Treasure Box Page 0,105

La Guardia he rented another car - from a different company this time, because he didn't want to think again about what he might or might not have done to that clerk. He drove north on roads now banked with snow like canyon walls on either side, where the plows had pushed it all. No scenery, just the white lights of oncoming cars, the red lights of the cars ahead, and the looming walls of filthy snow.

As he neared Mixinack, he read Mike Bolt's number off his card and phoned him. Maybe it was crazy to go back to him, knowing that he had been under Roz's control. But now that Rowena was more aware of what was going on, Roz wouldn't have such free access to him. As long as Bolt stayed away from the rest home, he was a good man. A friend. And he had a right to know how this all came out.

Bolt answered the phone.

"This is Quentin. I'm about five minutes out of Mixinack. You offered me a place to stay. The couch in the den or something."

"It's midnight," said Bolt. "Are you serious?"

"I met Rowena today. She's living in Virginia."

"Is she... what you said? Is she your enemy?"

"She's a witch, Bolt. But I'm not good at picking out bad guys and good guys today. We'll talk about it when I get there."

"Is she coming here? Will she come to Mixinack?"

"I think so," said Quentin. "For all I know they beat me here."

"You really drove back to DC last night in that storm? They said nobody was getting through."

"They were off by at least one. They always are."

"And you're already back."

"Yeah, well, I'm a frequent flier."

"So come on over." Bolt reminded him of how to get there. And then: "Is she still beautiful?"

"Rowena?"

"No, her dog."

"Mike, you're married."

The joking tone was gone when he answered. "Please. Tell me."

"She's beautiful, yes." Though Quentin was quite certain that she would look even more beautiful to Bolt than she looked to him.

"I wasn't crazy to love her, was I?"

"Bolt, we're all crazy to love anybody. But it drives us even crazier if we don't."

"Was that, like, a wise and pithy saying?"

"You better have it posted on your fridge before I arrive."

As he negotiated the side streets of Mixinack, which hadn't been as thoroughly plowed as the highways, Quentin finally found the moral certainty he had been wishing for and despairing of all the way there. It was Lizzy. Lizzy held hostage. The right and wrong of it just didn't matter in the face of that. He would do what it took to get Lizzy out. And that meant staying alive himself, alive and free. Because he was pretty sure that whether the beast won or Roz did, Lizzy's bright spirit would be forgotten in her prison cell if Quentin wasn't there to find her and let her go.

Bolt's wife was up when he got there. Quentin saw at once that she had been asleep; her hair was tousled despite the brush that had been passed over it a couple of times, and her eyes were heavy with weariness. But she met him with a smile when Bolt introduced them. "My Leda," he said, casting an arm across her shoulder.

"Caf or decaf?" she asked, shrugging off her husband's arm and playfully jabbing at him with her elbow.

"No coffee," said Quentin. "You shouldn't have gotten up, I didn't want to be any trouble."

"If you didn't want to be trouble, you'd've stayed in a motel," said Bolt. "Come on, Quentin, how many times you think we have millionaires sleeping on our couch? Let us play the openhearted host."

"You're very kind. Decaf then, or hot chocolate."

"Which? Got 'em both," said Leda.

"Chocolate then."

She made hot chocolate for all three of them, and then pulled a half-finished quart of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer. They all put a dollop of the ice cream into the hot chocolate and then took spoonfuls of it, ice cold and scalding hot at the same time. As he ate, Quentin noticed the swans all over the kitchen. Swans of wicker, porcelain, stuffed fabric, wood; painted on pots, printed on paper and framed, embroidered on cloth, patterned in the wallpaper.

"Leda and the swan," said Quentin. "I guess that means the swan is you, right, Mike?"

"The god in disguise who comes and carries off the beautiful damsel," said Bolt. "Zeus. God of lightning and thunder. Thunder bolts, right?"

"Careful," said Quentin. "It makes Hera jealous."

"Yeah, well, there is no Hera,"