Cat On a Hot Tin Roof

Wednesday "It looks okay," Ray remarked as he surveyed the area. "But then one abandoned building looks much like another, dunnit? Maybe I should check..."

I knew what was coming before he said it. "You're not going in there alone," I told him. The idea made me go all cold inside.

"Not me, Bodie, but Beelzy could."

"NO!" And how did I think I was going to stop him?

Ray sighed and slumped against the wall. "Look, lover, what's the point of my having a talent if I can't use it to make things easier?" I hate it when he tries to be rational.

"I don't like it," I said sounding mulish.

"I know that. It'll be okay. Don't forget where I leave my clothes, will you?" And with that he was gone, and a cat was stepping delicately out of a pile of Ray's clothing and winding around my legs.

"What am I gonna do with you?" I bent down to get him, got a nip for my troubles, and watched the orange streak disappear into the building.

Then I waited.

Ten minutes later I was ready to go in alone. It shouldn't have taken that long, there was something wrong; I was sure of it. I hauled out my R/T.

"Doyle's been inside for ten minutes; that is, Beelzy has. I want to go in after him."

"You'll have back-up in a moment," Cowley assured me, but I wasn't about to go in mob-handed and risk that little monster who means more to me than me than my own life.

"No, keep them outside. I'm going in alone."

"Have you lost your mind, Bodie?"

"No sir, just my cat. If they've seen him, they'll think I'm on the up and up. Just wait two minutes, and if I'm not out, then come in after me." I shut off the unit before he could protest and left it on Ray's discarded clothes, adding my gun and ID to the pile. "Let's hope it's just some comely little tabby that's captured his attention," I muttered just before I went in.

"Here, kitty. Here Beelzy..." The place was dark and musty, but the dust on the floors had been recently disturbed. The thought, though satisfying, made me uneasy for my sake as well as Ray's. "C'mon, cat, where are you?"

Something was pressed between my shoulder blades and I froze.

"Wot you doin' in 'ere?"

"Lookin' for my cat, if it's any of your business. 'ere, what's goin' on?

You the watchman or somethin'?"

There seemed to be crates stacked around the room, but I didn't like to look too closely.

"No, I'm not the bleedin' watchman! Frank, Eddie, over 'ere. Look what I' ve found!"

Two figures emerged from the shadows. The larger of the two was holding Beelzy. There was blood on his fur.

"What have you done to my cat?" I yelled, feeling real panic.

"Nothin'. Don't get so excited, mate." The man shoved Beelzy into my arms.

"He cut hisself on a bit of bottle. I heard 'im cryin'. You oughta take better care of 'im. 'e's a nice little puss, 'e is."

At that point I was the picture of the concerned cat-lover. Strewth, I was feeling more concerned over Beelzy that the oppo. Anyone who'd spot me for a CI5 agent had to be psychic. "Yeah, thanks. I'll take him to the vet now. Thanks for taking care of him." I walked away oblivious of the three men, all my attention focused on Beelzy. "What did you get yourself into?"

I crooned to the obviously uncomfortable feline.

"Hey!"

"Never mind, Ratty, let 'im go. Bloke's got enough on 'is mind with 'is cat and all."

Somebody sniggered.

"He could be a cop," one of them whispered.

I kept walking.

"'e's no cop. Now shut up."

I slipped out of the building and forced myself to walk at a normal pace back to where I'd left our things.

"It's okay now, Ray," I told him. "You can change."

Nothing.

"Change back, Ray." I was begging. "Please!" But Beelzy remained Beelzy and squeaked in discomfort as I hugged him a little too firmly. Cowley appeared suddenly.

"Three of them," I reported, "and stacks of crates - looks like ammo, guns...they'll not be expecting you so soon after sending me packing."

"Three of them," Cowley said into his R/T. "Move in."

"I'm taking Doyle to the doctor. He's hurt."

"How bad is it?" Cowley demanded, as the area came alive with agents.

"He's cut his paw. He won't change back."

"May I suggest a good vet?"

"Nice cat," the nurse said. "What's his name?"

"Beelzy. Beelzebub."

The look on her face said 'it takes all kinds.' "He's cut his paw," I told her rather unnecessarily. "Can the doctor look at him right away?"

"Unless it's an emergency, you'll have to wait your turn," she said, and I decided I didn't like her much.

"Emergency? What d'you call this?" I extended my own hand covered in Beelzy's blood.

"A cut paw. I'll bring something to put on it until Doctor Stein can see you. She disappeared into a room in back and came out with a pad of gauze.

"Press this against the wound."

"Will it help?"

"It'll make you feel better," she told me.

I was ushered into an examining room where I had to wait for the doctor.

"It'll be all right, Ray," I promised. "He'll fix you up and you'll be able to change back - just don't do it here, please." I waited for what seemed hours, though my watch told me only 10 minutes had passed. They were letting my partner bleed to death! Never mind that the gauze pad had slowed the blood flow to almost nothing. I knew he was dying. He looked pale to me - sort of an off-salmon.

I was really starting to lose my grip.

The door swung open and a fair-haired, middle-aged woman in a pink lab coat strode in. "Hello, I'm Doctor Stein..."

"This is outrageous. I've been waiting..."

"Mister..." The doctor consulted a card. "Mister Bodie, I have had a bad day, too. I've been bitten twice and I have one suspected case of feline leukaemia in isolation, so I don't need to be chewed out by you. If you don 't care for the treatment you receive here, you are free to go elsewhere.

Now, may I tend you cat please?"

Well, that was telling me. I suppose I was over-reacting a little. If it hadn't been for the fact that I couldn't get Ray to change back into Ray, I might not have gone off the deep end like this. I apologized and set Beelzy down on the table.

"What happened?" she asked as she cleaned the injured paw and examined the cut. Beelzy squirmed, but remained calm.

"He got out on me. Some fellows who found him said he cut his foot on a broken bottle."

"Where was this?"

"Abandoned warehouse.

"I see. Well, the cut itself isn't bad, but it could use a stitch. I'll give him a tetanus shot and some antibiotics as well. I'm sure he'll be just fine. Please hold him for a moment, I'll be right back - and press the pad to the wound."

I cradled Beelzy while we waited. "She said it's not too bad, Ray," I whispered. "You'll feel better soon, I promise. Why won't you change back?" Still nothing. I was hoping Cowley could find out from Colette what the problem was. He'd promised to call her as soon as he got back to HQ.

"That's good, just keep talking to him. They trust their owners instinctively and they'll always forgive you."

"Not this one," I muttered.

"Now put him down and hold him around the shoulders and chest." She prepared a wicked looking needle and stuck it into Beelzy's haunch, and Beelzy screeched and lurched forward, trying to climb up my jacket. "You'll have to hold him a little more securely, Mister Bodie. Let's try again."

"You didn't get it in?" I have to admit I was feeling rather shaky by this time.

"Just the point, not the anaesthetic."

I gripped Beelzy more firmly and gritted my teeth against his cry.

"Talk to him, Mister Bodie. It does help."

"There, there, everything'll be okay," I said stiffly. The vet raised an eyebrow but said nothing. "I'm here with you."

This time the shot was a success.

"It'll take a couple of minutes to work. Keep talking to him. Oh, and Mister Bodie?"

"Yes?"

"Don't you know any baby talk?"

"We're going to fix you up, mate," I promised after she left the room.

"Christ, I'm covered with car hair! You don't have something else wrong with you, do you? You shouldn't be losing this much hair." Visions of a suddenly bald Ray assaulted me and my insides lurched unpleasantly.

I waited for what seemed like another hour, worrying about infections and tetanus and hair-loss and feline whatsis in isolation and would Ray catch it from her?

"Where have you been?" I demanded. "The anaesthetic may have worn off by now."

She rolled her eyes. "I was seeing another patient. Please calm down, Mister Bodie, you'll give yourself indigestion. The anaesthetic won't wear off for several hours yet."

"Only, he's lost so much hair...do you think there's something wrong with him?"

For a moment Doctor Stein seemed to be fighting the urge to laugh and I had a feeling I was making a fool of myself. No, I knew I was making a fool of myself. That didn't stop me.

"It's quite natural. Cats shed when they're agitated. We sweep up enough here each year to knit several sweaters. It's nothing to worry about. How long have you had a cat?"

"Not very," I admitted, wondering if I was going to survive this first day of cat-ownership.

"I see. Very well, hold him now, roll him onto his side. And talk to him."

She cleaned the wound again and very deftly stitched it. Then she bandaged it. All the while I cooed and gurgled at Beelzy rather stiffly. I didn't think my dignity would every recover from this experience. And I just knew Ray was laughing at me. Everybody else was.

"He'll probably have the bandage off in a matter of hours, but don't worry about that. Let him lick it - it's good for the wound. But don't let him bite at the stitch. You'll have to use shredded newspaper in his box instead of gravel for a day or two. It helps avoid infection, particularly as this is a back paw which doesn't usually get cleaned as often. And bring him back in a week and I'll clip the stitch out. Now let me give him a couple of shots...don't worry, he won't feel these. His leg's numb. Restrict his activity for a couple of days...if you can." She stuck that needle into Beelzy twice more and I flinched each time. "How old is he?" she asked.

"Thirty-four."

"What?"

"Uh - in human years. Sorry, I meant almost seven." Careful, old son, I told myself.

"Well, you really ought to think of having him neutered," she told him as she eyed the little furry sacs that bulged out from between Beelzy's hind legs. "It'll save you all sorts of trouble later on."

Beelzy began to growl.

"I um..." It was terrible - I wanted to laugh, but I knew I'd never ever be forgiven. I liked those furry little balls.

"Doesn't he spray?"

"Not really." I bit the inside of my lip and prayed for control. I could tell she was wondering what my flat smelled like.

After the day I'd spent, I was more than relieved to be home. I deposited Beelzy on the sofa and fixed myself a drink. I almost fixed one for Ray too, but then I remembered.

"The things you put me through," I muttered. "Do you have any idea of how frightened I was when I saw all that blood?" There was half-dried blood all over my jacket and the sickly sweet smell of it was making me queasy.

Beelzy meowed plaintively.

"Your paw hurt, does it? Well, it's your own fault." I was feeling unsympathetic. "I told you not to go in there."

The phone began to shrill.

"How is he?" It was Cowley.

"He's fine - I'm a wreck," I admitted.

Cowley chuckled. "I spoke to Colette about this situation. She tells me that until the wound heals, he'll remain a cat."

I groaned. Couldn't help it.

"Incidentally, you were right about those crates, though I can't say I approve of the way you handled the situation. But we'll discuss that another time. Is there anything you need?"

"Cat food."

"I'll sign an expense chit for it." The old bastard - I could swear he was laughing at me. "You might want to ring up Colette," he suggested. "You may have tomorrow off, but I expect to see you here Friday morning, clear?"

"Yessir. And thanks."

He rang off and I began to dial Colette's number when Beelzy hopped down off the sofa and promptly collapsed as the anaesthetized leg refused to support his weight. This time I laughed aloud, then froze as a baleful green gaze transfixed me. "I'm going to pay for that, aren't I?" Beelzy hobbled, three-legged, towards the loo. I put the receiver back in its cradle.

"You need to use the - uh...Ray, we don't have a cat box anymore, remember?

You threw it away when we moved."

Beelzy yowled and scratched at the door.

"Wait there, wait a mo'." I hunted around frantically and found an empty cardboard box that had recently held some new shirts. "'Won't need a cat box anymore' you said. 'All through with that,' you said." I grabbed a stack of newspapers and tossed them into the box, then ran back to the loo.

"Here, use this."

Beelzy struggled into the box, squatted and began to pee. I didn't think a little cat could hold so much. When he was finished, he stepped out as carefully as he could and gave his hurt leg what was meant to be a disdainful shake, splattering cat pee all over the carpet. Life with Beelzy was not going to be easy.

"Here, you're making a mess," I complained, and carried him out to the kitchen where he cleaned off his paws. "You've wet your bandage, too." I decided to remove the wet gauze and tape, figuring that if I didn't he would, and anyway, I didn't want him to come down with some raging infection that would prolong this little farce. I cut the bandage away and Beelzy was surprisingly cooperative. Then I carried him into the bedroom and deposited him beside the pillows. "You rest a bit. I'll bring you your supper."

I went back to clean up the cat box, but when I picked it up, the now sodden cardboard came apart in my hands, showering wet paper all over the carpeting.

It took me a while to clean up all the wet papers. By the time I'd finished, Beelzy was asleep in the middle of the bed, so I went back to the phone to call Colette. I was able to reach her at the hospital.

"Bodie - how is he?"

"Sleeping. It's not too bad - right near paw. But it needed a stitch, and the doctor gave him a tetanus shoot and some antibiotics."

"I don't think you have much to worry about," she told me.

"Life with Beelzy."

"Is he that bad?"

"He's...difficult. He's a lot like Ray in a cat suit."

She began to laugh. "That's a priceless description. How are you holding up?"

"Ack! Not well. I've been acting the dithering idiot since it happened.

Everyone's amused but me. How long do you suppose this will last?" Please let her say twenty-four hours, I thought.

"Hard to say - a week, ten days."

"Oh God. Do you think this has anything to do with his being shot last fall?"

"No, not really. He's over that. It won't be that bad, I promise you."

"You don't have to live with him. Ah, Colette, what's feline leukaemia?"

"A very unpleasant disease, why? He hasn't been exposed has he?"

"How do you become exposed?"

"Body fluids, cat to cat. Saliva, blood..."

"No, nothing like that." I felt my heart begin to beat again.

"Well, that's good. You take care of yourself now, and call me if you need anything."

A week to ten days...lovely, I thought. We'd only just moved in together a fortnight before, and now I had a cat instead of my lover. I bet he did this to get out of the housework, I thought. What a way to begin a marriage.

It was going to be a long siege.

Thursday I was worried. Ray...that was, Beelzy hadn't eaten a thing since lunch the day before. Well, Ray had eaten lunch. Beelzy hadn't eaten anything. (I was also confused.) I'd bought a cat box that morning and it hadn't been used. Beelzy was still asleep in Ray's overstuffed chair. There was something wrong, I could tell.

I called Dr. Stein late that afternoon. "My cat, Beelzy," I said, feeling the complete fool. "He's not eating and he hasn't used the cat box today."

"The lack of appetite isn't unusual, Mr. Bodie," she told me. "Cats often stop eating when they're feeling under the weather. If by tomorrow he's still refusing food, then bring him in and we'll see what we can do. As for the other, when was the last time he urinated?"

"Last night."

"Again, not unusual considering he's put nothing in his stomach all day, probably not even water. If he doesn't use the box tonight, do bring him in tomorrow, even if he eats. That's a little more serious."

Wonderful, I thought, a werecat with failing kidneys.

"I expect it'll all come right by tomorrow morning. How's the paw?"

"I took the bandage off last night," I told her. "He wet it when he used his box." I can't even begin to describe how it felt to be discussing my lover in this way. "I didn't want him to get an infection."

"Quite right, you did the correct thing. How does the paw look?"

I reached out and lifted the leg gently. "Reddish, puffy, some dried blood."

"Sounds quite normal. I'm sure he'll begin to act more like his old self soon. Oh, and Mr. Bodie?"

"Yeh?"

"I have hopes for you too."

I felt as though I'd just been given a prize.

After I rang off with the doctor, I set to tempting Beelzy into eating. I threw away the food that had been sitting in his bowl since breakfast.

"I've brought some lovely cat food for you," I said, but there was no flicker of interest. I emptied a grocery sack and showed him the cans.

Beelzy shut his eyes and frowned, and I began to wonder if he had a fever.

He looked feverish, all listless and dull. I felt his head and was rewarded by a look that said 'will you leave me alone?' I should have asked her about a fever, I thought as I opened the first can.

Ray refused to be tempted by seafood supper, or mixed grill (yummy chopped innards in gravy), or tuna fish or turkey and giblets, and I had to admit I didn't think I'd be too tempted either. But I kept on trying until the chair on which Beelzy was lying looked like a kitty cafeteria.

"I'm taking you back to the vet tomorrow morning," I threatened. Then I set to eating my own supper, chicken and chips, which had been sitting in the oven.

Beelzy's right eye opened a slit. His pink nose began to twitch.

"Would you eat this?" I asked, holding out a drumstick. Beelzy stretched a bit and sniffed at the chicken.

I tore off a strip of flesh and held it out, and Beelzy stretched a bit more, and nibbled at it, the he fell back and sighed.

"No, come on now, you were interested." Frantic to get him to eat, I tore the chicken into small pieces and held one in front of his face. "Give it a try, Ray. 's good."

This time the chicken went down and I felt irrationally pleased with myself.

I fed him another and another...

Then I fed him most of my chips.

Friday The catbox had been used in the night. I knew this without leaving my bed because the smell had wakened me. Beelzy lay on Ray's side of the bed cleaning his wound with great concentration.

"Phew, she was right, wasn't she?" I asked. Beelzy did not deign to acknowledge my comment, as if it was bad form to discuss kitty smells.

I changed the papers, showered and dressed.

"I suppose you'll be all right on your own today," I said as I ate breakfast. Again, Beelzy refused to be tempted by the cans of food I'd stored in the refrigerator. He did, however, accept a few slices of bacon from my plate.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," I promised as I prepared to leave. It might have been my imagination, but Beelzy seemed to be smiling.

I have to admit I worried about him all day. I kept imagining him getting into all sorts of dangerous situations, wondering if I was going to come home to cat singed or drowned or strangled or electrocuted. This was worse than having a small child.

Murph asked if I wanted to go for a pint after work, but I refused.

"Hen-pecked, are we?" he asked archly.

"Piss off, Murph."

"Come on, Bodie, don't let him wind you around his little pink finger. What 's he 'ave, I 'aven't?"

"Pack it in, it's not going to work."

"I'm wounded," he said, clutching his chest. He could be a right prat when he wanted to.

The smell of cat was becoming fairly familiar, I realized as I opened the door of the flat.

"Have a cat, do you?" someone asked. Mrs. Ritter from upstairs. She wrinkled her nose. "You ought to have him fixed, Bodie."

"We're just cat-sitting for a friend," I explained.

"You know, if you give him a teaspoon of vinegar each day I his food, most of the smell will go away." She went on up the stairs. "If you need anything, just call."

I locked the door behind me. "I need my partner back," I said with a sigh.

Beelzy was curled up on the bed looking the perfect little angel. "Sweet as you can be," I said stroking the silky head, "I want Ray back."

I fell to fixing supper, Beelzy's first. But for the third time he rejected the food. I was beginning to get the message. Cat food was all right for cats, but Ray wasn't about to eat the stuff. He skewered bits of my steak on his front claws, and ate them daintily. I could tell he was feeling better. I objected when he began to chew at the steak itself, and was rewarded with a stinging slap from a greasy paw. I finished my meal in the loo, with the door shut. Beelzy sat outside and howled. I had a funny feeling that I'd been had.

Saturday/Sunday More of the same. I was almost glad to go to work. Beelzy seemed to take great pleasure in doing just what I didn't want him to do. He chewed on electrical cords and shredded lampshades, savaged my shoes and batted my watch around the floor in the middle of the night. (Had to dig it out from under a chair.) I kept wondering why, if he felt so perky, he was still a cat.

Monday I stumbled into the flat about 6am, dog-tired and dispirited after eighteen hours of almost useless running about. Every lead we'd had either proved false or worse than useless. I'd been teamed with Murphy who'd alternated between fits of sullenness and bouts of excessive friendliness. Murph needed to be taught to keep his hands to himself.

I managed to reach the bedroom and collapsed face-first into the pillows, promising myself I'd undress in a bit - just as soon as I had my second wind.

The bed dipped, and there was a soft, whuffling noise in my left ear.

"God, Ray, don't do that!" The warm, moist breath was having an unexpected effect. I pushed Beelzy away and put a pillow over my head.

A few seconds later Beelzy stepped up onto my backside, lay down and began to purr, making starfish paws, those needle-sharp claws digging uncomfortably into my arse.

"For Christ's sake!" I shouted, rolling over and dislodging Beelzy who landed on the floor with an 'umph' sound. "Why won't you let me..." Then I noticed he was limping and I went cold inside. What had I done?

I inspected the wounded foot. It may have been my imagination, but the paw seemed redder and more swollen than it had last time I looked. "I'm sorry, Ray, I didn't mean to hurt you. Here, lie down and let me put some ice on it or something." But when I set Beelzy on the bed he jumped off, landing clumsily, then limped out of the room.

