“I know this must be strange for you. I know it’s hard,” Tess said. “But after tonight, you can have the future you’re hoping for. I believe we all can.”
With a final, searching glance, Tess turned and strode out the door. Audrey was already gone. Nick smiled softly and pulled the door shut with a solid click that echoed in the apartment, even over the cheerful voices on the television.
Kyrie hurried to the door and locked it, the image of Tess’s bruises still fresh in her mind. She ought to have felt safe, but she did not. Not at all.
She walked back to the window and waited until she saw Nick, Tess, and Audrey leave the building. Without Maddie there to connect them, Tess got into the passenger seat of the Toyota while Audrey climbed in to ride with Nick. The jealous part of her, perhaps the sister of the Logical One, felt better, but Kyrie found it cold comfort in light of the fear and anxiety stirred up by their visit.
As the cars left the parking lot, the Toyota in the lead, she began to turn from the window but paused when she saw the dark figure of a man step out from the shadows between two cars on the far side of the lot. He was little more than a black shape in the night, but she shuddered. Something about the way he stood and watched the two cars depart troubled her.
“Kyrie, come on,” Maddie pleaded. “I wanna watch the movie. You said.”
She turned and gave the little girl a half smile. “I did say. You’re right. Mac and cheese coming right up, and then we go find Dory.”
Kyrie glanced back out the window and gave a little start. She stepped closer to the glass, craning her neck to search the parking lot for any glimpse of that dark figure, but whoever it had been had vanished.
Something caught her eye, up in the air, almost level with Nick’s fifth-floor apartment. A swath of black fabric flapped and danced in the night wind, blowing across the sky roughly in the same direction the cars had gone.
Kyrie watched it float and roll on a hard gust of air, and then she turned away, happy that she and Maddie were safe inside, out of the wind and the dark and away from whatever so terrified the little girl’s parents.
ELEVEN
With Maddie safe, Tess switched cars, letting Audrey ride alone with Nick. Leaving their daughter behind troubled her enough without also having to share another drive with her ex-husband during which Maddie was sure to be the topic of conversation. Maddie or Kyrie, and right now Tess could not manage to talk about either. Instead, she rode shotgun in Lili’s Toyota.
In the backseat, Frank Lindbergh pointed a gun at the creature who had once been Simon Danton. The ghost who had once worn Frank’s own face. The doubles were strong, so they had been careful when cutting away the duct tape that bound Danton to Tess’s kitchen chair. They’d waited until Maddie was safely out in Nick’s car and the real Frank had kept the gun aimed at Danton the whole time.
She glanced over the seat at Danton as they pulled out of the parking lot at Nick’s building. He cradled the arm Nick had broken with the bat, but it seemed to have begun to heal itself.
“So, what will happen, really, if Frank puts a bullet through your skull?”
Danton relaxed against the seat, seat belt tugging against his left shoulder and passing through a part of it that had faded, less solid than the rest of him.
“I honestly don’t know,” Danton replied. “But I’m not eager to find out.”
“Audrey said it might kill him,” Frank added. “Destroy the construct, unmoor the spirit. But she also said that at the very least it would be inconvenient, and it would hurt.” He glared at Danton with seething hatred. “That’s okay by me.”
Tess watched the streetlights flicker off the dark hood of the Toyota as Lili picked up speed. Soon they were wending their way through Harvard Square and then over the Charles River into Boston. As they crossed the bridge, Lili glanced at her.
“Do you think her life is better?” Lili asked, her voice low.
In the green glow of the dashboard lights, she looked more haunted than ever.
“Your double, you mean?” Tess said quietly.
Lili bit her lip, her fingers flexing before she gripped the steering wheel again. She kept her eyes on the road. “I know they’ve used … influence, somehow. They’ve only been around for a few months and Devani Kanda’s got her art in a gallery on Newbury Street. They have driver’s licenses and other identification, presumably. They’ve got to be nudging people, pulling strings, so nobody questions them too closely. I can’t believe I’m talking about magic, but that’s magic right there, isn’t it?”
