Trivia about BENEATH THE SURFACE SO WHAT ELEMENTS WENT INTO THIS BOOK? First of all, Mary was my water-witch. The element of water is the element most often associated with psychic abilities, so it made sense that she would be the most psychic of my characters. That also decided me to set much of the story on the water... I considered the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but that's nowhere near as frightening as the swamp! As mentioned at the top of the page, I echoed many elements of my own childhood in Mary and Guy: My Catholic background, my large family, and the tragic loss of two cousins (Kelly Boyce in '72 and Kimmy Roy in '74) and then my older sister Linda in 1976. I was 13 when Linda was killed, and as anyone who has suffered a similar loss in their youth can tell you, it changes how you look at life. In the case of BENEATH THE SURFACE, Mary learned to simply not think about the past, while Guy coped by deciding one could never count on having a future. I researched what kind of threats might come at Mary and Guy from the swamp--there really are legends of a Honey Island Swamp Monster, for example (like a local bigfoot), and the Cajuns really do speak of the couchemal. I liked the idea of pirates, having always been intrigued by Jean Lafitte, but he was a smuggler more than a murderous buccaneer--but the pirate gold element ended up staying. Somehow, all these ideas merged together into The Reaper. The hound dog is loosely based on a sweetheart of a dog we had a short while, in Louisiana, named Mix. Mix was hit by a car, and I reacted very much like young Mary, in the flashback, reacted to the death of Sneezy Bunny. When my older brothers read the book, they commented on it. WHAT'S MARY'S TAROT CARD.... Queen of Cups. SO WHAT KIND OF WITCH IS MARY? Both Sylvie and Mary are relatively new to the Craft, as opposed to Brigit and Cypress. But while Sylvie has learned her stuff through books (and some training from Brie), Mary's psychic abilities have been with her from birth. She's a natural. She also has always been something of a goddess worshipper, having had a great affinity to the Virgin Mary even when she was a Catholic. She's also the most public of all the four witches, boldly wearing her pentagram and putting pagan bumper stickers on her car. Part of that is because she is new to Wicca, if not to magic, and new converts to any religion tend to be terribly enthusiastic. Part of it is because she's younger than my other heroines, and thus less reticent. SO WHERE DID YOU GET THE NAMES? Mary was chosen because "Mer" means sea or ocean in French (water) and because of her Catholic youth--Mary Margaret is almost stereotypically Catholic, but that doesn't mean people don't use it! Deveraux I took because it sounded French, and as a nod toward Jude Deveraux, one of the first romance authors I read avidly. Now Guy's family... that's another story. I have among my things a historical romance set in 13th-century France, and the hero was Guy de Lusignan, Comte of Poitiers. That was my first completed novel, and though it never did sell, I worked on it for several years. I was a bit overwhelmed by life when I started BENEATH THE SURFACE, so I needed a hero fast, and imagined Guy as a kind of descendant to Hugh. Thus he became Guy Poitiers. His older brothers are Hugh and Ralph, also traditional Lusignan names. If you're wondering why Hugh is called "Tiboy," it's because he's a junior... but I just couldn't see my characters calling him "TiHugh," which sounds like a sneeze. However, if you ever hear someone named, oh, "TiJohn," that usually means "Little John" or "John Junior." I'm particularly intrigued by having used the name Lazare, for Hugh's ghostly cousin. I originally chose it because it sounds so French, and because I liked the idea of them shortening it to "Lazy." Only once I'd finished the book did the connection to Lazarus, and returning from the dead, occur to me! WAS BENEATH THE SURFACE YOUR FIRST TITLE? See the rant at the top of the page. 'Nuff said. Except that when I got my author copies of BTS, I crossed out the title on the title-page and wrote in GRIM REAPER WALTZ. WHAT MUSIC DID YOU LISTEN TO? I made a tape for this book, which I listened to over and over--it even had vocals on it, which I usually avoid for writing tapes. It included a nice mix of Cajun music, like "Iko Iko," "Litany of the Saints," and whatnot. It also included The Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper," not surprisingly. And it had Carol King's "Now and Forever," which I still cannot hear without thinking of Mary and Guy. Also, a good friend (who had made me a Celtic tape for BURNING TIMES) put together a collection of Xydeco music that made for great inspiration. SO WHO IS THIS ACTOR YOU'VE LONG LOVED? The one I based Guy on? First let me clarify--I don't fall in love with actors, generally, because I don't know them. I fall in love with their characters. Also, this particular actor died when I was in my early 20's, and so had remained forever young and earnest in my mind. He's Jon-Erik Hexum, from the TV series VOYAGERS! and another one called COVER UP. I don't know if he reminds me of someone from a past life or what, but he--or the illusion he so competently created on screen--became a male ideal for me, one I've never lost. I can rarely "reuse" hero inspiration--I haven't written another Rob Stewart hero, or another Tim Daly hero. But Jon-Erik Hexum? He was the basis for Hugh in my still-not-published KNIGHT'S ENCHANTRESS. He was the basis for Sky Marshall in my short story, "Woman of Character," from A DANGEROUS MAGIC (about, aptly enough, a woman in love with a TV character). He was the basis for an as-yet unpublished novella called "Water Witch," set in the early 1800's. And he's the basis for the hero of my upcoming historical romance, FALLEN FROM GRACE. I don't know what it is about this man that works for me, but I appreciate it, and still mourn his death... from the distance that fans must, of course. I never knew him. But his work--that lingers almost 20 years later. For Mary, I had no actress in mind; just some clippings from a clothing catalog about a small and optimistic looking blonde woman. SO HOW'D YOU MAKE THE SWAMP SO REALISTIC? One of my brothers and his family still live in Louisiana, so we went on a swamp tour--Honey Island Swamp Tours, I think-- as part of my research, and it was excellent. I took copious notes. Also, a good friend and I went on a canoeing trip in East Texas, a place called Caddoe Lake. That, too, is immensely swamp-like. Between those two research trips, I felt more than ready to send Guy and Mary deep into the bayou. |
PROLOGUE: "Some people," muttered Clem Maddox as he stared at his TV, "can be so greedy." The evening news superimposed weather statistics--humidity, temperature, barometric pressure--over footage of Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans. Masked attendants on glittering floats hurled handfuls of beads and doubloons. High-stepping bands danced over the booty. Excited revellers jostled each other to catch all they could, some even raising upside-down umbrellas to provide larger targets while they shouted to the floats. "Throw me somethin' Mister," mimicked Clem, flipping a doubloon in his own hand. This coin, however, didn't gleam--and it weighed much more than the parades' aluminum currency. Liking the heft of it, Clem tossed it again. He had a lot more to celebrate tonight than Mardi Gras. He and his two buddies, Earl and Bobby Lee, had made yesterday's paper for their recent discovery of decomposed remains in the Louisiana swamp. They'd been searching for a local man whose car went off a bridge last week; instead, they discovered a skull, a hipbone, and maybe a thighbone, with scraps of cloth and a nylon belt. Pretty cool. Better yet, they found a dirt-encrusted plastic wallet, like the kind kids carry, with three gold coins spilling out. Of course they didn't tell the authorities about the coins. The man who had gone off the bridge, later found drowned, had owed Earl money. They figured they deserved what they could get. The curtains of Clem's living-room window burst bright with lightning while a simultaneous thunderclap shook the earth--one mother of a storm out there. Clem glanced back at his TV, which now displayed the weather map. Storms covered southern Louisiana and Mississippi. Even if Earl and Bobby Lee did get here this century, the parties wouldn't last long. Another boom of thunder struck the air around him with a flash. The lamps, the hum of the fridge, and the TV faded out. In the sudden, dark silence, something hit the front door. Clem jumped near out of his skin, then snorted at himself. "Wuss." Find a few moldy bones and he turned into an old lady. Thud! Thud! Thud! Not so much a knock as a deliberate, sludgy pounding. The door shook under each blow . . . but it was a cheap door. Went with the cheap apartment. "Keep your pants on!" Clem called. Probably Bobby Lee and Earl, laughing their butts off. He reached for the door. It waited. He snatched his hand away as the door shuddered beneath another knock. "Dammit, I said--" But when Clem did yank open the door, his protest caught in his throat. Between the blackout and the steady downpour, he could hardly see the figure, taller than Earl or Bobby Lee, filling his front stoop. That wasn't what scared him, though. Something seemed weird, wrong, about the shape before him. He noticed a dark smear on the doorfront. "Aw, man--" But with the next explosion of lightning, Clem saw what was really weird about the guy on his stoop. It struck. He didn't get a chance to scream. Yesss. As Clem's body slid down the mud-slick door, the doubloon fell from his suddenly lax fingers. It bounced, rolled into a puddle, vanished beneath the coffee-colored, rain-pocked