The Fog Maiden Read online

  Chapter One

  The rain still fell, slithering off hand-hewn wood shingles and dripping dismally from one level of the roof to another. Janella Maki, looking out over the wet city, thought her own past year was as cheerless as the gray mist obscuring her view of San Diego Bay. The multicolored squares of stained glass set around the edges of the windows were without luster in the muted light. She felt oppressed by the lowering sky; in spite of the twelve windows in the Tower the rain was shutting her in, caging her. What good were windows if they couldn’t let in the sun?

  Janella sighed and shook her head to dismiss the princess-in-the-tower image. She was certainly no princess and it wasn’t one of her favorite fairy tales anyway. A knight climbing Rapunzel’s golden hair wasn’t very romantic—wouldn’t it hurt?

  But hurt wasn’t always important. Curtis had often caught her own hair in his fingers, winding the pale strands around his hand until she cried out, and then he would stop her protest with his mouth on hers, demanding, promising…

  No good to remember the times with Curtis, the false promises—all over now. The trouble with the past was getting rid of feelings better forgotten, mixed with the inexplicable refusal of her memory to yield recollections she wanted, to show her anything at all of the lost time in her early life. There were memories she wanted desperately from childhood—a fragment of her dead mother, something more than the colorless image of her father, dead, too, which was all she recalled. She needed mementos of her own to cherish, not her stepmother’s. But she had no kin except for Arnie—and who could count poor Arnie?

  Janella turned from the small arched window on the east side of the Tower but there was still no break in the clouds. She shivered a little in the chill that had crept in when the rain began. The old house was quiet. Up here in the Tower with only the soft slapping of water against the windows, she could almost feel alone in this great dark place. As if there were no Doris shut away in the downstairs office, no caretaker working in the basement, just Janella Maki alone in the Tower, waiting, reliving yesterdays.

  But today was so bleak. Curtis gone, no job, and she needed money to help her stepmother—Helen couldn’t work because of Arnie. Janella wished she’d had time to take the nursing course, but there was never enough money to buy the time. Medical assistant, that’s what she was—the doctor’s office helper. Nurses were scarce, could always find a job, but there was a surplus of girls like Janella available. And none of them had her other problem…

  Helen had been at her lately to quit giving this one afternoon a week as volunteer tour guide for Villa Montezuma. “You could spend that time looking for work.” But Helen had never understood her; they had lived together fourteen years and still were not close. Janella watched the rain fall all around her, twelve windows framing the dreary day. She needed an afternoon of pretense, of imagining a house like this was hers. Sometimes it seemed her whole life had been spent as a guest in someone else’s home.

  She didn’t notice the music at first, faint and minor keyed. The thread of sound seemed to come from inside her head, so closely did it match her mood. Lonely, all alone, the melody told her, weaving a plaintive ribbon of sadness. Janella began to descend the Spanish cedar stairs. She moved slowly, carefully, down the narrow curving staircase and stood at the foot, looking about her as though expecting to see the invisible musician. The painted eyes of King Richard watched her from the stained-glass window at the head of the second flight of stairs to the first floor and the clear reds of the glass glowed dimly in the gray light.

  Piano. The music came from the piano. It seemed to flow up the stairs and into her ears, permeating her with melancholy. Janella went down the second steep staircase to the Entry Hall.

  The music became softer, almost dying away. Janella waited, staring at her own image in the massive walnut pier glass. Long blonde hair framed her white face—a face much too white. Foolish to be nervous. Neither Doris nor the caretaker could play a note, so there must be a visitor in the Music Room playing the piano. Jesse Shephard had been dead over forty years, and she didn’t believe in ghosts. Still, she didn’t like the Music Room, hadn’t liked it from the first day she toured the Villa Montezuma, Jesse Shephard’s house.