I was desperate. I dialled the vet.

"There's no one here this early," a girl told me. "Except me. I clean here. I can give you an emergency number if you like."

I took down the number and dialled. Beelzy limped out to the kitchen and began to cry.

"Veterinary Emergency Service."

"It's my cat, he's hurt his paw...He's just fallen on the injured paw and it seems to be more swollen than before. He's crying."

"Seems to be or is more swollen?"

"Seems to be. I can't swear to it, but it looks pretty red and..."

Just then Beelzy limped out of the kitchen and around the living room. He was limping on a different leg this time. The little bastard.

"If you need someone to come out, we can send a doctor, but it's expensive."

"Thank you, I think he'll survive." I rang off and grabbed for Beelzy.

"You little sod, making me worry like that over nothing, c'mere!"

He darted away and hid under the sofa.

By then I was wide awake, so I changed the cat box and put down fresh water and food. Then I undressed and crawled under the covers. I could hear Beelzy using the box, and a few seconds later heard him in the kitchen, eating the food I'd set out.

"It's what you were after all along, isn't it, you little bastard? I hope you get well soon," I grumbled. "You're going to pay for this week, Ray."

I woke up about noon and found I was feeling better. Beelzy was curled up beside me, sleeping very determinedly, and I found it hard to be annoyed at him now he was being so angelic and quiet. I lifted the injured paw with my forefinger and saw that it looked almost normal. It was a little darker pink than the others but it was scrupulously clean, no dried bloody anywhere that I could see, and the pad no longer bulged on either side of the stitch.

It looked nearly healed. "I wish I could take you back today," I said, feeling wistful. "The sooner you're healed the sooner I have my partner back."

Beelzy woke and stretched fiercely, his toes splaying with the effort. He licked his side and rolled over to clean the other one. Then he began to purr and roll around, swatting at my hand. This was his 'cute' act.

"Are you going to be sweet today?" I asked, not quite ready to trust this sudden change in disposition. I wouldn't have put it past him to be planning some sort of major outrage.

We breakfasted together on bacon and toast, and Beelzy managed to behave himself through the meal. I began to hope not only that it signalled Ray's return to good health - more important, Ray's return.

There was a rap on the door while I was washing up.

"Mrs Ritter, hullo."

"I've popped down to see your houseguest. He is still here, isn't he?"

"Uh, yes...come in, please." I liked Mrs. Ritter. She'd made supper for us the night we moved in, and we'd eaten in her flat upstairs surrounded by her five cats. She was always stopping by to see how we were settling in, bringing us home-baked pastries and fresh flowers.

"I see him staring out of the window each day when I do my shopping. He looks like a sweet little thing. Oh, there you are, puss!"

Beelzy minced out, tail like a flag, and rubbed against her legs.

"What a dear baby you are, aren't you? What a little love. What's his name?"

It took me a second. "Beelzebub," I told her.

"That's a criminal name for such a little darling." She picked him up, cooing all the while. "Are you keeping him for long?"

"Not very. End of the week probably."

"Here, what's this?" She'd found the stitch. "Did the sweet baby have an accident?" She inspected it carefully. "Well, it's fairly well healed, do you want me to take the stitch out for you? Save you a trip to the vet."

"You can do that?" I asked, and she nodded, sending me running for the nail scissors.

"Now you just hold him tight and we'll have this nasty thing out in two shakes." A snip and it was done. "There, does my little man feel better now?" She rolled him over onto his stomach and began to pet him in long strokes down his back, smoothing the ruffled fur gently. "He'll be just fine now. He'll be his old self soon enough," she told me and I had to stifle a laugh. "What happened? Or don't you know?"

"Bit of broken glass. Thanks for the help. How'd you know how to do that?"

I asked. The woman had earned my eternal gratitude.

"When you've had cats - lots of them - all your life, you learn how to take care of them or you spend a fortune in vet bills and time. Well, you must come up and visit the children sometime - I have six now - and your partner too...where is he, by the way?"

"Holiday."

"You don't holiday together?" she asked in a way that made me wonder how much she knew or had guessed about us.

"Not always. We work together, too."

"Ah, then it's a good job to get away from each other occasionally. Well, things to do. If you need anything, just ask."

She let herself out and I sat down in the chair and began to pet Beelzy just as she had done. I was rewarded with a loud, moist purr.

"Now you can work on getting well, can't you?"

"Prrrrupt?"

"You'll be your old self soon, she said so, didn't she? Mrs. Ritter didn't know the half of it."

Tuesday I let myself in carefully, balancing a paper sack full of supper, and a grocery sack full of essentials like bread and cheese. No sign of Beelzy.

Lazy little sod was probably sleeping as usual. I found it hard to understand how cats could sleep so much.

I carried everything into the kitchen and put away the groceries, then went out to look for Beelzy. No sign of him in the bedroom. I even looked under the bed. And he wasn't in the loo, either, though the cat box needed changing rather emphatically.

This was becoming routine, and I reflected that we might as well get a cat - a real one. It would have been nice if it wasn't Ray I had to clean up after and worry about.

Just then I heard a crash from the kitchen, and ran out to investigate, gun drawn, ready for anything. I found Beelzy half inside the sack that held our supper, eating with gusto.

"Here, that's not fair!" I hauled Beelzy out of the sack and was dealt a sharp blow to the nose. I dropped his hindquarters and he went back into the sack.

"I'll just put that someplace you can't get to it," I told him, picking up the sack and shaking him out of it. Then I put dinner in the oven and went back to changing the cat box.

I removed the soiled litter, but when I returned I found a little present in the box.

"I just changed that!" I groaned. Beelzy was perched on the edge of the bath, staring at me. "And you're supposed to wait until I put the litter in." It was worse than useless, of course. Half the time I'd have sworn Beelzy understood every word I said, and the other half...well, I just wasn't sure. "Are all cats as obnoxious as you?" I asked, but Beelzy didn't deign to answer.

When I sat down to supper I found that each piece of fish had a bite taken out of it. "Trust you to be that perverse," I muttered as I broke off the chewed parts and gave them to Beelzy. "Y'know, Ray, I never fancied spending my middle-age as an eccentric old cat owner."

"Rrrroww?"

"Nah, always thought of myself goin' out in a burst of glory somewhere, and not makin' it to this point. Thing is, I'd rather have my partner back than a cat, no matter how sweet that cat is...no offence?"

"Rrup."

"Good. Anyway..." I paused and stared at Beelzy who seemed transfixed by the sight of something just beyond my left shoulder. From the look on the cat's face, whatever it was looming back there was about eight feet tall, covered in warts and spewing green saliva. I swung around.

Nothing.

When I turned back, Beelzy was staring at me.

"What was it?"

Beelzy went back to his meal.

"Cowley was asking how much longer you'd be out of commission - as if I'd know. I told him..."

The damn cat was doing it again. He was staring over my left shoulder with a look of such intensity I was sure there had to be something multi-legged and hairy about to land on me. I turned carefully.

Again, nothing.

This time I stared up at the walls, wondering if Beelzy had seen a small insect crawling along. Nothing.

When I looked back, Beelzy was eating quietly.

"What is it you're looking at, huh?"

"Mmmrrr?"

"As I was saying," I continued, sure that this was yet another great cat mystery humans would never solve. Perhaps cats could see into other dimensions. "As I was saying, I think Cowley's about ready to dock your pay for this, old son, so you'd better...oh, not again!"

Beelzy, hair standing on end, was staring past my right shoulder this time.

From the look on his face, this couldn't be another false alarm. I was ready for a wasp the size of an ICBM. I turned...

Nothing.

"Now look," I began as I turned back to Beelzy. This time the look on the cat's face was one of unadulterated amusement. I'd been had by an expert.

"Very funny, very funny."

I carried our dishes to the sink and tossed the scraps into the garbage bag.

I decided I'd do the dishes in the morning.

Morning...dishes? I'd left dirty dishes...what happened to last night's dishes?

I hadn't done them, had I? I thought very hard. No, I'd left them in the sink and was going to do them when I got home tonight. Then the penny dropped. I poured myself a glass of beer and sat down at the table.

"Y'know, Ray, I have to confess something. I'm not really proud of this, but it's been eating at me, and, well...you see, being without you all this time has been difficult. I mean, I miss you and all, especially at work, but it's the sex that's the hardest for me. Going without it, I mean. And well, this afternoon Murphy and I...you know how it is, Ray."

Suddenly it wasn't Beelzy sitting on the table in front of me but a stark naked Ray Doyle, murder in his eyes and grease on his face.

"No I do not, how is it, Bodie?" he demanded.

From my vantage point, I had a marvellous view. Ray always got excited when he was angry. "You mean that you and Murphy had it off at work while I was stuck here in a cat suit?"

"Stuck? Give me a break, all right? Since when do cats do the washing up?

Patent that and you could make a fortune, old son."

He looked sheepish. "You twigged?"

"You're damn right I did. How long have you been okay?" I was somewhere between wanting to kill him and wanting to kiss him.

"Since about the time Mrs. Ritter took the stitch out. It was getting rid of it gave me back the power to change. You mad?"

"Only a bit."

"You and Murphy?"

"No, but if I had it'd served you right, you perverse sod."

He grinned, secure in his claim on my body as well as my heart.

"You know, I'm starving. A few chewed bits of fish aren't enough for Ray Doyle. I don't suppose you'd fix some supper for me."

"Oh, fix it yourself, you spoiled thing." I was pleased to have him back, but I wasn't about to be his servant...well, I'd have to be coaxed a bit.

"Please, Bodie? My foot is hurting me a little." He extended one foot and waggled the toes in my face. There was a pinkish cut on the heel. I kissed the tip of the big toe.

"What do I get for playing servant?"

Ray wrapped his leg around my neck and pulled me forward to plant a kiss on my lips. This was more like it. "Ever made it with a contortionist?" He whispered.

Supper was somewhat delayed while we made other use of the table.

--Candlemas 1982

---

The Persian of CI5

Midsummer. Nice time of year. Bodie and I were heading north for a midsummer festival this year, instead of spending the holiday at The Dancing Maiden. I was looking forward to a few days of revelling and feasting and...other things. I was feeling particularly good this year. It was the first time we'd been able to go on a real holiday since I was shot. And since Beelzy was no longer a problem this festival was going to be just for us - me 'n' Bodie.

After work that day we rushed back to our flat to pack, and caught the train that would carry us up to Inverness, to a little place I'd heard of called The Green King. John and Jane had recommended it highly and Colette had mentioned it to me again in her last letter, so, being a great believer in serendipity, I made reservations for us. Bodie was pleased; he always is.

There are times when I worry about him; worry that he's just being dragged along in the wake of all this, accepting this totally alien sort of lifestyle just because he loves me. At Beltaine this year - our anniversary - we went to The Dancing Maiden and he did participate...sort of.

He came out to the fields and danced the dance with me. (Though he did draw the line at leaping through the flames. I know he only did it 'cause he loves me, but it was a lovely thing to do. Bodie must have magic of his own (everyone does, but so few of us are able to touch it much less use it) but he's never shown any indication of 'special' talents. I wish he could find his magic. I'd feel better about mine then.

Anyway, we'd been underway for about an hour when, predictably enough, Bodie announced he was starving. So we walked down the corridor towards the dining car, peeking into compartments as we went (we're both great people watchers). In the last compartment in the car, we spotted one of the most gorgeous women either of us had ever seen. She was Eurasian, dressed in white, and had hair like black silk spilling down almost to the train seat.

She was holding a large white Persian cat on her lap, but was otherwise alone in the car. Bodie nudged me. "Shall we go in and compliment her on her pussy?" he asked.

"I can't take you anywhere, can I?" I snapped, laughing a little despite myself. He's so endearingly goofy at times.

"It's a great ice-breaker," he insisted, rapping lightly on the door to attract her attention. She motioned us in. "What a beautiful cat," Bodie said to her.

"Why, thank you." She had a low musical voice, and no discernible accent.

"Won't you sit down?"

"Male of female?" Bodie asked, scratching the cat's head just behind the ears. He knows we like it there.

"Male. His name is Murphy," she replied, at which we both snorted with laughter.

"We have a friend named Murphy," I explained, "a less Persian-cat person I have yet to meet."

"People can sometimes surprise one," she said with a smile. "Are you two going up to Scotland, or are you on a shorter journey?"

"All the way to Inverness," Bodie told her, having recovered some of his composure. Murphy meowed loudly and jumped from her lap to Bodie's where he proceeded to shed all over Bodie's good black cords.

"By the way, I'm Ray Doyle and this is Bodie."

"Beatrice Emrys. Call me Bea, please." She chuckled. "Did you expect something like May Ling?"

"Well, perhaps something a little more exotic," I confessed as Murphy stepped delicately from Bodie's lap to mine.

"My father was Welsh," she explained. "And my mother, although she was born in Vietnam lived most of her life in France with her father's people, so you see, I am exotic. I just hide it exceptionally well." She smiled. "And at the moment I'm rather hungry." She looked from me to Bodie. "You were on your way to the dining car, were you not?"

"Um, yes, would you..." Bodie began.

"I'd rather not leave Murphy alone and I don't know if they would welcome him, well-behaved as he may be, in the dining car. Can I ask you to bring something back for the both of us?"

"Oh certainly," Bodie breathed, totally captivated. He's incorrigible when it comes to lovely women.

"We'll go to the canteen and bring back enough for all of us, that is, if you'd not object to some company?"

"How marvellous," she exclaimed. "I didn't like to ask, of course, but a trip this long can be so boring without companions." She took Murphy from me. "Come here you rascal. Ray and Bodie are going to fetch us some supper, isn't that lovely of them?"

Murphy began to purr.

"So," Bodie began as we waited in line behind half a dozen people who had the same idea, "what d'you reckon..."

"About Bea? Is there something to reckon?" I asked innocently.

"D'you think she's interested...in me?" he asked, an Irish twinkle in his eyes.

"She's not daft, mate. Probably saw an easy touch, is all. You're paying, aren't you?"

"I thought you could handle yourself and Murphy."

"Don't have to handle meself, do I?" I whispered into his back. "You do it rather better than I could ever hope to." He turned a lovely shade of crimson. It was most gratifying.

We had a fine picnic in Bea's compartment, and talked about travel - she was on her way to Inverness to stay at The Green King too - and history, and music (she was a cellist) and a lot of other things. It was almost midnight when I noticed that the conversation was beginning to lag. Murphy was sound asleep, curled up on the seat next to Bea, and Bodie was nearly asleep, done in by a long day, the wine we'd had with dinner and the heat of the compartment.

"I'd better tuck the lad in," I observed, hauling Bodie to his feet and propelling him to the door. "Thanks Bea, it was lovely." She did not speak, but her reply was eloquent. I read it in her golden, almond-shaped eyes, and heard in my mind as I steered Bodie back to our compartment, 'Any time at all, Raymond Doyle.' I had planned to be up early the next morning, half wanting to bring Bea her breakfast and to spend an hour or so in her company, but Bodie was feeling randy after a good long sleep, and he climbed up into my bunk and woke me very nicely, and kept me busy all through the breakfast hour. In fact, I forgot all about lovely Bea until I saw her stepping down from the train at Inverness, holding a docile Murphy against her chest. I wondered if she'd like another cat, but put the idea out of my mind.

Bodie hailed her. "Bea! Would you like to share a car with us?"

"I'm being met by some friends later today," she explained as she set Murphy down on the pavement. He looked disgruntled. "If you'd like to wait with me we can motor down together..."

"I think we'd better go on, then," Bodie said before I could answer. "Just so you have a way of getting there."

"We could have waited, Bodie," I told him as we motored south out of the city towards The Green King.

"Where's the map? You do have one, don't you?"

"Take a left at the next crossroads and answer my question."

"It wasn't a question, it was an observation, but to answer what you didn't ask, no I'm not jealous. She will be at the inn after all."

"I didn't think you were jealous," I protested wondering why he wasn't.

"Oh no?"

"Well, maybe..."

"Well then, maybe I am, just a bit."

"Oh, thank God. I thought you didn't care anymore."

"Just love you for your body, eh?"

We arrived at the inn at mid-morning. It was a lovely place, though not so homey as The Dancing Maiden. The garden was magnificent, though, and the inn as clean and neat as anyone could hope. The young man behind the desk greeted us cordially.

"I'm Jeff Spencer," he said with a pronounced American accent.

"Ray Doyle," I offered. "We have reservations."

"Oh yes. I'm glad you decided to stay with us." I signed the register. "We serve lunch at one-thirty," Jeff told us.

I looked over at Bodie. "We'll be there," I said, sure of his priorities.

"You might want to take a walk," Jeff suggested. "Though I wouldn't stray too far. It's going to rain later."

"Sunny out," Bodie observed, looking at the shaft of coloured light spilling through the stained glass window over the desk.

"Is now. Won't be later."

"Weather forecaster, are you?" Bodie asked, a little arch.

"He does live here, sunshine," I reminded him.

"Not me, my wife. I've never known her to miss yet." He plucked a few dead leaves off a fire-red geranium. "Warts."

"Beg your pardon?" I asked, not sure I'd heard the last bit.

"Warts - that's how she forecasts the weather."

Bodie stared for a moment. "Pull the other one - if has bells."

Jeff laughed. "For just a minute, you weren't sure, were you?"

"He was prepared for an old woman on a broomstick, I think," I told him.

"He's new to magic."

"How'd you hear about us?" Jeff asked. "Oh, wait, you said you were friends of Colette's, didn't you" He shut the register and swept the pile of leaves into his hand. "You're doubly welcome, in that case."

"She's a friend of yours, then?" Bodie asked.

"For a lot of years. I owe her. She's a special lady, isn't she?"

We agreed she was that.

"I've gotta run. If you're going, you'd better get started before the rain does."

We dropped our things in our room and went back out. Bodie wanted to stroll down towards the loch to see if Nessy was home. The countryside was stark and beautiful in green and brown. In the distance we could see snow on the mountains. The loch itself was a brownish-grey and was choppy that day, due in part, no doubt, to the storm that was brewing. The clouds were dark and heavy over the glen.

"No hunting tonight, lover," Bodie told me.

"Isn't this the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

"Almost." He said it so quietly that I nearly missed it...and the implication. But when I did catch it, I found I couldn't stop smiling.

We had to run a bit to stay dry, but we arrived back at the inn just as the sky opened up. We stood in the doorway for a few minutes watching the downpour.

"Glad you got back in time." Jeff was standing behind us, holding two glasses of wine. "This will take a bit of the chill off," he said. "Lunch is nearly ready if you'd like to go in."

We took a little table near the window so we could watch the storm.

"Bonjour." I looked up into a lovely little face with dark, merry eyes.

"We have today sole Veronique or breast of chicken Florentine, or if you wish, my 'usband will make you 'amburger from California with sprouted seeds and raw vegetables." I was completely enchanted. "I suggest the chicken or fish," she added with a mischievous grin.

"Fish by all means," Bodie told her. "You're Jeff's wife?"

"Oui. My name is Dahout. I'm French."

"Really?" Bodie asked, wide-eyed. I kicked him.

"Don't make fun of the person who prepares you meals," she warned in her enticing accent, but her smile was friendly. She had obviously felt Bodie's not inconsiderable charm already. "And you, Mister Doyle?"

"Chicken."

"Two very good choices...but my 'usband will be disappointed. There is an excess of greenery in the kitchen. I will bring you some more wine."

She slipped away, half turning to smile at Bodie over her shoulder.

"Married woman, sunshine," I warned.

"No harm in looking, so long as you don't plow in the field."

"I'm not sure I like you looking," I admitted, sipping my wine.

Bodie leaned forward. "Speaking of looking, my love, look who just arrived."

I turned to see Bea in the doorway. She had her arms around Jeff and was laughing and hugging him. There were two men standing behind her, one small and dark, one taller and fairer with a well-trimmed beard and moustache.

Murphy, ignore by the crowd at the door, marched purposefully up to our table, leapt onto it and began cleaning himself.

"This is your cat?" Dahout asked. "What a beauty!"

"Name's Murphy," Bodie told her, "and he's not ours."

"Oh Mairphee, you're a bad boy!" Dahout set down the wine bottle and picked the cat up. "Shame on you for disturbing our guests." She kissed the tip of his pink nose and tossed him onto the floor, pointing towards the doorway in a clear gesture of banishment. Then she refilled our glasses, smiling at Bodie the whole time. "You would like some salad, yes? It will make Jeff so 'appy. He is from California and he dotes on salads."