surface. Then the lights flickered back on to show nothing on the stoop but where Clem's dragged corpse had smeared across muddy footprints. The drumming rain quickly washed that away, too. The wind picked up, became tormented moans of lost souls-- too late, always too late. Then they, too, vanished. In the background, muffled by the steady tattoo of the downpour, sounded the jazz strains of Pete Fountain's Half-fast Band . . . and the cry of "Throw me something, mister!" CHAPTER ONE: Drinkin' in the dark. And it didn't get much darker than this, mused Guy Poitiers, leaning against a thin tree trunk. Even if there were a moon tonight, which there wasn't, heavy cloud cover hid the sky and sprinkled misty rain. Oh well. Louisiana, with its thick vegetation and tall, top-heavy loblolly pines, wasn't exactly known for its big sky. From the dampness floated the mournful hoot of a wood owl. "There are," Guy drawled at the portent of death, "certain benefits to not giving a damn." He crushed his empty beer can. Only the crickets, the cicadas, and the banjo frogs made comment. Them, and his belated conscience. "I mean, a darn," he muttered. Vaguely curious, he tipped the flashlight on his beltloop far enough to click it on and see his watch. He clicked it back off, let it dangle again from his hip. He'd agreed to give up swearing for Lent. Here it was eight minutes into Ash Wednesday, and already he'd sinned. Had to be a new record. Well heck, he hadn't observed Lent for years anyway. He wouldn't have given up anything, had he not returned to the old homestead, with its memories of a more religious childhood--and with his devout aunt, desperate for comforting. Guy didn't fully approve of his lapse back into religion, even so. He didn't like people counting on him, not for his beliefs or anything else. Just in case he started to give a . . . darn. He crouched to the cardboard box at his feet to trade his empty for a refill. He had to do it by feel, since turning on that flashlight had destroyed what little night vision he had. The wet spring night, thick with the fragrance of new growth, was a black void around him. A void with an owl. He didn't normally drink like this, but he could find his way around a twelve-pack. Now an eleven-pack. A ten-pack, he edited as his hand closed around another cool can, and he lifted it in memory of nights when he'd snuck out here with his brothers --and in memory of the cousin who should have lived to sneak out with them. "Happy Mardi Gras, Lazare," he muttered at the nothingness around him. "Laissez les bons temps rouler." He didn't really speak French, but his parents and grandparents did; he'd picked up a few useful phrases. "Let the good times--" And then he heard the giggle. Guy blinked, and immediately doubted the sound. A giggle? Not even a lady's giggle, but a kid's? He replaced the unopened can and hefted the cardboard box. It seemed pretty full. He tried to chuckle, but it came out more as a wary "Huh." And he realized the banjo frogs had quit their prideful croaking. The cicadas' endless drone stumbled into uncertainty. Another giggle bubbled at him from the trees, thin and distorted, and Guy slowly rose to his full height, sans beer. He tried to shake off the sense of morbid familiarity that sped his pulse--a familiarity even less conceivable than the giggle. Then, through the thick pines, a faint voice called. "Gilly?" And Guy--Guillaume--felt his breath leave him as solidly as if he'd been tackled by four very large defensive linemen. No one had called him Gilly since . . . He swallowed, hard, and decided to go back to the house and check on Tante Eva. Party over. "I can't be drunk yet," he protested, stepping high over a snarl of honeysuckle vine--even in the blackness he recognized the sweetness of a few early blooms. "I only had one . . ." His deep voice cracked, as if ten years had been stripped from him. No, eleven. Eleven years, this summer. The giggle echoed around him again, and a hush whisper. "Gilly, I found it." Guy stopped, mid-stride, because he did recognize the voice --and not just because of the human remains some Mississippi fellas had found in the swamp a few days back. The remains that had brought him and Tante Eva home. "Lazare?" he called, slowly turning to face the thicker wood, the slough and the swamp. "Lazy?" It occurred to him that, were this a sick joke, he'd played right into it. It occurred to him that nobody in Stagwater was that sick. "I found it," chanted the voice, sing-song, and Guy caught a movement in the depths of the wood. No, not movement--light. A faint, half-visible bluish green, like spots of brightness struggling through the misty rain. "Come see," prompted the voice, coy, from the same direction. "You gotta come see." The light--will-o'-the-wisp?--bobbed closer. A sober corner of Guy's mind labeled it swamp gas, only to be ridiculed by his adrenaline-shot imagination. Swamp gas didn't move--or giggle. He fumbled to unclip his flashlight from his jeans. Feu-follet, came his Papere's unbidden label. Couchemal. Don' go inna that swamp at night, boy--couchemal gonna get you, that's a fact. There! Let there be light. He aimed the beam directly at the hovering greenish glow. It vanished with another giggle. Guy crossed himself, backing toward the road to keep his eyes on . . , well, on the dim circle of yellow light where whatever-it-was had been. Pine-cones, needles and dead twigs crunched soggily under his boots. Something snagged his ankle and clawed at his jeans--blackberry vine. Even in the dark, he knew those briars. He tore loose and kept backing. Then he paused, unwilling to leave it at this. He killed the light. "Hey, Cuz." Talking to nothingness, alone in the woods, he felt like an idiot. But he'd feel worse to tuck his tail between his legs without even trying. "Um . . . what're you doing here?" It's you they found, isn't it? Again, the sickly light pulsed closer. Guy's hand stiffened around the flashlight barrel. He could smell menace in the heavy, silent air. He could taste death. "I found it." The words echoed in the moonless, misted night. "I found it." "I--uh--Lazy, I hate to be the one what breaks this to you, but--" When Guy took another step back, the ground dropped away beneath his heels and he tumbled into a sudden void--then sprawled into the overfull drainage ditch that paralleled the road. Dark water sloshed over his legs, waist, ribs. Something skittered by his submerged hand as it gooshed into soft mud. Crawfish? He scrambled to his feet. The light hovered, too close to him, reflecting disjointedly off the disturbed water. His fingers slipped as he fumbled to turn on the now-muddy flashlight, aimed at the couchemal like a weapon. There! Nothing happened. It had shorted out. Cheap piece of-- "I'll show ya', Gilly. Follow me; I'll show ya'. Follow--" "No!" The misty light shrouded him, colder than a corpse, colder than the drowning depths of a bayou. Guy shielded his eyes with a dripping arm and stumbled from the water. He felt blacktop beneath his muddy boots. No, Lazare, you're dead! At the sudden wail of a horn Guy lowered his arm to stare into the glare of headlights--and again broke his Lenten vow. Mary Deveraux slammed both feet on the brake pedal and yanked the steering wheel in the opposite direction from where the man dove. Her headlights streaked by a confusion of pine trunks and undergrowth, and the reflective green dots of a startled animal's eyes further back in the darkness. She felt a lurching weightlessness while the engine sped and her seatbelt tried to cinch her in half. A horrible jolt knocked her feet from the brake and bounced her sack purse off the dashboard. Everything tipped off kilter . . . and stopped. She grew aware of stalled silence, a whimpering sound she suspected might be her own, and one headlight shining onto the muddy waves of a disturbed, overfull drainage ditch. The other light shone beneath the brown surface, an eerie, watery glow. She fumbled at her seatbelt--had she hit him? When she managed that, she started to slide toward the passenger seat, due to the pickup truck's sickening angle. She grasped the steering wheel, her feet finding purchase. She had to get out, had to check on him! She'd always feared the day she would hit a squirrel or rabbit--or Lady forbid, someone's pet--but a human? The door handle wouldn't work. Unlock the door. It flew open, torn from her hand, and she screamed. A shadowy figure splashed back from her cry. Then it--he-- spread his arms to show harmless intent. She sank back against her lopsided seat with relief. Just a live, uninjured man. Just a man? As opposed to what, the Honey Island Swamp Monster? Even standing thigh-high in ditch water, in the near dark, the shadowed, broad-shouldered figure looked big, rangy. But swamp monsters probably wouldn't wear denim. And actually, Mary wouldn't have wanted to make road-kill out of even the Honey-Island Swamp Monster. "You okay?" His resonant, deep voice sounded vaguely familiar, if a bit shaky. She could understand only the latter. "Better than my truck, I'd bet." But an old truck--even hers--seemed fair trade for a life. Trucks could be fixed. Even knowing first-aid--and other assorted healing arts--she didn't want to take chances with people. "You?" In answer, the man took a sloshing step toward her. She belatedly considered that this could be a carjacking ploy, not that her truck made much of a prize even on land. She dismissed the idea. If he'd meant to harm her, she'd have sensed the deja-vu by now--that sickening realization that she'd already dreamed and forgotten this very scene. Mary dreamed, in advance, nearly every important thing that happened to her. Rarely did she retain those too-subjective premonitions--not in time to prevent them. But even if she'd dreamed and forgotten her own attack, this was