It rang a second time.

I hesitated.

Pick up the damn phone, Scrap yelled into the middle of my mind.

Okay. I could do this.

A deep breath for courage.

A third ring.

One more and it would go to voice mail. I could return the call.

He might not leave a message.

I’d not hear his clipped tenor voice with hints of upstate New York mellowed by the dozen languages he spoke and read.

Desperate, I grabbed the phone in the middle of the fourth ring. “Hello.” I tried to keep my voice from sounding breathless with anticipation. My heart raced and my teeth nearly chattered.

A long moment of dead air.

“Hello?” I tried again.

“Tess,” he breathed.

“Who is this?” As if I didn’t know.

“It’s me, Guilford ... um, Gollum.” I could almost see him blushing.

“Good morning Dr. Van der Hoyden-Smythe. A little late to be calling.”

“Tess, please. We need to talk. I’ve found some new information about your ... um ... problem.” He rushed through that, as if afraid I might hang up on him.

I thought about it.

“What kind of information?”

“Not over an open line. We need to talk. In private. Before it gets any worse.”

“How could it be worse? Seven women in less than a year.”

“The problem is escalating. Please. Where can I meet you?”

“How did you get this number?” I’d changed it right after leaving Cape Cod.

“JJ and Raquel gave it to me. They said you’re in the book.”

Damn.

Yeah!

What did I really feel?

Anger certainly. Fear. Deep and abiding longing to keep this conversation going forever.

“Tess, where can I meet you? Neutral territory if you like.”

“Do you know Bill’s Café on Bancroft, right off Macadam?” Two blocks away. Surely I could manage to hobble two blocks on my crutches. No way I could drive my car with a stick shift. Maybe I could hotwire Steve’s rental ... No, he was leaving at zero dark thirty and returning the car. Allie was staying with me. I wouldn’t ask her to drive.

“I’ll find it. Eight-thirty tomorrow ... this morning?”

“Why not earlier?” He’d always been an early riser, even after a late night of deep conversation and a bottle of single malt between us.

“I can’t get away until eight when Julia’s nurse is available. Then I have to be back at the college for a ten o’clock class.”

“Back up. Julia? Your wife is with you and not locked up in an insane asylum?” I started shaking with chills that began in my gut and spread outward. My hands grew so cold I almost dropped the phone.

“She’s had a remarkable breakthrough but I’m not comfortable leaving her alone ...”

I dropped the phone back in its cradle, cutting him off.

The phone rang again.

I turned it off without answering.

Too angry to cry, too filled with loneliness to think, eyes too full of tears to see the computer screen, I hauled myself off to my sofa, hugging a pillow so tight I burst the seams. It spewed down feathers, like a snowstorm had vomited all over my living room.

I watched tiny specks of white flutter to the floor at the same speed as the tears dripping off my cheeks.

As dawn crept around the edges of the blinds I turned on the gas log in the fireplace and cleaned up the mess. I had to use a hand broom and dustpan while crawling. Scrap didn’t help much, fluttering around, scattering clumps of feathers to the far corners.

I kept at my silent sweeping. No sense in letting Steve and Allie know how much I hurt.

Or Donovan.

A long arm reached from behind and above me to hold the door open.

I knew that hand. Long fingers, hairless knuckles, ink stains on the middle finger.

“Thank you, Gollum.” I had to close my eyes and force air into my lungs.

“I wasn’t sure you’d show up,” he said softly.

I couldn’t not show up.

He looked damp and a bit rumpled. His usual polo shirt and khakis had lost their crispness. I hoped I looked less battered by life than he.

Fat chance.

Bill, the café owner, bustled up and swung the door open further. Balding, middle-aged, once heavy but slimming down nicely from all the hard work of owning, managing, and cooking in his own place, Bill and I had struck up a friendship right after I moved into the neighborhood, a week after he opened.

“Tess, what happened?” He ushered me to a center table and pulled an extra chair over for me to prop my foot on.

“I tripped while jogging.” I followed him very slowly.

“Tsk, tsk. You must be more careful. You’re my best customer. I might have to close down if you stopped coming.”

Fat chance of that. People filled the line of booths under the windows on two walls. The five tables in the middle of the long narrow room were mostly occupied as well.

Big windows offered a glimpse of the river between tall office buildings across the highway, and a good look at the state of the rain. I’d learned that in the Pacific Northwest people depend upon a lot of big windows to let as much light in as possible. We consider the sun a UFO.

Maybe that’s why we have such excellent coffee, to brighten our moods when the sun can’t do it.

“Nothing’s broken. You won’t get rid of me so easily,” I quipped back.

“The regular, Tess?” he asked, helping me settle.

“Yeah, the regular. Black coffee and whole wheat toast with strawberry jam.”

Gollum quirked a questioning eyebrow at me. Then he handed his menu back to Bill without looking at it or sitting. “Pancake sandwich. Eggs over medium, patty sausage. Blackberry syrup if you have it. Coffee with cream and sugar.”

At least one of us hadn’t changed appetites. And he hadn’t tried to change my order to something more substantial. Donovan would have, in the name of taking care of me.

As I dropped into a seat ungracefully, Gollum gently raised my injured foot to rest upon the extra chair. “That should be more comfortable for you.”

“You’ve talked to JJ and Raquel so you know what happened.” I fingered the pearls nervously, wondering if I’d have had better luck in the forest if I’d worn them.

