The Power of Love (5 page)

“Take advantage of me while you can,” she urged.

Tristan smiled.

“I get points for that,” she said, just touching his lips with the tip of a long nail, but his smile had already disappeared. “You’re really worried.”

“You heard the dream,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious. There’s some connection between Caroline’s death and mine.”

“Tell me about Caroline. How’d she croak?” Lacey asked.

“Shot herself, in the head.”

“And they’re sure it was a suicide?”

“Well,” said Tristan, “the police found only her fingerprints on the gun, and her fingers were still twisted around it. She left no note, but she had torn up photographs of Gregory’s father and Ivy’s mother.”

Lacey sprang off the headboard and began to pace the room in a circle.

“I suppose someone could have set it up to look like a suicide,” Tristan said slowly. “And Ivy was in the neighborhood that night. She could have seen something. Lacey! What if she saw something she shouldn’t have—”

“Did I ever tell you I was in
Perry Mason?
” Lacey interrupted.

“—and what if she didn’t even realize it?” Tristan exclaimed.

“Of course, Raymond Burr is dead now,” Lacey continued.

“I need to check out the address of Gregory’s mother,” Tristan told her, “and the address where Ivy made the delivery that night.”

“As soon as I read the obit, I looked Raymond up,” Lacey said.

“Listen to me, Lacey.”

“I was sure he would be assigned some kind of mission.”

“Lacey, please,” he begged.

“I thought we could pal around together.”

“Lacey!” he shouted.

“I mean, Raymond would make an awesome angel.”

Tristan dropped his head in his hands. He needed time to think about what was going on and how he could keep Ivy safe.

“But he must have whisked right on,” Lacey said.

“Must have,” Tristan mumbled. He could feel his mind growing dim. He needed rest before he could figure things out.

“I can’t tell you how disappointed I was!”

“You just did,” Tristan observed wearily.

“Raymond said he’d never forget the episode I did with him.”

There could be a lot of reasons for that, Tristan thought.

“Raymond always appreciated my talent.”

Ivy was in danger, and he didn’t know how to warn her or whom to warn her against, and Lacey was going on and on about a dead actor.

“So what I am saying is that I can probably help you on this matter,” Lacey said.

Tristan stared at her. “Because you played a supporting role in one episode with another actor who pretended he was a lawyer who somehow ended up solving television crimes?”

“Well, if you’re going to put it that way, don’t expect my help!”

She stalked across the room, then paused theatrically and looked over her shoulder.

Tristan wished she’d keep right on going. The room was washed in the palest of morning light now, and the first birds were up, their flickering song being passed along from one tree to the next He wanted the last bit of time he could have alone with Ivy. He turned toward her, longing to touch her.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“You don’t know what I’m going to do,” Tristan replied.

“Oh, I can guess,” she said to his back. “And you’re too exhausted.”

“Leave me alone, Lacey.”

“I just thought I’d warn you.”

“Leave me alone!”

She did.

As soon as she left he stretched out his hand. Ivy slept quietly beneath it. He wanted so badly to touch her, to feel her warmth, to know her softness just one more time. Gathering all his strength, Tristan focused on the tips of his fingers. He knew he was tired, too tired, but still he concentrated with his last bit of energy. The ends of his fingers stopped shimmering. They were solid now.

Slowly, gently, he ran his fingers down her cheek, feeling the silk of her, the wonder of her. He traced Ivy’s mouth.

If only he could kiss those lips! If only he could hold Ivy, fold all of her in his arms …

Then he began to lose the sense of her.

He reached again, but he was losing touch. “No!” he cried out. It felt like he was dying all over again. The pain of losing her was so intense, so unbearable, that when the dreamless darkness came, he gave himself over to it willingly.

5

“Well, hello, sleepyhead,” said the girl sitting on the mall bench.

Tristan jumped, startled out of deep thought. He had emerged from the darkness about fifteen minutes before and immediately tracked Ivy to her job at ’Tis the Season. For the last few minutes he’d been trying to piece together the fragments of Ivy’s dream and what those pieces meant, but his mind still felt dark and muddled.

Lacey laughed at him. “Know what day it is?”

“Uh, Monday.”

“Brrtt.”
She did her obnoxious imitation of a game-show buzzer, then gestured to the seat next to her.

Tristan sat down. “It’s Monday,” he insisted. “When I came into the mall, I checked a newspaper, just like you told me to do.”

“Maybe you should have checked the
latest
one,” Lacey observed. “It’s Tuesday, and nearly one o’clock. Ivy should be taking her break soon.”

He looked across the mall toward the shop. Ivy was busy with two customers, a bald old man trying on a Superman cape and a grandmotherly type holding a pink basket and wearing bunny ears. He knew that ’Tis the Season sold costumes and holiday items—most of which were out of season. But the recent darkness, the two customers in their odd outfits, and the presence of a very large woman carrying a bagel and coffee who had just sat down on Tristan made it all very confusing.

Lacey patted his arm. “I told you that you were too tired. I warned you.”

“Move over,” he grunted. He couldn’t feel the woman’s weight, but it seemed a little weird having her wide, striped dress flowing over him.

