The Evil Seed by Joanne Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

the passageway, coming into
abrupt relief as she stopped in front of the window. Her hair was a nimbus of
flame in the sunlight, her figure trim and childishly slight. Her face was
pale, her eyes lost and haunted, but even then she was the most beautiful woman
I had ever seen. Even then. Even now.
    She looked at me
silently for a while, then turned slantways against the sunshine, so that I
caught the flutter from her hooded eyes. Her hair was so bright that it threw
coppery reflections on to a cheekbone, the curve of her neck.
    ‘To be alive,’ she said
quietly, turning to me again, her voice hoarse and sweet, like scratched silver.
‘What little difference between being alive and not. Don’t you think?’ I think
I just stared at her, not knowing what to say, not thinking.
    ‘To be alive,’ she
repeated, ‘such a brief mystery, too short to understand. The thing to have is
power. Power is everything and lasts for ever.’
    There I had it; the
creed of Rosemary Ashley, but, like a fool, I just gaped, offered pity where
none was needed, impulsively stretched out my hand towards her (the sunlight
bled it white), and said: ‘Don’t talk. Try to eat something. You’re among
friends now.’
    Her strange gaze fixed
me for an instant.
    ‘Friends,’ she said,
almost blankly.
    ‘I pulled you out of the
river,’ I said, trying not to sound too pleased with myself. ‘Believe me, miss.
I’m your friend now, if you’ll have me — if you’ll trust me. The river isn’t
any answer … Whatever it is … not that.’
    I think that somewhere
in my mind there might have been a suspicion of something tawdry; some slinking
tale of seduction and abandonment, but whatever it was, was banished as soon as
I looked into her eyes. She was innocent. I could have sworn she was; staked my
life on it, as, in a way, I suppose I did.
    It shone through her
like a searchlight. Innocence. Or so I thought.
    Later I learned to know
her better. It was not innocence which streamed from every part of her,
piercing her transparent skin and shining from her lilac eyes.
    I think it was power.

 
     
     
    Three
     
     
    HE CLOSED HIS BOOK AND WENT TO THE WINDOW
AGAIN. IT was raining now; the light from the street fell in great corrugated
sheets against the thick glass of the window and bounced from the windowsill
with a sound like shrapnel. It was half past two in the morning, and still she
did not come.
    He went to the drinks
cabinet and poured himself a whisky. He didn’t really like the stuff, though he
would never have admitted it to anyone, but it was what she drank,
whisky, no ice; and he was still too much in love and wanted to drink it for
her sake, as if the taste could somehow bring her closer to him. He swallowed,
made an involuntary face, then downed the whole glassful, slamming the glass
back on to the table in front of him in a way he imagined might have impressed her, if she had been there to see him.
    But she did not come.
Where was she? A movement from outside caught his eye, and he squinted through
the window again; was that a figure in the courtyard below, the gleam of a
plastic mackintosh in the lamplight? He fumbled with the catch of the window,
pushed it open, regardless of the rain pouring in.
    ‘Over here!’ he shouted
through the crashing of the overflow pipe, and the figure halted, looked up. He
caught a brief glimpse of her face above the shiny black collar, saw her nod,
and the familiar thrill always occasioned by her presence overcame him again, a
starburst of adrenalin which began somewhere in the region of his stomach and
expanded in thin, prickly lines towards the palms of his hands and the soles of
his feet; a delight which was partly compounded of lust and wonder and a kind
of fearful insignificance. Making love to her never changed her. She
renewed her chastity like the moon, every time; only he was defiled.
    Her footsteps sounded on
the stairs. He poured himself another glass of whisky and drank half of it