CONCLUSION

October 23, 1971 - Saturday morning
Collinsport Hospital

"I need her," Angelique was shouting, "I need her here right now so that I can destroy her myself! Tell me again what you saw, how it happened. How she struggled! We felt her die, but you actually watched her die. I want every detail."

Her eyes scorched Elliot from her hospital bed. She was fine and unharmed, apart from a bruised throat (from which the puncture marks had vanished), the baby's life signs perfect. When the couple showed up at the hospital demanding Angelique have every test under the sun and were met with bafflement from the staff, Elliot said quickly, "we think she ate something poisonous. Please check her, and look for any danger to the baby." Angelique had seen his eyes and played along. It was the smartest and fastest way to get rigorous care, because how could they begin to explain what had really been happening?

Between visits from nurses and doctors, when they had the examination room to themselves, Elliot described the death of Ann Comegys. For all her righteous wrath, still Angelique felt a chill. She had, at one time, undergone something similar herself. The first Reverend Trask had tied her to a tree for an exorcism. But that had been ages ago. She thrust the image from her.

"She's done for, my love," Elliot told Angelique for perhaps the seventh time. She had begun to note the gray shadows beneath his eyes as he repeated the story for her on demand.

His eyes closed, and she studied him, but he quickly opened them again and smiled at her. She was once again astonished at the depth of his love for her. It was certainly a useful thing to have. Usually it made her extremely impatient, but maybe not today. He and Barnabas must have moved heaven and earth to track Ann so quickly and destroy her. Perhaps she owed them something.

Perhaps she owed Elliot.

She couldn't tear Ann apart with her fingers, but she could at least reward Elliot for her extermination.

As she thought of these things, Elliot went in and out of a doze. She wondered what fantastic effort he'd had to expend this week.

A nurse popped her head in the door.

"Dr. Sloan says that you can leave," she said cheerfully. "No more wild mushroom-eating in the woods for heaven sakes, Miss Bouchard, not until you've learned which are good and which aren't, and maybe not even then! And doctor also says for you, Professor, to get right home to bed. You're not supposed to be dashing around having emergencies when he only just discharged you yesterday."

Elliot scrubbed his face with one hand and cleared his throat as Angelique regarded him.

"You were in the hospital?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You were injured?"

"No," he said, his voice scratchy with fatigue, "let's get out of here. Let's go home."

"Elliot," she said suddenly, leaning back on her pillows. Her disordered blonde hair made her look ravishing. "Would you like to know your baby's name?"

The rumpled man stared at her for a second. "You've got something you like? Yes, my Angelique, I would love to know the baby's name. He's going to be healthy, praise God. Praise God."

"How do you know it's a boy?" she said, dimpling, and he blinked at her.

"Well—I don't. Did I say he? Is it a boy? I guess we won't know until January or even February."

Thrusting the bed sheets aside, she scooted forward in the bed and unexpectedly wrapped a warm arm around his neck. "He is a boy," she whispered against his neck.

Elliot smiled happily at this rare display of fondness from Angelique. "How do you know? We haven't had the test, have we?"

"No, we have not," she admitted, "but it is a son, whether even the doctor knows it or not. And I will tell you the child's name."

She whispered it to him.

As they walked through the hospital parking lot to Elliot's car, he told her bravely, "as long as the child is healthy, I guess I can stand his having the most outlandish name in town; but is there no way I can talk you out of this?"

"Well, that's twice now," Julia noted as she slid into the passenger seat of her car. Barnabas, who wouldn't allow her to drive, clambered in behind the wheel. To hell with his learner's permit—he had no clue as to where the thing was. They would hardly be stopped between the cemetery grounds and the Old House. He'd find it later.

"Twice now what, Julia?" he asked. He shut the door, then took her hand and kissed it.

