Hard Light (31 page)

I found my way back to the attic and flung myself onto the pile of blankets. I finished the bottle then buried my face in my arms, until I could no longer hear the sound of my own voice repeating Quinn's name, over and over and over again.

 

36

Light blistered my eyelids. I turned and retched onto the floor. Someone wiped my face with a wet cloth. I pushed away a hand, groaning.

“Hello,” said Sam. “You're alive.”

She sat back on her heels, head cocked. Beside her was a plastic basin and some wadded towels. I tried to sit up, but my head felt as though an ax were embedded in it. “What time is it?” I whispered.

“Drink this.” Sam held out a liter soda bottle filled with water.

I started to reach for the bottle, stopped. “You first.”

Sam looked affronted. “It's only water.” But she took a swallow, then handed it to me.

My stomach lurched as I drank, but after a moment the nausea passed. It took all my effort to murmur thanks.

Sam edged closer to me. “I thought you were dead. You puked over everything, it was disgusting. Lucky you were on your stomach, or you'd've choked. I had to throw the blanket in the bin outside.”

“I just said thanks.”

“No—I mean, I thought you were
dead.
I shone the torch in your eyes and the pupils were like this—” She screwed up her face, pinched her fingers together. “Invisible.”

I made another, more successful attempt to sit up. “Is there more of that water?”

“I'll get some.” I listened to her footsteps recede downstairs, then return a few minutes later. “Here. I got two.”

“What time is it?”

“Just noon.”

I drank the water slowly and tried to avoid looking at the windows. Sam sat crosslegged on the floor, watching me intently. I frowned.

“Why are you wearing my leather jacket?”

“I had to clean it off. I peeled it right off you, and you didn't even move. I'm saying, you weren't breathing. Dead as dead, I thought.” She tugged the jacket's sleeves until they covered her bony wrists. “Into the grave with the babies.”

“Well, thanks for waiting before you buried me,” I said. “Hand me my bag, will you?”

I groped around till I found the bottle of ibuprofen and took four. My head throbbed as I struggled to recall the previous night.

Three hundred quid—that's what you're worth to Quinn O'Boyle.

I took a deep breath and waited for the black wave to pass before looking up at Sam once more.

“What did you say about my eyes?” I asked. “When you shone the flashlight in them.”

“You couldn't see the pupils. It was like they disappeared. It was freaky.”

“No fucking lie.” I finished the water. “That doesn't happen when you're drunk.”

Sam shook her head. “You were definitely drunk.”

“That's not what I mean. I've spent more years drunk than you've been alive—your eyes don't get pinned, even if you're completely wasted. Alcohol makes your pupils dilate. Opiates constrict them.”

I glanced around for the whiskey bottle and found it rolled alongside my pallet. I picked it up and sniffed it. No tell-tale scent, of course—that was the whole point.

“Shit,” I said.

“Shit what?”

“Shit someone tried to poison me, is what.”

Her eyes widened. “Who?”

“That's the million-dollar question.” I pushed myself to my feet, grimacing, and leaned against the wall. “Or maybe the three-hundred-pound question, minus petrol money. Unless it was you?”

“Me?”
Sam looked appalled. “No!”

“Well then. That leaves everybody else.”

“Fuck! How'd they do it?”

“They put something in the bottle, I drank it. End of story. It wouldn't be much of a challenge,” I admitted.

“Why aren't you dead?”

“Because me and Keith Richards were separated at birth. Wait—”

I jammed my hand into my jeans pocket, pulled out the plastic beads and silver chain. “You didn't tell anyone about these, did you? Your father or Tamsin?”

“You think I'm an idiot? No.”

“What about Krishna?”

“Her? I don't even know her.”

“Well, that's one good thing. Don't say anything about those babies to anyone. Don't even mention it to me again—I want to forget I ever fucking saw that place. There a shower here? Bathtub, anything like that?”

“Downstairs. I'll show you.”

I stepped woozily to the head of the stairs, and let her take my arm to steady me. “There a lock on the bathroom door?”

Sam nodded.

“What about a window?”

“A small one. But it's high up the wall.”