"Yes, of course," I said.

She turned to leave and met Bea who was on her way to our table. They greeted each other like long lost sisters, jabbering in French and speaking too fast for me to follow. I realized, after listening for a few moments, that it wasn't classic French they were speaking.

"Ray, Bodie, why don't you join us at our table? I'd like you to meet some friends of mine." Bea put her hand on my shoulder and the sensation was electric. From the look in his eyes, Bodie knew it, too.

"Sounds good to me," he said, and I gave him full marks for generosity. We moved our place sett8ings and wine glasses to the larger table. Then Bea introduced us.

"Ray Doyle, Bodie, clockwise from myself you have Tomas," she said, indicating the smaller man, "Daffydd and," here she paused and gave the third person at table a strange, quizzical, almost challenging look.

"Inge," said the beautiful blonde who made up the foursome. "How nice to meet you. How do you know Bea?"

"They picked me up on the train."

"Oh! Then they're the ones you told us about...oh my!"

Oh my? I thought. What had she told them?

"Where's Murphy?" Bodie asked.

Inge smiled. "I took him upstairs. He was becoming a pest." Tomas and Daffydd grinned. "What do you gentlemen do for a living?" she asked, pouring herself a glass of wine from our bottle.

"We're civil servants," I told her.

"Oh, you push a pencil? That's the life, eh? Quelling riots in the accounting office, high adventure around the water cooler..."

"Inge, darling, why don't you go upstairs and find Murphy?"

She began to laugh. "What Tomas is saying is that I'm being rude or bitchy or both. My apologies. I'm a sort of civil servant as well, so I really hadn't intended any insult."

"None taken," Bodie assured her, but I wasn't so sure. He had a funny look on his face that said he was none too taken with Inge.

The rest of the meal progressed smoothly enough. Outside the thunder crashed and lightning flashed, but inside we were all quite cosy and friendly. Bea had made it abundantly clear that if I was to stumble into her room by mistake that night, I wouldn't be unwelcome. It was tempting.

Tomas and Daffydd were obviously a couple, which left me wondering about Inge, and Dahout continued to flirt outrageously with Bodie.

By the time we finished lunch, the storm had passed through. It was raining gently when Bodie and I went upstairs to unpack and, frankly, to take a nap.

We weren't over-full, but the effects of the wine here were quite different from chateau DM; we were both a little sleepy. I was in the loo for a few minutes and when I came out, Bodie had opened the shutters and was leaning out of the window, oblivious to the rainwater dripping down from the eaves onto his hair.

"What're you looking at, you great daft thing?" I asked, pulling his damp hair gently. Then I saw Dahout in the garden. She was walking among the roses, naked and wet, looking for all the world like a dryad. She bent to savour the scent of an apricot-coloured rose.

"You're a dirty old man." I accused half-heartedly, feeling strangely moved by the sight.

"She did a dance...just held her arms up to the sky and danced," he whispered.

"Ray, she looks like the woman I met in the forest that night."

Of course she did. I should have expected that.

"You really want her," I observed, feeling no jealousy, but a strange sense of helplessness.

"She's not for the likes of me," he said, and in a moment the awe was gone and it was my Bodie standing there with one arm hooked around my waist.

"But you, on the other hand," he began, picking me up and tossing me onto the bed, "you're just right for me, aren't you, my beauty?"

We loved for what seemed like hours, tasting and touching and telling each all the silly things lovers say when they make love. I told Bodie I wished I could help him find his magic.

"My magic? I don't have any magic."

"You do. Everyone does. It's just hard for some of us to find, is all." I rolled on top of him and pulled the sheets up to cover my bare backside.

"I'll survive...eh, Ray?"

"Hmmmmm?"

"Don't look now, but we have a visitor."

I turned and saw Murphy sitting at the foot of the bed, staring at us with quizzical blue eyes. "Hullo Murphy."

"Maiiooow!"

"Wha'd he say?"

"I'm not a translator, Bodie. C'mere puss, c'mon..." I held out my hand and he stalked up and rubbed his head against it. "Who's a pretty boy then?" I asked.

"'ere, how'd he get in? The door was shut."

I shrugged. "How'd you do it, Murph, hmmmm? Who's a clever boy, then?"

He threw himself onto his side and rolled around. Like our Murph, this one was a tease.

"He does that almost as well as Beelzy," Bodie observed, rubbing Murphy's soft belly fur.

"Almost?"

"Doesn't make me all excited when he does it."

"Mmmmmmm." I rubbed my face on his chest. Then, with Murphy watching, we made love again. When we finished, Murphy stretched, stood up and licked his chest, then jumped down and went to the door where he scratched and miaowed until I got up to let him out.

"Bodie, I have this funny feeling about Murphy all of a sudden.

He pulled me down into his arms. "I have this funny feeling about you," he said, driving all of my suspicions right out of my mind.

That night, the bonfires would be lit. Jeff had kept his firewood dry under a canvas, but he still sprinkled paraffin over it to make sure it would light. I helped him lay three fires, and we talked.

"How long have you known Colette?" he asked.

"About a year. We met at The Dancing Maiden." He nodded.

"It was visiting there about seven years ago that made me want a place of my own. Dahout had a similar dream so here we are. Your Bodie is taken with her, isn't he?"

"I'd say the reverse is also true," I snapped, taken aback by his bluntness.

He laughed at me. "Oh don't look so serious. Ray, Dahout and I married because I wanted to be with her forever, but we took each other with no strings - nothing to bind us but the need to be together."

"Oh...well..." I didn't know what to say.

"What I mean is, neither of us are jealous, okay?"

I nodded, still a bit ill at ease. I pride myself on being uninhibited, but I'd just come smack up against an interesting brick wall - I found I was a lot more conservative about relationships that Jeff or Dahout apparently were. I understood their attitude, of course, but I had a hard time dealing with it. I guess I'm more of a twentieth-century man than I pretend sometimes. "Tell me about you and Colette," I asked. "How did you come to know her?"

"I met her in San Francisco about ten years ago," he told me as we dragged the last of the wood to the fire site. "I was going through some really heavy mind-trips," he confessed. "I was a prick." He smiled reminiscently.

"It was Colette who got my head screwed back on the right way. Christ, you name it, I did it - drugs, alcohol, all kinds of sexual scenes, I stole, I couldn't keep a job. I was involved in this weird black magic group from up north; amateurs mostly, but it was real soul-retarding stuff; very nasty.

"Someone from the hospital brought Colette one night because he knew she was into the occult and I guess he figured he'd impress her and get into her pants - you know." He wiped his hands on his jeans and went back for the paraffin. "Well, she was really upset by some of the stuff that was going down and she said so - you know Colette." He stopped for a moment to wrestle with the cap. "Ah, shit, broke a finger-nail. Anyway, she told everyone she thought they ought to quit this nonsense and the guy who brought her got ugly; said she had no right to put down other folks' religion. She told him she didn't have any problems with honest religious impulses, but this was a group of children trying to prove something, trying to prove they could break every taboo in the book, trying to prove they were 'cooler' than the rest of the world. He asked her if she really thought she had a pipeline to God, and she said, cool as anything - you know how Colette can be - 'I thought you didn't believe in God.' Wham! Like a good slap in the face. Well, that slap hit me, too, and I listened to her. Dunno why, 'cause I was pretty far gone by then. I was stoned out of my mind most of the time, and thought I was a pretty heavy dude just because I could spit on the crucifix and fuck a lot of foxy chicks who were impressed with devil-worship. But like I said," he sprinkled liquid paraffin on the firewood, "I heard her, really heard her that night and she was the first human being who ever made sense to me. She wasn't say 'come to God' or anything, she was saying 'don't waste your time in this life with such stupidity. Take responsibility for your own life.'" He stood back and nodded, remembering the moment, savouring it. "You know, I realized then I' d never bothered to do that. I'd always said, 'well, I got bad breaks,' or 'it's the boss' fault,' or 'it's my family's fault' or stuff like that.

"Anyway, I was about to deck the guy because he was getting real abusive with her, but instead I just came up to her and asked if she'd mind if I drove back to town with her, told her I wanted out and she said she'd be happy to take me back. So then the guy says to her, 'oh, that's it, is it?

You like the white boys? Well just remember you're a nigger just like me!' and she said, 'oh no, not just like you. Not like you at all.' Man she was so great. Then she reminded him they had to work together and he'd better watch his manners."

I found myself grinning at the story. That was Colette, the coolest, most together lady I'd ever met. I remembered all over how very much I loved her. Jeff did too, it seemed.

"Well, the rest is history," he said as we walked to the second pile of wood and he sprinkled that as well. "If only because she put up with me she's a candidate for sainthood. I'm not the type for revelations," he admitted, "and I was a difficult case. I guess it was two things that made the difference - she never let me blame anyone of anything else for the fix I was in and she never demanded I accept anything she told me as gospel. I lived with her for about a year and except for the house rules like no dope, no excess drinking, and that sort of thing, she never demanded anything of me. She had a lot of 'strays' in that big old house, some stayed and learned some couldn't handle the responsibility. It is a responsibility too, you know?"

"Yeh, I know," I admitted. We emptied the last of the paraffin on the third pile of wood and walked back to the inn. "She was my teacher for a while.

I wish I could have had more time," I told him. "I just don't think I've learned enough to be really comfortable with my talent."

"You're like Colette?" he asked. "A shape-shifter?"

"Uh-huh, but not a very good one."

"I'm like a battery," he told me as we walked. "A power source. It's a real passive talent. What's your totem animal?"

"I only do one other shape, a fiendish little marmalade cat. I suppose he's my totem." What a thought!

"You ought to talk..."

"Jeff!" It was Dahout in the doorway of the inn. "If you're finished laying the fires, there's a lot of other things to do."

He shook his head and laughed. "Ask me again why I married her," he said with a wry grin. "She never lets me rest. We'll talk later," he promised, and then he ran off.

I told Bodie, as I always do, that he was free to skip the ceremony, but, as he always does, he said he'd like to come along. It's a sweet gesture from someone who feels this is all harmless nonsense. I've explained to him that I don't entirely believe in the old gods, but paying my respects is a nice idea. Besides, observing the old holidays gives me a sense of the continuity of my history that's important to me now I'm getting older.

So Bodie and I were together that night when the fires were lighted. There were several dozen people in the field. Many of them were skyclad, though some wore light-coloured robes and a few, like Bodie and myself, were casually dressed. I would have happily stripped off, but I knew it would make Bodie uncomfortable. As it was, I could see he was starting to regret having agreed to participate. I put my arm around his waist. "At least Inge isn't here," I whispered, and he grinned.

Bea and Jeff entered the circle together. Kev had said something about the high-priestess here - a Frenchwoman, was it? He had also said she was very powerful. I felt a prickle of anticipation as Dahout entered the circle.

She was dressed in a shimmering white robe and a crown of white and red roses. A heavy amber necklace hung around her neck. She walked to the centre of the circle, to the small fire laid there, and held up her hands for silence.

"This is the time of the rose," she intoned. "The triumph of light is light 's death. We celebrate the dance which moves worlds. Dance with me."

She walked around the fire once, shedding her robe as she went. On the second circuit, she pulled Bodie into the dance. I grabbed his other hand with my right and felt someone clasp my left. We began to weave around in swirling, twining patterns, dancing around the fires, past the woven wicker figure of the God resting on the flower-decked altar. Dahout raised a chant.

SEED sower GRAIN reborn HORNED ONE COME BRIGHT sun DARK death Lord of the winds COME

SHE who is at CENter SHE WHO BLOOMS LEAFy one GREEN one LEAFy one GREEN one SHE who is CROWNED SHE who embraces!

This continued as we danced, some chanting the God chant, some the Goddess.

HAR HAR HOU HOU DANCE ici DANCE la!

JOUE ici Joue la!

SUN child summer CROWNED IO EVOHE!

HAIL old Moon WISE one HAIL old Moon WISE one HAIL old Moon ma MAH MA mi AH ee mah MAH ah MAH ah AH...

The chant became wordless vibration in some throats.

DANCE ici Aaaaahhhhhhhh DANCE la!

Eeeeehhhhhhhhaaaaaaaa JOUE ici AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH JOUE la!

MAAAHHHHHHHHHHMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I could feel my own voice rising into an atonal cry of pleasure, of sheer excitement and joy, breathing the sounds, feeling them echoing throughout my body. Beside me, Bodie was howling at the moon - one of the eeriest noises I've ever heard. Dahout's voice was raised in harmony.

The dance slowed and stopped. We stood, hands linked, voices raised in wordless praise of life. I shed my clothes. Dahout undressed Bodie. I needed to feel the night air, the moonlight wash over me.

The air seemed denser and light shimmered around us, almost a tangible force. Coloured sparks flew in and out of the circle and upwards. I watched them rise and saw the cone above us, luminous and white in the darkened sky.

Dahout pulled Bodie to the fire and raised her hands to the light. Suddenly the separate threads of sound became one.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Bodie's arms were raised, the firelight playing on his face making him feral, unearthly. He was glowing with sweat.

The sound grew louder.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

And Dahout cried: "to ME, TO ME!" and I felt as though my soul had been released from my body. It floated up into the cone of light while my body sank into the damp grass, and I heard it whispering to me: 'the God has gone into the corn', it whispered. 'He is in tree and vine. The sun is within us.' I rolled around, rubbing my face against the cool, green spears.

I could smell flowers - Dahout and Bodie were tossing wreaths of roses into the flames. I stood.

"Set sail," they chorused and the rest of us repeated it. "Set sail, set sail. One thing becomes another, in the mother, in the mother."

The wicker figure was fed to the flames and as it burned, Dahout led Bodie to each of the coveners. Before each of us they linked hands so we would see the flames through the circle of their arms. "See with clear sight and know the mystery of the unbroken circle," she told us.

And when they had come to each of us, Dahout went to the fire and pulled out a wrapped package. She broke it open and held up a wreath of bread.

"Behold, the God has gone into the grain!"

Bodie came back to me and took my hand. There was something in hi that was not my Bodie.

"The sun is on the water, the God is in the corn!" she broke the bread and passed it to each of us and we ate. Then she took up a cup. "He is in tree and vine. The sun is within us." And she passed the chalice so each of us could drink.

"The sun is not lost."

"He will feed us," we answered.

"The sun is within us."

"See how we shine!"

"The sun is not lost."

"He will quench our thirst."

"The sun is within us."

"SEE how we SHINE!"

the others sat and I pulled Bodie down onto the grass, into my arms.

"You are so beautiful," he said.

We watched the flames die and the sun rise again. The birds were singing as we walked back to the inn.

We went upstairs and made love so sweetly, and before I slept, I could hear in the comfortable, weary places in my mind, a line of poetry, unidentifiable and perfect: "...Nor one word be forgotten/ Said at the start/ About heart/ By heart, for heart..."

we were unbroken.

When I woke, the room was warm and the scent of flowers hung heavy in the air. I was thirsty, so I threw on my roe and crept downstairs in search of something to drink.

Dahout was there, trimming pots of herbs. "Allo, Ray. Did you sleep well?"

"Mmm. What's the time?"

"Past two. Almost everybody slept through lunch. What can I do for you?"

"I was thirsty. Some water? Juice?"

"Sit, I'll pour some juice for you."

I sat down and rubbed a sprig of basil between my fingers, savouring the fresh, slightly spicy scent. "Wonderful ceremony," I told her.

"Merci. Bodie helped." She set a glass of apricot juice in front of me.

It was sweet. I felt like a bee collecting nectar.

"How did you get him to cooperate?" I asked. "He's very unsure about all this."

"It's inside of 'im." She put the pot of basil in the window. "And one day he will know this. But he'll remember little about raising the power with me. He was, how to call it? Trancing." She clipped some chives and laid them beside the basil. "Would you be terribly upset if I took him for a night?"

I gave her ten out of ten for bluntness. "As a lover?" I asked stupidly.

"I don't know what to say."

Chervil joined the growing pile. "I 'ave a reason, and the desire is in both of us - you know that. Jeff does understand," she assured me. "I need him to raise another sort of power - a private one."

I thought about it while she trimmed a few sprigs of dill and tarragon. "I can't speak for him. I can only say that," I took a deep breath, "I'd like to understand the request, but so long as you make no claim on him, I'm content."

"Blessed art thou among lovers," she said, placing a sprig of rosemary in my curls. "Thy children and thy children's children shall praise the greatness of thy spirit." Then she smiled her enchanting smile and something - an expression, a trick of the light - made me see Bodie's face in hers.

"Not just now, though," I asked.

"No, not now," she agreed with a little laugh. "I 'ave work to do.

But...before you leave here."

"Deal."

I went back upstairs...and found Dahout in bed with Bodie.

Not possible, I thought, and went back downstairs. She was still in the kitchen.

"Attrapeur de mouches?"

"Eh?"

"Your mouth is hanging open - are you catching flies?"

"Who's upstairs with Bodie?" I asked.

"I don't know. Who is?"

"You are."

She said nothing, but led me back upstairs and into the bedroom. "What is this?" she demanded when she saw them together.

Bodie blinked at the two Dahouts for a moment, then scrambled out of bed.

"What the hell..."

"Mairphee, tu n'a pas de...you have gone too far this time!"

there was a sullen look on the face of the ersatz Dahout when the real Dahout left the room.

"Where's she going?" I asked the other Dahout.

A masculine voice issued from the very female form in the bed. "Probably to find Bea." The form began to shift and alter, and suddenly it was our Murphy - the one we work with - the original.

"Hi fellahs."

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

"Surprised? I'm a shape-shifter. You know, someone who can change..."

"Get the fuck out of our bed," Bodie snarled, stepping towards Murphy with murder in his eyes.

I stepped between them. "Easy, sunshine," I warned.

"You were anxious enough when I was Dahout," Murphy reminded him.

"Don't antagonize him," I warned Murph. "I may let him beat you senseless."

"Look, I'm sorry it's such a big deal." He stretched and I mentally took back what I'd said about him not being cat-like.

"That was you on the train - the white cat!" I accused. "And Inge too..."

"Cleaver boy..."

Dahout returned and she did, indeed, have Bea with her. They were both furious.

"What have you done?" Bea demanded. "How could you do this?"

for the first time, I saw discomfort on the smug features.

"It's just a game, Bea."

"I can't deal with this any longer. You'll have to find someone else." She stalked out of the room and Murphy scrambled after her.

"Bea, wait...please!"

Bodie seemed to relax visibly after Murphy left the room. I put a hand on his shoulder. "It's all right," I told him.

"You think so?"

"Bodie, Ray, sit down. I want to talk to you." Dahout shut the bedroom door and I pulled Bodie over to the bed. "You should understand that Mairphee is like a child with this gift - he's only learning how to use it. He needs a teacher - you know, Ray."

I nodded.

"It's very sad. No soul calls to his. And yet, we can only bear the childishness so long. I think he may need a lesson in manners, ne'est-ce pas?"

"You have something in mind?" Bodie asked.

"Oh, yes..."

after supper we all gathered in the common room. "There's a dance in town,"

Jeff informed us, "if anyone is interested." A few of the other guests decided to go and they went upstairs to get ready. Bea went off with Jeff.

As planned, I turned to Dahout and asked if she wouldn't prefer a rather more private dance. "Just the two of us," I said pointedly and if Murphy thought it was odd, he didn't let on. In fact, he laughed. We went upstairs to a chorus of whistles and catcalls.

"This isn't going to be easy," I whispered to Dahout.

"Trust me," she said.

About an hour later, a gorgeous redhead walked into the common room.

Me.

"Hullo everyone," I said, trying not to laugh at Bodie's expression. Bless him, he was trying hard to control himself.

"Colette," he managed. "I didn't expect to see you here."

I insinuated myself into the empty chair beside Murphy. "Well, hello," I purred. He was clearly interested. This was a strange sensation. I rather liked it. "And what's your name?"

I was loving this. Dahout and I had worked together on the transformation - she had incredible power. And she and Bea had dressed me in one of Bea's slinkiest outfits - black silk with a skirt slit up to my hip.

"Murphy."

"Just Murphy? Like, just Bodie?" I smiled at Bodie and the look in his eyes startled me. It was hunger, pure and simple. I got up and went over to him, and sat on his lap. "Haven't you had enough of me yet?" I teased, running my hands through his hair.

The idea had been to turn the tables on Murph; to teach him how it felt to be mocked, and to have his desires twisted and trampled. But all I wanted then was to experience Bodie with my new body.