  The Music Room had shadows in the niche behind the piano—shadows despite the stained glass glowing in the windows—and they shifted and changed shapes as though they had a life of their own. Shadows like the ones in her mind. But it was dangerous to think of those mental shadows…

  Perhaps she should go through the Dining Room to the back of the house, where Doris had her office. But that was silly—what was there to be afraid of? Janella took a step toward the Reception Room. Just a few feet more and she would be able to see into the Music Room, see the mysterious pianist. Why hadn’t Doris come out to see who was here? It must be a visitor. Janella’s feet moved reluctantly on the polished redwood floor until she was through the second doorway, into the Music Room proper. She stopped.

  A man sat on the plush crimson seat of the piano stool, his back to her. Even as she considered him, he took his hands from the keys and twirled the stool about until he faced her.

  “I’m your Uncle Lucien,” he said.

  She could only stare.

  He rose from the stool and she saw that he was tall, a big man. He smiled, lips moving back over even white teeth. “Did you think I was Jesse?” he asked.

  She shook her head, moistening dainty lips with her tongue. “No,” she said faintly and cleared her throat. “But I—I don’t know you. I’m afraid you have the wrong…”

  “You’re Janella Maki,” he said, no question in his voice.

  “Well, yes. Yes, I am—but I still don’t know you.”

  “Do you remember your Aunt Toivi?” His amber eyes caught hers, holding them until she could hardly speak.

  Toivi. The name sounded foreign and yet had a haunting familiarity. “No,” she answered, voice uncertain. “I don’t have an aunt. No one ever told me I had an aunt.”

  “She said you might not remember,” he murmured as though to himself. He moved closer and she saw his hair was darker than hers, more golden, and curled softly about his face and down over his collar.

  “I’m Lucien DuBois.” His voice seemed to fill the room without being loud. “You have never met me but I’m married to your Aunt Toivi.”

  “My aunt?” she repeated in wonder, shaking her head slowly.

  “Your father’s sister.”

  She looked at Lucien DuBois helplessly. She had almost no recollection of the first seven years of her life, and if Aunt Toivi belonged there Janella had no way to reach for the memory. Toivi, Toivi—the name echoed in her mind.

  “As far as I know I don’t have any blood relatives,” she said at last. No point in mentioning Arnie to this stranger, Arnie didn’t matter.

  “You do remember your father?”

  “Oh, yes. He didn’t die until I was eight and, besides, I have pictures of him.”

  “Then you know what he looked like?”

  “Why yes.”

  Lucien reached in his pocket and then handed her several photographs.

  Daddy. There was Daddy and a dark-haired woman, nearly a girl she was so young, dark and almost familiar like a word on the tip of your tongue. Her father so fair—blond and blue-eyed like Janella herself—standing next to a young dark-haired woman. Words came into her mind, her father’s voice out of the past.

  “She’s not like us, Janny, she’s one of the so-called black Finns. Maybe she’s old Louhi’s daughter.”

  Janella had no idea what the words meant, but she struggled to hold on to the voice until it faded and the barrier was back, the wall between her seventh and eighth year. Tears started in her eyes. She blinked to clear her blu
rred vision.

  “No,” she said to Lucien DuBois, handing him back the photographs, “I don’t seem to know her. It’s a picture of my father but I don’t know her. Unless—unless—do the words ‘Louhi’s daughter’ mean anything to you?”

  He said nothing and she stared up at the aquiline nose, strong square chin, high cheekbones and thought she’d seen a picture of him somewhere, too. And recently. Heavy brows above the amber eyes, eyes that held hers again until she felt herself disappearing into a golden haze.

  Laughter surrounded her, penetrating her skull until she grew dizzy, but the sound enabled her to look away from his eyes. She didn’t quite believe in his laughter.

  “Louhi’s daughter?” he said, still smiling. “Louhi, the witch woman of Pohjala?”

  “Pohjala?” she repeated.

  “Don’t tell me you never heard of Pohjala, the dismal Northland, and old Louhi working her spells on the travelers there? Toivi said your father knew all the ancient Finnish stories. Surely he told them to his little girl…”

  He sounded amused, but as she glanced at him she saw his eyes watching her carefully.

