Free Lady Sativa by Frank Lauria Page B

him.
    “Yes,” Hannah said, her voice remote. “Italy.”
    For the next hour, they discussed the violence of the séance and its possible causes, but soon the conversation became sluggish. First Hazer, then Maxwell, and shortly afterward Lily, drifted out of the circle around the table and went upstairs. Orient was just about to do the same when Sybelle asked an interesting question.
    “Wherever did you meet Lily?” she said casually. “She’s very gifted and so lovely.”
    Germaine’s smile was not without pride. “I met her quite accidentally in London. At the time she was suffering a good deal during the moon phase, but I’ve worked with her closely and she’s adjusted well.”
    “Perhaps Owen’s technique could be adapted to help Lily control her powers,” Sybelle suggested. “We could all work together.
    Germaine’s steely eyes flicked across Orient’s face and for a moment the smile sagged. In that fleeting second, Orient felt a physical intensity emanating from beneath the thick brows that recalled the looming image of his trance. Germaine shrugged and the smile widened. “Completely up to Lily,” he said. “She’s free to decide.”
    Orient decided to go to bed as Germaine, Sybelle, Hannah, and Neilson began discussing plans for another séance in a few months. As he went up the stairs he wondered if it wouldn’t be better to leave the dead to their new existence unencumbered by debts from past reality. Germaine had been right. The séance had been disrupted by a psychic attack.
    There was something else interesting about the count’s choice of a spell to dismiss the disturbance. He had used the formula of a third-level adept. Germaine was advanced almost to the level of high master.
    Apparently, he was a very special man—skilled occult mechanic as well as hypnotist.
    Orient stood at the window, smoking a cigarette, still pondering the significance of the disruption. As he stared at the moon he speculated on that dead satellite, circling the earth and reflecting the ebbs and swells of energy pulsing from the universe. He knew that the moon had always affected men’s deepest instincts. As man learned to plant crops by the moon his sense of ritual, then religion, formed. Even though the moon’s glow was just reflection, its unique spatial presence transformed the energy of the sun before it reached Earth. Like the sympathetic function of one vital organ for another. Then he saw something move across the reflection of the bed lamp in the windowpane.
    “Come in.”
    Lily closed the door behind her. “Hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said softly. She polled the lapel of her brown angora robe tighter around her neck. “Or are you a difficult sleeper?”
    “I sleep all right,” Orient turned away from the window. “But it’s nice to see you.”
    She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up at him. Her amber pupils were splintered by yellow slivers that glittered in the dim light with a feverish excitement. Her voice, however, was calm and husky. “Thanks for taking care of me tonight,”
    “I did very little.” He reached into his pocket and held out his cigarette case. “Smoke?”
    She shook her head.
    “Where do you go from here?”
    “London, maybe Amsterdam. I have a project to complete over the next couple of months. With Count Germaine. After that I could go anywhere. I’ll be free.” Her moist lips parted in a smile. “I will have a puff on your cigarette. It has a wonderful aroma.”
    Orient sat down next to her and passed his hand-wrapped cigarette. “Maybe you’d like New York for a few months. It could be interesting to explore your sensitivity to the moon.”
    She inhaled and let the smoke drift out slowly through her nostrils.
    “Could be interesting,” she mused. She leaned closer, and returned his cigarette. “You drew all of the confusion and the tension out of my body, as if you were inside me.”
    He watched the swirls of transparent blue smoke