“Police, I’m listening,” the dispatch operator said.
Eva opened her mouth but could not utter a word.
She was petrified by the sight of the wolf in her apartment. The beast was no longer on the other side of the mirror. It was right there, in her home, in the real world. She could not help wondering which mirror the wolf had come through. Then she stopped herself. This was ridiculous. Wolves did not travel through mirrors.
“Hello? You’ve reached the police. I’m listening,” the voice repeated.
Eva dropped her cell and took her Beretta in both hands. She aimed and fired, once, twice. The picture hanging on the wall shattered.
The wolf had vanished.
“What’s going on? Can you hear me?” the voice asked, worried now, at the other end of the call.
Eva bent over to pick up the phone.
She did not see it coming.
The figure had been crouching in her blind spot. It struck her in the face. For a second, all Eva saw was a burst of light. The gun slipped from her fingers.
She tried to turn around, to lift her arms to protect herself. The baton came down on her and hit her collarbone. Another explosion of pain coursed through her body. Her strength flagged. She felt herself fall backward and crash to the floor.
But driven by survival instinct, she turned toward her aggressor. Or at least its outline, draped in a long coat, the hood pulled down over the face.
The face in that hood was a mask.
A white Venetian mask that covered the upper part of the face, just as the witnesses at Hells Bells had described it.
“Who the fuck are you?” Eva whispered, as her vision started to swirl.
“You still don’t know, little tiger? After all the research you did on me? I’m disappointed in you.”
It was a woman’s voice.
She took a step forward, clutching the telescopic steel baton in her right hand. Eva realized with anguish that it was her baton. That crazy bitch had gone through her stuff without her even noticing.
Using her arms, the inspector tried to back away, but she slipped and hit her head.
The masked woman leaned over her.
A smile appeared on her glistening mouth, below the porcelain mask, as she tilted her head to the side.
“But you will understand. Don’t worry. Very soon.”
Eva was unable to utter a word.
She saw the figure pick up the Beretta on the floor. Her body froze with panic.
The wolf had reappeared. She could see it very clearly. It was pacing ever so slowly, like an impossible yet all-too-real mirage. Its coat was blacker than black. But it was not a coat of fur. It was shadows taking on the appearance of fur. The shadows shaped and reshaped themselves every second. This thing was not a wolf. Eva did not understand what its nature was, but it was nothing living.
The creature stared at her, drawing nearer still, and the flames in its eyes were much redder than even her own albino eyes.
“Don’t let him…” Eva began.
The wolf leaped on her before she could finish her sentence.
IV
35
Sitting at his desk in front of a piping-hot mug of coffee, Vauvert called Eva Svarta’s number. He still did not know how, but he had to tell her what had happened the day before.
But the call went straight to voice mail. “Svarta, Homicide. Leave a message after the tone,” was the simple message, delivered in a low and steady voice.
Vauvert would have to wait. He hung up and blew on his coffee, grumbling.
Trying a second time five minutes later, he got her voice mail again.
This time, he took a deep breath and said, “Hi, Eva, this is Alexandre Vauvert speaking. I was calling you back, as promised, for a progress report on the case. Some pretty weird things happened yesterday, and I need to talk to you. Please call me back as soon as you can, okay?”
He set his phone down, finished his coffee and poured himself another cup from the small coffeemaker he kept in his office.
Then he went back to his chair, propped his military boots on his desk, and started sipping his coffee.
Half an hour later, he called Eva’s number again, with the same result. She still hadn’t turned her phone back on.
“God dammit. What the hell is she doing?”
He looked at the phone in his hand. An absurd anxiety began to rise in him. There was no reason to worry, was there? Nothing serious could have happened. It had to be a coincidence.
Nevertheless, he wanted to make sure. He decided to call the Paris Central Headquarters directly. When dispatch answered, he asked to speak to Homicide Inspector Svarta.
The operator’s tone confirmed that there was a problem. The woman told him that Inspector Svarta was not available. He gave his name and his rank and explained that it was an urgent call, and the woman on the other end finally told him that it wasn’t that simple, that “events” had occurred during the night.
Events having to do with Inspector Svarta?
Anxiety in his gut started to become panic. He insisted on-demanded-an explanation. The woman told him to hold on. She would put him through to Homicide. Vauvert waited, feeling his throat constrict a bit more with every ring of the phone. Finally, someone picked up. It was a man’s voice, some Inspector Deveraux, who told him right away that this was not a good time to talk, that all the departments were busy. Vauvert explained once again who he was and why he was trying to speak to Eva-all the while feeling his diplomacy slowly wither. The man on the phone sighed before telling Vauvert what had happened during the night. Eva was missing. All units had been searching for her since morning.
The news was such a shock, Vauvert did not really understand what he was hearing. He did not quite get what the man was trying to explain. Some things just were not conceivable.
He swallowed painfully.
“And you have absolutely no idea where she is?”
“Well, that’s what ‘missing’ means, isn’t it? All we know is that she was attacked in her home. All the details have been up on the police network for like three hours now. You still don’t have Internet down south?”
“I’ll go check,” Vauvert said. “But you don’t have to be a dick! I was actually investigating…”
“Listen, buddy,” the man interrupted. “I’m real sorry, but I’ve got other fish to fry right now, okay? The whole force is on the case. If you’ll excuse me, we’ll have a progress report when there’s actually progress to report.”
“Wait. I absolutely have to…”
The man hung up.
“What a dickhead!” Vauvert exclaimed.
In a fit of anger, he threw the phone on his desk. There was a very clear sound of something breaking, and
