'Delightful, I tell you,' Signior Garzarek chuckles and then he drains his glass and reaches for the absinthe bottle on its silver serving tray.
'What do you see out there?'
The boy that Dead Girl calls Bobby is standing at the window in Miss Josephine's parlour, standing there with the sash up and snow blowing in, small drifts of snow at his bare feet and he turns around when she says his name.
'There was a bear on the street,' he says and puts the glass paperweight in her hands; glass dome filled with water and when she shakes it all the tiny white flakes inside swirl around and around, a miniature blizzard trapped in her palm, plastic snow to settle slow across the frozen field, the barn, the dark and winterbare line of trees in the distance.
'I saw a bear,' he says again, more insistent than before, and points at the open window.
'You did not see a bear,' Dead Girl says, but she doesn't look to see for herself, doesn't take her silver eyes off the paperweight; she'd almost forgotten about the barn, that day and the storm, January or February or March, more years ago than she'd have ever guessed and the wind howling like hungry wolves.
'I did ,' Bobby says. 'I saw a big black bear dancing in the street. I know a bear when I see one.'
And Dead Girl closes her eyes and lets the globe fall from her fingers, lets it roll from her hand and she knows that when it hits the floor it will shatter into a thousand pieces. World shatter, watersky shatter to bleed heaven away across the floor, and so there isn't much time if she's going to make it all the way to the barn.
'I think it knew our names,' the boy says and he sounds afraid, but when she looks back she can't see him any more. Nothing behind her now but the little stone wall to divide this field from the next, the slate and sandstone boulders already half buried by the storm, and the wind pricks her skin with icing needle teeth. The snow spirals down from the leaden clouds and the wind sends it spinning and dancing in dervish crystal curtains.
'We forget for a reason, child,' the Bailiff says, his rust-crimson voice woven tight between the air and every snowflake. ' 'Time is too heavy to carry so much of it strung about our necks.''
'I don't hear you,' she lies, and it doesn't matter anyway, whatever he says, because Dead Girl is already at the barn door; both the doors left standing open and her father will be angry, will be furious if he finds out. The horses could catch cold, he will say to her. The cows, he will say, the cows are already giving sour milk, as it is.
Shut the doors and don't look inside. Shut the doors and run all the way home.
'It fell from the sky,' he said, the night before. 'It fell screaming from a clear, blue sky. No one's gone looking for it. I don't think they will.'
'It was only a bird,' her mother said.
'No,' her father said. 'It wasn't a bird.'
Shut the doors and run
But she doesn't do either, because that isn't the way this happened, the way it happens, and the naked thing crouched there in the straw and the blood looks up at her with Gable's pretty face. Takes its mouth away from the mare's mangled throat and blood spills out between clenched teeth and runs down its chin.
'The bear was singing our names.'
And then the paperweight hits the floor and bursts in a sudden, merciful spray of glass and water that tears the winter day apart around her. 'Wake up,' Miss Josephine says, spits out impatient words that smell like anise and dust, and she shakes Dead Girl again.
'I expect Madam Terpsichore is finishing up downstairs. And the Bailiff will be back soon. You can't sleep here.'
Dead Girl blinks and squints past Miss Josephine and all the colourful, candy-shaded lamps. And the summer night outside the parlour window, the night that carries her rotten soul beneath its tongue, stares back with eyes as black and secret as the bottom of a river.
In the basement, Madam Terpsichore, lady of rib spreaders and carving knives, has already gone, has crept away down one of the damp and brick-throated tunnels with her snuffling entourage in tow. Their bellies full and all their entrail curiosities sated for another night, and only Barnaby is left behind to tidy up; part of his modest punishment for slicing too deeply through a sclera and ruining a violet eye meant for some graveyard potentate or another, the precious vitreous humour spilled by his hand, and there's a fresh notch in his left ear where Madam Terpsichore bit him for ruining such a delicacy. Dead Girl is sitting on an old produce crate, watching while he scrubs bile from the stainless-steel tabletop.
'I'm not very good with dreams, I'm afraid,' he says to her and wrinkles his wet black nose.
'Or eyes,' Dead Girl says and Barnaby nods his head.
'Or eyes,' he agrees.
'I just thought you might listen, that's all. It's not the sort of thing I can tell Gable, and Bobby, well'
'He's a sweet child, though,' Barnaby says, and then he frowns and scrubs harder at a stubborn smear the colour of scorched chestnuts.
'But I can't tell anyone else,' Dead Girl says; she sighs and Barnaby dips his pig-bristle brush into a pail of soapy water and goes back to work on the stain.
'I don't suppose I can do very much damage, if all I do is listen.' And the ghoul smiles a crooked smile for her and touches a claw to the bloody place where Madam Terpsichore nicked the base of his right ear with her sharp incisors.
'Thank you, Barnaby,' she says and draws a thoughtless half circle on the dirt floor with the scuffed toe of one shoe. 'It isn't a very long dream. It won't take but a minute,' and what she tells him, then, isn't the dream of Adrian Mobley and the Lovecraft tree and it isn't the barn and the blizzard, the white thing waiting for her inside the barn. This is another dream, a moonless night at Swan Point and someone's built a great, roaring bonfire near the river's edge. Dead Girl's watching the flames reflected in the water, the air heavy with wood smoke and the hungry
