waited, trying to figure out if she’d heard some warning sound—a cry from Linette, Aurora shrieking for more ice. Then very slowly she raised her head and gazed up at the house.
There was someone there. In one of the upstairs windows, gazing down upon the lawn and watching her. He was absolutely unmoving, like a cardboard dummy propped against the sill. It looked like he had been watching her forever. With a dull sense of dread she wondered why she hadn’t noticed him before. It wasn’t Lie Vagal, she knew that; nor could it have been Linette or Gram. So tall it seemed that he must stoop to gaze out at her, his face enormous, perhaps twice the size of a normal man’s and a deathly yellow color. Two huge pale eyes stared fixedly at her. His mouth was slightly ajar. That face hung as though in a fog of black, and drawn up against his breast were his hands, knotted together like an old man’s—huge hands like a clutch of parsnips, waxy and swollen. Even from here she could see the soft glint of the spangled lights upon his fingernails, and the triangular point of his tongue like an adder’s head darting between his lips.
For an instant she fell into a crouch, thinking to flee to the cottage. But the thought of turning her back upon that figure was too much for her. Instead Haley began to run towards the patio. Once she glanced up: and yes, it was still there, it had not moved, its eyes had not wavered from watching her; only it seemed its mouth might have opened a little more, as though it was panting.
Gasping, she nearly fell onto the flagstone patio. On the glass tables the remains of this morning’s breakfast sat in congealed pools on bright blue plates. A skein of insects rose and trailed her as she ran through the doors.
“Linette!”
She clapped her hand to her mouth. Of course it would have seen where she entered; but this place was enormous, surely she could find Linette and they could run, or hide—
But the room was so full of the echo of that insistent music that no one could have heard her call out. She waited for several heartbeats, then went on.
She passed all the rooms they had toured just days before. In the corridors the incense burners were dead and cold. The piranhas roiled frantically in their tank, and the neon sculptures hissed like something burning. In one room hung dozens of framed covers of Interview magazine, empty-eyed faces staring down at her. It seemed now that she recognized them, could almost have named them if Aurora had been there to prompt her—
Fairy Pagan, Dianthus Queen, Markey French . . .
As her feet whispered across the heavy carpet she could hear them breathing behind her, dead, dead, dead.
She ended up in the kitchen. On the wall the cat-clock ticked loudly. There was a smell of scorched coffee. Without thinking she crossed the room and switched off the automatic coffee maker, its glass carafe burned black and empty. A loaf of bread lay open on a counter, and a half-empty bottle of wine. Haley swallowed: her mouth tasted foul. She grabbed the wine bottle and gulped a mouthful, warm and sour; then coughing, found the way upstairs.
Lie pranced back to the bedroom, singing to himself. He felt giddy, the way he did sometimes after a long while without his medication. By the door he turned and flicked at several buttons on the stereo, grimacing when the music howled and quickly turning the levels down. No way she could have slept through that. He pulled his hair back and did a few little dance steps, the rush of pure feeling coming over him like speed.
“ ‘If you will, oh my darling, then with me go away,
My daughter shall tend you so fair and so gay . . . ’ ”
He twirled so that the cuffs of his loose trousers ballooned about his ankles. “Come, darling, rise and shine, time for little kinkajous to have their milk and honey—” he sang. And stopped.
The bed was empty. On the side table a cigarette—she had taken to cadging cigarettes from him—burned in a little brass tray, a scant half-inch of ash at its head.
“Linette?”
He whirled and went to the door, looked up and down the hall. He would have seen her if she’d gone out, but where could she have gone? Quickly he paced to the bathroom,