  “Are you really my uncle?” she asked, the words spilling unexpectedly from her. She brought her hand to her mouth too late to hold them back.

  His brows drew together and he took her hand. “You have an Aunt Toivi,” he said deliberately, as if speaking to a child. “Whether you remember her or not, she exists, and I’m married to her.”

  Janella’s hand quivered in his like a frightened bird, and she had the sensation all of her was caught in his hand, trapped.

  “How did you find me?” she asked, pulling her hand away.

  “I called all the Makis in the phone book until I got your stepmother. She was most helpful, although she didn’t know of Toivi.”

  “Helen—her name is Helen—had been married to my father less than a year when he was killed.”

  Lucien shook his head in sympathy. “A hard thing to grow up alone.”

  She almost nodded in agreement when an obscure urge to defend Helen seized her. “Oh, my stepmother had her problems. She was suddenly saddled with an eight-year-old girl who didn’t like her and never had enough money to live as she wanted to, had expected to. And then she had…” Janella stopped. Why talk about Arnie? Bury him deep like he should have been from the beginning. “Helen was a widow when my father met her and certainly never dreamed she’d be a widow again within a year of the marriage.”

  “There is no one left but you and Toivi.” The words rang in her ears with an ominous sound.

  “Where is she—where is Toivi?”

  “She’s sick.”

  “In the hospital?”

  “No. But she doesn’t leave the house—we’ve rented a house in San Diego. You must come with me to meet her. I believe you’d know her face-to-face. It’s a sad thing to be unable to remember, to think of her only as Louhi’s daughter.”

  Louhi, Louhi. The name entered her mind, the syllables expanding until Janella was lightheaded and she began to be frightened. She hadn’t had any trouble for almost a year, and both she and Helen were hopeful she’d outgrown “Janny’s spells,” as Helen used to call them.

  Lucien was speaking and Janella tried to focus on him, to concentrate on his voice. She mustn’t shut her eyes, to close them might be to spin off, around and around into nothingness. But he kept moving, he prowled the Music Room touching a piano key, sliding his hand over the black walnut pillars of the piano niche, always moving. The shadows moved with him, and watching them made her dizzier, until she shut her eyes after all.

  The whirling began—a part of Janella remembered the sensation even as she experienced it. Spin and spin again and the flowers would be there, the evil would wait for her beyond the white flowers. She must wake up before she came to the place beyond the flowers…

  Then she was there in the lost years with the white flowers. All the candles lit and her father crying and the strange white flowers and little Janny too scared to cry because Mama was in the box under the flowers and she couldn’t remember Mama’s face anymore, only the ugly stiff flowers with the yellow powder from the stamens sprinkled on the dark wood of the coffin like dust on forgotten furniture. No use to cry, Mama was gone and there was no one to comfort five-year-old Janny. Daddy cried but Janny sat stiff and white as the calla lilies, and the church smelled like burning wax.

  The white flowers and the black box flickered in the candlelight, and then the church was gone and there was nothing left but dark. Words began in a language she didn’t know, but she almost understood them and tried to stop her ears with her fingers because if she knew what the words meant the evil would come. Understanding hovered in front of her in the darkness like the shadows waiting to become real…

  On the floor. She was on the floor because she felt the hardness beneath her and knew she had fallen again. Janella opened her eyes and stared into golden eyes, unfamiliar eyes with the pupils black dots in a yellow sea.

  “Are you all right?” The deep voice slid into her mind and she remembered Uncle Lucien. She realized he was holding her wrist, feeling her pulse.

  “I—I felt faint.”

  His face was concerned. “I looked around just in time to see you fall—luckily your head landed on the rug. How do you feel?”

  Janella began to sit up and he moved his hand to her shoulder, holding her back.

  “No,” she insisted. “I can get up—I’m all right now.”

  “This has happened before?”

  “Several times,” she admitted, reluctant to discuss the matter.

