Gisèle Marie Baxter
Schanke tracks down Dennis Matheson at the Emergency Room of a downtown hospital; he is, like Natalie, a doctor, though they trained at different medical schools and interned in different places, and so lost touch. However, he did retain ties to Barbara, and visited her every day during her last hospitalization. According to records of procedure, Barbara was not scheduled for medication when she must have been administered the overdose that killed her. Dennis Matheson took a personal interest in her treatment, so he knows this. Neither he nor Schanke says "circumstantial." He is young, with unruly red-brown hair just starting to go white, almost tall and lanky, and he wears retro horn-rimmed spectacles, also a bow tie with his miniature gingham-checked shirt. His manner is edgy but in a way more characteristic than situational, and he readily agrees to accompany Schanke to the division when he shift ends at midnight. He sits in the interview room with his large piano-playing surgeon's hands folded on the tabletop and dutifully listens to the tape of his call to Nightwatch.
"So is that you?" Schanke wonders.
"Yes. I'd had quite a lot of tequila when I made that call," Dennis Matheson admits. "When I heard that Barbara died the next evening, everything seemed unreal, like the world had collapsed in on itself."
"What did you do the rest of the night?"
Dennis Matheson shrugs. "I drank some more. Then I fell asleep."
Schanke changes his approach slightly. He stops pacing, hitches down his necktie knot a notch, and stares straight but not forcefully at Dennis Matheson, lightly resting his hands on the back of a chair. "What happened between you and Barbara?"
For a moment, Dennis Matheson seems about to cry. His knuckles grow white from such rigid clenching, he clears his throat and blinks several times, then says, "Something stupid: we'd been pals since college, then after my wife left me, we moved in together for a while. Barbara's always had a strange relationship with trust; we had a fight over my seeing someone from work, and she threw me out. This was about, oh, three years ago. And I found living so hard after that. And then she got sick, and the most we could do is sort of make it up, though God knows I looked at every possible treatment or remedy."
After Dennis Matheson is permitted to leave, Schanke wanders out to the observation area where Captain Cohen is waiting; she shakes her head and says, "I don't like anything about this case. All we've turned up so far have been coincidences. I'd settle for a good theory."
"Do you think Natalie's overreacted to an error?" Schanke asks, while spreading cream cheese on a poppyseed bagel. "Or hey, maybe it's this Nightcrawler guy. Either he incited someone to do it or did it himself."
The captain frowns. "Why?" she wonders, unconvinced this is a good theory.
"Have you ever tried listening to the show?"
"Yes; it's not my style," Cohen returns dismissively. "I'm a little interested in why the programmer didn't report Barbara Jellicoe's old boyfriend's call himself. But I don't think it will matter much. And I'm really interested in whether anyone at the hospital saw anything unusual."
"We've checked. No one, of course," Schanke says grimly as he launches into his bagel.
*****
Natalie wanders through a district of shops and market stalls on a glittering Saturday morning. She wears a long winter coat and dark glasses, and her hair is tied back with a broad crimson ribbon. After some aimless wandering through the crowds, she finds herself in a little antique shop, which is dark and dusty and musty after the harsh winter sunlight of the street. She puts away her glasses and browses without really looking for anything in particular, until finally she grows interested in a tray of scarf pins and other heraldic jewelry in gold and silver. She chooses one that looks like a hawk, highly stylized and exquisite in its miniature detail, in plain burnished silver. A small elderly birdlike man with backswept white hair and gold-rimmed spectacles, who wears a black suit and speaks with a crisp English accent, assures her that it is from pre-revolutionary France as he sells it to her. With this purchase in her big striped woven shoulder bag, she returns to the outside world, and wanders some more through the market stalls until she reaches one selling various items of imported handcrafted jewelry. She runs a hand along a rack of pendants on chains, looking at one or two, then pulling out a small silver cross inlaid with chips of iridescent shell, on a long thin chain. A smiling dark-haired woman in a patterned blanket-cloth coat assures her it is very beautiful, and she buys this too, but instead of putting it away she hangs it around her neck and drops it under her collar.