He'd lifted Julia off her feet when the doors of the mausoleum had opened and the ladies were released from the crypt. Angelique had rushed out of the doors. Elliot cautioned Barnabas to be gentle with Julia, and then, as Barnabas opened his arms to Elizabeth, ran outside to catch Angelique. He put her in his car for immediate transport to the hospital.

"Twice now that you've saved me from vampires," she said softly, with a smile. She looked exhausted, but the marks at her throat were gone, disappeared as though they'd never been.

"Never again," he told her firmly, lifting a finger. "I can't go through it again. No more! But even if it happens seven times more, Julia, I will come and rescue you, or you will come and rescue me."

Julia remembered striking him while under Ann's demonic influence. She told him this. "Oh, Barnabas, Barnabas, I can't believe I hurt you. Forgive me," she said in a hushed voice, eyes glimmering with tears.

He wrenched in his seat and grabbed her. "There is nothing to forgive!" he cried. "I know what you endured, what you felt—who could know better? Your loyalty was for the monster who had taken you from me. You were not in control. I know that you love me more than life, Julia. You've proved it enough times. Do not apologize for what flesh and blood cannot help!"

He held her head and kissed her face, fingering the burnished curls that framed it. Something fell from the car visor onto his lap, and they both looked down at it.

It was Barnabas' learner's permit.

"What the … so that's where the flaming thing has been!" he muttered wonderingly.

Julia threw back her head and laughed, the tears still in her eyes. "I think it's a sign," she gasped, "for us to leave this cemetery!"

At the Old House, Garvey answered the hammering on the front door and let in a frantic Veronika.

"Garvey!" she cried. "What are you doing here? Is Roger in here with you?"

"Yeah, ma'am, yeah, yeah!" Garvey agreed, alarmed at her vehemence. "He's in the kitchen, lemme go get 'im."

She threw her purse and medical bag onto the floor. Roger appeared at once, and she rushed up to him and seized him.

"Where have you been?" she choked. She grabbed him into her arms with so much violence that he murmured. "I called and called!" she cried. "The cannery, all yesterday afternoon, no answer! Then no one picked up the phone at Collinwood! I drove to the house and no one's there and all the cars are gone!" She was in tears but didn't care.

Roger held her comfortingly and drew her into the front room, where they fell together onto the sofa.

"All's well," he began, but she interrupted. "What happened? Did you all go after the—did something happen? Oh, Roger, don't you ever do this to me again!" She angrily brushed the tears from her cheeks.

"Veronika, my love," he said, playing with her hair. "It's done, all over. The threat is gone."

"What did you do? Are you in trouble? Why's the house been emptied? Who is looking after Liz?"

He explained that the Collinwood household had stayed overnight at the Old House, and why, and that they were all on the point of returning home again.

"Barnabas and Elliot phoned. They went to the crypt and liberated everyone. I've got to get back there and find out more about what they did with the vampire. They only gave me a quick description."

She pulled back at that, and studied his calm face.

"You did not go with them?" she asked in a strange voice.

Roger met her eyes. "I stayed here, Veronika. There was an infinitesimal chance that Collinwood was going to be hit by one of the—suspects. We removed here and, well, I was left behind to help look after the children with everyone else, while Barnabas, Stokes and Devlin went on to—finish the business."

Heart pounding in spite of himself, he faced her. She seemed frozen, her eyes wide, staring into his. Then, in a violent convulsion she threw legs and arms around him.

"Thank God!" she wept. "Thank you! You didn't go! Oh, my God, Roger, I love you so much! If anything had happened to you, what would I have done?" She stopped, strangled by tears, and clutched him ferociously as he reared up on the sofa to kiss her wildly.

By the time Cary Olivo reached Collinwood, Elizabeth had been reinstalled as its mistress. She met him at the door in a wheat-colored winter sweater and dark skirt, an ensemble that heightened her brunette loveliness. Her eyes sparkled with pleasure, but after some ardent kisses, he pulled back and crinkled his eyes at her.

"Are you all right? You look tired."

