An Old Friend Of The Family (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 3) by Fred Saberhagen (the two towers ebook txt) 📕

order, and Johnny at least smiled and waved before he left, so maybe he would at least consider what his grandmother had said. Then he was gone, and there was no longer anything to interfere with Clarissa’s looking out the window. It took her only a minute to discover that that was not what she wanted to do after all.

   It was good to get away from the tension in the family for a little while, to have time for her own thoughts. But why had she chosen the library? Had it been in the back of her mind to find something particular to read?

   Clarissa was staring up at the east end of the highest shelf on the south wall when with a minor inward shock she consciously remembered what was up there. Years, it had been, since she had even thought of that. She shook her head deliberately, and deliberately smiled at herself, and moved away. But her steps slowed as she neared the door, which Johnny had left open. Clarissa closed it slowly. She did not want to rejoin the others just yet, she wanted to stay here.

   She had been seated in an armchair for ten minutes, reading lamp on beside her, reading a John O’Hara novel, when she suddenly fully understood that she had stationed herself here on guard, on call. She was on sentry duty, a few paces from the east end of the high south shelves. This time she did not try to smile at all.

CHAPTER THREE

   On regaining consciousness, Kate was no longer bothered by the cold, and at first she knew a trace of fear that hers were the sensations of death-by-freezing. But her fingers and toes were perfectly flexible and sensitive, her ears were not at all numb, and she was not shivering. Still cold in the room, certainly, but her body was coping with it now. A sort of second wind, evidently—or a second warmth might be a better way to put it.

   It was still night, though now she could see the room and its poor furnishings much more clearly than before. Maybe another electric sign had been turned on outside, or more likely her eyes had simply adjusted to the dark. She thought that not much time had passed, for she seemed still to be feeling the effects of what she had smoked, combined with the white wine. But now she was completely alone.

   She could remember Enoch’s face above hers in the dark, and his weight, pressing her down on the poor bed, where she still lay on her back, atop whatever bedclothes there might be. A forced intimacy, certainly, but not, as far as she could tell, a conventional rape. She was still fully dressed, lying there with her right arm thrown back above her head, and her left hand resting loosely on her middle.

   Kate sat up, easily, not hurting anywhere, groping with her toes automatically for one shoe that had fallen off. With this strange high of hers she was not in the mood to wonder about the why of anything, to worry about whether she had actually been raped or not.

   Both shoes on, Kate stood up, a little giddily just at first, and observed that she was still wearing her warm blue jacket. There appeared to be nothing to do in this room, so at once she headed for the door.

   She went quickly down the creaky stairs, and out into the shabby, unfamiliar street. At the moment fear and worry were as remote to her as curiosity. Maybe in the morning she would have the world’s worst hangover, but right now she simply felt like walking. The sky had cleared, as clear as it ever got above the city itself.

   Still feeling immune to cold and wind, Kate set out, marching in a direction she was sure was east, and noting the steady diminution of the address numbers that she passed, numbers that seemed to indicate that she had not too far to go, to reach the shops on North Michigan. These days all the best shopping was up there, not in the Loop.

   She passed a man who turned to look at her, perhaps only wondering that she dared to walk Chicago’s streets at night and alone. In this neighborhood there were only a few people about. What time was it, anyway?  Might the stores be closed? Kate’s watch showed 7:48 when she pressed its button—which was odd, considering that it must have been later than that when she left Craig’s. But she was not capable of trying to puzzle it all out now. She was going to walk.

   She came upon Michigan Boulevard from the west, passing through a region of closed printing shops, closed antique dealers, nearly empty parking lots, ad agencies all but anonymous behind their discreet signs, walls, and shutters. An elegant restaurant was open, so was a fast-food place a block away. She didn’t feel at all hungry. Here was a subway entrance. She had ridden the subway and El once with Johnny, from Evanston all the way down through the city to the far South Side and back again, just to see what it was like, and nothing had happened to them at all, though their parents had been angry when they found out…and here were the stairs to the upper level of Michigan, where she would find the shops she wanted.

   And here on the upper level were the shops at last, open till all hours of the night on these last shopping days before Christmas; here were the well-dressed crowds struggling muffled through the decorated streets against a wind that did not bother Kate. The traffic inched. The buses roared, befouled the air, crept ahead two, three, four of them together sometimes, threatening to crush their way right through the endless herds of walking bodies that bravely disputed every crosswalk with the vehicles.

   Kate was on the point