*****
Natalie sits in her office in the Coroner's Building. It is hard to concentrate by now, and her hands shake as she brings the most recent cup of black coffee up to her mouth. It is past three o'clock in the morning. She picks up the toxicology report on Barbara and begins to reread it, but the print seems to congeal on the page, and no amount of blinking or rubbing her eyes can clarify it. And yet she cannot cry. In the nearest women's washroom, she splashes cold water on her face, then braces her hands on the sink and studies herself in the mirror. At first she is horrified at her pale disheveled hollow-eyed deterioration, then she stands back and her face grows objective, appraising. She fluffs out her hair and smoothes her rumpled clothing and deftly reapplies her eyeliner and lipstick and powder. She sprays herself with perfume.
Outside snow is drifting down softly yet steadily, screening streetlights and blanketing parked cars and clinging to her hair and coat. She drives to the Raven, where there is still a lineup to get in, but she is quickly summoned out of it, so (leaving a wake of wondering envy) she goes straight to the bar and orders an Amaretto. Janette slides onto the stool next to her.
"Hello, Natalie." Janette smiles, noting the crimson lipstick and black clothes. "You look very au courant."
"Well, this is all sort of new to me," Natalie confesses. "In my club days, we just put on our denim miniskirts and went to the El Mocambo."
"I went to so many clubs trying to decide what I wanted for this. Do you know, I liked that dress you had on the other night. It was classically chic."
"I bought it to wear to my mother's retirement party." Natalie traces a finger around the rim of her glass. "I didn't see you that night."
"It is difficult to come in here without my knowing. Nicholas tells me your friend the artist died recently."
All Natalie can do is nod.
"I am sorry," Janette continues, placing a hand on Natalie's arm.
"You are?"
"Yes. We do not allow ourselves to feel very much beyond our own needs, and Nicholas has risked a great deal in what he feels for you."
"Oh, he knows I'll keep my mouth shut."
"No, it is not that. We all trust you. His choice is based on something much deeper than whether you'll keep his secret or help him amend his life and regain mortality, which I can assure you is impossible." Janette looks at Natalie very seriously for a moment, then presses her arm lightly. "But we won't debate that. All I want to say is that I feel enough to know that the death of your friend is a turning point for you. Now you've seen the fragility of mortal life and the severity of decay. And you can't really grieve because you're too afraid to grieve."
Again, for a moment, Natalie wants to cry, and she thinks: cry here, never mind where you are; she's offering you a shoulder. Weep on it till her dress is soggy and all your mascara runs. But thinking it makes it impossible, and she feels dry inside, thirsty. "Everyone's been so terrific," she says suddenly, then squeezes her eyes shut and clenches her fists, "but I want -- "
"A voice heard by chance," Janette suggests.
"Yes," Natalie breathes. "Someone outside any part of my life."
"Go to the office now," Janette says softly.
Natalie takes her drink and obeys. In the office, she sets the liqueur glass down on the bar and looks up at the painting over it. She is aware of hands gently resting on her shoulders, and a head bent to kiss her very lightly on one side of her neck, just above her high collar. She closes her eyes briefly, surrendering, then turns to look up at LaCroix, who still wears his scarf and overcoat and is cold from the outdoors. She permits him to run his fingertips lightly over her collar, down her throat, along the line of thin silver chain not even visible through the fabric of her dress to the tiny pendant. He winces visibly and his eyes grow just perceptibly more luminous but he compels himself to pressure the little silver cross until she feels the metal growing hot against her skin and she instinctively clamps her hands on the edge of the bar. When he withdraws his hand abruptly she can scarcely breathe her relief.
"Are you religious or superstitious?" he asks her gently.
"Neither," Natalie replies, with some conviction.
"Then are you afraid of me," he continues.
"Yes," she says softly but decisively, never taking her eyes from his.
"Then why are you here?" LaCroix wonders.
"Because nowhere else seems right," she says after some hesitation, and the despair of saying it releases her; she drops her limp hands into the deep pockets of her coat and stares at the carpet. LaCroix regards her for a few moments, then leads her over to a big armchair and sits her down like a rag doll. He crouches before her; holding her liqueur glass, he carefully dips a finger into the Amaretto and brings it to her lips, and she takes it gratefully. Then she takes the glass herself and regards him calmly.
"Can you help me?" she asks straightforwardly.
"Yes," he replies. "With two conditions. I shall never give you anything you do not ask for specifically. And you must tell me everything you want."
"I want to know if Barbara was killed," Natalie tells him.
"And?"
