"So what do we do?" I asked, pushing the evil book away numbly.

"I don't know." Adrian said.

"I wish it really was a demon. We know how to deal with demons. How do you fight an angry spirit? Is it sentient? Where did it go when Malcom died?" I let my questions spill out of me.

"I believe it's sentient. I think it's obvious where it went. Into the house itself. The truth is, I've never encountered anything like this before..."

"We have to tell them, don't we?"

"I think we can wait on that."

"Why?"

"They may not believe us."

"So what do we do?"

"I have to think about it. Just relax for now."

He picked up the book.

"I'm going to show this to Patrick."

"You know he doesn't believe in that stuff."

"Oh he does. He's terrified of it. So he denies it."

"I'm terrified of it too."

He looked at me, sighed, then bent to kiss the top of my head.

"I know."

He left me alone with my thoughts. I glanced around the room fearfully as if simply thinking of the dead gypsy man would summon him. So this was the darkness that wove in and out of the innocent lives of the Foxworths who had nothing to do with the incarceration and death of a 16th century gypsy king. I wondered how a soul could do that. Perhaps his rage was so great that it consumed his soul and manifested into a dark curse. A curse that thought and plotted and took decisive slashes at this family who'd so wronged him. It was odd that Malcom never sensed the presence in him, but then, maybe he had. Maybe he thought if he spoke of it, he would be declared insane. In it's twisted ironic way, the curse took the very religious beliefs that were his downfall and amplified them, making them the reason for the loss of many innocent lives. And then once in a while, it stretched forth it's hand and took someone by force. Like Catherine's father. Like Mal. It tried to take Joel, but failed somehow. Perhaps it had bigger plans for him. I shivered for it had suddenly grown cold. I pulled on my sweatshirt from Princeton. Lit a ciggarette.

In the evening the five of us trapped in this madhouse sat down to dinner, (roast beef) cooked by Joel, who wasn't a bad cook at all.

"Is that your Princeton sweatshirt?"

Bart glared at me accusingly.

"No, I bought it off an Indian man selling them from a cart. Of course it's mine!" I said, smiling.

Patrick and Adrian laughed.

"Oh. I'm starting my third semester at Harvard Law this fall." Bart said proudly. "Just like my father."

"Fascinating."

He huffed, angry now.

"You know, sarcasm is very immature."

"Or maybe you just don't have a sense of humor."

He huffed again. As I looked at him, I realized that the last thing any of us needed in this house was more anmity. I said,

"I'm sorry. Have you given any thought to what kind of law you want to practice?"

He looked at me suspiciously, like he wasn't sure I was sincere.

"Not really.." he said slowly, cautiously, like he was waiting for some invisible axe to fly at his head.

"I bet you'd make a great prosecuter." Patrick spoke up. I looked at him, worried that he was taking a swipe at Bart, but he looked calm, benevolent, even. Just as Bart was about to answer, Joel said,

"Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked."

Barts mouth closed and he turned red, ashamed. I stared at Joel who hadn't said a single word til then. The first time he opens his mouth for whole meal since he'd prayed over his food, and he says that? I glanced at Adrian and Patrick; Patrick had turned back to his food immeadiately, unruffled as always, but Adrian stared at Joel with what appeared to be pity. Just what this family needs; another pious old man. As I stared at Joel, I wondered if knowing that the devoutness of himself and generations before him was their undoing would change him at all. He raised his watery blue eyes from his plate and looked at me with something resembling revulsion. I have to say, at that moment I became filled with inexplicable distress. I stood up abruptly and left from the table.

That night, spring rain lashed the side of the house, gushing down in a torrent. I laid myself down uneasily, wishing I could lock the door, too afraid to open my little box, lest I become even more paranoid. Eventually the white noise of the steady drum of rain drops made my eyes heavy, and I drifted to sleep.

It felt like I'd been asleep for five minutes when I started awake. Someone was standing beside my bed!

"It's me! It's me!"

Adrian.

"Will you stop doing that?! You're going to give me a coronary!"

"I'm sorry, I'll go."

"No, don't. I'm sorry. It's this fuckin' house."

I looked at the clock. 1:30. The rain had stopped.

"I just...didn't want to sleep alone."

