LITMIR.BIZ

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love lingering inside her.

      He knew this. Had seen it, had tracked it for years. Jillian hadn’t yet achieved what she could hope to find, hadn’t had the time to place her mark upon the world. And she had a child. It wasn’t fair that she was the last one to give her life for this too-long, too-bitter war.

      But, of all beings, Steven knew that nothing was fair. Nothing at all. Perhaps that was the definitive awareness that an immortal carried…knowing with utter certainty that all life was unfair, an unending stream of imperfections.

      He should know. He’d traded his entire being, his existence, for the dubious honor of fighting the fallen, others like himself, but those who had eschewed mortal form. He, better than other men, knew how little of life could be considered fair, because fairness was born of impartiality, of balance, and nothing about mortal life was neutral or symmetrical.

      It didn’t serve any purpose to hesitate. The rules of this damnable war had been laid down long ago, and were carved in every fiber of his being, in his very soul. One couldn’t argue destiny, one didn’t dodge fate. Or duty. No matter how little sense it seemed to make, or how much he might be reluctant to act.

      Steven depressed the handle of the guesthouse door, and with unaccustomed violence, wrenched it open, the long-knife held fast in his other hand.

      Like Jillian, he had no choice in his role in this battle. But for the first time in his many years of battle, he found himself pausing, casting about for alternatives.

      He knew he had no choice. No options existed for him.

      And yet he frowned heavily, his heart pounding roughly in his chest. He knew the reasons Jillian had to die; he knew the consequences of this of all battles.

      How was it, then, that even knowing these things, he could feel regret? When had he, an immortal, a warrior, learned remorse?

      Jillian drew a deep breath after switching the cordless telephone to the standby position. Glad that Allie wasn’t in the kitchen or the adjacent dining room, she simply stood beside the counter, staring at the receiver still cradled in her palm.

      “Dark with excessive bright,” she murmured. That had been the phrase she’d used after linking eyes with her gardener…after losing herself in Steven’s gaze. His words, repeated while thinking about his sharp contrasts.

      The phone call had come from Elise, who had looked up the odd quotation as soon as she got home and riffled through her battered copy of Paradise Lost. The quote was from Milton, she’d told Jillian, taken from the epic poem that wove the tale of the creation of earth and the angels’ war over its governance. It was essentially the tale of fallen angels, beings “dark with excessive bright.”

      Insignificant, inconsequential words, a snippet of a poem written eons ago, yet made somehow important by Elise’s agitation over them, her recounting of Allie’s strange comment—or rather Lyle’s—that Steven wasn’t real. Whatever that might mean to Allie.

      How utterly ridiculous, Jillian had thought, but, oddly, she hadn’t voiced that to Elise.

      The phrase had only occurred to her because Steven had said the words a few days earlier. Then, when she was standing there looking at him this afternoon, feeling the effects of that oddly compelling gaze and thinking about her dark, frightening departure into surreal paintings of doorways, she’d thought of them again, felt a connection with them.

      Why didn’t Allie want Steven in the house, even if such an event was wholly unlikely to happen? Or was she asking the wrong question? Should she alter it to “Why didn’t Lyle want Steven in the house?”

      For the first time since she’d hired Steven, she wondered if she might not have made a serious mistake. And for the first time in his two-week tenure on her place, she wondered if there wasn’t more to his being there than his needing a job, than her needing a handyman.

      From the first day he’d come and taken up residence in the small one-bedroom guesthouse flanking the main structure, she’d slept a little more soundly, feeling safe because the somber-eyed man was close enough to respond to an alarm raised in the dark, lonely night.

      Now, tonight, she thought of that unusual connection she’d experienced when she looked into his eyes, of that taut expression on his face while he was loading the plastic bag with leaves, and she worried that Elise was right, that she’d made a colossal error in trusting him so much.

      And, more than her disquiet over allowing Steven such access to their lives, she worried about the wisdom of having admitted Lyle into it.

      “This is bunk,” she muttered, angry with herself, half-angry with Elise for calling her, scaring her with such nonsense.

      What if Allie’s right and Steven’s not a real person? Elise had asked, her voice hushed with possibility, conjecture and, yes, even a tinge of excitement. The white witch at work, apparently forgetting that she was talking about strange things in her best friend’s house, not some bizarre event in the abstract.

      Jillian shook her head. Milton was a writer of fiction, and hard-to-read fiction at that.

      A series of noisy thunks and rattling of shower-curtain loops from down the long, arched hallway flanking the kitchen told her that her daughter was finished with her bath and would soon be ready for the nightly ritual of story and cup of cocoa before bedtime.

      She found herself tensing again as she set the milk to heat. Before Dave’s death, this had been the best time of the day, the three of them curled up on the sofa, Dave’s deep voice bringing a story to life. And even after, it had remained the one sane constant in a world gone awry.

      But ever since Lyle had arrived in their lives—or had it come later than that, when Steven had moved into the guesthouse, bringing with him that unusual sense of recognition?—storytime had become something of a torture. She had to share the sofa with Allie and Lyle, and had to endure Allie’s whispered explanations to the invisible creature—or his to her—and, worst of all, Jillian was all too often asked to blow the imaginary friend a kiss good-night.

      The first few nights hadn’t been so bad. But one night, just a week ago, Allie had told her that Lyle wanted to kiss her back, that he found her very beautiful. What should have been amusing, even sweet, considering it came from Allie, only made her slightly queasy.

      But Allie hadn’t said, “You’re beautiful, Mommy.” She’d worded it differently: “Lyle says he finds you beautiful. Especially when you wear that nightgown.”

      Something in the peculiar wording, and everything about the adultlike nuance, made her exceedingly uncomfortable. She’d taken to wearing her thickest robe after that, never tucking Allie in while wearing the sheer negligees Dave had so loved, had needed. And she had taken to covering up, not because of Allie, but because of Lyle.

      She shook her head and shoved the cordless telephone onto the counter without replacing it in the cradle. Maybe the battery would wear down and she wouldn’t have to listen to any more ridiculous speculations.

      That was exactly what Elise’s suggestions were, she thought. Ridiculous. Foolish. And she was the most ridiculous, foolish person of all, for listening to Elise, thinking fantastic and scary thoughts about an imaginary creature. About a gardener who might be unusual, but was still a man for all that. Allie wasn’t the only one with a wildly vivid imagination.

      She made short work—anger at herself a tremendous spur—of cleaning up the supper dishes, and by the time Allie appeared in her footed pajamas, book in hand, looking like a sleepy-eyed angel, Jillian had her mask of cheer in place. She didn’t even wince when Allie stopped the story to point out a few of the more interesting facets of the context to Lyle.

      She was even able to answer Allie almost truthfully when she suddenly asked if Jillian was afraid of Lyle. “As long as he doesn’t ever hurt you, I guess he’s okay in my book.”

      Allie seemed to accept that, but it made Jillian think. She was frightened of Lyle. Not because he came across as sly—which was how his comments often struck Jillian. Nor was it because

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