“Yes.”

We stared at each other in uncomfortable silence.

“Do you still have Gandalf?” I asked about the long-haired white lump of a cat Gollum took everywhere.

“Of course. He’s quite the elderly gentleman now. Spends more time sitting on the windowsill looking out than anything else. But he has become quite attached to Julia. She needs him.”

“Oh.” His wife again.

“What are you teaching this term?” I finally asked just to break the silence.

Bill brought us big eggplant-colored pottery mugs and an emerald thermal carafe of coffee—freshly ground beans, dark roast, the house specialty. A ceramic cream pitcher in Bill’s colors and a clear sugar dispenser were already on the table along with cutlery wrapped in printed, paper napkins also in the same deep colors.

We fussed with the details of pouring and accessorizing our drinks.

“Oh, Tess, I almost forgot.” Bill came back with a second pitcher, this one in beige plastic. “I laid in a supply of soy coffee creamer. You aren’t my only lactose intolerant customer. Try it. If you don’t like it I’ll get you a fresh cup. Your orders will be up in just a minute.”

He left us alone again, too busy to chat. Although with the six booths and three tables nearly full we weren’t really alone. Not the best place to carry on a private conversation about otherworldly critters I needed to fight with the Celestial Blade.

Gollum took a sip of his coffee, smiled and nodded at the excellent brew, then answered my question. “McLoughlin College hired me to teach all levels of anthropology, including a class on the persistence of old folklore into modern urban myths.”

“Your area of expertise.”

He nodded, falling back into silence.

“Why McLoughlin? With your credentials you could go anywhere.”

“When I knew for sure I’d have Julia with me, I needed more than adjunct work, a term here, a year there. I applied to fifty different colleges. McLoughlin was the only one to offer a tenure track position. And it’s three thousand miles away from Julia’s mother. And mine.”

“So tell me about your wife’s breakthrough.” I had to know just how well she’d recovered after fifteen years of institutionalization. Maybe if I knew she was fully functioning in modern society I’d finally accept that Gollum was lost to me.

But if she were fully functional, why did she have a nurse? Why couldn’t he leave her alone for more than a few minutes?

A small niggle of hope burned in my heart.

I squashed it.

“Julia’s caregivers noticed years ago that on Wednesdays she was bright, cheerful, and coherent. Then on Thursdays her mother visited—blew in and took over. Within the hour Julia reverted to mute wandering, and refusing to acknowledge her surroundings, or other people. By the following Wednesday she was on the road to recovery again.”

“Until her mother descended and convinced her she was useless, a hypochondriac, and a drain on her resources,” I finished the thought.

My own relationship with my mother had been weird, but at the end we’d found rapport. Mostly I’d given up running my life in a futile attempt to win her approval. She’d never acknowledge that I could do anything right until ... until after Donovan’s foster father died. But she depended on me to take care of her, no matter what guise she put on her actions.

“How’d you get her mother to stop exerting control over Julia, keeping her dependent and useless?”

“Bridget found a new charity. She’s turning vacant lots into mini parks, planting trees and community gardens, and commissioning murals on ugly walls. She doesn’t have time to run up to Boston every week.” He flashed a half smile. Just a brief glimpse of the warped sense of humor we shared.

“Are you well? Other than the bunged up ankle that is?” he asked before I could pursue the topic of his wife.

“Mostly.”

We fell back into silence that lasted until Bill brought our plates. He fussed about for a moment, refilling coffee mugs, grabbing extra butter, and satisfying himself that we wouldn’t starve in the next few moments if he left us to tend other patrons.

“I found a psychiatric nurse who works swing shift at the local hospital,” Gollum blurted out between bites. “I give her room and board. She gives Julia companionship when I’m tied up at the college.”

“Precautionary or necessary?” No polite way to ask that.

“Necessary. Julia had a couple of relapses early on, short-lived, but scary when they happen. Nothing serious for nearly three months now.” He stared at his half finished meal.

I wanted to ditch my toast. Bill had put too much butter on it.

We both found solace in coffee.

“I’m not sharing her bed,” Gollum finally said. He kept his mug close to his mouth, muffling his words.

My heart skipped a beat and my breath caught in my throat. I don’t know why. I was the one who ended our affair. I couldn’t carry on with a married man and I couldn’t ask him to divorce the woman who always asked for him first during her moments of coherence.

“I’m sorry, Gollum, I can’t do this. I need all of you or nothing.” I knew that he was safe if not happy.

More than I could say for myself with the Nörglein preying on women in the hills above Portland.

I fumbled for my crutches and ended up losing my balance, banging my cast on the floor and nearly falling off my chair.

Gollum was right there helping me with a strong hand. He settled me on my feet and escorted me to the door after flinging money on the table. More than enough to cover the bill and a generous tip.

“Take this file, Tess. I printed out something that might help you. Call me if there’s anything else. But please, I beg you, don’t go deeper into this until you heal.” He handed me a manila file folder from the folds of his leather jacket.

“I’m going to High Desert Con in three weeks. I should be mostly healed by then,” I mentioned the science fiction convention in Pasco, Washington where we’d first gotten to know each other and begun our adventure with Sasquatch and hellhounds out of Indian legends. “I won’t do anything about the Nörglein until after that.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” He kissed my cheek and ran off into the rain, disappearing into the mist rising from the river. As substantial as a dream.