about the time she would realize that she had seen this movie before, and hadn't liked the ending. No such sensation. The shadow's extended hands spoke more of chivalry than menace. When she tried to collect her keys, her awkward fingers surprised her further. If she'd tried to climb out herself, she probably would have flopped into the rain-swollen ditch. With cautious gratitude she swung her legs out the door and braced herself on the man's broad shoulders, her hands splayed atop damp denim jacket. Nice deltoids. He circled her waist with big hands, lifted her as easily as he might a child, and carefully lowered her to the soggy grass edging the ditch. Again a sense of familiarity trickled through her, this time at the solid warmth of his palms on her waist. She didn't know him from premonitions of the future, but . . . "I can pull out your truck in the morning, check the damage --get it fixed." His low drawl sounded local, maybe Cajun. That could explain the familiarity of his voice. But what about the familiarity of the touch that slid belatedly from her hips? "My aunt's staying half a mile north of here. You can call someone from there, or I can give you a ride. You sure you aren't hurt?" She ignored the last question. Nothing stood just north of here except her parents' house, where she'd celebrated Mardi Gras tonight. Her parents', and the old Poitiers place. The Poitiers place?! In the indirect illumination of her headlight, she stared at the man beside her. He glanced nervously toward the even darker woods across the road while she discerned bits of profile. Chiseled jaw--not merely handsome, downright chiseled. Nice nose. Tousled hair. Only a Poitiers boy could, half-hidden, look so damned good . . . but after all these years! Ralph? TiBoy? No; the tingle his hands had left against her meant the past had caught up, whether she felt ready for it or not. "Guy?" He cocked his head toward her. Now she recognized blunt cheekbones; full lips parting in astonishment; eyes so blue they glowed in the shadows. Guy? She must be mistaken. Stagwater, Louisiana, did not produce men this gorgeous. Not even Poitiers. But then he bent closer, and his mouth stretched into a broad, if distracted, smile. "Mary?" The distraction left his smile; he caught her at the waist again, swept her high into the air and spun her around with a splash. "Hey, Mary Margaret!" "Hey yourself," she murmured, nearly drowning beneath a wave of deja-vu. She had seen this movie before . . . and though she couldn't remember the ending, it felt like a doozy. "You cut your hair." His eyes still readjusting after having been caught like a poached deer in her highbeams, Guy somehow expected Mary Deveraux to fit his memory's clear picture. Still little; when he set her back on the bank, she barely reached his chest. Still elf-faced, with those big golden eyes and that uptilted nose and that generous mouth, though she'd finally grown into the features. Still blond, even. So the first obvious difference that struck him was her short hair, the same hair that used to hang in a messy braid down her back. Next he noticed that she'd gotten curvy. Not like some of the top-heavy girls about whom they'd compared notes on walks home from the school-bus. Mary Margaret wore some kind of tight leggings, and a flowing, oversized blouse that hid most of what she did have, but he had developed an eye for these things. Besides, his hands still spanned her tucked waist. The girl had grown up--well, grown--thoroughly female. Suddenly embarrassed, he wrenched his gaze back to her impish face, glad he'd noticed and blurted out surprise over her hair first. He let his tardy hands fall free. "Don't call me Margaret," Mary chided, grinning. Son of a . . . gun. Eleven years fell off him. Here he stood on the Old Slough Road with Mary Deveraux. A fall of little silver stars from her ears, bracelets that jangled like chimes at her wrists, and a cluster of otherworldly symbols on her necklace--a crescent, a crystal, a five-pointed star--somehow gave the impression of moonlight and magic. She reminded him of magic. If he hadn't already touched her, he'd fear she'd waver and vanish like a reflection in a pool of water, or a particularly nice memory. Or a ghost. The warm fuzzies of old home night faltered as he remembered what--who?--he'd seen. He caught her hand; she still didn't vanish. "Come on, let's get you out of, uh, the weather." She jumped the ditch easily--what kid from Old Slough Road couldn't jump a ditch? He had to yank his own feet free from the mud, and sensed from the weight as he splashed to dry land that he'd probably grown a good inch while he stood there, pole-axed. "What about the weather?" Mary asked as he towed her up the road, wary of any threat. But surely not the ghost of a nine- year-old boy! Lazy couldn't be evil, not even dead. A couchemal, though? Guy's grandfather would say couchemals were bad omens, lures to death. Then again Papere barely spoke English, and was a tad superstitious. Guy briefly considered telling Mary. There'd been a time he could tell her anything, and she'd always had her own direct line to the unknown. Then he remembered that his cousin Lazare hadn't drowned alone, eleven years back. Tossing dead relatives into the conversation this quickly seemed kind of tacky, even for him. And despite looking much the same, she might have changed. He certainly had. He cleared his throat--had she asked a question? Oh yeah, the hurry. "Could be it's going to storm." "Could be you lie like a rug." She easily kept up with his long-legged stride, like always. At the rumble of distant thunder, Guy couldn't resist a told-you-so grin. So far nothing had jumped out at-- Light caught the edge of his vision. Stepping quickly between it and Mary, releasing her hand to free his, he realized he'd overreacted. Dumb as a duck. This was plain incandescent light from the living-room window of the two-story rental house, past the clearing. His parents owned it. He'd grown up here with his brothers and parents, his cousin Lazare, and sometimes, when their Nonk Alphonse got wild, with their Tante Eva. Had he imagined the giggle? I'll show ya', Gilly. He almost wanted to go back, to doublecheck. For Lazy. The hand that touched his arm, light as the mist but deliciously warmer, dissuaded him. "You okay?" Mary Margaret appeared by his elbow, her golden eyes searching his. He lost himself in them for a moment--better than in thoughts of ghosts. Much better. The bulk of his memories protested his reaction to her nearness--Mary Margaret?! But another memory stood out in defense of his attraction: them on the bayou, bare feet sinking in the mud. They'd both worn cut-offs, him bare-chested, her in a tank top that skimmed her then-boyish figure. They'd been tanned brown, her dark-honeyed braid bleached gold from the sun. He had awkwardly suggested maybe he could take her to a dance, when she started high-school that fall. She had shyly accepted. Both instinctively understood the implications, that their lifetime relationship hovered on the verge of momentous change. Her golden eyes had gazed up at him with thirteen-year-old expectation as he'd licked his lips, then leaned closer . . . And jerked away, embarrassed, when he'd heard his brother's truck approaching. She'd looked embarrassed, too, but hardly displeased by this new sensation. They'd held that excited self- consciousness between them for as long as possible before looking away to their interruption. And then TiBoy had leaned out the truck's window, asked them when they'd last seen Lazare and Joey--and Mary's tanned, elfish face had gone white. Guy had known that look. It meant she'd remembered something. She'd dreamed something would happen, and when TiBoy asked the question she'd remembered it, and it terrified her. That alone had terrified him. Lazy's tragedy--Lazy's and little Joey Deveraux's--had stolen that long-ago moment. Now he stared into those same eyes by the dim light that meant his Tante Eva was waiting up for her nephew, since her own son was long-dead . . . though maybe not as dead as they'd thought. "I think maybe you're drunk," Mary decided with a patient smile, innocently skimming her palm down his arm to take his hand in her small grip and tugging at him. "Why don't we get you inside where your Aunt Eva can tuck you in, eh?" "Me? I'm not drunk," he protested, overtaking her in two strides and passing her with the third. Wasn't he supposed to be getting her safely inside? Wasn't he supposed to not give a darn? "How many beers have you had?" she challenged. "Not enough, cher," he groaned, holding open the screen door onto the porch for her, then ducking past to open the front door too. "Tante Eva! See who I found!" He wished he hadn't left the rest of the beer in the woods. Stepping inside the familiarity of her one-time best friend's home, Mary braced herself against memories of his family's departure. The past had lurked for a long time, ghostly at the edge of her vision, but she'd skillfully avoided it--until one of its denizens darted out of her memory and into her pickup's path, in full, living color. Bigger and better and more handsome than before, Guy had grown into a pure-dee hunk. Not that it mattered. She'd once missed him, of course, missed him terribly. But that was the past, trying to suck her in like a deadly undertow beneath placid waves. Like the unexpected current in a flooded bayou. The Mary she'd been at thirteen missed the Guy he'd been at fifteen. But they'd gone on, become other people . . . really good-looking people in his case, but strangers nevertheless. They'd found other lives, and he wouldn't likely stay in hers for long. He'd probably only returned because of the human remains some men from Picayune, across the state line, had found in the swamp. Lazare's remains, she