Without hesitation, "I want justice done."
"And?"
Her mouth almost opens, then she hesitates miserably, and finally she says, "That's all; there's nothing else."
"Please don't lie to me now," LaCroix says softly. "There is something."
"Yes," she says impulsively, then quietly. "But you know what I mean."
"You have to say it."
"Now?"
"Not now; you're not ready yet."
She almost smiles, but very sadly, then sets aside the liqueur glass and opens her little purse. "I have something for you," she announces, and hands it to him; it is wrapped in black tissue which LaCroix folds back carefully to reveal the tiny burnished silver scarf pin in the stylized shape of a hawk. He studies it closely and with obvious admiration.
"This is very old." He looks at her not quite suspiciously. "How did you come by it? You realize that if it's something Nicholas gave you he'll know I have it."
"I know that," says Natalie. "And I wouldn't betray Nick like that. That's something that should be a museum piece but which I bought at a bizarre little antique shop not many people know about."
He stands up and crosses the room to a mirror, where he knots over his fine plain silk scarf and affixes the pin to it one way, then another, then he realizes Natalie is standing beside him. With an allow-me gesture, she reties the scarf and positions the pin, then, holding it in place, looks up at him.
"What you want me to do right now," she says, "is this -- " and she stabs the sharp metal point into her index finger, then fixes the clasp and holds out her hand to him. They watch the globule of red blood forming. Then he gingerly takes her hand in both of his and lifts it to his mouth, and she regards him fearlessly and sadly through the moment of awful risk when she is uncertain whether he'll be able to stop. Yet his greater aims give him enormous self-control, and he lets her go safely within that moment, kissing her knuckles lightly and never letting his pale eyes leave hers. She is utterly seduced and convinced.
*****
Just before dawn, Dennis Matheson ends his shift and, with his winter coat hastily flung over his familiar doctor's garb, he strides across the parking lot to his car, an ancient tomato-soup-red Citroen he imported and refitted himself. As he is about to unlock it, he drops the keys, then before he can see what's coming, the keys have been collected and are being handed to him by a tall pale stranger wearing a long leather overcoat over a finely tailored black suit with a tiny silver pin affixed to one lapel. LaCroix smiles benignly and Dennis Matheson returns the smile with hesitant nervousness.
"Should I know you?" the doctor wonders.
"You already do," LaCroix replies. "And you knew Barbara Jellicoe."
This alarms Dennis Matheson to the extent that he jabs an angry finger at this intruder while thrusting what he hopes is the right key at the door lock, but his voice cracks slightly as he says, "Unless you're the police, get lost."
So suddenly the transition is invisible, Dennis Matheson finds himself hauled up and pinned against the roof of his car, and being stared at very hard. He is too amazed and terrified to struggle.
"I'm not the police," says LaCroix. "But I am interested in finding out whether Barbara was killed, and if so by whom, and they're taking far too long."
"How did you know Barbara?" Dennis Matheson gasps absurdly.
"I was in a way her dearest friend and confidante." LaCroix smiles at this reference to a woman he had never seen. "But she's dead now, and of no consequence to me, though I've learned more about her lately than she probably knew herself. And so I must ask you: did you kill her?"
Dennis Matheson could at this point indignantly answer, no. Or he could be too shocked to say anything. Instead, oddly enough, his expression softens, and he says with great sincerity despite his discomfort, "No, of course not."
Nevertheless, LaCroix refuses to loosen his grasp, and he persists: "Do you know who killed her?"
Dennis Matheson shakes his head numbly. "No," he says. Then his expression crumbles and squeezes up and in spite of his best efforts, he starts to cry, and adds with vehemence, "No, I don't."
"Thank you," LaCroix says dispassionately, and the next thing Dennis Matheson knows, he is alone, having crashlanded by the side of his car. He pulls himself up, rubbing sore spots. His ring of car keys is still in the hand that held it before.
*****
Shortly after sundown, Amanda Cohen packs her briefcase and layers on her cold-weather clothes preparatory to departure. A brief tap at her office door interrupts her, and she looks up from her desk, where she is scribbling things on post-it notes, to see a tall, pale, blond man in her doorway. He wears an expensive black leather zippered jacket over a turtlenecked sweater and heavy wool trousers; as he pulls off his gloves, she notices a large ornate silver ring on one hand. There is something strange about his eyes, which are also very pale and glassy: maybe a bad reaction to contact lenses or maybe drug use; it's part of the life. For she knows who he is.
