Lussi placed his hands on the jacket. “Can you hold that? I’ll need to leave for help in a second.”
He tried to speak but only managed a hideous gurgling sound. He turned his head and spit out a thick rope of mucus. “I saw you’d left while I was napping,” he said. “Thought you’d come to the office to do something stupid.”
“I did do something stupid. I drugged you,” she said. “You shouldn’t be able to walk—”
“What do you think I gave you, horse tranquilizers? It was just a couple of ’ludes. It takes more than that to knock me out. It takes…well, it takes a pistol, I suppose.”
“How’d you get into the building?” she asked.
“I was circling it outside, looking for your office. I suppose I was going to throw rocks at your window but I couldn’t remember which one it was. Heading through the alley, I heard a loud bang. Like someone lit a firecracker up my arse. Then…I woke up here.” He lifted the soaked denim jacket. Blood continued to pool where he’d been shot. “This doesn’t look like my coat.”
“You didn’t see who did this?” she asked, ignoring his quip about the jacket. There were more pressing matters. “You didn’t see a cloak or a mask?”
He shook his head.
She looked up at the basement door. “I’m going to go get help. Don’t go anywhere.”
Fabien made a gurgling noise. “Fat bloody chance of that.”
She raced upstairs and jiggled the door handle. It was locked, which she’d known it would be, of course, but any hope it had swung shut on its own died. She threw her shoulder into it. No give; it wasn’t as flimsy as the cage door. She banged on it with her fists, hollering for help, praying her voice would carry to Digby on the fourth floor. “How hasn’t he heard a damn thing? There was a freaking tornado in the building a few minutes ago,” she muttered to herself.
Lussi walked back down the stairs, defeated. Fabien was silent. He lay there, using his waning energy to hold the jacket against his body. She gently lifted his hand. “Here, let me do it. If I’m stuck down here, I might as well be of some use.”
That’s when she smelled it. Obsession for Men.
“Fabien,” Lussi said, her voice shaking ever so slightly. “I think I know who did this.” She closed her eyes and pictured Digby stepping into the alleyway and shooting Fabien point-blank. Dragging his body to the basement. The cloying scent of Fabien’s cologne rubbing off on Digby’s clothes.
But why shoot Fabien? It didn’t make any sense.
You know the answer, Lussi, a voice whispered in the back of her mind.
As bait for me? Lussi wondered.
Think harder. There’s nothing to be gained by trapping you here.
Lussi shook her head. She didn’t want to believe it.
Digby knows. He’s figured it out. He’s making an offering to the Percht. Just like his father did before him.
He’s spoiled but he’s not a murderer, Lussi thought, fighting against the voice in her head.
He’s been looking at the financial records for weeks now. If he knows what the Percht has to offer, and can secure his father’s legacy with a little sacrifice, why wouldn’t he do it? Fabien means nothing to him. You mean nothing to him.
“You warned me about this place,” Lussi said, opening her eyes and looking down at Fabien. “I should have listened.”
Fabien coughed hard. “It’s all blood under the bridge. You need to promise me one thing, though.”
“Don’t you freaking dare. We’re not saying goodbye. We’re locked down here, but there has to be a way to signal somebody for help. A fire alarm…something. We’ll have an ambulance here in no time—emergency services is well acquainted with the address.”
He didn’t respond, not right away. His breathing had slowed significantly. He wrapped his fingers around hers. “Unless I come back as a ghost, I think I’d better say what I have to say now.” He coughed again. “I want you to promise me that after I’m—after…”
“Fabien?”
His eyes fluttered. He fixed them on her. “Promise me,” he said between wet gasps, “promise me you won’t let my books go out of print.”
He closed his eyes. A thin smile spread on his lips.
She laughed. In spite of herself, she laughed. “That’s not going to happen. Your new book…it’s everything you said. It’s so fucking good. So fucking good.” Her face was streaked with tears again. “You’re making me cry at work, too. I don’t care. Your backlist isn’t going anywhere. People are going to read you for a long, long time.”
He didn’t respond. He hadn’t even heard her; his thin smile was frozen in place. Each breath was more spaced out than the last. His hands went cold and slack. She pressed the jacket hard against his wound. If the bleeding had slowed at all, it was because there was precious little fluid left in his veins. He was fading like an ellipsis…and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Or could she?
There was one avenue she hadn’t explored.
She’d finally reached the suicide part of her suicide mission.
Lussi looked at the box next to Fabien’s rapidly dying body. She removed the bracelets from her wrists and tipped the box’s lid back, exposing the doll.
The lights flickered and went out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
At first, there was only darkness. Then darkness upon darkness. A shadow, a whisper. The whisper of a shadow. Lussi wasn’t sure if what she was seeing had form or if the darkness was simply playing games with her. Whatever it was, it was quiet as the predawn hours of Christmas morning. It was everywhere and nowhere all at once. She tried to trail the shadow around with her eyes, but it eluded her like a floater on the edge of her vision.
“I can feel you,” she whispered into the dark.