knew, identification pending or no. He'd only returned because of the morbid past. "Guillaume?" Miss Eva's voice trembled; when the older woman stepped from the near-bare living room into the front hall, Mary tried not to stare. Eva, who couldn't be much past forty, looked sixty! More than faded hair and sunken features aged her. The woman looked scared, as if she'd been scared a long time. "Hello, Miss Eva," Mary greeted, smiling gently. Miss Eva did not smile back. "You remember Mary Deveraux?" prompted Guy, resting a warm hand on Mary's shoulder. "Mr. Al and Miz Maddy's second daughter from down the road? Her big sister Anne used to date TiBoy." Miss Eva said nothing--but Mary thought she did remember them. After the accident, Mary's family had found little Joey's body. Eva had not gotten even that comfort. Yet. But from the moment Mary had heard on the news about the grisly discovery, she'd known it was Lazare, finally Lazare. "Miss Eva--" "Get out," said the older woman. Mary blinked, startled. Guy's fingers tightened on her shoulder. "But--I think you should know something." "Get out of my sister's home. You practice your black arts somewhere else, and leave my boys alone." "What are you--" Guy stopped his protest when Mary raised her fingers to his own. He dropped her a sulky glance, but let her defend herself. Yes, she wore a pentagram--but not the inverted pentagram of a satanist! The woman was way off. "If it puts you at ease, Miss Eva, I'll leave. But you needn't be frightened. I don't do evil. Guy and his brothers are no longer boys. And--" She swallowed that last one just in time. And they aren't yours anyway. Definitely not something to tell a lady who'd lost her only son. So Mary shut up, shrugged off Guy's grip, and got out. She did, however, let the screen door slam on her way down the front steps. Black arts! Leave my boys alone! As if-- A chill worse than the spring mist settled over her, and she raised her hands to her mouth in dismay. Miss Eva couldn't think she'd had anything to do with Lazare's death, could she? Not when Mary's brother died in the same accident! The bayou had been at a record high, a level not repeated until this spring. Lazy and Joey had apparently climbed onto a drifted tree, wedged against the bank. A stupid, childish risk. An accident! Everyone knew it was an accident. Only as she blinked away hot wetness did Mary notice tears in her eyes. She fiercely wiped them away with the back of her hand, aware of Guy's raised voice--his new, deeper voice--inside, and Miss Eva spewing something back in rapid French. If only she could smear away the unwanted memories as easily. Joey and Lazy, that was past. Eleven years ago! It had been tragic, and she still missed her little brother now and then, but life had gone on. She'd gone on. She hiked across the lawn, from the oyster-shell drive toward the bordering woods with their darkness and their drone of cicadas. She'd take the old short-cut across the slough to her parents' place, sleep on the couch and get a ride home tomorrow. There she could think about her kid sister's upcoming wedding, her older brother's pregnant wife . . . the happiness of the future. She'd barely escaped the glow of the porchlight before she heard the hollow slap of the screen door behind her. "Mary!" The squelch of Guy's boots and the rub of wet denim mixed with the crunch of shells. Remembering the mud, she allowed herself a single, petty smile, and hoped he'd tracked it inside. "Mary, wait up!" She glanced over her shoulder and got a full-length view of the man loping toward her. Who would have thought the runt would become pick of the litter? Look out, women of Stagwater. "Where are you going?" he asked, his voice thick with . . . embarrassment, she guessed. "Don't let Eva run you off." "I'm not," she insisted; it didn't lessen the concern shadowing his bright eyes. "But it's late; my parents are probably already in bed." She started to turn away. He dodged around her to block her path. "The shortcut must be grown over by now. And it's dark." Actually, between her younger sisters and her older nephews, she suspected the path had remained more or less passable. He was sweet to worry, though. "I'll be fine." She patted his rain-damp arm comfortingly as she went around him. Nice biceps. Triceps too. "It's no darker than the road." She didn't get suspicious until he ducked in front of her again, then leaned with feigned nonchalance against the branchless trunk of a tall pine. "Let me give you a lift." "No way. You've been drinking." "One beer, cher." His hundred-watt grin washed over her, tickling her stomach. "Come on, Mary. I already helped trash your truck and get you accused of satanism in one night. Good luck comes in three's, you know." When the grin didn't work, he raised his eyebrows entreatingly. "I'm sober as a clam." She didn't fight the smile that pulled at her mouth . . . no harm in a good smile now and then. "I thought clams were happy." "I don't know--are they?" Guy's voice almost cracked; he was trying so hard to be casually charming, he practically vibrated with it. In truth, she doubted he could exude all this high-frequency energy if he were the least bit intoxicated. Still, she had another way to check him out, so to speak, and raised a practiced hand to his cheek. His eyelids fell heavy with suspicion, but except for instinctively tipping his head back, he held still. His facial muscles didn't feel lax. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then slanted his brows apologetically and tried to hold still again. The pulse at his temple, beneath her fingertips, beat steady and quick, too. Soft stubble brushed her thumb. If she spread her hand, her thumb could reach that lower lip of his . . . . Hold up--this was Guy, childhood buddy turned complete stranger! She dropped her hand, flustered, a moment before her investigation became a caress. "I could examine your eyes or make you walk straight lines and touch your nose to kingdom come," she said quickly. "None of that's really trustworthy." Guy finally stood completely still. His eyes had in fact softened as they focused on her mouth. He extended one big hand, index finger raised--and as his eyes cleared and his smile returned, he touched it to the tip of her nose. "Trust me. I had one beer. And that was one ghos--" His cough sounded fake. "One good while ago. C'mon, cher. Let me drive you home." Trust him? The man acted crazy as a jaybird. But her instincts insisted he was also sober as a . . . clam. He could take her to her own home. Even her parents' house embodied the past. "I'll need a ride to work tomorrow if it's raining," she warned. "If I stay with my folks, someone could--" "I'll give you the ride," he promised, clearly relieved by her decision. "Maybe I'll have news on your truck. Deal?" She cast one more glance at the dense woods beyond him, tangled with twining creepers and trash brush, where they'd been inseparable as kids. In the distance lightning flashed, illuminating more snarled growth, deeper. She shuddered. Someone walk over your grave? Before she could try sensing the area for anything truly spooky, though, Guy's big hand had swallowed hers, and he was steering her back from the dark woods to the lit carport--and from the confusions of their past toward . . . . What? |
REVIEWERS Love Beneath the Surface Ms. Vaughn has created a creature so vile, so evil, I read this story only during daylight hours. Still, I was scared. Dynamite story. (RENDEZVOUS) Rising star Evelyn Vaughn adds another link to The Circle with BENEATH THE SURFACE (3).... Ms. Vaughn sends shivers racing up and down our spines as these two appealing lovers triumph over the forces of darkness. (ROMANTIC TIMES) Five stars. (HEARTLAND CRITIQUES) Plot details shrink in importance before two powerful main characters created by this talented author. Romance and suspense are equally balanced and strongly written. BENEATH THE SURFACE engages the emotions, stimulates the imagination, and ultimately warms the heart with its life-affirming message. (GOTHIC JOURNAL) |
Mary Deveraux has always been able to see into the future. Too bad that the love from her past, Hugh Poitiers, has no future.... BENEATH THE SURFACE is in some ways my favorite Circle novel, and in some ways my first great disappointment. The disappointment was in part the 1995 cover, which seemed a sharp contrast in quality from the first two. And it was in part the title. I had the perfect title for this book--THE GRIM REAPER WALTZ. It works on so many levels. Both Mary and Guy are dancing around the subject of death, for one thing. And the evil, lurking in the swamp, soon gets called "The Reaper" (in part from the Blue Oyster Cult song). My friends loved the title. My editor loved the title. Marketing, however, hated the title--they didn't want death in the title of a romance novel--and so it was changed to the fairly generic BENEATH THE SURFACE. Yeah, I'll probably be griping about this to my dying breath. But welcome to the business world, Vaughn. I was foolish not to just appreciate being able to publish this story in the first place! After all, I've got a lot of personal connections to this one. Mary and Guy both come from large families (like mine). Both, as teens, lost a sibling or cousin (like me). Both grew up Catholic, then lapsed (like me). And Hugh, in my mind, looks like an actor I long loved. It also made the best use of the Lousiana setting, which added so much to all four Circle books. Click on any of the following lings to learn more about BENEATH THE SURFACE, including: * Trivia |
Yvonne Jocks Von Jocks EvelynVaughn |
Beneath the Surface (Silhouette) |
The Grim Reaper Waltz... |
