She ground the stone against the cloth, the threads fraying, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, frost to fire.
CHAPTER 49
Roth licked his lips. This was the good part. The bird had fallen for his line of poppycock. Swallowed it as if it were a worm. Which gave him an idea about what he would get Lilith to do when they got to her room.
She had led him through a small door in the pantry, a door he hadn’t noticed before, a place of drafts and shadows that seemed spot-on for the common class. Come to think of it, the servants were ever-present, as if they never needed to sleep. He’d seen one of the maids tending the fire in the sitting room at three in the morning, and the hired hands were in at all hours with their loads of firewood.
Roth followed Lilith down a narrow set of stairs. This was a separate section of the basement, walled off from the part where Mason worked and where Roth had developed his negatives. When the door swung shut above them, they were in pitch darkness. Neither had a lantern, and the inability to see excited Roth, made his skin tingle in anticipation. Or maybe it was the chilly dead air, the sense of enclosure, that caused his heart to pump faster.
She’d been easy and eager, all right. Most women acted like the old in-out in the middle of the day was an affront to the gods. Lilith didn’t even need to finish her first glass of filched wine before she was leaning on Roth, giving him that special happy smile, looking into those smoky gray eyes that no woman in her right mind could resist.
He reached in front of him, keeping one hand on the wall so he wouldn’t lose his balance. He touched Lilith’s hair. He slid his hand down to where her shoulder should be, but she managed to stay a few steps ahead of him. She hadn’t spoken since he’d made his suggestion, only smiled in submission and tilted her head to her secret door. She was one for games, she was.
Roth stepped off the creaking wood onto a hard, flat area. Then he heard a match strike a few feet away, and a tuft of flame erupted. Lilith’s face was in the circle of light, but that was impossible, because she was beside him. Her black dress made her body invisible, and for a moment her face and hands appeared to be floating unattached in the air. He let go of her hair, or whatever he was touching, and jumped back as she lit a candle.
“We should have a fire,” she whispered, her voice husky. Roth looked down at his hand and saw that it was covered with cobwebs. He yelped and wiped his hand on his pants.
She giggled. “Did that scare you, Mr. Roth?”
“I hate spiders, remember? Ever since I was nine and got one in me mouth when I was crawling around under the porch. Had nightmares for a week after.”
“Poor boy. You’re safe with me.”
“I hope not too safe, eh? I live for danger, and you’re looking pretty bleeding dangerous, love.”
As the candle caught and flared, he could make out the dim corners of the room, wondering if spiders lurked in the shadows. Six feet from anywhere, they said. As long as they stayed six feet away. He noticed an alcove that had another candle in it. How had she lit that one? He thought maybe the room led into another, but then saw Lilith’s back and his own face. A mirror, as large as the bed beneath it, reflecting the room. Kinky bird.
He licked his lips and ran his tongue over his teeth. The room was small and the walls were stone masonry, so thick that no sound would escape. Maybe she liked to get in full voice while having a go. That was fine with Roth.
The room was empty of furniture besides the bed, and that bothered Roth for a moment. There were no blankets on the mattress, only an old linen sheet that looked like it could use a wash. The place was as dismal as a monk’s cell. But he forgot all that when Lilith placed the candle on the hearth and sat on the bed, looking up at him with wanton eyes.
Black eyes. Deeper than a Newcastle coal shaft. He didn’t see the things he wanted to see. He liked his birds to have a little fear, or at least a little performance anxiety. Made them try harder to please.
But he wasn’t going to get particular. One was the same as another, when all was said and done. And her skin looked creamy enough. He would have thought she might blush a little, but she only smiled again, and something about the smile bothered him.
“You won’t get in trouble, will you? Having it on with the guests?” he asked, more to break the suffocating silence than because he cared.
“Miss Mamie says guest satisfaction is the key to repeat business,” she said, and again that devilish smile was on her lips. For a moment, Roth felt like the seduced instead of the seducer. But that was ridiculous. It was his fame, his charm, his aura of power that had swayed her. His name on a thousand glossy photo credits.
