In Search of the Dove Read Free Page A

and vials. As she opened them, he caught whiffs of rosemary, violet, sassafras, and less pleasant scents that he couldn’t identify. They all went into a stone mortar and were pulverized.
    Returning to kneel in front of him, she held up the bowl and began to chant again. The syllables were soft and sibilant in a dialect he didn’t understand. They seemed to swirl around him like a suffocating mist.
    When she finished, she set the mortar down and raised the lid of the box. Inside was a tapered silver knife. The repoussé on the handle matched the silver serpent on her turban, except that the two snakes’ mouths were open where they met the blade.
    He drew in a sharp breath. Though his heart rate had accelerated, he was powerless to move.
    With one hand, she reached out and picked up his sweaty palm. With the other, she raised the knife.
    “We need some of your blood to bind the potion.”
    The knife came down and he felt the point pierce his skin.

Chapter Two
    “D id your brother have a stable personality before this drug-induced psychosis?”
    Jessica propped her elbow thoughtfully on the edge of the wooden chair in the hospital consultation room. Across the oak-grained desk, Dr. Thomas Frederickson sat with his ball-point pen poised above a sheet of paper.
    Drug-induced psychosis—so someone had finally put a label on Aubrey’s disturbing behavior. At first it had been a question of saving his life. Though he now seemed on the road to physical recovery, he wouldn’t communicate with her at all, and his only words to the nurses and doctors were little more than sporadic bursts of rage.
    Just how well did she really know her younger brother? Over the past few years they hadn’t spent much time together. It was probably her guilt about neglecting him that had sent her rushing back to Louisiana.
    Dr. Frederickson waited patiently, making a point of not pressing the young woman who sat across from him. They’d already talked briefly a few times. Though she’d been distressed about her brother’s condition, she hadn’t gone to pieces. Now she looked a bit more rested. Her face, he supposed, was conventionally pretty. But there was a very personal style about this woman that took her out of the ranks of the conventional. And there was a sense that when she met his direct gaze, she was probing into his psyche as much as he was delving into hers. For a psychiatrist used to controlling this sort of interview, the observation was a bit unsettling.
    She was wearing a navy-and-canary Indian print dress set off at the neckline with a hand-worked brass necklace, he noted, and her curly auburn hair was freshly washed and brushed, but not tamed. Her complexion was creamy peach, her large eyes a dramatic hazel. Right now she didn’t look as if she’d spent long hours in the psychiatric unit’s grim waiting room. But Dr. Frederickson knew that she’d agreed to go home and get some sleep only after she’d been assured that Aubrey was going to pull through.
    “Was my brother stable?” she repeated the question in a clear alto voice that was softened by a faint southern accent. “I’m not sure what that means, exactly. He didn’t have any serious problems like delinquency or drinking, but he and my parents used to fight a lot.”
    “About what?”
    “The usual things. Not wanting to eat the dinner my mother had prepared or refusing to clean his room.”
    Frederickson smiled. “That’s not out of the ordinary. How did he handle the conflict? Was there any violence?”
    “Oh, no! Aubrey was famous for stomping off to his room to sulk—or disappearing for long bike rides.”
    “And what would you say about your parents? How would you describe them?”
    “They were very rigid.”
    The psychiatrist looked up, wondering why she had singled out that adjective.
    “You mean they were particularly strict about issues like dating and smoking?”
    She nodded tightly. Yes, and going to church every week, and minding your