Mary Deveraux has always been able to see into the future. Too bad that the love from her past, Hugh Poitiers, has no future.... BENEATH THE SURFACE is in some ways my favorite Circle novel, and in some ways my first great disappointment. The disappointment was in part the 1995 cover, which seemed a sharp contrast in quality from the first two. And it was in part the title. I had the perfect title for this book--THE GRIM REAPER WALTZ. It works on so many levels. Both Mary and Guy are dancing around the subject of death, for one thing. And the evil, lurking in the swamp, soon gets called "The Reaper" (in part from the Blue Oyster Cult song). My friends loved the title. My editor loved the title. Marketing, however, hated the title--they didn't want death in the title of a romance novel--and so it was changed to the fairly generic BENEATH THE SURFACE. Yeah, I'll probably be griping about this to my dying breath. But welcome to the business world, Vaughn. I was foolish not to just appreciate being able to publish this story in the first place! After all, I've got a lot of personal connections to this one. Mary and Guy both come from large families (like mine). Both, as teens, lost a sibling or cousin (like me). Both grew up Catholic, then lapsed (like me). And Hugh, in my mind, looks like an actor I long loved. It also made the best use of the Lousiana setting, which added so much to all four Circle books. Click on any of the following lings to learn more about BENEATH THE SURFACE, including: * Trivia |
REVIEWERS Love Beneath the Surface Ms. Vaughn has created a creature so vile, so evil, I read this story only during daylight hours. Still, I was scared. Dynamite story. (RENDEZVOUS) Rising star Evelyn Vaughn adds another link to The Circle with BENEATH THE SURFACE (3).... Ms. Vaughn sends shivers racing up and down our spines as these two appealing lovers triumph over the forces of darkness. (ROMANTIC TIMES) Five stars. (HEARTLAND CRITIQUES) Plot details shrink in importance before two powerful main characters created by this talented author. Romance and suspense are equally balanced and strongly written. BENEATH THE SURFACE engages the emotions, stimulates the imagination, and ultimately warms the heart with its life-affirming message. (GOTHIC JOURNAL) |
BENEATH THE SURFACE is an August, 2002 release in the Silhouette Dreamscapes line! |
Beneath the Surface, in 1995, had my first "disappointment" cover (below). Hugh looked too old, Mary looked too tall, it just didn't work for me. So I love the new Dreamscapes cover (left). Mind you, the Cajun hunk on the cover does not look like my image of Hugh (who is blond, for one thing!) But it's still a great cover...! |
PROLOGUE: "Some people," muttered Clem Maddox as he stared at his TV, "can be so greedy." The evening news superimposed weather statistics--humidity, temperature, barometric pressure--over footage of Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans. Masked attendants on glittering floats hurled handfuls of beads and doubloons. High-stepping bands danced over the booty. Excited revellers jostled each other to catch all they could, some even raising upside-down umbrellas to provide larger targets while they shouted to the floats. "Throw me somethin' Mister," mimicked Clem, flipping a doubloon in his own hand. This coin, however, didn't gleam--and it weighed much more than the parades' aluminum currency. Liking the heft of it, Clem tossed it again. He had a lot more to celebrate tonight than Mardi Gras. He and his two buddies, Earl and Bobby Lee, had made yesterday's paper for their recent discovery of decomposed remains in the Louisiana swamp. They'd been searching for a local man whose car went off a bridge last week; instead, they discovered a skull, a hipbone, and maybe a thighbone, with scraps of cloth and a nylon belt. Pretty cool. Better yet, they found a dirt-encrusted plastic wallet, like the kind kids carry, with three gold coins spilling out. Of course they didn't tell the authorities about the coins. The man who had gone off the bridge, later found drowned, had owed Earl money. They figured they deserved what they could get. The curtains of Clem's living-room window burst bright with lightning while a simultaneous thunderclap shook the earth--one mother of a storm out there. Clem glanced back at his TV, which now displayed the weather map. Storms covered southern Louisiana and Mississippi. Even if Earl and Bobby Lee did get here this century, the parties wouldn't last long. Another boom of thunder struck the air around him with a flash. The lamps, the hum of the fridge, and the TV faded out. In the sudden, dark silence, something hit the front door. Clem jumped near out of his skin, then snorted at himself. "Wuss." Find a few moldy bones and he turned into an old lady. Thud! Thud! Thud! Not so much a knock as a deliberate, sludgy pounding. The door shook under each blow . . . but it was a cheap door. Went with the cheap apartment. "Keep your pants on!" Clem called. Probably Bobby Lee and Earl, laughing their butts off. He reached for the door. It waited. He snatched his hand away as the door shuddered beneath another knock. "Dammit, I said--" But when Clem did yank open the door, his protest caught in his throat. Between the blackout and the steady downpour, he could hardly see the figure, taller than Earl or Bobby Lee, filling his front stoop. That wasn't what scared him, though. Something seemed weird, wrong, about the shape before him. He noticed a dark smear on the doorfront. "Aw, man--" But with the next explosion of lightning, Clem saw what was really weird about the guy on his stoop. It struck. He didn't get a chance to scream. Yesss. As Clem's body slid down the mud-slick door, the doubloon fell from his suddenly lax fingers. It bounced, rolled into a puddle, vanished beneath the coffee-colored, rain-pocked surface. Then the lights flickered back on to show nothing on the stoop but where Clem's dragged corpse had smeared across muddy footprints. The drumming rain quickly washed that away, too. The wind picked up, became tormented moans of lost souls-- too late, always too late. Then they, too, vanished. In the background, muffled by the steady tattoo of the downpour, sounded the jazz strains of Pete Fountain's Half-fast Band . . . and the cry of "Throw me something, mister!" CHAPTER ONE: Drinkin' in the dark. And it didn't get much darker than this, mused Guy Poitiers, leaning against a thin tree trunk. Even if there were a moon tonight, which there wasn't, heavy cloud cover hid the sky and sprinkled misty rain. Oh well. Louisiana, with its thick vegetation and tall, top-heavy loblolly pines, wasn't exactly known for its big sky. From the dampness floated the mournful hoot of a wood owl. "There are," Guy drawled at the portent of death, "certain benefits to not giving a damn." He crushed his empty beer can. Only the crickets, the cicadas, and the banjo frogs made comment. Them, and his belated conscience. "I mean, a darn," he muttered. Vaguely curious, he tipped the flashlight on his beltloop far enough to click it on and see his watch. He clicked it back off, let it dangle again from his hip. He'd agreed to give up swearing for Lent. Here it was eight minutes into Ash Wednesday, and already he'd sinned. Had to be a new record. Well heck, he hadn't observed Lent for years anyway. He wouldn't have given up anything, had he not returned to the old homestead, with its memories of a more religious childhood--and with his devout aunt, desperate for comforting. Guy didn't fully approve of his lapse back into religion, even so. He didn't like people counting on him, not for his beliefs or anything else. Just in case he started to give a . . . darn. He crouched to the cardboard box at his feet to trade his empty for a refill. He had to do it by feel, since turning on that flashlight had destroyed what little night vision he had. The wet spring night, thick with the fragrance of new growth, was a black void around him. A void with an owl. He didn't normally drink like this, but he could find his way around a twelve-pack. Now an eleven-pack. A ten-pack, he edited as his hand closed around another cool can, and he lifted it in memory of nights when he'd snuck out here with his brothers --and in memory of the cousin who should have lived to sneak out with them. "Happy Mardi Gras, Lazare," he muttered at the nothingness around him. "Laissez les bons temps rouler." He didn't really speak French, but his parents and grandparents did; he'd picked up a few useful phrases. "Let the good times--" And then he heard the giggle. Guy blinked, and immediately doubted the sound. A giggle? Not even a lady's giggle, but a kid's? He replaced the unopened can and hefted the cardboard box. It seemed pretty full. He tried to chuckle, but it came out more as a wary "Huh." And he realized the banjo frogs had quit their prideful croaking. The cicadas' endless drone stumbled into uncertainty. Another giggle bubbled at him from the trees, thin and distorted, and Guy slowly rose to his full height, sans beer. He tried to shake off the sense of morbid familiarity that sped his pulse--a familiarity even less conceivable than the giggle. Then, through the thick pines, a faint voice called. "Gilly?" And Guy--Guillaume--felt his breath leave him as solidly as if he'd been tackled by four very large defensive linemen. No one had called him Gilly since . . . He swallowed, hard, and decided to go back to the house and check on Tante Eva. Party over. "I can't be drunk yet," he protested, stepping high over a snarl of honeysuckle vine--even in the blackness he recognized the sweetness of a few early blooms. "I only had one . . ." His deep voice cracked, as if ten years had been stripped from him. No, eleven. Eleven years, this summer. The giggle echoed around him again, and a hush whisper. "Gilly, I found it." Guy stopped, mid-stride, because he did recognize the voice --and not just because of the human remains some Mississippi fellas had found in the swamp a few days back. The remains that had brought him and Tante Eva home. "Lazare?" he called, slowly turning to face the thicker wood, the slough and the swamp. "Lazy?" It occurred to him that, were this a sick joke, he'd played right into it. It occurred to him that nobody in Stagwater was that sick. "I found it," chanted the voice, sing-song, and Guy caught a movement in the depths of the wood. No, not movement--light. A faint, half-visible bluish green, like spots of brightness struggling through the misty rain. "Come see," prompted the voice, coy, from the same direction. "You gotta come see." The light--will-o'-the-wisp?