His heart pounded harder and he moved across the room to the bed. She lay back on the sheet, spreading her arms, opening herself to him.
“Am I as pretty as a picture, Mr. Roth?”
He gulped. Maybe it was all that wine he’d tossed back, but he was getting aroused too fast. He felt like an idiot schoolboy looking at a girlie mag. He didn’t like to lose control. No bird could play with his emotions that easily.
Her breasts had flattened out beneath the neckline of her dress, and she raised her knees so that her legs were spread. Her dress slid along her thighs, and Roth couldn’t tear his gaze away from the shadowy space between her hips. He’d never been this turned on.
Or maybe it was the house, the odd tingle he’d felt in the back of his head since he’d arrived. The tingle seemed to grow more intense and spread through his limbs. Fire, that’s what it was. A mild flush of warmth expanding into a glow.
He knelt, wanting to touch her. He’d have to take it slow, or he’d become an animal. He didn’t want to just have a slam, he wanted to go nice and easy. He liked that. He liked to hear them beg to be finished off.
But now he was afraid he was slipping, that the power and control had shifted, that she was the one calling the shots. His hands trembled as he reached for her, and he was suddenly angry with himself. He never trembled. He’d taken photos of charging rhinos from thirty feet, with a handheld camera, and they’d come out as clear and focused as an eye chart.
So he did what he always did when he wanted to prolong or deny his passion: he thought about his work. The batch of negatives he’d developed that afternoon. Something about them bothered him, but he couldn’t remember at the moment. Definitely the wine had gotten him. And his anger at Spence had clouded his thoughts, too. Well, only one way to drive out the devil.
He put his hands on her bare lower thighs. Her skin was tepid, the same temperature as the room. Odd, but he’d warm her up soon enough. Nothing like a bit of friction for that. But not yet.
Roth climbed onto the bed, thought about removing his pants, then decided to wait. Lilith’s hands were on his shoulders, around his neck, pulling his face to hers. What the hell, no use making her suffer any longer. For some reason, her lack of body heat excited him further. Maybe it was this blooming crypt of a room that chilled her. He took it as a personal challenge to stoke her fires.
His lips pressed against hers, her tongue uncertain in her mouth. For a bird with such a fast come-on, she was acting like she’d never kissed before. He hesitated, because something was wrong with the inside of her mouth.
Roth pressed himself down on top of Lilith, her body molding to his even through the dress. Her breasts compressed under him and he liked the feeling. But he was careful not to like it too much. Nice and easy was the ticket, even though his blood pounded hard through his flesh. What was it about the inside of her mouth?
It was just like the rest of her, a little too cool. What was the temperature under the ground, a constant fifty-six degrees or something? But surely her mouth should be hot, and not quite so dry. It was almost like shoving his tongue into a coat pocket. He hoped she wasn’t this dry everywhere else.
Lilith moaned into his mouth. Didn’t she have any juice?
She writhed under him, so he forgot about the awkwardness of her tongue. He reached out for the shoulder of her dress. He sta
rted to pull it lower, to expose more of her flesh to the candlelight.
“Yes,” she gasped.
“Yes,” came another voice.
Bloody hell?
Probably just an echo off the stone walls. A trick of the acoustics.
But the dead air of the room gobbled sound and swallowed it whole instead of bouncing it back and forth.
Roth caught a flicker of movement that distracted him from the blood rushing below his waist. Then he remembered the mirror and looked up at it. Maybe watching him and the lovely lass beneath him would rekindle his arousal.
In the mirror his face grew larger, as if he were watching himself through a fast-zooming lens. And why was that so wrong?
It was only a split second, but plenty of time for him to notice that the mirror was falling onto the bed, onto them, as if in slow motion. And that sheet of glass must weigh a hundred pounds—if it broke—
If it broke, he would be badly cut.
Badly.