"Never enough." He caressed alien curves.

It was so...I felt so strange - so much of my sexual awareness seemed to be cantered higher, and there was a feeling of fullness, almost congestion in my pelvic area. I put Bodie's hand on my belly. Something in me longed to be filled.

"Well, then..." I stood up and pulled him to his feet. "Perhaps another dose of Colette might help." As we started out of the common room, I turned to Murphy and mouthed 'later' and he grinned at me. Things were getting complicated.

Bodie was so excited by the time we reached our room that it nearly happened before we made it to the bed, but I was determined to enjoy this and I made him stop before we went too far. Then, when I thought we'd both cooled sufficiently, I let him undress me, loving the feel of his hands on this new flesh. I felt different - I wasn't Ray Doyle and yet was. I felt at hoe with this new body, with breasts and that mysterious place between my legs.

It all felt right as Beelzy's skin had always felt, and I was both elated and a little afraid. It would be easy to lose myself in these changes.

"Wait, wait," I ordered, and stepped in front of the mirror. I was looking out of alien eyes, out of an alien body which was sending urgent messages I could only understand on an instinctive level. I began to touch myself - breasts, belly, pubic mound...something missing...between my legs, the moist opening and tiny bud. A feather touch there made me gasp with pleasure.

So, this is what it was like.

"Let me," Bodie whispered. He picked me up and carried me back to the bed.

He kissed me - his touch was different. There was a holding back.

"I won't break," I promised.

He touched and kissed me all over. He took a long time to pleasure me. And all those stories about his prowess - they were all true. I'd appreciated Bodie as a lover when I was in Doyle's body, but hadn't ever taken seriously his claims to be a great lover with women. He's every bit as good as he claims! He knew all the moves, all the right places to use them; he was a considerate lover, entering my new body carefully, knowing it was the first time in more ways than the usual one.

And afterwards, I held him close and cried a little because it had been so strange and perfect and wonderful, and then I laughed because of the same things. I guess I'd known I loved him for a long time, but I'd never realized how much we belonged together. I wanted to tell him all of this, but it was getting late and I had to finish what I'd begun, though after what we'd just had, I didn't want to bother.

He gave me one of those crooked Irish grins and pushed me out of bed. "Go on, you little tease - tie him in knots, then come back to me."

I slipped on my robe, thanking providence that I'd brought a towelling one that could pass on either sex, and crept out and down the hall to Murphy's room. I met Jeff going into Bea's and he smiled at me. I heard her murmur a greeting before the door closed behind him. Just before I rapped on Murphy's door, I saw Dahout coming up the stairs with a candle. She looked at me and then glanced at the door of our room.

"I'm likely to be busy for some time," I told her, then knocked. I was reminded of a French bedroom farce for some reason.

Murphy greeted me enthusiastically and I bounced into his bed wondering if I was becoming a loose woman. I used every trick that had ever been used on me to make him respond, to make him crazy with wanting me, but every time he tried to finish it, I stopped him. Finally when I sensed that the excitement was about to give way to frustration and perhaps anger, I held him back for a moment. "You really want e, don't you?" I asked in my most seductive voice.

"God yes! Can you doubt it?" and I had to admit that I certainly couldn't.

the physical evidence was right there in front of me in living colour.

"Then you may have me," I said, lying back against the pillows. But when he stretched out on top of me, and slipped a hand between my thighs, what he found there was not what he had expected to find.

I'd never seen Murph move so fast.

"What're you doing here?" he asked stupidly, standing in the middle of the floor.

"Turnabout being fair play, I'm here giving you a dose of your own medicine.

Not so funny from this side is it?" I climbed out of bed and pulled on my robe. "You're not the only bloody shape-shifter in the world," I informed him, "and next time you think about putting your hands on Bodie, remember this: if you hurt him, I'll break you."

"You're not going to leave me like this, are you?"

"Consider it one of the gentler lessons you have to learn," I snapped as I left the room.

Bodie was sound asleep and I wondered if Dahout had come to him at all.

Perhaps it was all my imagination, I thought...but no, when I slipped into bed beside him, there were roses on the pillow and a handful twined in his hair, and beside the bed, the candle she'd carried scented the air.

He reached out in his sleep and pulled me against his chest, sniffed me and smiled. "Love you, Ray," he murmured.

"Me too."

"How'd you do it anyway?" he shifted around until we were tied up in a knot and would probably never be able to free ourselves and would die up there in that room all tangled and happy.

"Dahout helped," I told him. The scent of crushed roses hung over the pillows. Bodie opened his eyes and they were violet-coloured in the light from the candle. "She told me that I probably couldn't change into anything but Beelzy because I didn't believe I could."

"Now that sounds way too simple," he said, and yawned.

"Wasn't just that, but it was a big part of it. She helped me learn to visualize what it was I wanted to be - that's a major part of the change - visualization. I had trouble at first," I confessed. "I kept getting men-women and cat-women and once I ended up as the Sphinx and kept asking riddles..."

He chuckled. "So, how'd you know?" "Know what?"

"About my dream woman. You were her, you know."

"I was?" This was a surprise.

"Sure. Ever since I was old enough to dream about women, she's been hovering around in my mind. I've been looking for her since I was about fifteen." He rubbed his cheek against my hair.

"Straight up?"

"Cross my heart. It was lovely, Ray, thanks." He muzzled my chest and dropped back off to sleep very quickly.

"You daft thing," I said.

I lay awake for a while, thinking. I thought about Murphy, alone and confused and angry. I felt a pang of guilt. Revenge is never as sweet as you hope it will be. I thought about Jeff and Bea - was it love between them? And how did Dahout feel about it?

And I thought about us - me and Bodie, and about love. What I'd felt at the ceremony as I watched him play priest to Dahout's priestess - God to her Goddess - had not been awe, but love so deep and fulfilling I couldn't hold it in. I let it spill out of me into the cone of power. Was part of that love in each of us? Was it still ringing?

And still, there was so much left.

Enter with him, these legends, love...

Some memory stirred and was silent again.

--Litha 1982

---

Belling the Cat

"I don't see that it matters, Bodie," Ray grumbled as they approached the pub. It was like Bodie to be factious about Ray's attempts to use his talent - what he didn't understand he denied. Then Ray realised he was being unfair. This was still all too new to both of them.

"I just like to know what I'm coming home to is all," Bodie replied.

"Beelzy's one thing, but the griffon was just too much."

"I thought it was imaginative." He tugged the door open, feeling sulky.

Perhaps he had been changing more often that was strictly necessary, but surely Bodie could try to understand...

"To say nothing of the miniature whale in the bath last weekend." Bodie stepped in the narrow doorway so that their bodies pressed close together; and, as always, the electricity between them sparked, damping the petty irritations. Not for the first time did Ray realise that sex was a powerful agent of dtente.

"An experiment, Bodie!" he protested.

"And the giant dung beetle..."

"I never!" So Bodie was having him on. "Very funny."

"I never know from day to day," Bodie chuckled, offering a fleeting caress to Ray's backside before shoving him through the doors of the pub. "Now if I was to find that long-legged redhead..." he stopped short, his expression turning to stone. Confused, Ray followed Bodie's eyes and found himself staring down the barrel of a shotgun.

"Don't say nuffink," hissed the man in the balaclava. "Just stand quiet and you won't be 'urt." Another, similarly masked and armed, was forcing a frightened young barmaid to empty the till into a canvas sack. Resisting the instinctive urge to reach for his gun, Ray played the scene loud and obtuse, hoping to convince the robbers that he and his mate were harmless.

"'ere! Wot's goin' on?" he demanded.

"Over there with the others," the first robber snapped, prodding him with his gun, "and keep yer mouths shut."

Ray stole a look at Bodie, whose ramrod-stiff posture and tightly drawn mouth were clear signs of barely leashed rage. Well, keep it leashed, sunshine, Ray thought at his partner, and let's get these folks out alive.

Instinctively the moved to opposite ends of the group of frightened patrons.

A clearcut robbery wouldn't be too difficult to wait out. These two were professionals - they were moving quickly, economically, wasting neither time nor words. If all went well...

"Doyle, is it?" The second man, the one who had supervised the emptying of the till, turned his attention to Ray. The voice filtering through the mask was vaguely familiar. He stepped a little closer to Ray and peered at him through the slit in his mask. "Yeh...oh, yeh, I remember you," he breathed.

There was a nasty sort of glee in his voice.

"You ready?" the other robber asked, already backing towards the doorway.

He held the filled sack and had stuffed his pockets full of cigarettes.

"Nah, wait a tick, this is the copper wot sent me to prison. I told you..."

The air in the pub was stifling, heavy. Ray was finding it difficult to think clearly. This had the potential to be an ugly little incident if handled badly. If only he could place the voice... "Don't remember me, copper? Maybe it's the mask. I'd hate to think you'd forgotten me." He nudged Doyle's chin with the barrel of his shotgun. "I couldn't go without saying how do, could I?"

That voice...

"Irving," Doyle said, suddenly sure. Eyes sparkled with malice from the slitted mask. Ray was aware of a palpable tension pouring off of Bodie.

Stay put, don't move, he thought. I can handle this.

"I remember you, Irving. I also remember what you were in for."

Instinctively Ray began to use what Bodie called his 'copper' voice. "You know if you hurt any of us it'll go badly for you."

"IF they catch me."

"They will, you know. They always do."

"Not this time, Doyle. This time it's a sure thing." He laughed unpleasantly.

"Must be if you're willing to blow your disguise on a bit of petty revenge."

He sounded cooler than he felt. The temperature in the pub must have risen twenty degrees.

"Petty? You owe me a good dozen years, don't you? An' I'm takin' it out of your hide."

Bodie growled low and stepped towards Irving, but the other robber swung round and levelled his own gun on him. "For chrissake, people'll be coming in, let's go!" The tension in the air was almost tangible, much of it radiating from Bodie.

"I'm gonna leave you a little token of my affection, Doyle," Irving promised. He aimed his gun at Ray's right knee. "'ow about a limp...or wooden leg?" he asked. He raised the shotgun and nudged Doyle's crotch.

"Or maybe," he hissed, a malevolent gleam in his eyes, "I'll turn you into a girl."

There was a moment of silence in which time seemed to spin out endlessly, thin and tenuous, and before Ray could react, the air grew even heavier with something like an electrical charge - a crackling, dangerous sort of energy, as though a storm was brewing there in the pub. Doyle felt as if the air pressure was going to crush them all, and he found it difficult to breathe...even to think. Then, around Irving, time and space seemed to warp, shimmering and iridescent, and in a moment the man was gone, vanished, his shotgun clattering to the floor. One of them women, released from the shock of the moment by the noise, screamed just once, and then all was silent again - heavy and oppressive. Doyle sagged a little against the bar, his mind numb to what he had just seen, unable to quite comprehend that the danger no longer existed. The second robber backed away, dropped the sack he held and bolted, and the movement snapped Ray out of his fog. He turned to Bodie, as he always did in moments like this, for his familiar presence; but what he saw sent a frisson of horror through him: a tiny smile tugging at the corners of Bodie's mouth - an expression of childlike, unrepentant satisfaction.

Bodie caught Ray's eye and stepped close; Ray could feel energy crackling around him like fire devouring kindling. Bodie touched Ray's arm and he flinched away involuntarily. "You okay, sunshine?" Relief changed to something so dark Doyle could not name it. He wanted to be away from this place, away from Bodie.

"I'll call in," he managed, stumbling away from his partner, pushing through the crowd that milled around the place where Irving had disappeared as if the spot itself held some significance. He heard Bodie reassuring the others as he made his way out to the car. "Everything's all right, folks, just calm down."

Not possible, it was not possible. Doyle radioed in and asked for the police, then sat out in the car for several minutes, too weak to move, unable to face his partner who might well have been the agent of Irving's disappearance. It had happened so quickly...He remembered the almost tangible feeling of power flowing from Bodie. He remembered the smile, and amended his thoughts; might have been? Bodie must have been the agent of Irving's disappearance. "What did you do to him, Bodie?" he whispered, feeling sick at the thought that anyone could have so much power. Did Bodie even realise how powerful he really was? And how dangerous?

When the police arrived Ray went back into the pub with them. Bodie was standing at the bar, chatting with the barmaid who was giggling shyly. The other customers were seated around the room, talking quietly. There was an air of relaxation in the place and even Ray, as agitated as he was, lost the fine edge of near hysteria. This time the energy pouring off Bodie was not red like fire but green like the ocean. The colour of peace. He looked up at Ray's approach and smiled one of those supremely innocent smiles that always took Ray's breath away. No, Bodie had no idea of what he had just done, of that Ray was sure. Which of them, he wondered, would suffer more over this in the long run?

He was anxious to be away, and promised to have detailed reports sent round to the police. Not for the first time did Ray say a silent thank yo7u for his CI5 id. As they left, there was a holiday sort of atmosphere in the pub, the customers and the police chatting pleasantly about what had happened. Eerie, Doyle thought, like something out of Village of the Damned.

Bodie was behind the wheel, taking charge with a cheery efficiency that did little to reassure Doyle. "You hungry, lover?"

"What?"

"Hungry? Want to eat? You okay, sunshine?"

Still numb, and inclined to drift back into the memory of Irving vanishing in front of his eyes, Ray heard a scream that had never come and felt sick again - violently so. "Bodie stop the car." He barely got the door open before he doubled over and vomited in great, shuddering spasms, the tiny scream echoing in his mind. Bodie's arms slid around his waist and Ray felt an insidious calm creeping over his; a calm forced on him from the outside.

"'s'okay, lover, take it easy," Bodie crooned. "I'm here."

That's part of the bleedin' problem, Ray thought. "Handkerchief?" he asked, shoving Bodie away and searching his own pockets vainly. Bodie produced a tissue and wiped Ray's mouth. "I feel terrible," Ray complained, but he attempted a smile.

"Ice cream sound good to you?"

"I'll have a go," Ray conceded with false lightness. The thought of any food made him feel queasy. "But I'm tired, Bodie. Can't we take some home?"

"Leave it all to me. I'll take good care of you."

Bodie took him home, put him to bed, and fed him mounds of ice cream - strawberry and vanilla and chocolate - making Ray feel like a child again, safe at home, every wish instantly gratified.

"Sleep'll be good for you, petal," Bodie was saying. "You'll feel better in the morning, I promise. You'll forget all about this." And Ray, tired as he was, felt chilled by that promise. He wanted to forget, but knew he couldn't afford to. "Don't think it's stomach flu or anything serious,"

Bodie added. Did he really not know what was wrong with his partner?

By way of protection, Ray summoned up the white light - the energy he used to keep others out of his mind, and fell asleep immediately. He slept hard for several hours, and woke with an unpleasant jolt out of a bad dream.

Bodie was sound asleep beside him, looking as innocent as a child, his ridiculous eyelashes fanning dark across skin any woman would envy. How was it that Bodie was so damn beautiful? And he'd been so sweet earlier when Ray had gone off the deep end about the robbery.

Ray wondered if he wasn't coming down with flu or something; it wasn't like him to be so upset by a straightforward robbery, particularly when it turned out so...Then it all came crashing back on him - true memory was still there, locked away in a private place. He crept out to the kitchen and called Cowley.

"Sorry to bother you at this hour, Sir," he began.

"I presume you do know what hour it is, Doyle, and what you have to say to me is important."

"It is. Sir, you've been told about the robbery this evening?"

"We've had a report from the police. Seems fairly..." Doyle could have sworn he heard a sharp intake of breath from Cowley's end. "What is it, Doyle?

What haven't I been told?"

"I'm not quite sure," Ray admitted, feeling foolish. "Were you told what happened to the robbers?"

"I was told they fled, leaving the money behind..." There was a long pause.

"That's not what happened, is it?"

It was Doyle's turn to hesitate now, not quite willing to commit himself to a story that might just be false, and yet that very uncertainty made him angry enough to press on. "No," he said, his voice flat. There was silence from the other end. "The man, the one I knew, he disappeared."

After a moment Cowley asked, "Can you define your terms more clearly?"

"Disappeared as in abracadabra, now you see him, now you don't. Vanished into thin air."

"And?" Cowley pursued.

"And I think Bodie did it." There, it was out; and suddenly it was less threatening. The fear in him began to recede.

This time there was a distinct intake of breath. "What makes you think that, laddie?" The emotion was clear in Cowley's voice - so he did care for Bodie...

"I just think he did is all. It's hard for me to explain why I believe it's so. Will you take my word on it? Hear Bodie's explanation; talk to him about it. Christ," he breathed. "I feel like a raving nutter!"

"No!...no, I don't believe you're wrong. I've been afraid of this, or something very like it for a long time. I'll speak to both of you first thing tomorrow. Now give me your version of the story - the important part - so I can contrast it with the reports and with Bodie's version."

Doyle made his report, grateful to be able to share the story with Cowley, who did not think him mad, then went back to bed and slept soundly at last, Bodie's familiar presence comforting in spite of everything. When he finally woke to the alarm, he found that he did feel better. The phantom scream no longer echoed in his head, and he found himself wondering if the events of the evening past had happened at all.

Bodie, for his part, seemed to have forgotten the incident entirely. He was cheerful, if a little solicitous, and it was easy for Ray to forget that their interview with Cowley was still to come.

When they arrived at headquarters Betty informed them that they were to go directly to Cowley's office.

"Reckon it's about last night?" Bodie asked. It was the first time he'd alluded to the incident.

"Maybe." Ray felt guilty; perhaps he should have let it go. He was no longer quite sure what had happened the night before.

Cowley didn't waste any time. "Doyle's reported the incident to me and I'd like your report as well, Bodie."

"Wouldn't you like it typed in triplicate?" Bodie asked, giving Ray a look of half anger and half betrayal.

"Now, if you don't mine."

Bodie sighed and recounted the incident, hesitating only slightly at the disappearance before he stated flatly that both robbers fled, leaving the lolly behind. Cowley glanced over at Ray but said nothing, allowing Bodie to finish before making any comment.

"Why did they flee?"

"Dunno," Bodie said after a moment. "Guess they were frightened by something."

"Too bloody right," Ray muttered under his breath.

"4.5, will you please repeat the story as you told it to me?"

Ray obliged, his story paralleling Bodie's until he reached the moment when Irving vanished. For a moment he was confused by the way his memories seemed to blend together. Irving threatening him, the tension in the pub, the oppressive heat...he shut his eyes and saw Irving backing out of the pub, warning them not to move. No, it was all wrong! He concentrated. Irving nudging his groin with the shotgun and...Bodie! A sense of Bodie seemed to engulf him, swallowing him up. He opened his eyes and the scene played itself out as it had the night before - fractured time and space and in the eyes staring out from the black wool of the mask a look of uncomprehending terror.

Then nothing.

"Ray..." it was Bodie. Only his eyes betrayed his concern.

"He vanished," Rays said, voice flat as his emotions. Then he felt sick again, remembering the expression on Bodie's face.

"It didn't happen that way!"

"It's what I saw, Bodie."

"No!" Bodie's eyes had gone dangerously dark. "You're wrong," he said evenly. When neither Cowley nor Doyle replied to this, he tried again.

"What do the customers say happened?" he asked. "And the barmaid; what did she say?" He looked like a trapped animal.

Cowley said nothing for a moment, then he smiled wryly. "It's most interesting, Bodie. Apparently none of them remember exactly what happened from the time Irving threatened Doyle to the moment when the other robber dropped the money and fled the pub. It seems to be a case of mass amnesia."

Ray was feeling dangerously queasy by now. Not possible...and yet it had happened.

"Maybe it's..."

"What?" Cowley prodded. "Care to explain group memory loss?"

"All right, so maybe the bloke did disappear, so what? You seem to think it 's our fault. Look, just because Ray can ch- ch- change..." He broke off, panting as though he'd run a race. Ray moved to his side and began to stroke the short, sweat-damp hair. Bodie turned his face against Ray's stomach. It wasn't often you saw Bodie scared silly, Ray realised, and he shot a warning look at Cowley. Enough, enough...

"It's not Doyle I'm worried about, laddie," Cowley said gently. "Miss Emrys..." The door opened and Bea entered the office.

"What's she doing here?" Bodie demanded, stiffening in Ray's loose embrace.

"George called and asked me to help."

"Go to hell."

"Bodie, please," Ray begged. "Please, hear us out."

"Us?" The expression on Bodie's face was painful. "You believe I did..."

"I don't know."