I looked at him. A sliver of light from the window fell across his face. His eyes were shining, brimming with emotion. He wore a tee shirt and boxers. His long legs stood bathed in a bar of light. I opened the covers to him.

He got into my bed. We lay facing each other a moment or two, then he tipped his head and brushed his lips on mine. I kissed him again, and soon we were deeply embracing, our breath becoming heavy. This wasn't the first time either.


The first time Adrian and I had made love, was a few weeks after Eric left. I was parked on Adrian's couch, not wanting to go home and purge my apartment of everything that reminded me of Eric. I think that perhaps in some deep crevice of my mind I was still hoping that Eric would come back one day, because he must have missed me as much as I missed him. So I languished in Adrian's apartment and waited for him to come home as I'd once waited for Eric. Even though we'd kissed, Adrian had never pressured me, knowing that I couldn't complicate myself further with a rebound. Instead he did little things. Little touches, that one might think wouldn't matter much. Brushing a strand of hair from my face. A hand on the small of my back as I walked through the door of the diner we frequented. His arm grazing mine ever so gently. A leg pushed up against mine under the table. In the car, he'd tuned in to my favorite radio station and left it there. All those little things were what saw me through that initial period when I'd grieved the loss of my love.

One clear, cold, and quiet winter's night, I was overwhelmed with dysphoria and emptiness; missing the feeling of a body next to mine. Adrian's cat lay sprawled on the edge of the couch and I rose as gently as possible so as not to disturb him.

I had a moments trepidation outside of Adrians door. I wasn't entirely sure of what I had wanted at that instant. I took a deep breath, and I opened the door.

Adrian was lying in bed, his arms behind his head, staring up at the ceiling as if lost in a great reverie. His bedside lamp was on, casting a soft orange glow over the room. He shifted his head toward me upon my entry, and said,

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing...well, I don't know. I guess...I just don't want to sleep alone."

He turned his head back toward the ceiling, and swallowed; I could hear the dry click in his throat. He reached over, in that slow way of his, and switched off the light. I wasn't sure what I should do at all, when he said,

"C'mere."

He said it so softly. If the deep winter quiet had not lain over the world so, I might not have heard him. Something in his voice touched me so completely that my quivering heart stilled. I crawled in beside him and to my surprise his arms came up and wrapped themselves around me seamlessly. I had not intended it, but the heady scent of his warm breath so close to my face drove me to kiss him. He did not startle, but glided into the kiss as though he'd planned it all along. Soon our bodies grew hot, though winters chill was seeping in from outside. It didn't surprise me that Adrian's hands moved sleekly into the gaps of my clothes to find my secret places. Every move he made was fluid. Always.

I wish I could say I had as much finesse as he. I won't say I didn't have any awkward moments, but I certainly didn't notice them in the same way as I had with others. I slid my hand down his stomach and into his pajama bottoms and he let out his breath a little harder than before, and bent his neck to kiss my chest. Smoothly, so smoothly he slid out of his clothes, and pulled mine off with a flourish, as though he were revealing something magnificent. I lay in front of him on my back, staring up at his body; bright in the darkness, whiter than snow. He gazed down at me, taking in every curve, every slope. He traced his fingers over my tattoos, twin red imperial dragons, twisting symetrically from my stomach, curling around my breasts and facing each other on my breastbone. He fell upon me slowly and took me with gentle passion, as though every movement was absolutely sacred. He pumped himself in me steadily, stimulating my clitoris with his finger. With Eric, it had been frenzied at best, and towards the end we were simply going through the motions sexually. But Adrian treated my body like a well oiled machine, pressing all my buttons, while pulling my handles and pumping my pistons. Soon I felt the pressure building, and he felt it too; he was pumping a little faster. Then it happened, and my body responded to the stimulation with astonishing vehemence. My hips pushed off the sheets and I let out a halting cry; at the same time, Adrian's head fell forward and he gasped and growled like some sort of animal. It was the first true orgasm of my life.

Afterward we sat next to each other in utter silence, yet it was not uncomfortable. He reached over and took the cigarette from my hand; took a deep drag. I had a thought before I fell asleep: That it was the first time I'd made love. There was sex, which was perfunctionary, driven by instinct. And then there was love making. It had been like a performace, a perfect dance of two bodies completely in sync.