But he couldn’t move, Lilith had her limbs locked around him, and bloody hell, she was strong, he grunted as he tried to fight her off, but she had too many arms, too many, scratching and clutching at him, and he saw her reflection in the mirror and she wasn’t Lilith, she was a black spider, squat and thick, pincers twitching near his lips, searching for a soul kiss.
Black widow, his mind screamed at him, she always eats her mate.
Looking up, he hardly recognized his reflection, eyes large, his mouth a black tunnel, the stems of Lilith’s eight arms clasping him, the barbs of her forelimbs in his flesh.
But before the pain could spin its web, the mirror was upon him, and as the glass shattered, it wasn’t his face in the mirror, it was Korban’s.
Then the silver shards sliced into his flesh and Lilith loosed her venom and he was in the long dark tunnel and Ephram Korban smiled at him, holding up a spoon that squirmed with the frantic scrabbling of spiders.
“Time for a spot of tea, Mr. Roth,” Korban said.
CHAPTER 50
“How is our statue coming along?” Miss Mamie hoped her impatience was buried deep, just as all her emotions were, except when under the naked gaze of Ephram.
“It’s going to be lovely,” Mason said, standing in the doorway of his room, eyes puffy, hair disheveled. “You want to come in?”
She and Ephram had spent many precious nights here, hours that seemed even sweeter with the distant years. But the room disturbed her because it always bore the stink and taint of Sylva, as if the walls still harbored the memory of Ephram’s sin. She could forgive, all right. All women could forgive, that was how love worked, but she would never forget. Even if Ephram let her live to be a thousand.
Mason held open the door, and she peered past him to the fireplace, the dew drying on the windowsill, the smiling face of Ephram on the wall.
“I only have a moment,” she said. “I’m busy preparing for the party.”
“Party?”
“The blue moon party. It’s something of a tradition at Korban Manor. Your presence is required.”
“Sure. I guess I could spare the time.”
“Not too much time, I hope. I know you’re dedicated to your work.”
“That reminds me. Do you know anything about that painting of the manor in the basement?”
Rage filled Miss Mamie, burned her, scorched her like her dead husband’s love. She no longer cared if Mason saw the flames in her eyes. He couldn’t escape anyway. He was as trapped here as she was.
She forced a smile, the good hostess. “Master Korban, I’m afraid. He once fancied himself a painter.”
The anger opened a dark tunnel in her heart, the conduit through which Ephram kept his hold over her. An icy wind blew from the mouth of the tunnel, freezing her chest. Ephram’s threat and Ephram’s promise. He needed her fear as much as he needed the emotions of the others. She only wished her love was all he required. But love by itself was never enough.
“He was gifted.” Mason must not have noticed her torment. She was good at hiding it, after all these decades.
“One of his greatest sorrows was that he never finished it,” she said. “There’s something melancholy about an artist’s final work, even when the artist’s talents are ordinary and mortal. One always hopes to make an impression that will live on after death.”
“Our vanity,” Mason said. “And I reckon it’s what drives us crazy. Because we know we’ll never achieve perfection.”
“Perfection.” Miss Mamie didn’t need the painting before her in order to remember. She could close her eyes and see the house, the lighted windows, the low clouds, the widow’s walk. She could taste the breeze that had blown from the northwest, crisp from its journey over Canadian tundra. String music quivered in the air, smoke poured from the chimneys as it rose into the round eye of the moon. And Ephram called them up, fetched his spirit slaves, and sent them after Rachel Faye Hartley.
Ephram didn’t like his own family keeping secrets from him. Rachel had fled, leapt to her death from the widow’s walk. Rachel had taken her secrets to the grave, but carried them back from the grave as well.
The hurt rose inside Miss Mamie, consumed her in a blaze of hatred. Ephram and Sylva were bound by blood. His illicit family would always hold the biggest place in his everlasting heart, no matter what sacrifices Miss Mamie made. No matter how deep her devotion. And that painting, the one Ephram called his work in progress, was an eternal reminder.
She turned away, into the hall, the portrait of Ephram close enough to touch. “That painting should have been burned long ago,” she said.
“Anna said her mother was in the painting.”
