by Emma Bull
I could see the camera, watching from its bracket on the ceiling, and past it, the guard desk. I looked into the camera’s eye and nodded, schooling my face to something like confident blankness.
The guard was one I didn’t know, young, brown-haired, with a sunburnt nose. He looked up when I stopped in front of the desk.
“They know I’m coming,” I said.
“Can I have your name, please, to—”
“They don’t need my name. They just saw my face on the monitor upstairs.” I tilted my head toward the camera.
“I have to call to authorize—”
“Please do.”
He went into the little room with the window in the door, and I followed silently after. When I came in, he was on the intercom saying, ”… didn’t give a name, sir.” I reached gently around his shoulder and took the desk mike away from him.
“Hello, Tom,” I said. It would come through clearly; I knew how to talk into a microphone. “I thought I was invited.”
There was a beat of silence. Then the drawling voice, saying, “Well, God damn if you aren’t. Come on up. You know the way.”
The guard stepped back, watching me. He seemed skittish. I handed him the microphone and headed for the elevator.
I didn’t know what I was going to do. We’d discovered, when we put our heads together, that the only thing we could plan was the lighting of Ego. Helping Dana, thwarting — or even avoiding — Tom, were too full of variables. I could only go, because I had to go, and stay alert, and do the next thing, whatever it was. Everything depended on what happened next, and what happened after that, and after that, and I had no idea what any of those would be. I was waiting, almost literally, for a sign. Improvisation wasn’t what I was good at. What was I good at? What was I made to do?
Theo would light the Gilded West, if he could, at the request of Sherrea’s gods. What was I here for? To bring Dana out. To stop Tom Worecski. I doubted I could manage either one. I was simply moving in the direction that seemed right, and hoping that at the appropriate moment, something would tell me I’d arrived.
“This isn’t just the power monopoly,” Sherrea had said before I climbed into the truck. “That’s just a symptom. D’you understand?” It had meant a lot to her, I could tell: her hands were closed hard on my shoulders, and her face was uncomfortably close to mine. She wouldn’t have forgotten if it wasn’t important. Once, I would have smiled and told her yes, I understood, sure. This afternoon, I’d stood quiet under her hands and finally shook my head. She’d remembered then, let go and stepped back. But I’d seen the fear in her face.
Oh, spirits, if Frances wasn’t John Wayne, I certainly wasn’t. Why hadn’t I just stood at the front door and cut my throat?
The elevator door opened on darkness. The elevator itself was still lit, so the power hadn’t gone off. I stepped out, holding the door open. It pinged furiously; I jumped and lost my grip. The door closed and left me in a perfect absence of light. I wish I’d thought to bring a candle. But how could I have expected that here, where electricity ran like water, there wouldn’t be enough light to see by?
I could find the office by touch; there weren’t that many doors. But I could probably find other things, too, if I was meant to. I took two steps, my fingers trailing along the wall. “Tom,” I said on a whim, “this is stupid. I can turn around and leave.”
In the ceiling, a speaker crackled. I’d been right. He’d seen too many movies. “That elevator ain’t comin’ back.”
“I know where the fire stairs are.”
“Sure, you do. But I’m awful sorry about the lights on those stairs. Seem to be on the blink. You sure you want to go down ’em in the dark, nice and slow?”
That might mean that he had put something in the stairwell. Or it might only mean that, once I headed for it, he would.
“And speakin’ of fire, what did you think of the one I lit for you last time? Huh?” He laughed, a high, scratching giggle overhead. How about a little fire, Scarecrow, I thought, but didn’t say. The horse you rode in on, and your little dog, too, Worecski.
I found a light switch under my fingers and flipped it, but nothing happened. Shut off at the breaker box, probably located in Ego’s heels; and I was in her hair. Either he’d just ordered it done, or the paging system was on a separate circuit.
I reached the door that opened on Albrecht’s office. Would Tom be in it? Or Albrecht, or both? If the lamp was on, I’d be blind. I opened the door a finger width at a time.