--bobbed closer. A sober corner of Guy's mind labeled it swamp gas, only to be ridiculed by his adrenaline-shot imagination. Swamp gas didn't move--or giggle. He fumbled to unclip his flashlight from his jeans. Feu-follet, came his Papere's unbidden label. Couchemal. Don' go inna that swamp at night, boy--couchemal gonna get you, that's a fact. There! Let there be light. He aimed the beam directly at the hovering greenish glow. It vanished with another giggle. Guy crossed himself, backing toward the road to keep his eyes on . . , well, on the dim circle of yellow light where whatever-it-was had been. Pine-cones, needles and dead twigs crunched soggily under his boots. Something snagged his ankle and clawed at his jeans--blackberry vine. Even in the dark, he knew those briars. He tore loose and kept backing. Then he paused, unwilling to leave it at this. He killed the light. "Hey, Cuz." Talking to nothingness, alone in the woods, he felt like an idiot. But he'd feel worse to tuck his tail between his legs without even trying. "Um . . . what're you doing here?" It's you they found, isn't it? Again, the sickly light pulsed closer. Guy's hand stiffened around the flashlight barrel. He could smell menace in the heavy, silent air. He could taste death. "I found it." The words echoed in the moonless, misted night. "I found it." "I--uh--Lazy, I hate to be the one what breaks this to you, but--" When Guy took another step back, the ground dropped away beneath his heels and he tumbled into a sudden void--then sprawled into the overfull drainage ditch that paralleled the road. Dark water sloshed over his legs, waist, ribs. Something skittered by his submerged hand as it gooshed into soft mud. Crawfish? He scrambled to his feet. The light hovered, too close to him, reflecting disjointedly off the disturbed water. His fingers slipped as he fumbled to turn on the now-muddy flashlight, aimed at the couchemal like a weapon. There! Nothing happened. It had shorted out. Cheap piece of-- "I'll show ya', Gilly. Follow me; I'll show ya'. Follow--" "No!" The misty light shrouded him, colder than a corpse, colder than the drowning depths of a bayou. Guy shielded his eyes with a dripping arm and stumbled from the water. He felt blacktop beneath his muddy boots. No, Lazare, you're dead! At the sudden wail of a horn Guy lowered his arm to stare into the glare of headlights--and again broke his Lenten vow. Mary Deveraux slammed both feet on the brake pedal and yanked the steering wheel in the opposite direction from where the man dove. Her headlights streaked by a confusion of pine trunks and undergrowth, and the reflective green dots of a startled animal's eyes further back in the darkness. She felt a lurching weightlessness while the engine sped and her seatbelt tried to cinch her in half. A horrible jolt knocked her feet from the brake and bounced her sack purse off the dashboard. Everything tipped off kilter . . . and stopped. She grew aware of stalled silence, a whimpering sound she suspected might be her own, and one headlight shining onto the muddy waves of a disturbed, overfull drainage ditch. The other light shone beneath the brown surface, an eerie, watery glow. She fumbled at her seatbelt--had she hit him? When she managed that, she started to slide toward the passenger seat, due to the pickup truck's sickening angle. She grasped the steering wheel, her feet finding purchase. She had to get out, had to check on him! She'd always feared the day she would hit a squirrel or rabbit--or Lady forbid, someone's pet--but a human? The door handle wouldn't work. Unlock the door. It flew open, torn from her hand, and she screamed. A shadowy figure splashed back from her cry. Then it--he-- spread his arms to show harmless intent. She sank back against her lopsided seat with relief. Just a live, uninjured man. Just a man? As opposed to what, the Honey Island Swamp Monster? Even standing thigh-high in ditch water, in the near dark, the shadowed, broad-shouldered figure looked big, rangy. But swamp monsters probably wouldn't wear denim. And actually, Mary wouldn't have wanted to make road-kill out of even the Honey-Island Swamp Monster. "You okay?" His resonant, deep voice sounded vaguely familiar, if a bit shaky. She could understand only the latter. "Better than my truck, I'd bet." But an old truck--even hers--seemed fair trade for a life. Trucks could be fixed. Even knowing first-aid--and other assorted healing arts--she didn't want to take chances with people. "You?" In answer, the man took a sloshing step toward her. She belatedly considered that this could be a carjacking ploy, not that her truck made much of a prize even on land. She dismissed the idea. If he'd meant to harm her, she'd have sensed the deja-vu by now--that sickening realization that she'd already dreamed and forgotten this very scene. Mary dreamed, in advance, nearly every important thing that happened to her. Rarely did she retain those too-subjective premonitions--not in time to prevent them. But even if she'd dreamed and forgotten her own attack, this was about the time she would realize that she had seen this movie before, and hadn't liked the ending. No such sensation. The shadow's extended hands spoke more of chivalry than menace. When she tried to collect her keys, her awkward fingers surprised her further. If she'd tried to climb out herself, she probably would have flopped into the rain-swollen ditch. With cautious gratitude she swung her legs out the door and braced herself on the man's broad shoulders, her hands splayed atop damp denim jacket. Nice deltoids. He circled her waist with big hands, lifted her as easily as he might a child, and carefully lowered her to the soggy grass edging the ditch. Again a sense of familiarity trickled through her, this time at the solid warmth of his palms on her waist. She didn't know him from premonitions of the future, but . . . "I can pull out your truck in the morning, check the damage --get it fixed." His low drawl sounded local, maybe Cajun. That could explain the familiarity of his voice. But what about the familiarity of the touch that slid belatedly from her hips? "My aunt's staying half a mile north of here. You can call someone from there, or I can give you a ride. You sure you aren't hurt?" She ignored the last question. Nothing stood just north of here except her parents' house, where she'd celebrated Mardi Gras tonight. Her parents', and the old Poitiers place. The Poitiers place?! In the indirect illumination of her headlight, she stared at the man beside her. He glanced nervously toward the even darker woods across the road while she discerned bits of profile. Chiseled jaw--not merely handsome, downright chiseled. Nice nose. Tousled hair. Only a Poitiers boy could, half-hidden, look so damned good . . . but after all these years! Ralph? TiBoy? No; the tingle his hands had left against her meant the past had caught up, whether she felt ready for it or not. "Guy?" He cocked his head toward her. Now she recognized blunt cheekbones; full lips parting in astonishment; eyes so blue they glowed in the shadows. Guy? She must be mistaken. Stagwater, Louisiana, did not produce men this gorgeous. Not even Poitiers. But then he bent closer, and his mouth stretched into a broad, if distracted, smile. "Mary?" The distraction left his smile; he caught her at the waist again, swept her high into the air and spun her around with a splash. "Hey, Mary Margaret!" "Hey yourself," she murmured, nearly drowning beneath a wave of deja-vu. She had seen this movie before . . . and though she couldn't remember the ending, it felt like a doozy. "You cut your hair." His eyes still readjusting after having been caught like a poached deer in her highbeams, Guy somehow expected Mary Deveraux to fit his memory's clear picture. Still little; when he set her back on the bank, she barely reached his chest. Still elf-faced, with those big golden eyes and that uptilted nose and that generous mouth, though she'd finally grown into the features. Still blond, even. So the first obvious difference that struck him was her short hair, the same hair that used to hang in a messy braid down her back. Next he noticed that she'd gotten curvy. Not like some of the top-heavy girls about whom they'd compared notes on walks home from the school-bus. Mary Margaret wore some kind of tight leggings, and a flowing, oversized blouse that hid most of what she did have, but he had developed an eye for these things. Besides, his hands still spanned her tucked waist. The girl had grown up--well, grown--thoroughly female. Suddenly embarrassed, he wrenched his gaze back to her impish face, glad he'd noticed and blurted out surprise over her hair first. He let his tardy hands fall free. "Don't call me Margaret," Mary chided, grinning. Son of a . . . gun. Eleven years fell off him. Here he stood on the Old Slough Road with Mary Deveraux. A fall of little silver stars from her ears, bracelets that jangled like chimes at her wrists, and a cluster of otherworldly symbols on her necklace--a crescent, a crystal, a five-pointed star--somehow gave the impression of moonlight and magic. She reminded him of magic. If he hadn't already touched her, he'd fear she'd waver and vanish like a reflection in a pool of water, or a particularly nice memory. Or a ghost. The warm fuzzies of old home night faltered as he remembered what--who?