"I didn't!" He wrenched free of Ray's grasp and stood, knocking over the chair I his agitation.

"Bodie..." Bea's voice was low, hypnotic.

"Leave me alone."

"Bodie, listen, we want to help," she continued relentlessly. Ray felt himself relax as Bea wove threads of calm into the highly charged atmosphere. "We want to know for sure what happened last night; you're the only one who can help us. Won't you help us?" For a moment longer Bodie was able to resist the spell she wove, then he sagged against the wall, his expression docile. Ray was impressed; Bea was a powerful lady.

"How?" There was a blankness in Bodie's eyes that frightened Ray.

"We're going to The Green King - you'd like that wouldn't you?" she coaxed.

"You'll see Dahout again."

"Don't know."

"She can help. Trust me, Bodie."

Bodie's hand closed convulsively around Ray's "Ray?"

"I'm coming too, sunshine," Ray promised, silently daring Cowley to contradict him. He rubbed a tense spot between Bodie's shoulders. "I won't leave you, I promise."

The journey up to Inverness was miserable. Bodie lay awake for most of the trip, clinging to Ray. His eyes had a drugged, bewildered look that was almost painful for Doyle.

And it frightened him to think that the man he loved and trusted, who he thought he knew better than himself, would prove to be a stranger who'd sent another human being off so some never-never land, erased the memory of the disappearance from the minds of the witnesses, and had tried to do the same to Ray's memories of the incident.

The inner voice whispered, "You're still alive and you still have both legs and both balls thanks to this 'stranger', my son, perhaps a little gratitude is in order."

"I am grateful," he protested silently, "it's just that...Christ, what he did to that man." He shuddered.

"Dead is dead," the voice reminded him. "Doesn't much matter how you get there."

"But it does, it does. For chrissake, couldn't he have just made the gun jam of something? Any why won't he leave my mind alone?"

"Because, you prat, the memory was hurting you."

"Me." The thought struck with sickening clarity. What Bodie had done to Irving, he had done for Ray's sake.

The next morning Bodie seemed more himself, discussing the trip as though it was a holiday. Selective memory, Ray realised, feeling not a little depressed by the situation and the lack of sleep. Bodie was wary of Bea when she joined them in the rental car, and was equally stiff with Jeff, who seemed confused by their sudden appearance during off-season, but happy to see them nonetheless.

"We've thought about you a lot," he told them as he showed them to their rooms. Then he left them alone.

Ray set about unpacking with an efficiency born of unease. Bodie hadn't said a word since they'd arrived, and he was pacing the room, looking miserable. Ray had to keep reminding himself that they were there for Bodie 's sake.

"It's sort of a holiday, sunshine - a paid vacation. Never thought I'd see the day that the Cow would part with this much money for our sakes. Though I'd prefer something a bit homier, wouldn't you?" He knew he was chattering, but he couldn't stop. "Riviera would 'ave been nice, wouldn't it? Or Barbados?"

"I haven't done anything," Bodie whispered, and Ray would rather have cut his own heart out than endure the sight of Bodie standing in the centre of the room, a little bowed under the weight of this unwelcome attention, emphatically cut off even from his lover. He had never seemed more vulnerable than at that moment. Ray reached out to him.

"Let me help."

The reply was lost as someone rapped sharply at the door. Bodie stiffened and moved away.

The door opened to admit Bea with a tray, followed by Dahout who looked incredibly lovely and very pregnant. Bodie watched them both with undisguised hostility, but their presence seemed to compel him to pretend all was quite normal.

"'allo Ray." Dahout kissed him and then approached Bodie, who stepped away from her. Her dark eyes studied him for a moment. "I thought, some tea?"

"Sounds fantastic," Ray said, feigning enthusiasm. Dahout poured while Bea tossed a few logs on the fire.

"Bodie?"

"No."

She poured anyway and held the cup out to him. "It's very good," she coaxed.

"Drink it yourself, then," he snapped. But his mood was no proof against her silent determination. He snatched the cup away from her and drained it.

"Happy?" he asked ungraciously, before retreating to a far corner to stare out of the window.

They chatted for a quarter of an hour and Ray, who was watching Bodie the whole time, noticed his partner struggling with sleepiness. Finally Bodie went over to the bed, lay down, and fell asleep immediately.

"Good, he needs the sleep," Bea said. "I'll take the tea things down and you undress him, will you?"

"What did you do?" Ray demanded as Dahout began to unbutton Bodie's shirt.

"Some 'erbs in his tea; they won't hurt."

"They better not," he grumbled, but she seemed unconcerned.

"Sleep heals, Ray." His name fell from her tongue, soft and seductive.

"You 'ave been well? I know you live together now. It's better, non?"

"How did you know? Oh, Colette..."

"Oui. I speak to her often."

"You mean...telepathy?" He had a fuzzy mental image of the two women gossiping on the astral plane.

"No. Telephone." She grinned and Ray felt like a fool.

He unzipped Bodie's cords and hesitated only a moment before he remembered with a quick pang of jealousy that a naked Bodie was nothing new to Dahout.

"Why did Bea bring us up here?" he asked as he hauled the slacks and pants off. "She could teach him in London just as easily, couldn't she?"

"She could, but I can't. I am Bodie's teacher, Ray, not Beatrice. Eh, bien, we will make things right again, non? He's too strong not to choose life."

A chill ran through Ray. He hadn't realised what the other choice would mean. Desperate to change the subject, he latched on to the word 'life.' "When's it due? The baby, I mean?"

"Eostar." She brushed the hair back from Bodie's forehead and kissed him sweetly.

"So much longer?" he asked stupidly. She blinked at him, uncomprehending.

"It's just...you look ready now."

"Oh! Twins," she explained as she pulled the duvet over Bodie. "Boy and girl."

She folded Bodie's clothes and Ray counted backwards from March. June.

Midsummer. They had been here at Litha, and Dahout and Bodie had slept together at full moon. "Bodie's?" he asked, sick with apprehension.

"Mine," she said with an air of finality.

The inn was empty but for the five of them. Ray curled up in front of the fire in the common room and Bea brought tea and biscuits in later that afternoon. "Do you think he'll be all right?" he asked her.

"Yes." No evasion, no hedging.

He nodded and stared into the flames as she sat down beside him. "It's cold up here," he said. "Bodie hates the cold."

"It's warm inside...his friends will keep him warm. Ray?" A dozen questions in that one word.

"I'm angry with Bodie and I feel guilty about it. I keep thinking that if he'd bothered to learn what Colette was willing to teach him, none of this might have happened."

"He did learn, Ray." She stretched out her long legs and wriggled her toes, basking in the heat from the fire. "He learned too much and not enough."

"Come again?"

"He learned enough to make him dangerous, but not enough to control that power. However, Colette is no more the right teacher for Bodie than I am."

"And I thought that's why you were here," Ray said, prodding the logs with a cast iron poker with a bird's head handle.

"No...it's just that George has had need of me in the past, and he calls me automatically when he needs advice in this sort of matter. Fortunately I knew who Bodie's teacher was."

"Did you know when we were here at Midsummer?"

"I guessed. I had other things on my mind."

Murphy, Doyle assumed. Suddenly his catlike curiosity got the better of him. "Bea, about Murph..."

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies," she replied, shifting around on the hearthrug to toast her wonderfully exotic face. "In other words, he is none of your business, my pretty, though I will tell you this - he has a great deal to learn and he refuses to learn; he is a danger to himself. I pray that neither you nor Bodie will ever become so lost in the paths of your magicks. As to why I'm staying up here with you...well, I thought perhaps you and Jeff might need some companionship on the occasional cold hieland night. The three of us are going to be extra appendages once Dahout and Bodie commence their work." She tilted her head and smiled at him.

Instinctively Ray wanted to deny that he'd need, much less desire what was implied in Bea's offer, but he was wiser now than he had been a year ago and understood only too well his need for human comfort in bad times. Sex was occasionally all muddled together with compassion and spiritual healing, and he could accept it without guilt; understanding, as he now did, that it implied nothing more than a gentle, undemanding affection. Having known passion with Bodie, he was in no danger of confusing the two; nor was he in danger of confusing the love he and Bodie shared with all the other sorts he felt for people like Bea and Colette and his mother, and even for people like Cowley. He must have begun to smile unconsciously because Bea smiled in return.

"Penny for your thoughts," she offered. "Or are they worth more than a penny?"

"Nothing special," he told her. "Thanks for being here."

"Were you wishing that Colette could be here as well?"

He rolled onto his back. "I hadn't allowed myself to think about it, but yes, now you mention it, I do wish she could come if only for a day. I haven't seen her since...it's been over a year." He was surprised at how quickly time had passed. "I've worked on my own, of course, and learned a lot, but I think I'd learn faster if we were together." He glanced over at Bea who was studying him intently. "I suppose you think I rely on her too much."

"Was that a question or an observation?" He didn't answer. "No, I don't think that, though the danger exists. You see it clearly - that's good, it' s the way you should see your relationship with Colette. She gives so much that sometimes people tend to drain her." Bea sat up and began fussing with her hair.

"How well do you know her?"

"Very well, and for many years. I've known many of her 'lame ducks' as she calls them. You're not one of the harder cases, Ray, so you needn't flatter yourself that you're Colette's bad boy."

He chuckled. "That would be Jamie, I'll wager."

"I don't know him well," Bea said, looking troubled, "and I don't like him either. He's..." She broke off with a frown.

"Does he have a talent?" Ray asked. "Or rather," he added, remembering all his lectures to Bodie on how everyone had a talent, "has any talent manifested itself?"

"Odd you should ask that because I've been wondering the same thing recently. I expect that part of the problem I have with his is that I think he does have a manifest power and that it's terribly warped because of the life he's led. Makes me uncomfortable to see anyone allow their power to..."

She seemed to search for the right word. "...to violate them," she finished with a little shudder.

"What d'you mean?"

"I'm not quite sure, Ray, except that I think his life is the result of the power he has - one that uses him." She sighed. "I ought not to make either judgements or uneducated guesses about anyone," she admitted. "Let's discuss Jamie some other time, yes?" She curled up against his side and began to stroke him gently - head, shoulders, neck, arms, back - and Ray could feel the tension and anxiety begin to release their hold on him.

"Good hands," he murmured, growing contentedly sleepy.

"Someday I'll do the whole number on you, my dear, and you'll know what good hands are!"

The last thing he remembered was the sound of her quiet laughter.

Jeff woke them for supper, and told them Bodie was still sleeping soundly.

Ray and Bea shared their meal with Jeff and Dahout and they talked about little things, unimportant things, until Ray finally had to ask: "How long will he sleep?"

"Possibly through the night," Dahout told him. "You must not be concerned, Ray, sleep..."

"Heals, yes, I know, but I'm worried about him. I can't help it. Anyway, I thought you were supposed to be working on him, not putting him on hold."

He was feeling surprisingly grumpy and wanted to know that Bodie was all right rather than being told. "This all seems a lot of fuss over nothing..."

He was brought up short when he realised that his memory of the incident was becoming more muddled. He shivered.

"Are you all right?" Bea asked.

"Fine. I just realised how necessary it is to help Bodie. He's rearranged my memories of the robbery. They'd be gone entirely if I hadn't blocked him."

"He'll be okay, Ray," Jeff promised. "Dahout hasn't lost a student yet.

Just how strong is he?" he asked almost as an afterthought. He looked concerned. And well he should, Ray thought to himself. Poor Jeff seemed lost in the midst of this craziness. He seemed like a nice, average man who had been tossed into a world of magic and mayhem.

"We don't know," Bea told him, but Dahout shook her head.

"I know," she said. "Jeff, Bodie is like me; we share blood." She rose suddenly and cleared away the dinner plates, carrying them out to the kitchen without another word. Ray was unnerved to see that Jeff had paled slightly.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ray demanded, but Jeff didn't answer.

Instead, he followed Dahout out to the kitchen. "Bea?"

Her eyes were fixed on the swinging door. "Ray," she said in a soft voice, "have you ever heard of the Sidhe?"

Bodie moved restlessly, deep in his dreams. He was standing in the pub watching Irving threaten Ray, feeling his rage build along with Ray's fear.

Surely Ray knew that Bodie would take care of him. Hadn't he done just that for years now? Did Ray doubt Bodie could deal with Irving with his usual efficiency? Well then, he decided, no lucky break this time; no stroke or heart attack or timely arrival of the seventh cavalry. Bodie would prove to Ray once and for all that he had nothing to fear while Bodie was caring for him.

Shunning all the flash, showy tricks he could have used on Irving - having him explode (too messy), or consumed in a pillar of fire (might burn down the pub, and Cowley would not be amused), he opted for the simple, efficient method of turning the man at right angles to himself. Irving went away.

And then, knowing the danger was gone, Bodie permitted himself a little smile.

Suddenly the pub disappeared and space flattened out all around him, and a man whose face was smooth and featureless but for terrified eyes screamed and screamed...

"Child, what have you done?"

"It wasn't like that!" Bodie protested. In his sleep, his fingers tore the sheet. "I was afraid for Ray. I just wanted Irving to go away!"

It seemed to Bodie that he walked a slender thread spanning a bottomless chasm. To one side was a mass of amorphous shapes, shifting, forming briefly into things seen only in dream or nightmare. And from the mass rose a din of voices and noises, as formless as the shapes from which it issued - clicking, muffled thuds, voices garbled as by poor radio transmissions. To the other side was a vast stillness opening like a chasm. So deep and quiet was this silence that Bodie perceived it as annihilation and was afraid.

"Mother...Mama..." He reached out blindly to touch the moon.

"Come back to me, manchild," she said to him. "I would not lose you to Chaos.

Then he was awake, and sweating heavily despite the fact that he was cold deep inside himself. Where...? A few memories came back to him - Ray, Bea, the trip to Inverness, Dahout, and Chaos all around him, nipping at his heels.

He rose and washed, wincing a little at the sight of his face, pale as the moon he had touched in his dream, with dark pits for eyes. Then he threw on some clothes. It was dark, but a fire burned in the grate, the warm light casting odd shadows. He hurried out of the room and down the stairs in search of something human and reassuring.

Ray and Jeff were playing cards in the common room. When Ray saw him, he rose and walked forward, stopping a few paces away. There was a question in his eyes.

"Need a cuddle," Bodie admitted, and if felt good to be able to do so. Ray moved into the circle of Bodie's arms and held him very tight.

"I'll take care of you," Ray whispered into Bodie's neck. "It's gonna be okay, you'll see."

From over Ray's shoulder, Bodie could see Dahout hovering in the doorway, holding a bottle of wine and five glasses. "I need your help," Bodie told her.

They all settled before the fire and drank a couple of bottles of wine. For the first time in many years Bodie felt completely safe. In fact, he'd not felt like this since...since before he'd been sent off to school. He tried to recall those wintry evenings spent in the nursery. He and his mother would sit in front of the fire and she'd tell him stories of the Fair Folk. So long ago...He'd believed her when she told him that his father was a faery warrior who wore silver armour and rode a silver horse. Time enough later to wonder what black-Irish lothario had taken advantage of a young girl who wasn't all there.

He clung to Ray, content for the first time in their relationship to take comfort and security rather than giving it. It was nice to be cared for for a change. He realised that his whole life had been spent taking care of himself and trying to protect the people he loved best - Ray, his mother...only he hadn't been too successful with his mother who'd died while he was away at school. And much as he prided himself on being a pragmatist, the sorrow of that loss had never quite left him.

It grew late, and still they sat before the fire, wine glasses littering the floor around them. Jeff was propped against the long settee, right arm around Bea and left arm around Dahout who looked peaceful and beautiful.

Bodie remembered the girl in the forest and the woman who'd loved him at Midsummer. He dropped back into an untroubled sleep and she was with him - the girl from the forest with flowers in her hair and smudges of dirt on her cheeks. She was naked and laughing. "Did wait for thee," she said.

"Cummon, sunshine, left foot then right foot," Ray urged, chuckling softly in his ear. "We'll get upstairs yet."

"Slept all day," Bodie complained muzzily, wondering how they'd got to the stairs in the first place. Last thing he remembered was dancing with the girl with the beautiful eyes. "Wanna dance."

"Oh, charming. Tomorrow, I promise I'll dance with you, okay?"

"Wanna celebrate."

"You've 'ad a bit, 'aven't you? Never mind. We'll celebrate tomorrow, tiger. Tonight it'd do us both in." For the second time that day he undressed Bodie and put him to bed, but this time he slipped between the covers and pulled his lover into his arms. Bodie kissed Ray's nose and dropped off immediately, back into his dream.

Despite the accumulated fatigue of the last forty-eight hours, Ray found it impossible to drop off to sleep immediately. He found his thoughts turning to the things Bea had said about the Sidhe, about Dahout being the daughter of one of them. He knew all the old legends, of course, but even he, who had every reason to believe in the strange and supernatural, found this hard to believe. Dahout, and, by implication, Bodie, with faery blood (and he allowed himself a pleasant moment to contemplate the mileage to be had from that turn of phrase) - Bodie...not quite human? No. The whole thing was too bizarre for words. The man asleep in his arms was as human and substantial as...as Ray was. Faery blood! Still, he thought, as he finally became drowsy, whatever it took; whatever Dahout wanted to believe about Bodie, she could believe, just so long as she helped him.

"We'll celebrate in the morning," he repeated before he dropped into sleep.

But to that sleep there came a dream so strangely familiar that Ray found himself giddy with relief at the feeling of being home. He was running through a field, leaping over...bodies? No, that couldn't be right. He was laughing. Then he dove into a river and the shock of the cold water made him cry out. Warm arms, arms tattooed with blue snakes, wrapped around him and a mouth touched his very softly. Bodie.

And then there was emptiness...and Beelzy was running through the fields, but not Beelzy, and a sudden tearing away of something important...emptiness and pain in his heart that he thought he could not survive.

Then he was dreaming of the day he met Bodie, and he smiled in his sleep.

Bodie woke him with a kiss and for a few minutes there was no past or future for them, only the now. The feel of Bodie in his arms was reassuring in a way he'd never known before. Ray broke the kiss and held his partner at arm 's length. "Are you okay?" he asked. Bodie certainly looked a good deal better than he had for several days.

"Fine...how 'bout you?" He licked Ray's shoulder. "You taste fine."

"Do you remember..."

"Yeah, I remember. I remember what I did and I don't like it much.

However," he continued after a bone-cracking stretch and yawn, "that's what we're here for, isn't it? To make sure I don't do things like that to people who steal my parking space."

Doyle had to laugh.

"Watch out or I'll turn you into a newt," Bodie threatened. "Or an anteater...they have very long tongues." He waggled his eyebrows and Ray dissolved into a fit of laughter. "Of course, you could do that yourself, so what's the use my threatening? 'ere! You're supposed to take me seriously," Bodie complained. "I'm a dangerous character."

Ray laughed harder. "I yield, I yield! Enough! My stomach hurts."

"What'll you give me if I stop?"

"Kiss." His hand slid down to indicate that he was offering something more.

"Can't refuse such a generous offer, can I?" Bodie kicked the duvet aside and propped his head up on his arms. "I'll watch and let you know if you're doing it proper." He was partially erect, his cock flushed and heavy against his thigh. He had gorgeous thighs, Doyle thought as he bent and took the organ into his mouth. He had gorgeous everything - gorgeous eyes, gorgeous cock, fantastic hands that made Ray lose control every time they touched him. Bodie moaned a little and his legs parted slightly. Ray slipped a hand between them and cupped the soft loose sac in his palm; such a lovely sensation, so soft and heavy in his hand. He rolled the fragile contents gently between his fingers. His tongue travelled the length of the cock, now completely erect and straining against the stimulation of hand and mouth. Touching Bodie was a sort of magic for Ray. He revelled in bringing his not inconsiderable skills to bear on his cool, contained partner; in making him want what only Ray could give - not merely release or even the transient pleasure of a purely sexual encounter, but a chance to touch something deeper and more resonant. It was an experience that Ray had never had before Bodie, and never since with anyone but Bodie.

Thought you wanted to watch, Ray thought, smiling inwardly at the sight of Bodie, head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut. Bodie's mouth was open slightly and the tip of his tongue slipped, moist and pink, over his teeth.

Ray felt his own body respond with a surge of pleasure that was near violence in its intensity. It was always like this for them - pleasure for one was pleasure for both.

