§ § § -- January 18, 1992
Leslie was gone for so long that Roarke, growing very worried, finally went in search of her, and found her sitting on a rock at the base of Fantasy Falls, huddled into herself. She sat with her knees drawn partway up, her elbows resting against them, her head in her hands as if it pained her. She didn't move even though she heard his footsteps approaching her. "Leslie, are you all right?" he asked gently.
"No," she mumbled. "I have the worst headache of my life, and I'm afraid if I try to go to sleep tonight, he'll be back, invading my dreams again."
Roarke settled onto the rock beside her and flattened one hand on her back, rubbing gently. "I realize your feelings about your father are very strong…" he began.
At that, Leslie's head came up sharply and she stared at him. "Michael Hamilton is not my father," she stated stonily. "I thought we established that already."
Roarke's own gaze chilled suddenly and he said, "Indeed? Perhaps you had better explain that to him."
Apprehension crept into her eyes and she asked, "What did he say to you?"
"Ask him yourself," Roarke suggested quietly and lifted his hand from her back, rising in one smooth, swift motion. "Come along, Leslie. You can't stay out here all night." With that, he started away down the path; she stared after him for a moment before following at some distance, a cold fear beginning to gnaw at her. Was he distancing himself from her? And if so, why?
At the main house Mariki served dinner, dividing her worried glances between Roarke, who maintained a cool silence, and Leslie, who looked frightened. Neither of them said anything, so she took her cue from them; but there was no doubt she wanted to ask a lot of questions. When she had finished dispensing the dishes from her cart, she sighed heavily and wheeled it back to the kitchen.
A wintry breeze curled around the veranda corner at that point and they both looked up; Roarke seemed resigned, Leslie startled. Quite out of nowhere, Michael Hamilton popped into view beside the table and surveyed what was on it. "Food," he said wistfully. "Boy, that's one thing I miss, being dead."
Quite deliberately, Leslie lifted a chunk of lamb chop and made a production of savoring it, staring tauntingly at him all the while. Roarke watched her in disapproval but said nothing; Hamilton rolled his eyes. "Quit being juvenile, Leslie, and act your age," he said, disgusted.
She shot him an insolent look, taking a cue from the way her sister Kelly had always treated him. "You don't have any right to tell me what to do," she informed him.
"Says who? I'm your father," Hamilton reminded her heatedly.
"No, Mr. Roarke is my father," Leslie retorted, "in almost every sense of the word. He adopted me, he raised me, he nurtured and provided for me—we may not be related by blood, but he's far more of a father to me than you ever bothered to be. So don't go trying to convince me you have any significance in my life. Your only contribution to my existence was to get Mom pregnant with me. After that you absolved all responsibility, and in so doing, you lost any right to call yourself my father. My father is, and always will be, Mr. Roarke. So you may as well get that straight right now."
Roarke, surprised and obviously moved, turned his gaze to Hamilton, who looked astonished. "Perhaps that addresses the issue you brought up to me earlier," he said.
Hamilton peered at Leslie with a unwilling respect in his eyes. "I guess so, mostly," he said at some length. Leslie flicked her surprised gaze back and forth between them.
"What're you talking about?" she asked.
Roarke only shook his head. "That isn't important now," he said and smiled at her, watching immense relief fill her eyes before she returned the smile threefold. Hamilton observed their interaction with sudden apprehension and doubt, then faded out of view without another word. Roarke looked around in time to see the last trace of his transparent form vanish. "No," he said, "the important thing is that you consider what lies at stake here. He believes that you owe him a certain duty, as a child to a father, to give him release; but there may be some question about precisely what you do owe him. That's probably why he must beg for your assistance in the matter."
Leslie nodded slowly, considering. "I'd been thinking about something at the falls," she said after a moment. "I was trying to understand the difference between limbo and hell. I always heard that being in limbo was hard on souls…well, good souls at least. I remember at least one fantasy where you helped a man who was in limbo. But there was no question about his deserving release to something better. In Michael Hamilton's case, the release is supposedly to something worse. Yet, he keeps talking about how awful it is to wander this intermediate plane…so I thought maybe you could help me understand, Mr. Roarke. Which is worse—being in limbo or being doomed to the netherworld?"
"Are you quite sure you want that question answered?" asked an entirely new voice, and they both turned sharply to see a familiar figure in a black suit with white tie standing nearby. His attire looked like a photographic negative of Roarke's; he was a slim man with sharp eyes and spare features. "Both limbo and hell have their bad qualities, young lady," he continued in a distinctly British lilt. "How else can you explain why so many souls in limbo want to get out of it?"
Roarke and Leslie regarded Mephistopheles warily. "I suppose we should have known you'd get yourself involved in this at some point," Leslie remarked.