The mesh cages rattled in response. She’d felt the Percht’s presence before—she recognized the electrical charge running through her from that first time in the basement—but never this strong. This naked. The electric feeling had been there in the background all along, growing, slow and steady, since she’d made first contact with Xavier Blackwood’s doll—the doll that was so much like the one she’d known but not. The doll was but an anchor. The presence swirling around her was the spirit’s true self. The thing in the mirror.
The thing taking form in the basement with her had no relationship to the Percht she grew up with. Oma’s doll had never had power, as far as she knew. Xavier’s doll was a lightning rod. It had been charged long ago. Whether it was the result of Third Reich supernatural experimentation or pre-Christian pagan rites was beside the point. All that mattered was whether or not Lussi could control it.
There was only one way to do that, if what Agnes had said was true.
What Xavier Blackwood had done to keep the publishing company afloat all these years was unthinkable. He’d sacrificed interns to survive industry turmoil and changes. His competition had been reduced via mergers and acquisitions. Bankruptcies. His “boy” had allowed Blackwood-Patterson to weather the ups and downs of publishing. The company had never made a profit; it didn’t have to. The Percht couldn’t make a book a best seller, but Xavier seemed to have found a way to use it for cash influxes. His own private ATM.
But Lussi didn’t want money.
Fabien’s breathing was so shallow now as to be silent. She squeezed his wrist and held it tight, waiting eons until she felt a pulse. If he were conscious, he would try to talk her out of what she was about to do. He would have probably been successful, too. It was a good thing for him that he wasn’t awake.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, casting her voice into the darkness.
Mein Frauchen, the thing said. Fütter mich, mein Frauchen.
* * *
—
Lussi had played hardball with some of the toughest agents in the industry.
Th
is deal did not take long.
* * *
—
There was a great KER-THUNK inside the service elevator shaft. The gray doors slid open, revealing an elevator cage lit by a bank of overhead fluorescents and illuminating a kneeling figure. Alan. The maintenance man grumbled to himself as he fiddled with the control panel. An array of tools was spread out beside him.
“Um, hello?” Lussi said.
He looked up, startled. His thin white hair was a mess, making him look like a mad scientist. “Oh, you again,” he said, relaxing. “What do you got there, a body? I left my handsaw upstairs. Leave him there, I’ll get to him later.”
“He’s not dead.”
“Sure looks it, though, don’t he? Let me see…” He picked through his tools and raised a hammer. “This should do it.”
Lussi put up her hands. “I don’t want him dead. I need your help getting him upstairs.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Alan said, hopping to his feet.
The maintenance man’s willingness to engage in criminal activity disturbed her, but it shouldn’t have. If Alan really did have ten children at home, what choice did he have? He couldn’t afford to lose his job. Not in this economy. And yet he would end up on unemployment anyway when the company went under. That outcome was all but guaranteed. Even if Transylvanian Dirt was the game changer she believed it to be, Blackwood-Patterson’s luck had run out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The service elevator opened on the fourth floor, down the hall from the great oak doors leading into Digby Blackwood’s office. The elevator wasn’t as old as other parts of the building, but the ride had been harrowing nonetheless. The car had taken its time climbing the floors, the gears grinding in fits and starts. But it worked. Mighty fine coincidence that Alan had gotten it into serviceable condition the exact moment she needed it…
She stepped out alone. The maintenance man stayed inside the elevator with Fabien’s slumped body. Alan had agreed to take him to the nearest hospital. She wasn’t sure she trusted the wily maintenance man—she had come to believe he was the one who’d dropped trou in her office after all—but she had no choice.
“Go to the emergency room,” she stressed one last time. “Not the morgue.”
Alan nodded as the elevator door closed. Lussi would take the stairs back down, provided she was in any condition to when the time came. There were no guarantees. Even with the backing of a metaphysical entity. Otherwise, Xavier Blackwood would still be here.
She saw a sliver of light underneath the doors to Digby’s office. Lussi hadn’t been up here to see him since he’d taken over. The afternoon of her interview was still the only time she’d been in the fourth-floor office, which extended the building’s length from front to back, with magnificent views all around. She took a deep breath and exhaled. She raised her hand to knock.
“It’s open,” Digby said from within.
She pushed the doors apart. A strong sense of déjà vu struck her upon seeing him behind the desk. The resemblance to his old man was uncanny. They had the same high cheekbones, the same Roman nose. Digby’s features were starting to harden. He seemed to have aged a decade in the past two weeks.
“That doesn’t look like my soda,” he said, staring at the wooden box in her hands.
She crossed the room and thunked it down on his desk. She didn’t sit. The chair was the same too-tall chair she remembered from her interview. Digby hadn’t changed any of the furniture or bothered to replace his father’s things on the bookshelves. “Forgive me,” she said. “It’s been a long day, mostly because of the thing inside this box.”
“Huh,” was all he said. He cut a line of gray powder on a mirror on his desk and, using a bit of straw, snorted it. He threw his head back and yelled, “Goddamn, that’s some good shit.”
Digby pushed the mirror across the desk.
Lussi shook her head. “No thanks. I’m with Nancy Reagan on this one.”