"I'm Captain Amanda Cohen," she announces, extending a hand.
"Lucien LaCroix." He shakes her hand briefly; his hand is cold. "I got your call, Captain Cohen," he says calmly.
"Right. Well, it's about the circumstances surrounding the death of Barbara Jellicoe. Apparently she was a dedicated listener to your program on CERK, and someone called in the night before she died to make some sort of plea to her, so there are a few questions we want to ask you." Cohen pushes down the fingers of her gloves and tugs a broad knitted headband over her hair, and continues, "Detectives Knight and Schanke are handling this investigation; they'll be here shortly and you'll talk to them."
"Where shall I wait?" LaCroix wonders reasonably.
Cohen vaguely dislikes his ability to stare without blinking but ignores this subjective response; he has, after all, come here voluntarily.
"You don't have to," she replies, glancing out across the squad room. "Here they come. And I appreciate your cooperation, Mr. LaCroix."
He inclines his head slightly and almost smiles, then follows her out. Schanke is balancing two file folders, a brown paper bag of takeout bagels with cream cheese, and a plastic-lidded cup of takeout cappuccino. Nick strides along beside him, hands in the pockets of his long overcoat, fringed French wool scarf flapping out from his collar, unflustered and glamorous (as the captain has always believed) despite the odd diffidence of his manner. He is kidding his partner about something and freezes almost in mid-syllable for a moment so swift it's like a camera shutter, or like something only LaCroix notices.
"Gentlemen," says Cohen, "this is Lucien LaCroix from CERK radio; he's the host of Nightwatch and has agreed to talk to us. And Knight, Schanke, I want progress reports on this investigation by the start of your shifts tomorrow."
With this typically dry farewell request, Cohen rattles her car keys in her coat pocket and heads off to test the antifreeze. Schanke somehow can sense a sudden pressure in the atmosphere and as he sets all his stuff down on his desk stares between Nick and LaCroix, who are facing each other with a sort of grimly serious ironic politeness. It could be his imagination, he tells himself, and anyway, there's work to be done. Collecting his reorganized snack, he names an interview room they could use.
"Might as well get this show on the road," he suggests. "Sooner started, sooner ended. And don't worry, Mr. LaCroix; you're not a suspect and it's not an interrogation."
LaCroix smiles. "I'd been looking forward to a good grilling, and I'd have thought Detective Knight would appreciate the opportunity."
"Oh right, you guys know each other." Schanke is uncertain whether to be impressed.
"We go back a way," says Nick, preceding the others into the interview room and switching on the lights. He examines the tape recorded then looks at his partner with a little grin. "Schanke: see if you can find the microphone, could you?"
Frowning, Schanke heads off to perform this task. Upon his departure, Nick indicates a chair, and he and LaCroix sit facing each other at the table. The latter is relaxed, and only smiles benignly when Nick glares and jabs a finger at him.
"All right," says Nick firmly. "You have five seconds to tell me what the hell you think you're doing here."
LaCroix stares at the ceiling and thinks about it for four seconds, then looks blandly at Nick and replies, "My civic duty?"
"Come on, you don't care whether Barbara Jellicoe was killed," Nick counters.
"Is whether I care an ethical or a philosophical question or are the two indistinguishable," LaCroix muses. "Shall we say I'm interested, and if I can contribute to the killer being found, well, someone will be eternally grateful, dear Nicholas."
"Stay away from Natalie," Nick warns the other vampire, and is aware he is talking in a hoarse urgent whisper he hardly uses now.
"She came to me," LaCroix reminds him.
Nick says nothing to this. Leaning back in his chair, he folds his arms and regards LaCroix critically for a few moments, reflecting, I've outgrown you. That's why I'm so tired and frustrated. And you'll never grow old not only in the sense neither of us can, but because you refuse to grow up: you've never gone beyond a child's selfish impetuosity. And for the moment, Natalie is the bright object that has attracted your peripheral vision. Finally, he says more calmly, "So you're using your full name."
"Well, one needs a full name for documents," LaCroix explains. "Since the station pays me, they need a name for my cheques. And I need one for my bank accounts, my mortgage, my bills, my passport and birth certificate and social insurance number. I suppose if I didn't work I wouldn't need a name at all, but I've been LaCroix for so long, I suppose it's second nature. And I like it; the name has a lovely personal irony for me, and it travels well."