--he'd seen. He caught her hand; she still didn't vanish. "Come on, let's get you out of, uh, the weather." She jumped the ditch easily--what kid from Old Slough Road couldn't jump a ditch? He had to yank his own feet free from the mud, and sensed from the weight as he splashed to dry land that he'd probably grown a good inch while he stood there, pole-axed. "What about the weather?" Mary asked as he towed her up the road, wary of any threat. But surely not the ghost of a nine- year-old boy! Lazy couldn't be evil, not even dead. A couchemal, though? Guy's grandfather would say couchemals were bad omens, lures to death. Then again Papere barely spoke English, and was a tad superstitious. Guy briefly considered telling Mary. There'd been a time he could tell her anything, and she'd always had her own direct line to the unknown. Then he remembered that his cousin Lazare hadn't drowned alone, eleven years back. Tossing dead relatives into the conversation this quickly seemed kind of tacky, even for him. And despite looking much the same, she might have changed. He certainly had. He cleared his throat--had she asked a question? Oh yeah, the hurry. "Could be it's going to storm." "Could be you lie like a rug." She easily kept up with his long-legged stride, like always. At the rumble of distant thunder, Guy couldn't resist a told-you-so grin. So far nothing had jumped out at-- Light caught the edge of his vision. Stepping quickly between it and Mary, releasing her hand to free his, he realized he'd overreacted. Dumb as a duck. This was plain incandescent light from the living-room window of the two-story rental house, past the clearing. His parents owned it. He'd grown up here with his brothers and parents, his cousin Lazare, and sometimes, when their Nonk Alphonse got wild, with their Tante Eva. Had he imagined the giggle? I'll show ya', Gilly. He almost wanted to go back, to doublecheck. For Lazy. The hand that touched his arm, light as the mist but deliciously warmer, dissuaded him. "You okay?" Mary Margaret appeared by his elbow, her golden eyes searching his. He lost himself in them for a moment--better than in thoughts of ghosts. Much better. The bulk of his memories protested his reaction to her nearness--Mary Margaret?! But another memory stood out in defense of his attraction: them on the bayou, bare feet sinking in the mud. They'd both worn cut-offs, him bare-chested, her in a tank top that skimmed her then-boyish figure. They'd been tanned brown, her dark-honeyed braid bleached gold from the sun. He had awkwardly suggested maybe he could take her to a dance, when she started high-school that fall. She had shyly accepted. Both instinctively understood the implications, that their lifetime relationship hovered on the verge of momentous change. Her golden eyes had gazed up at him with thirteen-year-old expectation as he'd licked his lips, then leaned closer . . . And jerked away, embarrassed, when he'd heard his brother's truck approaching. She'd looked embarrassed, too, but hardly displeased by this new sensation. They'd held that excited self- consciousness between them for as long as possible before looking away to their interruption. And then TiBoy had leaned out the truck's window, asked them when they'd last seen Lazare and Joey--and Mary's tanned, elfish face had gone white. Guy had known that look. It meant she'd remembered something. She'd dreamed something would happen, and when TiBoy asked the question she'd remembered it, and it terrified her. That alone had terrified him. Lazy's tragedy--Lazy's and little Joey Deveraux's--had stolen that long-ago moment. Now he stared into those same eyes by the dim light that meant his Tante Eva was waiting up for her nephew, since her own son was long-dead . . . though maybe not as dead as they'd thought. "I think maybe you're drunk," Mary decided with a patient smile, innocently skimming her palm down his arm to take his hand in her small grip and tugging at him. "Why don't we get you inside where your Aunt Eva can tuck you in, eh?" "Me? I'm not drunk," he protested, overtaking her in two strides and passing her with the third. Wasn't he supposed to be getting her safely inside? Wasn't he supposed to not give a darn? "How many beers have you had?" she challenged. "Not enough, cher," he groaned, holding open the screen door onto the porch for her, then ducking past to open the front door too. "Tante Eva! See who I found!" He wished he hadn't left the rest of the beer in the woods. Stepping inside the familiarity of her one-time best friend's home, Mary braced herself against memories of his family's departure. The past had lurked for a long time, ghostly at the edge of her vision, but she'd skillfully avoided it--until one of its denizens darted out of her memory and into her pickup's path, in full, living color. Bigger and better and more handsome than before, Guy had grown into a pure-dee hunk. Not that it mattered. She'd once missed him, of course, missed him terribly. But that was the past, trying to suck her in like a deadly undertow beneath placid waves. Like the unexpected current in a flooded bayou. The Mary she'd been at thirteen missed the Guy he'd been at fifteen. But they'd gone on, become other people . . . really good-looking people in his case, but strangers nevertheless. They'd found other lives, and he wouldn't likely stay in hers for long. He'd probably only returned because of the human remains some men from Picayune, across the state line, had found in the swamp. Lazare's remains, she knew, identification pending or no. He'd only returned because of the morbid past. "Guillaume?" Miss Eva's voice trembled; when the older woman stepped from the near-bare living room into the front hall, Mary tried not to stare. Eva, who couldn't be much past forty, looked sixty! More than faded hair and sunken features aged her. The woman looked scared, as if she'd been scared a long time. "Hello, Miss Eva," Mary greeted, smiling gently. Miss Eva did not smile back. "You remember Mary Deveraux?" prompted Guy, resting a warm hand on Mary's shoulder. "Mr. Al and Miz Maddy's second daughter from down the road? Her big sister Anne used to date TiBoy." Miss Eva said nothing--but Mary thought she did remember them. After the accident, Mary's family had found little Joey's body. Eva had not gotten even that comfort. Yet. But from the moment Mary had heard on the news about the grisly discovery, she'd known it was Lazare, finally Lazare. "Miss Eva--" "Get out," said the older woman. Mary blinked, startled. Guy's fingers tightened on her shoulder. "But--I think you should know something." "Get out of my sister's home. You practice your black arts somewhere else, and leave my boys alone." "What are you--" Guy stopped his protest when Mary raised her fingers to his own. He dropped her a sulky glance, but let her defend herself. Yes, she wore a pentagram--but not the inverted pentagram of a satanist! The woman was way off. "If it puts you at ease, Miss Eva, I'll leave. But you needn't be frightened. I don't do evil. Guy and his brothers are no longer boys. And--" She swallowed that last one just in time. And they aren't yours anyway. Definitely not something to tell a lady who'd lost her only son. So Mary shut up, shrugged off Guy's grip, and got out. She did, however, let the screen door slam on her way down the front steps. Black arts! Leave my boys alone! As if-- A chill worse than the spring mist settled over her, and she raised her hands to her mouth in dismay. Miss Eva couldn't think she'd had anything to do with Lazare's death, could she? Not when Mary's brother died in the same accident! The bayou had been at a record high, a level not repeated until this spring. Lazy and Joey had apparently climbed onto a drifted tree, wedged against the bank. A stupid, childish risk. An accident! Everyone knew it was an accident. Only as she blinked away hot wetness did Mary notice tears in her eyes. She fiercely wiped them away with the back of her hand, aware of Guy's raised voice--his new, deeper voice--inside, and Miss Eva spewing something back in rapid French. If only she could smear away the unwanted memories as easily. Joey and Lazy, that was past. Eleven years ago! It had been tragic, and she still missed her little brother now and then, but life had gone on. She'd gone on. She hiked across the lawn, from the oyster-shell drive toward the bordering woods with their darkness and their drone of cicadas. She'd take the old short-cut across the slough to her parents' place, sleep on the couch and get a ride home tomorrow. There she could think about her kid sister's upcoming wedding, her older brother's pregnant wife . . . the happiness of the future. She'd barely escaped the glow of the porchlight before she heard the hollow slap of the screen door behind her. "Mary!" The squelch of Guy's boots and the rub of wet denim mixed with the crunch of shells. Remembering the mud, she allowed herself a single, petty smile, and hoped he'd tracked it inside. "Mary, wait up!" She glanced over her shoulder and got a full-length view of the man loping toward her. Who would have thought the runt would become pick of the litter? Look out, women of Stagwater. "Where are you going?" he asked, his voice thick with . . . embarrassment, she guessed. "Don't let Eva run you off." "I'm not," she insisted; it didn't lessen the concern shadowing his bright eyes. "But it's late; my parents are probably already in bed." She started to turn away. He dodged around her to block her path. "The shortcut must be grown over by now. And it's dark." Actually, between her younger sisters and her older nephews, she suspected the path had remained more or less passable. He was sweet to worry, though. "I'll be fine." She patted his rain-damp arm comfortingly as she went around him. Nice biceps. Triceps too. "It's no darker than the road." She didn't get suspicious until he ducked in front of her again, then leaned with feigned nonchalance against the branchless trunk of a tall pine. "Let me give you a lift." "No way. You've been drinking." "One beer, cher." His hundred-watt grin washed over her, tickling her stomach. "Come on, Mary. I already helped trash your truck and get you accused of satanism in one night. Good luck comes in three's, you know." When the grin didn't work, he raised his eyebrows entreatingly. "I'm sober as a clam." She didn't fight the smile that pulled at her mouth . . . no harm in a good smile now and then. "I thought clams were happy." "I don't know--are they?" Guy's voice almost cracked; he was trying so hard to be casually charming, he practically vibrated with it. In truth, she doubted he could exude all this high-frequency energy if he were the least bit intoxicated. Still, she had another way to check him out, so to speak, and raised a practiced hand to his cheek. His eyelids fell heavy with suspicion, but except for instinctively tipping his head back, he held still. His facial muscles didn't feel lax. