But, as he’d come to recognize and perhaps even admire, Edith took things in stride and shifted mental gears smoothly. “Let’s work quickly,” she said. “Our new friend may already be on his way to ring his colleagues about us.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Gabe pushed the door wider. “Am I supposed to carry you over the threshold?”
“Don’t get any ideas, Romeo.”
She strode past him, and he followed into a dingy space where the divisions between kitchen, living room, and sleeping space were abstract suggestions implied by the scuff patterns in the floorboards, not by any architectural reality. The north-facing windows never got direct sunlight. Together with the dark varnish on the floorboards and walls whose original color was a complete mystery, it was more than a little claustrophobic. A niche in the far wall held a retracted Murphy bed. There was a flimsy card table in the center of the flat, but the single chair had been placed before the window, next to an ancient steam radiator. The kitchen counter and doorless cupboards were bare. As with many of these old buildings, each floor had a single communal bathroom. They’d passed it in the corridor.
“Hmm,” she said. “So our mystery tenant cleared out in a hurry.”
“I’ll bet the timing lines up with one of the recent fires,” Gabe mused. “But was this guy the firebug, or did he simply vamoose once he caught wind of what was happening?”
“Either way, when somebody skips town that quickly, they usually leave things behind,” said Edith. “It’s like this place was barely used.”
Gabe inhaled deeply. The taste of tobacco rolled across the back of his tongue. “Dominic was here. A lot.”
Edith followed suit. She wrinkled her nose. “Yeesh.”
The floorboards in the more well-trodden spaces weren’t so bad, but a sifting of dust lined the edges of the room, tracing a chipped and abused wainscot. It lined the windowsills, too, and even fuzzed the invisible threads of the cobweb strands stretching from the ceiling to where a bare bulb dangled from a wire, dark for the moment.
“They cleared out in a hurry,” said Gabe, pointing at the cobwebs, “but they didn’t clean out.”
It didn’t look good. If the tenant were the victim of a random accident, or out of town on a quick trip, there would still be personal effects in the room. Instead, it looked like the tenant or tenants had departed knowing damn well they’d never be back. But were they fleeing from something, or to something? And if the former, what did they fear?
Edith knelt in a corner. She brushed a hand along the wall, kicking up a dust bunny. “What the hell?” She rubbed dusty fingertips together under her nose. “It’s not dust.”
Gabe made a similar inspection of the kitchen counter. She was right: not dust, but stale cigar ash. Except for his and Edith’s intercessions, it formed an unbroken line around the perimeter of the room.
Edith shook her head. “Gabe, just how much did Dominic smoke?”
“Not that much. Not that I saw. He was more the type to carry an unlit cigar in his pocket, take it out for a sniff now and then. Rarely saw him light up, though.”
“If he was such a slob, you’d expect to find ash everywhere. But it’s just the edges of the room.”
“Yeah,” Gabe managed. Weird.”
Not really, though. Not according to the sinking feeling in his stomach. The emphasis on boundaries—walls and thresholds—suggested a protective ward of some sort.
“Look at this.” Edith scooped something from atop the window sash. Rather, several small somethings that clinked in her hand. Coins, he realized. Now he saw them stacked on the other windows, too, discreet and unobtrusive intrusion monitors. Practically invisible from outside, but guaranteed to hit the floor and make a little noise if somebody forced the windows. It was an oldie, but a goodie. They shared a look. “Does it strike you that this tenant was a little paranoid about unannounced guests?”
“Yeah. Though to be fair, unexpected company behind the Iron Curtain doesn’t promise quite the thrilling evening on the town that it might in Chicago or New York.”
“Sure, but Gabe, this is full-blown paranoia.” She gestured to the street, three stories below. There was no fire escape out there, just a ledge of crumbling masonry. “The StB would have to be pretty dedicated to break into this apartment via the windows.”
He checked the cupboards and drawers. All empty. So, too, the oven and fridge. Not a speck.
Edith crossed the room and pulled down the Murphy bed. The hinges and springs creaked like a rusty drawbridge. Vague stains mottled the bare mattress. Her lip curled up. But she produced what appeared to be a telescoping knitting needle from the lining of her coat and started giving the mattress the pincushion treatment. While she was occupied, Gabe turned his attention back to the ash.