There was a sudden slickness under his tongue, and the tender sac in his hands began drawing up tight beneath the straining cock. The smell of musk prickled ray's nose and the back of his throat. Just before Bodie climaxed he arched up, muscles tensing into knotted cords, fingers and toes digging into the mattress. He fell back with a little groan and his eyes slitted open and he smiled at ray. After they made love, ray realised, Bodie's eyes were always a dark, dark violet.

"Oh, very nice, lover," he said, bending to kiss Bodie. "And now it's my turn." He straddled Bodie's chest, and to the delight of his sated lover began to toss off. He knew how to touch himself; how to make himself respond quickly, and how to make the sensations last. There was a smile in Bodie's feverish eyes and it tugged on the voluptuously, maddeningly, red and swollen lips. Bodie began to urge him on; ray liked the words - forbidden, rich and redolent of sex, earthy words, whispered between them only in such moments. The things he promised to do, the images they conjured nearly sent Ray over the edge...too soon, too soon. He stopped and shut his eyes and tried to breathe normally, controlling his urge to finish quickly.

"You are so beautiful," Bodie whispered, and ray felt as though he might weep with happiness. If Bodie loved him, he must be worth loving. His hand closed around his cock again and he stroked slowly, thumb sliding over the slick, snub head. Bodie's hands moved restlessly up and down his thighs.

"Almost," Ray warned, his voice shaky. His hand moved faster now, seeking only release, but then Bodie pushed his hands away and replaced them with his own, catching, at the moment of melting, glorious climax, a handful of semen. He licked his hands clean, a conspiratorial grin on the wide, quirky mouth.

"Christ!" Ray hissed, collapsing against Bodie's chest.

They remained gloriously indolent for nearly an hour. Bodie tickled Ray with lightly drifting fingers. "Don't want to get up...ever," he said.

"Let's not. Let's be the eccentric old gentlemen of Inverness who never leave their bed." Ray stretched his arms up and twined his fingers in short, damp, silky curls. "They'll write books about us, ate, and famous people'll come and visit us and we can serve tea right here in this room.

Wouldn't you like to spend the rest of your life in this bed with me?"

Bodie chuckled softly. "This is a once in a lifetime offer," Ray added with a wriggle of his hips. He could feel that Bodie was slightly hard again.

He enjoyed arousing Bodie.

A rap at the door interrupted them. Dahout stuck her head in. "You would like some breakfast, non?"

"We would like some breakfast, yes," Ray responded as he tried to pull the sheet up over his naked backside. It kept slipping down and it took him a moment to realise Bodie had caught it between his toes and was pulling it back down. "Will you stop!"

"Do not stop on my account," Dahout told them. "This is the best view in the 'otel. Come down when you are dressed and Jeff will fix you something.

Then I want to start working. Ray, it will do you no 'arm to work with us if you wish." Then she was gone.

"So, do you wish?" Bodie asked as they washed and dressed.

"How do you feel about it?"

"Be nice to have a friendly face about. Is this going to be painful?" he asked, suddenly serious.

"Only as painful as you make it. Look, if you want me to go at anytime...if there's something you think you don't want me to know, just say so.

Everyone keeps secrets, even from their lovers and best friends. I won't mind."

Bodie just nodded.

After breakfast that morning Dahout took them up to a little attic room which was her private place. It was comfortable and warm, cluttered with books and little figures. A Celtic harp stood in the corner. When Ray asked her if she played, her face grew solemn and she said, "It was my brother's harp. I hold it for his return."

"Oh, where is he? Travelling?" Doyle asked.

"You could say. He died ten years ago."

The teaching, once begun, repeated the work Ray and Colette had done together. Dahout taught them about energy and power, and about the harnessing of both. The first few days were occupied with learning how to consciously summon power. Bodie was not immediately successful, and Dahout asked Ray to stay away for a day or two until Bodie had overcome whatever was holding him back. "I see now he focuses on you, Ray," she explained, out of Bodie's hearing. "And if he thinks, or senses, that you 'ave some problem about the expression of his power, he'll hold back."

The request, though it came earlier than he had expected, was not a surprise. He took it well enough, understanding that Bodie needed to set his own pace free from any pressures from Ray or anyone else, but even so, there was some tiny part of him that resented the banishment, and which feared being parted from Bodie.

Ray, Jeff and Bea drove into the city once or twice a week to shop, and to relieve some of the monotony of life in an empty inn. Christmas was approaching and it gave them something to plan for.

"What would you and Dahout do if you were all alone up here?" Ray asked one afternoon when they were having lunch at a teashop.

"Sometimes we go away for the winter, sometimes we stay. It depends," he said, pushing a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. The older women in the tearoom found him exotic, with his fair hair pulled back into a short braid and held in place with a leather band. "She has resources. She's never bored."

"What about you?" Ray asked.

"I read a lot." He grinned. "Yeah, okay, sometimes I'm bored silly. When that happens I usually go away by myself. I'll visit friends - Bea or Colette..." He glanced up at Ray. "I know what you're thinking and I suppose you're right. It doesn't seem like much of a marriage."

"I didn't say that," Ray protested.

"You didn't have to. And I've said it to myself many times."

"Jeff..." Bea laid her hand on his arm.

"No, let me say it. I love Dahout, always will, but what held us together is over now - something has been fulfilled and I'm restless again." He took Bea's hand between his own and kissed her fingers "I'm longing for something based on passion, not intellect or spirit."

"Oh, my dear," Bea breathed, "I wish..."

Ray felt as though he'd stumbled onto something very personal, and was embarrassed.

"However," Jeff said briskly, "there's no point in thinking about it for a while now. She needs my energy for the work she has to do with Bodie, and for the babies. Afterwards, we'll settle it between ourselves. Let's make a baby," he said to Bea.

"Sounds wonderful."

"I have a question," Ray said. "You can tell me to mind my own business if you like, but...how do you manage to run an empty inn?"

"Oh my." Jeff sat back and folded his hands across his stomach. "That's a long story. When I was four, my parents split up. My mother remarried about a year later and her second husband was the only father I ever really knew. We moved out to the West Coast in...sixty-six, I think it was. I was fourteen then. I wasn't really unhappy so much as restless, I guess. I got into drugs and the Haight-Ashbury thing, then I lived on a commune for a few years. Then I..."

At that moment the waitress came by with a fresh pot of tea and asked if they'd like dessert. When she'd brought the sweets, Jeff continued.

"Basically, I dropped out. Went to Mexico and lived with Huichol for a while - this was after I met Colette. I spent a year riding with a motorcycle gang...I did it all. And when I came back to San Francisco, there was a fortune waiting for me. Oh, not a big one. I'm not Paul Getty or anything. But my father had died while I was on the road, and his entire estate had come to me. It was sort of a shock considering I couldn't remember anything about the man. The lawyer I talked to told me my father was a little eccentric. My mom told me he meant my dad was nuts."

He shrugged and ate a bit of the pastry he'd ordered.

"Anyway, I gave some of the money to Mom, and kept the rest. It's a nice income, and we both supplement it. I write and Dahout..." He smiled. "Well, she has resources in that area as well."

"You never cease to amaze me," Ray admitted, much to their amusement.

On the way back to the car Jeff stopped at a phone box and begged a handful of tens from them. He dialled, waited for what seemed a very long time, then said, "It's Jeff, take down this number and call me back." Then he gave the number, hung up and waited.

"Who are you calling?" Bea asked.

"You'll see." The phone rang and he answered it. "Hi! No, what time is it? Really? Sorry, I forgot. Anyway, what're you doing for Yule? And Christmas," he added. "Can you all come and visit? We're lonely up here.

Oh..." He winked at Ray and Bea. "Bea, Ray, Bodie...Dahout is teaching Bodie.

Uh-huh. Hurry up, we're freezing! When? Okay, we'll have your rooms ready. Bye." He hung up again. "That was Kev. He says that he and Colette and the boys'll be happy to spend the holidays here." Bea squealed and threw her arms around Jeff's neck. "I'm a creature of impulse," he said with a sheepish grin. He picked Bea up and carried her down the street. "I wanted to see them again," he said to Ray who walked along beside them. "Of course, now we have to buy more gifts, don't we?"

"Any excuse," Bea said, but Ray knew she was pleased.

"You're not paying attention," Dahout accused for the third time that afternoon. "What's the matter?"

"Dunno. Bored, I guess. None of this makes any sense to me, Dahout. I feel like I'm being taught to walk on water, but I don't know why."

"I should have thought the why was obvious," she began, and he lost patience.

"I did something awful to someone who was going to do something awful to us...I do that every day, love, only I usually use a gun. What's the big deal?"

"You have control of the gun, non?"

Put so simply, it was obvious. Bodie was embarrassed and annoyed. He paced the room, unable to find an outlet for his anger. "So the answer is party tricks, is that it? Make this disappear, make it come back...shall I make Irving come back, Dahout? Is that what we're leading up to?"

"NO!" She was on her feet, and the look on her face frightened him. "No, that's not a good idea."

"Why?"

"It just is not. Don't ever think of it again."

He remembered the faceless man struggling to scream, and wrapped his arms around himself, suddenly cold and very lonely.

"I don't know what you want," he admitted quietly.

"I want you to be safe and happy."

"Oh, is that all? He took refuge in heavy sarcasm. "Nothin' to it," he said, snapping his fingers.

"I think we should stop for today - we achieve nothing when you're in such a mood." She walked past him, then stopped and turned back. "We do 'party tricks' because it's all you'll allow yourself to do, Bodie." Then she left him alone in the room.

He stood there for a long time - ten, twenty minutes - his mind wandering.

A month ago things had been so simple. He loved Ray and Ray loved him and they were both alive and healthy and lusty and basically happy. For a moment he was consumed by a wave of negative emotion directed against himself - guilt, anger, fear...it amazed him, shook him and left him weak.

This was his fault. He'd ruined what they'd had.

Without thinking, he wandered to the window seat and sat, pulling the harp towards him. His fingers drifted across the strings aimlessly, making soft, formless noises. Things would never be the same between them; his life would never be the same. The wires vibrated under his hands, the sounds hanging in the air. The Bodie who had walked into that pub was gone forever.

The sunlight was fading and the little room was growing cold. He set the harp back into its corner and went downstairs.

Later that night, when they were alone together, Bodie asked Ray, "Do you regret what we've lost?"

"Lost?"

It was so hard to explain... "That night in the pub, things changed, Ray. You know that as well as I do."

"Things change all the time, Bodie."

"Too easy..."

"Do you want me to say, 'Yes, I regret the changes'? I don't, you know."

When Bodie didn't respond, he continued. "I don't see them as negative."

"Pollyanna Doyle."

"Not at all." He put out the light and climbed into bed beside Bodie.

"Change is healthy. Doesn't mean anything's lost. Ah, have you been worrying about this?" He reached out to muss his lover's hair and Bodie jerked away.

"Don't patronize me, okay?"

"Not my intention. You want to fight about this? I don't." He turned over and hauled the duvet up over his shoulder. "G'night."

Bodie lay awake for a long time before he turned onto his side and fell asleep.

The next morning he went up to Dahout's room. She was sitting in the window seat, holding the harp, tracing the knotwork with her fingers.

"I want you to tell me what you want me to do," he told her. "Straight out."

The look she gave him was not what he had expected. "I want you to find that place in you where you hide yourself," she said. "It's there you'll touch your real power."

"And where is that?"

She shook her head and ran a finger over the strings. "I don't know...your heart, your mind, your soul...they can all be labyrinths, treasure rooms.

But, if I had to guess, I'd say look into your heart first. Look for the things you love best."

He tried to sound derisive, but her guess truck a responsive chord. "You'll never find that among the things I love best."

"No? Well, perhaps not. It was just a guess. Shall I ask Ray to come back and work with us?"

"No! I mean, why bother? What good would it do?"

She smiled at him. "You won't leave this place, my dear, until you stop handing me parlour tricks when I ask for your magic."

"Can you stop me?" he asked, affronted.

"I think so. Shall we try?"

For a moment he was tempted, but something in him warned him away from testing her strength. "Another time, maybe," he drawled. "Where did you say I should look?"

"That's for you to decide."

He sat on the floor. "Sort of like an armchair scavenger hunt, innit? Oh, great and wise spirit, show me the way," he intoned, sneaking a look at Dahout. She was grinning. "Aren't you going to scold me for being facetious?"

"No."

"Rude?"

She shook her head.

"You're no fun."

"You'll learn," she said. "Listen to this; it was a favourite piece of my brother's." She began to play in earnest, her fingers drifting across the strings. The song she played was simple, yet elusive. Bodie found himself concentrating on it, trying to follow it in his mind. He relaxed a little, forgetting his frustration in the music. "'s nice, that."

"It's an old tune."

"It reminds me of something..."

"Mmmm-hmmm."

Once he'd captured the melody, he sat back and drifted with it, feeling himself vibrating along with the strings. Dahout was a good harpist, he decided, and the song...it was like one his mum used to sing. Not the same, of course, but very like. How did it go? He shut his eyes and thought hard about the melody, hummed a few bars. Close...something about roses and willow trees...he could almost hear her singing. She was playing the harp and singing her song. "I didn't know you could play," he said.

"There's a lot you never knew about me." He was unaccountably hurt by her words.

"Not for want of trying," he said, a trifle defensively.

"No?" She sang another verse. "You made me over in your own image of me,"

she said. Her hands stilled, but the music continued. "How could you know what I really was?"

Nothing would ever be the same.

"Is that why you left me?" he whispered, fearing her answer.

"I never left you, Gwyn."

"Why did you always call me that?"

"It was what I wanted to name you. They wouldn't let me. They named you after my father and uncle. It never took, did it?"

He shook his head and they shared a smile as they used to.

"When you find me as I really was, you'll find what you seek, Gwyn." She began to play again. Soon there was only the melody.

"Bodie..." Dahout was watching him from the window seat. "Where have you been?"

"Where you sent me," he snapped, feeling angry at the whole world. But he was intrigued by the challenge. "...as I really was..." What and where was that? "Play something else?" he asked, and without comment, she began again.

This time he travelled consciously down the paths she had shown him in the last few weeks. Many of the places he knew well, for this was where he stored those 'party tricks' he'd become so good at. Here a rabbit out of a hat, there a flame leaping from his fingertips...all done with mirrors, folks.

But then he came to the place where he had faltered many times before - a fork in the road. One side was a well-worn path, lined with the familiar and the comfortable. The other road was unknown, unlit and untravelled. He hesitated for only a moment before he chose the second way.

The first thing he found there was himself. "You don't want to come this way, old son," he said to himself. "Nasty stuff back there. Go on back before you get hurt."

"Tough guy, huh?" he asked.

"You bet...the toughest." He ached to wipe the smirk off his own face. "Hey, you keep going and I can't answer for the consequences," he warned.

He kept walking, past a young soldier who dug frantically through the rubble of a demolished building in Belfast, searching for the child who had delivered the bomb, past a lovely dream named Marikka, past a boy fighting off his own mates on so many hot, drunken nights in the jungle, on a ship, far away from home.

And then he stopped beside a child who stood, stony-faced, in a church. "It 's okay to cry," he told the boy, who didn't seem to hear. "It wasn't your fault."

"I'm back," he said to his mother, who stood un-noticed on the other side of the child.

"Almost there, keep going."

He walked on, and as he reached the crest of a hill he saw Ray sitting on a fence that ran by the side of the road. "What're you doing here?" he asked.

"Waiting for you. I thought you'd never make it." He hopped down off the fence. "Thought you might want some company on the way."

"Could have used a bit back there," Bodie grumbled as Ray fell into step with him.

"Nah, that's nothing you haven't faced every day of your life. This is the real thing, now, this is the stuff that separates the men from the boys."

He cackled obscenely and Bodie laughed at Doyle's ribald good humour.

They walked on in companionable silence for a while. Then Doyle stopped and caught hold of Bodie's arm. "I'm with you," he said, all trace of levity gone.

"I know."

And once again that chasm yawned before him - chaos and peace opening up into infinity, spanned by a single bright thread. "I won't let the goblins get you, mate," Doyle promised, and Bodie turned to him and smiled.

"I've been walking this thread all my life. This time it'll be easy.

Common." And he stepped out onto the strand of light, surefooted, Ray close behind. "Hear the one about the CI5 agent and the farmer's daughter?" he asked.

"Hear it? I made it up," Ray replied.

Bodie stepped off the thread onto solid ground. "It figures. We made it, though. Nice place, eh?" It was a small room with white walls and a fireplace. "Looks a bit like my old nursery," he mused.

"I think it looks like the bedroom at The Dancing Maiden, meself," Ray observed. "Here, isn't that your mum?" He gestured to the window, and Bodie looked out to see his mother, dressed in a sea-green dress, dancing with a handsome, dark-haired man. She was laughing in a way she'd never laughed with him. He watched them kiss, then turned away.

"Well, I always knew I wasn't the immaculate conception," he said to Ray, who was grinning broadly.

"Didn't keep you from actin' the part, did it?"

"Prat. Help me find it, will you?"

"Find what?"

"Me...well, part of me, anyway."

"Which part? A good one?" He leered at Bodie. "Okay, why don't you try that chest?"

Bodie turned to find his old toy chest sitting against the wall. "Haven't seen that in years," he said, running a hand over the well-remembered designs - dancing rabbits, the teddy bears' picnic. "Can't be in here, though. 's too small." He opened the box anyway and drew out a cap and top hat.

"Gwyn the magnificent will now produce an egg from my ear!" Ray announced.

"Go on, you know you want to."

"Saw you in half, more like. Look at this!" He drew a battered old lion from the chest and gave it an unconscious hug. "This is Africa. Uncle Bill gave her to me. I used to dream about going there and seeing real lions."

The expression of tender affection in Ray's eyes made Bodie blush. "You know something, though? This is the magic. I thought it would be bigger, fiercer...like Africa here. I always thought she was big and fierce and she's really just a little threadbare toy." He stared down at the lion and then with great deliberateness, he hugged her to his chest. "Funny, innit? It's all the things that you hide away 'cause they mean too much."

"If you hide them from yourself, you risk losing them," Dahout observed.

Bodie looked up at her and smiled.

"I know the was now," he said, "though I can't say I enjoyed the trip."

"But you brought your magic back."

He was still clutching Africa.

Christmas had given the 'extra appendages' something to do. They aired and cleaned the bedrooms, decorating them with evergreen and potted flowers and herbs. On one of their excursions Bea found a box of old crystals in an antique store, and spent a whole day hanging them in all the windows of the inn. Later, Ray heard her say to Jeff, "We should think about painting some of the rooms. New curtains might be nice as well." And he realised Bea was beginning to nest. She was never for him - not really. The flame of their attraction had faded to a warm glow. He was content.

They bought a tree, its root ball wrapped in burlap so it could be planted outside in the spring, and decorated with ornaments they took from the storeroom.

Carried away with the spirit of the holiday, Jeff took to the kitchen and baked cookies and cakes and breads. Bea bought pots of amaryllis bulbs and set them everywhere, asking each one if it would consent to bloom for the holidays. At first Ray thought she was joking, but he noticed the plants seemed to be making an extraordinary effort to do just that.

For his part, Ray wrapped gifts. His own packages were so admired, as they sat in splendour under the tree, that everyone else brought him their gifts and begged him to wrap them as well. He took great pleasure in making each one both beautiful and unusual. He'd just finished one of his gifts to Bodie - a handsome leather-bound set of Tolkien that had set him back a good few quid - when Bodie appeared at the table where Ray was working, clutching a battered toy lion. "Need a bit of help?" he asked.

"Nah, everything's under control. Could use some company, though." Bodie sat down. "Where'd you get that?" Ray asked, indicating the toy.

"Hm? Oh, you wouldn't believe it. Here, have a biscuit. Jeff made 'em."

He held one out to Ray. "G'is a kiss?"

"You don't have to bribe me." They kissed and Ray claimed the biscuit.

"Nice," he said. "both."

"What's in this one?" Bodie asked. "Is it for me?" Ray rescued the package before it could be shaken.

"You're Peter-bloody-Pan, you are. Never grown up."

"Grew up too soon; never 'ad time for this. Nice, innit?"

Ray stopped and looked at him with real affection. "Yeh, 's nice," he agreed. "So're you. You're feeling good today," he observed as he swallowed the last bit. "Good session?"

"Yeh, not bad. Miss you though." Bodie picked up a scrap of paper and folded it into a little square, then into a rectangle, then tore it in half.

"Feels like I'm back in school and, oh, you know, missing me friends." He wrapped his arms around the lion and rested his chin on it.

