Dance with the Devil

“Partly? What's the rest of it, then?”

“I've seen a few of these marks before,” he said, stepping closer to the door and motioning for her to supply him light. “Enough so that I have a general idea of the purpose.”

She waited.

“They've decided that you will be their next — associate.”

“Who has decided?” she asked.

Their voices sounded uncommonly sharp in the quiet of the long corridor.

“The cult,” he said.

“Associate?” she asked, though she knew just what he meant. It was, however, much easier to let him put it into clearer language than to say it herself.

“They've looked you over, passed judgment on you and marked you as a potential convert to their cause.”

“I think their cause is silly.”

“Do you?” he asked. Before she could answer, he said, “If you'll excuse my saying so, it's evident that you've been deeply upset by all of this and that, maybe, you're beginning to wonder whether there could be any truth in it.”

“You're wrong,” she said. “I'm not worried about devils and demons. Just about the people who believe in them, what they might do, what extremes they might go to.”

He shrugged, as if to say that she might not really understand her motives as well as she thought she did.

“Besides,” she said, “I don't even believe, want to believe, or even symphathize.”

“Sympathy with the devil is not required,” he said. “If they can manage to put you under the proper spell —”

“I reject that,” she interrupted.

Yuri sighed and said, “Well, then, let me get tissues and water from your room, to clean your door before the blood dries.”

When he had removed the mess and was ready to return to bed, she asked, “Yuri, why have you been pretending with me?”

“Pretending, Miss Sellers?”

“Yes, like you are now. I don't believe this superstitious streak of yours for one minute, and I think you know I don't. Yet you go on playing this role. What do you hope to gain by it?”

He was upset out of all proportion to the question. “I haven't been playing any role,” he said. “I deeply believe the things I told you. I not only believe in them, but I know they are facts. I've seen all this as a child in my mountain village.”

“Okay,” she said, confused by the earnestness of his response.

“Not okay,” he said. “You don't believe me yet. But there is nothing more that I can tell you to change your mind.”

“I'm sorry I upset you,” she said.

As she closed her door, he said, “Bolt it, please.”

She did.

Then she went to bed and turned out the light. She told herself jokes and tried to remember what a bright future she had ahead of her. But the depression remained this time, stubborn, more deeply entrenched than any bad mood she had ever experienced before.

During the night, the owls hooted eerily in the rafters above.

CHAPTER 10

A light but steady snowfall had begun early the following morning, coming straight down in the absence of any wind. It gradually smoothed out the tracks and spots in the earlier ground cover, padded the corners of windows and doors.

Yuri knocked on Katherine's door shortly after nine and informed her that Lydia would like her to join the family breakfast at ten. She wished to hear Katherine's story, in detail. According to Yuri, she was terribly upset to think that an intruder had so easily gained entrance to Owlsden.

In the smallest dining room, over shirred eggs, toast, fresh fruit and pastries, Katherine discovered that, though both Lydia and Alex seemed upset over the notion that the sanctity of Owlsden could be so off-handedly violated, neither of them wanted to face up to the most likely explanation for that violation.

“How do you suppose they got in?” Lydia asked at one point, when the discussion had been just about exhausted of new insights. “I checked all of the windows — rather, Yuri checked them — and reported they were still locked from the inside. He says he locked all the doors last night, and he is not likely to forget something like that. Indeed, he almost has a mania about locks.”

“Perhaps one of the cultists is a lock-picker,” Alex suggested.

“That sounds too melodramatic,” Lydia said.

“Perhaps, then,” Katherine said, “the intruder was a friend of the family.”

They looked at her as if she had not finished a sentence, or as if what she had said was utterly incoherent.

Alex said, “Excuse me?”

Patiently, she explained, “It could be possible that the intruder had a key to Owlsden. I understand that a number of your acquaintances have keys and that—”

“Not acquaintances, though,” Alex said.

His mother amplified his meaning, “They're friends, not just casual acquaintances.”

“Just the same,” Katherine insisted, “isn't it conceivable that one of them might be a member of the cult, without your knowledge?”

“No,” Alex said quickly.

“You didn't even give the notion a chance,” Katherine said. “You didn't even pause to consider the people who have keys.”

This time, more to humor her than to give it any real thought, he waited a few moments before speaking. “None of them would get involved in something that silly; They're all realists.”

“And, from what I saw,” Katherine said, “they're all pessimists as well. Isn't it within reason to conjecture that someone so depressed with the state of the world might turn to odd hopes, unusual beliefs from which they could hope to salvage the future?”

Lydia put down the pastry she was nibbling at, patted her lips with a linen napkin. “I'm afraid I'd have to agree with Alex,” she said. “His friends are just not the type for foolishness like this.”

“Yours, then,” Katherine said, turning directly to Lydia and giving up the previous line of argument. She wondered, as she pressed the point, if she had already said too much, gone too far. No one enjoyed having their friends put down, even by inference.

“My friends?” Lydia asked.

“You said a couple of people close to you have keys,” Katherine said. She had stopped eating too. She no longer felt hungry.

“Yes, but they aren't the sort to—”

“Of course they aren't,” Alex said. “Besides, they're not young, not a one of them. I can hardly see them stomping about in deep snow, risking jail by breaking into a house — all to pull off some foolish prank.”

“I suppose,” Katherine said. “But it was something I thought we should consider, at least.”

Now, Lydia and Alex relaxed. “Of course,” he said. “Consider every angle. That's the only way to handle it.”

“Do you think I should inform Constable Cartier?” Lydia asked.

“Hardly,” Alex asked. “We don't want him bumbling around the house, getting in everyone's way. Besides,