This is where Christophe said. So why are you stalling? I put the car in park, eyed the front of the house again. The front door was a huge thing of wet black wood. They certainly like everything super-sized out here. All hail Middle America.
I made up my mind and reached for the field box. “Stay in here. I’m going to check it out.”
“No way. Are you crazy?” Graves shook his head like he was dislodging a bad thought. “Don’t leave me out here!”
“Look, if I don’t come out, you drive the truck through those gates and get the hell out of here. I’ll go inside and make sure it’s safe. No reason for us both—” To get killed, I was about to say, because it was what Dad often said. “—to go in,” I amended hastily, “because someone needs to stay out here and keep the truck running in case we need to leave in a hurry. I’m trained for this.” At least, I’m better trained than you are. “I’ll do it.”
“Jesus.” Graves stared at me. His eyes were very, very green. “You’ve got a death wish.”
Right now I have a bathroom-and-sleep-somewhere-safe wish, kid. “No, I don’t. I want to get out of this alive and I want to get you out of this alive. Look, just stay here and keep the motor running. You know how to drive?”
“Are you kidding?” The look he gave me qualified as shocked. “I ride the bus.”
Oh yeah, this just keeps getting better. “Don’t worry. It’s a piece of cake.” I opened the field box, checked the gun. The clicks of the clip sliding out and back in, the safety checked, were very loud in the snowy silence, the wind suddenly hushing to a damp not-sound.
“Oh yeah? What if the door’s locked, Dru?”
I actually smiled. At least, the corners of my mouth pulled up. “Places like this are never locked,” I said quietly, and unlocked my door.
As soon as I slammed the door shut the wind came back, random curls flying into my eyes, driving snow against my cheeks, white flakes sticking to them. I went around the front, not looking through the windshield—if I did, I would only see Graves looking pale and scared, and I didn’t need that.
I was scared enough for both of us.
There were only three steps leading up to the door. Big concrete urns that might have held plants were now only mounded with snow.
There’s nothing growing in here. It’s all concrete. I shivered—it wasn’t as cold as you’d think, but snow tickled me with little wet fingers, clinging to my eyelashes and soaking through my sneakers.
I touched the door, closed my hand around the knob. It turned easily, and I heard a soft, passionless sound—an owl’s throaty who? who?
I looked back over my shoulder. No sign of Gran’s owl, but the call came again, muffled like feathered wings. The truck kept running, smooth as silk. The door opened silently, snow blowing in past me.
Through the door, then, into a foyer floored with little pieces of varnished wood all smushed together and waxed to a high gloss. I stood shivering and looking at a flight of stairs going up, a chandelier dripping warm waxen light. The gun was a heavy weight pointed at the floor. I snicked the safety lever off and wished miserably that Dad was here.
How do you know he wasn’t? a little voice said in the very back of my head, and a cool bath of dread began at the base of my skull, sliding down my back with soft wet flabby fingers.
I know, I told that horrible little voice. I saw where he died, I think. He left the truck right outside, and he went down a hall in an abandoned warehouse. And someone was waiting for him.
The lights were on, but it was cold in here. Cold as a crypt. I took another two steps into the foyer, saw a hallway, and the light changed imperceptibly.
I whirled. The door slid closed, the slight sound of its catch just like the sound of the safety clicking off. The taste of rust ran over my tongue in a river, followed by the wet rotten smell of oranges gone bad, fuzzy and leaking in a blind wet corner. The ringing got worse, filling my head with cotton wool.
Something glinted on the floor, past a little square of rounded darkness that my eyes refused to see properly for a moment.
Oh shit. My sneakers made small wet sounds. Little tracers of steam lifted off my skin, it was so cold. My breath made a cloud, vanishing as soon as I inhaled. I moved as if in a dream, or as if it was last night, something pulling my unresisting body forward. It hurt to bend myself over to pick up the familiar black leather billfold.
It was thick with cash, and I flipped it open, saw Dad’s ID, him staring into the camera like he dared it to take a bad shot of him. The picture of Mom was gone, but the mark where my thumb rubbed the plastic every time was still there, like an old friend. I straightened, automatically stuffing the billfold in my pocket, and was compelled to step forward, looking at the other little thing, glittering patiently on the waxed floor.
It was silver, and as I bent my aching knees to take a look at it my body knew, chilling all over, gooseflesh prickling across my back and down my arms.
It was a heavy locket, almost as long as my thumb. Scrollwork on its front I knew better than my own name, even, and a silver chain, now broken, that I’d seen all my life. The scrollwork made a heart with a cross inside it, and on the back there would be little foreign symbols sketched, where they could rest against the skin.
I touched it with my index finger, letting out a clouded breath that ended on a short sound as if I’d been punched and lost all my air. My fist closed over it and I pushed myself up, dry-eyed.
And all of a sudden I knew something else. I wasn’t alone in here.
Someone spoke from the hall beyond the foyer. It was a boy’s voice, more tenor-sweet than Graves’s and harsher than Christophe’s, with the same queer space between words and sounds as the djamphir’s.
“Come into my parlor, said the spider.” A light, happy giggle, as if someone was having a hell of a good time. “And obediently, she walks in and picks up the bait.”
I raised my head. Strings of damp curling hair fell in my face.
There was a shape in the door to the hallway, a cloak of more-than-physical darkness clinging to it. I suddenly knew who had been on my front porch that night. He hadn’t had an invitation, so my threshold was a barrier to him. But here I was, and here he was, and why had Christophe sent me here?
A cool bath of dread slid down my back.
“Sergej.” I sounded normal, not terrified. As a matter of fact, I sounded pretty good.
He stepped into the wash of gold from the chandelier, and I understood why it was so cold. The cold was coming from him, breathing out from his poreless skin with its faint tint of swarthiness. And here was another shock.
He looked about eighteen—a little older than Graves, a little older than me. Broad-shouldered as if he worked out, and with a face chipped from an old coin—a long narrow nose, a chiseled mouth, a mess of artfully disheveled honey-brown curls. But his dark eyes were wrong. They were dusty, and far more adult than they should be. The closest I’d ever seen to eyes like that was on some city streets, where kids melted out of the shadows as cars cruised slowly past, their bodies young but something ancient shining from their faces. Kids who had seen a lot of things no kid should have to see, kids I shivered when I thought about always making me scoot closer to Dad on the truck’s seat.
Only they were still human, those kids. And this thing wasn’t. It looked young, and I suppose if you weren’t in the habit of looking closely at things you’d just think he was lucky to have such great skin and killer lips.