He scooped a bit from the counter into his palm. Then, with his back facing her, he reached out to the hitchhiker, which had lain dormant all afternoon. He sniffed the stale ash again and gave his metaphysical bloodhound a little nudge.
Here, boy.
Nothing. The hitchhiker gave the equivalent of a metaphysical yawn, rolled over, and went back to doing whatever it did when not trying to turn Gabe’s brain into jelly. He glanced over his shoulder to check on Edith’s progress, but she was focused on methodically perforating the unpleasant mattress. So he bit the tip of his tongue to draw just a bit of blood, flinching as he did so—it was harder than it sounded—and spat into his dusty palm.
The blooded ash fizzed like Alka-Seltzer. The hitchhiker came violently awake and aware, hard enough to make Gabe stumble.
That had gotten its attention. Definitely not regular cigar ash, then. A spell component. The magic had long since been disarmed, or deactivated, but the ash was still warm with residual energies, like steel beams in the ruins of Hiroshima. Just what had Dom intended? And for whom?
“You son of a bitch, Dom.”
Edith straightened, slid the needle back in her coat, and wiped her hands on a handkerchief. “It doesn’t look good, but it’s also not incriminating. There’s nothing here to condemn him. This is all circumstantial. We don’t know who rented this flat, or who Dominic met here, or why.”
Gabe shrugged, turned away, and then turned back, staring at scuff marks on the kitchen floor, alongside the refrigerator. He pointed; Edith frowned. Together, they scooted the fridge forward a few inches. Gabe made to reach into the gap between the fridge and the wall, but Edith knocked his hand away, then offered one of the needles instead. It clicked uselessly against the cooling coils—tink, tink—then something thudded to the floor. Gabe used the needle to fish out a book and handed it to Edith along with the tool. He looked over her shoulder as she flipped through it.
“It’s in some sort of code,” she said. “Do you recognize it?”
He shook his head. “Looks like gibberish to me,” he lied.
He had seen pages covered with similar writing just a few months ago. At a shack in the countryside, where he’d hired a hedgewitch. Her personal pharmacopeia was reminiscent of the slim volume Edith now held. Like the hedgewitch’s notes, scattered with zodiacal and alchemical symbols, these pages had been filled with a variety of inks by a variety of hands, probably over many years.
“At what point,” he asked, “does circumstantial become overwhelming?”
“It’s all very suspicious. But,” she said, turning to face him directly, “you might recall I’ve also caught you doing suspicious things.”
Time to change the subject. As he pushed the fridge back in place, he said, “So, look, I don’t know what he said to you, but Josh is really an okay guy.”
That stopped her in her tracks. She raised both eyebrows at him this time, like a gunslinger in a dime paperback: Click, bang. Click, bang.
“I should have known you’d leap to his defense. You and your boy’s club.”
He raised his hands, palms out. “I’m not defending anything. I’m just saying, maybe he was uncharacteristically forward. He’s usually not like
that. Everybody has a bad night. Maybe he deserves another chance. I’m not saying you should date him. Just get to know him.”
They stepped into the corridor. Locking the door behind them, she said tartly, “I’ve already learned quite a lot about him, thank you.”
She set off for the stairwell, on her way to return the key. Gabe lingered by the door. “Wow. Just what did he say to you?”
She told him. Gabe blinked, but mostly to cover his blushing.
“I… huh.” He shook his head. “He really used the word ‘camisole?’”
Edith nodded, grim.
“That’s… oddly specific.”
3.
Sometimes Gabe wondered if there was only one endless soul-deadening party, and everything that transpired before or after it was just a lovely dream. Perhaps he’d always been here. If not for Edith’s presence—and, for that matter, Dom’s absence—the evening might have been indistinguishable from so many others. All the usual players were here. It was a Zerena Pulnoc party, predictable as every other Zerena Pulnoc party. Gabe sighed as he cast his gaze across the room. In fact—
Whoa. He blinked, rubbed his eyes.
