The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (13 inch ebook reader .TXT) 📗

were absent last week was to attend a family funeral. No one really close, I hope?”

“Closer than I can say, just now,” I replied with a noncommittal expression. I touched the Pod’s arm. “But thanks for asking.”

As I went off down the hall, I glanced at my watch and wondered exactly how close to this spot Sam actually was. Then I went to put on my thermal gear and headed for the No-Name cowboy bar.

The dark wood-paneled interior was steeped in beer and smoke: The jukebox was playing. I arrived about twenty-five minutes early, sat at a table near the wall phone, ordered a Virgin Mary, and waited. Finally the phone jingled. I was on my feet and grabbing it by the end of the first ring.

“Ariel.” Sam’s voice sounded relieved when I answered the phone. “I’ve been crazy since the funeral, wanting to explain everything, to let you know what’s happened, what this is all about. But first—are you all right?”

“I think I’m recovering,” I told him. “I don’t know whether I want to laugh or cry. I’m hysterical with joy that you’re alive, but I’m furious that you put all of us—especially me—through all that shit. Right now, I have to take your word for it that you really had to pretend you were dead. Who else knows about this but me?”

“Nobody can know about me, just now, but you,” said Sam, his voice tight as a guitar string. “We’re in tremendous danger if anyone else learns I’m alive.”

“What’s this we, paleface?” I quoted Tonto’s reply to the Lone Ranger when they found themselves surrounded by hostile Apache.

“Ariel, I’m serious. You’re in more danger right now than I am myself. I was so afraid you wouldn’t come directly back to Idaho—that you’d go off somewhere to be alone and you wouldn’t get the package. After I found out your phone was tapped and your car had been ransacked, I kept praying that you’d had the presence of mind to put it somewhere safe.…”

The waitress was scooping her tip from the table and raising her eyebrows to inquire if I wanted a refill.

I shook my head and said to Sam on the other end, “I don’t understand.” I was afraid I did, though. When the waitress was out of earshot, I added in a hoarse whisper, “What package?”

The line was stony silent for a moment. I could feel the tension over the line. When Sam finally did speak, his voice was trembling.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t get it, Ariel,” he said. “Please God, don’t tell me that. I had to get rid of it, and fast, before the funeral. You were the only one I could think of that I could rely on completely. I tossed it in a mailbox, addressed to you. I sent it third class parcel post. I was sure no one would ever imagine anything as overt or baldfaced as that: sending it by common mail. I hoped you’d get back just after it arrived, that it would be waiting in the post office for you. How could you not have received it, unless … maybe you haven’t gone yet to pick up your mail?”

“Holy shit, Sam,” I whispered. “What have you done to me? What did you send me in the mail? Not my ‘inheritance,’ I hope?”

“Did anyone mention it during the funeral?” he asked, whispering back as if someone were listening on the line.

“Anyone?!!” I had to throttle my voice. “It was read aloud in the will. Augustus and Grace gave a press conference! The news media have been telephoning trying to find it! Uncle Laf is flying here from Austria! Are those enough anyones for you?”

My throat was getting raw from this full-blast wind-tunnel whispering. I couldn’t believe what had happened to my recently calm, well-organized life, which now looked like confetti. I couldn’t believe Sam was alive and that I wanted to kill him.

“Ariel, please,” said Sam. His voice sounded as if he were pulling his hair. “Did you pick up your mail, or not? Is there any possible explanation we can think of, why you haven’t”—he choked a little—“seen the package?”

I felt sick to my stomach. It hadn’t taken much to guess what must be in that parcel: Pandora’s manuscripts. The manuscripts everyone was so hot to get hold of. The manuscripts I had believed had gotten Sam killed.

“I forgot to stop my mail,” I told Sam. I heard his sharp intake of breath at the other end, so I added irritably, “I was a bit distraught! I had to attend the funeral of someone very close to me. I just forgot.”

“So, if it was in your mailbox all this time,” said Sam, still whispering, “then where is it now?”

Terrific. It was in a pile of mush on my living room floor—or maybe buried in a seven-foot snowdrift. Then the image came back of my sinking in snow and tossing my mail up onto the road beneath my car.

“I pulled all the mail out of my mailbox when I got home last night,” I told Sam, “and I threw it inside on the floor. I didn’t go through it last night. It’s still lying there.”

“My God,” said Sam. “If your line was bugged even before you got home, then it’s positive that the place has been searched thoroughly by now—maybe more than once, but surely again since you left to come to work today. Ariel, I nearly got killed for that package, and your only insurance is if they believe you haven’t received it yet. But I didn’t think of your danger when I sent it to you.”

“How sweet,” I told him. “Sort of like a chain letter, where you’re cursed with a thunderbolt and eternal damnation if you don’t pass it on?”

“You don’t understand—we will be cursed,” said Sam. I’d never heard this note of despair from him. His voice sank, and when he spoke it was as if he were at the bottom of a well. “It’s