City of Masks

16

After leaving Guidry's office, Cree tried to call Lila from the pay phone at the police complex. She got the machine again and hung up without leaving another message. Suddenly she knew where to find her.

Ten minutes later she arrived at Beauforte House, and, sure enough, parked at the curb was the beige Lexus SUV she'd seen in the garage at the Warrens'. The front door of the house was slightly ajar.

Two o'clock, and the Garden District hummed with its own low-key bustle: an occasional car driving slowly along the tree-shaded streets, a couple of tourists sauntering the root-buckled sidewalks. Groundskeepers worked in flower beds or trimmed lawns, filling the air with the drone of mowers. Two houses down from Beauforte House, a team of repairmen were doing some work and the street rang intermittently with the whine and shriek of a circular saw.

Broad daylight, sunny and pleasant and ordinary, and all Cree could feel was seething fear. Whatever the source of Lila's problems, supernatural or medical, she wasn't safe here. Lila had no business coming here alone in her current condition.

She trotted up the stairs into the faint breath of cool, musty air that flowed out of the front door. She knocked loudly and pushed it open. The dim interior stretched away.

Her pulse jumped when she noticed a purse in the middle of the foyer floor, lipstick and keys spilling from it as if it had been thrown there.

"Lila? Are you here? It's Cree Black." The still house absorbed her words, and she called again, louder.

A scuttling sound upstairs.

She began walking up the long staircase, bringing each foot down hard to make sure her steps were audible. "Lila, it's me, it's Cree Black. You weren't at home, so I swung by here. Are you up there?"

A muffled shriek startled her before she realized it was the carpenters' saw down the street. And then the thought occurred to her that if Lila had screamed or called for help, no one would have heard it amid the chorus of noises outside.

She came to the top of the stairs and paused. There was more light up here, but she found the light switch and turned it on anyway. Overhead, the chandelier sprang to life, a galaxy of yellow sparkles. "Lila?"

The house looked fine and old and proper, yet its rooms seemed infused with that malevolence Cree had felt as she'd hung in the mirror tunnel. She hesitated at the top of the stairs, feeling almost incapable of going farther.

Quick footsteps thumped from the front of the house, and she turned in time to see a form cross the doorway of the middle front room and disappear. Lila!

Cree called to her again and started to cross the room, her eyes on the doorway. Halfway across, she stepped on something and felt a stab of pain as her ankle turned. She winced and looked down to find a woman's shoe, one of the slate-blue, square-toed pumps Lila had worn yesterday. She saw its mate flung into the far corner. Then she noticed that a lamp had been knocked off one of the side tables.

There'd been a fight here.

"Lila, it's Cree! Are you okay?"

Someone moved in the front room, and the window light shifted. Cree gimped toward it. Her sense of foreboding grew, that tornado weather again: She felt the sky's belly bulge and birth the dangling worm that would soon lengthen and swell. As she came into the doorway, she caught a momentary glimpse of Lila cringing behind an ornate desk to her left. And then Lila fled through the side door.

"Lila! It's just Cree! Don't be afraid! Please don't run away!"

Lila had looked like a madwoman. Her eyes were wide and mindless, her face a checkerboard of red and white blotches, her hair ratted out on one side. Though Cree had barely glimpsed her, she saw that her skirt was ripped up one thigh, her blouse untucked and partially unbuttoned. Cree flung herself through the room and into the next, but Lila was already gone, into the central room. Cree heard her bare feet thumping across the big floor and then the different sound as she ran into the hallway.

She had to repress the urge to chase her. Lila was clearly lost in a nightmare in which she was being pursued, and Cree must not appear to be her pursuer. Instead, she limped slowly back through the big room toward the corridor. There were no more sounds from back there, so she didn't think Lila had gone down the rear stairs; she must have run into one of the rooms along the hall, maybe the master bedroom.