There was at least one new face. Or was it two? He could have sworn, just for an instant, that he’d seen two men occupying the same space. One young, one old. The visual glitch left a searing ache behind his eyes and phantom spots at the edges of his vision, like staring at the sun.
Firmly engaging the hitchhiker, he imagined wielding it like metaphysical welding goggles, then squinted across the room. There, behind the glamour: Terzian.
What the hell are you doing here?
The illusion pierced, Gabe relaxed his hold on the hitchhiker. He kept one eye on the rest of the room and one eye on the creaky old guy, who at that moment was leaning on a cane with his left hand and sampling canapés with the right. The hitchhiker gave the psychic equivalent of a growl and whine the moment Gabe’s eyes landed on the cane.
Gabe finished his glass of wine. Seeking a refill took him close to Alestair, who at the moment was holding forth on the glory days of the British Raj to a bored Soviet functionary. The poor comrade looked more than a little relieved when Alestair broke off to greet Gabe.
“Ah, Mr. Pritchard. I see you, too, failed to escape our hostess’s web.”
“Evening, Al. Doesn’t everybody?”
“Indeed. I was just debating the relative merits of Kipling and Pushkin with my new friend Anatoli, here.” The functionary, Anatoli, gave Gabe a cursory nod, but excused himself before Alestair could build up another head of steam about Kim. “Hmm. I rather thought he was enjoying the conversation.”
Gabe put his back to the room and exchanged his empty wine glass for a fresh one. When the server had passed out of earshot, he said, “Behind me, ten o’clock. Look closely. The geezer gobbling down hors d’oeuvres. Know him?”
Alestair frowned. “Am I looking for somebody advanced in his years, or have I been led astray by the eloquence of your idiom?”
Gabe clucked his tongue. “You’re not looking closely enough.” He’d expected Alestair to see right through the glamour. Sotto voce, he added, “Tell me a joke. I’m going to slap you on the back. Keep your eyes on the hors d’oeuvres table.”
Alestair rolled his eyes, but played along with a tale of a clergyman, a charwoman, and her horse. He concluded, “At which point the mare said, ‘Five bob, vicar!’”
Gabe laughed and did as he promised. At the moment of contact, he goosed the hitchhiker again, this time willing the scales to fall from Alestair’s eyes, too. The Brit inhaled sharply. “Ah.”
Alestair sipped from a glass which smelled, ever so faintly, of juniper berries. He studied the old man, briefly, over the lip of the glass. Then he altered his posture and turned to Gabe again, so as not to draw attention by staring.
Gabe asked, “Recognize him now?”
“No. Should I?”
Gabe studied the flow of foot traffic, made sure they wouldn’t be joined at an importune moment. Josh hadn’t arrived yet, and Edith was stuck in a clump by the string quartet. She saw him; he raised his glass in greeting. She started extricating herself.
Quickly, Gabe said, “He’s your guy. The one you wanted me to keep an eye on. Name’s Terzian.”
Alestair blinked. Which, for him, qualified as abject amazement. He’d certainly heard of Terzian, at least. Know your enemies and all that. “You’re certain?”
“Reasonably. Take a close look at the cane, if you can. My, uh, invisible friend is very unhappy about it.”
“Ah.” A simple acknowledgment. “And the old fellow felt it important enough to be here—important enough to don what I must assume is a rather taxing disguise—because…”
“Well, that’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it?”
“I’ll put my hounds on it,” Alestair whispered, his voice further muffled by his drink. Then he said, brightly, “Gabriel, shame on you! You didn’t tell me you’d brought a date to this affair. And to think you abandoned her in the midst of this scrum.”
Edith had joined them, looking quizzical. It wasn’t clear if she was amused by Alestair or annoyed by the implication that Gabe might have been leaning on their fictional marriage.
She inclined her head. “Telling tales out of school, are we, Gabe?”
“You must tell me,” Alestair said, “who is this charming confection?”
She did, Gabe had to admit, clean up nicely.
“Alestair Winthrop, meet Edith Lowell. Edith, meet Al. He’s our embassy’s US/UK liaison from across the pond.”