I reached to touch my leather jacket, hanging loosely on her skinny frame. “Listen. I want you to stay outside that bathroom door—if anyone comes, you let me know. Quietly, though. Then you take off, okay? Don't let them see you.”

“Sure.”

She didn't even blink. I shook my head. “You're a piece of work. Let's go.”

This bathroom was tacked on to the far end of the farmhouse, a few steps down a dark hallway that also held a washing machine and piles of clothing. Sam closed the hall door, pulling a wooden latch to secure it, then sank to the floor beside the bathroom door.

“I'll wait here.” She took out a hand-rolled cigarette and a lighter. “I always smoke in the bath. They'll think it's me.”

I locked the door behind me. There was a large claw-foot tub, its enamel streaked with rust. Two well-worn towels hung from nails in the wall. There was a spindly wooden chair and a collection of nearly-empty shampoo bottles on the floor beside the tub. A porcelain dish held slivers of soap. The shampoo had come from D. R. Harris. The soap still gave forth a faint fragrance of eglantine. I wondered how many other aging English aristocrats were holed up in similarly impoverished circumstances, freezing their bony asses off as they ate tinned beans and drank the dregs of their forebears' wine cellars.

The hot water came from an on-demand gas water heater, which meant there was an unlimited supply. I undressed and carefully looped the two thaumatropes over the back of the chair. Then I filled the tub and sank into it. I washed my cropped hair and did my best not to fall back into unconsciousness, lulled by hot water and the remnants of whatever drug still remained in my system.

I opened my eyes with a start: I'd nodded off.

I hastily sat up and splashed water on my face. I'd been living so long on speed and alcohol that the bones in my hands stood up like the tines of a rake. I needed a good night's sleep and a decent meal. Neither seemed likely. I could hightail it across the open moor, but I had no idea where I was, and I suspected the locals here didn't take kindly to strangers. I could hijack Adrian's Land Rover, but that would mean getting the keys. I wondered if Sam's skill set included jumpstarting a car.

More than anything, though, I wondered who wanted me dead, and why.

Morven's own relationship with heroin would have made it possible for her to kill Poppy, if her onetime friend and fellow Flaming Creature had betrayed her with Mallo. And that empty packet of Midazolam pointed to Adrian as the Dunfrieses' killer. He might have kept a hidden stockpile of Midazolam.

But why go to all the trouble of dragging me here? As he'd pointed out, he'd had ample opportunity to off me back in London. Krishna seemingly had access to enough opiates to kill me several times over, but she seemed barely able to walk upright. And while I wouldn't quite put it past Sam to slide someone a roofie, I had a hard time imagining she'd do it to me. Not on her own.

That left Tamsin. Or maybe the fake ICOTIA agent, Ellen Connors. Like Adrian, she could have done the job far more easily in London: Why chase me across the West Country in a blizzard?

So, Tamsin. Adrian had described her as batshit crazy. Based on what I'd heard, she was certainly unstable, and guilty of child neglect, if not actual abuse.

A few days ago, I'd never heard of any of these people. Since then, I'd slept with one of them and found the corpses of three others, but nothing else connected me to their daisy chain of sexual dalliances, stemming from Leith Carlisle and god knows how many teenage girls.

Except for two things.

I leaned over the tub and removed a thaumatrope from the chair. The disc with the eye, the disc that Adrian had found in a barrow here at Kethelwite. It twisted slowly, its malicious gaze fixed on me from a vantage of thousands of years.

“
Cass!
” I looked up sharply at Sam's urgent whisper. “Adrian's looking for me. If I don't go he'll come down here.”

I looped both thaumatropes over my neck and stood, grabbing a towel, then went to the door and cracked it. “Go!”

Sam averted her eyes from me. “What will—”

“I don't know—just
go
.”

I closed the door and dressed, tucking the thaumatropes beneath my black sweater, henley, and T-shirt. Too late I remembered that Sam still had my leather jacket.

Silently I stepped into the hallway. Before I could reach the door that led out of the annex, it opened.

A woman in mud-covered Wellingtons and a faded red barn jacket stood in the doorway. She seemed spindly as a scarecrow as she approached me, leaning on a walking stick. Then she straightened, and I saw that she was taller than she'd first appeared—strong jawed, her angular face slightly mannish, with thick ash-gray hair cut in a messy bob. Her eyes were pale blue, slightly opalescent: cataracts, probably. She didn't much resemble her son, except in the grim set of her mouth, streaked with incongruously bright pink lipstick.

