“I’m so glad they gave your head back,” he said, laughing and indicating the red slash around her neck.
“Why, thank you.” She bobbed. Of course, the poor little queen playing in her shepherdess costume. How nice that this was the costume chosen for her—she hated the thought.
The man swept off his hat and made a deep leg, sweeping the feathers in his tricorne across the floor, then wandered away.
Willow stared at the little bird again. She stepped closer to the cage. Its beak wasn’t petite the way such a small creature’s usually was. The upper part hooked over the lower in a nasty-looking point. Willow raised her brows and thought that it could take a nasty hold on something or someone. That woman had been fortunate that only her sleeve was torn.
For an instant she thought the bird stared at her with eyes as green as his feathers, but bright, sharp, piercing.
She couldn’t blame herself for being fanciful tonight and smiled. Actually, she was remarkably sane, considering what they were all going through.
Moving from foot to foot, the bird opened its mouth wide, showing a thick, black tongue. The eyes closed slightly. Hateful, she decided and prepared to move on. If she didn’t get outside, Ben would notice her absence and come rushing to the rescue whether she needed it or not.
In one corner of the cage an open-fronted cupboard reached from top to bottom. What looked like supplies for the bird and garden items were lined up on shelves.
Willow was grateful she didn’t have to confront the little green monster to reach anything on those shelves. The bird had sidled all the way to the end of its perch, the end closest to Willow, and inclined his head to stare at her some more. Its thick tongue darted from its beak, and she thought she heard a hissing sound.
Time to go.
There were bottles on the shelves in the cage.
She stood like stone, staring at them.
Some had labels. They appeared to contain orchid food of various kinds and colors.
Her heart speeded up to a painful hammering in her throat. Leaning closer, she pressed her mask to the bars and stared at those bottles with their thick, wavy glass and the sandy-looking stuff, or bigger, brighter granules inside.
Gasping, Willow looked over her shoulder, but she was alone now.
Again she leaned her face to the bars and tried not to blink.
At last, in a square bottle with several inches of shockingly turquoise granules inside, she saw a movement.
A tiny, almost transparent but pinkish, shrimplike creature revolved through the medium. She couldn’t breathe. Gasping for air, she whispered, “I’m going for help now. Don’t do anything,” even though she doubted she could be heard.
A vicious crack against her mask all but knocked her backward. She straightened, but not before the bird came at her for a second time, its beak wide-open and its purplish-black tongue flashing through the bars, as long as the body of a garden snake.
Chapter 34
Where was Sykes? Where were any members of her family who had wangled invitations tonight?
Willow rushed through the house to the gardens as fast as her bustles and bows would allow.
Surrounded by disguised strangers, and some people she must know, but didn’t recognize, she searched for help. Specifically she wanted Ben. There was no time for long explanations, and he already knew everything. Relief brought a rush of blood to her face. He stood with Rock, alias the boatman from the gondola that stretched from one end of the pool to the other. It listed toward the cabana side of the pool.
She wanted to call out Ben’s name, but ran faster instead, and waved.
He saw her and waved back, indicating the line he held, one end attached to the gondola while he waited for someone to finish driving a hefty stake into the nearby grass with a large mallet. The line was one of three at the stern.
Willow avoided a milling group sharing bottles of champagne. She wondered how long ago they had given up on using glasses. If they weren’t careful, they’d end up in the pool and they weren’t dressed for swimming.
She saw Ben bend over, his cloak flying out behind him, to thread the line through a hole at the top of the stake. Barrels blocked her path and she dodged around them and some flanking shrubs.
Violent blue light caught her squarely in the eyes.
Willow gasped, threw her hands in front of the mask. Strong hands whipped her around, pulled her against a solid body and forced her into the pool with him.
Flailing, desperately grappling to turn and face her attacker, she sank. The wig dislodged and she managed to tear off the mask. Her feet met the bottom and she tried to push off, stretching toward the surface and the flicker of candlelight above the water.
He held her where she was until she fought mindlessly, threw out her arms and kicked.
Her lungs ached.
She would drown.
Willow struggled not to draw in water. Her nose stung and she winced at bubbling in the bones of her face. With all the strength she had left, she grappled to tear herself free.
The painful blue light gouged at her eyes once more. She couldn’t see.
Something hard slapped over her face. A diving mask. There didn’t seem to be any tanks, yet she heard sudden hissing before air surged into her punished lungs.
She couldn’t tell which way she had to go to get to the top and she still couldn’t see properly.
Willow let herself bend and crumple. She dropped until her knees met the tiles. The arms had let her go, but she didn’t know where that maniac was. He had tried to drown her, then put a mask and air tank on her? There was no way to make sense of any of it. She slitted her eyes, searching for him.
Darkness fell over her and she looked up.
Above her head a shadow spread.
The shadow took shape, coming at her through the water. Wings spread wide, grotesque body gliding; it was the creature that had appeared to her on the night she’d spent with Ben at Sykes’s house.
The huge beak snapped open and shut. Flaps of gray tissue waved from pointed ears. A feathered coat lay thick and oily against its sinuous body and balloons of opaque yellow slime slipped free of its beak, slid down its loose, fatty beard of flesh and sank.
It ducked its head and charged. The collision knocked her backward, but immediately the bird creature took her hair in its talons and towed her. Willow shot through the water and felt a force she was helpless to resist dragging on her body as if it would turn her inside out.
Another blast of blue glare made her blind again. She thrashed around and began to spin. Faster and faster, she spun. Her ankles crossed, the bones crushed together by velocity, her shoes long gone.
Nausea brought bile into her throat.
She let her eyes close and wanted only to be quiet. At last she stopped fighting and let herself revolve, like an electric top gone mad.
Her shoulders and the backs of her hands scraped hard surfaces. One last time Willow struggled to open her eyes and looked out through a visor. Streams of bubbles whirled past.
She shot through a chute, its dark sides visible through churning water. Sucked down and down, she was as helpless as a minnow going over a massive waterfall.
Completely numb, Willow didn’t care anymore. Inside her head was quiet, and she slipped into a soft, cold, black space that waited for her.