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then slanted his brows apologetically and tried to hold still again. The pulse at his temple, beneath her fingertips, beat steady and quick, too. Soft stubble brushed her thumb. If she spread her hand, her thumb could reach that lower lip of his . . . . Hold up--this was Guy, childhood buddy turned complete stranger! She dropped her hand, flustered, a moment before her investigation became a caress. "I could examine your eyes or make you walk straight lines and touch your nose to kingdom come," she said quickly. "None of that's really trustworthy." Guy finally stood completely still. His eyes had in fact softened as they focused on her mouth. He extended one big hand, index finger raised--and as his eyes cleared and his smile returned, he touched it to the tip of her nose. "Trust me. I had one beer. And that was one ghos--" His cough sounded fake. "One good while ago. C'mon, cher. Let me drive you home." Trust him? The man acted crazy as a jaybird. But her instincts insisted he was also sober as a . . . clam. He could take her to her own home. Even her parents' house embodied the past. "I'll need a ride to work tomorrow if it's raining," she warned. "If I stay with my folks, someone could--" "I'll give you the ride," he promised, clearly relieved by her decision. "Maybe I'll have news on your truck. Deal?" She cast one more glance at the dense woods beyond him, tangled with twining creepers and trash brush, where they'd been inseparable as kids. In the distance lightning flashed, illuminating more snarled growth, deeper. She shuddered. Someone walk over your grave? Before she could try sensing the area for anything truly spooky, though, Guy's big hand had swallowed hers, and he was steering her back from the dark woods to the lit carport--and from the confusions of their past toward . . . . What? |
Trivia about BENEATH THE SURFACE SO WHAT ELEMENTS WENT INTO THIS BOOK? First of all, Mary was my water-witch. The element of water is the element most often associated with psychic abilities, so it made sense that she would be the most psychic of my characters. That also decided me to set much of the story on the water... I considered the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but that's nowhere near as frightening as the swamp! As mentioned at the top of the page, I echoed many elements of my own childhood in Mary and Guy: My Catholic background, my large family, and the tragic loss of two cousins (Kelly Boyce in '72 and Kimmy Roy in '74) and then my older sister Linda in 1976. I was 13 when Linda was killed, and as anyone who has suffered a similar loss in their youth can tell you, it changes how you look at life. In the case of BENEATH THE SURFACE, Mary learned to simply not think about the past, while Guy coped by deciding one could never count on having a future. I researched what kind of threats might come at Mary and Guy from the swamp--there really are legends of a Honey Island Swamp Monster, for example (like a local bigfoot), and the Cajuns really do speak of the couchemal. I liked the idea of pirates, having always been intrigued by Jean Lafitte, but he was a smuggler more than a murderous buccaneer--but the pirate gold element ended up staying. Somehow, all these ideas merged together into The Reaper. The hound dog is loosely based on a sweetheart of a dog we had a short while, in Louisiana, named Mix. Mix was hit by a car, and I reacted very much like young Mary, in the flashback, reacted to the death of Sneezy Bunny. When my older brothers read the book, they commented on it. WHAT'S MARY'S TAROT CARD.... Queen of Cups. SO WHAT KIND OF WITCH IS MARY? Both Sylvie and Mary are relatively new to the Craft, as opposed to Brigit and Cypress. But while Sylvie has learned her stuff through books (and some training from Brie), Mary's psychic abilities have been with her from birth. She's a natural. She also has always been something of a goddess worshipper, having had a great affinity to the Virgin Mary even when she was a Catholic. She's also the most public of all the four witches, boldly wearing her pentagram and putting pagan bumper stickers on her car. Part of that is because she is new to Wicca, if not to magic, and new converts to any religion tend to be terribly enthusiastic. Part of it is because she's younger than my other heroines, and thus less reticent. SO WHERE DID YOU GET THE NAMES? Mary was chosen because "Mer" means sea or ocean in French (water) and because of her Catholic youth--Mary Margaret is almost stereotypically Catholic, but that doesn't mean people don't use it! Deveraux I took because it sounded French, and as a nod toward Jude Deveraux, one of the first romance authors I read avidly. Now Guy's family... that's another story. I have among my things a historical romance set in 13th-century France, and the hero was Guy de Lusignan, Comte of Poitiers. That was my first completed novel, and though it never did sell, I worked on it for several years. I was a bit overwhelmed by life when I started BENEATH THE SURFACE, so I needed a hero fast, and imagined Guy as a kind of descendant to Hugh. Thus he became Guy Poitiers. His older brothers are Hugh and Ralph, also traditional Lusignan names. If you're wondering why Hugh is called "Tiboy," it's because he's a junior... but I just couldn't see my characters calling him "TiHugh," which sounds like a sneeze. However, if you ever hear someone named, oh, "TiJohn," that usually means "Little John" or "John Junior." I'm particularly intrigued by having used the name Lazare, for Hugh's ghostly cousin. I originally chose it because it sounds so French, and because I liked the idea of them shortening it to "Lazy." Only once I'd finished the book did the connection to Lazarus, and returning from the dead, occur to me! WAS BENEATH THE SURFACE YOUR FIRST TITLE? See the rant at the top of the page. 'Nuff said. Except that when I got my author copies of BTS, I crossed out the title on the title-page and wrote in GRIM REAPER WALTZ. WHAT MUSIC DID YOU LISTEN TO? I made a tape for this book, which I listened to over and over--it even had vocals on it, which I usually avoid for writing tapes. It included a nice mix of Cajun music, like "Iko Iko," "Litany of the Saints," and whatnot. It also included The Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper," not surprisingly. And it had Carol King's "Now and Forever," which I still cannot hear without thinking of Mary and Guy. Also, a good friend (who had made me a Celtic tape for BURNING TIMES) put together a collection of Xydeco music that made for great inspiration. SO WHO IS THIS ACTOR YOU'VE LONG LOVED? The one I based Guy on? First let me clarify--I don't fall in love with actors, generally, because I don't know them. I fall in love with their characters. Also, this particular actor died when I was in my early 20's, and so had remained forever young and earnest in my mind. He's Jon-Erik Hexum, from the TV series VOYAGERS! and another one called COVER UP. I don't know if he reminds me of someone from a past life or what, but he--or the illusion he so competently created on screen--became a male ideal for me, one I've never lost. I can rarely "reuse" hero inspiration--I haven't written another Rob Stewart hero, or another Tim Daly hero. But Jon-Erik Hexum? He was the basis for Hugh in my still-not-published KNIGHT'S ENCHANTRESS. He was the basis for Sky Marshall in my short story, "Woman of Character," from A DANGEROUS MAGIC (about, aptly enough, a woman in love with a TV character). He was the basis for an as-yet unpublished novella called "Water Witch," set in the early 1800's. And he's the basis for the hero of my upcoming historical romance, FALLEN FROM GRACE. I don't know what it is about this man that works for me, but I appreciate it, and still mourn his death... from the distance that fans must, of course. I never knew him. But his work--that lingers almost 20 years later. For Mary, I had no actress in mind; just some clippings from a clothing catalog about a small and optimistic looking blonde woman. SO HOW'D YOU MAKE THE SWAMP SO REALISTIC? One of my brothers and his family still live in Louisiana, so we went on a swamp tour--Honey Island Swamp Tours, I think-- as part of my research, and it was excellent. I took copious notes. Also, a good friend and I went on a canoeing trip in East Texas, a place called Caddoe Lake. That, too, is immensely swamp-like. Between those two research trips, I felt more than ready to send Guy and Mary deep into the bayou. |
