“Who is the Embran?” he asked. “Or what?”
“If you need to know, you will know. You, Gray. You follow Marley. Be there. Do nothing unless you’re told. The Embran wants Marley, but we don’t know his intentions for tonight. When the time comes you will have to make sure her body is kept warm. Stay back.”
Another whisperer broke in irritably. “Remember he can only see what happens on his own aware side. What goes on beyond the veil will be invisible to him.”
“Hush,” the man told this one and muttering gradually faded away.
“You, Gray. Pay attention. I don’t think the Embran is aware of you. Your powers are not developed enough, but neither are you the weak stuff of his chosen prey. And you are not a Millet, which is to your advantage.” He gave a humorless laugh. “But one day I believe you will have to fight him—unless you choose to abandon Marley—and you will have only your instincts to follow. Be ready.”
Silence rushed in where the voice had been. The shadow form was gone, and Gray felt like shouting for the man to come back. “I’ll never leave her,” he said.
Ahead of him, Marley turned right, into a room illuminated by a few bulbs in an old chandelier. She walked to the center of the room where the only furniture was one pale couch.
Gray hung back, tucked himself just out of sight, but made sure he could get to her rapidly. He heard music. Lightly and from a distance. The tune was familiar, but old and remembered from another place. Gray didn’t know what it was or anything about it except it made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.
He dug finger and thumb into the corners of his eyes and concentrated.
Chapter 36
Marley didn’t feel alone.
Screens made of thin wood with green, watered silk stretched over them hung from ceiling tracks and fitted into corresponding grooves in the floor. And familiar music played gently, coming from overhead.
This place felt warm and soft, enticing. She closed her eyes tightly and opened them again. A simple dark blue chair looked inviting and she sat down.
Instantly, pressure on the top of her head and her shoulders stiffened every muscle. Her back hurt. She tried to get up, but her legs wouldn’t hold her weight.
The screens rattled.
“Comfortable, are we?” a grating voice from the other side of the screens asked.
Marley drew back in the chair.
“You’re not comfortable? What a pity.”
The laugh that followed sent a pain through her head.
“I don’t believe you know me and I intend to make sure you never do. You are an interloper and I think I know why. Soon I shall be certain. Through interference from my enemies, you have strayed to a place that holds only danger for you. But we can make this so very simple. Who sent you?”
She couldn’t make her mouth work.
“Who sent you?” he repeated louder. “How did you know where to come when I first marked you? How did you find me in the warehouse? You will never succeed in destroying me or others like me.”
“I don’t know,” she got out. “I don’t know anything about you.”
“You have intruded where you have no business being. You couldn’t have done that without a guide. Who is your guide and what did they tell you?”
“Nothing.”
A great, growling noise sent a shudder through Marley.
Without warning, a spotlight shone on the screens. Behind them, starkly silhouetted, she saw a standing figure, arms spread wide, a loose robe hanging. Wide sleeves fell from the shoulders. But it was all a dark shape without features.
“I can crush you,” he said. “There is no way out for you unless I say so. I won’t allow you to leave until you answer all my questions. Where is my chinoiserie house?”
Marley felt icy cold. “What?” She had no idea what she should or shouldn’t say, or how long she would have control over her mind. She felt the power of the other one.
“My chinoiserie house. You’ve got it, haven’t you? Who gave it to you? What did they tell you about it and about me?”
Belle had told Marley to guard the house, to make sure no one took it from her, and to follow where it led her. And to stop the killing. But the woman had not told her how she was supposed to accomplish all this.
With the help of the Ushers, she had followed where the house seemed to want her to go, but apart from Shirley Cooper, who was already dead and had never appeared to Marley, there was no proof of other deaths connected to any of this.
Women were missing. More of them now. And she had heard Nat and Gray speculate about a connection to the string of women who had disappeared some years ago. She locked her knees to control the shaking.
“Answer me.” The man’s voice thundered, then cracked and seemed to slide away.
Marley saw him turn his head, and the way his hood draped.
But she drew back in horror at the sight of the man’s profile, the thick, wide jaw, nostrils that jutted, much too big to be normal. One hand rose and pointed in her direction. “Who gave you my house?”
Not a hand, a claw.
“No one.” She steadied her voice.
“Man or woman?”
“No one.”
“What were you told?”
“Nothing.”
“I want to tear you apart, do you understand?”
Marley closed her mouth tightly and held her jaw rigid. She would not show fear.
“This is your last warning. You are not here by accident. I can bring you back whenever I please. I have been following your mind pattern. At first I only knew there was something familiar about you although I could not believe my own deductions. I didn’t want to. To me you are the most hated of creatures, you and your clan. Tell me where to find the house.”
“I don’t have any house.” She concentrated on her story. “I live in an apartment.”
For an instant he was silent. Then he said, “Oh, you think you’re clever. I have my ways to make you scream. I can make you beg. I can make you as nothing, but only after you deal with horror you cannot even imagine. Tell me what I need to know.”
“You’re mad,” she said. “I don’t believe anything you say and I don’t care what you say. I am more powerful than you.” She was not weak. Hers was a honed talent, a dramatic skill, set of skills.
“What?” he thundered. “You are no stronger than the others who have gone before you. Give me what’s mine.”
Give you what you consider yours so you don’t need to keep me alive anymore?
The thought shook her afresh. Could each of the missing women have had something he wanted? Once they gave it to him, had they been discarded?
She had to be strong, for them and for herself—and for the people who loved her.
“Why should I try to help you?” she said.
“Because I’ve told you to.”
“Why should I believe anything you say? I don’t think you know anything that would interest me. And I don’t believe you can hurt me or anyone else. Get away. Go back to whatever hole you crawled from. I’ve imagined you and now I’m casting you out of my mind. Go away. You aren’t real.”
Marley summoned her strength and pushed to her feet. “I have to leave now. Enjoy your fairy tales.”
“Fairy tales? You impudent puppet. You will give up to me whoever it is who pulls your strings. And you will give me my house.”
“I don’t have your house and I’ll give you nothing. You don’t exist.”
The screens smashed open and darkness flooded the whole space. All Marley could see were the red eyes she had come to dread. They drew closer, and closer, their uneven progress evidence that their owner limped badly.
He was in front of her, hovering so close that fear paralyzed Marley. Light-headed, she took a deep breath and coughed. An odor surged over her, so strong, so fetid, she swallowed waves of sickness.
“I will be back for you,” he said. “I can’t stay longer now—it’s time for me to leave. When I return and find you, my possession had better be with you.”