Alestair took her hand. “A very great pleasure, my dear.”
“Likewise.” She sniffed. “Do I smell gin?”
“You do,” said Al.
She glanced at the wine glasses, red and white like a sanguine chessboard, on a nearby table. “I’d murder somebody for a gimlet right now.”
“She’s too good for you, Gabriel.” To this, Edith said nothing, but the expression on her face suggested she didn’t disagree. Gabe felt that slightly unfair. They hardly knew each other, after all.
“Allow me, my dear.” With a languid gesture, a flutter of long fingers so graceful and effortless it must have been practiced (or did they teach these things at Eton?) Alestair waved over one of the circulating servers. “A gin gimlet for the lady, please.”
Watching this performance, Gabe accidentally made eye contact with Josh, freshly arrived, who was of course watching the trio—and Alestair in particular—while trying to maintain the fiction of polite interest in his own conversation. Gabe recognized the fellow who had Josh cornered; he was one of the Czech locals at the agricultural meeting that had brought ANCHISES to Prague. And, judging from Josh’s forlorn look, he was probably deep in a monologue about barley hybridization, or something equally riveting. Gabe gave him a wink and nodded toward Alestair and Edith, who at that moment were bonding over a shared condemnation of the American tendency to bastardize the noble gin gimlet with vodka.
Josh gave a little shrug. Then his glance flicked over to the door, and he frowned. Nadia entered; a look passed between her and Josh. What was that about?
But if Nadia was here, that meant Tanya couldn’t be too far away. The last thing he needed was for her to sneak up on him—or corner him in a bathroom again—right under Edith’s nose. He redoubled his examination of the room, one ear half tuned to Alestair and Edith. But it was the usual scene, with the usual suspects, doing the usual things.
Or so it seemed until an awkward ripple crossed the crowd, as though somebody had skipped a stone across the smooth and glassy pond of social niceties. It took Gabe a moment to hone in on the source, but it wasn’t difficult—people were staring at the door through which Nadia had entered.
Alestair took a considered sip of his gin. “Well, this is unexpected.”
Their hostess had arrived. On the arm of her husband. Who, it had to be said, was looking particularly dapper.
Gabe manage
d a grunt. “Uh-huh,” was the best he could do, because most of his attention was focused on trying remember how much he’d bet, and to whom, and how much cash he had on him.
Edith noted innocently, “I’d heard the ambassador was usually a no-show at these things.”
“So thought we all, my dear,” Alestair admitted.
This unexpected turn gave Josh the impetus and excuse he needed to brave Edith’s presence and join the company he truly sought. But Gabe had to give him credit for the way he gave Alestair just a cursory nod, and a perfectly cordial one to Edith, before accosting his partner. Josh nodded toward the ambassador, currently making the rounds of the higher dignitaries in the room. He smiled. “Pay up.”
“How in the world did you know he’d be here?”
Josh shrugged. “I have my ways.”
“Dumb luck, you mean.”
“There was nothing dumb about it. He had to show up at one of these things eventually.”
“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. That doesn’t make it a quality timepiece. Anyway, I’ll have to owe you.”
Alestair clucked his tongue. “Unsporting of you, Gabriel. If it comes to a duel, Mr. Toms, I’ll be your second.”
“Thank you, Alestair.” Josh snagged a wineglass from a passing server, trading out a white for a red. And then, so nonchalantly that Gabe couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t mentally channeling a certain Brit, he said, “How are you enjoying the Prague party scene, Edith?”
“Everybody looks so refined, I feel shamefully underdressed.” She cocked that eyebrow. “Right down to my camisole.”
• • •
The ambassador’s unexpected arrival at his own party was like a gust of autumn wind that sent leaves swirling in unfamiliar patterns. To somebody trained to watch human interactions, to look for exploitable weaknesses, it was a treasure trove. From Tanya’s position near the French doors leading to the veranda, she could sample a good cross-section of the perturbed interactions just by watching who scurried over to share a whisper with whom, who shared surprised glances, who checked their watches and departed suddenly. Who exchanged money, even. (The Americans, of course. They could turn anything into a capitalist exercise.)
The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2) Page 11