“It’s not coke,” he said. Digby dipped a finger into the small pile of powder on the mirror. He rubbed it over his gums and teeth. It gave him a ghastly appearance, like he’d been eating dirt. “It’s Daddy,” he said with a giggle. “It’s Daddy.”
For the first time, she noticed the open urn beside the desk lamp. His father’s desk…his father’s lamp. His father.
“You’re sick,” she said. “You need help.”
He placed a palm on top of the box. “Is this what I think it is?”
“How would you even know what it is?”
He opened the box and stared at the doll. “My father’s lawyer handed me a sealed letter at the funeral. It explained everything. I couldn’t believe it at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.” He looked at the doll almost wistfully. “I always wondered what was in this box. By the time I was tall enough to get it down from the shelf, I’d forgotten about it. But I never forgot how my father kept me at a distance—how he loved this company more than me. More than my mother. More than Agnes, even. He always preferred books to people. Hence this whole shambling enterprise.”
“Stop,” she said. “I’m beginning to like him.”
He slapped the table, sending a small plume of powder into the air. “He could have used this doll to get rich. If you’re going to make a deal with the devil, at least make some bank. This building…everything he worked for…his priorities were all backward. Now he’s a pile of dust. This building will be a pile of dust in a few weeks, too.”
“Let me guess…you’re going to torch it for the insurance money.”
He shook his head. “Selling it to a developer. It will go the way of every other old building in this rat-infested neighborhood. I was holding off to see if you could find me the next Stephen King, but I take it you’re turning in your resignation.”
“You shot the next Stephen King.”
He looked up at her. His pupils were unnaturally dilated. “The fatso I caught trying to break in? He’s not even American.”
“Fabien is a naturalized citizen. Not that it makes any difference.”
He snorted another line, then pinched his nose. “I used to be a hotshot on Wall Street. Had a run of bad luck. Went balls deep into debt to the wrong people. The plan had been to cash out, to sell my father’s business when it looked like we were on an upward trajectory. Now that I have this, it doesn’t really matter, does it? This is worth ten times any publishing house in this city.”
Digby reached into the top desk drawer. He pulled out Gail’s Desert Eagle and pointed it at Lussi, but she stood her ground. “I don’t need your dumb British writer. I don’t need you anymore.”
Lussi watched as he pulled the trigger.
* * *
—
Nothing.
Not even a click.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said, peering down the barrel with one eye. He was squinting the other. “Jammed? Christ.”
Lussi breathed a sigh of relief. She’d known Digby still had the gun. But she had something better: Perky. She’d struck a deal to save Fabien’s life. Now she had to follow through on her end of the bargain.
Digby turned his ire on the doll, still in the box. “I left you a sacrifice. I thought that was your thing—spill some blood, show you that I’m serious. Show you that I’m worthy. What’s that? You want another sacrifice? If you insist.”
He lunged across the desk at Lussi, snagging her sweater. She drove her elbow into his forearm and he released her, screaming in pain, letting loose obscenities like, I’m going to kill you, bitch, and you’re dead bitch, and bitch bitch bitch, blah blah blah. All the dumb things men scream at women who’ve wronged them.
Lussi wasn’t going to stick around to listen. She bolted for the twin doors.
They were locked.
“Yoo-hoo,” Digby called behind her.
&
nbsp; She glanced over her shoulder, expecting to find him advancing on her. Instead, he was seated cross-legged on top of his desk, toying with the bowie knife. It had fallen out of her belt loop as she’d freed herself from him. He was playing with it, testing its sharpness on his palms and drawing blood like a fascinated child.
“There’s a button underneath the desk,” he said, without looking at her. “Locks the door remotely, so that you can’t leave. Discovered it by accident. Not sure what kind of games the old man was into.”
“I can guess,” Lussi said.
Digby stood tall on the desk. He looked at his bleeding palms. His self-administered stigmata. “Is this enough blood, you stupid doll?” he said, hopping onto the floor. He was wobbly on his feet, but not wobbly enough to cripple him. Only enough to level the playing field between them. He pointed the bowie knife at her. He was desperate now; dangerous. Much more dangerous.
She needed to reach that button under his desk.
He grinned, showing his blackened gums again. He stalked her around the room, swinging the knife wildly. “I’m going to cut you to ribbons, and when I’m done, I’m going to string your intestines like garlands around the office. How do you like the sound of that?”
“I’ve heard worse pickup lines,” she said, dodging a clumsy stab. All it would take is one thrust, one cut along her jugular or to an artery, and she’d never see the light of day again.
Had Perky abandoned her, too? Was Digby’s bloodlust tickling its fancy?
Digby swiped at her again and she bent backward nearly to the floor. With every step back, she edged closer to the desk. All she had to do was hit that button. Then she could make a run for it.
Finally, she reached the desk. He’d backed her up to it.
He thought he had her. Silly boy.
Lussi rolled onto the desk and over it, falling into the chair. She steadied herself with her left hand on the desk to keep the chair from rolling back and felt for the button underneath with her right. There. She slapped it and heard the doors swing open.
Secret Santa Page 16
