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.As if he knew, but was afraid of knowing.He let the drug take him.The thick cushions on the carpet were like a pasha's palace, and he stretched out and felt embraced by oriental splendor.Coleridge had described it all so well.At a wave of a little black box he commanded the music on.It saturated his consciousness, as if it was in his head and his ears at once.He sank into the music until it filled his whole range of perception.And then he saw her.Her long dark hair was free on her shoulders and she was wearing a white night dress with cascades of lace over her arms and breast like snow, and a single white rose in her hair.White on white, innocent and unredeemed, predator and victim all at once.She did not appear to notice him at first.She was seated on a large canopy bed with pages in front of her, reading them over feverishly.And then she looked up and met his eyes."It is not finished yet," she said gravely."We have been so busy on the lake and there was the matter of Claire's pregnancy, you understand.But I have begun and am committed to finishing.Even if you are only part of myself, it seems you are a part of myself which must be obeyed.""You must finish, Mary," he said softly."We have an agreement, you and I.You promised you would finish the book for me.I finished the songs for you.Listen.I wrote it for you.Because of you."She cocked her head and her mouth tightened into a line as if she were straining."It is so distant," she said."Like the thunder on the lake, like something from Hell.So perhaps when I think of you as my demon I am not so wrong.""It'll go platinum," he said firmly.And then he realized that was not even close to anything he wanted to say.The words were all for her in the lyrics he had written down, the words that she could barely hear through the veil of a century."Please," he said softly."It's my gift to you."The music embraced them both, relentless rhythms driving it through them, primitive, free, abandoned and wild.Her dark eyes shone in the candlelight, tied and twisted on the bed, caught and pinioned and unafraid all together.Then she turned as white as her starched lace."But I was never gifted in music, I could not call up an illusion like this from my own mind.And you, you seem so very far distant and so real.But I cannot."He reached out, desire burning more sharply than the razor ever cut.He reached toward the white shadowed form, and for an instant he thought he touched cool yielding flesh.A lock of hair brushed his face and he was lost in the clean scent of rain."I love you, Mary," he whispered into her neck.Ice ghost fingers snaked through his hair, traced the scars on his arms, on his chest.She leaned down and kissed the healing cuts he had made when he had summoned her, cuts deep enough that they were still black in the center and angry red across the white skin.She smiled at the self-inflicted injuries like a blessing, then shook the layers of downy lace away from her own sleeves and showed him neat white cuts that were more demure from being longer healed than his own.She looked at him, into him, and she knew him and took possession of his darkness.She enhanced it, reflected it like moonlight, like the black ink lake under the stars, like death.For the first time Tim McKeon truly wanted to die.If the deep slashmarks of his pain pleased her then he desperately wanted more pain.He wanted to fling himself into those consuming eyes and drown.He had given her his music, he had given her his soul and it was not enough.And then it seemed that she was gone, or translated into the drug dream that followed.McKeon never was certain if the rest actually happened or was created from his own mind and the pipe.But her presence had more substance than the girls in the clubs, her breath like the aroma of poppies filled the room.Touch surprised him, and yet she was with him, here, draped across the heaped pillows like Coleridge's odelisque.But when he lay a hand against her knee he found her flesh as cold as a November rain.As he lay simply looking into her face and wondering if he could get another key of whatever this was Andrew had sold him, she drew herself upright and leaned over him.She held a small knife in her hand, a pocket knife he didn't recognize.She touched the blunt edge to his cheek and traced the line of his jaw to his ear.Then he felt the point teasing across his skin, down his throat.Not quite cutting.Not yet.Then she reversed the knife again and caught the blade under his tee shirt.He felt the smooth safe edge glide down over his heart and across his belly as she cut the shirt to ribbons.She moved from his sight.He felt his boots removed, quickly, efficiently, and then the cool path of the knife as she slit his jeans up the leg, tickling his hip and slashing the waist.By the time she shredded the other leg and his clothes, now ribbons, fell between the cushions, he craved release.The rhythms of his own music pounded in his ears, his blood.Always the blood.She sat on her heels and then moved over him, mounting him without revealing herself.He closed his eyes for a moment to revel in the glory of sensation, feeding on it.But it was not enough.He needed something.more.He returned his vision to her face.In her face he could see the mirror of his own, desire building in urgency but lacking.Needing.She arched her back and her hands fluttered to her hair.To the white rose tangled in the dark locks
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