath of air that tasted of evening,
and was suddenly seized by a fit of melancholy without cause.

Divisadero Street was empty, uphill and down, everyone tucked up
safely at home. By listening hard I was able to discern the whine
of an electric trolley on Van Ness Avenue, and somewhere someone
tootled a car horn, but on the whole, all was still.
Too
still.

It was a strange moment. I should not have been surprised to see
a spectre materialize in a blank window of the house across the
street, whose inhabitants appeared to be perpetually away. Surely
in this sad, foreboding stillness something would happen?

But nothing did. I tried calling Wish one last time, and he was
still not at home.

At last, knowing it was a mistake, I called Frances McFadden-
even though I was well aware her husband kept their one and only
telephone in his study, practically under lock and key. I had the
oddest feeling Frances had been thinking of me all this time,
trying to communicate with me somehow, and perhaps if I telephoned
she might answer. She did not, but Jeremy McFadden did, and I broke
the connection without saying a word. My cheeks burned as if he
could see me, in my cowardly silence, through the wires.

After a perfectly horrid, restless night, I got up early.
Dressed in a dark green skirt, a wide brown leather belt, and a
lace-trimmed ecru blouse, I had already made the coffee when I
sensed Michael's presence in the office kitchen. I turned around
and there he was, though he hadn't made a sound.

I frowned. "I don't know how you do that," I said.

"Good morning to you, too. Do what?" He reached around me to
remove the coffeepot from the burner, but stopped short of kissing
my cheek.

"Sneak up on me sometimes." I frowned harder. "Generally, I know
when you are there; and besides, I should have heard the door."

"Poor Fremont." Now he kissed my cheek. His eyes twinkled with
mischief. "Even those famous ears cannot be expected to hear
everything."

"So far as I know, my ears are not in the least famous."

"They are with me."

"I shall not make such a good detective after all," I groused,
pouring coffee for myself and plopping down into a chair at the
table, "if I can't even hear my own front door open-and with a bell
on it, at that!"

Michael chuckled. "If you were more yourself, you would realize
I came in the back."

"Oh. That explains it, then." But it didn't, not entirely.
Michael is very, very good at sneaking around. Or at surveillance.
I shall most likely never be as good at all these clandestine
activities as he is. It rankles that I have never yet followed him
on one of our training exercises without his knowing I am there. He
has doubled around and come up behind me more than once, and it
makes me furious-with myself, of course, not him. Well, maybe just
a little bit with him.

I sat glowering over my coffee and worrying about Frances, which
did make me cross with Michael, because I couldn't very well turn
to him for support. Not after he'd practically forbidden me to
pursue a friendship with her. Indeed! Well, he knew that wouldn't
work, but I still could not expect him to allay my anxieties, which
had no foundation in any case. None that I knew of.

My partner, wisely leaving me alone in my grumpiness, had begun
to fry bacon and was beating up some eggs in a bowl. Michael is a
more passable cook than I, if the truth be told. "No eggs for me,"
I said, as I realized what he was doing.

"You have to eat, Fremont. A good breakfast might even make you
less disagreeable in the mornings."

It stung. I protested: "That wasn't very nice."

"But true." He picked up another egg.

"Really," I said sharply, before he could break the shell, "I
had eggs for supper last night. Toast and bacon will do me quite
well, thank you."

"You're welcome."

After a few moments, out of the corner of my eye I saw one of
Michael's black eyebrows arch up as he flashed a look at me over
his shoulder. I knew what he was thinking:
Is she approachable
yet?

I should be ashamed of myself, but I wasn't. I
was
still
irritated with him for bossing me around about Frances. More than
that, I wanted and needed to talk with him about my concerns for
her, which for no reason at all had intensified overnight. Perhaps,
indirectly, there was a way . . .

I joined Michael at the chopping block, next to the stove, and
busied myself with cutting bread for toast. "Michael," I said
casually as I fastened the slices into the rack, "do you believe in
mental telepathy?"

Both black brows shot up. "I beg your pardon?"

"You know, the ability some people claim to have, to be able to
communicate across a distance, without spoken words."

"Mind to mind," he said gravely.

"Yes."

"Why do you ask?" Suddenly my partner was as tense as a bow,
before the arrow is let fly.

"It's no big thing," I said, bending down and shoving the racked
toast into the oven, "just that I've had the oddest feeling someone
may be trying to communicate with me in that manner."

