Circe didn’t say a word. I took a deep breath. “After I cut off your father’s head, I stacked his body on top of the mummy collection in the library. That’s where the Mexican police found him. According to the papers, they’re investigating a number of leads. If you ask me, they’re investigating how quickly they can sweep the whole matter under the carpet. The last thing they want is to find your father’s head, let alone his killer. Mexico is a very religious county. Diabolos Whistler’s death has generated a shitload of negative publicity. The politicians who facilitated your father’s move south of the border aren’t eager to be exposed to their countrymen. I’m sure the little weasels are already in touch with your father’s lawyers. Matters will be settled in short order, and soon enough you’ll have a big fat inheritance to squander any way you please-”
“That’s enough.”
“It might be for you, but it’s not for me. If you don’t want to hear about it, pay me.” I grinned. “That’ll shut me up.
“Tests first. Money later.”
“I guess you like the sound of my voice.”
“Really, it won’t take long. Spider will take the head to San Francisco this afternoon-”
“Ripley’s taking it? Looked to me like he didn’t want any part of that thing.”
“Spider is a true believer.” Circe smiled. “But he does what he’s told.”
“He’s an idiot.”
“Draw your own conclusions.”
“It’s just that I’m a strong believer in first impressions.”
She cocked an eyebrow and waited.
“If you’re waiting to hear my first impression of you,” I said, “I think I’ll keep that to myself.”
“As you wish.” She returned her attention to the head. “At any rate, the preliminary dental exam should be completed by midnight. There are a few other formalities that you don’t need to worry about. But if all goes well, you’ll have your money by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Tomorrow afternoon I wanted to be on a beach.”
“There are beaches here.”
“I was thinking of the tropics.”
“Believe me, I can understand your impatience.” She shrugged. “But the tropics will have to wait.”
“And in the meantime?”
“At the top of the stairs, you’ll find a guest room. There’s a shower. I suggest you make use of it. There’s a bed, too. It’s comfortable. You can have a nap. Later we’ll have dinner. Just the two of us.”
I thought it over. A shower…a nap…dinner…it didn’t sound so bad.
She laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Saunders. But I’ve never had this much trouble convincing a man to spend time with me.”
“It’s not you.” I nodded at Diabolos Whistler’s severed head. “It’s him. I’m a little tired of his company.”
“I know the feeling,” she said.
I started up the circular staircase. A shower would be good. Really long. Really hot. I wanted to be clean.
I wondered what Circe Whistler wanted. I’d struck a nerve when I mentioned her inheritance, but I knew that she was after more than a few extra zeros at the end of her bank balance. One look at the house and I knew that she already had more than enough money.
I could see right through Spider Ripley. Just like he was a window. A first impression was all it took with a guy like that. Spider Ripley was all slot A in tab B, until he fit together like a kid’s toy. But Circe Whistler was something else. A puzzle box. The kind the Japanese made. The kind you couldn’t open unless someone showed you how.
I watched her through spiked wrought iron bars as I walked along the landing above the living room. Watched her black nails rake Diabolos Whistler’s long white mane. Watched her fingers curl into a fist. Watched her raise her father’s severed head, and watched it sway at her side as she disappeared down a dark corridor of redwood and stone, leaving only the sound of Diabolos Whistler’s bristling goatee brushing her naked thigh with every step she took.
4
“We’re alone, just like Hansel and Gretel.”
That voice again, like a lonely wind that touches no one.
I jerked awake, but there was no little girl ghost with long blonde hair and a black dress. Only Circe, her raven hair spilling over shoulders inked with scales and blood, demons’ leers and children’s tears.
“You were dreaming,” she said.
She sat on the edge of the bed, and just as I realized that her hand was on top of mine it whispered away over black satin sheets and was gone.
I’d slept away the afternoon. Outside, stars salted the black sky, but there was no moon. In the bedroom, spears of feeble yellow light fought a losing battle with the shadows, abandoning us to the dark.
Somewhere in the house, someone was crying. Very, very softly. Fragile, feminine sobs that were somehow out of place, like a sliver of dream under the skin of reality.
Circe didn’t seem to hear the crying at all. Or maybe I had imagined it-another moment and the sound was gone.
I looked into Circe’s eyes, twin chips of cold blue ice. Certainly no tears gleamed there. I wondered if she ever cried.
I doubted it. Crying would redden her eyes, and red eyes didn’t have anything to do with the image Circe Whistler wanted to project. Red eyes were for demons and monsters. But blue eyes could be many things-cool and intelligent, alluring and hypnotic, enticing as they were mysterious. Maybe that was the secret of Circe’s gaze. Not the destructive power of a Medusa, but a vampire’s stare that reflected its victim’s deepest desires.
What you wanted to see in those eyes, you could. And yet I wondered how it was for Circe, living behind those eyes, staring out from a place deep inside herself.
I didn’t know for sure. Not yet. There was no way I could know. But I thought it was as cold as it was dark, and very quiet, that place inside.
Circe rose from the bed and followed a slim shaft of light that spilled through the bedroom doorway.
“Dinner’s waiting,” she said. “Don’t be long.”
Dinner was rack of lamb. If Circe wanted to gauge my sense of irony, it was a little much. Still, I restrained myself. I left it to her to joke about the meat coming off an altar in a catacomb of hell’s own kitchen, conveniently located just below the dining room.
The line was more Elvira than Oscar Wilde, but she played it all right. But if Diabolos Whistler’s daughter was trying to sell self-deprecation, I wasn’t buying. This woman knew what she wanted and how to get it. One look at her and any idiot could see that.
There was more to it than a pair of alluring blue eyes. Circe wore a dress scooped low in the back that might have been revealing on anyone else. On Circe, the dress was a threat. Snakeskin material clung to her like a second skin, but what the dress didn’t cover was more dangerous than any reptile. The tattooed creature on Circe’s back was her father’s most fearsome demigod-Korthes’h, all tentacles and teeth, a servant of Satan crowned with a dozen eyes gleaming with soulless fire.
The tattoo was just the kind of thing that could ruin a man’s appetite, but I didn’t have to look at it while I ate. We faced each other across a long dining table. Spiked wrought-iron candlesticks stood under a chandelier that looked like a torture device looted from Torquemada’s dungeon.
