The Sea King's Daughter by Barbara Michaels

Author:Barbara Michaels
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter

8

I THINK MOST PEOPLE WOULD HAVE FOUND THAT speech disconcerting. For me the effect was absolutely devastating. It was not only what she said, it was the way she was looking at me, with the queerest mixture of longing and hostility. I had heard of devouring eyes, but I had always thought it was a figure of speech, till then, when her black eyes fastened on my face like claws.

Jim pulled out a chair.

“Won’t you join us?” he said. “My name is Jim Sanchez. This is Sandy Bishop. Madame…?”

“Kore.” She didn’t look at him.

“Will you have coffee, madame? Ouzo? Wine?”

His insistent courtesy finally won her attention. When she turned those eyes away I felt as if an actual physical restraint had been removed.

She wasn’t as tall as I had thought. Next to Jim she appeared quite short. She looked up at him with her head tilted. It might have been instinctive coquetry, for, as I had noticed, he was that sort of man. Or it might have been appraisal.

“Coffee,” she said. “Thank you. You forgive the informality, yes? In this small place we outsiders must be allies.”

The smile she gave him held a hint of the sexual allure she must have possessed once upon a time. She had lost most of it. Her figure was still good, if you like the Junoesque type, but at close range her face was a sad ruin. The fiery black eyes were her only remaining beauty; her cheeks and forehead were a map of wrinkles. Instead of camouflaging the disaster, her heavy makeup merely emphasized its marks.

Jim held the chair for her and then seated himself.

“Allies?” he repeated. “Against what enemy, madame?”

“Is not the enemy always the same?”

“I think not.” Jim was watching her curiously. “The age-old struggle between evil and good is eternal, but the definitions vary, depending on which side you happen to be.”

She laughed. She had a pretty, tinkling laugh.

“But what an absurd conversation. I do not mean to be so serious. I express only my pleasure to find a breath of the outside world. The world of fashion, newspapers, reason. These people talk only of fish and their foolish superstitions.”

“What kind of superstitions?” Jim was carrying the conversation. I was still tongue-tied.

“Every kind. Thera is the home of the vrykolas, the vampire. Sometimes the men do not work the fields because there are ghosts. And you have seen”—she opened her eyes wide—“how they are afraid of me. Perhaps they think I am vrykolas, an old harmless woman like me.”

“You could never be old, Madame Kore,” Jim said. “And no beautiful woman is ever harmless.”

“And they say Americans are without gallantry.” She smiled at him. “That, too, I miss. The men of Zoa run from me as if I were a demon. Not that a woman would wish their compliments….”

“Without offense, madame, may I suggest that you encourage their fear? Even your name….”

“Kore, the maiden,” she said dreamily. “The mother, in one of her many aspects. Persephone, bride of Hell…. But of course it is not my realname! My real name I have forgotten, it is so dull.

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