Which would buy me time to think, not that I needed a lot of it. It was clear I was going to have to put the problem of Arun Brahma aside and canvass the stupa while I still could. If anything out of the ordinary occurred at this rehearsal dinner-and a homicidal attack by a creature escaped from another world certainly qualified-
Lindy would immediately alert the Tulpa. Then every action within these walls would be catalogued like a forensic exam. So I’d investigate tonight just to be safe, maybe during the soup course, before making sure all the guests got home safely. Tomorrow I’d stop one of my best friends from marrying a man who made her unabashedly happy despite both his stalker and otherworldly qualities. After that?
I’d gather up the arsenal my mother had left me and go kill myself a tulpa.
20
Dusk still came early in February, so night’s fingers slipped into the mansion before the main course was even served. I glanced surreptitiously at my watch, knowing it would be well into the midnight hours before this party was over. Suzanne hadn’t stopped beaming since I’d arrived, and damned if I was going to be the one to wipe the smile from her face by cutting the festivities short. Even Arun had eased up on the devotedly deranged husband act, swaying in his seat as Bollywood films played merrily on the wall screens.
Deciding a round of raucous toasting was needed to slip away unseen, I passed the suggestion into the ear of a bald man who’d been bouncing along enthusiastically in front of a one-dimensional Aishwarya Rai. It was akin to holding a match to a water-starved field. The idea blazed through the crowd, and a microphone suddenly appeared. Some people were sincere in their toasts, some elicited hoots of laughter and a public dialogue, while others simply vyed for the attention of a man who ruled over his own Indian principality…and for the favor of a woman who would soon be a princess. I made my escape halfway through one of these.
Footsteps light, I slipped through the heart of the house, ears pricking at the occasional bursts of laughter from the dining area, though within minutes it felt like the festivities were in a separate home altogether. This side of the estate was crypt-quiet, and just as cool, as if all the body heat and warmth were confined to the proximity of the human activity.
And here you are, I thought wryly. Baiting not-quite-dead things in the dark. Somebody cue the too-stupid-tolive music.
But I was almost there. Another corner and I’d gained entry to a room made entirely of smooth white marble, bare of floor coverings but with tiny spotlights set low on artifacts Xavier had deemed precious. Stupas, essentially aboveground tombs, traditionally housed the bones of great lamas of the past. Xavier’s stupa didn’t contain bones-not as far as I knew-but it did house a thirteen-hundred-year-old Tibetan Book of the Dead, a recessed dais complete with gold throne, a phalanx of traditional prayer wheels, and a half dozen animistic masks. Crafted of varying metals and woods, each of these featured mouths open wide in silent, monstrous screams.
Spooky. Shit.
Three medieval-style windows popped from their casements along one wall, mere eye slits compared to the giant leaded windows overlooking the front lawn. Unadorned, they also seemed to follow my progress across the cavernous room. The rest of the marble room was sparse, making the giant gold dais and throne stand out all the more. With no interest in waking the dead, I avoided the prayer wheels, my attention on the masks spaced along the white. All were antique, all mystical, and I knew all contained a spirit trapped inside the hollowed space.
I put a wide swath of space between myself and a mask I’d worn before, even while squinting at the design work, looking for the telltale depiction of a snake. The spirit residing in that mask had once tried to take over my mind. When donned unwillingly, it trapped a person’s breath inside the concave form, effectively suffocating them without ever allowing their death. I half expected it to leap from the wall, secure itself to my face, and never let go.
Finishing with the masks, I turned my attention to the etchings on the Book of the Dead, bending low so I could view the spine of the book, propped open in its protective casing. Nothing. A closer look at the dais, carved and lacquered with geometric designs, proved it absent of anything resembling a snake, and the ornate throne was covered only in faceless whorls and endless knots. Sighing, I turned around in the room’s center, trying to see the place anew, then stilled as my gaze locked on Xavier’s office opposite the stupa’s entrance.
My office now, I reasoned, eyes narrowing like those slitted windows. And one containing a hidden room where he’d ritualistically, incrementally, given up his soul to provide power and strength to his benefactor, the Tulpa. Resisting the urge to spin a prayer wheel on the way, I left the aboveground tomb for a room buried even deeper.
Pressing my back against the office door, I took in the scent of leather and old books, a faint stale whiff of the cigars Xavier had liked to smoke, and something like invisible iron lying in the air-heavy, but not readily there. Any other mortal would dismiss it-and the chill it induced in the spine-as skittishness induced by a dead man’s room. Yet I knew it for the scorched remnants of a soul, leaving Xavier a dead man even before his body had given up the fight.
Pushing from the oak door, I made my way to the giant desk, where I flipped on a banker’s lamp and sent the shadows scurrying like rats. The chocolate walls were still lined with bookshelves, their contents still untouched. Smoked mirrors and crown molding slipped along the coffered ceiling, and everything else was dark mahogany, rich and shining, yet utterly without warmth. I left the heavy burgundy curtains drawn, not wanting the light from the study to spill out and reveal my location.
Now to discover the hidden room’s entrance.
I tried all the places you see in the movies-a latch under the desk, the wall lamp shaped like a candle, individual books lining the back wall. Nothing. Yet in going through the desk drawers I discovered the giant folder Xavier had handed over to me while on his deathbed. It detailed every boring financial aspect of the family business, which is why I hadn’t missed it, though I had no idea how and when it got shoved back into his study.
Helen, I thought wryly, dropping the folder onto the desk. She must have removed it during that bleak period I’d been convalescing in the mansion. Like I said, I had no interest in its contents, but I hated when someone made assumptions about what I could or couldn’t do. I’d decide for myself if I were interested in the family business, thanks very much. So I left the binder on the desk for later and went back to my search.
“C’mon, Jo,” I whispered, looking for some freaky little symbolic mark. Everyone in the Zodiac world loved that shit. Hearing a muffled sound just outside the door, I fell still, but after a full minute I resumed my search. It was probably just one of the masks yawning in boredom.
I was about to do the same when my gaze caught on the fireplace…and more specifically the tool set perched next to it. Interesting, as I’d never seen a fire burning inside it. Then again, Xavier had been built like an ox, and had probably run hot, at least before his illness. Which made the stoking tools even more of an oddity. Bending closer, I found hinges attached to each wrought-iron tool. “Bingo,” I whispered, yanking on one.
It wasn’t that easy. They obviously had to be pulled in a specific order, and with four tools, the combinations were endless. I tried a variation of the most obvious ones, glanced at my watch, then began a second, more hurried round. By the third I was sweating. By the fourth I heard another sound outside the office door.
“Think,” I cajoled myself, closing my eyes, trying to figure out what combination Xavier would find meaningful. The man had been neither sentimental nor superstitious. He’d only gotten involved with the Tulpa out of a desire to make a boatload of money. But while that told me he was a stupid, greedy bastard-things I already knew-it didn’t help me ferret out the combination leading to his secret room. Frustrated, I yanked on all four tools at the same time, like I could force the damned thing open.