The Gates of Winter Read Free

and Grace Beckett stepped through the gate, along with the wounded man Beltan and the spindly gray being that was, impossibly, a fairy. Then the window collapsed in on itself, and they were gone. Not two hundred yards away, the Seekers were waiting to pick the rest of them up. So much for the policy of not interfering with those who had otherwordly connections.
    No doubt the Seekers had desired to intercept them before the arrival of the police, whose sirens had already wailed on the air. Besides, the otherworldly beings with which Deirdre and Farr had been connected were gone—vanished through a gate to another world. In the days before, she and Farr had been cut off from the Seekers for becoming too closely involved in the Wilder-Beckett case. They had been allowed to break Desiderata left and right just so the Seekers could see what they would do. They had gone from being watchers to being the watched. Only with Grace Beckett and Travis Wilder now far out of reach, the rules had changed again. Silently, they had climbed into the waiting black sedans.
    The Seekers had taken Travis's friends, Davis and Mitchell Burke-Favor, into custody as well. Deirdre had not been allowed to talk to them, though she learned later from Sasha that they had been released after intensive debriefing. And also that, in exchange for signing an affidavit of secrecy—something Deirdre suspected was not an option if the cowboys wanted to avoid being turned over to the police to be prosecuted for aiding and abetting known fugitives—they received substantial compensation from the Seekers' deep coffers. Deirdre knew that the two men could use the money; ranching was not an easy business. So maybe, in the end, some good had come out of all this.
    Twelve hours after the Seekers picked them up, they had touched down in London; to Deirdre, it felt like traveling to another world. In the time since, she and Farr had both written detailed reports about their activities in Denver. They had been questioned and questioned again by Seekers at nearly every level in the organization. Deirdre was no psychologist, but she knew enough to be sure the subtle repetition was conceived to reveal any inconsistencies in their stories. However, she simply told them the truth; she guessed Farr did as well.
    But maybe not all of the truth, Deirdre. Do you think he told them he really is following in the footsteps of the famed Seeker Marius Lucius Albrecht, who fell in love with the woman he had been sent to observe? Do you think Farr told the Philosophers what he feels for Dr. Grace Beckett?
    Regardless, it was almost over. Deirdre knew that the only ones left to talk to were the Philosophers themselves—if they even existed.
    Evidently they did; the summons had come that morning. Deirdre actually dressed up for the occasion, donning a simple but tasteful skirt suit of black wool. However, she had kept her bear claw necklace, and she had been forced to grab her leather biker jacket against the chill January drizzle that slicked the London streets.
    She had spent perhaps an hour in the room beyond that mahogany door. It had been dark and empty except for a single chair carefully placed in a circle of gold light. Then the voices had started, and she had seen the row of dim silhouettes just beyond the light. For a moment she thought they were really there. Only that wouldn't be nearly mysterious enough for the Philosophers, would it? After a minute, a crackle of static passed in front of the figures. It was a projection, that was all—their electronically altered voices coming through speakers, her replies returning to them by hidden microphone. They could have been a thousand miles from that room.
    All the same, these were the dread Philosophers she was speaking to—the secret governing body of the Seekers, whose number and identities were unknown. This fact had registered on her, but distantly. She had seen a gold-masked sorcerer from another world use magic to control