§ § § -- February 10, 1999

Duly freshened, she ventured downstairs in the quiet house and was happy to hear voices in the kitchen. One sounded like a male voice, and she went to investigate. It turned out to be Rogan, cadging a picnic basket out of Mariki. "A picnic at this hour?" Mariki was asking with deep incredulity.

"Must be a breakfast picnic," Leslie suggested jokingly.

Mariki brightened. "So you're awake, Miss Leslie! You look much better this morning. How about Mr. Roarke?"

Leslie's smile dropped away and she shook her head. "He was still sleeping when I got up. I don't think there'll be any change."

Rogan said, "Unfortunately I have to agree with that. I hope you've an interest in breakfast, Leslie, as I've something to tell you."

"Shoot," Leslie said absently, inspecting the array of fruit Mariki was preparing.

"No, at the breakfast table," said Rogan firmly, in a significant tone of voice that got Leslie's attention. He gave one slow nod when she focused on him.

Slightly spooked, Leslie said, "Okay, then we can eat on the veranda. Mariki, I'll go for oatmeal and some fruit this morning…and don't forget to spike my orange juice again." This last was delivered with amused irony.

Mariki snorted. "That's the thanks I get for trying to keep you healthy! Get out to the veranda with you, Miss Leslie, and I'll have your breakfast out in no time." She took Rogan's request as well, then shooed them both out.

At the table Rogan took Roarke's usual chair, and Leslie settled into her own, watching him. "So what's the news?"

"It's not good, Leslie," Rogan told her point-blank. "Mephistopheles knows about your father's illness. I was out walking with Julie yesterday afternoon and caught the two of them deep in conversation. Apparently my father is on whatever passes for friendly terms with Mephistopheles."

Leslie slumped dejectedly in her chair and let her head fall back. "Well, isn't that just the icing on the cake," she muttered. "Trouble is, I have to admit I'm not exactly surprised by this little revelation. Mephistopheles has always been crazy beyond belief to get Father's soul, and with Father at his most vulnerable, it just figures that Mephistopheles would be hovering like the vulture he is." She sat up and regarded Rogan intensely. "Did your father actually make a deal with the devil?"

"No, they only discussed it, which is bad enough," Rogan said. "My father, damn him, told Mephistopheles he'd have to sleep on it, and Mephistopheles then set a deadline for Da to make a decision. We have till midnight Friday to try to persuade Da to hand over the secret of the cure. Otherwise, your father will die, and Mephistopheles will leap right in and make off with him before you can recite your own name."

"Father's as good as condemned," Leslie said, voice flat with hopelessness. "With this stupid jealousy your father has for him, there's no way he'd pass up the chance to get rid of his alleged rival." She closed her eyes and swallowed. "I have no appetite left." She got to her feet and walked off without looking back, and Rogan watched her go, then began to curse quietly to himself in Irish Gaelic.

‡ ‡ ‡

Early in the afternoon Roarke awoke and glanced around the room, moving only his eyes. He was only physically afflicted by his illness; his mental capabilities were as sharp as they had ever been. He judged the time to be around one-thirty or so and wondered idly where Leslie was. Something occurred to him then and he frowned slightly, then gathered himself and put all his effort into turning his head on the pillow till he could see the items atop the nightstand. The bottle of tonic for which he had sent Leslie and Rogan the week before stood near a corner of its surface, beside the teaspoon Leslie had been using to administer the daily doses. She had remarked to him on the third day that there didn't seem to be very much left in the bottle, and it was now the eleventh day since he had started taking it. Five milliliters per day was the absolute minimum dosage he could take and still get the palliative benefit. Staring at the bottle, he made out the low level of liquid within it and calculated that he might have three more days of doses left before it was gone. That in itself wasn't a problem; what worried him was that, even if Rogan knew the formula to mix up more, he didn't have all the necessary ingredients—one of which was amakarna, an item Roarke had never allowed on the island since the day he'd taken possession of it. He had always considered the stuff too dangerous to take chances with. Now here I lie, a victim of my own folly, he reflected with resignation. Perhaps it's time to tell Leslie where I placed the instructions I wrote for running the island, the first time I faced Mephistopheles after she came here. Fate seems to be suggesting that my time has come.

"What's the trouble, cousin?" he heard H.R. ask, derailing his train of thought for the time being. "You've quite the annoyed look on your face."

"Are you here to keep me company again?" asked Roarke with ironic humor, unable to muster enough strength to turn his head back and face his cousin.

H.R. laughed. "You can call it that if you want." He came into the room, pulled the chair out from the desk and settled into it, more or less within Roarke's field of vision. "You look more like hell than ever, P.Q. The bone-eating disease appears to agree with you less than anyone else I've ever seen who had it." He waited, but Roarke didn't reply. "Where's your dear devoted daughter? She seems to have abandoned you."

"I'm sure she's handling daily business," Roarke said. "Were you looking for her?"

"No, I was merely making small talk. It's not as if she can really do anything for you anyway. What's this? It looks familiar." H.R. picked up the nearly-empty tonic bottle and examined it, then quirked one eyebrow. "Well, well, it seems to me we're nearly out of cod-liver oil," he remarked with a half-sneer, half-grin.

