Chapter 9

"Hold up," Buzz ordered Hallie, clasping her upper arm as the others filed out of the room, alarmed and curious as to who Roger had found in the other room. Hallie looked up at Buzz.

"What is it?"

"C'mere," said Buzz, tugging Hallie back into the dumbwaiter room.

"But Mr. Collins says that there's a woman up here and that he doesn't know who sh—"

"Yeah, yeah," Buzz overrode, steadily pulling Hallie back into the now empty room until her back touched the wall. Uncomprehendingly, she watched as he put his arms out and braced the wall around her head with his hands, essentially trapping her. He bowed his head and stared at the floor between their feet.

"What do you want?" Hallie asked impatiently. "I want to see who that is in the other room."

"Jellybean, listen," murmured Buzz, his head still bowed so that she was looking into the stiff bush of his wild hair. "I been thinkin'. I'm running out of time on this end, you know? Don't ask me how I know, but I do. So, I was wondering if you would wanna—come back with me? When it's time for me to go?"

He raised his eyes to hers, reached up and took off his dark glasses and poked them into his hair, and stared into her face. Hallie stared back. This guy was asking her to go with him? She felt two things at once—a thrill of joy that an actual grown man was paying romantic attention to her, and a shock of surprise at the invitation.

Buzz lowered one arm, and caressed her cheek and chin with his thumb. "I been thinking about you, I dunno," he continued. "You're still 'way too young for me and all, but you'll grow out of that. And you told me you're not a member of the family here, right?"

"I—" Hallie began, then froze as Buzz's face suddenly took on a strangely somber cast. He slowly brought his face nearer hers. She could smell the leather of his jacket. His lips looked soft.

Buzz closed his eyes and nudged her nose with his. And then his lips—

"HEY, YOU!" a voice erupted from the doorway, followed by a clattering crash as Harry Johnson dropped the dustpan and broom he was carrying. They bounced on the hardwood floor. Hallie leapt at the noise and Buzz twitched and turned his face to Harry.

Harry fixed Buzz with terrible eyes.

"Who the hell are you? What are you doing? How did you get in here?" Harry demanded, quickly entering the room. Hallie pushed out of the trap of Buzz's arms around her head and faced Harry.

Harry held himself with dangerous stillness, and Hallie realized with a start that he was enraged.

Buzz fetched his dark glasses from atop his head and put them back on his face. "Look, man, this is nothing," he began.

Harry leapt across the room and seized Buzz by the collar.

"What do you think you're doing to her?" Harry yelled. "What do you think you're doing?"

They scuffled. "Lemme go, you idiot!" Buzz hollered.

Hallie shrank away along the wall, clapping her hands to her ears. Then she gasped as something in the doorway caught her attention.

A giggling, heavily-perspiring Willie Loomis entered the room tipsily and observed the struggling men. As Hallie watched in horror, the black-and-multicolored afghan Willie had been clutching about his shoulders slipped to the floor, and—it seemed to her—a freshet of sweat fell from his face with a splash, and began to be absorbed into his shirt. He looked as though he had just emerged from a locker room shower.

Willie passed his arm across his forehead and stood swaying in the doorway. Then he fetched breath and gave a shriek that made Hallie nearly jump out of her skin.

"JOHNSON!" Willie screamed. "I'm gonna kill you!" He launched himself at the two men.

Harry gave Buzz a vicious push which sent Buzz sprawling into a corner, then swiftly turned to defend himself against Willie's attack. But Willie, out of his mind with the afghan's contagion, was more than a match for him. He grabbed Harry by his shirt collar and tried to bodily lift him from the floor, and practically succeeded. He threw Harry against the dumbwaiter and waded in.

"Loomis, you jackass," Harry cried, then ducked and grabbed Willie about the waist, trying to knock him over. But whatever else the afghan had done to Willie, it had also given him a devilish strength. Staggering back against the wall as Harry drove into him in a football tackle, Willie reached forward, grasped Harry by the hips and yanked, flipping the other man in a sloppy throw partway over his shoulder. Harry gasped, then grunted as he crashed onto the floor.

In a flash Willie was at the dumbwaiter door, wrenching it open.

He seized Harry by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet. Both men were disheveled, their clothes split, their breath harsh. Hallie screamed.

"You get in there!" Willie roared and hurled Harry into the dumbwaiter. With a yell, Harry tumbled into the compartment. Willie launched himself halfway into the dumbwaiter bay after him, bellowing at his prisoner, tendons standing out in his neck.

"What do you think about that, hah? That's for Maggie!" He punched and pushed the man struggling inside the dumbwaiter, and Hallie got a confused picture of Harry with a bloody mouth. Then Willie reared back and slammed the door, trapping Harry inside. Harry began to shout and kick on the other side of the door.

"You don't be touchin' Maggie," Willie blathered fiercely, spying the cables above the dumbwaiter and seizing one with alacrity. He jerked the cable with gusto, and the compartment with Harry in it raced downwards, out of sight.

"Willie, no!" Hallie moaned.

"There you go!" Willie screamed, beginning to dance in front of the dumbwaiter as he worked the cable hand-under-hand. Drops of sweat shot from his hair and face and tapped onto the floor around him. "You don't go around tryna touch Maggie!"

Buzz Hackett stayed sprawled in the corner, shocked at the scene.

Hallie let out a sob and rushed from the room, colliding with Elizabeth Stoddard, who was just entering it. Both of them tripped over the broom that lay across the threshold.