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “I’m really quite all right,” she repeated, and he helped her stand, then insisted she sit down on one of the Belter chairs in the Reception Room.

  “I’m sitting on Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant’s inauguration dress,” she murmured.

  “What?” Lucien bent over her, startled.

  She put her hand to her mouth. “It’s not important. But I tell so many people the Belter chairs are upholstered with the dress, and I’ve never dared sit on one.”

  He peered critically at her. “I think you need to rest. Where is the other woman—the one who let me in?”

  “Doris? Through the Dining Room and down the hall there’s an office.” Janella pointed, then watched him move away. A very good-looking man, Lucien DuBois. Uncle Lucien. How old was he? She’d guess mid-thirties.

  She got up from the chair. The feeling that she’d seen a picture of him crystallized into a certainty. Here. Somewhere in Villa Montezuma. She walked slowly back toward the Music Room. Not on the walls—all the photographs on the wall were old, ancient. Nothing else but the painted faces on the stained-glass windows and the old volume of Paradise Lost with Gustave Doré illustrations. Fantastic illustrations, with Satan portrayed as she’d never before seen him, not dark and sinister but as Lucifer, the tragic fallen angel.

  The big book with its gold lettering lay on a reading table under a gilt-framed mirror. Her fingers moved of their own volition, opening the book, turning pages until she came to an illustration. Yes. Oh, yes, here was Lucifer, golden, brooding, alive on the sepia page. Long curling hair, heavy brows, high cheekbones and the square chin…

  She shut her eyes and raised her head. When she opened them she saw her own pale face in the mirror and his face over her shoulder, looking down at his twin in the picture. She caught her breath as the amber eyes came up to meet hers in the mirror.

  Lucien.

  Chapter Two

  “Do I frighten you?” he asked her.

  Janella moved sideways, away from the picture, away from Lucien DuBois. She tried to smile but the muscles of her face felt stiff. “I—I just find the whole situation strange, hard to believe.”

  “She said you could leave.”

  “She?”

  “The other woman—Doris, you told me—doesn’t think Villa Montezuma will have many visitors in the rain.”

  Jane
lla wanted to protest, say she felt fine, everything was all right, but she didn’t feel fine.

  “You will come with me to see Toivi?” Lucien asked.

  “You mean right now? But I can’t just go—I’ll have to talk to Helen…”

  “I told your stepmother about Toivi. She seemed to think you’d jump at the chance to take care of your aunt.”

  Janella stared at Lucien. “But you didn’t say—I mean, you told me she was sick but you didn’t ask me to take care of her.”

  He shrugged. “For money, of course.” And when she made a protesting movement, he went on, “I know you’d want to help Toivi anyway, but I realize you can’t do so without a salary.”

  Janella took a deep breath. Trust practical Helen to work money into her conversation with Lucien.

  “Let me drive you home now and you can pack a few things.”

  She bit her lip, feeling pushed into acceptance. How could she refuse a long-lost sick aunt? And the money, she needed the money. Was she foolish to be disturbed?

  Of course she wanted to meet Aunt Toivi, help her if she could. And maybe Aunt Toivi could tell her about herself—about the missing childhood years of little Janny. There was no tangible reason to fear this man who said he was her Uncle Lucien, no reason at all for her heart to be beating so fast. What if he did look like an illustration in an old book?

  “What’s wrong with her—with Toivi?” she said at last.

  “She’s troubled—a troubled mind.”

  “Do you mean she’s mentally ill?”

  He frowned, heavy brows drawing together. “Perhaps more an illness of the spirit, if that’s possible. But you shall judge for yourself when you see her.”

  A nebulous answer, telling her nothing. Lucien took her coat from one of the hooks on the pier glass in the Entry Hall and held it for her to slip into. Then he helped her down the outside steps and into a red Jaguar that made a vivid spot of color in the darkening day. Janella had never ridden in a Jaguar before. She and Helen had no car of their own, much less a Jaguar.