By The Sword Part 17

"I do remember." She squeezed his forearm. "Oh, Glenn, I'm making it so hard on you."

He patted her hand. "Not at all, my love."

"But why am I still hungry?"

"Perhaps you didn't eat enough."

Her eating habits had become bizarre. She would be famished after a big meal, and then go most of the following day without eating anything-needing to be talked into sitting down for dinner.

"How about some ice cream? We have chocolate, your favorite."

She shook her head. "I need something more... more..." She frowned, searching for the word.

"Substantial?"

"Yes!" She brightened. "I'll have Miranda fix me some scrambled eggs."

Miranda had been their housekeeper six years ago.

"Miranda's not here, but I'll fix them."

She clapped her hands like a delighted child. "Wonderful! And you'll fix them the way I like them?"

He nodded. "With grated asiago. Of course."

He pulled out a frying pan and began melting a pat of b.u.t.ter. He'd cooked countless meals down the seemingly endless years and had become skilled at it.

He knew if Magda followed her usual pattern, her appet.i.te would be gone by the time the eggs were ready. And then he'd eat them. He'd have to. He'd been hungry too many times, sagging against death's door more than once from starvation, ever to throw away food.

But that was all right. He made excellent scrambled eggs.

12.

What the-?

It had happened again.

Jack sat at his round oak table and stared at the page he'd bookmarked in the Compendium of Srem Compendium of Srem. n.o.body knew the book's age. He'd heard it was from the First Age, but no one could prove that, and the people with the credentials to do some sort of backgrounding on it believed it was a myth. After all, only one copy existed, and Jack had it. He'd been told it was indestructible, that Grand Inquisitor Torquemada had tried everything-fire, sword, ax, and anything else he could think of-but had been unable to destroy it. Finally he'd given up and buried it beneath a monastery. But it hadn't stayed buried.

All very odd, but the oddest thing about the Compendium Compendium was that everyone who opened it found it written in his or her native tongue. was that everyone who opened it found it written in his or her native tongue.

Jack had bookmarked the section on the Seven Infernals the other day and decided tonight would be a good time to check out a weird-looking contraption he'd seen there that looked oddly familiar... displayed in a sideshow, long ago. But now, when he opened to the page, he found himself in another section.

Impossible that someone could have moved the bookmark, because he was the only one in the apartment, the only one for weeks.

He started paging through, looking for the Infernals again, but could find no trace of them. Instead he found pages he'd never seen before. He'd read a lot of the book-understanding little-and had flipped through it a number of times, but now he was finding whole sections he'd never even glimpsed before.

This wasn't the first time. What was this thing? Could it be sentient?

He slapped the book closed and pushed it to the center of the table. d.a.m.n thing was heavy.

He leaned back and tried to let his mind go blank, but an aching need popped Gia into his head. He saw her... he heard her... the sounds she made when they were in bed. She wasn't a wailer, not a screamer, not an oh-G.o.dder... just soft little moans, almost like whimpers, from way back in her throat. He felt her nails raking his back when he was in her, heard the rasp of those nails as they raked the sheets when he was down on her.

He had to go back. He couldn't stay away any longer.

WEDNESDAY.

1.

Usually Gia avoided mention of Emma and rarely visited her at St. Ann's. But every once in a while she felt the need to stand over her daughter's grave and speak a few words to her.

Jack understood that-all too well. What he'd never understood was why she had insisted on this particular cemetery. St. Ann's was in Bayside, way out in the far eastern hinterlands of Queens. Practically in Na.s.sau County. The reasons had been cryptic: Because Emma had communicated during Gia's coma that she wanted a view of the water... and wanted to be here to comfort someone. Who that someone might be, Gia couldn't say, because Emma had never told her.

And now Gia had forgotten the dreams and that she'd ever said those things. The memories were gone but Emma would remain at St. Ann's till whenever.

Other memories... of the burial... crashed around him. The snow-covered gra.s.s, the hard-frozen ground, the cutting wind, the tiny white coffin...

And no Gia. Although she and Vicky were recovering from their comas and injuries at what every doctor and nurse in New York Hospital had called "a miraculous pace," they remained in the trauma unit. Emma needed burial but no way could they venture out of intensive care. Which left all the funeral arrangements to Jack.

Looking back now he recalled little of his meeting with the undertaker, or arranging the burial plot out here in Bayside. He'd been too numb. He vaguely remembered Abe, Julio, Alicia Clayton, Lyle Kenton, and a few others at the graveside. Father Edward Halloran had somehow heard about Emma and showed up, insisting on saying a few words over the grave.

And so whenever Gia wanted to visit, Jack would take her. Because he needed a visit now and again too, and didn't like the idea of her alone in a cemetery.

