The subzero air caused Dylan’s sinuses to run, and a miniature icicle of nasal drippings formed from the rim of his left nostril.
Mere seconds after folding elsewhere, Shep returned, sans the scientist. ‘Cake.’
‘Where’d you take him, sweetie?’
‘Cake.’
‘Somewhere else out here on the ice?’
‘Cake.’
Dylan said, ‘He’ll freeze to death, buddy.’
‘Cake.’
Jilly said, ‘We’ve got to do the right thing, sweetie.’
‘Not Shep,’ said Shepherd.
‘You too, sweetie. The right thing.’
Shepherd shook his head and said, ‘Shep can be a little bad.’
‘No, I don’t think you can be, buddy. Not without a lot of torment later.’
‘No cake?’ Shep asked.
‘It’s not an issue of cake, sweetie.’
‘Shep can be just a little bad.’
Jilly exchanged a look with Dylan. To Shep, she said, ‘Can you be bad, sweetie?’
‘Just a little.’
‘Just a little?’
‘Just a little.’
Lantern’s eyelashes were crusted with frozen tears. His eyes streamed, but nevertheless Jilly could read the guilt in them when he said, ‘A little would be useful. In fact sometimes, when the evil is big enough, the right thing to do is act decisively to end it.’
‘Okay,’ said Shep.
They shared a silence.
‘Okay?’ Shep asked.
‘Thinking,’ Dylan said.
Out of the still sky sifted snow. This was like no snow Jilly had ever seen before. Not fluffy flakes. Needle-sharp white granules, flecks of ice.
‘Too much,’ Shep said.
‘Too much what, sweetie?’
‘Too much.’
‘Too much what?’
‘Thinking,’ Shepherd said. Then he declared, ‘Cold,’ and folded them back to Tahoe, without Proctor.
49
Chocolate-cherry cake with dark chocolate icing, eaten while everyone stood around the island in the center of Parish Lantern’s kitchen, was solace and reward, but to Jilly it also seemed to be the bread of a strange communion. They ate in silence, staring at their plates, all conforming to the table etiquette of Shepherd O’Conner.
This, she supposed, was as it should be.
The house proved to be even larger than it had appeared from the outside. When Parish escorted them into the expansive guest wing, to the two bedrooms that he had prepared for their use, she thought that he might have been able to accommodate a score of visitors on a moment’s notice.
Although Jilly had been exhausted on returning from the North Pole and had expected to nap away the remaining afternoon and early evening, she felt awake, alert, and energetic after the cake. She wondered if the changes that she was going through might ultimately leave her with less of a need to sleep.
Each bedroom featured a large and sumptuously appointed bath with marble floors and walls and counters, gold-plated fixtures, both a shower and a large tub designed for leisurely soaking, plus heated racks to ensure the small but welcome comfort of warm towels. She took a long, luxurious shower, and with the lazy self-absorption of a cat, she found bliss in grooming and prettifying herself.
Parish had tried to foresee her preferences in everything from shampoo and bar soap to makeup and eyeliner. Sometimes he’d made the right choice, sometimes not, but he’d hit the mark more often than he missed. His consideration charmed her.
Refreshed and remade, in clean clothes, she found her way from the guest wing to the living room. During this ramble, she was more than ever convinced that the warm style and the coziness of the house distracted most visitors from clearly perceiving its true immensity. Beneath its softened and romanticized Wrightian lines, in spite of its open embrace of nature with windows and courtyards, the structure was deeply mysterious, cloistered when it appeared not to be, keeping secrets precisely when it seemed most to expose itself.
This, too, was as it should be.
From the living room, she stepped out onto the cantilevered deck that the architect had magically suspended high among the fragrant pine trees to provide a breathtaking view of the fabled lake.
Within moments, Dylan joined her at the railing. They stood in silence together, enchanted by the panorama, which had the luminous vibrancy of a Maxfield Parrish painting in this late-afternoon light. The time for talking had both passed and not yet arrived.
Parish had apologized in advance for not being able to provide them with the usual level of service that he offered to his guests. When he’d first realized that the injection of nanomachines would change him profoundly, he had given four members of his household staff a week’s vacation so that he could endure the metamorphosis in private.