The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

that special dank night scent that heralds the coming of spring. Wolfgang pulled off one of my gloves and took my bare hand in his, and I felt the heat move through me again that I felt whenever he touched me. He smiled down at me as we walked, but just at that moment a fog bank scudded across the moon, hurling us into darkness.

I thought for an instant I heard the sound of a branch cracking, a footstep behind us not far down the hill. I felt a sudden cold pang of fear, though I couldn’t think why. I stopped in my tracks, drew my hand from his, and listened. Who could be coming this way so late at night?

Wolfgang’s hand pressed my shoulder: he’d heard it, too. “Wait here, and don’t move,” he said quietly. “I’ll be right back.”

Don’t move? I was in panic—but he’d been swallowed into the darkness.

I crouched between two grape stocks and focused my ears on the night sounds as Sam had taught me. For instance, just now I could identify the separate calls of a dozen or more insects against the background of the slowly lapping waters of the river wafting from the valley floor. But beneath these sounds of nature I was able to pick out the whispers of two distinct male voices. I caught only fragments—someone said the word “she” and then I heard “tomorrow.”

Just as my eyes had fully dilated in the dark, the scudding fog blew off and the hillside was drenched in silvery moonlight. About twenty yards below where I crouched, two men stood huddled together between the rows of vine. One was clearly Wolfgang; when I stood and he saw me, he raised his arm and waved, then turned away from the other figure and started back up the hill toward me. I glanced at the other man. His crumpled hat cast a shadow on his face so I couldn’t make it out in the moonlight, but when he turned back downhill to depart, there was something about the way his slightly shorter, wirier body moved away.…

Just then Wolfgang reached me. Tossing his arms around me, he lifted me off my feet and swung me in a circle. Then he set me down and kissed me full on the lips.

“If you could see yourself all in silver light like this,” he told me. “You’re so incredibly beautiful—I can’t believe you’re real, and that you’re mine.”

“Who was that man who was following us?” I asked. “He looked familiar.”

“Oh, not at all, it was only my groundskeeper, Hans,” he told me. “He works in the next village during the day, and he looks in here each night when he comes back. Often, like tonight, it’s rather late. But just now when he returned, someone told him they’d seen lights on earlier, up here at the castle. He was coming to check everything before he went to bed. I suppose I’d neglected to tell him I would be home, and he certainly isn’t used to finding houseguests here.”

Wolfgang looked down at me and tossed his arm over my shoulder as we started up the hill once more. “And now, my dear little houseguest,” he added, squeezing me inside the circle of his arm, “I believe it’s time for us to go to bed as well—although not necessarily to sleep.”

But sleep, at long last, we did—though not until well after midnight—among piles of fluffy goosedown comforters in Wolfgang’s bed, high at the top of the tower, beneath that vast tinseled canopy of stars. This one-night odyssey of tempestuous passion had certainly cleared my brain out—not to mention my pores. I was finally at peace despite the fact that I had no idea what the morning, much less the rest of my life, might bring.

Wolfgang lay exhausted in the pillows, as well he might, one arm tossed diagonally across my rib cage, his hand caressing a lock of my hair that rested on my shoulder, as he drifted off into a seemingly untroubled sleep. I lay on my back and looked at the midnight sky spangled with stars. I saw the constellation Orion just overhead, Dacian’s “home of the Romani” in the sky, with those three bright stars at the center of the hourglass: Kaspar, Balthasar, and Melchior.

The last thing I recall was gazing up into the sky at the enormous serpent of light that Sam said the ancients believed was created by milk spurting from the breasts of the primal goddess Rhea: the Milky Way. I recalled the first time I’d stayed up all night to see it—the night of Sam’s tiwa-titmas, so many years ago. And then, unconsciously, I slipped back once more into the dream.…

It was well past midnight, but not yet dawn. Sam and I had maintained our vigil most of the night, keeping the fire stirred and fed as we waited for the totem spirits. This last hour we had remained very still, sitting crosslegged on the ground side by side, just our fingertips touching, hoping that before the night was over Sam would finally have the vision he’d waited for, over and over, these past five years. The moon was low on the western horizon and the embers of our fire were merely a glow.

And then I heard it. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like the sound of breathing, and very nearby. I tensed, but Sam pressed my fingertips, warning me to stay still. I held my breath. Now it seemed even closer—just behind my ear—a rough, labored sound, followed by the warm, heady scent of something powerfully feral. An instant later, there was a flicker at the periphery of my eye. I kept my gaze frozen straight ahead, afraid to move even my lashes though my heart was beating wildly. When the blur of movement solidified within my field of vision, I nearly fainted from shock: it was a full-grown cougar—a mountain lion!—only a few feet away from me.

Sam pressed my hand