The office was dark. And unnaturally silent — of course. With the power off, any fans or air-conditioning exclusive to this floor would go off, too. From the perfect lack of noise, I figured Albrecht’s floor must have had its own independent everything. If Tom was in the room, I ought to be able to hear his breathing, if I could only keep my own quiet.
I bumped lightly into the desk, and let my hands drift in the area where the lamp ought to be. It was there. I tried the switch because it had to be tried, but nothing happened. I worked my way around the desk, stopping to listen every two or three steps, holding my breath until the pulse in my head deafened me. In time, I made it to the door in the paneling that led to the big, bright room that had been the stage for Tom’s last drama.
It was as dark as the office. And the cool, dry air had been replaced with suffocating heat and damp. No venting, no air-conditioning. I could feel sweat springing to my skin already, like condensation on a glass. I took a step into the void, another -
And couldn’t quite stifle the sound I made when something brushed against my face. I staggered backward. Nothing happened. I reached out and found something between my fingers: plastic — long ribbons of it — hanging from the ceiling like loose-curled vines.
What I had to stifle then was a stream of epithets. It was videotape. Half-inch videotape pulled off its reels and draped like party streamers as far as I could reach.
Light fluttered through the room, and I thought at first it was a reflection from somewhere. But in the afterimage I realized what I’d seen. The blinds had been drawn back from the wall of window glass, and the first pale flickering of lightning had passed through. Lightning. What about wind? That wasn’t my part of the show. I couldn’t spare either hope or fear for the weather now.
But it had given me that moment’s illumination. In it, I’d seen thickets of tape, veiling the room from one side to the other. Albrecht’s collection, it must be, everything I’d found for him, everything he’d commissioned from anywhere else, all originals, because he’d insisted on that. I closed both fists on handfuls of tape and began, methodically, to pull it down.
The furniture was gone. When I reached the place where the two couches had been, I found only empty floor. A stab of lightning showed me the marks in the deep carpet left by the couches’ feet, and by the Chinese table. He might not be here at all, I thought suddenly, alarmed. A cluster of tape slipped through my fingers to the floor. He might have left this here for me, and be sitting somewhere below, imagining the scene, laughing. If so, he could have left something else as well, something lethal.
No, it felt wrong. Tom Worecski had a wonderful imagination; I had the proof of it right here. But I didn’t think he’d want to miss the effect he’d caused, even if he had to limit himself to judging by the noises I made. I gathered up an armful of tape and yanked.
Bleaching white light shot into the room from the window and was gone, with the crash of mangled air on its heels. I staggered and fell, and jammed my knuckles into my teeth to stop sound and air.
Dana was hanging from the ceiling. The afterimage was printed on my vision wherever I turned: head down, naked, her bare arms dangling among the twists of videotape, the ragged remains of her blond hair sticking out around her face, her mouth dark with dried blood, her eyes wide and empty. Her throat had been cut.
There was another flash, and I didn’t have warning enough to look away, so I saw her again. I would have to see her to get past her. I ought to get her dow
n from there; but oh, gods, gods, I couldn’t do it. What did you burn candles to Erzulie for, Dana? To save you from someone like Tom Worecski? Had she been alive yesterday, when I held her hair in a box? I couldn’t tell, not from one lightning flash to the next. A broken mannequin, a ruined fashion doll — but all the while she’d been alive, she had been real, and I hadn’t noticed. Now it was too late.
The need for stealth, it seemed to me, was gone. “Where are you, Tom?” I said aloud.
“This way,” he answered from behind a screen of tape, in the same tone I used: flat, stripped of frivolity or even character. It was his live voice, not another ceiling speaker. I moved cautiously forward through the plastic. It stuck to my skin where it brushed, to the glaze of sweat there. I could feel my shirt clinging wet to my back, the trousers catching damply at my thighs and calves. “Why did you send for me, Tom?”
“Mick told me your little story. He said you couldn’t remember being a Horseman, but I figured you for a liar.” He was moving; his arc was taking him toward the right, away from the windows, putting me between him and them. Did he think I had a gun?
“It’s true. I don’t. I never was a Horseman.”