I could not fail to notice that Michael's tension immediately
lessened. "Oh," he said, sounding amused, "and what is this someone
saying? Are the two of you engaged in a dialogue?"

"Not exactly. I do not seem to be very good at it, but the
feeling is certainly very strong. So what do you think, is it
possible?" I retrieved the toast from the oven just in time to
prevent its burning, observing in passing that the two of us had
become rather good at this business of preparing meals together. So
long as the meals were simple enough.

"There is a great deal of interest in such matters right now in
the land of my ancestors," Michael acknowledged-reluctantly, I
thought.

"Russia, you mean."

"Yes, because of this man Grigori Efimovich, whom most are
calling by the disgusting name Rasputin."

"I've heard of him," I said. "He is a mesmerist, is he not? And
why is the name so disgusting?"

"I don't know what he is, Fremont, and neither do some people
who happen to be among the few in Russia I still care about. I only
know he is already close to the heart of the Tsarina, and I cannot
believe that a person of such low birth and no education as this
Grigori-"

"Whoa, Misha! And I thought you such an egalitarian."

"Let me finish, if you please." Michael's eyes were flashing. He
looked like a candidate for tsarhood himself, or at least a prince;
a leader, a ruler, and an angry one at that. "The name Rasputin
means 'debaucher,' and he
is
debauched, though he presents
himself as a holy man. Like Jesus Christ, may the saints forgive
the comparison-"

"I didn't know you were religious." I popped a piece of toast in
my mouth. I was enjoying this; it was highly interesting, even if
it wasn't helping me much with my own problem.

"You might say Russian Orthodoxy is in my blood, or call it
superstition. As I was saying: Like Jesus Christ, this Grigori
Efimovich claims that physical contact with him can heal. Jesus
healed with a touch of his hand. Rasputin takes it rather further
than that."

"What do you mean?"

Michael ran his hand through his hair, messing it up, which he
does only when he's deeply distressed. "I should never have gotten
into this with you. I'd managed to put it out of my own mind until
you became involved with that damn woman!"

I felt the blood flash into my cheeks. "Really, Michael, you had
better explain yourself, because I cannot for the life of me
imagine what connection there can be between my friend Frances and
this-this debauched Russian!"

"All right!" he said hotly, then quickly calmed. "But you must
bear with me because it won't be easy. I have heard on good
authority that before he went to St. Petersburg, which by the way
was only a year or so before I met you, Grigori Efimovich was
healing people, especially females, through having carnal knowledge
of them."

"You mean intercourse," I said, my cheeks doubly hot now, "on
the theory, no doubt, that if a mere touch is healing ..."

"Precisely," said Michael. "Now that he's at the imperial court,
there are those who say he has cast his spell on the Tsarina in the
same way, that this is what binds her to him, not just his ability
to calm the Tsarevich."

"Begging your pardon, but you've lost me. What or who is a
Tsarevich?"

"The boy, the heir, Alexei, whose health is so frail. That is
not general knowledge, by the way."

I frowned, perplexed. "But I still don't see what any of this
has to do with Frances. And you certainly should not have called my
friend 'that damned woman.' Really, Michael!"

"All right. I apologize, I was angry. You see, Fremont,
mysticism is still all the rage in Russia, though the craze has
passed its peak here in the United States and in England. The
Russians are a sort of brooding, mysterious people by nature
anyhow-mysticism, mentalism, mesmerism, all those things naturally
appeal to them. I think Rasputin is dangerous, and the last thing
in the world I want right now is to have to go back to Russia and
be part of some plot to expose him."

I reached out and put my hand over Michael's. "Is there such a
plot?"

"Not yet. But there are rumblings."

I thought about what I'd seen-and heard-at the seance. "Could he
be legitimate, this Rasputin? Could he really have some
otherworldly power?"

Michael searched me, through my eyes. He said, "I'm beginning to
understand. You think that medium at the seance the other night was
the real thing. Don't you?"

"I don't know. But I do know Frances, and something strange-and
I believe otherworldly-happened to her, Michael. Something that has
no logical explanation."

Michael inhaled deeply, and his love for me, mingled with a
fierce caring, poured from his eyes into mine. "One thing I can
tell you for certain, Fremont. Power is only power, but people can
be good or evil. Rasputin is evil. Now I have to ask you: How much
do you really know about your new friend?"