In the Night Room

clear out the wreckage, and staple a sheet of plastic over the opening. Maybe we could save the carpet and whatever else in there ain’t already ruined. Only we need the key, on account of that room is locked right now.

Willy could barely hear him. She was still reeling from the hours subtracted from her day. Everything else was an irrelevance, a minor problem. Hours had not been taken from her; she had lost them, because she was cuckoo, bats, looney tunes.

Giles had wandered over. Mud was spattered across his beautiful shoes. —And it’s locked for a reason, Santolini. Mr. Faber values his privacy very highly. Can’t you do something from the outside?

—What, you want me to pull that shit out? Sorry, missus.

—Go in and open the door, Giles, Willy said, wanting to put an end to all this blather.

—I’m sorry, but I can’t do that without authorization from Mr. Faber.

—Mr. Faber won’t be very happy with you if you let his office get wrecked any more than it already is. Let’s get out of the rain.

—This is on your head, Willy.

He spun around and proceeded toward the garage with Willy immediately behind him. Rocky and Vince Santolini trotted off to pick up power saws and rolls of plastic sheeting.

Willy whispered, Did I fall asleep in the car?

—How would I know? Ask yourself how much you had to drink.

Expressing his opinion of the enterprise by leaving muddy footprints on the carpets, Coverley refused to say any more as he marched up the big central staircase, wheeled across the landing, took the next, narrower flight up, and positioned himself in front of the office door. Through its thick, dark wood came the sound of a high wind and the rattling of leaves. He pulled a baseball-sized key ring from his coat pocket, selected a key, held it up in front of Willy, and challenged her with a glare.

—I take no responsibility for this. Coverley inserted the key into the lock and twisted it. The door flung itself open on a blast of wind and struck the startled Coverley full in the face. Rainwater and torn leaves flew past him.

—Christ. Blood dripped from behind the hand Coverley held over his nose. I’m not going to stand here and bleed to death. He moved aside, with an ironic gesture of welcome.

The Santolinis brushed past Willy and went immediately to work in the chaos of Faber’s lair. Saws roaring like motorboat engines, they climbed over the tangle of branches protruding through the roof and the destroyed window frame. Wood chips and sawdust flew up around them as they worked.

—This was your idea, you deal with it, Coverley said. A fat streamlet of blood was running down over his chin and dripping onto his shirt.

—I’ll drive you to the hospital, if you like.

—Just make sure these clowns don’t steal anything. He slipped away.

Willy entered Mitchell’s office with hesitant footsteps and a distinct feeling of trespass. A smell of burnt wood that somehow reminded her of Christmas came from the Santolinis’ side of the room. The floor and huge rectangular Persian rug were covered with wet and far-flung papers, and in the absence of anything else to do, Willy began picking these up. Hunkering down to scoop up a long, spilled-out sheaf of documents, she groaned at the mess before her and put out a hand to steady herself. Then her eyes fell upon a flat, intricately carved wooden box propped open on its hinged top. Either the wind or one of the invading branches had wiped it from its accustomed surface and sent it flying. Beneath the box lay a scattering of photographs. Willy duckwalked over to the box, closed its top, and set it down next to her right foot. When she reached out for the photographs, a stray breeze caused them to stir and flutter as if suddenly come to life. Willy caught one in its ascent from the deep reds and inky blues of the densely patterned rug and turned it over to look at its surface. What in the world is Mitchell doing with a picture of Jim Patrick? she wondered, only mildly intrigued by the mystery of her first husband’s photograph turning up in her fiance’s office.

It was not until her surprise at the unexpected sight of her first husband’s face began to recede that she was able to take in what had happened to his body. In the photograph, Jim Patrick’s corpse lay on stony soil beside the car in which his charred body, and Holly’s, had been found. Three bullets had entered his body, and a great deal of blood lay pooled around it. Then she saw that his hands had been cut off. The picture, it came to her, represented a kind of trophy.

She must have made some kind of noise, because Rocky and Vince raised their heads and looked at her, curious as dogs. Trembling violently, Willy waved them off.

That night, she locked herself in her office and tried to sleep as she lay shaking on the floor. She feared for her life: she feared that Giles Coverley would overcome his scruples, enter his boss’s office, and see the photographs scattered on the floor. She was terrified of a knock on her door, but no knock came, and no one knew what she had seen.

The next morning, she managed to avoid being seen by Coverley and Roman Richard as she crept down the stairs, passed from the kitchen into the garage, and drove at a reckless speed down the hill and into Hendersonia, where she had an appointment with her banker.

And at nine-thirty that night, following a most adventurous day, she gave her car keys to a valet in front of the Milford Plaza hotel, took the escalator to the lobby, rolled her suitcase up to the front desk, and checked in under the name James Patrick had wanted her to use on her Gold AmEx card, W. Bryce.

15

Cyrax:

it is an endless <omplexity and u will never undrstnd it, buttsecks, but here we r & I must try.

oh, y do I call u buttsecks? is that wht u ask? 8e<uz u don’t GEDDIT! u r a IGNORAMUS on the subject of death. (LOLOL!)

And why am I writing that way, you ask, Underhand? I was writing that way, and I will write that way whenever I feel like it, which is to say when you’re acting like a jackass, for the simple reason that it is a pleasure for an ancient laddie-buck (so to speak) like myself to learn a new language every now and again, and presently I am feeling my way around HAXXOR, a language exclusive to juveniles addicted to mIRC and other chat programs. Of course it isn’t a real language, merely a system of jokes and substitutions, but it’s a hoot, n’est-ce pas? Between my birth in Byzantium during the reign of Michael II, known as the Stammerer, and my premature (by your standards) but not all that untimely (by mine) death under Michael III, known as the Drunkard, I acquired a good working knowledge of six languages, a matter quite useful to me in my work as a gatherer and disseminator of information. (Since my disappearance from the surface of the Earth and gradual introduction to eternal realms, I have learned perhaps six hundred, including a great many “lost” dialects.) You could say, I was a journalist of sorts. A gossip columnist, to be specific, though of course we did not call it gossip at the time. What we did call it was “news,” and to come up with this commodity on a steady basis I dragged myself here and there about the empire, dropping in on the local satraps and princelings ever eager to have their accomplishments publicized at court.

& y 4m I 73lling u thi5?

Because like you I was a writer, and they felt that you needed One who could communicate with you in a familiar manner. So I, Cyrax, will be your Familiar Spirit.

Underdog, it is necessary for you to LISTEN! Acting recklessly and ignorantly, you have sent winds of disorder, tides of resentment, waves of confusion through the Eternal Realms, or the Other World, or the Other Side, or whatever you want to call it. You have created DIFFICULTY & TROUBLE! You have given a WEDGE to CHAOS.

Oh how, you ask, as if any such answer can be simple, can be even what your kind would call Answer. But let me try, Underdown, let me try. My enormous pleasure at the possibility of communicating directly with a 21st Century man—and having him communicate with me!—much outweighs the irritation of having to deal with such obdurate material as yourself.

For the sake of clarity, I will employ the vulgar typographical device known as the “bullet”:

•         7 years after the dawn of your life, your wings brushed this REALM—April your Sister preceded your spirit here as its Guide, and you were CALLED BACK, but only after you had established a FRAGILE CONTACT with