Our Lady of Darkness Read Free

low laughs (dour slatterns more likely, reason commented). He knocked at 407.
    It was one of those times when Cal looked like a serious schoolgirl of seventeen, lightly wrapped in dreams, and not ten years older, her actual age. Long, dark hair, blue eyes, a quiet smile. They’d been to bed together twice, but didn’t kiss now—it might have seemed presumptuous on his part, she didn’t quite offer to, and in any case he wasn’t sure how far he wanted to commit himself. She invited him in to the breakfast she was making. Though a duplicate of his, her room looked much nicer—too good for me building—she had redecorated it completely with help from Gunnar and Saul. Only it didn’t have a view. There was a music stand by the window and an electronic piano that was mostly keyboard and black box and that had earphones for silent practicing, as well as speaker.
    “I came down because I heard you blowing the Telemann,” Franz said.
    “Perhaps I did it to summon you,” Cal replied offhandedly from where she was busy with the hot plates and toaster. “There’s magic in music, you know.”
    “You’re thinking of The Magic Flute ?” he asked. “You make a recorder sound like one.”
    “There’s magic in all woodwinds,” she assured him. “Mozart’s supposed to have changed the plot of The Magic Flute midway so that it wouldn’t be too close to that of a rival opera, The Enchanted Bassoon .”
    He laughed, men went on. “Musical notes do have at least one supernatural power. They can levitate, fly up through the air. Of course words can do mat, too, but not as well.”
    “How do you figure that?” she asked over her shoulder.
    “From cartoons and comic strips,” he told her. “Words need balloons to hold them up, but notes just come flying out of the piano or whatever.”
    “They have those little black wings,” she said, “at least the eighth and shorter ones. But it’s all true. Music can fly—It’s ail release—and it has the power to release other things and make them fly and swirl.”
    He nodded. “I wish you’d release the notes of this piano, though, and let them swirl out when you practice harpsichord,” he said, looking at the electronic instrument, “instead of keeping themshut up inside the earphones.”
    “You’d be the only one who’d like it,” she informed him.
    “There’s Gun and Saul,” he said.
    “Their rooms aren’t on this shaft. Besides, you’d get sick of scales and arpeggios yourself.”
    “I’m not so sure,” he said, then teased, “But maybe harpsichord notes are too tinkly to make magic.”
    “I hate mat word,” she said, “but you’re still wrong. Tinkly (ugh!) notes can make magic too. Remember Papageno’s bells—there’s more than one kind of magic music in The Flute .”
    They ate toast, juice, and eggs. Franz told Cal of his decision to send the manuscript of Towers of Treason off just as it was.
    He finished, “So my readers won’t find out just what a document-shredding machine sounds like when it works—what difference does that make? I actually saw that program on the tube, but when the Satanist wizard fed in the rune, they had smoke come out—which seemed stupid.”
    “I’m glad to hear you say that,” she said sharply. “You put too much effort into rationalizing that silly program.” Her expression changed. “Still, I don’t know. It’s partly that you always try to do your best, whatever at, that makes me think of you as a professional.” She smiled.
    He felt another faint twinge of guilt but fought it down easily.
    While she was pouring him more coffee, he said, “I’ve got a great idea. Let’s go to Corona Heights today. I think there’d be a great view of Downtown and the Inner Bay. We could take the Muni most of the way, and there shouldn’t be too much climbing.”
    “You forget I’ve got to practice for the concert tomorrow night and couldn’t risk my hands, in any case,” she said a shade reproachfully. “But