"It's just me," Cree called. "I'm just coming to visit you. Please don't be afraid." She continued taking measured steps, trying to ignore the ankle. Into the hall. Talking continuously, she found the light switch, flicked it on. "Lila, please don't mn, it's just Cree! Please talk to me."

The only answer was the faint, grating screech of the circular saw outside.

The bathroom and the master bedroom were empty. Cree came to the doorway to Lila's old bedroom, the room she'd fled to to escape the boar-headed man. She felt the tension swell an instant before the attack came and had a flashing mental image of a pig's face, terrible small eyes and grinning snout, but it was too late. Lila lunged out of the doorway, screaming and clawing at her. Reflexively, Cree flinched away. Her injured ankle buckled, and she fell against the wall with Lila's hands at her face and chest, the compact body pummeling and pushing at her with astonishing strength. Lila's mottled face raged in animal desperation.

Cree managed to catch Lila's wrists as they went over, holding them hard despite the bruising fall. The breath went out of her, but she used her size and strength to hold on and roll Lila over. Lila tossed from side to side, kicking, her face terrified and terrifying. Cree held herself against the twisting and flailing, and managed to pin her arms against the floor. Raw panic leapt like an electrical arc between them.

And abruptly the plump heaving body went slack and the round eyes shut partially and slid to the side, defeated. Lila lay flat on her back, one pale thigh emerging from her ripped skirt, her blouse half open and showing the lace of her bra. The hands stopped clutching and relaxed, surrendered, against the floor. Somehow it was the hands that most wrenched at Cree's heart.

Cree lay half on top of her, trying to catch her breath, unwilling to let go of her wrists. The panicked rage faded from Lila's face, leaving only abject surrender, defeat, sorrow. Exhaustion, too. Her pumping chest slowed and then her breathing caught and went uneven, became sobs. Tears leaked out the corners of her half-closed eyes.

"Lila, it's Cree Black," Cree panted. Her voice came out a rough whisper. "It's Cree! I'm your friend! Don't be afraid. We're in this together, okay? I promise. You don't have anything to be afraid of."

Lila's head lolled to one side and she lay inert. Cree released one wrist and then the other, and still the hands lay limp and defeated against the carpet. Lila kept her face turned away, mouth open and eyes half shut.

It took Cree a moment to realize that she wasn't just dazedly staring but was focusing, looking down the hall toward the central room.

Cree followed her gaze. There was something strange just where the hall opened into the big room. Down on the floor, to the left: the tips of shoes. Someone was standing just around the corner. As she looked, the toes tucked themselves back, almost out of view.

Abruptly Cree felt him there, felt him wanting to be seen, wanting to be feared. That malevolent glee burgeoning with predatory lust and gnarled with unfathomable complexities. She caught the scent of his sweat again, an inky, testosterone musk.

She blinked rapidly, struggling to conquer her own fear and rage. The part of her that had become Lila wanted to explode at him, obliterate him. But that would do no good. It would only fuel his affect. You had to overcome it in yourself. You had to overcome it and find the link between what was good in yourself and the same in him.

"Who are you?" she asked. "What do you want? Do you know who you are?"

There was no change in his affect, no doubt or remorse. More than anything else she'd experienced near him, this terrified her. He had to be a memory spun away from a dying man, but Cree couldn't sense a perimortem dimension to him, none of the range of emotions she'd come to associate with the act of dying. Where was the link, the bridge?

Whatever he was, she was not ready to reach him. If he came at them now

Lila stirred slightly, and Cree looked down at her. She had closed her eyes and now looked like she was asleep. When Cree looked up again, the shoes had retreated out of view. The sense of his presence dissipated.

Weak with relief, Cree leaned to stroke Lila's forehead. "You're all right now. Everything's going to be okay. You're not alone. You're not alone in this." It was all she could think of to say. It didn't sound convincing, didn't sound at all sufficient. Lila just seemed to drowse, a plump middle-aged housewife lying incongruously on the rich Oriental runner, ravaged and abandoned.