But the words rang hollow in his mind. He had known for some time that something was wrong with Poppy. Something was-disturbed-inside her. He'd sensed that the rhythms of her body were slightly off; he could tell she was losing sleep. And the pain-he always knew when the pain was there. He just hadn't realized how serious it was.
Poppy knows, too, he thought. Deep down, she knows that something very bad is going on, or she wouldn't have asked me to find this out. But what does she expect me to do, walk in and tell her she's going to die in a few months?
And am I supposed to stand around and watch it?
His lips pulled back from his teeth slightly. Not a nice smile, more of a savage grimace. He'd seen a lot of death in seventeen years. He knew the stages of dying, knew the difference between the moment breathing stopped and the moment the brain turned off; knew the unmistakable ghostlike pallor of a fresh corpse. The way the eyeballs flattened out about five minutes after expiration. Now, that was a detail most people weren't familiar with. Five minutes after you die, your eyes go flat and filmy gray. And then your body starts to shrink. You actually get smaller.
Poppy was so small already.
He'd always been afraid of hurting her. She looked so fragile, and he could hurt somebody much stronger if he wasn't careful.
That was one reason he kept a certain distance between them.
One reason. Not the main one.
The other was something he couldn't put into words, not even to himself. It brought him right up to the edge of the forbidden.
To face rules that had been ingrained in him since birth.
None of the Night People could fall in love with a human. The sentence for breaking the law was death.
It didn't matter. He knew what he had to do now. Where he had to go.
Cold and precise, James logged off the Net. He stood, picked up his sunglasses, slid them into place. Went out into the merciless June sunlight, slamming his apartment door behind him.
Poppy looked around the hospital room unhappily. There was nothing so awful about it, except that it was too cold , but .. . it was a hospital. That was the truth behind the pretty pink-and-blue curtains and the dosed-circuit TV and the dinner menu decora ted wit h cartoon characters. It was a place you didn't come unless you were Pretty Darn Sick.
Oh, come on, she told hersel f. Ch eer up a little. What happened to the power of Poppytive thinking? Where's Poppyanna when you need her? Where's Mary Poppy-ins?
God, I'm even making myself gag, she thought.
But she found herself smiling faintly, with selfdeprecating humor if nothing else. And the nurses were nice here, and the bed was extremely cool. It had a remote control on the side that bent it into every imaginable position.
Her mother came in while she was playing with it.
"I got hold of Cliff; h e'll be here later. Meanwhile, I think you'd better change so you're ready for the tests."
Poppy looked at the blue-and-white striped seersucker hospital robe and felt a painful spasm that seemed to reach from her stomach to her back. And something in the deepest part of her said Please, not yet. I'll never be ready.
James pulled his Integra into a parking space on Ferry Street near Stoneham. It wasn't a nice part of town. Tourists visiting Los Angeles avoided this area.
The building was sagging and decrepit. Several stores were vacant, with cardboard taped over broken windows. Graffiti covered the peeling paint on the cinder-block walls.
Even the smog seemed to hang thicker here. The air itself seemed yellow and cloying. Like a poisonous miasma, it darkened the brightest day and made everything look unreal and ominous.
James walked around to the back of the building. There, among the freight entrances of the stores in front, was one door unmarked by graffiti. The sign above it had no words. Just a picture of a black flower.
A black iris.
James knocked. The door opened two inches, and a skinny kid in a wrinkled T-shirt peered out with beady eyes.
"It's me, Ulf," James said, resisting the temptation to kick the door in. Werewolves, he thought. Why do they have to be so territorial?
World. I don't want to break any laws. I just want her well."
The slanted blue eyes were searching his face. "Are you sure you haven't broken the laws already?" And when James looked determined not to understand this, she added in a lowered voice, "Are you sure you're not in love with her?"
James made himself meet the probing gaze directly. He spoke softly and dangerously. "Don't say that unless you want a fight."
Gisele looked away. She played with her ring. The candle flame dwindled and died.
"James, I've known you for a long time," she said without looking up. "I don't want to get you in trouble. I believe you when you say you haven't broken any laws--but I think we'd both better forget this conversation. Just walk out now and I'll pretend it never happened."
"And the spell?"
"There's no such thing. And if there was, I wouldn't help you.
Just go."
James went. There was one other possibility that he could think of. He drove to Brentwood, to an area that was as different from the last as a diamond is f rom coal. He parked in a covered carport by a quaint adobe building with a fountain.
Red and purple bougainvillaea climbed up the walls to the Spanish tile on the roof.
Walking through an archway into a courtyard, he came to an office with gold letters on the door. Jasper R. Rasmussen, Ph.D. His father was a psychologist.
Before he could reach for the handle, the door opened and a woman came out. She was like most of his father's clients, forty-something, obviously rich, wearing a designer jogging suit and high-heeled sandals.
She looked a little dazed and dreamy, and there were two small, rapidly healing puncture wounds on her neck.
James went into the office. There was a waiting room, but no receptionist. Strains of Mozart came from the inner office.
James knocked on the door.
"Dad?"
The door opened to reveal a handsome man with dark hair. He was wearing a perfectly tailored gray suit and a shirt with French cuffs. He had an aura of power and purpose.
But not of warmth. He said, "What is it, James?" in the same voice he used for his clients: thoughtful, deliberate, confident.
"Do you have a minute?"
His father glanced at his Rolex. "As a matter of fact, my next patient won't be here for half an hour."
"There's something I need to talk about."