“He was arrested for murder,” she said. “Eight murders, to be precise. The bodies were found buried on his estate, just outside Avignon. There were allegations of cannibalism, but nothing was ever proven.”
Just then there was a terrific commotion from the drawing room. Someone cried out—an awful sound, like a cornered, hurting animal—and my mind returned at once to the blindfolded boy at the fireplace. Ecaterina quickly pulled the pocket doors shut again. She glanced over her shoulder and muttered something in Romanian. At least, I assumed it was Romanian. And I saw, or more likely I only imagined that I saw, a reddish iridescent shimmer in the woman’s eyes, like the eyeshine from a wild animal. And I thought, I do not believe in werewolves, but if I did, then I would believe without hesitation that’s exactly what this woman is.
Then Adelie Marquardt took my elbow, and she said, “You must leave now. I do apologize, but there’s an urgent matter that requires my attention. I regret the inconvenience.” The way she said this, it seemed exactly as if she were reading a prepared and carefully worded statement. She nodded to a small door opposite the tea table, a door I hadn’t noticed. “That will lead you back out to the street. It’s best you hurry.”
And I did hurry. I found that I wanted—more than I’d ever wanted anything, I think—to be out of that house and away from those strange people and that wicked statuette. Somewhere above us, bells had begun to chime; they sounded very much like buoy bells. I exited the study, followed a narrow, musty hallway, and was soon out on Benefit Street again, looking back from the safety of a flickering pool of gaslight. I’m not sure how long I stood there by the lamppost, my heart racing, regarding Stephen Harris’s unlucky yellow house. Five minutes? Ten? And then I went back to Miller Hall. I left the lights burning until dawn, and I didn’t sleep. I left Providence the next day, three days earlier than I’d planned, and was grateful to be on my way back to California.
I will add one last thing, and then I’ll close. Two weeks or so after that night, I received by mail an envelope containing a clipping from the Providence Journal. There was no return address, and I have no idea who sent it, but there was a Boston postmark. On November 5th, a week after Marquardt’s gathering, a body was found floating in the Seekonk River, not so far from the yellow house. The nude body of a young man. His tongue had been cut out, as had his eyes.
As I said, I’ll post this from Grand Junction. Be safe, dear Ruth. Please stay away from that woman.
Yours Truly,
Ysabeau
7.: Black Ops Alt (#friendlyskies)
(Over Monument Valley, Utah, January 18, 2018)
Thirty-five thousand feet up, Ellison Nicodemo wakes from a dream of drowning. She opens her eyes and squints and blinks painfully at the pale blue sky, at the white stratus and cumulus clouds, and at all the shades of terra-cotta red and brown, ochre yellow and sage green that are the desert laid out far below. The cabin of the Beechcraft King Air B200 is drenched with cold, bright morning sunlight spilling in through twelve circular portholes. Kitty Wells is singing and there’s the smell of coffee and leather upholstery. Ellison’s throat and mouth are parched, her eyes gummy from the pressurized, recirculated air of the plane, and her tongue feels like the bins of whole dried fish at the Korean market a few doors down from her shithole apartment back in Los Angeles. Her sinuses ache, and there’s a vague, unfamiliar sort of nausea stirring in her belly, a touch of airsickness; she hasn’t flown in years.
She sits up and stares at her reflection in the window, superimposed on the western sky. She’s wearing the new clothes they gave her back at LAAFB, more or less standard-issue agency threads—a black leather blazer, white dress shirt and black slacks, and a pair of inexpensive-looking black block-heel pumps. After she was dressed, the Signalman gave her a silver-and-turquoise bolo tie, and she’s wearing that, too. There’s a chunky Timex digital watch on her right wrist, so she knows that it’s 8:24 a.m., and there’s a Glock 17M 9mm tucked snug inside a shoulder holster—just like the bad old days, and never mind that she hasn’t fired a gun since 2011.
All around her, the airplane thrums like a gigantic insect that’s eaten her alive. It’s not a pleasant thought, and she pushes it away.
“I need something to drink,” she mutters, her voice hardly more than a raw, hoarse whisper, and then she sees the bottle of National Bohemian waiting obligingly in her cup holder.
“Well, will you look at that,” says the Signalman. “Sleeping Beauty awakes. And here I figured you’d be sawing logs all the way to Omaha.” He’s sitting across the narrow aisle from Ellison and two rows forward, his back to the cockpit doors, facing the female agent who watched on while Ellison endured a rushed medical evaluation and a round of inoculations, Mackenzie something or another Irish—Rourke. O’Riordan, Reilly . . .
Mackenzie Regan, she remembers.
Yeah, that’s right.
She’s too pretty, that one, too young and fresh-faced, entirely too sober and unscarred, someone who would look more at home teaching elementary school than running with the likes of the Signalman. Then again, Ellison Nicodemo learned a long time ago just exactly how deceiving looks can truly be. Best to withhold judgment. Always best to wait and see. For all Ellison knows, Mackenzie Regan might be the meanest motherfucker alive, a regular intergalactic samurai badass, facing the death sentence in twelve star systems, yada, yada, yada.
Ellison twists the cap off the bottle of beer and takes a long swallow, clears her throat, wipes her mouth on the back of her hand, and belches. Mackenzie Regan turns her head, looking over her