"Missing? Your friends always skiving off, were they? Bad lot?" He went o wrapping as he talked.

"Nah, 's just that I went away to school and my friends didn't. My best friend..."

"What?"

"Nothin' really. Is that one for me? What's in it?"

"Mind your own bloody business!" Ray told him, laughing.

"All right, all right."

Late that evening Colette and the others arrived, laden with gifts and holiday cheer. Ray was overjoyed to see her again - it had been so long since they'd been together. He threw his arms around her and hugged her until she begged for mercy.

"Lord, Ray, you've healed up stronger than when you started, haven't you?"

"I'm growing younger, didn't I tell you?"

"And I'm afraid it's my fault," Bodie said, pushing Ray aside to claim a hug and kiss for himself. They were all standing in the common room, falling over luggage as they hugged and kissed each other.

Ray began to greet the others and when he came to Jamie he hesitated, remembering what had happened between Bodie and Jamie the last time they were together. Jamie's eyes narrowed. "It's okay, you don't have to," he muttered, just loud enough for Ray to hear.

They sat down to a late supper and talked about what had been happening since they'd all seen each other last, a year ago. Colette was thrilled about the babies, and couldn't stop talking about them. Ray noticed that Bodie was frowning.

He also noticed Jamie watching Bodie with that same terrible longing that Ray had seen on Jamie's last visit. It made him angry remembering the rousing fights he and Bodie still occasionally had over Jamie. Even a year later it upset him to think of Bodie and Jamie together. They were supposed to have gone to dinner and the cinema while Ray and the others celebrated Samhain; instead they'd gone to a hotel. Bodie hadn't lied about it. He'd explained that Jamie needed loving more than he needed a Cagney retrospective. Ray hadn't understood then and he didn't understand now.

Tal stretched and stood up, signing that he was sleepy and wanted to go to bed. Then he kissed everyone goodnight - even planting a kiss on Dahout's swollen abdomen - and went upstairs. Jamie's gaze followed him, then shifted to Bodie, and something passed between them - a question. Bodie shook his head and Jamie stood up. "I'm going to bed too," he said abruptly, then followed Tal.

Bea watched him, her head tilted and her expression thoughtful. "When did this happen?" she asked.

"Last year. Hearts and flowers it ain't," Kev admitted, "but it's lasted this long."

"They are good for each other, non?" Dahout observed. She moved her chair close to Jeff's and leaned against him, pulling his arm around herself.

"Well, Tal's good for Jamie," Colette said, "in more ways than the obvious.

He needed a healer, and, no offence Bea, it wasn't you."

Bea nodded thoughtfully. "I never liked him much," she admitted.

"He's not a likeable kid," Kev began, "but he's..."

"A loveable one," Bodie finished and Ray forced himself not to react.

"You think so?" Colette asked.

"When he lets himself be...yes, I do."

"Empathy is a double-edged blade," Jeff added, with surprising insight.

The conversation turned to other things, but Ray found he couldn't stop thinking about Jamie and Bodie...together...in bed. It infuriated him though he did his best to hide it. It was nearly two before they retired to their beds.

"Are you upset about something?" Bodie asked under cover of darkness. "I know you're not asleep," he added, rubbing the tense back.

"I'm not upset."

"Pull the other one. Is it Jamie?"

"Oh, drop it, Bodie," Ray said, sounding exasperated. "I don't want to fight with you. You do what you want, okay?"

Bodie wanted to say that it was not okay, but something seemed to be caught in his throat. "Night," he whispered and rolled over to face the wall. It was all wrong - he didn't understand where the line had been drawn. He had tried over and over to explain what had happened between Jamie and himself, but Ray hadn't wanted to understand, and time, apparently, hadn't proved to be any more persuasive.

He rolled over again. "Ray? Won't you even talk to me about it?" Silence.

"For Chrissake Ray, are you going to make me pay for a little kindness for the rest of my life?"

"Kindness?" Ray sat up and stared at him, his eyes glittering in the moonlight. Angry cat. "How stupid do you think I am? Kindness?"

"Yeah. That's all it was. I tried to tell you that before."

Ray shut his eyes. "Whatever you say...anything you say. Anything for some peace."

"Don't cut me off like this," Bodie begged.

"I don't want to argue."

"We don't have to argue, Ray, but I think we ought to straighten..."

"I don't want to argue, don't want to straighten anything out, don't want to discuss, talk, fight, chat, rap, converse, exchange views or even bloody think about you and Jamie, so just shut up about it!" He rolled over and pulled a pillow over his head.

Bodie wanted to break something. He wanted to grab Ray and shake him until he had to listen to what Bodie wanted to say. He wanted to slap Ray silly.

He wanted to hurt Ray.

Suddenly the windows blew open and a wind swept into the chamber, picking up anything that wasn't nailed down and tossing it about. It even lifted the bed slightly and moved it across the room. A bolt of lightening streaked through and struck the chair where Ray had tossed his clothes, reducing it to a smoking wreck. Then the storm ended, leaving Bodie bereft of his senses in the sudden and complete silence and darkness. He felt Ray slide out of bed and heard his soft footfall as he walked across to what was left of the chair.

"Was this me?" Ray asked bitterly.

The door flew open and Jeff and Kev entered. "What the hell's going on?"

Jeff demanded.

"We had a little storm. Sorry for the noise."

Bodie missed the rest of the conversation. He pulled his knees up and pressed his face against them. He was sick to his stomach.

He heard the door close.

"I suppose I should be grateful it was my clothes and not me, eh? I'd better sleep somewhere else."

He heard the door open, and close again. He looked up. Africa was staring at him.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Bodie whispered, rocking back and forth like a frightened child. He sat like that for hours, and didn't remember finally falling asleep.

He skipped breakfast the next morning, dressed, and went directly to Dahout' s room. "Did Jeff tell you what happened?"

"What he could. You tell me."

"I was angry. I killed the chair instead of Ray."

"You wanted to kill him?" she asked, sitting beside him.

"I thought I did."

"But if you'd wanted to you would 'ave, non?"

"Don't know."

"I do. Now we work on controlling that temper of yours." He found that far from being comforted, he resented her businesslike attitude.

"Doesn't anyone have a minute to spare for me, for the Bodie who doesn't really understand any of this?"

She sighed. "I expect you are right. What would you like to talk about?"

"Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?" he demanded, wanting, irrationally, to fight with anyone and everyone.

"That's not what I had in mind," she countered.

"Nevertheless..."

For a long time she didn't answer, then she stood up and touched the harp in the corner. "What could it mean to you?"

"Is that your way of telling me I'm not the father?" he asked unpleasantly.

"No. But I ask you - what do you think you could do that I cannot? Could you be a father to them?"

It was truth and it had a bitter flavour. "No," he admitted in a barely perceptible whisper. "No, I'm not father material, am I? Doesn't matter,"

he said with a gesture of dismissal. "Let's go back to work."

"No, it's time for us to talk to each other," she said. "I 'ave waited to long for this - it is my fault. D'accord, we talk." She sat beside him once again and took his hand. "Was Ray angry because of Jamie?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"Yes," she said, and Bodie felt himself blush. "You and I are very much alike, I think."

"Are you trying to tell me I was a sympathy fuck?" he asked with bitter humour.

"No, I'm trying to tell you something else, something I should have told you long ago." She touched her abdomen in the unconscious gesture of protection that pregnant women make. "Tell me about your mother."

"What?"

"I want to hear about her. What is she like?"

He resisted at first. "Dead," he said with an angry bluntness. But then he realized he wanted to talk about her. "She was a pretty thing - dark red hair, green eyes...spray of freckles across her nose. Typical Irish." He could see her now, very clearly. "She went on holiday with her friends and came back with me inside her. Later she told me my father was a faery night. She wasn't all there, you see." He smiled and shook his head.

After all these years the bitterness had faded and he felt only a rueful sadness for his shy, pretty mother. "She was my best friend," he added quietly. "She died when I was fourteen and away at school. She walked into the river, they told me. Never found her body. They brought me home for the funeral and when they put me on the train to go back to school...I kept going. Never looked back." He looked at Dahout. "Enough?" He was surprised to see compassion in her eyes.

"She didn't lie to you, Bodie...about your father."

"Right."

"Would you like to meet him?"

"Dahout, for god's sake, don't!" He stood up and pulled away from her. "I don't want to play these games any longer. Just help me to control this craziness. Why the hell can't I wish it away like I did Irving?"

"Do you want to meet him?" she asked again, and something in her tone made Bodie stop and listen. "He exists. I know him."

"Don't..."

"What?"

"I don't know. This is too much. How do you know him?" Despite the rational self who was now almost gibbering, Bodie was intrigued.

"I recognise him in you - I saw him there the moment we met."

"Crony of yours, is he? Share spells, do you?"

"He's my father as well."

"This isn't happening," Bodie muttered. She smiled at him. "I don't believe it."

"Very well," she said, businesslike once more. "Then we should work and not waste your time. Eh, bien...last time I told you..."

"All right, all right, I yield. Do your party number."

"Are you sure?" she asked, and he glared at her. "Very well, then. Come here, beside me and do as I say."

He sat beside her on the floor and watched as she lit a tall candle, listened as she called her father.

It'll never work, he thought as he waited for something...anything to happen.

Then he realized the room had grown dark. He looked around and saw that there was still sunlight coming in through the windows, but it shed no light there in the centre of the room. Instead, the light from the candle seemed to be growing larger and brighter, filling the room with a silvery glow.

"Thee's called me from the wars." An aggrieved voice broke the unnatural silence. "Will talk to me now, daughter?" A figure, not more than five feet tall and clad in silver, stepped out of the glow. The face, framed by longish blue-black curls, seemed oddly familiar.

"It is time you met," Dahout said, indicating Bodie. "Bodie, this is thy father, Gwydion. Gwydion - thy son."

The tiny warrior tilted his dark, shaggy head and studied Bodie for a moment, then he smiled. "Fiona did say thee was fair," he said. "Come."

He extended a slim hand and without thinking, Bodie took it.

They were in a sunny meadow, filled as far as they eye could see with brilliantly-coloured wildflowers, shaded by an ancient oak. "Who are you?"

Bodie demanded, numb with shock.

"Thy father! Have forgotten already?" He laughed, the sound like music.

"Thy mother's missed thee," Gwydion said, and Bodie's heart did a strange dance.

"She's with you?"

"Aye, could not let her go for long." The smile faded from his face and he placed his hands on Bodie's shoulders. "Has been well with thee, lad?"

Bodie tried to avoid the steady gaze, but could not. Gwydion's eyes were clear violet. "Thee has little enough of me - my face and Fiona's heart.

Dost need aught of me? Do you ask of me, and if I have the power, I grant it."

No, Bodie thought, I have nothing of his. The man standing before him was almost unbearably beautiful. To Bodie's way of thinking there was no similarity between Gwydion's unearthly beauty and his own commonplace regularity of features. Next to this man Bodie felt lumpish and ugly.

"Can I see my mother once more?" he asked, looking away from the steady, knowing gaze.

"See, thee might, but time runs strange where thy mother is now. Thee may cross, if thee wishes, but..." He hesitated and Bodie remembered old stories about humans caught in faery rings.

Bodie nodded. "There's nothing, then. But, tell her I love her?" Then: "The stories she told...I didn't believe them."

"Thee's believed," Gwydion countered, a half-smile playing on his handsome face. He leaned against the gnarled trunk of the oak. "The young self believes still."

And suddenly there flared in Bodie a resentment towards this...not man, this creature who claimed him now, who had taken his mother away and who so glibly informed him of what he did or did not believe.

"Actually," he snapped, "I believe I'm as mad as my mother."

The blow on his cheek caught him by surprise. "Be real enough for thee?"

Gwydion enquired sweetly. Then the harshness in his small, perfect face faded and Bodie was surprised by the look of gentle sadness in the amethyst eyes. "Will not hear thee speak ill of Fiona - a's never mad." He brushed Bodie's cheek with gentle fingers and the sting of the blow faded. "Should have taken thee back as well; tall-folk's hurt thee into anger. Do love thee, child of great happiness. Thee's my wealth, and they brothers and sisters. Stay with us, child."

"Can't...I, Ray..."

Gwydion tipped his head and frowned, then he reached for Bodie, touching his face with fingertips. He sighed. "Thee's found him at last?" he asked, a slow smile forming. "Two thing, then, I give. The first - what thee needs most. The second - a father's blessing on thee...and on Redhair. A's fey enough." He kissed Bodie's forehead. Then his wide mouth twisted into a smile. "God's go with thee, my son. Do you ever wish so, the People will welcome thee both."

"Bodie...Bodie!"

He was sitting on the floor in front of a guttering candle. There was no longer sunlight coming in the windows. It was dark out. "Is there a storm," he asked, feeling stupid and logy.

"It's evening, my dear. You 'ave been gone for hours."

He shut his eyes as she flicked on the room light. "Nice trick. How'd you do it?"

"You don't want to believe?" she asked, seeming genuinely puzzled.

"Oh, it's a lovely little fantasy..."

"Why must you always hide even from yourself?" she snapped.

"What do you recommend?" He stood up and stared down at her. "Life would be lovely if we could all be beautiful and good and wealthy and spend our days singing hey-nonny on the greensward, wouldn't it? But it's not and we can't, so there's no use in pretending."

"But you can..."

"Yea, I can make things happen...with a vengeance. You think that really pleases me? You think I like the idea that my father is an elf and I've slept with my sister? Did you think that would please me? This is a joke.

Tell me it's a joke..." And suddenly he was pleading with her.

"I can't tell you that. I can't deny what I am even if you choose to do so, Bodie." She stood up and suddenly seemed different somehow. She was no longer the girl with the beautiful eyes and violets in her hair; she was fierce and imposing and untouchable. "If you choose to reject your power, I can take it from you. Is that what you wish?"

Bluntly stated, that was exactly what he wanted. But with the possibility within his grasp, he hesitated. "How could you do that?"

"Like a surgeon removing a damaged limb. Once gone, you can never have it back," she told him. "Think about it, brother. Make no hasty decisions."

She left him alone in the room.

He stood there for a while, then went back to his bedroom, undressed and fell asleep immediately.

A soft voice woke him. "Bodie? I brought some supper." Ray uncovered the plate. "Lamb stew."

"I'm sorry about last night, Ray. I'm sorry about Jamie. I..."

"Don't."

Bodie turned his face into the pillow. I've done it wrong again, he thought. Then he felt the bed dip and Ray's arms around him. "I meant, don 't apologise. Don't worry. I behaved like a cuckolded adolescent and I have a lot to apologise for as well. I'm not very good at it, so could we take it all as read and start over? I love you, Bodie."

"Still?"

"Always. Did you think you could get rid of me that easily?"

Instead of picking up on the joke, Bodie buried his face in Ray's neck.

"Love you too," he muttered.

"I know. Bodie, sometimes I forget how important this is. I get caught in the details. I'm sorry. I think we ought to talk about Jamie if you're still willing. I need to understand what brought you two together."

There was a long silence, then Bodie said, "I just passed along a bit of kindness someone once showed me. Jamie was willing to sell himself for a little affection; I just showed him that affection was free for the asking and that a bed doesn't have to be a battlefield. What I started Tal is finishing. That's all there is, Ray. Just that."

Ray pressed his cheek against Bodie's hair. "He's lucky you were there for him," he said, dreamily. "I just didn't understand before, Bodie. I've been missing you, and sometimes I'm afraid I'm losing you."

Bodie stirred. "Ray, what would you think if you found I wasn't...what you thought I was?"

"Come again?"

"How would you react if I told you I wasn't, say, really Bodie? If you thought I'd made up my life or something?"

"How could anyone make up your life?" he teased. Then, "You're serious, aren't you? Oh dear, is it something you're likely to tell me?"

"Might be."

"Well..." He shifted slightly to press the length of himself against Bodie's side. "I suppose I'd be surprised, and I'd want to know the truth, but I doubt it would change the way I feel about you."

"What if the truth was something not quite...What if it was very strange and not quite normal?"

"You're really from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse - I knew it!"

"Ray!"

"Well, have a heart, mate, you make it all sound so ominous and creepy. I don't think there's anything you could tell me that would make me love you less."

"Or change the way you think about me?"

"Alter pure lust? Never. Bodie, what are you on about?"

"It's about my family. I...they..."

"Wait, wait, before you say any more..." He elbowed himself up and looked down at Bodie. "Bea told me something that I had a hard time believing, but from the look of you, I may have to accept it. Does it have to do with Dahout as well?"

"Yes. They told you?" He was outraged and Ray was quick to calm him.

"Dahout said you were like her, that you shared blood. I asked Bea what she meant and she said Dahout's father was one of the Sidhe and Dahout must have seen the blood of the People, as Bea calls them, in you. That's all I know.

Is it true?"

"I think so," Bodie admitted.

"Well, there's a thing." He crawled on top of his lover and rested his head on Bodie's shoulder. "You're upset about it. Tell uncle Ray."

"I met my father today...or I was persuaded that I did."

"What's he like?"

"Incredible. Ray, you've never seen anything so beautiful. I don't believe he can be any part of me."

"From that description, I can believe it. Continue."

"My mother told me about him when I was little and everything she said was true. He wore silver armour and had blue-black curly hair and eyes like...like amethysts. He couldn't have been more than five feet tall."

"The mind boggles," Ray said with a chuckle. "He sounds wonderful. What's the problem?"

"I don't want to be half-human."

"Has it changed it you at all?" Ray asked.

"No, but..."

"What you mean is you don't want to be anything but what you are, which is what you'll always be, Bodie. Just because you call it by another name doesn't make it any worse or better."

"Do you believe it's possible?"

"Of course."

"You do?"

Ray grinned. "You're asking a man who regularly changes into a cat? C'mon Bodie, don't you think your perceptions ought to change with the times?"

"You're telling me I should just blithely believe in all this?"

"Essentially...yes. What's it cost?"

"My sanity."

"Oh, don't be so melodramatic, and don't argue with me!" He mock threatened Bodie, who gave him a sheepish smile.

"All right, uncle Ray. You still love me then?"

"You'll do in a pinch," Ray said, and Bodie did just that to his favourite part of Ray's anatomy.

It was suddenly morning and Bodie was feeling comfortable if a little disoriented by the events of the previous day. It must have been some daft sort of dream, he decided - his father was no more a faery knight than he was Sir Lancelot. What, he wondered, had Dahout put in that tea?

Ray stirred, but didn't wake, and Bodie lost himself in contemplation of his lover. Tousled curls - an obvious place to begin - he loved those curls, loved to wrap them around his fingers and straighten them out, only to watch them spring back into the original shape when he released them. They were a source of endless fascination to him. Then the face...some found it ugly, some thought it was ruggedly handsome. Ruggedly? Bodie almost laughed aloud remembering the woman who'd described Ray as ruggedly handsome. Must have been the cheek because nothing else about the face qualified even remotely for that definition. No, Ray was beautiful in a way you just didn' t see in this world too often. With a start, Bodie realised Gwydion had that same sort of beauty, though unflawed - slanting eyes, sensual mouth and a nose...well, Bodie'd seen that often enough when looking in the mirror.

Perhaps that's where Gwydion had come from, perhaps he'd been born out of Ray's feyness and Bodie's own physical quirks. He looked up to see Africa still staring down at him from the bedside table. She looked as though she was grinning at him, like the Cheshire cat. Maybe it was all true...

Anyway, he thought with a forcible shift of gears, then there's the body.

It was surprisingly strong, resilient, and had a quirky beauty. Bodie loved the smooth golden skin and the dark gold pelt of hair, light at the throat and thickening down at the groin. And rising out of the fur, a creature with a mind of it's own. Beelzy's alter ego, Bodie thought with a secret glee. He stroked the smooth flank under his hands and felt the warm skin quiver at his touch.

He lay back against the pillows and continued to stroke Ray gently, knowing that, like the cat he was, Ray loved to be petted. This, then, was contentment. It was the thing that had drawn Bodie to Ray before they knew each other very well...long before they became lovers...mates. If he analysed the feeling, he'd have said it felt like coming home. Startled by that revelation, he stilled his hand.

"Don't stop, it feels wonderful!"

"Didn't know you were awake."

"'m not." He moved back against Bodie and nestled his pretty round ass tight against Bodie's groin. "Give you any ideas, sport?"

"No new ones...sport."

Ray giggled. Then he stretched, and sneezed a few times, and gave a tremendous yawn. "Crikey, now I'm all worn out."