"But of course, my dear child," Mephistopheles said in surprise, peering at Roarke. "Don't tell me, Roarke—you didn't explain things to her?"
"Well, if you're so anxious that she know, Mephistopheles," Roarke said mildly, settling comfortably back in his chair, "then perhaps you should have the honor of filling her in. Besides, you are undoubtedly far more involved in Michael Hamilton's case than I. Until he appeared here seeking her help, I had no more idea of his fate than she did."
"You have a point," Mephistopheles observed. "Very well, then. To put it bluntly, Leslie, Michael Hamilton has been trapped in his current existence for all these years because of the love your mother had for him. In spite of his heinous acts…" His voice trailed off and a smile spread across his face. "Ah, those acts. Very inventive for a mere mortal, I would say, especially in light of his reasons for committing them. There was a particular cruelty about them that truly impresses me."
"Stop it," Leslie choked, hands around her throat, face white.
Roarke sighed impatiently, suddenly quite angry on her behalf. "Amazing as it seems, I hadn't thought you so base as to resort to scare tactics; but I seem to have been in error. Leslie's soul is not yours to torture, Mephistopheles. Kindly refrain from embellishing your explanation with such comments."
"Sorry," Mephistopheles huffed and rolled his eyes. "As I was saying, in spite of Hamilton's actions, your mother's voice intervened on his behalf, pleading for forgiveness. Now, I am not normally one to entertain a request from…up there…" Mephistopheles shot a mocking look skyward. "…but other sources besides your mother interceded. It seems that Shannon Hamilton was an exceptionally saintly sort, and evidently her appeal counted for something. I had to answer to that authority, and that left Michael Hamilton in the lurch."
Leslie, calm again, cast him a heavily-ironic gaze and said sardonically, "And you just couldn't stand to be cheated out of a soul, could you? So you told him to appeal to me."
"Brilliant!" Mephistopheles exclaimed, beaming. "I must admit, Roarke, she's become quite worthy of you. Yes, at first Hamilton thought he was escaping his just punishment for his misdeeds, but then I explained precisely what he'd experience on this plane. No one ever told me I couldn't exact a little advance retribution, so I may have exaggerated a bit."
"That gasoline can," Leslie said, the specter of a smile flicking the corner of her mouth for perhaps a millisecond. "That was your idea, then."
"Certainly was," Mephistopheles said cheerfully. "Inspired, don't you think? Well, Hamilton eventually came to me and begged me to put him out of his misery. He'd been trying for years, as I'm sure you know, Roarke, to send Leslie messages through those nightmares she had every now and then when she was under stress. Problem is, one of the terms of his release was that he had to wait one day for every day of Leslie's age when he murdered her mother and sisters; and that wasn't a condition I had laid down, so I couldn't get around it. But when that time had finally elapsed, I suggested he go to you. The edict from on high was still pending, but he was perfectly willing to give up his choice of heaven." He regarded Leslie meaningfully. "I'll be quite happy to take his soul, but the admissions price to hell is your forgiveness."
Leslie's features took on a stubborn, mutinous cast and she eyed him. "I'm sure you realize that's pretty much impossible," she said.
"Not quite as sweet and saintly as your dear mother, apparently," Mephistopheles said, lightly mocking. "I suppose that's understandable. If you fail to forgive him, he'll simply go on wandering through no-man's-land, toting that petrol container along with him for eternity. But is that enough punishment to satisfy you, Leslie?"
She found herself caught up short and stared at him for a moment, then turned helplessly to Roarke for some kind of support. But he simply smiled faintly at her. "I can't help you, my child," he said gently. "The decision rests entirely with you."
"Mind you," Mephistopheles interjected, as if struck by an idea, "I've been promised a soul out of all this—and one way or another, I intend to get one. If not Michael Hamilton's, then…hmm, wouldn't Roarke's soul make a wonderful substitute?"
"You can't drag Mr. Roarke into this," Leslie protested, incensed. "He has nothing to do with it, so you have no basis for a claim on his soul."
"Oh, come now, you know all too well that I've been trying to get his soul for eons," Mephistopheles said, "and I'm really quite tired of waiting. Besides, flimsy though it may seem to you, Leslie, I do have grounds for a claim. The man you so willingly call father made a promise to Shannon Hamilton nearly twenty-seven years ago, to raise you to adulthood and to protect you from harm. He'd never see any danger to you, especially at my hands. I discovered that quite a few years ago, the last time we had an encounter." Roarke and Leslie looked at each other long enough to smile slightly with the memory, before Mephistopheles shattered what little was left of Leslie's composure by saying, "So if I don't get Michael Hamilton's soul, then I shall take Roarke's."