“Something like that,” Tess replied, knowing that the dead thing that had once been Simon Danton must be listening, that he could answer Lili’s question easily enough. That he must be laughing inside at their fear and self-doubt.
“It got me thinking,” Lili went on. “I started wondering if maybe she deserved it more than I did.”
“Deserved what?”
Lili slowed, the engine idling as they waited for a red light to turn. She exhaled, wearing an apologetic smile.
“Life,” she said.
Tess turned in her seat. “Don’t be—”
“I know,” Lili said, waving her to silence as the light turned green and they slid through Boston traffic. “Trust me, I’ve been through it all in my head. I’m saying I spent some time thinking about the idea that the ability for them to have a better life—happier and more successful and without so much pain and worry—made them more deserving. I mean, I’d have liked an easier path in my own life.”
“We all would.”
“But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I’ve earned this life. Yeah, I’ve lived through some ugly times, but I’m more than the things I’ve survived … I’m the life I’ve built on top of those things. Y’know, there was a time I wanted to be you.”
The road seemed very loud beneath the car’s tires.
“Why would you want to be me?” Tess asked. “You’re so much stronger than I am. Ever since my accident I’ve been in pain, but when it gets really bad I tell myself that pain won’t break me. That you never let it break you, and if I gave into the despair that comes with it, then I wouldn’t have learned anything from being your friend. And I have.”
Lili reached for her hand. They drove that way for a little while, taking strength and courage from each other. Tess could feel the weight of the gaze of the men in the backseat—one living and one dead. Frank had faced his own struggles, his own darkness, and found himself not as strong as he would have hoped. But tonight he was taking that part of himself back, the part that he’d surrendered.
Danton, though … he was another story. Just being in his presence made her skin crawl. The doubles were the spirits of men and women who had opened their hearts to real evil, the kind of darkness that Tess had always convinced herself must be just a myth. But evil was no myth—it was real, and vibrant with such power that it flexed and trembled and breathed all around them, a live wire waiting for someone foolish enough to grab hold of it.
She’d been so afraid, but her future depended on whether or not she would stand and fight. Her life with Maddie—and maybe Maddie’s life itself—hung in the balance. Fear burned away to nothing in the light of that knowledge.
Tess turned in her seat and glared back at Danton. “You’re awfully quiet. I’d have expected mockery from you.”
All of his arrogance had fled. The dead man only sat calmly, his cadaverous face looming in the flickering city lights as Lili drove through Boston.
“You want to live, just as we do,” he said at last. “I cannot mock that desire.”
Tess stared at him a moment longer, aware that he was just biding his time, waiting for an opportunity. In his place, she would have done no different. Danton was right, they both wanted the same thing—to live.
When they drove past the Nepenthe Hotel, the dashboard clock showed the time as 7:32 P.M. Tess directed Lili down a side street a block from the hotel. Boston was a bustling city most
nights of the week, but they managed to find a parking spot. Tess saw Nick’s car drive past them, Audrey waving to indicate that she’d noted their location.
Lili killed the engine, glancing at Tess as if to say what now? Somewhere along the line, Tess had taken the reins, but that was all right with her. She would hold them tightly.
“Frank,” Tess said, glancing into the backseat. “We can’t let him get very far from us, but I don’t want to take Danton inside.”
The dead man sneered.
“I’d like to take a hammer to the psychomanteum,” Frank replied, so different from the withered thing that had come through her front door only hours ago.
“I know and I’m sorry,” Tess said. “But I don’t know what he might do to interfere. To stop us. I need you to stay here with him, keep that gun on him, and if he tries to get out of the car or makes any move to hurt you, put every bullet you have in his head.”
Frank took a deep breath as if he might be frightened, but Tess remembered the things he’d said about being held prisoner in his cellar and knew he wouldn’t hesitate.