"I am," she laughed. "Or, I was! I had a cold for a day or so, but I'm better now, a thousand times better now that you're safe home from England."

"Wait til you see everything I brought you from London," the handsome man told her mischievously. "If I never have another international business conference it'll be too soon. Boring! Don't get me started. Meetings and signatures and afternoon 'tea' that tastes like rocket fuel! How about you, Liz? I don't suppose anything interesting happened around here while I was gone?"

Saturday afternoon

Burke gazed about the roomy cottage with affection. Nothing seemed to have changed, except, of course, for the most significant thing.

The curtains were new, perhaps, a different color than he'd expected. Hadn't they been blue when he was here before? At one time they'd been striped; he was certain of that. Today they were a sunny, soft plaid pattern of peach and red, swept to one side as usual to let in the light.

The floor creaked comfortably beneath their steps, just as it always had. The sofa, chairs and lamps all stood in their old places. But Sam's easels and paints were gone, and most of the portraits he had painted, though many now crowded the walls, had been packed away somewhere. The house smelled like freshly baked bread.

"Same old place," he noted, pleased.

Maggie shrugged her shoulders and stuck her fists into the pockets of her luxurious velvet pants. "I haven't changed much of anything. Redid my bedroom—it needed it. And I had Pop's bedroom repainted and fitted out." She smiled faintly and nodded her head to where her father's easel had stood. "You'd pose right there on weekends, mostly Saturdays as soon as your dad let you off work, and I'd be occupied with something vitally important in the background. But all the while, I was staring at you," Maggie snickered.

Burke snorted, turning to her. "Do you remember the time Sam practically told me to strip? Wanted to pose me like Neptune or somebody? He gave me a barbecue fork to hold as a trident. Jesus. I kept staring at you and inclining my head at you and clearing my throat, wanting him to take the hint to tell you to clear out. He was so hot to trot he didn't notice. When Sam got a vision of what he wanted to paint, that was it."

"Well, he was used to my being around his models. I think I was supposed to go to a friend's house that afternoon. However, I suddenly felt it necessary to arrange my father's discarded paint tubes into alphabetical order," Maggie laughed, "and I worked right there at that desk where I could watch you. There was no way I was going to leave the room."

He crinkled his eyes at her. "Yeah, I knew you were watching me. I found it amusing." He grinned, but then she saw him instantly grow somber again. "Long time ago," he said roughly.

She laid a hand on his arm. "Please sit, and I'll make us coffee." She gestured at the couch, then left him.

Burke let himself collapse on the couch as soon as she was out of sight. God, it was comfortable here, and he was so tired these days. He remembered what they'd told him at the hospital in Belém; that he was going to have to take it easy for a long, long time. But he was bristling with the things he wanted to get done; every day an idea for a new business venture occurred to him.

The whole place felt like home, certainly much better than the dry, stilted room he was living in at the Collinsport Inn. This couch held him like an embrace.

Should he do this? Move into the Evans' cottage? Maggie was offering it to him, seemed to want him as a tenant.

He had nowhere to live in town save for the Inn. For some months, he'd been envisioning the well-appointed, palatial home he would have built for himself on the outskirts of Collinsport. Complete with heated pool and maybe even a little sauna. Let Collinwood try to match that. He'd had a tumultuous week, but now things had settled down and he could start thinking about it again. Until he could choose a plot of land and actually break ground, perhaps he really would stay here.

Kim Jansing would remain in town. Barnabas had invited him to spend a few days at the Old House. Each man had pledged his friendship to Kim this morning in the woods, something that had satisfied Burke deeply, for a man needed friends. Kim was going to survive this wretched experience and remain a Collinsport resident.

Burke thought about Maggie. She was prettier than he remembered her back in '67, but she'd been a lot younger then. The kid had everything going for her. Awful luck being an orphan, but she was a healthy, likeable, gorgeous woman with her whole life ahead of her.

