Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 by Melissa Scott Page B

even better guess that Henry knows something he wasn’t saying. I think I need to have words with him in the morning.”
     
    J erry got out of the taxi stiffly and climbed the steps to Henry’s house. The light of morning wasn’t kind. Miss Patterson had dark circles under her eyes that even Hollywood powder couldn’t conceal, but her lipstick and mascara were defiantly perfect. It could not have been an easy evening for her, Jerry thought, cleaning up after the ritual had gone rather obviously wrong — not the physical clean up, of course, she’d have staff of her own for that, but she’d have been the one smoothing ruffled feathers and providing explanations. He gave her a smile of sympathy, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
    She led him down the hall to Henry’s office, past rooms where a few glasses still stood on side tables, and the rugs were rumpled. Jerry was willing to bet there were still a few people sleeping off hangovers, from drink or otherwise, in the bedrooms upstairs. She tapped on the door, and opened it without waiting for a response.
    Henry looked up from the papers spread across his desk, and gave a nod of greeting. “Thanks, Pat,” he said. “Tell Mrs. Russo to send up some more coffee, if you would, and then you can take the rest of the day off.”
    “I’ll tell her,” she answered, “but I need to stick around. There’s still a lot to be done, Mr. Kershaw.”
    “Can it wait?”
    She hesitated. “Some of it….”
    “Then do whatever can’t wait, and take off. You did a hell of a job last night.”
    She smiled then, tired but game. “Thank you. I’m just sorry —”
    “What happened was not your fault,” Henry said. “There’s nothing you could have done to prevent it.”
    She gave Jerry a swift, dubious look, but nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Kershaw. I’ll have Rosa send up more coffee.”
    The door closed softly behind her, and Henry waved vaguely toward the waiting chairs. Jerry lowered himself carefully, propping his cane to hand against the edge of the desk, and lifted an eyebrow. “Nice to have good help.”
    “She’s very good,” Henry answered. “Used to work for one of the studios, assistant director. It comes in very handy when we’re trying to do a nice ritual.”
    Jerry supposed it would, which raised several questions, but, interesting as it would be to pursue the matter, it wasn’t relevant. “You’ve got a problem here, Henry.”
    “No kidding.” Henry twirled a fountain pen between his fingers. “I had no idea he’d try something like that — I don’t even know why —”
    “Don’t you?” Jerry fixed him with the stare he’d used on ungrateful undergraduates, and Henry looked away.
    “I didn’t know. Not for sure. And I couldn’t say anything, not without proof.”
    “Something has possessed William Davenport,” Jerry said. “Or he’s allied himself with something very dubious. I’ve known him and his style, his energy, for too many years to think that was just him, no matter what he may have learned. And if you knew it and didn’t do anything about it —”
    “I couldn’t,” Henry said again. He shoved his chair back from the desk, crossed to the windows to pull back the curtains. The windows faced east, and the sun was strong enough to make both men wince, but Henry stared out at the pool house anyway. “I only suspected because Bill asked me to stand in for someone last week — he’d been doing something with a smaller group, teaching new students, and one of the men was ill, and they couldn’t put it off….”
    That made sense, Jerry thought. Davenport had never had any respect for Henry’s talent — which was real enough, even if it wasn’t disciplined, and even if Henry was lazy and didn’t always show at his best. If Davenport didn’t believe Henry was any good, then he would have assumed that Henry couldn’t actually feel what was going on. “But you sensed — something,” he prompted, and Henry