“We’ll wait right here,” Frank promised.
Danton leaned forward slightly. Frank pressed the barrel of the gun into his side but the dead man only glared at Tess.
“What do you suppose will happen if you manage to do this?” Danton hissed between his teeth. “The demon will still be there. Still hungry.”
“Trapped there, yeah,” Tess replied. “File that under, not my fucking problem.”
She popped open the door and stepped out, buzzing with the anger and determination that protecting her daughter had given her. The cold autumn wind whipped around her and leaves skittered by on the sidewalk. The night made her more alert, attuned to a purpose that the people driving by her could never have understood. She slammed the door as Lili climbed out of the driver’s seat. As they crossed the side street and headed back toward the hotel, Lili clicked the automatic car lock and its familiar tweet seemed to originate in another world.
On the other side of the street, Tess and Lili waited while Nick and Audrey parked. Tess saw Nick go to his trunk and retrieve a duffel bag. He glanced around guiltily as he closed the trunk, as if afraid the police might suddenly arrive to prevent the crime about to be committed.
“Don’t look so twitchy,” she said as Nick and Audrey approached. “You’ve got guilt radiating out of you so bright you could glow in the dark.”
“You ready?” Nick asked, ignoring her jibe.
“Not even close. But we’re doing this anyway,” Tess said. She took Lili’s hand, gave it a squeeze, and then dropped it. “You’ll see the windows for the restaurant. It shouldn’t be hard to figure out which is the right door.”
“Tess,” Audrey said quietly.
They all looked at her. Of the four of them, she was the outsider. The other three were so intimately connected, but Audrey was a colleague more than a friend. At least until tonight that had been the case, but Tess thought that was about to change. Audrey might have been the smallest of them, but her presence loomed the largest. She sensed and understood things that Tess did not envy.
“I know,” Tess said. “Be careful.”
“If you could feel how wrong that room is, the sheer malevolent weight of the psychomanteum, I doubt any of you would even go in,” Audrey said, glancing around. “I’m only here myself because I don’t see any other choice. We’re only going to get one chance with this so if anyone tries to stop you—alive or otherwise—you can’t let them.”
Nick seemed about to speak. Instead, duffel hanging heavily in one hand, he drew Tess into a one-armed embrace. No matter what else they had been through or what the future held, they shared a bond that would never fade. Tess hugged him back, but only for a moment before she released him.
“Go on,” she said. “I’ll see you all in a minute or two.”
He nodded and started around the side of the hotel with Lili and Audrey, leaving Tess alone on the sidewalk. She steeled herself, turned into the wind, and marched toward the awning at the hotel’s front entrance. The doormen paid no attention to her as she entered. Loud voices and the sound of clinking plates and glasses came from the pub, but there were very few people in the lobby and she knew that one of the staffers behind the desk was sure to notice her if she headed directly toward the other restaurant. Instead she smiled at the concierge as if she belonged and went to the central staircase, padding up the Victorian carpet runner as if she were a guest.
Quiet reigned on the second floor. The carpet whispered under her feet as she hurried down the corridor past the elevator bay and the doors to more than two dozen rooms. At a turn in the hallway, she found the entrance to another stairway. There was a service elevator there, but Tess feared that might draw more attention, so she slipped through the door marked STAFF ONLY and started down.
Back on the first floor, Tess opened the door quietly and slipped out, walked past the restrooms, and glanced into the lobby. Several people were checking in and others were passing through, either leaving the hotel or heading into the pub. No one had noticed her.
She slipped along the wall and moved past the hostess station. Heavy curtains had been drawn across the narrow hall that led into the Sideboard restaurant at the back of the hotel. She pushed through the curtain and found herself alone in the room. Alone in the dark. The only illumination came from outside, the light from streetlamps and passing cars and the neon sign from a pub across the street.