He felt the familiar ache of unhappiness in his chest. He would be looking at the future alone. Though he'd have loved to find a woman like Veronika, or like Maggie, he was out of the running, perhaps for good. A lot of damage had been done to his body. What woman would be looking for a man like himself, just crawled out of the junk heap?

Uncharacteristically, he wished he were younger.

Maggie brought a tray, poured coffee, then settled back with him on the couch.

"Have you thought?" she asked quietly, her feet tucked beneath her.

"I might," he admitted. "This cottage is as close to a home as I ever had. Feeling that you don't belong anywhere is kind of rotten."

There was a pause. Maggie asked, not looking at him, "Have you considered something else?"

He looked at her swiftly, then withdrew his eyes to his coffee cup, uncertain. "What would that be?"

"I remember," she began slowly, eyes downcast, "how deeply you and Vicky loved one another. I was with her in those awful days after the news report about your plane. You had the real thing there, Burke." She shifted hesitantly. "I'd like to make sure you understand that I feel that way about you, too."

He spasmodically gripped the handle of his cup.

The signals he thought she'd been sending him this afternoon were not imaginary after all. He felt his face grow hot.

"I've had a feeling every so often," she continued. "Lying in bed, waiting to fall asleep, thinking about things I want for myself. There's a point at which my thoughts come up against a sort of soft barrier. I'm not allowed to consider beyond it, because what's beyond there doesn't exist anymore, even though it's the thing I want. I think that for me, you've been behind the barrier. I tried not to want you anymore because you were gone, but underneath my thoughts, I missed you and wanted you anyway. Then, when you showed up this week at Collinwood, I thought, hey. He does exist."

Leaning forward, he carefully set the cup on the table. "Maggie," he said softly, not looking at her, "do you realize the difference in our ages? I'm about twenty years older than you."

"That's not right," she said, lifting her face to him with faintly flushed cheeks, "there's barely a dozen years between us—"

"A dozen? How the hell do you get a dozen?"

"—and why does it matter?" she overrode him. "Besides, Vicky and I were practically the same age."

He turned to survey her. She seemed to be perspiring behind those soft bangs. God, what an enchanting girl. He realized with a shock that of all people in Collinsport, Maggie was the only one he had a past history with. Sam was gone, others he had known and grown up with were dead. Even old Mr. Wells from the Collinsport Inn was gone; he'd heard that dreadful story. The friends he had up at Collinwood now had been recently made. The only other person he seemed to have known forever was Roger Collins, and that was not a happy thought.

Of everyone he'd known in his life, Maggie was his fondest friend. Dear Maggie. She'd known him the longest. Perhaps she was the one who knew him best.

He gazed into her lovely cinnamon-brown eyes. She was a girl from Maine, but her eyes had an exotic tang; eyes so different from Vicky's, yet exactly the same. The same? Why was he seeing them as the same? There was no physical resemblance—as he frowned, he suddenly understood.

The love that animated her expression gave her eyes their similarity to Vicky's. Christ! There was real love in Maggie's face. Maggie actually loved him. She wanted him.

His soul lifted in joy.

Burke knew he'd have no problem seeing past the kid he'd known and finding the woman, damn him. (He was going to go to hell for this.) Then the memory of all the rest of his troubles dripped into his thoughts, and the blast of happiness in his veins abruptly died.

He swallowed and looked across the room, at its shadows near the ceiling. He said, "Listen. I'm about a hundred years older than I was when I left Collinsport four years ago."

"I must say you don't look it."

"There are scars all over me. You don't know."

"I can find out. Is that supposed to frighten me off?"

"Then how's this for frightening? I'm the same age as Roger Collins."

"He's two months older than you are."

"The bottom line is," he said, turning to her sternly though his heart had begun its gallop again, "I'll be forty-one in a few weeks."

"November the twenty-first," Maggie agreed. "My birthday's the twenty-first also, though I'm in May."

"Oh, my God." Burke groaned, his eyes squeezed shut, and grimaced at the image of a calendar behind his eyes. "It would be a May-November romance."