That night I dreamed I was sitting naked in the most extraordinary garden. Lotus blossoms bloomed from every direction and colorful birds were in every tree. Golden afternoon sunshine poured into a clear pond where koi swam lazily. A golden tiger lay across the pond in a patch of sun. The tigers' greenish yellow eyes looked at me penetratingly and it said without words, where do you belong? I could hear a bulbul tarang strumming all around me, filling me with the most peaceful resonance I'd ever experienced. No thoughts came into my head, it was blissfully empty, completely drained.

In the weeks that followed, Adrian and I made love with no regularity. Sometimes we did, and sometimes things were the way they'd always been. I believe at that point in time I was falling in love with Adrian and still falling out of love with Eric. It was a peculiar time, as I reflected back on my ex fiance, realizing everything I'd done wrong; at the same time, realizing how remarkably different it was with Adrian. Not only were the details of our relationship different, but the way I felt about our relationship was different.

You see, with Eric, I'd always been a little on edge. I considered him perfect physically, and really, he was the sort of man I was most attracted to at the time. Long hair, tattoos, rediculously tall, broad chested, sculpted features. He looked like a Viking warrior. I thought every girl who ever looked at him was attracted to him and there were many who were. His female friends all in some way or another desired him. They demanded his attention and I think he liked being admired, who doesn't? But I'd put him on a pedestal of perfection, and if I saw perfection in him, it stood to reason that every other woman in his life saw what I did. So whenever he'd see them, at parties or whatnot gatherings, I'd hang back, sullen, silent and almost hating him for not coming after me. For not keeping me at his side while they fawned over him. Guys would come up to me at these gatherings, but when I looked at them, they just appeared mediocre, and Eric didn't seem to feel as strongly about my male friends as I felt about his female harem. When he'd proposed to me, I'd felt happy, believing then, that all his little friends would leave him alone since he was claimed. But they didn't. In fact, they became more demanding than ever before! Many a night I went to bed sobbing, alone, worrying about him leaving because of my jealousy. He began to comment on the attractivness of women on TV, and then in public. I tried to fight back, to say that this or that man was just as attractive. I tried to be aloof, but inside I was screaming, wanting him to see only me as I saw only him. Toward the end, I threatened suicide sometimes. I allowed all my hopes and dreams to be wrapped up in a man who was still just a boy.

But during those weeks with Adrian, that insessant jealousy, the constant worries about his feelings towards me, were non existant. And I knew why.

There were no promises. I wasn't ready for a relationship; he didn't refer to me as his girlfriend, I didn't refer to him as my boyfriend. I wondered about having him in that capacity, but only in an offhand way. I didn't put any kind of label for the future on his head. He was just as attractive as Eric had been, almost seven inches shorter, but still incredibly handsome, even more so, in fact. Yet when girls stared at him I felt only a twinge of what I'd felt before. Before, it felt like a giant eagle had swooped down to claw at my head, but now it was like a moth bouncing against my arm. I think during those first few weeks, I found myself surprised that I had in fact survived. I used to think that if Eric ever dumped me, I'd jump in my car and just travel the country like those hippies in the sixties, daring some hitchiking killer to slaughter me. Then Eric would be sorry. But when it actually happened, I just took it. My brain had somehow formed a protective coccoon around my pain, locking it away to drain out slowly, while Adrian made me fall for him a little bit day by day. I still longed for Eric, until one day damned if I didn't see him on the street with his arm wrapped around a homely girl with a bulging pregnant belly. One of his "friends". And I laughed to see it.

There were no promises for Adrian to break, and after a time, I knew that Adrian would never break one should he make it. I came to understand he didn't toss about promises lightly, and as I had just painfully learned, for good reason.

So Adrian in his slow persistant way, had hurried along the process to heal my wounds. I still had a ways to go, for sometimes Eric crept into my thoughts and tormented me there. But the road was shorter now, and whether Adrian lay at the end of it I couldn't say. And for the first time since my first kiss in seventh grade, that was just fine.