“Ah. That girl was telling the truth.” Her voice was an imperious rasp. “We do have another unwanted guest.”

“What girl?” I retorted, but she ignored my question.

“Out!” she commanded, gesturing at the door as though I were a wet dog. “Now!”

I walked past her quickly, hoping to get enough momentum to break into a run. She grabbed my arm, pulling me up short—she was strong for a living scarecrow. Whip-fast, she struck the back of my knees with the walking stick.

I cried out as my legs buckled, and she prodded me with her cane. The handle was gold—a gryphon's head with ruby eyes. “
Go
.”

I limped down the hall into the living room. Adrian sprawled, his face impassive, in one of the old armchairs. Krishna sat in the other chair. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup, skin milk-white and lips cracked. Without the Cleopatra eyeliner, it was easier to focus on her bloodshot eyes, their dark irises flecked with amethyst. She gazed in dazed fascination at Sam, who knelt in the middle of the floor, speaking softly to the brown soccer ball.

“Come on, Tithonus. Say hello.” As we entered, Sam looked up at the gray-haired woman. “He won't come out.”

“He doesn't like strangers.”

The woman leaned forward to bang her cane on the floor three times. The soccer ball shifted ever so slightly. Very slowly, an etiolated neck extended from it, ending in a small, bulbous head.

“I expect he's hungry.” The old woman nudged Sam gently with the cane. “Go see if there's some lettuce in the icebox.”

Sam stood. She made a point of not glancing my way as she headed into the kitchen.

“That's a turtle,” I said.

“Tortoise,” the woman corrected me. “His name is Tithonus. He belonged to my great-grandmother Calantha when she was a girl. He's a spider tortoise, brought to this country by an obscure relative who had business in the southern desert of Madagascar. We never thought to ask what the nature of his business was. Something sinister, I would suspect. I believe the species is now extinct, which would make him the last of his kind, as I am of mine. Tithonus is one hundred and forty-seven years old. Nearly as old as I am,” she added as Sam returned.

“Spinach,” said Sam. She dropped to her knees beside the tortoise and held out a green wad. The tortoise raced toward her, surprisingly fast, its claws clittering against the wooden floor.

Krishna grimaced. “Ugh.”

The gray-haired woman regarded Krishna, then me. “I am Tamsin Carlisle. I gather you also arrived with Adrian yesterday.”

I glanced at Adrian. He gave a slight nod, and I looked back at Tamsin. “Yeah.”

“Did Morven send you?”

“Who?”

“Don't try to lie to me. I can smell her on you.” Swift as a striking hawk, her face jabbed against mine, forcing me backward. Her breath reeked of carious teeth and gin. “You thought you'd wash away her stink, but I can smell her.”

She spat at me. I raised my fist.

“Don't!” cried Sam.

“Stop it.” Adrian grabbed my elbow. “Calm down.”

“Right,” pronounced Krishna. “Calm down.
Calm down
. Because this is all so
fucking normal,
right?”

Tamsin fixed her with a cold stare. “Get up,” she said, indicating the armchair.

Krishna rose with preposterous slowness. “Your Highness Lady Muck,” she said, and sidled to the wooden stool.

I waited for Tamsin to retaliate, but she only sat. “Thank you,” she murmured. She reached for a teacup on the floor beside her, lifted it, and took a sip. “This has already been a long day.”

All this time, I'd been thinking of her as a contemporary of Morven and Poppy, only a few years older than me. But she'd been six years Leith Carlisle's senior. Living alone on this hardscabble farm might have contributed to her formidable manner and unnerving agility, but she'd still have to be in her late seventies.

Which meant she'd have been within shouting distance of forty when Adrian was born: twice as old as Poppy and Morven and all the other teenagers running around Kethelwite Manor, all those girls whom Leith screwed. Tamsin's first child died in the fire: If what Adrian had said was true, and Leith's teenage lovers had borne him children, that could explain the two other infant skeletons in the barrow.