The psychomanteum remained where it had been the last time Tess had been in the Sideboard. But now, in the quiet and the dark, it seemed to pulse with malignant awareness. Nothing moved around or within it, though she could see the mirrored panes inside glinting with light from the nighttime city beyond the windows. Yet she could not escape the feeling that somehow, in the invisible heart of the thing, it buzzed with malevolent power, an enormous wasp nest of ominous potential.
Tess did not hesitate. She moved through the darkened restaurant without searching for a light switch. If she allowed herself to be daunted by the abhorrent aura emanating from the apparition box, the others would be waiting outside forever.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
She jumped, startled by the voice, which she recognized even before she spun around to see Aaron Blaustein standing just inside the curtains she had parted moments before. But it wasn’t Aaron, of course, and from the naked hostility of his expression she could see that he knew his masquerade had ended.
Tess took a step backward, toward the psychomanteum. “You’d better call your friends. If you have a plan B, the time has come.”
The dead thing wearing Aaron’s face smiled at her. “You honestly think I need help to hurt you? To hold you here until Marketa comes to steal what’s left of your self?”
Marketa, Tess thought. The name of the occultist who had stolen her face. This dead man had no reason to lie to her when he thought she had no hope remaining.
“And I thought your friend Danton was an arrogant prick,” she said.
The thing that wasn’t Aaron flinched. “What are you—”
“You were all so full of yourselves, weren’t you?” she said. “Cornell Berrige was the most accomplished magician of the nineteenth century and even he couldn’t safely summon real evil into the world, but you amateurs thought you’d dabbled enough that calling yourselves the Society of the Lesser Key would lend you a sophistication and a level of skill none of you really had.”
As she spoke, Tess kept backing toward the psychomanteum, knowing with every step that the other doubles might be inside, living within the mirrored panes of its interior. At any moment they might step out, might reach for her—the one called Marketa would try to leech more of her soul away, trap her inside the mirrors.
“Your tongue is going to get you killed, woman,” Not-Aaron said as he began to approach her. In the soft shadows of the room he seemed to have three faces, one Aaron Blaustein, one she imagined he’d had in lif
e, and the third his true face. Withered and dead, half his lower jaw rotted away.
Tess shuddered. She’d allowed fear and adrenaline to push away the knowledge of what these things really were and what it might mean to be drained completely, reduced to nothing but a husk of humanity, a forgotten shadow.
“I never liked Aaron Blaustein,” she said. “But he had a wife and kids who loved him and now he’s dead because you and your friends were so full of ambition that you were willing to sell your souls, but too cowardly to pay the price when it came.”
“Hush, now, and die,” the dead man said. His upper lip curled in disdain as he strode toward her, snatching a knife from a table that had been prepared for the morning’s breakfast seating.
“You want to be careful telling a woman to watch her tongue,” Tess said. “It never goes well.”
She bolted for the emergency exit, smashed the safety bar on the door and it swung wide, blasted by the autumn wind. She turned back to look at the occultist, at the only thing left of Aaron. He picked up his pace, perhaps thinking she meant to run.
Lili was first through the door, this little Indian woman wearing leather gloves and carrying the poker from Tess’s fireplace. Aaron’s double slowed a moment, then gripped the knife tighter and lunged toward them.
Nick stepped through the door, aluminum bat held down by his side.
The dead thing hesitated.
Lili smashed him across the skull with the fireplace poker, gashing his skin. Blood spattered as he staggered into a table and then fell over a chair, his knife skittering across the carpet.
“Stay down,” Nick said, pointing at him with the bat, even as Audrey came through the door with the duffel bag.
“Do it,” Tess said, nodding at Lili.
Audrey pulled a pair of golf clubs from the bag and dropped it onto the floor. She handed one to Tess, glancing around.
“No alarm?” Audrey asked.
“Maybe silent,” Nick said. “Clock’s ticking either way.”
Dead Ringers Page 26