"Mortgage? I thought you bought the place outright."
"I did. Then one I've long wanted in Paris became available, but I've decided to pay it off gradually until I sort out when to move there. At the moment, it's sublet to English writers who will pay very dearly for any damage. It's a beautiful house, as you recall."
"That house?" Nick is impressed, in spite of himself.
"Yes. People always assume we like to live in castles. I like living in very large cities." LaCroix smiles with something not quite like reminiscence, but not quite his customary irony or coldness either. "I always have. And I am very much looking forward to kicking the writers out and moving in."
"Well, Janette would probably like that. Why don't you, then?"
"You know why," LaCroix returns, suddenly cold again.
"We can't argue here," Nick says practically. "Maybe eventually I'll want to live in Paris again. But not now. And here's Schanke."
Schanke fiddles with cords and plugs for a few moments, runs the recorder through a couple of tests, then retreats to a corner of the room. No one else wants a bagel, so he unrolls the tops of the paper bag and unlids the coffee cup and gets to work on his night shift breakfast, notebook and pencil ready. Nick opens his own notebook and locates a gold and lacquer pen, a present from Natalie, in a blazer pocket; LaCroix notices with some amusement that Nick draws little sketches of people and objects in the margins of his pages, rather in the style of manuscript illumination, but LaCroix is controlled now, and folds his hands on the table and faces the other mirthlessly. Nick hits the record switch and recites, "Investigation into circumstances surrounding the death of Barbara Jellicoe; interview of Lucien LaCroix, conducted by detectives Nicholas Knight and Donald Schanke, January 22, 8:15 p.m." Then he folds his arms again, and asks directly, "Why didn't you report Dennis Matheson's call after Barbara Jellicoe's death was in the news?"
"I pay very little attention to the news," LaCroix replies smoothly. "I found out about Barbara's death just before I went on the air the night she died, however, on CERK's midnight news report. I'd always somehow felt Barbara was doomed; there was a darkness in her character, or perhaps more precisely, a melancholy not quite in keeping with this era. As for why I didn't report Mr. Matheson's call, well, quite simply because I didn't consider it suspicious."
Nick frowns and glances at Schanke, who gulps his cappuccino and asks, "Why not?"
LaCroix permits Schanke only a brief sideways glance, and keeps his attention on Nick as he adds, "Doing what I do, I should consider the ravings of a distraught jilted lover suspicious?"
"All right, you're not here to speculate," Nick says shortly, then decides to try another approach: "Did Barbara Jellicoe ever talk about her private life with you?"
"No. In a way, she was very much to me what I was to her, though to a lesser degree, of course, and this is not hubris, Nicholas: she did, after all, listen almost every night but only called every few weeks. She had a great range of interests: art, of course, literature, music, history, magic, philosophy. And she was quite happy to talk in the abstract; I assume her personal confessions were made, if at all, to her friends."
Nick scribbles on the notebook, Natalie knows what happened to Barbara but doesn't realize it. He rubs the back of his hand along his jaw to mask the suddenness of this reaction, then begins to sketch some of the icons from Barbara's paintings. "Did you ever meet her?" he asks.
"No," LaCroix replies. "I had no idea until she died of her full name, and to this day I have no idea what she looked like. And of course she had no opportunity to learn anything more of me than a voice and an on-air name, though I sometimes," and he hesitates, smiling to himself and letting his gaze wander over the room, and his eyes are very pale in the florescent light, "I sometimes liked to think she realized things about me no other listener could. She was, after all, dedicated."
One last question: "Did anyone ever call to comment on anything she'd said? Did anyone else call about her?"
"Oh, someone sitting up late grading essays in a university office or some cab-driving philosopher would sometimes call to take issue the next night," LaCroix says contemptuously. "She always called during the last hour, I expect when she'd worked long enough, and she would always ring off telling me to go home, have a drink, and go to bed. And so I did." LaCroix smiles, though one finger is absently twisting the large ring on his right hand. "Otherwise, no one called about her personally except this Dennis Matheson the night before her death, and Natalie Lambert a week later."
