Out of Body

to be the biggest headliner in town once all this quiets down.”

“Sure you are,” Eric sneered. He turned to Marley. “She brought her rivals here to frighten them and threaten them. But then they couldn’t be allowed to leave because they knew too much. Sidney’s competition had to die, you see.”

“Shirley Cooper was nothing to do with me,” Sidney said. “I was just the excuse for another killing. A stupid street singer. He wanted to have her and then he wanted to kill her.”

“Shut your mouth,” Eric said. “You talk too much.”

“Where is Erin?” Marley whispered to Pipes.

The other woman only shook her head and cried harder.

“Is she okay?”

“Quiet,” Eric said. “You need to concentrate. We were worried in case Sidney had been careless, and someone would come here looking for the women. We decided to start leaving the bodies in the Quarter. That way all attention is concentrated there. We will continue until the danger is past.”

Marley decided she should just keep her mouth shut. She only became more convinced that she, too, was never intended to go free again.

“Because of her,” Eric nodded at Sidney, “at first the killing was essential to keep us safe. Strength came from destroying those women. Then the appetite for death reignited and it was all her fault. Sidney’s. The lust for thrill killing had been quelled, but once the hunger returned, it had to be fed.”

Marley listened quietly to this mad diatribe. How long did she have before they decided to dispose of her? And they would. Like the others, she was too dangerous to them as long as she was alive.

“So you killed anyone who Sidney decided was a better singer than her?” she said.

The shrieking that went up tore around the roof. “They were not better. They were lucky. Now it’s my turn. First, anyone left who can harm us will have to go.”

Who did she mean, “anyone who can harm us?”

She wasn’t asking any questions, Marley decided. If there was any chance, she would do everything in her power to stop more carnage…and the madness. That was the duty she’d taken on from Belle.

“Now,” Eric said. “Let me show you why you’re going to do everything you can to help us.”

He dragged her across the dirty concrete floor to the locker in the corner of the room.

Marley visualized the inside of the dollhouse, the pipes she had seen that would be beneath this very floor.

All around her the walls sweated, and the ceiling. Rivulets of grimy moisture trickled down—the same as on her other visits.

Eric hauled open the heavy locker door and pulled Marley inside after him. Icy vapor roiled around them. She glanced back and saw the other two women follow.

Again Marley remembered the grids under the floor. Were they some sort of freezing system? Not that it mattered anymore.

The line of white, oblong containers, like top-opening ice boxes, stretched in front of them.

“See this?” Eric said, pointing out a red lever on a wall. “All I have to do is turn this and the air in here freezes within minutes. If you’re unfortunate enough to be locked in here, it freezes your lungs.”

“Did you design all this?” Marley asked. “It’s brilliant.” Flattery pleased a lot of people.

“This was done by my…my guide,” he said, the corners of his mouth jerking down.

He threw open the first box. “They’re in order by date of death,” he said. “We’re very organized here.”

Marley looked down on a woman she recognized without knowing why. She was older and perfectly preserved—and perfectly dead. Marley held her breath. She didn’t have time to get emotional or sick.

The woman had been in that room where she’d seen Erin in the dream. The hat the woman had worn rested on her chest. Her head was twisted at an unnatural angle.

“Meet Selma,” Eric said.

Marley recoiled. “I thought Selma was your mother. I thought you were going to take me to meet her.”

“I have,” he said and giggled like a schoolgirl. “And here’s Eustace.”

The man had been bulky with a thick head of gray hair. His eyes were open and Marley had to look away.

“Not our parents. That’s just a convenient story. These two used to own the house but they were empties. Made no impression on anyone, so when they disappeared no one noticed. A new family lived here instead. Us!”

“How old are you?” Marley asked impulsively.

“We reach our perfect age within days of our birth,” Eric said. “We never change after that. That’s how old we are.”

This time it was Sidney who laughed. She pointed upward where Marley didn’t want to look. “You’ll like them,” she said. “You really will. Look.”

Unwillingly, Marley followed Sidney’s pointing finger.

“They’re next,” Sidney said. “We’re keeping them alive until they’re going to be left in the Quarter. That way they’re fresher—and they get plenty of time to consider what’s happening to them. Torture is good for the backbone, and fun to watch.”

Eric said, “Liza had already frozen before we dropped her off for her show.” He laughed. “The police could get really curious about the condition of the body, if they’ve got enough gray cells between them to notice.”

“Amber’s next,” Sidney said. “She won’t use me again.”

Marley did look up then and slammed her hands over her mouth to hold in a scream. Side by side, Amber and Pearl Brite, swathed from their feet to their necks in plastic bags and suspended in harnesses, swung gently from overhead hooks. Both were gagged.

Marley wanted to rush and get them down. Both women stared at her with terrified eyes.

“More of the same here,” Eric said, walking beside the ice boxes and flipping open lids, waiting for Marley to draw level, and closing them again. The only male had been Eustace, the rest were young women—when they were still recognizable. Signs of the “hunger” Eric mentioned were everywhere.

“We’ve got to go,” Sidney said. “Hurry up.”

“Mother’s gone,” Eric said to his sister, completely confusing Marley. “She wasn’t in her body when I thought I killed her. Bummer. Now we’ll always have to be on the watch for the old bat.”

“How could you make a mistake like that?” Sidney said.

“You know Belle,” Eric said. “She always liked those little travels of hers. So she just traveled when I locked her in the box to suffocate.”

“Her body—”

“Gone,” Eric said. “I’m sure she thinks she’s very clever.”

Eric looked at Marley with a knowing grin. “Our father isn’t human, only Belle. But she’s supposed to be dead and she doesn’t count anyway. Bolivar is our father, not our grandfather.”

He used a heavy metal ring to pull a stone flag out of the floor. “Down,” he said, giving Marley a shove.

She calculated her chances of disabling him and managing to deal with Sidney at the same time. She could do it, but best wait and keep looking for the best opportunity.

Soon the four of them bent over to walk along a tunnel with gravel beneath their feet.

Eric went ahead of Marley. As he passed, he grinned. “Don’t feel bad. We’ll make sure you come back to your friends.”

Her skin felt several sizes too small for her body.

“Marley?”

She almost stopped walking. Gray’s voice came to her again. She answered. “Where are you?” and willed him to hear her. “I’m coming. Where are you?”

“The Garden District…” She felt them separate and wanted to shout out for him to come back. They had communicated. She would keep working at it.

“Come on,” Eric said. He was really hurrying now.

Marley considered calling for Sykes. But if he came—and he sometimes dropped from the system—and stopped the Fourniers now they might miss finding other victims still alive. And she didn’t have Pipes’s little girl yet.