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

call at the main branch during office hours to pick up the parcel myself.

Whoever Sam’s “professionals” happened to be, I knew that even a criminal or a spy wouldn’t be fool enough to stand out here in the open road, in a rural area like this where everybody knows his neighbor, just waiting to rifle through my mail looking for a yellow slip of paper. Especially if he had no inkling that the “valuable” item would come by uninsured parcel post.

Even if someone had found this postal slip, would he try to claim the parcel at the post office? It would be taking a huge risk in a town this size, where a stranger trying to call for somebody else’s mail would be not only remembered but probably questioned right on the spot. We Idahoans are naturally suspicious of strangers. If the package had indeed arrived, the yellow slip of paper could still be in the damp pile of mail inside my house, where it could have been found if they searched this afternoon. Even if I didn’t find the paper tonight, I could go to the post office when it opened first thing tomorrow morning and collect the parcel myself—paper or none.

I headed back to the house, today’s mail in hand, intent on sorting through my entire week of soggy mail on the floor. But halfway down the drive the clouds parted briefly, showering the snow-laden lawn with milky moonlight. I saw Jason sitting on the mounded whippedcream waves of snow out there, batting at a leaf with his paw. I started to call for him to follow me back into the house for dinner. Then I froze. It wasn’t a leaf he was batting at, it was the corner of a yellow piece of paper half buried in the snow—blown perhaps from my tossed pile last night.

It was right there in plain sight, yet hopelessly out of reach. The crust of that snow might be strong enough to support one small cat, but there was no way it could support one hundred ten pounds of healthy girl nuke. If I tried to cross to where Jason was playing with the paper, I’d crash through the crust and repeat last night’s sinking experience. Nor could I clamp into my Nordic skis, as I had last night. If I was being watched, that would be even more obvious than leaping into phone booths. Sam would not approve.

There was only one choice: I had to hope that Jason’s obsession and talent for retrieving would work on something more than his little red rubber ball.

“Jason, fetch,” I whispered, as I crouched in the drive and reached my hand out.

Jason looked at me and flicked his tail. The clouds closed in again, plunging us into darkness. I could still make out the outline of Jason’s small black body against the stark white snow, but in this light—or lack of it—I could no longer see the paper. I prayed to God he wouldn’t decide playfully to bury it so I’d have to excavate the whole garden tomorrow to find it. That would be hard to do “casually,” as Sam had enjoined me—and worse yet than the Nordic ski idea.

“Come on, Jason,” I whispered a little louder, wondering whether my invisible snoopers were just across the road in the woods.

I stood up, trying to act like an ordinary woman calling her ordinary cat in to dinner. I continued down the drive, not wanting to be overly obvious. Besides, Jason himself would grow suspicious if I started acting too normal. He was accustomed to life in a highly eccentric milieu. Nevertheless, he got the message. Before I reached the back door I felt him rubbing against my boots as he did when he wanted to be picked up. I crouched again in the inky darkness, yanked off my gloves, and took Jason’s face in my hands so I could feel what I couldn’t see: in his mouth was a bit of paper.

Thank God, I thought—choosing not to dwell on what might follow immediately on the heels of this discovery. My heart was thudding again as I carefully removed the paper, holding it gingerly between my trembling fingertips.

“Good cat!” I whispered. Jason purred back, and I patted his sleek head.

At that instant the driveway was flooded with blinding light; I was drowning in light, frozen like a jackrabbit in the brilliant glare as the scream of a giant engine bore down from above, barreling toward me. I panicked, unable to see where to dive for shelter. Jason had ducked behind me as if for protection from a ravening monster. But somehow, in that split second, I found the presence of mind to tuck the piece of yellow paper in the sleeve of my sheepskin coat.

The high beams and growling engine bore down on me, penetrating the drive and shutting off any exit. I stood there riveted by the noise, trying in blindness to feel for my car as a buffer. Then all at once the lights and motor were shut off—though I still couldn’t see—and we were plunged back into darkness. A car door opened and slammed shut, and I heard Olivier’s voice with its québecois-soaked accent calling:

“Jiminy Crickets, do they never grow weary of playing in the snow?”

“What is that monster?” I called back up into the void. “The headlight beams alone look ten feet high! You frightened me out of my wits.”

“You mean I frightened your wits out of you,” Olivier said as his voice moved toward me in the darkness. “My crankcase oil froze before I left work. I guess the temperature had dropped more than I knew. Larry the programmer loaned me his truck till tomorrow. I dropped him at his apartment in town before coming home.”

I was curious how Olivier could have approached down our dark, deserted road without my having seen or heard the truck, but I was so relieved it was Olivier, not the gang of spy-thug-murderers I’d been expecting,