Schanke raises an eyebrow and is about to say something but is silenced by a quick shake of Nick's head. Nick switches off the tape recorder. He draws a series of hard short diagonal lines across the bottom of the page, then slams the notebook shut and lets out a long harsh breath.
"So?" says Schanke, reading and not reading his partner's frustration.
"So we're still running in place," says Nick.
"You think Matheson hurried Barbara along a little faster than nature intended?" Schanke wonders, sinking a perfect two-shot with his crumpled paper bag.
"Everyone loved Barbara," Nick murmurs, echoing Natalie. He shrugs, and forces a not-quite-sour smile in LaCroix's direction. "Oh, by the way, that's it: you may go. Thanks for telling us what you could. We'll still have to keep the tapes."
LaCroix rises, ignoring Schanke and permitting Nick only the slightest of courteous nods, then precedes the detectives out of the interview room. Schanke makes a face behind his back. The squad room is busy: a couple of reluctant witnesses to a shooting being consoled by a uniformed policewoman, a vociferous young man in a Megadeth t-shirt being led off in handcuffs by a couple of detectives in undercover drug-dealer grunge, telephones ringing, fax machines spewing out data, everyone cursing the continuing bitter cold. Still muffled in scarf and coat, Natalie is crossing the floor, a manila envelope in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. When she sees LaCroix she freezes and keeps her hands very steady to avoid the obvious moves of dropping or spilling. Her face is lightly flushed from the cold but despite the uncharacteristic dark lipstick, still pale and haggard from prolonged sleeplessness. She starts to say something, then almost laughs, then, though her wideopen eyes never seem to leave LaCroix's, she registers Nick and Schanke and manages to say, quite brightly, "Hey, is this the welcoming committee?"
"If you'd been half an hour earlier," says Schanke, "there were Zuckerman's bagels, fresh from the oven, with cream cheese."
"Mmmm. Well, I'm sure there are some stale croissants in my fridge." She reaches past LaCroix to give Nick the folder, explaining, "That's the final toxicology report on Barbara." While Nick glances through this and Schanke moves off to answer the phone on his desk, she finally addresses LaCroix, simply saying in a low serious voice, "So. I didn't really expect to run into you here."
He brings her free hand up briefly to his lips and she smiles in spite of herself, then relaxes enough to start drinking her coffee as he explains, "I had to tell the good detectives here what I could about Barbara Jellicoe and Dennis Matheson."
"You were doing your civic duty," Nick can't help saying, without looking up from the report.
Natalie glances from one to the other, and the situation strikes her as one of those moments that stretch you past your limits: she is standing in a police station in Toronto in mid-winter in the mid-1990's, a medical examiner capable of reconstructing in DNA analysis a human being from a shred of flesh scraped from under a fingernail, or a single hair found clinging to a blanket, and she is standing here with two vampires, of a combined age pushing three thousand years, and Barbara didn't even get to be forty, didn't get to see her younger child start school. The moment pushes her into an unwanted laugh, which she unsuccessfully stifles as a gasp over the rim of her coffee cup, and they both suddenly look at her. She sets her cup down and briefly covers her mouth with her hands, then manages to say, "Look, I'm sorry, I really truly am."
"Natalie," Nick begins.
"Nick, please, no." She holds up a hand then immediately crushes it back against her mouth to quell another spasm of this ghastly mirth. Shuddering, she adds: "So after all this time here we all are, the three of us. Standing around being good citizens, talking about police work. Not getting anywhere with it, I might add, but then who am I to say. But here we are with all this technology, all this secret knowledge, against one person who knows how to give a morphine injection overdose in one not unmanageably large city, we have all this -- "
She has never raised her voice; from any distance she would simply seem to be speaking very earnestly. But she breaks off suddenly, as if shocked, and her shifting gaze settles on LaCroix, who finishes for her very gently, "All this power."
Natalie nods. She feels drained, defeated, exposed. "It doesn't matter," she murmurs, stuffing her hands in her pockets and staring down at her boots. "I'm taking it personally."
"She was your friend," says Nick.
"I'm sorry," Natalie repeats.
Nick tosses the report alongside Schanke's notes and glances around for Schanke, then finds LaCroix's silent hovering presence too suffocating and says more sharply than intended, "Don't you have something to do?" LaCroix shrugs. "I could think of something." He sighs. "Oh well, as usual, you're very difficult to visit, Nicholas." And he gently strokes an index fingertip along Natalie's jaw, so that she looks up at him. "Give me a call if you can't sleep," he tells her.
