Of Fever and Blood

talker, especially not with women. And especially, especially not with the ones he was really interested in.

He also wondered why she had bothered to call him several times at the very beginning, when she could just as easily have checked the files herself. Then she stopped calling. Why? Often, when the evening came, he would stare at his cell phone, scroll through the numbers until he got to hers, and then he would hesitate, his thumb on the call icon, his mind blank. What would he say to her? Nothing. Probably nothing.

He would put the phone aside and light a cigarette.

Loneliness was an old friend. At least he knew what to expect.

Besides, the media turmoil had started to die down. He could breathe again, even though the case was still officially open.

As far as the Salaville brothers were concerned, the forensics unit did not uncover anything more than what they already knew. The brothers had kidnapped those girls for reasons that remained unknown, and they had tortured them, one after another. With no exception, they had ripped the skin off their faces before bleeding them like livestock.

Nobody could begin to understand why they had committed such atrocities, why they had drawn pentacles and covered the walls with esoteric inscriptions. The men’s past, as their medical files pointed out, was but a pitiful series of stays in correctional facilities and psychiatric institutions. According to all of the specialists who had seen them, both had manifested behavioral problems for a long time. It was a congenital syndrome that ensured their whole lives would be spent on psychotropic drugs.

What the hell had they done with their victims’ blood? That was a total puzzler.

The disappearance of the faces, which had been peeled off the victims while they were still in agony, was a more haunting matter. But after six months, the Homicide Unit had no choice but to move on to other cases. The only two suspects were deceased.

There was nothing left to do. Meanwhile, other news-a radioactive leak up north-riveted the journalists’ attention. The Black Mountain Vampires gradually slipped into the oblivion of old nightmares, and were buried there.

Vauvert did his best to shake an uneasy feeling of incompleteness and avoid lingering in the nauseating twists of the grisly story.

Until he was pulled back into it.

Thirteen months later, precisely.

When the murders started again.

Identical.

II

THE MASK

13

Paris

Friday, 10 p.m.

Long after the sun dipped below the rooftops and disappeared, lightning lit the sky. The first raindrops plopped, almost timidly, against the expansive window. Then the splashing became blasts. There was no shyness about it. It was a tempest beating down with a rage.

Comfortable in her armchair, Audrey Desiderio shut her eyes and let the alcohol warm her. The boardroom was deserted. At this time of night, the entire staff was gone. Only she remained. She did not feel like leaving just yet. She was the boss and had every right to stay. Lately, she had even taken to lingering behind.

Tonight more than any other night, she needed to unwind. The magazine had gone to press. The week had seemed like it would never end, and she was worn out, mentally, as well as physically.

In such moments, nothing topped the pleasure of having no responsibility in the world beyond holding a glass of whisky, taking in the peaty fragrance, and feeling the cold of the ice cubes. She could lose herself in the whirl of her thoughts without worrying about the sales of the two publications she was responsible for, about editorial meetings and childish ego wars, battles over the price of every photo, and freelancers’ delays and excuses. She could escape, if only for a few moments, from the massive responsibilities that weighed on her shoulders and crushed her a bit more each day.

Audrey Desiderio felt old. How on earth do you feel old at only thirty-nine? Oh, she knew very well how. All she had to do was glance at the boardroom walls. All these covers with fourteen-year-old models who had no need yet for the blush and eyeliner on their faces. And the teasing captions on the covers: “Pink Goth-The Innocent Look for Bad Girls,” “The Five-Day Fast: When You Need Results Right Now,” “Dream Chick or Worst Nightmare? Which Girlfriend Are You?”

For years, she had felt so superior. When she actually was in control of her life. But now? In less than six months, she would turn forty. All this work over inconsequential magazine content designed to sell shampoos and shoes, and designer labels and all this watching anorexic kids dressed up like porn stars filled her with just one desire. To look like them. For just a few moments still.

Though she fully understood the impossibility of her desire, Audrey Desiderio was consumed by frustration.

There was no cure for the course of time, was there?

In her job, she kept rushing ahead. Yet the evenings would come, and she would find herself alone in the boardroom, yearning to be held in someone’s arms and to feel all small and protected again. Well, as for someone’s arms, she did wind up in plenty of those. Anonymous faces, scents and skin textures, all so different and all so totally alike in the end. She embraced the bodies with intensity in the backrooms of night clubs, on the desks in her very office building, on anonymous tables covered with cocaine residue.

It did not do anything to solve her problem. She was thirty-nine. She felt old.

She sipped her whisky.

She knew she was looking for a cure in places where there was not any. But she was addicted to her pleasures.

Like Barbara.

In the end, it was she who was the cause of her anguish.

If only she had known! She never imagined that it was possible to become hooked to such an extent. She had not seen it coming. But could anyone ever see that kind of thing coming? At first, it was a game, of course. Just a simple challenge to prove to herself that she was still attractive, that she was able to seduce a girl half her age. A youthful plunge in the arms of someone of the same sex. The kind of useless plunge that she took more and more often. The kind that was fated to end up crushing body and soul.

In Barbara’s arms, she felt as if the time flow had stopped. Oh, so briefly, it was true. But how precious, those few minutes of youth.

She grabbed her phone on the boardroom table. This week, she’d left her three voicemails. On her fourth call-that was last night-Barbara finally picked up.

But she did not talk to her.

Not a word.

Audrey just heard her breathing in the earpiece.

She had asked Barbara if she was all right. What was going on, why she did not want to talk to her?

She got no answer. Only that breathing. Animal-like. Abnormal.

Then Barbara hung up.

What was that supposed to mean?

Was that her way of letting her know that it was all over between them?