"What in the world! Hallie—Willie, what are you doing!?" Elizabeth cried.

Willie immediately turned. His shirt was drenched and his pants showed patterns of sweat here and there. He fixed his eye upon Elizabeth and lurched toward her, gently pushing Hallie out of his way.

"Mrs. Stoddid!" he caroled, beginning to giggle, and put his burning hands onto Elizabeth's cheeks. She stared at him, startled, as he chuckled and brought his face close to hers.

"My God," he slurred, "You are—so—beautiful! Has anyone told you what a beautiful face you have? Oh, my God!" he gasped, laughing, crying, caressing Elizabeth's cheeks. Elizabeth tenderly put both hands on Willie's wrists and then gave a cry at the bizarre heat she felt there.

"Oh, no!" Elizabeth cried. "Veronika! Dr. Liska, help!"

"It's okay," Willie assured her, his eyes pleading and laughing into hers. Then they welled with tears. "I got that guy, did you see me get that guy? I can't get over how beautiful you are! I can't believe it!" He cupped her face and woozily kissed her nose.

"It's the afghan again!" Hallie sobbed in horror. She stumbled from the room and, seeing Roger Collins hurrying toward her, put out her hands to him. Roger snatched Hallie protectively into his arms, confused as to what was going on.

"Willie's sick from the afghan," Hallie wept on the front of Roger's suit jacket. "And he's k-kissing Mrs. Stoddard, and he threw H-Harry into the dumbwaiter and sent it away to the other side!"

Barnabas sat on the fallen log in the woods between Collinwood and the Old House.

After Julia had departed the room earlier this morning, leaving him with Roxanne, he had finally stumbled away also and gone down the staircase of Collinwood, trying to hold in his distress in case he met a member of the family. He even covered his face with one hand. But he saw no one. Feeling as though he had been struck by a train, he staggered from Collinwood, intent upon reaching the Old House, but then he had collapsed. He had sat down abruptly on the fallen log and tried to catch his breath.

He lifted shaking hands to his head; his face was flaming, his hands deadly cold.

Roxanne and David were very firmly in his mind. Yes, he must see to them. But first he had to somehow absorb this sickening blow, this horrible development of losing Julia.

He was still bewildered and shocked, but he thought he understood the situation. He could follow Julia's thinking—just. Of course he could. But she was wrong!

Wasn't she?

Barnabas wound his arms tightly about his midsection. With tears on his cheeks, he pressed his eyes shut and examined his conscience.

Did he want Roxanne? Oh, yes, yes! But not the way Julia thought he did; it was as simple as that.

Did he want Julia? Yes! He could no longer imagine living without her. She was vital to his survival. At one time, that phrase had meant his survival as a creature of the dark—he needed her to guard his sleep, to try her cures on him, to inform him in the evening what had happened during the daylight hours he was forced to shun. But now! Now it was her love he craved. He had thought very carefully before giving his engagement ring to Julia, for she had loved him unswervingly, unstintingly, for a long time. He had recognized in himself a burgeoning desire to share his life with her. He had let the feelings grow on their own until he was certain.

It was not as though he had forgotten the other women he had loved. That would never happen. But Roxanne—that affair had been the worst. To begin with, he had loved her from the first second he saw her trapped in forced sleep in Stokes' cottage. And the moment she'd opened her eyes, she had loved him in return.

He had lost her violently. First, they had been swept apart by a fire that decimated the secret room which had been his accessway into parallel time. Later, when he'd found her yet again in a different setting, in a different age, in 1840, she had been a different person—but still Roxanne. And she had, once again, looked upon him and loved him.

And he hadn't been able to stand it. At the time himself a vampire, Barnabas had led her into that dark life, purposely led her into death—killed her—saw her rise from the grave, only to have her destroyed by her mourning brother. Randall had forced her away from her sanctuary grave as the sun rose, by holding up the holy cross that Roxanne could no longer endure to look upon.

Barnabas had found her again and again, and lost her repeatedly, just as he had Josette.

But if a man's first love could be called unforgettably powerful, there was also something primal, devastating, about his last.

He held himself tightly and rocked in the cool air of the woods. He tried to think back and analyze exactly how he'd felt about Roxanne then, before he had fallen in love with Julia, and how his feelings differed now. How could he make it clear to Julia that her interpretation of all she had witnessed this morning was wrong? His urgency, his weeping, his begging Julia to bring Roxanne to life again—what woman wouldn't have translated his behavior as backsliding, a willing return to a love affair that he had never really relinquished? Of course Julia would think that the evidence of his passion for this girl blotted herself out. Yet, still he felt a little injured that Julia had refused to hear him.

Well, whether he caught Julia at the Old House or had to follow her all the way to Windcliff, he was going to articulate everything for her and explain all of it.

Barnabas bowed his head and prayed as he had done in childhood.

"God," he whispered, "You know how I feel, and I know, but Julia doesn't understand. Please give me the words to tell her, to clearly illustrate that no matter how she saw me behaving earlier, my feelings for Roxanne are now vitally changed from what they were before. Help me illuminate this for Julia. Help me to speak the truth to her so that she will understand it and come back to me, for it is she whom I love! Please, God. … Thank You. In Christ's holy name. Amen."

At Collinwood, in the room where they'd discovered her, as Elliot watched, Roxanne Drew slowly opened her eyes.