“Oh, bullshit. The fuckin’ chevaux were just meatbags. Somebody’d have to operate ’em. So, are you Mitchell, that little ass wipe? He thought he was Mister C. I. fuckin’ A. He’d love to try to take me out.”
“I told you what I am.” There was no reason not to talk; the rustling of the videotape would have told him where I was. He’d invited me up. He thought I was a Horseman. He wanted another head fight, wanted to prove to another of his kind that he was the master.
“Or Scoville, maybe? Christ, what a pussy. And Chichenas hated my guts — are you Chichenas?”
On the other hand, if I’d run out of things to say, there was no reason to go on talking. When he was done playing with me, he’d strike. And then I’d see if my doppelganger worked.
Theo was in the Gilded West, right outside that window. If he got lucky and a toy cyclone danced on the vanes of his turbine, if it didn’t tear off the top of the building and crush him in the rubble, he would light up the night. It seemed terribly silly and distant. Why had we wanted to do it? What good was it going to be to anyone? I just hoped he could get away safe. Frances would help. I skirted another clump of tape.
“Sparrow, look out,” someone said, low and quick. In front of me I saw a movement, a lighter spot in the dark like a face. I ducked right. There was a spit of flame and a dry, deafening crack, and I felt something tear a hole through the flesh of my left shoulder. My scream and the gunshot reverberated together in the room and were gone.
I’d fallen to one knee; I stayed there, bent over and gasping. I clutched at my shoulder, but my hand wasn’t big enough to close over both the entrance and the exit wounds. Blood ran down my right wrist into my sleeve. So much for the clean shirt. Apologies to its owner when — no, it didn’t look as if I’d have the chance to make those. It had never occurred to me that he would have a gun, that he would choose to fight with something other than his head. I was an idiot. I was not good at this.
Lightning came and went in a quick, rhythmless dance. The room was pockmarked, in the flashes, with the image of the rain that patted against the window glass. The couches had been moved to this end of the room, and Mick Skinner occupied one of them. His had been the warning voice. He sat very straight, his hands pressed together between his tight-closed knees, his hair tangled and filthy, his pretty stolen face hollowed out and blank. Tom stood in front of him, a pistol in his hands aimed professionally at me. Behind him was the other door into the room, where Cassidy had died.
“Surprise,” Tom said. Then he moved closer, and I heard the frown in his voice. “God damn — you’re not Frances. Shit, I didn’t figure she’d miss a chance like this.”
I sucked air in, quivering, uneven. It hurt, it hurt, and my stomach cramped with fear. I pressed my lips against my upraised knee to hold back whimpering and bile. Then I turned my head just enough to say, “No… I’m me. You didn’t… you didn’t send for her.”
“Hell, no. I thought this way I’d get Frances’s head and the cheval body. I always did like one-of-a-kind shit. But Franny was supposed to try to sneak in on you. That’d make you a Trojan horse, huh? That’s just the kind of joke she always liked. She turn yellow, maybe?”
“Lost her… sense of humor.”
He was too dangerous not to watch. My breath stumbling loudly through my open mouth, I lifted my head from my knee and my gaze from the floor. Tom’s face was bright with sweat in the lightning flicker. “Well, one out of two ain’t bad.”
I tried to send a look of appeal to Mick, but he couldn’t see it for the backlighting, or he didn’t care. It was time to say something brave and witty, and do something creative. Nothing occurred to me. It seemed I hadn’t seen enough movies after all. But Frances had. The door banged open under her kick, showering splinters from the frame. She’d gotten a handgun from somewhere, and was taking aim while the door was still swinging. Tom dropped to the floor like a felled tree and fired three shots, all of which hit Frances somewhere between the shoulders and the knees. She sagged back and slid down the door frame. I could hear the drag of air into her lungs.
“Stupid bitch,” Tom muttered. He scrabbled across the floor and kicked her pistol out of her reach, farther into the room. “Did you think I’d believe this shit? I knew you had to show up.”
It was more than I had known. I wanted to say so, but my tongue was frozen.