"I suppose it would," Maggie laughed. "Since when has that ever stopped anybody?"

He took her hand and rushed through a catalogue of warnings.

"You don't want me, Maggie," he said huskily. "Listen to me, now, I mean it. I'm falling apart. Light bothers my eyes. I have nightmares. My bones ache, I'm malarial, and sometimes I even fall down on the floor for no reason. I've got a brain injury. You want to sit at home every evening babysitting me? You want to find some nice young guy. Whatever happened to Joe Haskell?"

"Joe Haskell," she told him, caressing his hand in both of hers, "is very happily dating Dr. Liska's youngest sister. Joe is only a friend to me these days and that satisfies us both. As to you, you're always on the phone with your staff and I know you're bursting with plans and projects, so what gives you the idea you're going to need babysitting?"

She gently released his hand and dared to do what she so wanted to. She caressed his face.

"I know myself pretty well," she told him, her heart outracing itself. "I know what I want. When I saw you the other night in Liz Stoddard's drawing room, returned to us, I … I knew I was going to have to tell you how I felt." She bowed her head. "My entire life changed the minute I recognized you. I was so happy, I almost started bawling right there in the drawing room. Pop would have told me to go after you with everything I had."

Burke closed his eyes and moved his face against her soft hand. He took a slow, deep breath. Her touch was creating a tumult in him. He hadn't felt any sexual arousal after his accident until Veronika, and had been elated to discover he could still function in the bedroom. But he'd since wondered whether that night had been a lucky one-off (or, more precisely, a two-off) and whether his sexual interest would dwindle once more without a whimper.

Evidently, he couldn't have been more wrong. Just with this sweet touch on his face, Maggie was causing his nerves to flame. He couldn't get enough air into his lungs.

He'd taken a long time falling in love with Vicky. But back then, they'd had all the time in the world. That was no longer the case. It surprised him to realize that he felt ready to begin immediately with Maggie.

She loved him.

Could he accept it?

"Listen," he babbled. "I've got plans to build myself a big house. I need a swimming pool year round, and it'll be heated. I'll have it in a big sort of pavilion room attached to the house. Somewhere around town there's got to be a nice piece of land with a lot of trees, maybe on a little hill or something. It's going to be beautiful. I can see the whole thing in my mind. Would you … do you think you … but you live at Collinwood."

"I do," she admitted. "But David's fourteen and Hallie's turning sixteen in the spring, and keeping a governess in the house is starting to feel a little ridiculous. There's Amy, but she needs friends her own age, and we're talking about putting her in public school. Mrs. Stoddard and I are going to run it past her brother Chris."

"Then you'll have no place to go," he said hoarsely.

Maggie laughed and quickly kissed his cheek.

"I'm not sure whether you've heard, but a lot has happened to me over these years, too. I unexpectedly inherited some insurance money when Pop died. I am quite independent; I could buy a house of my own tomorrow." She snapped her fingers.

He stared at her for a long moment, then reached over to softly pull a lock of her hair.

"Maggie, are you sure? You … are you sure? I'm not the guy you might remember. I'm not as strong as I was."

She lightly laid a hand on his chest, her dark eyes fixed on his. "You were strong enough to lift Veronika Liska out of the street the other day. You went with Barnabas to take down the vampire. And I think you're strong enough to let someone love you, what do you think?"

After a second, he smiled, caressed her shoulder and drew her close to him.

"You really want to try this?" he murmured. "I hope I don't embarrass you. Sometimes I fumble for words. I've forgotten things."

"You remember me," she whispered. "We're doing all right so far."

She tentatively snuggled against him, his heart thundering against her cheek.

In moving toward her on the couch, his knee struck the cup on the table, knocking it to the floor, where it shattered.

"Oh, no," he groaned.

She took his face between her palms and kissed him, then drew back to smile at him.

"Just whatever you do," Maggie told him merrily, "I implore you … don't break my coffee cups!"