Roarke eyed him sidelong, more out of necessity than by choice because of where H.R. was positioned in his sights. "How considerate of you to be so broken up about it," he said, for the first time showing his frustration. "You baffle me, H.R. You persist in clinging to your invented, one-sided feud, and you come here apparently for the sole purpose of tormenting me when you are well aware of my inability to defend myself with anything more than words. You make taunts about my daughter and take pleasure in watching my decline. If this is your sole reason for coming here, then I invite you to leave the island. There are far pleasanter ways for me to pass whatever time remains to me."

"Like what?" H.R. demanded, laughing. "Watching the shadows dance on the walls? Waiting for your daughter to come back up and feed you a little more of your dwindling supply of death-postponement medicine? And I have no doubt you don't have everything you need to make any more of it. Maybe that's as well, since it ultimately won't do you much good anyway. You really should have fathered a child of your own instead of taking on someone else's abandoned stray. At least then you could have had some fighting chance of leaving a real legacy."

"Another cheap shot at Leslie?" Roarke said tiredly. "Either find another subject or leave me, H.R."

"I'm only trying to understand your affinity for the girl," H.R. protested, pretending affrontery. "The least you can do is take pity on me and explain it. For that matter, you could also explain your odd attraction to earth humans in general."

"Is it so wrong to want to help those with whom we share this planet?" Roarke asked.

H.R. shrugged. "Well, if you go in for these altruistic motivations, I suppose not. Did you ever marry, P.Q.? Wasn't there ever anyone who moved you enough to make you want to spend all your days with her and get children on her?"

Roarke's gaze slipped out of focus and his dark eyes half closed with memory. "I've been very much in love with a few women in my lifetime," he said, "but I loved only one enough to marry her. And within days she was dead of a brain tumor."

"How tragic," H.R. said, mockery touching his voice. "Brain tumor? Well, we aren't afflicted by those, so it had to be another ordinary human woman. Bah, P.Q., you're the one who baffles me."

"I suspect you never gave your whole heart to a woman, or you would have no need to question me," Roarke murmured. "I loved Helena with everything I had—body, mind, soul, heart. I knew full well she was ill when I married her, but I loved her too deeply not to. I have never once regretted it." He refocused and found the strength to turn his head just enough to give his cousin a direct, challenging stare. "Can you say the same?"

For the first time H.R. looked distinctly uncomfortable, and resettled his weight uneasily in the chair. Roarke waited patiently, his gaze never wavering, and H.R. finally crumbled beneath it. "If you must know, there was Rogan's mother. It was a damn sight too many years ago, more than I really care to remember, but yes, I loved Caitriona Callaghan with everything in me. I would have married her—she must have had MacNabb, or perhaps even the blood of one of our people, in her—but…" He shrugged again and scowled. "Bah," he said halfheartedly.

Roarke's chuckle was almost inaudible, but hearty all the same. "How weak of the invincible H.R. Roarke to have to admit to something as foolish as love, hm?"

"Bah," H.R. repeated, more forcefully. "She also died, P.Q. …of tuberculosis, believe it or not. Consumption, they called it back then. I could have easily fixed the problem for her, but by the time I knew about it, it was too late and I found myself saddled with her son to raise. He was fourteen at the time and had no knowledge of our people. It seems Caitriona neglected to inform him that he was a Roarke, never mind educating him of the abilities he inherited as a result of his parentage. I had to explain a great many things to Rogan, but I must admit, he learned well. At least Caitriona had taught him not to be superstitious, like so many others in those days." His ice-blue eyes were looking at some distant memory, and Roarke observed him with open interest. "She was a lovely girl really. I knew there was something different about her, I didn't think she could possibly have been a mere human from the way she so easily accepted who I was and what I could do. Maybe she was an off-shoot of another of the clans—I always thought she must have been, from her attitude. I wanted to marry her…she consumed me utterly. I never lost myself that way before or after her." H.R. snapped back into the present all at once and regarded Roarke with an annoyed look. "What on earth was the point of making me relive all that?"

"Mere curiosity," Roarke replied mildly. "I admit to wondering whether a heart still beat within you. Apparently it does, which is gratifying to know."

H.R. rolled his eyes and remarked, "You've been a sentimental fool all your life, P.Q. It must come from being raised in Latin countries where they let emotions rule the day."

Roarke's dark eyes lit with reminiscence, and he said softly, "The warmth of the people drew my parents in and suffused my entire childhood. Oh, those days, those places… the color, the vibrancy, the very life! The atmosphere is wholly different from the one your parents chose to raise you in. The cultures in which I grew up shaped my character every bit as much as my parents did."

"As I said, a sentimental fool." One of H.R.'s eyebrows stretched towards his hairline. "I suppose that's why you were so easily persuaded to raise that human girl. Bleeding heart that you are, you ignored her inferiority."

Roarke's gaze lost all warmth and his expression all animation, and his regard became stone-cold, his eyes seeming to deepen to a frigid black. When he spoke again, his voice was deliberate, steely with something that even H.R. dared not defy. "Leave my house at once, and don't return here again. I will no longer tolerate your prejudice." His cousin stared at him in speechless surprise, and Roarke lost what little patience he had left. The word exploded out of him in one stentorian command. "GO!"

Moving in slow motion, gaping at Roarke all the while, H.R. got up, returned the chair to its proper place and quietly exited the room. Behind him, his cousin, thoroughly depleted, went limp in the bed and fell instantly into a comatose slumber.