Lacey slid down a little and said, “I have something to tell you. While you were in the darkness, I’ve been busy.”

“I already know.”

The Monday paper had caught his attention because of an article on people gathering to pray in Times Square after an image of Barbra Streisand, projected on an electronic billboard, grew a chubby, pink angel body and flitted around.

“Does this have anything to do with the traffic jams on Forty-second Street?” he asked.

She dismissed the event with a wave of her hand.

“I read something about Streisand considering a lawsuit, and how the New York cabbies—”

“Barbra should never have said I honked like a goose. Not that I couldn’t have used a few more voice lessons—”

“Lacey, how are you ever going to complete your mission?”

“My mission? Today I’m helping you with yours,” she said, then sprang up from the bench.

Tristan shook his head and followed her.

“I went to the cemetery Sunday to pay a visit to Gregory’s mother,” Lacey said as they walked along with the shoppers. “While I was there, somebody came by, a tall, thin guy, dark-haired. About forty, I think. He left Caroline some flowers.”

“He’s been there before,” Tristan said. “I saw him the day we were in the chapel.” He remembered watching the visitor from behind, mistaking him for Gregory until he turned around. He could still see the man’s face, full of anguish.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

They were heading away from ’Tis the Season. Tristan looked back longingly at Ivy, but Lacey marched on.

“We should find out. He might be able to help us.”

“Help us what?” Tristan asked.

“Figure out what happened the night Caroline died.”

They stopped by the fountain to watch cascades of water fall in pink and blue drops. One day, when nobody was looking, Tristan had made a wish here, a wish that Ivy would be his.

“I looked up Caroline’s address in the phone book,” Lacey went on. “Five twenty-eight Willow. Her date of death was written on her tombstone. I came here this morning to check out the shop records for that day.” She paused and looked at Tristan expectantly.

When he didn’t say anything, she said, “What an angel you are, Lacey, helping me out like this.”

“What did you find out?” he asked, ignoring her sarcasm.

“For one thing, that Lillian and her sister haven’t a clue about how to keep business books. But after a lot of hunting and squinting I did find it: a delivery on May twenty-eighth to a Mrs. Abromaitis on Willow Street—no house number given. I looked it up in the phone book. Guess what? Five thirty Willow.”

“Right next door,” Tristan said, his voice a whisper, his mind prickling with fear. “I knew it. Ivy saw something.”

“Looks that way,” Lacey agreed. She caught a coin that a woman had tossed toward the fountain and flipped it back at her. The woman stared down at it, then stuck the unlucky penny in a pot of ferns.

“Ivy saw something at Caroline’s,” Tristan said, “and it wasn’t a suicide.”

“We can’t assume that,” Lacey replied. “Caroline still could have killed herself, and someone could have been there afterward, taking something or hiding something. I mean, there are a lot of things Ivy could have seen—”

“That she shouldn’t have,” Tristan Finished Lacey’s sentence. “I have to reach her, Lacey!”

“I thought we should check out the house today.”

“I have to warn her now!”

“I remember how we did a search on
Perry Mason,
” Lacey said. She started pulling Tristan toward the mall exit, but he was intent on heading back to ’Tis the Season, and he was stronger. “Tristan, listen to me! There’s nothing you can do to protect Ivy. You and I weren’t given that kind of power. The best you can do is combine the powers you do have with someone else and make that person stronger. But you yourself can’t stop anyone who wants to harm her.”

Tristan stood still. He had never feared for his own life the way he now feared for Ivy’s.

“As long as she’s in a crowd, she’s safe,” Lacey added. “So let’s check out the house and—”

“As soon as she gets in her car tonight, she’ll be alone,” Tristan pointed out. “As soon as she goes for a walk, as soon as she goes up to her music room, she’ll be in danger.”

“There are other people at home with her,” Lacey pointed out. “She’s probably safe there. So let’s find out who she has to watch out for and then—”

But Lacey was left to talk to herself. Beth and Suzanne had just entered the mall. Spotting them, Tristan turned quickly and began to walk with them. He figured they were meeting Ivy for lunch. This time he would get through.

Ivy was standing by the shop entrance, and for a moment Tristan forgot she was seeing only the girls. When he saw the look of welcome on her face, he hurried toward her, only to find she was now looking past him at Suzanne and Beth. It never got easier—the pain of being close to her, but far away, never seemed to lessen.

“Now, take your time over lunch,” Lillian was saying to the girls. “It’s a slow day, so do a little shopping. Be sure to take a peek in that new gift shop. I’ll bet
they
don’t have glow-in-the-dark wind chimes.”

“Not in the shape of leprechauns and fairies,” Beth said. Whenever she came to the shop, she got a look of total wonder on her face. Suzanne had to reach back and pull her out the door.

Tristan followed the girls through the mall. They stopped at one store window after another, and he began to grow impatient. He wanted Beth to sit down right away and start scribbling in her notebook. He thought they’d never get out of the Beautiful You shop, with all those bottles and tubes and little pots of color.

He began to pace from one side of the store to the other and ran head-on into Lacey. He hadn’t realized that she had come along.

“Chill out, Tristan,” Lacey said. “Ivy’s safe for now, unless someone runs her through with a nail file.”

