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"No. That's old. She moved to SF about four years ago, when she got
W I T C H L I G H T I79
the job managing that bookshop." Ramsey spoke with decision, just as if
Winter should know what bookshop and why Cassie should be managing
it. "I'll get it for you." He left the kitchen quickly.
Winter pushed her nearly untouched breakfast away from her. Ramsey
was as helpful as if he were anxious for her to be gone, and after what she
suspected had happened this morning she did not blame him. But he
didn't act outraged or puzzled about it, or try to blame someone. As if he expected
it... or as if it had happened before.
"Ramsey?" Winter called, suddenly apprehensive.
"Here it is," Ramsey said, coming back into the kitchen. He set a
three-by-five card on the table in front of her, an address copied out on it
in Ramsey's neat penmanship.
Ancient Mysteries Bookstore, Winter read, and an address on Haight
Street in San Francisco. She felt a faint surge of discomfort; with a name
like that it almost had to be a place like Inquire ~thin: one of those
whole-hearted surges into the irrational. How could Cassie do this to her?
Of the lot of them, Cassie had always been the sensible one, the one with
both feet firmly planted in reality .... A reality, anyway.
"Are you going to go see Cassie?" Ramsey asked.
"If I can." Winter wasn't sure what impulse made her qualify her
promise. "Ramsey, about this morning.., it wasn't you; it was--"
"If you do, will you do something for me?" Ramsey interrupted her as
if he hadn't heard. "I'm---oh, God, I'm no good at this."
He sat down across from her. The harsh illumination of the alcove
light made him look suddenly old, harsh downward lines pulling his face
into a frozen mask of age. "If you're going, you have to understand, I...
When you were asking about Nuclear Lake ..." His voice drifted to a
stop.
"All my life I never took anything seriously I couldn't see or touch.
Used cars; there isn't much more rock-bottom real than that, is there? I
didn't want to be blindsided by things I didn't have any chance of beat-
ing--you know me, Winter; I always liked a fight, but only if it was a
fair one. Up at Nuclear Lake..." His voice trailed off in a sigh. So he DOES
remember/Winter felt a primal flash of triumph.
"I didn't like it, but what we did, what happened there, if it didn't
come from outside--from objective reality--then it came from me, do
I80 MARION Z I M M E R BRADLEY
As she backed out of the garage Winter could see Ramsey watching her
through the living room window, as isolated as a castaway on a desert is-
land. Although she was only yards away, Winter already felt as though
she couldn't go back, as if there were some force pushing the two of them
apart. She willed herself not to care, to look to what came next. There was
no way to go back, after all--there was no "back" to go to.
She turned onto the street and drove away, and by the time Winter
had reached the cross street the house was no longer in sight.
Surrounded by the sights and sounds of weekday-morning Dayton
traffic, Winter brooded. Ramsey had been completely honest with her at
the end. Motivated by fear.., or because he had given up trying to
protect her? Winter's fingers briefly touched the bag on the seat beside
her. It held Cassie's address. Or what Ramsey said was Cassie's address,
anyway.
Now that she was on the road and heading for the interchange that
W I T C H L 1 G H T I8I
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would put her in I-8o, Winter realized that her hasty departure from
Ramsey's house had been motivated as much by panic and guilt as any-
thing else. She'd taken off without a clear plan in mind, and California
was a long way to go by car. There were major air-travel hubs in Chicago
and St. Louis; surely it would be more sensible to drive to either place
and fly out from there?
But a part of Winter disliked the thought of being without a car once
she arrived--unless she rented one--and, searching her emotions further,
she realized she was reluctant to face Cassilda Chandler at all. Had Cassie
changed? She was the only one of us who kept faith, Winter thought with an
odd pang. From Ramsey's hints, Cassie was still deeply involved in...
whatever the five of them had been deeply involved in. Magic. Oc-
cultism. "The dark twin of Science," according to the Thorne Blackburn
biography. Taken up during their college days, as far as Winter could re-
construct, and never quite abandoned.
Not completely.
Not by all of them.
She turned onto one of the six-lane roads that led to the interstate, her
body moving the car smoothly and automatically through the rush-hour
traffic. Could it be Cassie who had sent the magickal child? The idea had a
certain repugnant logic.
"After all, if you can't suspect your friends, who can you suspect?" Grey said
out of memory.
"I wish you were here to tell me what's going on," Winter muttered to
the absent Hunter Greyson.
Somehow she thought that he knew; Grey had always known, or
seemed to know, the answer to everything--at least as much as a college
student could be expected to know. It was hard now to remember how
young they'd all been then. They'd felt like adults, and thought that was
all that mattered, but they'd been kids. And now, all these years later,
how well could she say she still knew any of them? Janelle, entombed in
her sad marriage, Ramsey, complacently accepting his myriad failures--
maybe Cassie had undergone the same sort of dark alchemical transfor-
mation, into...
The interchange for I-8o West loomed ahead in a blaze of red-white-
and-blue shield-shaped signs. Accustomed to making instant decisions,
Winter pulled onto the on ramp and merged smoothly with the heavier
I82 M A R I O N Z I M M E R B R A D L E Y
traffic, buying herself more time to think. She had to go west anyway--
to reach Chicago, if she decided to fly; to reach 1-9o and California if she
didn't. Once she'd settled into the light autohypnosis of long-distance
driving, her mind returned unerringly to her original problem. The arti-
ficial Elemental--the magickal child.
A power created and sent by a magician was stalking her. Beyond rea-
son or sense, here, in the declining years of the twentieth century, her
problem was a magickal assault by a person or persons unknown. Its dan-
ger increased with every day, and she had no idea what to do about it.
She'd been searching for Grey because he was the only magician she
knew. She could not believe he would have returned from nowhere to
harm her; but how could she be certain she'd had no contact with Grey
since college? Could he be carrying out some agenda she'd forgotten?
Winter frowned. She remembered the farmhouse outside Glastonbury,
and before that, the sanatorium at Fall River. She remembered Arkham
Miskatonic King, the day she'd started work there still as bright in her
mind as a new-minted penny....
And before that came the garbled half-memories of college, like
bright fish in murky waters. She hardly remembered Grey at all, but she
could not believe she could ever have done something to kindle that de-
gree of hatred in a sane person. And Grey, whatever else she might have
forgotten about him, had been radiantly sane.
But not, now that Winter came to think about it, the only magician
she knew. If she could believe what Ramsey had said, Cassilda had "kept
up with" the Blackburn Work as well, so Cassie could be as much help to
Winter as Grey could.
Or as much harm. Face it, Winter, while sorcerous assault strains the credibil-
ity, being a victim chosen at random snaps it right in half It has to be someone
who knows you--and who you know.
Not Cassie. Not Grey. With the obstinacy of a child lying alone in the
dark, Winter clung to that belief. They had been her friends. They would
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