The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice

bed trimming, noting her clothes in a heap at the foot of the bed. But Marchent was nowhere around.
    He wanted to go up to the attic. There was a staircase at either end of the western hall. But he had no leave to go exploring up there, and so he didn’t. And he didn’t open closed doors, though he wanted to do that very much too.
    He loved the house. He loved the twin candlelike sconces, the thick wooden crown moldings everywhere, and the dark wooden baseboards and heavy brass-handled doors.
    Where was the lady of the house?
    He went downstairs.
    He heard her voice before he saw her. From the kitchen, he saw her in an adjacent office, amid fax machines or copy machines, computer monitors and mountains of clutter, talking on a landline phone in a low voice.
    He didn’t want to eavesdrop, and in truth, he couldn’t really make out what she was saying. She wore a white negligee now, something very soft, with layers of lace and pearls, it seemed, and her smooth straight hair shimmered like satin in the light.
    He felt a stab of desire that was painful, just looking at her hand as it held the receiver of the phone, and seeing the light on her forehead.
    She turned, saw him, and smiled, gesturing for him to wait.
    He turned and went away.
    The old woman Felice was going through the big house and turning off the lights.
    The dining room was already dark when he came back through it, and he saw that the fire had been scattered and was no more than embers. The rooms up front appeared to be in total darkness now. And he could see the old woman moving down the hall, reaching for the switches of the sconces one by one.
    At last she passed him on her way back to the kitchen, and this room she plunged into total darkness as well. She went on out then, without a word to Marchent, who was still talking, and Reuben went on back up the stairs.
    A small lamp burned on a table in the upstairs hallway. And there was light coming from Marchent’s open bedroom door.
    He sat down at the top of the stairs, with his back to the wall. He figured he would wait for her and surely she would come up soon.
    He knew suddenly he’d do everything in his power to get her to sleep the night with him, and he grew impatient wanting to hold her, kiss her, feel her in his arms. It had been powerfully exciting to sleep with her simply because she was new to him and so very different, yet soft and yielding and utterly self-confident and frankly much more passionate than he’d ever known Celeste to be. She didn’t seem like an older womanin any particular way. He knew she was, of course, but her flesh had been firm and sweet, and she’d been a little less muscular than Celeste.
    These struck him as crude thoughts; he didn’t like these thoughts. He thought of her voice and her eyes and he loved her. He figured Celeste would probably understand. Celeste after all had been unfaithful to him with her old boyfriend twice. She’d been very candid about both of these “disasters,” and they’d gotten past it. In fact, Celeste had suffered over them much more than Reuben had.
    But he had it in his mind that she owed him one, and that a woman of Marchent’s age wouldn’t arouse her jealousy at all. Celeste was uncommonly pretty, effortlessly attractive. She’d let this go.
    He went to sleep. It was a thin sleep in which he thought he was awake, but it was sleep. His body felt sublimely relaxed and he knew he was happier than he’d been in a very long time.

3
     
    A LOUD CRASH . Glass breaking. He woke up. The lights were out. He couldn’t see anything. Then he heard Marchent scream.
    He raced down the steps, hand sliding along the broad oak railing, finding his way.
    One horrific scream after another drew him straight forward in the blackness, and gradually, by what light he didn’t know, he made out the kitchen door.
    The beam of a flashlight blinded him, and before he could shield his eyes, someone had caught him by the throat and was pushing him