He'd been planning to call her this morning when the phone rang and there she was, asking if he'd drive her.

Perfect.

She sat on the ground now, running her hand through the new gra.s.s over Emma's grave. Her lips were moving in silence. Jack wondered what she was saying to her unborn child, the daughter she'd known only from within her.

To give her some s.p.a.ce, he wandered off across the gra.s.s with no particular destination. St. Ann's Cemetery was small and old, crowded with headstones dating back a hundred years or more. As he wound among them, reading the inscriptions, he heard a male voice cursing in Spanish. He'd never studied Spanish, but a few years working for a local landscaper had taught him how to curse and swear in the language.

He headed in that direction and found a gardener kicking at the dirt of a bare patch near the high stone wall. When the man realized he had an audience, he stopped and flashed Jack a sheepish, gold-flecked grin.

"Excuse my words, senor senor." He gestured at the headstones. "Especially here among the dead."

Jack shrugged. "I haven't heard any complaints. What were you kicking there?"

"This ground... nothing will grow on it. I mix in the finest topsoil, I seed it, I water it, yet no gra.s.s will grow. I put sod down, it dies. I become very angry."

"I saw that. Ever think of trying some ground cover?"

"I have planted periwinkle, pachysandra, and ivy. They all die. I think the soil is poisoned, so I dig down six inches, bring in new earth. Still the same. Nothing will live here. Not plants, not even ants. Nothing."

Jack stared down at the four-foot oblong patch of bare ground. It looked like normal topsoil. The gra.s.s around it was in beautiful shape. Just this one patch...

He spotted a beetle scurrying through the gra.s.s toward the bald spot. He watched it veer left just before it reached it. The bug walked around to the far side of the patch, then continued on its way.

A chill ran over Jack's skin. What the h.e.l.l was wrong with that patch of ground that even bugs wouldn't cross it? Had something been spilled there? Or more unsettling, was something buried there?

"I've got your solution," Jack said. "Astroturf."

The gardener shook his head. "No. I shall win. This dirt will not beat me."

Jack waved and headed back toward Gia and Emma. "Good luck."

He found Gia waiting for him on a rise.

"Ready?"

She took a deep shuddering breath and nodded. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do I have to come here to be with her? Why isn't she with me? Why did this have to happen?"

"I wish I could tell you, Gia."

And that was true to the extent that Jack found himself unable to speak the words that would answer her question.

He still hadn't found the right time to tell her the truth. Maybe he'd never find the right time to say, Because of me, because of your importance to me, because some cosmic something beyond knowing thought it could better use me if you and Vicky and Emma weren't around. Because of me, because of your importance to me, because some cosmic something beyond knowing thought it could better use me if you and Vicky and Emma weren't around.

As he took her hand and they started back toward the car, he remembered how Gia had said the dream-Emma wanted to be here at St. Ann's "to comfort someone."

He looked back at the gardener raking up the soil of the bare spot.

Could it be...?

Nah.

"I want to come home with you, Gi. Vicky's at school so I was hoping maybe we could..."

"Talk?"

"Yes. Talk. And do other stuff."

"Other stuff?"

"Other stuff."

"I am in need of other stuff, Jack. Especially after being here. I need to lose myself for a little while."

"Me too."

She smiled that smile. "Goody."

2.

Hideo had wanted to search further through the police database last night but the need for sleep and the time zone change had caught up with him. He'd awakened late this morning fully refreshed and ready for the next step.

His target was anyone connected with Hugh Gerrish. First was to search for a list of "known a.s.sociates," but he could find no such list. Perhaps because Gerrish had never been a fugitive. He had served no jail time, so there was no cellmate Hideo could look up.

He went back to the crime itself and found the arrest record. His spirits lifted as he read through it: Gerrish had not been alone on the break and enter. He'd been captured along with a man named Alonzo Cooter.

Hideo searched the database for that name and found the mug shot. A beefy, surly black face stared back at him. Not a cooperative face. The belligerence in his eyes said he was not a man who would frighten easily.

But that was what the yakuza were for.

He called for Kenji, then hit the print b.u.t.ton. While he was waiting, Hideo found Cooter's last known address-he hoped it was good-and printed that screen too. Then he scanned through Kaze Group's properties in the five boroughs. Cooter lived in the South Bronx. Kaze owned a boarded-up building awaiting demolition near Yankee Stadium. Cooter lived less than a mile away.

"Takita-san," Kenji said with a quick bow upon arrival.

Hideo wrote the building's address on one of the printouts, then handed him the sheets.

"Find this man. Bring him to this address. Then call me."

Another quick bow and Kenji was gone.

Hideo nodded. Complications had been encountered and overcome. Soon he would be talking to Hugh Gerrish.

Now... if only he could find the ronin ronin.