“So go for it, Franny,” Tom went on. He got to his feet, grinning. “That horse is gonna die. Make the jump, girl, just like you wanted me to. Only this time I’ve got the gun. Ain’t nobody to ride but your pals, and if you ride ’em, I’ll kill ’em. Unless you want to try to take me again.”
“You said you’d let her go,” Mick spoke from the couch. He sounded as if he’d been shot, too, as if he had only one lung working. “You said you’d showed her, and now you wouldn’t have to kill her.”
“And I wouldn’t have had to, you little prick, except here she is. She needed showing again. What was I supposed to do? Let her kill me instead?”
“You promised me — if she got away from you, you’d let her go. You promised.” Mick rose, shakily. What had happened to him in the last weeks? What had Tom done to him? Whatever it was, why hadn’t it given him a sensible distrust of promises from Tom Worecski?
Frances hadn’t moved, but I saw her eyes open and squint in the blaze of lightning. Rain was projected on her face, the image of it running down the glass. I wondered if I could get to her discarded pistol unnoticed.
Tom faced Mick, his whole face alive with anger. Then it fell. “You’re right. I broke my promise.” Tom dropped to his knees on the carpet and held the pistol out to Mick. “Kill me. Kill me, goddammit. If you can bring yourself to do it, then I must deserve to die.”
Mick took the pistol. The big window rattled with the thunder. “Oh, I can do it,” Mick said in a trembling voice.
I thought, No.
Then Tom sagged to the floor and Mick smiled. “Jesus, what a sucker,” he drawled, and put the barrel in his mouth.
“No!” Frances screamed, but it was drowned by the double crack of thunder, inside and out.
Tom stood up and shook himself. “Shit,” he said. “Shouldn’t’ve done that. There was still plenty of fun in him.”
He’d been weak, that was all. Mick had cared for Frances; he’d even cared, I realized, for me. But he’d been too weak to stand against a thing like Worecski. And I’d been too weak to save him.
Frances’s head dropped back against the door frame, and I heard a little despairing noise from her. Her eyes were tight shut. Mick had slid in a heap to the carpet, smearing the white couch on the way. The pistol lay on the floor between his body and his arm.
“One down,” said Tom. “Come on, girl. Jump for it.”
Slowly, Frances shook her head.
&nbs
p; The bead of glass at my throat was cool and hard. My head was swimming with heat and loss of blood, and my legs were shaking under me. But neither gun was in Tom’s reach. So I took a last shuddering breath and flung myself untidily at him.
His arm came up across the side of my face like a log. There was no reason why someone who could do what he did should be so strong. He hoisted me up in two handfuls of shirtfront and shook me. I hit him as hard as I could in the stomach with my right fist, but the angle was bad, I was weak, and it wasn’t hard enough. He grunted and bared his clenched teeth, and pushed me backward into the wall. I sobbed when my left shoulder hit.
He wasn’t going to fight with his head. If he didn’t, I hadn’t a chance against him. But the alternative to this pointless battering was to sit quietly and wait for him to kill me. That seemed wasteful.
I staggered upright and went for his throat with both hands. Tom grabbed my wrists and forced me back to the wall again, pinned me there. His eyes, so close to mine, suddenly widened and cut sideways, toward the door.
“Jesus Christ, Frances, what’s holding you back? I thought for sure — But if you were ridin’ this, it would fight better. What does it take, Franny?”
I wondered if she’d heard that. If he was right, she and I would both be better off if she’d ditch her principles and ride.
I could see the pores in his face in the lightning flashes; I could smell the sharp reek of his sweat and feel the moist heat of him. I twisted, felt torn things in my shoulder pull farther apart, and bit off a cry.
“Now I remember,” he said, his voice mild and cheerful. “You don’t like to be touched.” And he leaned forward and forced his mouth down hard on mine.
My teeth were already clenched; it was too late to clamp my lips between them. The hierarchy, from weakest muscles to strongest, is: lips, tongue, jaws. At least he couldn’t get past my teeth. He pulled his head back and laughed softly; his breath fanned my cheek, as warm and damp as the air. “Your head is sayin’ no, but — hell, your body’s sayin’ no, too. Guess I’ll have to change your mind.”