"We're getting lazy. Soft life up here."

"I'm getting fat as a pig," Ray announced. Bodie ran his hand over Doyle's abdomen.

"No fear," he said, hand lingering over the still-sharp jut of pelvic bones. "You'll always be rangy, like an old alley cat."

"I beg your pardon!" Ray grumbled as he rolled over and climbed on top of Bodie.

"Oof! I take it back, you are fat."

"That's more like it." He bit Bodie's chin, rubbed his face on Bodie's chest and changed into Beelzy.

"Hullo, kitty. I've missed you." Beelzy began to purr and make starfish paws on his chest as Bodie scratched behind his ears. Beelzy's eyes slitted in pure bliss.

"Who's a handsome boy, then? Hmmm? Who's my big, beautiful marmalade tom?"

Beelzy rolled sideways, nearly sliding off Bodie's chest, and his purr became a roar. "He's a pretty puss, he is...little heart-breaker. King of the gigolos." Beelzy started to drool. He shut his eyes and stretched out full length on Bodie, still purring madly. Then Ray was back.

"You don't half talk rubbish to that cat," he observed, but he was grinning.

"Want me to talk that way to you, don't you? Ah, cummon, I know you want it...'ere! You jealous?"

"Nah, like to watch you make an ass of yourself over Beelzy." He turned over and Beelzy was back, purring and drooling and digging his needle claws into Bodie's side.

"You are the most perverse...cat...person...cat-person, I've ever met."

"Rrrrrrrrrrrowww."

"'Course, sometimes you're a better conversationalist than Ray."

"Grrroowowlll." A cold wet nose pressed against Bodie's chin and Beelzy stretched full length again down Bodie's torso. "Mmmeowp?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Bodie asked, scratching behind the soft ears.

"What's the time?"

Bodie rolled over, dumping Ray onto the mattress, then reached for his watch. "Gone ten. That's odd, usually they call us if we oversleep. You don't suppose we've missed breakfast?"

Ray began to laugh and held out his arms to Bodie. "I'll give you breakfast, you twit."

It was almost eleven thirty before they finally put in an appearance downstairs. The first person they met was Jeff, who was carrying an armload of holly and looking harassed. "It's catch as catch can in the kitchen today."

"What's going on?"

"Solstice. We're having the celebration tonight. Tomorrow through Christmas we party, but today we work. Go have something to eat and then come and help."

In the kitchen, all was in uproar. Bea, Colette and Tal were all working there and inclined to be snappish if disturbed.

After a hurried meal, Ray and Bodie went to find Jeff who put them to work fetching and carrying. They hung mistletoe and holly and laid a fire of oak roots in the fireplace in the common room. Jamie watched them, and while he helped clean and move furniture, he refused to have anything to do with the preparations for the solstice celebration. "Not convinced, eh?" Bodie asked him as he took a rest. "Well, I'll tell you a secret - neither am I."

"Then why are you going along with this bullshit?" Jamie asked.

"Because it can't hurt. No, really," he insisted in response to the young man's derisive laugh. "What's the cost to you? You don't believe in any god, do you? Well then, you don't believe you'll be punished for believing in the wrong one."

"Of course not!"

"So what does it hurt to go along with something that's harmless at worst and will probably make you feel better?"

"How is it supposed to make me feel better?"

Bodie sat back and considered the question. "I guess it becomes a sort of touchstone - something that allows you to feel as though life has meaning and order. It lets you believe there's some purpose even to the most seemingly unimportant lives."

"Big deal."

"Yeh, it is. For the first time since my mother died I feel content. For the first time, I respect life. How about that? Maybe I am convinced after all." He looked closely at the boy sitting beside him and was aware once again of the confusion and unhappiness that had led him to take Jamie into his bed once before. "Still so unhappy? I thought things were better for you."

"They are and they aren't. Bodie..."

"Hmmm?"

"Nothing, never mind."

"No, tell me. No secrets, remember? We agreed."

"Not a secret. It's just that I...I don't feel right about anything; especially about Tal. I'm afraid."

"Of what?" He put his arm around Jamie and felt him tense, then relax.

"Of hurting him, afraid he'll leave, afraid he'll die, afraid I can't give him what he needs or wants. I'm afraid of everything."

"Sounds like love to me."

At that, Jamie laughed a little. "If it is, why is it so popular? I think it's a nuisance."

"Because it's only a part. The other parts are much better."

"Yeah, well..."

"I'm going back to work or Jeff and Ray'll have my hide. We can talk more later, if you want."

"Okay, thanks." He muttered, but sounded unconvinced. Bodie hesitated at the door of the common room. Suddenly he understood a great deal about himself. He turned back and went to Jamie's side. "Maybe they can cope without me after all."

"You don't have to..."

"I know. We're friends, yes? And friends ought to be honest with each other." Jamie nodded, avoiding Bodie's eyes. "I feel the same way about Ray."

"I know." It was a defeated sound.

"You've known that since we first met."

"I wanted you to love me."

"I do care about you." It hurt to see the boy so unhappy. "Why me?"

For a moment Jamie was silent. "Because you don't need..." he began, then shook his head.

"Need what? Need to use you? No."

"Everyone else...nobody ever...gave me anything before. Now everyone is being nice and I don't know what to do. I wanted you to help me."

"I can't be your father, Jamie. I can't tell you how to live. And I can't be strong for you. That's what you want, isn't it?" Jamie was silent again, withdrawn. "What I tried to give you was affection...hope, maybe. I told you then I was giving to you what someone gave to me many years ago. I don't know what else to say to you."

"I wanted you to love me," Jamie repeated.

"I do...but not in the way you want to be loved."

Then, unaccountably the darkness fell away from the handsome face. "Maybe I 'm smarter than I used to be." He kissed Bodie's cheek and walked out of the common room without looking back.

Later that afternoon a small group of people arrived at the inn. Bodie met Ray in the hallway and watched Jeff take them up to their rooms. "He told me we'd be thirteen at the ceremony," Ray remarked. "It'll be the first time I've worshipped with a full coven."

"I hope they weren't counting on Jamie," said Bodie.

"They never do."

It was late when the circle gathered in the darkened common room. Dahout stepped into the centre of the group. "This is the solstice," she said, "the longest night of the year. Darkness triumphs, yet must give way to the light. And we wait for the child, the coming of dawn, together - the promise of light and life. This is the time out of time when all life waits suspended...we wait. We call the sun-child from the womb of night. Blessed Be!" She motioned to the others to sit, and while she stood silently at the centre of the circle, a chant began with Kev.

"We die and are reborn," he chanted. "The wheel turns. What must we leave behind us?" The chant, picked up by the others in turn, echoed in Bodie's mind as each member of the group offered something to the night. It had a hypnotic effect on him - he felt suspended in time and distanced from all the reality he had know, from his self, his Bodieness. "What must we leave behind?" they asked over and over again and he heard his voice rising above the others. "Fear," he said, and heard the word picked up and woven into the music they were making. His fear was part of the music. He was part of the music.

Then he was standing, moving in a spiral dance around Dahout, passing the alter where Kev stood holding a small bowl. Dahout led him to Kev.

"Everything passes, everything fades," she whispered as Kev placed a pinch of salt on Bodie's tongue. "Everything passes," Kev echoed. "Taste of death."

It brought tears to his eyes, this harsh salty death. He huddled in a tight, fearful circle of humanity, half hearing Dahout telling them to sleep...to sleep in the earth, to know the perfect freedom. He was afraid at first, but remembered, as the sharpness of the salt faded into the saltiness of his own taste, that he had left fear behind him in his old life. He trusted her and crumbled to the earth and slept. Space of perfect freedom.

"Oh child, you are welcome," said the same sweet voice he had known in a dream.

But there were no dreams here, no visions, nothing but the peace he had been promised. He floated, thoughtless, fearless...until he was grasped by strong hands and drawn up through layers of darkness and warmth. He remembered to breathe in one shuddering gasp. He was cold. Kev squatted next to him.

"Sleep the sleep of the newborn, dream of the life to come, sweet child."

Ray.

There was a sweetness in his mouth. "Taste the sweetness of life, my dear,"

Dahout whispered as she smeared honey on his tongue.

A chant was building, waking him to the darkness of the room. "Set sail, set sail, Into the wind and storm, To be reborn, to be reborn..."

"We are awake in the night." He joined the music. "We turn the Wheel to bring the light."

"Who is that?"

"Golden sun...light the skies."

And there was a flare of light as the candles and the roots of oak flared into life. "Io Evohe!" Kev cried and the others echoed him. "I who have died am alive again today."

"We are born again, we shall live again," the circle answered. A hand curled around Bodie's.

"Blessed Be," Ray whispered. Bodie's face was wet.

He found himself sitting beside Ray, passing a bottle of wine, a plate of cakes and fruit. He was ravenously hungry. He was entirely at peace.

"Thank you," Ray said.

"For what?"

"Taking part. It was important."

And though there was much he wished to say, his heart was still too full.

He just nodded. There would be time. Only one thing marred the contentment - Jamie, pale-faced and alone, hovering in the doorway, watching Tal sleep, his head in Colette's lap.

A few of the group dropped off to sleep, and Ray was nodding off in the heat from the fire and wine when he felt Bodie pulling away from him. "Wha?"

"I'll be right back, lover," Bodie promised. Ray curled up on the rug and felt vaguely abandoned. Then suddenly warmth closed around him and he smelled Bodie nearby. "You brought the duvet!"

"And pillows. Some of the others are doing the same. I guess we're all kipping here tonight."

Ray chuckled and allowed himself to be tucked in like a child. A pillow was placed under his head, and Bodie lay beside him, warm and solid and comforting. "Love you," he murmured. Then, "meow." Bodie was chuckling as Ray dropped off to sleep.

He woke with a start and looked around. Several of the group were sitting up, wearing their blankets like pale-faced Indians, talking quietly. Dahout and Kev were awake, wrapped in a duvet, Kev's head resting on her shoulder.

Colette was asleep, one arm curved around Jeff and the other around Tal.

Bea was awake, but holding a sleeping Jamie close. There was a look on her face Ray had never seen before - one of such fierce tenderness that it was painful to watch her.

And Bodie...his sweet-faced, vulnerable lover was sleeping peacefully, face pressed against Ray's arm. The worst was over - he could feel it in his bones.

"Ray..." It was Dahout. He looked towards her and she pointed to the large window on the east side of the house. He could just see a glow on the horizon. Dawn.

She came to his side and kissed him. "Good morning."

"Morning. Thanks."

"De rien." She kissed Bodie awake, then moved to the others, repeating the gesture for each.

"Whasup? The old man call?" Bodie asked sleepily.

"Nothin' like that. Look. Suns coming up."

Like the sunrise, the look of childlike wonder on Bodie's face was a revelation.

Later that morning, after a glass of juice and a promise of a fine supper, they all made their way up to their rooms to sleep. Ray dropped in and out of sleep, and of dreams about things he didn't understand. Each time he woke, all he could remember was being happy.

Bodie woke occasionally and each time he did, he propped himself up on one elbow and stared down at Ray for a few moments, then they smiled at each other and he lay down and fell asleep again.

There was a commotion in the hallway about sunset, and a knock at their door. "Oh go away," Ray muttered, too comfortable to move.

The door opened and George Cowley stepped into the room.

"Oh, crikey," Bodie groaned, properly awake at last.

"Good evening, lads. Cold night." To Ray's surprise, Cowley was smiling broadly.

"I hope you don't expect us to hop up and salute or anything," Bodie drawled, but he was grinning at Cowley.

"Not just now. Tomorrow perhaps. Lessons are suspended for the holiday, I understand. That will give us ample time to discuss the situation. I will expect to see you at super." He turned on his heel and left as suddenly as he had arrived.

"Are you ready for this?" Ray asked with a chuckle. All the same, he felt a little chilled by the arrival, as though the presence of Cowley would make official the thing he'd been fearing since the night Irving disappeared - separation from Bodie. He wrapped his arms around his lover and snuggled closer, trying, unconsciously, to burrow his way into Bodie and disappear.

"Father-bloody-Christmas just popped down the chimney," Bodie muttered, "and what d'you think 'e's giving us?"

"An all expense paid vacation to the south of France?"

"Two weeks in the outer Hebrides, more like."

"And a rubber raft!" They both began to laugh. "Fancy him finding us in bed together and not turnin' a hair," Ray mused.

"He did know..."

"Still, it must have been a bit of a shock."

"He's seen it all," Bodie countered in his best man-of-the-world voice.

"Not yet he hasn't, and he'd better not if you want to keep your happy home, mate. Wonder why he is here, though."

"Ah, let's not worry about bloody Cowley tonight. I have you and you have me and this is a lovely cosy bed in a lovely cosy room. Why should we ever think about the world again?"

"Because we have to live in it is why," Ray countered. He rolled over and spooned himself against Bodie, pulling Bodie's arm over himself.

"Maybe not," Bodie said, but refused to elaborate.

"Well, we have to eat...I'm starved."

"Skinny thing like you - can't afford to let you go without, can I?"

"Cor, skinny! Put on half a stone here, 'aven't I?"

"Not possible. Ooh, crikey, all around the middle, isn't it?" Bodie teased.

"You don't have to be vulgar. Come on, it's getting late."

But it was another half an hour before they went down to supper.

True to his rod, Cowley was waiting for them. Ray groaned quietly when he saw the man, but Bodie caught his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Together,"

he whispered, and Ray felt better.

As usual there was a fine spread - pork with sage and dried fruit, fresh bread, several crisp-cooked vegetables, potatoes, and half a dozen desserts for which credit was taken by Jeff and Tal.

Ray tuned in to the conversation in time to hear Bodie ask Cowley straight out what he was doing in Inverness.

"More to the point, what am I doing here, eh, Bodie?"

"Didn't like to be rude, sir."

"Indeed. Well, I am here because I was invited to spent the holiday here."

He glanced at Colette and smiled. "And I felt it was time to find out how my investment is coming along."

"If you mean Bodie..." Ray began, annoyed.

"Doing well," Bodie interrupted.

"We'll discuss it later."

After the meal they went to Cowley's room to talk.

"I'm going to be frank with you both - I have no intention of allowing Bodie to continue as a field agent now that I know what he is capable of. He's far too valuable to risk in such a capacity. On the other hand, Doyle, you would be very valuable remaining in the field considering your talent. What I'm driving at is..."

"No." Cowley looked at Bodie who was sitting, ramrod stiff in the big, brocaded wing chair that dominated the room.

"I beg your pardon, Bodie, but I wasn't finished."

"I know what you're going to say and..."

"Have you taken to reading minds now, too?" Cowley asked sarcastically.

"That's your department, isn't it? Still, it wouldn't take a genius to suss out what you plan on doing to us, and the answer's no. No split. We work together or we're gone."

Cowley raised an eyebrow and for a long time no one spoke. Cowley and Bodie simply stared at each other, seemingly engaged in some private communication to which Ray could never be a party.

"Don't you think you should consult Doyle before you speak for him?" Cowley asked, finally breaking the silence.

"Together," Ray said. And strangely enough, Cowley smiled.

"I'm not really surprised," he admitted, "nor am I entirely displeased."

"Loyalty is at a premium, isn't it, sir?" Bodie remarked with an answering smile.

"In this business, especially. Well, I suppose I'll have to find some new job description to fit the two of you. God knows, you're becoming a bit long in the tooth to be poncing about in this green and pleasant land after villains young enough to be your children. Bodie, should you be that thin with all this food about?"

"Can't I ever do anything right?" Bodie groaned rolling his eyes. "Macklin' d be happy to see me looking like this."

"He's not paying your salary. Have you been eating?"

"As much as Doyle..."

"More," Ray added, painfully aware of his own weight.

"Good Lord!"

"Don't rub it in, sir," Ray told him.

"It's this magical stuff takes the starch out."

"Well, I suppose it's all right so long as Dahout isn't concerned. I'll speak to her tomorrow. Right now I'm tired and I could use some sleep."

Thus dismissed, they went back down to the common room to relax and listen to some music.

"Bodie..."

"Mmmm?"

"What did you do, I mean to Cowley? How did you make him back off on the split?"

"Nothing."

"Pull the other one," muttered Ray.

"No, honestly. I just let him know what I could do."

Which, Doyle reflected sleepily, is exactly what the old fox wanted. Oh, Bodie, you're such an innocent, he thought, with a rush of affection.

Christmas came, for Bodie, in a hazy sort of happiness. Everyone was content to leave him alone with Ray, asking nothing more than the occasional attentiveness. It was rather like a honeymoon, he decided as he watched Ray shave on Christmas morning. Hard to be more than a few feet apart at any time. It was nice that the others were allowing them this time - Christ only knew that once back on the job, they'd have little enough chance to behave like young lovers.

The others who had come for the ceremony were gone now. It was like a family at the inn. Before breakfast on Christmas morning they exchanged gifts. Ray gave Bodie a watch, he gave Ray a gold chain. They held hands at breakfast.

The rest of the day was quiet. Kev told stories and Bea played the old piano in the common room. After supper they played Sardines, all but Cowley and Dahout, who sat together by the fire.

Dahout came to Bodie that night and said, "We 'ave to work tomorrow Bodie, and every day until you are ready to go back into the world." It occurred to him then that his was not an endless idyll. Cowley had come to take Ray back to London.

"It won't take long," he promised her, and when she shot him a sceptical look he added, "I'll make sure it won't."

The next morning he was up early, anxious to begin, to finish his studies so the separation should not be long, when he realized he had the means to prevent any separation. He sat down in the chair beside the bed and looked at Ray for a long time, then he cleared his mind and began.

It was hard, at first, concentrating on the path down to that secret place.

"Together," he whispered. "Always together." And he felt something change inside him, felt something open. "You will never separate us. When you leave, it will be without Ray." He wove the words, considering them carefully, sending them out, wrapping them around the sleeping Cowley. It was simple, then. The magic was there. He dressed quietly and went up to Dahout's room.

She gave him a strange look as he entered. "You've been working," she said.

"How did you know?"

"I know the currents of power in this house, and in the people in it. I know your power and I felt it at work."

"Are you going to scold me, sister?"

She smiled. "I have no power over you and no right to scold you...brother. I felt the control, Bodie."

"I did it well, then?" It was strange to be here with her discussing something that was still not quite real to him.

"We shall see when George wakes."

It was mid-morning when the summons came. Cowley wanted to see him in the dining room.

"Yessir?"

"Sit down, sit down and eat something."

Bodie sat beside Ray who was already tucking into a dish of raspberries and cream.

"I'll be leaving this afternoon. I was going to take Doyle with me, but I' ve decided he'd be better off working with you for the next week or so."

Bodie managed to suppress a grin. "I want you to be a more effective team when you return than when you left."

"That's a tall order, sir," Bodie observed, drizzling heather honey on a hot baking powder biscuit.

"Aye, it is." Cowley seemed about to say something else, but he stopped short and stared at Bodie. Then he smiled. "And I don't think it'll take much longer, will it?"

"Not much," Bodie admitted. "Things seem to be coming together nicely."

"I imagine they are. Watch your step, laddie."

"I plan on it."

"What was all that about at breakfast?" Ray asked as they watched Cowley's car pull away from the inn.

"What d'you mean?"

"You know, all that unspoken conversation that you both thought I wouldn't catch. I know when someone's talking around me, you know."

"I thought you were too wrapped up in your berries and cream to notice,"

Bodie teased. "Besides, it wasn't really important. He wanted to take you back to London and I didn't want you to go." Ray's smile faded, and Bodie was puzzled.

"So you won."

"Of course."

"Think that was fair?"

This time it was Bodie's smile that faded. "I couldn't let you go, Ray, I..."

"What if I'd wanted to go?"

For a moment Bodie was confused and annoyed. He'd done it for them, couldn' t Ray see...and then he saw, too clearly. "If you want to go, I can call him back," he said, simply. "I'm sorry. It's too easy."

"It is...but that's why we're here, isn't it?"

"Do you want to go?"

"No. But next time I'd ask first. Now we'd better go upstairs. Someone has to learn how to control the uncontrollable." He smiled at Bodie who returned the expression hesitantly. "It's as bad as trying to bell a cat, I swear!"

"You ought to know," Bodie snapped as they started up the stairs to Dahout's room.

"Since when has Beelzy ever been anything but a little angel?" Ray asked with an almost straight face.

"Don't tempt me..."

"Meow."

--Yule 1982

---

...Continued in Part 3...

< Previous

Next >