“Forget Anna. You’re to think only of your statue.”
“Anna says she’s never been here before. How could Korban have known? He’s in the painting, too. And somebody who looks like you.”
“Illusions,” Miss Mamie said. “Never trust an artist, because dreams lie and visions are temporary.”
“Can I trust anybody?”
“Trust your heart, Mr. Jackson. That’s the only thing worth believing in.”
“My heart is getting pulled in three different directions.”
She studied the young man’s face. He was a lot like Ephram in some ways, stubborn and proud, afraid of weakness and failure. But Ephram had taken matters into his own hands, determined to leave none of his work unfinished. Obsessed with controlling his world. “I guess you’ll just have to tear your heart into enough pieces to go around. As long as the biggest piece goes into your statue.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make you proud. I’ll make them all proud.”
“I’m sure you will. See you tonight. Don’t be late.”
The door closed. Miss Mamie touched the locket that hung around her neck. When Ephram wore flesh again, he would prove that love never died. Sylva, Rachel, Anna, Lilith, and all the others would be forgotten, would be the embers of memories, fading, dying, and at last, lost to darkness. While Miss Mamie and Ephram burned on, together forever.
CHAPTER 51
Anna sat on her bed, huddled in a blanket. The room had grown cold during the afternoon, the temperature falling as the fire burned low. She found herself staring at Ephram Korban’s portrait, searching his face for genetic features that had been passed down to her. Korban, Rachel, Sylva. And somewhere in there, a faceless father, who’d slipped her off the mountain, abandoned her with only a first name, and died rather than return to the mountains. By his own hand and noose, according to Sylva.
She had drifted for so long, rootless and unconnected, and now she belonged to too many people. Her bloodline was too crooked, the generations skewed by whatever magic slowed the ravages of time here at the manor. Because if Sylva was a hundred and five, and Anna was twenty-six, then Rachel had died less than three decades ago. Or maybe when you died, you were ageless, and the years no longer counted.
There was a knock and Cris entered. “Hi, girl, what’s up?”
“Just br
ooding.”
“Hey, that’s no way to spend an artists’ retreat. Leave that to the idiots who think it’s okay to starve for art. Or to pigheaded photographers.”
“Ah, what’s the point?”
“That’s exactly the point. If it doesn’t matter, if it’s all a solo wet dream, then why not enjoy yourself?”
“Maybe you’re right. I’m taking things a bit too seriously.”
“That’s the spirit.” Cris slipped into the bathroom, paused at the door. “Excuse me. Time of the month. Full moon tonight.”
“So I hear.”
“And a big party on the roof. Miss Mamie says it’s not to be missed. If Mason’s there, maybe you’ll get lucky.” Cris winked, then closed the bathroom door. Anna pulled the blanket more tightly about her shoulders.
When Cris came out, she rummaged in her dresser for a sweater. “Hey, did you mess with my sketch pad?”
“I haven’t been here today.”
Cris held it up. Scrawled across a large sheet of paper, in slashing strokes of red crayon, were the words Go out frost, come in fire.
“Maybe it was one of the servants,” Anna said. “A reminder note to put more wood on the fire.”
“It’s getting cold, all right. October in the mountains. If it wasn’t for the falling leaves, I think I’d rather have Rio. See you tonight.” Cris waved and left, tying her hair back in a ponytail as she went.
Anna watched the grain of the door as it swirled and bent inward. A shape superimposed itself against the dark oak panels. A pale hand, holding a bouquet, the woman with desperate eyes. And that one whispered word, “Anna.”
Resting in peace was apparently not allowed for either the dead or the living.
CHAPTER 52
Mason wished he’d brought a lantern, since the afternoon had grown suddenly dark, heavy clouds sweeping from the northwest like smoke from a distant prairie fire. At least he was out of the house, having dodged the questioning gaze of Miss Mamie. He didn’t want to go down into the basement, at least not until his head cleared. Anna was right, he’d become obsessed, and it was far more than just the pursuit of praise that drove him.
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