Lucifer's Daughter. V. J. Banis

me. You are another girl suddenly. You seem to be the personification of both good and evil. Which is the stronger of the two, I do not know. That is for you to determine.”

      The old woman stared more closely into Julia’s eyes. “I believe I know someone who might help you.” Her eyes wandered away, as though debating as to whether she should continue. They returned quickly. “Yes,” the gypsy decided. “I will send you to someone who will be able to direct you. Perhaps that will not be an easy path to follow, but she will show you the way, and you will then have to decide for yourself.” The gypsy turned and went toward the back of the tent. She disappeared behind a canvas partition.

      Julia shook her head. She wasn’t an evil person. She had never caused anyone any trouble. Yet, as she thought back over her young life, she began remembering those many, many individuals who had shied away from her. She had never succeeded in befriending anyone except for an occasional frightened little child who was in her charge at the orphanage. But once she befriended them, the matrons always removed the charges from her care. Perhaps all those people who avoided her saw something in her that she did not know was there. Perhaps others saw what the old gypsy had seen.

      Was she an evil being? she began to wonder. She’d often felt evil just behind her, but she thought she’d managed to keep ahead of it at all times. Perhaps it had finally caught up with her.

      The seeds of doubt were planted. She’d have to find out the true nature of those seeds before permitting them to bear fruit, she told herself.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      A ramshackle old house sat at the farthermost end of a cul-de-sac. The hour was late and the fog rolling in from the sea made the place look brooding and ominous. Julia sat in the back seat of the taxi with the little piece of paper the gypsy had given her. She glanced down and then up at the house number, confirming that she was at the right place.

      “Do you want me to wait?” the cab driver asked.

      “Yes, perhaps it would be a good idea. There doesn’t seem to be anyone at home...at least there aren’t any lights that I can see.” She got out of the cab and started across the crooked pavement and up the wooden steps to the porch. The flooring was sagging and warped, the fog swirled around, making every step soundless. The bushes and shrubs had advanced in such unchecked profusion they obscured any light on the lower level from view.

      Once on the porch, Julia saw a dim light that burned in one of the large downstairs windows.

      What was she doing here? Why had she come to this desolate place? What had she hoped to discover about herself that she didn’t know already? Elizabeth had been right. The old gypsy had just been playacting, and now she was sending Julia to some friend or cohort who would more than likely try to coax Julia into giving up more of her hard-earned money.

      Julia pressed the button alongside the door. The door creaked open. Julia found herself holding her breath. At first she saw nothing, only a dim light and empty space.

      “Yes?” a voice said.

      Julia looked down in the direction of the voice and saw a face peering up at her. The flame of a candle flickered just below the plump chin, making the face seem disconnected from its body. She thought at first it was a child, but the eyes were old and the cheeks puffed and yellow with age. Heavy sacks of skin hung from beneath the smoldering eyes. Julia felt her blood begin to race more quickly through her veins.

      “Madam Esperelda told me you might help me,” Julia managed to say. She found her voice trembling.

      “What kind of help do you need?”

      Julia hesitated. “I don’t know.” She couldn’t think of anything to say. She held out the slip of paper the gypsy had given her. “Madam Esperelda sent me to you.”

      The face that floated in the crack between door and jamb frowned. “Come in,” the woman said quickly.

      “I have a taxi waiting,” Julia said, glancing over her shoulder. “I wasn’t sure anyone would be at home.”

      The eyes just looked up at her; they said nothing.

      “If I send him away, do you have a telephone which I could use to call for another taxi?”

      The head floating above the flame of the candle nodded.

      Hurriedly, as if anxious to get away from the strange, rather frightening little face, Julia went back down the steps, paid the driver, and thanked him for his patience. When she returned to the porch, the face was still hovering there. Then Julia heard invisible fingers undo a safety chain and the door swung open.

      The interior into which Julia stepped was more depressing than the outside of the old house. The hall was heavy with draperies, furniture, rugs, pictures, wallpaper, dark paneling, cluttered tables. A staircase of shiny, black ebony ran up one wall.

      A pair of amber eyes stared down at her from halfway up the stairs. The eyes stayed steadily fixed on her. Then Julia saw movement and the eyes vanished. She recognized the shape of a huge cat disappearing on the upper landing.

      The woman motioned Julia into a room on the right. The room, like the hall, was overloaded with too many furnishings. All of the tables wore shawls, every surface was cluttered with objects of all descriptions. There wasn’t a single inch of wall space showing between picture frames, tapestries, and hangings of all sorts. The windows were shrouded in heavy, blue-black velvet. Wax candles flickered and smoked.

      The woman nodded toward a chair, complete with antimacassars, throw pillows, and footstool. Julia perched herself on the very edge of its sagging cushion.

      “What seems to be troubling you, girl?” the woman asked as she settled herself on a chair with a flowered slipcover, ruffled bottom, and wide, drooping arms. She propped her plump little fingers under her chin and fixed her eyes on Julia. She resembled a hungry cat contemplating a meal. The thought made Julia shift uneasily.

      “I fainted when Madam Esperelda began reading my fortune,” Julia said in a rush. She wanted to get it all out and over with. She decided she’d made a mistake coming to this strange little woman. The place frightened her; the woman frightened her. “The gypsy said she saw something evil in my fortune. When I looked into her crystal ball, it shattered into pieces.” Julia was studying her own hands; she found she could not look into the woman’s face.

      At this last bit of information, the woman’s hand went away from her chin. Her plump little head came straight up. She pushed herself erect and leaned forward, staring hard into Julia’s face. “The crystal shattered, you say?”

      “Yes. I saw a man’s face reflected dimly in it...at least I think it was a man’s face...and then it broke into pieces. That was when I fainted. Madam Esperelda fainted, too,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

      “Hmmmmm.” The woman’s head lowered and she studied Julia from under her drooping eyelids. “And you want to know what made the crystal shatter?”

      “I want to know why the gypsy said she saw evil in me. The face and the man who stood beside me could have been some sort of trick...I don’t care about them, I only want to....”

      “A man stood beside you?” the woman asked, frowning with interest.

      “Yes. I saw the face in the glass, and there was a man standing just behind me. I think it was his face that was reflected in the crystal ball.”

      The woman put a plump little finger into her mouth and began chewing on it. She thought hard for a moment, then nodded and rolled her eyes. “I see. I see,” she mumbled.

      “What do you see?”

      “Nothing, girl. Nothing.” She went silent.

      “I really don’t like someone calling me evil,” Julia said a little boldly. “She had no right to make such terrible accusations. I’m an orphan, you see, and I know nothing about my past. Things such as this upset me, I’m afraid. Knowing nothing about one’s origin—”

      “I understand,