Adrian lay beside me for several hours asleep. I gently roused him just before dawn so he could slip back to his room. I didn't worry about him being seen or heard. He was naturally stealthy, like a tiger in the trees. Just as beautiful.

I stood next to the window, watching him pull his clothes on, while I puffed on a cigarette.

"You know you're gonna have to tell Patrick sometime." he said in an offhand manner, as if Patrick were an afterthought.

"That woud imply that there is something to tell of."

He let out a single ironic laugh. Then he turned a wily golden hazel eye on me; very rare for him to be mischivous.

"Maybe there is."

I smiled at him.

He came over to me. I flicked my ciggarette out the window and put my arms around him. He studied my face as he often did, and I still didn't know what he saw that made his eyes glow, as if he were staring into a brilliant red summer sunset. He sighed deeply, and buried his face into my neck, groaning,

"You're killing me."

"What do you mean?" I whispered into ear.

"Sometimes I feel like a room is dripping with beauty when you're in it. Not the classic colorful kind either, like a green garden of roses. I mean like a black and white photograph, or the bare trees in winter at sunset. Simple, y'know, like a single orchid in a stark white room. It just kills me."

He said it dispassionately, like he said everything, as if he were talking about the weather. But his touches, his eyes all told me he was so deeply sincere, and my eyes stung for a moment. I collected myself.

He kissed my cheek and glided on long steps out of my room, not closing the door all the way. I stood a moment longer looking out of the windows at the quiet night, breathing in the scent of fresh rain, then I moved across the room to push the door closed. As I went, it swung open gently. I froze, panic gripping my heart. The ghosts, the ghosts, they were coming in!

But a gnarled, sinewy hand reached over the threshold, and Joel Foxworth stepped into the room. He closed the door behind him soft as a whisper and stared around, when his eye fell upon me, standing in my longest tee shirt.

"Mr. Foxworth-!" I started, but his eyes flared up like a flame as he took in my lack of clothes.

"Whore!" he spat. "I knew you'd be a whore, just like her."

"Mr. Foxworth, I'm sorry-" I began, fearing for our jobs, not even catching his implication.

"-Yes, if you're not the sorriest harlot this side of the atlantic!" He was so angry he was spitting. "But I suppose I should expect nothing less of the sin of my flesh! All the SORRY women in my bloodline, whores, harlots every last one!"

"What the hell are you talking about?!" I nearly shouted. I was horrified he'd caught me sleeping with Adrian, but more than that, his raving about sins of his flesh took me somewhere dark, and everything ceased to be real at that moment. It was a nightmare and I was suddenly drowning, drowning in it!

He strode the distance between us so quickly it shocked me, and to my face he delivered a hard stinging slap. Too hard for a man of his advancing years, it was almost superhuman. I tripped on my heel and fell to the floor.

"Fool!" He delcared, spit flying. "Jeanette! The whore of The Papillon Fille!"

My mind reeled. Jeanette. My grandmother's name. The Papillon Fille, a juke joint she used to sing at when she was young and had a glorious voice, one she only used for church now. She'd quit to raise my mother.

"What?" I said shakily, holding my hand to my face. I was in a thick fog from that slap.

"That's right, your grandmother was nothing but a stinking black whore, sent from hell to soil every mans' good name. Just like you." he said, rasping in and out.

There wasn't a whole lot I understood at that time, but when he called my grandmother a whore, something awakened inside of me. Some unknown power that had gigantic wings that began to beat and teeth that shone bone white. Red hot fire licked my insides and smoke streamed from my mouth and I turned around slowly from my position on the floor to stare at him. As I did, a smile cracked my face. Oh it did give me satisfaction to see him blanch.

"My grandmother was not a whore. I know you took it from her. I know you heard her voice as you played the piano that night and you wanted her, and you weren't enough of a man for her to consider, and that pissed you off."

I knew no such thing of course, but it had the effect this fledgeling beast in my belly demanded. His eyes grew wild and dangerous as his lips folded and unfolded upon themselves; apparently he couldn't find words terrible enough for me.

I let out a humorless laugh.

"Your silence says it all, Grandfather. So at last I've met you. Why couldn't you just stay dead in the alps?"

He turned and left, shuffling out more slowly than he would have normally, as if he was weakened physically by the encounter that he'd initiated.