Her gaze dropped abruptly to the book at her knees. She ran her fingers along its edge, then as though with long practice opened it to a page towards the back. “There he is,” she murmured, and traced the outlines of a black-and-white photo, neatly pressed beneath its sheath of yellowing plastic.
It was Lie Vagal. His hair was longer, and black as a cat’s. He wore high leather boots, and the picture had been posed in a way to make him look taller than he really was. But what made Haley feel sick and frightened was that he was wearing makeup—his face powdered dead white, his eyes livid behind pools of mascara and kohl, his mouth a scarlet blossom. And it wasn’t that it made him look like a woman (though it did).
It was that he looked exactly like Linette.
Shaking her head, she turned towards Aurora, talking so fast her teeth chattered. “You—does she—does he—does he know?”
Aurora stared down at the photograph and shook her head. “I don’t think so. No one does. I mean, people might have suspected, I’m sure they talked, but—it was so long ago, they all forgot. Except for him, of course—”
In the air between them loomed suddenly the image of the man in black and red and purple, heavy gold rings winking from his ears. Haley’s head pounded and she felt as though the floor reeled beneath her. In the hazy air the shining figure bowed its head, light gleaming from the unbroken ebony line that ran above its eyes. She seemed to hear a voice hissing to her, and feel cold sharp nails pressing tiny half-moons into the flesh of her arm. But before she could cry out the image was gone. There was only the still dank room, and Aurora saying,
“ . . . for a long time thought he would die, for sure—all those drugs—and then of course he went crazy; but then I realized he wouldn’t have made that kind of deal. Lie was sharp, you see; he did have some talent, he didn’t need this sort of—of thing to make him happen. And Lie sure wasn’t a fool. Even if he thought it was a joke, he was terrified of dying, terrified of losing his mind—he’d already had that incident in Marrakech—and so that left the other option; and since he never knew, I never told him; well it must have seemed a safe deal to make . . . ”
A deal. Haley’s stomach tumbled as Aurora’s words came back to her—A standard contract—souls, sanity, first-born children. “But how—” she stammered.
“It’s time.” Aurora’s hollow voice echoed through the chilly room. “It’s time, is all. Whatever it was that Lie wanted, he got; and now it’s time to pay up.”
Suddenly she stood, her foot knocking the photo album so that it skidded across the flagstones, and tottered back into the kitchen. Haley could hear the clatter of glassware as she poured herself more gin. Silently the girl crept across the floor and stared for another moment at the photo of Lie Vagal. Then she went outside.
She thought of riding her bike to Kingdom Come, but absurd fears—she had visions of bony hands snaking out of the earth and snatching the wheels as she passed—made her walk instead. She clambered over the stone wall, grimacing at the smell of rotting apples. The unnatural chill of Linette’s house had made her forget the relentless late-August heat and breathless air out here, no cooler for all that the sun had set and left a sky colored like the inside of a mussel shell. From the distant lake came the desultory thump of bullfrogs. When she jumped from the wall to the ground a windfall popped beneath her foot, spattering her with vinegary muck. Haley swore to herself and hurried up the hill.
Beneath the ultramarine sky the trees stood absolutely still, each moored to its small circle of shadow. Walking between them made Haley’s eyes hurt, going from that eerie dusk to sudden darkness and then back into the twilight. She felt sick, from the heat and from what she had heard. It was crazy, of course, Aurora was always crazy; but Linette hadn’t come back, and it had been such a creepy place, all those pictures, and the old lady, and Lie Vagal himself skittering through the halls and laughing . . .
Haley took a deep breath, balled up her T-shirt to wipe