*****
En route to talk to an informant about another case, Nick drops in at the Raven. Now, at midnight, the place is crowded to the fire regulations limit, and there is a lineup outside. The music is deafening and the lights eerily low, yet he makes his way deftly through the throbbing mass of dancers to the bar, where Janette is teasing Miklos about something. She is wearing a simple, form-fitting sleeveless short gown, in a fine silk velvet somewhere between black and green, with long satin gloves and lace stockings. Around her neck hangs an emerald pendant on a gold chain, a present from Nick at least a hundred years old; her hair is piled up and frizzed out. She turns her pale blue eyes on the arrival with guarded delight, and allows him a brief kiss on the mouth.
"Would you like a drink, Nicholas?" she offers suggestively.
"Can't; I'm supposed to be working," he replies.
"And you are not?" Janette arches an eyebrow and perches on an available barstool, her own half-empty glass poised between her hands.
"I came to show you something," Nick says mysteriously; smiling, he withdraws from a coat pocket a brown envelope, and from this he removes an old black-and-white photograph, which he shows her. It is of an elegant mid-18th-century house of neoclassical design, near the Close Payen in Paris, and was taken in 1905.
Janette gasps. "Oh, I remember this beautiful house," she says in wondering delight. "The time we went to the gala for that touring opera company: the terrace and the garden in the moonlight, and all the men in full formal wear. And the rooms with their long windows. But why are you showing me this?"
"Because the house has just been bought."
Janette's eyes widen and seem to glisten like silver. "By whom?" she demands.
"You didn't know?" Nick is uncertain whether to be surprised, so he maintains his ironic smile at the shake of her head. Her eyes narrow suspiciously, then resume their wondering glisten.
"LaCroix?" Her voice is nearly a whisper. "But why?"
"Come on, Janette, you know he doesn't want to stay here. North America's like an amusement park to him."
"But he has a life here," Janette muses, sipping her drink. "And I thought when he stopped sleeping in the club like some uncertain guest on a very much extended visit, and bought his condominium, that maybe he was beginning to accept us all living separately. But now this."
"What would you do if he went back to Paris?" Nick asks seriously.
"He won't go back without you." Janette sets aside her empty glass, which Miklos quickly removes to refill at a very subtle nod, and picks up the photograph to study it more closely. "Perhaps he has something in mind and wants a place ready for the three of us."
"I'm not sure this time." Nick is so serious by now he is using the tone only she can understand in this crowded deafeningly noisy place, and in this isolated pocket of communication, he takes her hands in his. "Janette, he wants to bring Natalie across and I almost think she wants to come."
"She is very strong. Forgive me, Nicholas, but she would make a good vampire."
"No, I see your point. She's his nemesis as much as I am, more so because there's no link. If there were, it might even annihilate his connection to us. After all, she'd be young; he could foresee a thousand years of educating her. Or he might leave her to me, feeling his revenge is complete, and just go off to Paris himself. You're not part of this so you might be able to go; after all, you love the house, the city is your home more than any of ours, and after this Toronto stopover, you might open a quite infamous nightclub there."
Janette smiles. "I had considered that for my next reinvention."
And Nick smiles back. "What's your reading of all this?"
Her eyebrows arch in mild surprise. "You are asking my opinion? Oh, well, in a very strange way I believe he loves her. And she loves both of you, so however much she despairs will determine what she does."
"Janette, I will die before I let him bring her across." Nick grips her hands more tightly, then releases them and the charm is broken, the noise of the club comes crashing in, she drops her gaze to her limp hands in her lap and can barely hear him say, "And I'll destroy him if he does."
"You cannot," she whispers. "You know that." Looking up quickly, eyes like flames but voice a quite murmur through scarcely moving lips, she adds, "And what of her?"
Nick bends his head to give Janette the quick kiss they permit themselves, and strokes her cheek: "Je dois partir."
"Je ne peux pas la proteger, Nicholas."
"Je le sais, Janette."
Miklos brings the fresh drink as she watches Nick leave.
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Copyright 1995-2004 by Gisèle Baxter; all rights to original narrative, characters and characterizations reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Last updated 2 August 2003 by G.M. Baxter.