Then she wandered off to a corner, as mesmerized as the others by the hundreds of colors—which all looked pretty much like red and pink to him. Tristan wondered whether, if he ever made it to the next realm, some mysteries about girls would be explained.

Suzanne, now wearing stripes of tester lipstick all the way up her arm, was talking about a wedding in Philadelphia that she was going to that weekend.

“I wish you were coming with us, Ivy,” she said. “I showed my cousin your picture. He’s definitely interested, and he’s so perfect for you.”

Terrific, thought Tristan.

“So you decided to go to the lake after all?” Beth asked. She was trying on a shower cap that looked like a silver mushroom.

“The lake!” Suzanne said, surprised. “She’s staying home, and you’re staying with her, Beth.”

Beth frowned. “Suzanne, you know I can’t miss my family reunion. I thought she was going to Philly with you.”

Ivy had turned away from both of them.

“Ivy!” Suzanne commanded.

“What?” She started sorting through a bin of barrettes and didn’t look up.

“What are you doing this weekend?”

“Staying home.”

Suzanne raised her perfectly shaped black eyebrows. “Your mother’s letting you stay alone?”

“She thinks that you and Beth will be with me. And I’m counting on you two to cover for me,” Ivy added.

Lacey glanced over at Tristan.

“I don’t know what the big deal is,” Ivy went on. “I’d like to have the house to myself for a change. I’ll have plenty of time to practice for the festival, and Ella will keep me company.”

“But Ella can’t protect you,” Tristan protested.

“I just don’t like the idea of you moping around all weekend by yourself,” Suzanne said.

“That house is too big, too lonely,” Beth added. “Listen to them, Ivy,” Tristan urged.

“I told you both, I won’t go to Juniper Lake! I can’t!”

“This is some kind of Tristan thing, isn’t it?” Suzanne said.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ivy replied.

It was. Tristan remembered the plans they had made the night he died. Ivy had told him how she was going to float in the sunlight in the deepest part of Juniper Lake. “I’ll swim in the moonlight, too.”

“The moonlight?” he’d said. “You’d swim in the dark?”

“With you I would,”

Lacey touched Tristan on the arm. “You’ve got to get through to her this time.”

He nodded.

They followed the girls out of the store. Tristan was tempted to slip inside Beth’s mind right then, to direct her toward a table where she could take out her writing pad, but he didn’t want to give her too many instructions. She might begin to resist.

Beth stopped suddenly in front of Electronic Wizard, and Tristan followed her eyes to a display of computers inside.

“Look at her. Look at her!” Suzanne said, nudging Ivy. “You’d think Beth was checking out guys.”

“There’s the laptop I want,” Beth said.

Then Lacey came up quickly behind her. Tristan saw that the tips of her fingers had stopped shimmering. She gave a swift push. Beth stumbled through the door and looked back in surprise at Suzanne and Ivy. They followed Beth inside, with Tristan and Lacey right behind them.

“Can I help you?” asked a salesman.

“Uh, I’m just looking,” Beth said, blushing. “Can I try out your display models?”

He flicked his hand in their direction and walked away.

“You’re on, Tristan,” Lacey said.

It didn’t take Beth long to find the word-processing program. Tristan had to struggle to keep up with her, to think what her next thought might be, which was the way Lacey had taught him to slip into the minds of others.

When a writer looked at an empty computer screen, what did she see? Tristan wondered. A movie screen ready to be lit with faces? A night sky with one small star blinking at the top, a universe ready to be written on? Endless possibilities. Love’s endless twists and turns—and all love’s impossibilities.

Beth started typing:

Impossibilities

What did she see when she looked out every night at the lonely black screen of sky? Possibilities. Love’s endless twists and turns, and, oh, bitter heart, all love’s impossibilities.

Phew! Tristan thought.

“Phew!” Beth typed, then squinted at the screen.

“Stay with her, Tristan,” Lacey said. “Keep your focus.”

Back up. Delete word. Oh, bitter heart, Tristan prompted Beth.

“Oh, bitter heart, lonely heart,” Beth typed, then paused.

They were both stuck, then Tristan saw the connection: You should not stay home alone.

“You should not stay home alone,” Beth typed.

It’s not safe alone, he thought.

“It’s not safe alone,” she typed.

Then, before he could send her a message about anything else, she wrote on: “But is my heart safe alone
with him?”

No, he thought.

“Yes,” Beth replied.

No!

“Yes!”

No!

“Yes!” Beth frowned.

Tristan sighed. Of course, she wanted the romance to work out and have the girl who was gazing at the night sky not be lonely anymore. But Tristan wanted to issue a warning. If Ivy was alone with the wrong guy …

“What’s wrong?” asked Ivy.

“I’ve got that funny feeling again,” Beth said. “It’s really strange, like there’s someone inside my head, saying things.”

“Oh, you writers.” Suzanne snorted.

Ivy bent down to look at the screen. “‘No! Yes! No! Yes!’” she read, then laughed a little sadly. “It sounds like me when I first met Tristan.”

“It’s Tristan,” Beth typed quickly.

Ivy stopped smiling.