Read Online The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville - Free Book Online Page B

have seen what you did,” I told Jersey, squeezing her arm. “It was so bizarre—just what tickled his funny bone. He would have died laughing.”
    “He died anyway,” said Jersey. And she ordered another drink.
    At seven o’clock I arrived at the Mark in the limo Augustus sent for me. He hired a car whenever he visited any city so he’d never have to degrade himself flagging down a cab. My father was into appearances. I told the driver to collect me at ten and take me back to the little Victorian inn where I was staying across the bridge. Three hours of Augustus and Grace, as I knew from experience, would be more than adequate.
    Their penthouse suite was large and filled with the lavish flower arrangements Grace required in any surroundings. Augustus opened the door when I knocked and regarded me sternly. My father was always elegant, with his silvery hair and tanned complexion. Now, in a black cashmere blazer and grey trousers, he looked every bit the part of the feudal lord he’d been rehearsing for all his life.
    “You’re late,” he said, glancing at his gold wristwatch. “You were to arrive at six-thirty so we could speak privately before dinner.”
    “This morning was enough of a family reunion for me,” I told him.
    I instantly regretted having alluded to the earlier events of the day.
    “And that’s something else I want to speak with you about: your mother,” said Augustus. “First, what can I fix you to drink?”
    “I had lunch with Jersey,” I said. “I’m not sure I need anything much stronger than water.”
    Wherever Augustus went, he had a well-stocked bar set up, though he drank little himself. Maybe that’s what went wrong when he and my mother were married.
    “I’ll fix you a spritzer; that’s light,” he said, and squirted the soda from a mesh-encased bottle, handing the wineglass to me.
    “Where’s Grace?” I asked, taking a sip as he mixed himself a light Scotch.
    “She’s lying down. She was quite upset by that little debacle your mother pulled this morning—and who can blame her? It was unforgivable.” Augustus always referred to Jersey as “ your mother,” as though I were responsible for her very existence, rather than the other way around.
    “Actually,” I told him, “I felt her display provided a well-needed touch of brightness to the entire morbid affair. I mean, I can’t really imagine providing brass bands, shooting off guns, and giving someone a medal all because, in the service of the U.S. government, he got himself blown into pieces like a dismembered patchwork quilt!”
    “Don’t change the subject on me , young lady,” my father reprimanded me in his most authoritarian tone of voice. “Your mother’s behavior was absolutely shocking. Deplorable. We were fortunate that reporters were not permitted.”
    Augustus would never use words like “disgusting” or “humiliating.” They were too subjective, involving personal emotion. He was only interested in the objective, the remote—things like appearance and reputation.
    In that regard, I was a good deal more like him than I cared to admit. But I still couldn’t bear the fact that he was more interested in my mother’s comportment at a social event than in Sam’s brutal death.
    “I wonder if people scream when they die like that?” I asked aloud.
    Augustus turned on his heel so I couldn’t see his face. He went across to the bedroom door. “I’ll wake up Grace,” he informed me over his shoulder, “so she’ll be ready in time for dinner.”
    “I don’t see how we can speak,” said Grace, blotting her eyes, which were swollen with tears, and brushing a wisp of stark blond hair from her forehead with the back of her wrist. “I don’t see how we can eat. It’s truly incredible to imagine how we can all be sitting here in a restaurant, trying to behave like human beings.”
    Until that moment it had never occurred to me that someone like Grace had ever visualized the concept of