The Magic Circle Katherine Neville (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📖

from where he’d been curled on the pillow. Ears erect, he stared at the door to the corridor as if waiting for someone to enter. He looked at me for a moment, but I’d heard nothing outside. Without a sound, he crept across the bed, dropped to the floor, padded to the door, and turned back to look over his shoulder at me again. There was definitely someone out there.

I took a deep breath. Then I threw back the covers and stood up, grabbed the robe that was lying on a nearby chair, pulled it on, and crossed to the door myself. Jason, standing there on the alert, was never mistaken about a visitor who was about to call. On the other hand, if someone was about to call—why didn’t he?

I put my eye to the peephole and saw a familiar if unexpected face. I grabbed the knob and yanked open the door.

There, in the soft yellow light of the corridor, stood beautiful blond Bambi, her pale eyes wide and guileless, her shimmering golden hair framing her face. She was dressed for avant le boudoir, in a long black velvet robe cut along the stark lines of a man’s smoking jacket, displaying cascades of antique lace and ribbons at throat and wrist. But I noticed she had one hand held behind her back.

Suddenly, in a panic, an insane but very real-seeming notion flashed into my head: She was hiding a gun! I was poised to leap back and slam the door in her face. At that instant she brought forth the other hand. In it she held a bottle of Rémy Martin and two small brandy snifters.

She smiled. “Will you join me in a cognac?” she said. “It’s a kind of peace offering, though not only for myself.”

“I have to get up quite early—” I began.

“So do I,” Bambi said quickly. “But what I have to tell you, I should prefer not to say while standing out here in the corridor. May I come in?”

I stepped back reluctantly and let her pass.

Despite this woman’s major beauty and her demonstrated artistry, there was still something bothering me—and not only her dippy demeanor. In fact, given those other qualities, it had occurred to me that her vagueness might well camouflage vulnerability, much as with Jersey and her drinking.

I went over to the table where Bambi was pouring, but stayed on my feet. I lifted my snifter, and she and I clinked glasses and sipped.

“What couldn’t you tell me, outside in the corridor?” I asked.

“Please sit down,” Bambi said in a low voice.

Her tone was so soothing, it wasn’t until I was halfway to the chair that I realized the effect had actually been that of a rein being expertly snapped in by an extremely practiced hand. I decided to listen up to Ms. Bambi a bit more attentively.

“I don’t want you to dislike me,” Bambi assured me. “I hope we’ll be friends.”

In the dim light of my room, those clear eyes swimming like Goldwasser with little gold flecks were half shadowed by her lashes. I couldn’t for the life of me make out what she was actually thinking, but I suddenly felt it was very, very important that I find out—and that honesty was the best policy to adopt.

“It isn’t that I dislike you, but I don’t really understand someone like you,” I admitted, “and that makes me uncomfortable around you. You appear one way, but speak in another, and behave in a third. I feel you’re not at all what you seem.”

“Perhaps you aren’t either,” said Bambi, reaching down to touch Jason on the head with those long, slender fingers. He didn’t purr, but he didn’t dart away either.

“We weren’t discussing me,” I said. “But as I’m sure you gathered from our conversation this morning, I grew up in a family that’s never been very close. If I seem mysterious when I’m around them, maybe I just want to distance myself from their controversies. That’s why I’ve chosen to go my own way—to take a different path from the others.”

“Do you believe so?” she asked cryptically. Then she added, “But you see, we actually were discussing you. And your opinion of me is important to me. When I said I didn’t want you to dislike me, I did not mean I hoped we would be like real sisters, as your uncle expressed. I only wish to explain that under the present circumstance, I feel it would be—how shall I say?—quite difficult if we could not, at the least, be friends.”

“Look here,” I told her, having another swallow of brandy: it was excellent. “There’s really no cause for the two of us to worry about whether we’re going to be pals or not. After all, this is the first time in many years I’ve been around Uncle Laf, so it’s unlikely that after this weekend you and I will even see each other again.”

“In that, you are mistaken,” she said with a smile. “But before I explain, I should like you to say what it is about me that has made you feel ‘uncomfortable.’ If you wouldn’t mind to do so.”

I looked into those clear, open eyes again, but they still seemed veiled to me. This chick was some item, but I decided that if that was what she wanted, she was going to get precisely what she asked for—even if it was a slap in the face.

“Okay, maybe this will seem too personal,” I told her, “but you’re the one who arrived in the middle of the night with the brandy, asking to chat. My uncle Laf’s life is hardly a sealed book, so you must be aware he’s been with plenty of women, each one more beautiful than the last, and many of them, like my grandmother Pandora, possessing great talent as well. But you’re different from the others: I believe you’re truly gifted. Really, your playing tonight was extraordinary, world class—as I think, given my upbringing, I am in