The Power of Love Read Free Page A

stroke. I knew it would make Ivy think of you.”
    “What I was wondering was this: Couldn’t you have left the pies alone?”
    Her eyes slid over to the dessert tray again.
    “Don’t even think about it,” he said.
    There were only a handful of customers sitting at the town’s outdoor café at four-thirty in the afternoon, but he knew Lacey could create chaos with very little. Two pies and some whipped cream—that’s all it had taken earlier at Eric’s. “I mean, isn’t that kind of stunt a little old, Lacey? It was old when the Three Stooges did it.”
    “Oh, lighten up, Dumps,” she replied. “Everyone at the party enjoyed it. Okay, okay,” she said, “some people enjoyed it, and a few, like Suzanne, got fussy about their hair. But I had a good time.”
    Tristan shook his head. Lacey had been lightning-quick, moving around the pool house, invisibly picking fights. She had obviously enjoyed yanking at Gregory’s swimming trunks whenever Eric was close by. “Now I know why you never complete your mission,” Tristan said.
    “Well, excu-u-use me! Please remind me of that next time you beg me to come with you and help you reach Ivy.” She stood up abruptly and stomped out of the café. Tristan was used to her dramatics and followed her slowly onto Main Street.
    “You’ve got nerve, Tristan, criticizing my little bit of fun. Where were you when Ivy started making faces like a goldfish down in the deep end of the pool? Who took care of Eric?”
    “You did,” he said, “and you know where I was.”
    “All tangled up inside of Will.”
    Tristan nodded. The truth was embarrassing.
    He and Lacey moved silendy down the brick sidewalk, passing a row of shops with bright striped awnings. Windows full of antiques and dried-flower arrangements, art books and decorator wallpaper showed off the taste of the wealthy Connecticut town. Tristan still walked as if he were alive and solid, moving out of the way of shoppers. Lacey went straight through them.
    “I must be doing something wrong,” Tristan said at last. “One moment I’m inside Will, so much a part of him that when he looks at Ivy, I do, too. It’s like he feels what I feel for her. Then all of a sudden he pulls back.”
    Lacey had stopped to look in the window of a dress shop.
    “I must be pushing too hard,” Tristan continued. “I need Will to speak for me. But I think he’s discovered me prowling around in his mind, and now he’s afraid of me.”
    “Or maybe,” said Lacey, “he’s afraid of her.”
    “Of Ivy?”
    “Of his feelings for her.”
    “My feelings for her!” Tristan said quickly.
    Lacey turned to look at him, her head cocked. Tristan feigned a sudden interest in an ugly black sequined dress hanging in the window. He couldn’t see a reflection of Lacey’s face in the glass, any more than he could see his own. Just a shimmer of gold and wisps of soft color shone against the window; he guessed that it was what a believer would see when looking at them.
    “Why?” Lacey asked. “I want to know why you assume that you’re the only guy in the world in love with—”
    Tristan cut in. “I entered Will, and since he’s a good radio, he started to feel my feelings and think my thoughts. That’s how it works, right?”
    “Didn’t it ever occur to you that the reason it was so easy for an amateur like you to enter Will was because he was already feeling your feelings and thinking your thoughts, at least when it comes to Ivy?”
    It had, but Tristan had done his best to squelch the idea.
    “I got inside Beth’s mind, too,” he reminded her.
    The first time Lacey had seen Beth, she had told Tristan that Ivy’s friend would be a natural “radio,” someone who could transmit messages from a different side of life. Just as Tristan had coaxed Will into drawing angels in an effort to comfort Ivy, he had gotten Beth to do some automatic writing, though it was so jumbled that no one had been able to make sense of it.
    “You got